Category Archives: Apps

Zello – Push to Talk for Android, BlackBerry & Windows Mobile

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zelloWell I’ve tried many Push to Talk apps for Android both over WiFi and 3G networks and tested them all with poor reception. I must have tried about 20 apps, and only one of them really held up to be any good.

LoudTalks Lite was released for Android on July 25th 2011 so its very new software. Just a few days ago they changed their name to Zello.

What makes it so good is its use of keep-alive and allowing the user to alter this preference. Keep-alive directly affects battery drain while Zello is operating and if the connection is retained when travelling through an area with total loss of 3G signal.

Further to this, Zello allows the user to tinker with buffering settings. Zello uses the open source Speex codecs. Zello also supports channels which can optionally be privatized with a password or moderated.

My testing by talking with my partner showed that Zello was most likely to get a message out in all scenarios with the least amount of delay.

All we need now is an iPhone version.

Flashing Cyanogenmod 7.1 to Samsung Galaxy Gio GT-S5660 with S2E and Google Apps & Maps

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cyanogenmodWell Cyanogenmod is certainly the most well known unofficial Android firmware and is compatible with many devices including my Samsung Galaxy Gio. Cyanogenmod has even been purported by some as being better than official firmwares shipped by manufacturers and carriers. For now Cyanogenmod is not officially supported on the Gio, but it seems that’s on its way.

I blogged about how I started using it some time ago. I’ve nutted out some problems I had and now feel I can blog about its installation so that everything works and the handset is stable.

ISSUES:

I continue to have some minor stability issues with S2E, however its very easy to fix. Because I now use Google to sync & store my calendar, contacts & notes, the real hard part of fixing the S2E issue is having to re-flash the phone. I did this just this morning so hopefully the problem doesn’t pop up again where I can’t install apps (the handset reboots during installation) or that apps begin to slowly disappear.

Another issue is that if I change the screen brightness, the LEDs behind the menu and back buttons will stay on and will not turn off until the handset is rebooted. This is known about, is considered a bug, and should hopefully be fixed in the next version.

And the final issue which I solved is Google Maps, Latitude & Navigation when installed from the Market crashes very soon after you load it. The solution is to not install the latest version from the Market but to install version 5.12 from the link I provided above. This version seems stable, the new 6.x versions are not stable on this firmware (they should be, its a firmware bug that should hopefully be fixed in the next version).

You will need:

  • Clockworkmod 2.0 for Samsung Galaxy Gio
  • Cyanogenmod
  • Google Apps
  • Google Maps 5.12 APK
  • Mini Partition Tool Home Edition
  • A MicroSD card that can be re-partitioned with at least 512MB to be used for app storage
  • 02gio – replacement startup file that disables tune2fs on the SD-EXT partition
  • Root Explorer (buy it you cheap asshole)
  • S2E

This folder on Minus has everything you need:

 

To install:

  • Remove your memory card from your phone and connect it to your PC with a memory card reader. Do not use the USB cable to your phone as Cyanogenmod doesn’t support this so you won’t be able to do this once you’ve flashed it, so you should now begin to get in the habit of your phone unable to act as a memory card reader.
  • Repartition your memory card with Mini Partition Tool Home Edition. You can right click the existing partition, select resize, and free up enough space for your new partition. When you create a new partition make it a Primary partition of the Ext4 filesystem with a cluster size of 4kb. Hit the apply button and it should be done in a couple minutes.
  • Safely remove the memory card from your PC and then re-insert it
  • Copy the ZIP files to the FAT32 partition of your SD card. You will need to copy Clockworkmod, Cyanogenmod, Google Apps, Google Maps APK & 02gio to the SD card. Probably put it in a folder named Cyanogenmod. Most other guides say put it in the root folder but you don’t have to do that, you can organise your shit (nothing prevents this).
  • Safely remove the memory card from your PC
  • Turn off your phone, put your memory card back in the phone
  • Turn your phone on by holding the home and power buttons. Keep holding these buttons until presented with the recovery menu
  • Select ‘Install ZIP from SD card’
  • Select ‘Choose ZIP file’
  • Browse to the Clockworkmod zip file and flash it
  • Press the back button to get you back to the main menu
  • Reboot your phone
  • Once your phone boots up, turn it off
  • Turn your phone back on holding the home and power buttons until the recovery menu is presented
  • Select ‘Install ZIP from SD card’
  • Select ‘Choose ZIP file’
  • Browse to the Cyanogenmod zip file and flash it
  • Press the back button until you get back to the main menu
  • Reboot your phone
  • Once your phone boots up, enable WiFi, connect it to your WiFi access point, then turn your phone off
  • Turn your phone back on by holding the home and power buttons until the recovery menu is presented
  • Select ‘Install ZIP from SD card’
  • Select ‘Choose ZIP file’
  • Browse to the Google Apps ZIP file and flash it
  • Press the back button until you get back to the main menu
  • Reboot your phone
  • Once your phone boots up, you’ll be presented with the Google Market installer. Make sure you sign in with your Google account
  • You will be presented with the Google Market showing all the apps Google have published. Hit the back button. You’ll be taken back to the Google Market installer which has a few more things to skip through
  • When the wizard is gone, load up Market and install Root Explorer and S2E
  • Exit the market, and load up Root Explorer
  • Copy 02gio to /system/etc/init.d and change its ownership to root:shell and its permissions to 640
  • Browse to the Google Maps apk you copied to the memory card and install it
  • Reboot your phone
  • Open S2E, hit the menu button, select Preferences, tick Mount EXT4
  • Reboot
  • Open S2E, enable S2E for Applications and the Dalvik cache, hit the menu button, select reboot
  • Congratulations – you have Cyanogenmod with S2E and Google Apps & Google Maps

15.2GB of free Dropbox?

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dropboxAn old friend of mine, Hyper, e-mailed me about something he discovered.

I’ve previously blogged about how to use Google Adwords to get 10GB of free Dropbox for life.

Hyper has discovered that Dropbox are conducting a beta program of a new photo & video import feature. By installing their new beta software and importing 5GB of photos & videos to Dropbox with the new beta features, you will be rewarded with 5GB of extra space (in chunks of 500MB, separate from the referral bonuses).

Good find Hyper! Thanks for letting me know.

I’ve done it myself and have so far been rewarded with 500MB – it sucks being limited to 1Mbit upload on ADSL2+.

Sync’ing with Microsoft Office Outlook and Android

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I use Microsoft Office Outlook for my e-mail because it has other tools like a calendar, task list and address book. I do not use Microsoft Exchange but I do use Outlook on a number of computers which all run the same version of Windows 7 Ultimate x64 and Microsoft Office 2010 Premium.

I also have a Samsung Galaxy Gio running Android which is currently the Cyanogenmod firmware. The best method to use contacts by far on this device is “in the cloud” on Google Contacts. The calendar is the same with Google Calendar. And so are notes with Notes in Google Docs.

I previously have had lots of problems sync’ing to Android. I first used Samsung Kies which seemed alright except it had a tendency to duplicate contacts and calendar events continually so that my phone’s memory eventually filled up. Cyanogenmod won’t actually support Samsung Kies, mainly because the USB device function seems to be broken on the Samsung Galaxy Gio port and Cyanogenmod also lacks the Samsung Apps framework.

I found GO Contact Sync Mod after trying several other methods of sync’ing. When run on a PC which uses Outlook, it essentially sync’s your Outlook Calendar & Notes with Google.

Google also have put out Google Calendar Sync which will sync your Outlook to Google Calendar.

So with those two apps, you have a total sync solution that doesn’t fuck out if you run it on two PCs – and it uses the Internet connection so no direct connection between the phone and PC is needed, just the Internet on both devices.

Alternative firmware for the Noontec A9

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After posting on xda-forums the other day I was pointed to this page. Umax is Noontec’s distributor in the Czech Republic and have published a couple firmwares that Noontec haven’t. They are:

I’m yet to try the 1.2.04 myself, but I will soon and naturally I’ll blog about it.

I have made some small steps in rooting the Noontec… in that realizing root is available by default through the adb shell when connected via USB to a PC.

I also realized that the /system partition on the Noontec firmware is cramfs, and therefore read only, and therefore I cannot modify it even with Super User installed. This seems like an absolutely stupid move by Noontec considering the device’s tech specs mention it has 2GB of NAND memory (so its capable of being in a writeable format) and the advantages of root on Android include things like playback of videos over CIFS network shares (which would be a target market for a “Smart TV Box”).

It seems like I’ll have to work on my own firmware image. I’m just a little fearful of this considering the Noontec also lacks a /recovery partition which makes the recovery menus non-existent.

Webroot Removal Tool?

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Webroot Spy Sweeper 2011Norton have their Removal Tools for sometimes damaged installations that do not remove correctly.

A customer of mine had used Webroot SpySweeper for many years but we both decided that it wasn’t offering adequate protection and was instead slowing down the customers computer. A real shame because SpySweeper used to be a really good product when the customer first used it on Windows XP – today it doesn’t seem to be so good in the era of Windows 7. So we wanted to remove it.

The standard installer would not work. After some time it gave an “Error 100” whatever that means and directed me to this website. I wasn’t able to find this through Google so I thought I’d blog about it, so that maybe it is reachable through Google. That page describes WRUpgrade.exe which is published by Webroot to remove damaged installations of their products when their regular uninstaller does not work.

When I ran WRUpgrade I had to then load Task Manager and kill off Webroot related processes as it got stuck. But after I did that it removed Spysweeper no problems.

Windows Loader by Daz v2.1

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I thought I’d post about Windows Loader by Daz as I’ve previously blogged about v1.9.7. I recently noticed that Daz has released several new versions since I blogged about it in March. The current 2.1 version was released on the 28th of November.

While 1.9.7 still works perfectly fine for me and every update sees no change to the status of Windows Activation Technology, new versions are worth noting because of the addition of further SLICs taken from OEM pre-installations of Windows 7, and further advanced options to fiddle with. I haven’t bothered to install 2.1, I figure I won’t install a new version of Windows Loader until activation stops working, but its worth noting for any new installs to use the latest version available.

Current releases for Windows Loader by Daz can be found here.

Windows Loader by Daz v2.1 can be downloaded here.

eCommerce Inspiration

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The launch of my eBook store in the past week has inspired me about a few other future projects.

A primary goal of the eBook store project wasn’t even to turn over a profit, it was to test and operate a store with very basic needs on its eCommerce package in order to gain experience.

Because of this experience I’ve realized quite a few things about Zen Cart and how I can make it work for my computer hardware business.

I’ll have to test a rig on how I can easily maintain thousands of products by using supplier pricelist files, over the Christmas break. If that works out well then I’ll just have to spend a stack of time photographing and writing descriptions on products.

I may even have to buy something like StoreManager for Zen Cart for the huge job of product data entry.

Get 10GB of Dropbox free for life

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dropboxMany people use Dropbox these days because its a handy file sync tool. However the paid service is quite pricey at either $10 per month or $100 per year for their 50GB package.

The free 2GB package is well used. You can get 250MB of extra space for every person you refer, up to 8GB. In other words, you can have up to 10GB of space for free through referrals.

And it also happens that Google Adwords are giving away $75 free advertising coupons like they’re candy.

Combine the two, and you can run an Adwords campaign for Dropbox using your referral link for free. As people sign up, you get bonus space.

I just did it myself, and for about 2 days nothing happened. Then tonight all of a sudden 10 referrals have rolled in as Google have activated my ad campaign. I guess I’m staying up until I get up to my 8GB which should be very soon.

The following video is a good guide on how to do this yourself: