Thursday, October 25, 2012
Bionic's finally get Ice Cream Sandwich
Finally the ICS (Android 4.0) gets pushed out to the Motorola Droid Bionic. One of the first great new features I noticed was the ability to disable bloatware. In fact, you can even uninstall some of it now (Blockbuster for instance). That you can't remove can at least be disabled which removes it from everything so you can't see it, it does not upgrade, and it is not offered as an app to launch for shortcuts. Very nice. Next best thing to just a complete uninstall. It now acts totally different in the lapdock. It no longer uses the internal lapdock browser at all. It just launches webtop. The webtop is nice though and now Firefox and Chrome run on the Bionic.
Monday, August 13, 2012
Weather station up and running
I finally got the weather station up and running in my new place. My temperature/humidity sensor was bad so I replaced it. I also set up all the websites like I had before. Here is the page ( http://jimroal.com/wxdata.htm ) where you will also find links to the other pages where I push data.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Career advice to kids graduating High School
We have some major shortages of people to fill high-tech positions in science and engineering these days. Engineers here in the Midwest are in such demand right now that we struggle to fill the positions. Estimates put unemployment in Engineering below 1%. Normal unemployment is usually considered optimum around 4% from normal attrition, people not fitting well with the job, etc. At the same time I hear about these crazy new degrees some schools are offering that have no chance of ever landing a decent job and many graduates with them. Schools keep raising tuition yet they are filthy rich already. The greed from schools is very disgusting. Getting a 4 year Bachelors degree can now run about $50k/year for a $200k total. Often kids pay that for a degree that will not earn them even $40k a year. They can never pay it back for that.
I think the root cause starts early in life when we tell our kids to get a job they enjoy. While the statement is true, it is very misinterpreted. Yes, you should get a job you enjoy but don't confuse that with a job that actually pays and has a great future. When finding a career you would enjoy start by looking at the best paying jobs with the lowest unemployment. As you look down that list find one that sounds interesting to you. In other words, first find a job with low unemployment and great pay and benefits. Then from that list, find one that interests you. Don't confuse your hobbies with a career. Sure there are a few people that become football stars, race car drivers, and actors. That vast majority trying for these things do not succeed. It is fine to aspire to those jobs. It is even good to try to attain it but you need a backup plan. Go ahead and play football in college and be the best you can be. However, at the same time work towards a degree that pays and has low unemployment. If you get to your senior year and you are the top football player, then you might have a chance. However, you always have the degree to fall back on in case it does not work out for you.
Should you go to college at all? If you really have no idea what you want to do, maybe not. Maybe it is best for you to just go out and get a job. See what the world is all about. Eventually you will decide a career is in order. Once you are serious, then you can really apply yourself in school.
Where should to attend college? Not the place with the best parties! Actually the school you choose is less important than the effort you put into learning and getting good grades. As long as the school is accredited, and they give real grades, all are pretty close in my book. Ivy league schools are a rip off. Not even worth the extra money. While they are often very good schools, they overcharge. Instead choose a good college where you can learn and not brake the bank doing it. There is nothing wrong with starting at a community college and transferring to a university and this can save money. I did that myself. Just make sure you line up the community college and university to make sure the credits all transfer. Also, most counselors are pretty much worthless. Instead of following their advice, go directly to the person leading the department at the university where you plan to get your degree. Some of the professors in your major as also good. You want someone who is an expert in the field you plan to get the degree in to help guide you through college.
I have interviewed many people. Interviewees are often surprised when I am as interested in the job they had while in college as I am with their school work. Many people will not put these jobs on a resume thinking it will detract from their resume. Some people believe this will somehow reflect negatively on them. When I start asking question about jobs they have had, they finally start telling me about some of their experiences. What we are looking for as employers is a person with good work ethic and discipline. The only place to demonstrate many of these attributes is in a job. Interviewing a recent graduate with no work experience is hard and hiring that person is a gamble. It really does not matter what the job was. Working as a McDonald's cook, or a janitor, or changing oil at a Jiffy Lube is nothing to be ashamed of. Not working at all generally is. I have heard from other people who interview say the same things. In fact, I have heard from several that won't even look at a candidate that has no work experience. Again, any job is better than no job.
One way to get both work experience and some experience in the field of study at the same time is through internships. I can't stress enough how important this is and what a great opportunity it is for both employer and potential employee. Find an internship at an employer in your field of study and interest. This gives you an inside view to what this job really is. You may find that it was not what you thought and you might change majors. More likely, you will find it is not the grind you thought and in fact it can be very fun. After working there you and the employer know each other much better and, assuming things went well, you could have more internships and finally a job by graduation.
When you finally get to the interview, be open, energetic, and honest. What we want to see as employers is that you are actually interested in working here to provide benefit for the company. Engagement is the key. We want to see your interest in what we are doing. An ideal candidate would ask questions about the work we do and what their role will be in it. I want to see them thinking about actually working here and building a career. Energy and enthusiasm. The people who move up the fastest in a good company are the ones who provide the most value and those are always the most engaged employees. What I mean by engagement is that you understand what makes the company successful and you truly enjoy working hard to make it even more successful. That success comes from providing real value to your customers. Seeing your customers also succeed is itself engaging. Real top performers is non labor careers are driven by purpose, autonomy, and mastery. Here is a video that explains it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJr9QajdCNc
I think the root cause starts early in life when we tell our kids to get a job they enjoy. While the statement is true, it is very misinterpreted. Yes, you should get a job you enjoy but don't confuse that with a job that actually pays and has a great future. When finding a career you would enjoy start by looking at the best paying jobs with the lowest unemployment. As you look down that list find one that sounds interesting to you. In other words, first find a job with low unemployment and great pay and benefits. Then from that list, find one that interests you. Don't confuse your hobbies with a career. Sure there are a few people that become football stars, race car drivers, and actors. That vast majority trying for these things do not succeed. It is fine to aspire to those jobs. It is even good to try to attain it but you need a backup plan. Go ahead and play football in college and be the best you can be. However, at the same time work towards a degree that pays and has low unemployment. If you get to your senior year and you are the top football player, then you might have a chance. However, you always have the degree to fall back on in case it does not work out for you.
Should you go to college at all? If you really have no idea what you want to do, maybe not. Maybe it is best for you to just go out and get a job. See what the world is all about. Eventually you will decide a career is in order. Once you are serious, then you can really apply yourself in school.
Where should to attend college? Not the place with the best parties! Actually the school you choose is less important than the effort you put into learning and getting good grades. As long as the school is accredited, and they give real grades, all are pretty close in my book. Ivy league schools are a rip off. Not even worth the extra money. While they are often very good schools, they overcharge. Instead choose a good college where you can learn and not brake the bank doing it. There is nothing wrong with starting at a community college and transferring to a university and this can save money. I did that myself. Just make sure you line up the community college and university to make sure the credits all transfer. Also, most counselors are pretty much worthless. Instead of following their advice, go directly to the person leading the department at the university where you plan to get your degree. Some of the professors in your major as also good. You want someone who is an expert in the field you plan to get the degree in to help guide you through college.
I have interviewed many people. Interviewees are often surprised when I am as interested in the job they had while in college as I am with their school work. Many people will not put these jobs on a resume thinking it will detract from their resume. Some people believe this will somehow reflect negatively on them. When I start asking question about jobs they have had, they finally start telling me about some of their experiences. What we are looking for as employers is a person with good work ethic and discipline. The only place to demonstrate many of these attributes is in a job. Interviewing a recent graduate with no work experience is hard and hiring that person is a gamble. It really does not matter what the job was. Working as a McDonald's cook, or a janitor, or changing oil at a Jiffy Lube is nothing to be ashamed of. Not working at all generally is. I have heard from other people who interview say the same things. In fact, I have heard from several that won't even look at a candidate that has no work experience. Again, any job is better than no job.
One way to get both work experience and some experience in the field of study at the same time is through internships. I can't stress enough how important this is and what a great opportunity it is for both employer and potential employee. Find an internship at an employer in your field of study and interest. This gives you an inside view to what this job really is. You may find that it was not what you thought and you might change majors. More likely, you will find it is not the grind you thought and in fact it can be very fun. After working there you and the employer know each other much better and, assuming things went well, you could have more internships and finally a job by graduation.
When you finally get to the interview, be open, energetic, and honest. What we want to see as employers is that you are actually interested in working here to provide benefit for the company. Engagement is the key. We want to see your interest in what we are doing. An ideal candidate would ask questions about the work we do and what their role will be in it. I want to see them thinking about actually working here and building a career. Energy and enthusiasm. The people who move up the fastest in a good company are the ones who provide the most value and those are always the most engaged employees. What I mean by engagement is that you understand what makes the company successful and you truly enjoy working hard to make it even more successful. That success comes from providing real value to your customers. Seeing your customers also succeed is itself engaging. Real top performers is non labor careers are driven by purpose, autonomy, and mastery. Here is a video that explains it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJr9QajdCNc
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Removing Bloatware from your Android
I finally did it! I rooted the Droid 3 and ripped out all the nasty bloatware Verizon forced on me. I feel quite liberated. My battery life has doubled. The device is faster and more reliable since it has more available RAM too. I even removed all those locked bookmarks from the browser.
Here is how I did it:
1) Gain root access to the device. There are several one-click root solutions out there now for most phones. I used this one: http://www.psouza4.com/Droid3/
2) Rename the bloatware .APK and .ODEX files in the system/app directory on the device. That is well documented here: http://www.androidcentral.com/removing-bloatware-your-motorola-droid-3 . One thing I did a bit different was to use ES File Explorer to rename the files. It is a free app on the Android Market and it support root access. You can just navigate to the system/apps directory and rename the bloatware apps files by adding the .bak to the end. This makes it an easily reversible process and you can choose what you keep. In order to access the root with ES File Explorer, you need to enable it in the settings. In ES File Explorer click the menu key, then scroll to the bottom where it has Root Settings. Check both boxes ("root explorer" and "mount file system").
3) Remove the locked bookmarks from your browser.db file in the /data/data/com.android.browser/databases/ directory. That process is explained here: http://androidforums.com/commando-all-things-root/408698-browser-removing-verizon-locked-bookmarks.html
Thanks to the world wide web we have rapid information sharing and collaboration to make things like this happen fast and then share it around the world.
Before the de-bloat I would have to plug in my phone at lunch time under normal usage. Now I no longer both. I can go 16 hours unplugged with normal usage and stay above 60%. Many days I still have 70%. I am using the Motorola extended battery (BF6X). I installed the extended battery just after I got the device because I could not go 1/2 a day without plugging in. It got really bad. Something happened that caused the phone to chew up about 6GB of data that month. I suspect it was the Verizon backup assistant. I don't use that service after having a very bad experience with it messing up my contacts. I did a factory reset of the device and my battery life and data usage improved. Then a couple months later I had to do a factory reset again because my battery life was terrible again. After the resets, the battery would improve. Now that I have rooted and de-bloated, those issues appear to be behind me for good.
I didn't remove any of the Motorola Blur apps. I actually like most of them. The voice command is very good, much better than stock Android. I also left My Verizon in there as I actually do find value in that. ZumoCast is a very good app so I kept it as well. All the VCast crap is gone though. VZ Navigator is gone too. NFL mobile is gone as is City ID. I can remove any pre-installed software I want easily using ES File Explorer.
The facing camera in the Droid 3 has never been the most stable. Skype and GTalk would sometimes just not initialize. Now that camera does not work at all. It tries to open but then fails to initialize. I found a few others that have not rooted this device that have the same problem. I have not yet found a solution but honestly I never used that camera anyway. The main camera still works great. Video IM is mostly a gimmick anyway and it does not work at all on 3G.
For now I am still running the stock ROM. I will probably hold out until a stable build with Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4) is available for this device.
Here is how I did it:
1) Gain root access to the device. There are several one-click root solutions out there now for most phones. I used this one: http://www.psouza4.com/Droid3/
2) Rename the bloatware .APK and .ODEX files in the system/app directory on the device. That is well documented here: http://www.androidcentral.com/removing-bloatware-your-motorola-droid-3 . One thing I did a bit different was to use ES File Explorer to rename the files. It is a free app on the Android Market and it support root access. You can just navigate to the system/apps directory and rename the bloatware apps files by adding the .bak to the end. This makes it an easily reversible process and you can choose what you keep. In order to access the root with ES File Explorer, you need to enable it in the settings. In ES File Explorer click the menu key, then scroll to the bottom where it has Root Settings. Check both boxes ("root explorer" and "mount file system").
3) Remove the locked bookmarks from your browser.db file in the /data/data/com.android.browser/databases/ directory. That process is explained here: http://androidforums.com/commando-all-things-root/408698-browser-removing-verizon-locked-bookmarks.html
Thanks to the world wide web we have rapid information sharing and collaboration to make things like this happen fast and then share it around the world.
Before the de-bloat I would have to plug in my phone at lunch time under normal usage. Now I no longer both. I can go 16 hours unplugged with normal usage and stay above 60%. Many days I still have 70%. I am using the Motorola extended battery (BF6X). I installed the extended battery just after I got the device because I could not go 1/2 a day without plugging in. It got really bad. Something happened that caused the phone to chew up about 6GB of data that month. I suspect it was the Verizon backup assistant. I don't use that service after having a very bad experience with it messing up my contacts. I did a factory reset of the device and my battery life and data usage improved. Then a couple months later I had to do a factory reset again because my battery life was terrible again. After the resets, the battery would improve. Now that I have rooted and de-bloated, those issues appear to be behind me for good.
I didn't remove any of the Motorola Blur apps. I actually like most of them. The voice command is very good, much better than stock Android. I also left My Verizon in there as I actually do find value in that. ZumoCast is a very good app so I kept it as well. All the VCast crap is gone though. VZ Navigator is gone too. NFL mobile is gone as is City ID. I can remove any pre-installed software I want easily using ES File Explorer.
The facing camera in the Droid 3 has never been the most stable. Skype and GTalk would sometimes just not initialize. Now that camera does not work at all. It tries to open but then fails to initialize. I found a few others that have not rooted this device that have the same problem. I have not yet found a solution but honestly I never used that camera anyway. The main camera still works great. Video IM is mostly a gimmick anyway and it does not work at all on 3G.
For now I am still running the stock ROM. I will probably hold out until a stable build with Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4) is available for this device.
Friday, December 30, 2011
What to do with your old Android smartphone
Today's smartphones are actually computers. In fact, they are much more powerful than desktop PC's were just 10 years ago. Unlike ordinary mobile phones, smartphones still have many uses even when they are no longer activated on a cellular network. I have captured a few ideas below.
- Use it as a music/video player. Many people paid good money to buy iPods back in the day. Today's Android phones are more powerful and more flexible than an iPod. You can use the WiFi connection to use Android Market, Amazon, Pandora, Tune-In Radio, Napster, or many other music services to buy and stream music and videos as well as free radio. Use the Bluetooth A2DP streaming to listen to music using any Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP) receiver. You can also share and control your music using DLNA.
- Use it as an OBDII scan tool for your car. For about $25 you can buy a Bluetooth OBDII scan tool on eBay. Just do a search for ELM327 Bluetooth on eBay and you are sure to find many. There are several OBDII scan tool apps available on Android Market. Torque is one of the best. You can read and clear your fault codes and turn OFF your Check Engine light. You can also read engine parameters and much more.
- Use it as a Skype phone. Have a home WiFi and use Skype? You can use your old Android phone to make Skype calls just like you do on your PC. Just download the free Skype app from Android Market. The same is true for Google Talk and Google Voice.
- Use it for GPS navigation. Most Android devices also have GPS receivers in them. The newer versions of Google Maps for Android support map cache. Before you go on a trip, cache all the areas you will be traveling. You can use Google Maps on the PC to set up your destinations and routes too.
- Use it as a camera/camcorder. These devices are compact but have decent cameras in them. They make a very handy camera for photos and video. They will also capture the GPS location of the photos and video which is very handy. Once you get to a WiFi connection, you can post them to Google+, Facebook, Picasa, or many other photo and video sites.
- Use it to play games. There are many games out there that don't need a constant data connection.
- Use it like you used your old PDA. You can create and edit documents, spreadsheets, etc. The calendar also still works and it will sync with your Google calendars.
- Use it as an alarm clock. You can also use the timer app. There are many great alarm clock apps on Android Market.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Buying a Smartphone
Smartphones are spreading like wild fire these days. What was once a novelty for a few is now mainstream with over 1/2 of new cellular phone purchases being smartphones. Right now there are 4 main competitors in the smartphone platform space: Android, iOS, Blackberry, and Windows. By far the dominant players are Android and iOS. Android is the number one in activation rate and is now dominating the market.
I happen to be one of those Android fans. I bought the first Droid the day it was out on the market. I have since upgraded to a Droid 3 but I have 2 Bionics and a Droid 2 in the family as well. To be honest my first week with Droid 1 was disappointing in some ways. It had Android 2.0 which did not support voice dialing over Bluetooth, one of my critical requirements. I have Bluetooth in all of my cars. I also use the Bluetooth A2DP music streaming. That first week when I found out about these missing features, I was shocked. I was planning to return the device until a friend convinced me that the software was still quite new and these features would be added very soon. Of course he was right. By the release of Android 2.2, my features were all there, and then some.
As I said I use Bluetooth hands free and stereo streaming (A2DP) in my cars. I use the voice dialing and voice commands so I keep the device in my pocket at all times when driving. There were a few issues with doing this on most devices including Android. The A2DP stream is attenuated via the volume. This is needed on some devices as they don't always have their own volume controls. However, in the car, the Bluetooth car systems need the stream to not be attenuated so the volume can instead be controlled by the car stereo system. To fix this issue I wrote my first Android application called A2DP Volume. It is free on Android Market and is open source (http://code.google.com/p/a2dpvolume/). I am a hobby programmer. I had a year of C/C++ in college as well as FORTRAN. I dabble with C# and now Java for Android. After programming in C#, Java is very simple to learn. There are many similarities.
Some have asked when this app will be available for iOS. The answer to this is never, and here's why. In order to develop for iOS I would need to learn Apple's special programming language, buy an Apple PC, and acquire an Apple device to test it on. This would cost about $3k according to experts. Then I would have to pay $100 per year so I could publish to the Apple App Store, which is the only way to distribute iOS apps. In the end, I would not get any use from it, since I use Android and all my PCs are Windows based. The problem with Apple is they tend to force you to use only their products and services. Their business model is about making a profit from hardware and services so they charge accordingly for it. Because they don't sell their OS to anyone else, you must buy their hardware and use only their services. If you decide to go with the Apple ecosystem, you need all Apple stuff to work with it. I much prefer the open source world. As a developer, there are no unanswered questions with Android. If I need to know how to integrate a feature with the OS, I can just look at the OS source code. With Apple they heavily limit what a developer can see and do. Often in these cases a little reverse engineering is needed to figure it out.
There are many other reasons I don't like Apple. The iPhone has a tiny 3.5" screen and very limited controls. The iPad is also smaller than many Android counterparts. I don't like iTunes at all. It works terribly on the PC platform. It is more like a virus than usable software. You have to pay to get decent voice navigation. You are married to Apple to buy music, apps, videos, etc and you pay accordingly. You do what Apple wants you to do, and nothing else. The Apple video formats don't work on most devices and must be converted. I have a Kodak camera that shoots video in .MOV format and it has been a serious pain because of this. Never again will I buy a device that uses Apple's formats. Apple does not even support many Bluetooth devices. For instance, you can't get a Bluetooth OBD scan tool that works with iOS. I can get an ELM327 based Bluetooth scan tool for my Android that costs about $25 on eBay and the basic Android software is free. With that I can read and clear OBD codes, read powertrain data, etc. I can't do any of that with iStuff. Want to expand memory, not with iPod, iPad, or iPhone. No SD slot on these devices. Battery getting weak? Send your iPhone back to Apple to replace it, and pay what they want to charge you. Want an extended battery? Tough luck. How about a physical keyboard? No luck there either.
Smartphone users know that the real power of the device is found using apps. Both Apple and Android have huge app stores. However, the apps for Apple tend to cost much more. I have only bought a couple apps for Android. Nearly everything I want is available for free. Not so much with Apple. Their business model is about making money from you directly. Google is in the advertising business. Android is just a tool to allow more advertising. They give everything away for free and make their money from advertisers. Because of this, Google is very open and they try to integrate with everything whereas Apple try to close out everything except Apple. Microsoft falls right in between. They want to be on every device. Since Microsoft does not really make devices, they try to integrate with others.
The open source software community is highly innovative. They develop numerous creative things we can do with our devices. Becoming an Android developer involves downloading a free software development kit (SDK). My favorite is Motodev Studio. It comes complete with the Android SDK and the correct version of Eclipse. If you want to publish to the Android Market, it will cost you a one time fee of $25. Publishing an app is quick and easy. You can find all the details here: http://developer.android.com/index.html.
Apple was smart to push the envelope with the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. They deserve credit for doing that. Others quickly followed that success with competing products. Apple's answer to competition is to lawyer up and sue everyone. OK, now it's time to step up on my soap box to whine about the patent system.
There are serious issues with the current worldwide patent system. It is getting even worse. The winners of this are the worlds richest companies. The losers are us, the consumers, and individuals or small companies that invent. Today you can patent nearly anything, locking out the competitors. Very silly simple things are granted patents. As an engineer this is obvious to me but it is much less obvious to most others. For instance, the idea of being able to click on a phone number to dial it seems common sense but that is patented. The idea to swipe across the touch screen to unlock the device is also obvious, but that too is patented. The list goes on and on. This year our government eliminated the need to prove there was no prior work before granting patents. Now it is first to file. This just made it far worse. Microsoft now makes more money from patent royalties off of Android based phones than it does from its own mobile OS. We as consumers pay for that. Our money goes to one of the richest companies in the world for work given away for free. Google spent the money to create Android (after buying the business) but Microsoft makes a profit from Google work. It amazes me that we put up with this! Our patent system needs a serious overhaul. There needs to be a sanity check up front. Here is my suggestion. If you pose the problem that the patent solves to a group of students in the field of study (say engineers) and at least one of them solves it with the approach proposed in the patent, then it gets thrown out as common sense. I suspect that would eliminate about 2/3's of the patents. This would likely save consumers billions every year. The little guy does not stand a chance. Say you invent something and you spend the money to patent it. Now a big company decides they want to use that patent. They can just patent you into a box where you could never use your own patent. Its a matter of who has the most money to lawyer up. The big company can always outspend you and crush you like a bug. And they will.
Back to smartphones. Let's talk about listening to music. You may notice that there are many devices out there that are iPod compatible. They have a proprietary dock and connector to connect to your iStuff and control it. Because of this you may think that you need iStuff so you can listen to your music, in which case you would be mistaken. The wave of the future is in Bluetooth and WiFi streaming (DLNA). Rather than purchasing a special piece of hardware, you can just get a device that supports DLNA or Bluetooth A2DP. These are industry standards that everyone can use. You can get a LG TV, Panasonic Blue-ray player, and a Samsung smartphone and it can all share music, video, and photos. Then you don't need to put your device in that clunky dock. Instead, you can take it with you and use it to control the media. Now you can use any brand and it will work. It even works on iStuff. I bought an $18 Bluetooth A2DP receiver for my daughter. It has a 3.5mm stereo jack to connect to any stereo system. She uses it with a boom box. Works fantastic. I can use media from any of my Android devices and stream it to my TV using DLNA. You can find more information on DLNA here: http://www.dlna.org/home.
If you are interested in Bluetooth music streaming I posted details of my installations on the Motorola support forum here: https://forums.motorola.com/posts/95de7ae497. If you can't access that, I have details of the installation in our 1998 Jaguar XJR here: http://jimroal.com/cars/X308Bluetooth.pdf. I have some more information here: http://code.google.com/p/a2dpvolume/wiki/Devices. Some new vehicles (later models) support it already. For instance, the Ford Sync supports it. You can also get devices that don't require installation. Some use a 3.5mm stereo plug so your car stereo will need to have that. Others rebroadcast over FM. The hard wired or integrated solutions are always the best way to go.
More to come later...
I happen to be one of those Android fans. I bought the first Droid the day it was out on the market. I have since upgraded to a Droid 3 but I have 2 Bionics and a Droid 2 in the family as well. To be honest my first week with Droid 1 was disappointing in some ways. It had Android 2.0 which did not support voice dialing over Bluetooth, one of my critical requirements. I have Bluetooth in all of my cars. I also use the Bluetooth A2DP music streaming. That first week when I found out about these missing features, I was shocked. I was planning to return the device until a friend convinced me that the software was still quite new and these features would be added very soon. Of course he was right. By the release of Android 2.2, my features were all there, and then some.
As I said I use Bluetooth hands free and stereo streaming (A2DP) in my cars. I use the voice dialing and voice commands so I keep the device in my pocket at all times when driving. There were a few issues with doing this on most devices including Android. The A2DP stream is attenuated via the volume. This is needed on some devices as they don't always have their own volume controls. However, in the car, the Bluetooth car systems need the stream to not be attenuated so the volume can instead be controlled by the car stereo system. To fix this issue I wrote my first Android application called A2DP Volume. It is free on Android Market and is open source (http://code.google.com/p/a2dpvolume/). I am a hobby programmer. I had a year of C/C++ in college as well as FORTRAN. I dabble with C# and now Java for Android. After programming in C#, Java is very simple to learn. There are many similarities.
Some have asked when this app will be available for iOS. The answer to this is never, and here's why. In order to develop for iOS I would need to learn Apple's special programming language, buy an Apple PC, and acquire an Apple device to test it on. This would cost about $3k according to experts. Then I would have to pay $100 per year so I could publish to the Apple App Store, which is the only way to distribute iOS apps. In the end, I would not get any use from it, since I use Android and all my PCs are Windows based. The problem with Apple is they tend to force you to use only their products and services. Their business model is about making a profit from hardware and services so they charge accordingly for it. Because they don't sell their OS to anyone else, you must buy their hardware and use only their services. If you decide to go with the Apple ecosystem, you need all Apple stuff to work with it. I much prefer the open source world. As a developer, there are no unanswered questions with Android. If I need to know how to integrate a feature with the OS, I can just look at the OS source code. With Apple they heavily limit what a developer can see and do. Often in these cases a little reverse engineering is needed to figure it out.
There are many other reasons I don't like Apple. The iPhone has a tiny 3.5" screen and very limited controls. The iPad is also smaller than many Android counterparts. I don't like iTunes at all. It works terribly on the PC platform. It is more like a virus than usable software. You have to pay to get decent voice navigation. You are married to Apple to buy music, apps, videos, etc and you pay accordingly. You do what Apple wants you to do, and nothing else. The Apple video formats don't work on most devices and must be converted. I have a Kodak camera that shoots video in .MOV format and it has been a serious pain because of this. Never again will I buy a device that uses Apple's formats. Apple does not even support many Bluetooth devices. For instance, you can't get a Bluetooth OBD scan tool that works with iOS. I can get an ELM327 based Bluetooth scan tool for my Android that costs about $25 on eBay and the basic Android software is free. With that I can read and clear OBD codes, read powertrain data, etc. I can't do any of that with iStuff. Want to expand memory, not with iPod, iPad, or iPhone. No SD slot on these devices. Battery getting weak? Send your iPhone back to Apple to replace it, and pay what they want to charge you. Want an extended battery? Tough luck. How about a physical keyboard? No luck there either.
Smartphone users know that the real power of the device is found using apps. Both Apple and Android have huge app stores. However, the apps for Apple tend to cost much more. I have only bought a couple apps for Android. Nearly everything I want is available for free. Not so much with Apple. Their business model is about making money from you directly. Google is in the advertising business. Android is just a tool to allow more advertising. They give everything away for free and make their money from advertisers. Because of this, Google is very open and they try to integrate with everything whereas Apple try to close out everything except Apple. Microsoft falls right in between. They want to be on every device. Since Microsoft does not really make devices, they try to integrate with others.
The open source software community is highly innovative. They develop numerous creative things we can do with our devices. Becoming an Android developer involves downloading a free software development kit (SDK). My favorite is Motodev Studio. It comes complete with the Android SDK and the correct version of Eclipse. If you want to publish to the Android Market, it will cost you a one time fee of $25. Publishing an app is quick and easy. You can find all the details here: http://developer.android.com/index.html.
Apple was smart to push the envelope with the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. They deserve credit for doing that. Others quickly followed that success with competing products. Apple's answer to competition is to lawyer up and sue everyone. OK, now it's time to step up on my soap box to whine about the patent system.
There are serious issues with the current worldwide patent system. It is getting even worse. The winners of this are the worlds richest companies. The losers are us, the consumers, and individuals or small companies that invent. Today you can patent nearly anything, locking out the competitors. Very silly simple things are granted patents. As an engineer this is obvious to me but it is much less obvious to most others. For instance, the idea of being able to click on a phone number to dial it seems common sense but that is patented. The idea to swipe across the touch screen to unlock the device is also obvious, but that too is patented. The list goes on and on. This year our government eliminated the need to prove there was no prior work before granting patents. Now it is first to file. This just made it far worse. Microsoft now makes more money from patent royalties off of Android based phones than it does from its own mobile OS. We as consumers pay for that. Our money goes to one of the richest companies in the world for work given away for free. Google spent the money to create Android (after buying the business) but Microsoft makes a profit from Google work. It amazes me that we put up with this! Our patent system needs a serious overhaul. There needs to be a sanity check up front. Here is my suggestion. If you pose the problem that the patent solves to a group of students in the field of study (say engineers) and at least one of them solves it with the approach proposed in the patent, then it gets thrown out as common sense. I suspect that would eliminate about 2/3's of the patents. This would likely save consumers billions every year. The little guy does not stand a chance. Say you invent something and you spend the money to patent it. Now a big company decides they want to use that patent. They can just patent you into a box where you could never use your own patent. Its a matter of who has the most money to lawyer up. The big company can always outspend you and crush you like a bug. And they will.
Back to smartphones. Let's talk about listening to music. You may notice that there are many devices out there that are iPod compatible. They have a proprietary dock and connector to connect to your iStuff and control it. Because of this you may think that you need iStuff so you can listen to your music, in which case you would be mistaken. The wave of the future is in Bluetooth and WiFi streaming (DLNA). Rather than purchasing a special piece of hardware, you can just get a device that supports DLNA or Bluetooth A2DP. These are industry standards that everyone can use. You can get a LG TV, Panasonic Blue-ray player, and a Samsung smartphone and it can all share music, video, and photos. Then you don't need to put your device in that clunky dock. Instead, you can take it with you and use it to control the media. Now you can use any brand and it will work. It even works on iStuff. I bought an $18 Bluetooth A2DP receiver for my daughter. It has a 3.5mm stereo jack to connect to any stereo system. She uses it with a boom box. Works fantastic. I can use media from any of my Android devices and stream it to my TV using DLNA. You can find more information on DLNA here: http://www.dlna.org/home.
If you are interested in Bluetooth music streaming I posted details of my installations on the Motorola support forum here: https://forums.motorola.com/posts/95de7ae497. If you can't access that, I have details of the installation in our 1998 Jaguar XJR here: http://jimroal.com/cars/X308Bluetooth.pdf. I have some more information here: http://code.google.com/p/a2dpvolume/wiki/Devices. Some new vehicles (later models) support it already. For instance, the Ford Sync supports it. You can also get devices that don't require installation. Some use a 3.5mm stereo plug so your car stereo will need to have that. Others rebroadcast over FM. The hard wired or integrated solutions are always the best way to go.
More to come later...
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