TheSmiling-Blog

Sorry that it took me so long to give you some updates on my blog. I’ve been kinda busy the last weeks. It’s a good new year’s resolution to do at least one blog post every week … we’ll see :)
As you know, I’m one of the 18 Samsung mob!lers around in germany and we are lucky to get some phones like the Samsung Galaxy and now the Samsung SPICA for free, to test the devices and of course promote them here and there a little bit. I’ll get to the SPICA on another blog post so for now, let’s get to Proxoid:

First two words: just awesome
I’m currently not in Frankfurt and depending on my location, vodafone or O2 have the better signal (O2 is my mobilers contract which I unfortunately have to return by the end of January). I’m a few kilometers outside of Coburg right now and my vodafone USB Stick and UMTS flat makes me want to get UPS to deliver me a CD with the data I need.
I decided to only download one file: the USB-Drivers for my Samsung SPICA to get it connected to my computer via the USB debugging bridge. It took me 12 minutes to download a 3.6MB ZIP-file.

After that I installed the USB-driver for the SPICA which worked just fine and I also downloaded Proxoid from the Android market. Open up the app, click on menu and download the proxoid-adb.zip file, copy it to your computer and extract it to some lovely place.
Now follow the easy instructions here to set up your android phone as a proxy for your computer and let’s go … UTMS internet connection with O2.

Don’t forget to set you proxy for all connections if you also want to use your E-Mail- and e.g. Twitter-Client.

As I have a ThinkPad, I just use the ThinkVantage Access Connections Software to set the proxy settings and also execute the start-tunnel batch file when I want to use Proxoid.

Oh, I almost forgot: With Proxoid, you don’t need any root access on your android phone … as I said: just awesome!

Last weekend was just amazing, and the keyword is BarCamp Mainz (#bcmz).

It’s been my second BarCamp yet and I’m really impressed about what the orga team got going here. I guess the number of participants on Saturday was around 320 and still the location didn’ t seem to be very packed. It was the University of Mainz where the BarCamp took place so the rooms where also equipped with very good and new technology like beamers and microphones … I missed nothing.
Every BarCamp participant had his/her own WiFi access, the only annoying thing to mention is that you always had to re-login after your computer had been in StandyBy mode.

The main topics were technology, web and internet culture. To get a feeling about the BarCamp Mainz, just go here and check out the review page here.

Due to some stupid human action I don’t want to mention here in detail, the BarCamp Mainz page has moved from www.barcampmainz.de to www.barcamp-rheinmain.de.

I had a great time, got connected with new interesting people and awesome sessions … thank you for the BarCamp.

You can download my google wave presentation slides I had at BarCamp Mainz here: Slides GoogleWave BarCampMainz

Feel free to add comments.

I’ve been using my HTC Magic from vodafone for approximately 8 month now and as time goes on I’m downloading more and more apps on to my phone.

The android market takes care of updates on all of your downloaded apps so it reminds you of new app versions every now and then. That’s definitely a very good thing, you don’t have to take care about checking for updates or anything, but:
I just counted my downloaded apps and I almost hit the 50 mark. Wow, 47 apps that I downloaded so far and that are still on my phone. Now, when the android market app tells me that there are new updates for some apps, there are always more than 6 apps to update at the same time.  Have you ever thought exactly about the update process?

1. Open the android market app with the list of updatable apps
2. click on the first app and (maybe) read the (hopefully) new description of the current changes
3. click “update” to update your app
4. click “OK” to the screen that tells you that this app version will replace the old version of this app (no shit Sherlock, it’s an UPDATE!)
5. click “install” to the screen that shows you the permissions this app needs
6. now this app will be downloaded an installed

… and that was only the first of at least 6 apps.

My first question is: Where is the “Update all” button?

Since the user has to give some apps the permission to access phone resources, the internet or whatever, we need a mechanism that can control this issue in  a convenient way. Here’s my idea: android tracks the history of the last permissions that the user already granted during the last install or update. As long as the permissions of this app don’t change, the app will update automatically as soon as I hit the “update all” button. Another alternative, or better, another feature beside an “update all” button would be the possibility to check several apps that I would like to update at once with a “update selected” button.

To sum it up:

• add an “update all” button
• add an “update selected” button with check-boxes for selecting apps
• keep track of already granted permissions of the last app install
• only ask user if permissions of an app have changed

These features should be possible, shouldn’t they?
Help me to enhance the mobile world and tell me about your ideas. Any comments appreciated.

Hi friends,

you might have read about the mobilers campagin to enhance mobile phones. Please help me and my team with our research and fill out the form behind the following link:

Mobilers Questionary (in german)

Thank you very much.

Last night I received the over the air (OTA) Update for my HTC Magic, Android 1.6.

My first check was on the new search bar, which I think is just great. The default settings let you search for your applications, contacts and websites. You can add music to it so it would also search for artists and playlist.
I also discovered the new home screen widget “energybar” (I don’t know if this is the right translation here, but the german word is “Energieleiste”), a bar that offers quick switches for GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, Sync and Display brightness. I know, there are plenty of apps who can do that, but I still hope it can turn on my wireless network much more faster than any app can do.

While sitting around in the bus on my way to work, I played with the 1.6 version and discovered the new features:
SpeechSyntheses: a text-to-speech engine … I’m not sure where this is working and how .. but I’m sure I will know by the end of the day :)

To activate the SpeechSyntheses, I had to download this app first and the new android market app popped up: I really like the new design and now apps can show 2 screenshots which is really helpful for the user.

Now let’s get to the feature that I’m really thrilled about: VPN connections
Yes, we are really getting to the business applications now, just awesome. Under “settings > wireless” you now have a VPN-Settings item where you can set up PPTP and L2TP VPNs with pre-shared keys or with certificates. I’m only missing and OpenVPN client, but I’m pretty sure that android will get to it.

So far, I’m really happy with the new update and that vodafone managed to get to it quickly. My #mobilers phone, the Samsung Galaxy, will not get any OTA Updates for Android as far as I know. I have to install the Samsung Software (which only runs on Windows *strange*) and then try to update the phone over USB. I’ll let you know when I update (or try to update) my Galaxy but one fact is already clear: This is everything else but user friendly!

Finally, the picture I took with my Samsung Galaxy of the Update-screen from my HTC Magic while updating to Android 1.6. Isn’t that paradox :) (sorry for the quality, I just woke up ;) )

Android 1.6 HTC Update

Yesterday we, and with “we” I mean the Samsung mobilers :) , had a great and interesting day at the Samsung headquarter.

Samsung mobilers … what’s that?

The mobilers are 3 groups, each of 6 persons with diverse backgrounds and interests, that were chosen from a pool of 230 interested parties for this promotion, who will dive into the mobile phone  scene to generate a lot of ideas concerning the improvement of mobile phones and mobile applications.

Every mobiler is equipped with a brand new Samsung Galaxy mobile phone with the android operating system. The idea behind all this is, that average consumers now can talk about their pain with mobile phones, say what is missing or could be done better, to improve mobile phones and help Samsung with the development.
The workshop included presentations about marketing, distribution and business model generation, and of course, a brief introduction to the android operating system on the Samsung Galaxy. We also had a great tour through the Samsung World Hall, the presentation room that shows almost the whole product range of Samsung … wow, did you know, that Samsung produces fridges, backing ovens and washing machines, ha, now I got you ;) Another interesting thing: “SAM SUNG” means “Three Stars”.

The mobilers promotion isn’t a small thing at all: The president of Samsung germany, Sunny Lee, had a few words for us and we are the first mobilers group that improves this promotion outside of asia … awesome!

As you know, I’m already an android user and also developer and I have the HTC Magic since the beginning of this year. I now have the chance to test the devices against each other and tell you about my experience. Just give me some time to get to know the Galaxy better, some buttons are placed at different locations and I have to set up the same applications that I have installed on my HTC. One thing that I can already tell: The display of the Galaxy is better. It’s brighter and the colors are more brilliant than on the HTC Magic.

If you’re interested in the mobilers activities, our twitter tag is #mobilers. As you can see, I came up with a new blog-category especially for the mobilers and will give you updates every now and then. By time, I will also need your help to get your opinion and needs in the mobile world. I hope that you can spare some time for me then to help me get my job done.

Finally I have a few pics for you of the Samsung World Hall with their products:

It is never disappointing when I visit webmonday in Frankfurt.
Although I’d count myself as a developer/techi, webmonday always holds a lot of interessting topics besides development.

This time, we had

• Andreas Demmer with “Wireframes & Co.: Conceptual Design als Projektbaustein”
• Mario Hachemer with “Barcamp Mainz – Was ist ein Barcamp und ist das was für mich?”
• Kerstin Hoffmann “Verachtet mir die Klassik nicht! – Warum Kernkompetenzen und menschliche Tugenden über den Erfolg von PR und Netzwerken im Web-2.0-Zeitalter entscheiden”
• Johannes Kleske with “#todolist #fail – neue arbeitskonzepte für kopfarbeiter”
• Martin Seibert with “Wikis in Agenturen und Unternehmen“

It’s also impressing that there were around 80 to 100 people attending this time. The room was packed and the after-presentation-networking-time is the best chance to get to know new and interesting people.

The visitors voting after the presentations also settled the whole presentation time for the future webmondays in Frankfurt:
It will be set to 90 minutes which holds room for 4 to 5 speakers. I think that’s a good decision: not too less and not too much.

As Darren always pronounces: If you like it, tell others … and that’s what I’m doing here!

PS: Next time the twitter wall will also filter on the real webmonday frankfurt hashtag #wmfra ;)

After a few requests I finally updated my hello widget tutorial to show you how to add some buttons to your widget.

Download the newest version of the tutorial here and get the source code here.

Here’s my promised update on 1.6:

I now have the answer to the updateMillis Problem that I rectently fell into:
According to this discussion here there was a change in 1.6 that the updatePeroide has to be at least 30 Minutes to save battery live. This is currently not documented but someone posted the affected sourcecode:

from appwidget framework source (appWidgetService.java)

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private static final int MIN_UPDATE_PERIOD = 30 * 60 * 1000; // 30 minutes 
long period = p.info.updatePeriodMillis; 
if (period < MIN_UPDATE_PERIOD) { 
       period = MIN_UPDATE_PERIOD; 
}

This obviously causes the problem, that my widget tutorial displaying the current time will NOT work on 1.6 anymore.
Still, due to testing purposes this change is critical in my eyes.