Push an APK to and Android phone under Ubuntu 9.10

NOTE: This can BRICK your phone if you get it wrong - I am not responsible if following any of my instructions causes any kind of damage to you, your PC, your phone or your life. Be careful and research before mucking about!

Make sure your Android phone is rooted!

Make sure USB debugging is on:

On the phone go to Settings > Appications > Develpment and tick USB Debugging

On you Ubuntu box make sure you have the latest Android SDK installed - you can find it here

Once installed open a terminal window and navigate to the Android SDK tool directory, in my case:

~/android-sdk-linux_86/tools

From here you can use ls to see the directory contents, which should list adb. You need to run this as root for Ubuntu to pick up the device:

Start with sudo ./adb shell which should start the daemon for you:

* daemon not running. starting it now *

* daemon started successfully *

Then you can use sudo ./adb devices to ensure it has picked up your device:

List of devices attached

HT***L****** device

You then need to mount the device sudo ./adb remount to push the application.

Once mounted simply push the application:

sudo ./adb push /PATH/TO/APPLICATION/NAMEOFAPPLICATION.apk /system/app

Then reboot your device!

30 day Pay Monthly plan comparison

Since buying myself the SIM free HTC Hero I have been looking at the offerings of the UK's network providers. Since I am no longer tied into a 12/18/24 month contract, and I don't particularly want to be, I have been looking at the SIM only 30 day rolling contract options.

Nowhere can I find a comparison table of the options so I decided to put one together here!

Below is a breakdown of the options available and is best read as 'notes' to the linked spreadsheet.

O2:

Though there are cheaper monthly contracts the ones which provide "Unlimited" internet begin at £20. The "Unlimited Web Bolt On" used to have a data cap (Fair Usage Policy) of about 500 mb. However, I can't currently find anything on their website to confirm this. Having spoken to them on the phone it seems they will only begin charging you (or cut of your service) if they feel you are using it "excessively" (though no definition of excessive!) or if they thought you where tethering it to a laptop / PC.

O2 Terms and Conditions - http://bit.ly/4ZPcIg

Vodafone:

Again with Vodafone, there are cheaper pay monthly tariffs but the internet ones start at about £20. Though with Vodafone, there is a clearly stated data limit of 500 mb.

Interestingly the £30 Sim Only Vodafone tariff includes "Unlimited" land line calls.

Vodafone T&C's - http://bit.ly/6rjEBJ

Vodafone Mobile Internet T&C's - http://bit.ly/8JJc5P

T-Mobile:

The T-Mobile inclusive internet plans also start at £20 (am I sensing a pattern here?). Interestingly this includes an Unlimited text message allowance, however please note the T&C

" If you send more than 3000 texts a month or text more than 200 different numbers in 5 days, you may be breaking your terms and conditions, which say that you can't use your phone for anything unlawful or to send nuisance communications. We'll warn you if you do this and if you do it again we'll remove your unlimited texts. Remember, we're free to decide that other types of use may also be breaking your terms."

Also, the 1GB allowance for mobile data doesn't appear to be that stringent

"If you use more than your fair use policy amount, we won't charge you any more, but we may restrict how you can use your plan, depending on how often you go over your amount and by how much."

You also get a useful "you've reached 80% of your limit" warning text message.

NOTE: Make sure you go for the Solo not the Solo Fixed - these have an extra £7.50 charge for internet.

NOTE 2:"Picture messages and voicemail aren't part of inclusive minutes and texts and will cost this much whenever you use them"

T-Mobile T&C - http://bit.ly/7TGp5l

Orange:

It looks like Orange have broken the mold a little with their SIM only monthly plans. They offer 500mb mobile internet with any of their £30+ SIM only plans - http://bit.ly/6zBJ3n.

Orange T&C's - http://bit.ly/7hkSc0

I'm currently with O2, though am seriously considering T-Mobile as an alternative following endless problems sending texts or receiving calls on O2. Though T-Mobile do provide a coverage checker it does not check for HSDPA coverage.

I've discounted both Vodafone and Orange due to their low monthly data allowance - when will we (in the UK) get the same "unlimited" data tariffs available in the US?

Customise Opera for a Netbook display

While there are plenty of websites and blog posts advising people on customizing Firefox for their spanking new netbooks, there is very little written about Opera. 

Having recently moved to Opera (and found it to be as good, if not better than Firefox) I have been trying to customize it for my Eee 901. 

Obviously, you could simply hide all of the toolbars, but what do you do when you need to use a function from that toolbar? After some reading I have found a few useful hints to hide the menus and yet provide you with access at the click of a button. I have mapped mine to F10 but you can replace this with your own choice. 

To hide the main Menu and Address bar go to Tools > Preferences (or press CTRL+F12) and go to the Advanced tab. On the bottom left you will see the Shortcut options. Here you can edit or add your own shortcuts. Select Opera Standard (or Opera Standard Unix if your on Linux) and click Edit. This should open the Edit Keyboard Shortcuts dialog box. Drop down the 'Application' section, here you can click add  and create a shortcut to hide the Menu bar and the Address bar.   

I have added the following:

f10 - View address bar, 6 & Delay, 10000 & View address bar, 0

f10 ctrl - Enable menu bar | Disable menu bar

The first will display the Address bar then hide it after the specified time, the second will toggle the menu bar on of off. The Menu bar functions can still be accessed without showing the menu bar using ALT- and the appropriate letter as normal, its just that the menu does not actually appear. 

Hopefully, these two adjustments will make viewing content with Opera on a netbook screen more bearable!

Links:

This site has detailed directions for hiding / toggling  the various Opera toolbars:

Link - http://operawatch.com/news/2008/06/auto-hide-toolbars-in-opera.html

Fix PPA Authentication errors in Linux

When running sudo apt-get update I often get an error similar to this:

GPG error: http://ppa.launchpad.net intrepid Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 0CF459B8DF37ED8B

After a little Google-ing I think I have found the answer. Fire up your terminal and try the following command:

gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv (ERRORKEY)

Replace ERROR KEY with the error code you are getting - it will be something like this - 632D16BB0C713DA6

Next type the following to add that key to your gpg keychain:

gpg --export --armor (ERRORKEY) | sudo apt-key add -

This resolved the errors for me, but I'm not sure it will work 100% of the time!

Install Adobe Air in Linux

Click Get Adobe Air

cd to your download directory.

Make the file executable by running the following command in a terminal window:

chmod u+x Adobe*

then run the following command in a terminal window

sudo ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

and follow the Adobe Air installer instructions!

Once installed you should be able to download and install Adobe Air apps such as TweetDeck or Twhirl!

DLNA in Ubuntu 9.04

I have recently installed Ubuntu 9.04 on my Macbook (1,1) and was interested to see if I could easily stream media to my new install from my DLNA media server that I use for my PS3 (a Western Digital MyBookWorld NAS). The good news is that this is very simple to do with a plug in for the already installed Totem media player.

The coherence plugin provides DLNA functionality. This can be installed by simply typing 'sudo apt-get install python-coherence' in a terminal window. However, here I experienced a small problem. Opening Totem and going to the plugin menu (under the edit menu) you can see the plugin. However, when trying to activate it you get a popup error message. Luckily this too has a simple solution. Again in the terminal, as root create this file '/usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.Coherence.service' with this contents:

[D-BUS Service]
Name=org.Coherence
Exec=/usr/bin/coherence -o use_dbus:yes -o controlpoint:yes

Close and reopen Totem and the plugin can now be activated. Your DLNA server should now appear under you Totem menu playlist options, enjoy!

It is worth noteing that it does take some time to buffer the video before playback begins.

Links:

Coherence - Here
Guide - Here
Bug report with solution - Here

Firefox Quick Searches

I guess I have never really explored the full functionality of Firefox, otherwise I would have seen this ages ago! But there you go.

I have a friend at work who is constantly singing the virtues of the Opera web browser to me, trying to get me to adopt it. So far he has failed, but one of the features I do love if the ability to use shortcuts in the address bar for searches. For example if he wants to do a Wikipedia search he heads to the address bar and types in: wiki #whatever which takes him directly to the Wikipedia search results for #whatever. OK so its not so difficult to open a wiki page form your bookmarks and type it in there but it always bugged me that I couldn't find a Firefox extension to do this. That would be because Firefox has this functionality built right in!

Firefox Quick Searches provides exactly this functionality, a way to add custom shortcuts for addresses. That is all very well assuming you know the links for the search shortcut you want to use, fear not. The folks over at Lifehacker have put together their top 15 Quick searches in a handy downloadable (right click and save as) HTML file that you can import straight into your existing Firefox bookmarks.

Unfortunately, they are a bit US centric so I hope they won't mind that I have put together a UK version (right click and save as). The only link that doesn't seem to have liked the move is the Yahoo Local search, but I'll work on that.

Of course the list is totally customizable and its really easy once you know how. Of course with the use of Foxmarks these quick searches will be copied to all the PC's you use Firefox on!