Android crowd, green and gold…five apps to start with

Of course, once the golden dust around my new shiny Desire HD had settled a bit, I immediately proceeded to pull off some essential apps from the market, and so a little review might be in order here. Things I do all the time on the phone while out in the wild are reading feeds, ebooks and listening to podcasts. So tell us all about those apps there, and break them down in sweet little categories while you’re at it.

First off, feed readers.

This is my primary news source, my newspaper, and the primary way I access web content. So this better be solid.

One remarkable app in this category is alphonsolabs’ pulse reader. It is by far the best looking and wets your mouth to read more just by looking at it. It’s free, but it does have some drawbacks, at least on android: It is limited both horizontally and vertically, meaning you can add only up to 25 news sources (oi! I got 81 at the moment, and I need them all!), and once you read the first dozen entries, that’s it. You need to go to the website to access more content. Finally, this thing keeps crashing on me on seemingly random entries. Those are the reasons I can’t use this one as my primary reader, and only keep it around as a sort of gadget.

Next up it’s time for Feedsquares. We talked about this cute way to read your feeds a while ago, and it got an android version around that time as well. It’s usage is seemless, it let’s you use the day/night themes, and organize your stuff into folders, for all the Monikas out there. Get it here:

And of course, for anybody who wants the whole real deal, without compromising, you’d need the native Google Reader app. It’s on the market, and while not being among the prettiest looking apps out there, it does offer nearly everything the web application has.

Second base: eBooks.

This one, even more than the other categories, is an ongoing quest for me. I do read the occasional ebook, and I liked the quasi-paper look they gave the screen on the kindle. So I have been looking for an app that offers some comfort and looks, but most importantly, let me display my imported, free ebooks. On that account, I failed, and haven’t been able to find an ebook app that just does that. Meanwhile, I went with aldiko, which features a nice interface, good choice of different reading methodes, and an overall good handling. I was able to get the free ebooks I wanted to read from the built-in shop, but was lucky, I guess. Still looking for that simplest of things, a state of the art ebook reader that is able to display my own ebooks And now that version 2-oh is out there, I can do just that. Case solved. That’s right. Buhaa.

Aaand count three – podcasts.

I tried three promising podcast clients this far.

PodCat (lol witty appnames galore): Looks like a simple, clean catcher and player, but it isn’t: I just keeps crashing. So, not suitable for use in this version.

Hapi Podcast/xuluan android: This one features a pretty awful design and interface. The first thing in order would be to import your existing podcast list, which in my case is quite long, similar to the RSS feeds up there in category #1. This only worked after a stubborn few dozen tries, and only after realizing you had to rename your *.OPML in a certain way and put in a certain place, whereas this podcast client wouldn’t tell you this by itself. Also, at a random point, your podcast list would be erased, and look at your face when you skipped the *.OPML importing step and punched in the RSS feeds of your wished for podcasts by hand. Lord, what a terrible app. Finally, after deleting this thing, it leaves its own sort of permanent footprint on your system, as a sort of reminder of what you dealt with here: An unerasable folder in your system’s garbage bin.

This sometimes happens on my work Mac OS too. I sincerely hate that.

Enough of this, let’s get to the good stuff: BeyondPod. This one finally is the stuff. It lets you import your ‘casts seemlessly and without a fuzz. You can than sort them into folders, download the latest shows, schedule for automatic updates anytime, keep certain entries from updating or getting deleted, and so on and so forth. It just works perfectly. And I mentioned that before, but you do not need iTunes anymore. Thank you very much, some more bloatware finally gone! I even just updated to the paid “PRO” version for $5, without really getting where the difference was, but anyway in order to support the perfect standalone podcast app on android.

Join the green and gold android crowd.

Lord knows, it’s been a while since I’ve been hungering that much for a single device. Maybe it’s getting worse.

Following my own personal smartphone holocaust however, and after venturing through some rather strange places on the ecommercing web, I walked into Saturn am Alexanderplatz and ordered the HTC Desire HD. That got me waiting for many weeks of course, since this badboy has been sold out completely and utterly since day one if one is to judge by some tweets we saw out there.

Anyway. First impressions in this case last.

Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way.

I thought I just just briefly mentioned the things I don’t like on this fella, to then pass on to indulging you with the good things. First for android itself, I am missing two very very little things. You can’t name the device as of version 2.2 Froyo, so in a WLAN you will have to look for a thing that calls himself a12341717#a12 etc. No prob if you got only one android in your home, but with two or more, well…good luck guessing. Also, you can’t do screenshots. There are several applications in the marketplace, but you’d need to root first.

HTC’s overlay, called HTC Sense, is a very good one for that, but some of the promised features can’t be used, eg. it should be possible to log on to the website and locate your cell phone in your apartment or elsewhere, but the site just won’t let you do that. So, until further notice, no hatemail to your phone’s thief.

The handset itself has got the one flaw that is really worth mentioning, as in “this shouldn’t be this way”. The parts of the device apart from the giant screen itself are of a rather lesser quality build. This means that you can push the bottom and side covers in when holding the Desire HD, and you can even hear little crunching noises. It may even break off when trying to insert a new micro SD or SIM card.

We will just have to wait and see what lifetime we can expect, but right now I’ll have to state that I really loved the build and finishing of my first iPhone 2G compared to this. Well, at least the exterior.
With a monster like this, you’d think that you would keep it in your hand all the time and play around with it. And this sorta thing drains your battery. So the first step in order was to buy another two chargers and place them anywhere I would happen to dwell. But a bigger battery would have been very cute there.

Kingdom come

With those issues out of the way, I could write 300 posts just about how smart, cool, and beautiful the system and the whole device is. All things I didn’t like or that were kinda dealbreakers with the iPhone are gone now with #android. Sorry, twitter and all. Anyway, your don’t need iTunes or any other dumbed down bloatware. You mount your phone with a finger tip and put on your media, docs and other files, also without decoding it. To sum it up, it is smartphonewise just as ubuntu is an experience OS-wise: I start it up the first time with a certain idea of how it should look like, the look and feel etc., and either it delivers right from the start or you can tune it with a few tips/mouseclicks. This I like, this I wantwant. Even though the locked up, dumbed down, making you pay for everything experience on an iPhone is said to have the advantage that each piece relates beautifully to every other part of the system, that is exactly what Froyo with HTC Sense does. There may be some apps on the marketplace that try to add some usabilily you already have, but my overal impression is just that everything just falls into place and feels right. To sum the whole experience up, I would say “android is about being nice to you.”

(o_O)

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On the shoulders of giants

Look up the specs of this badboy on HTCs official site, here (although, beware – the test praises the build and the battery life, the two major shortcomings of the Desire HD, and we don’t know what exactly they be smoking when doing a test at their “lab”), and here.

Browse a few apps on the official site, or on the imperative appbrain. Check the market stats here.

Manga nicht anders.

Meine liebsten Podcasts kennt ihr ja jetzt, machen wir weiter mit meinen liebsten Mangas.

1. Auch wenn ich nur sporadisch Mangas lese, und ich die leise Ahnung habe, dass die übersetzten Werke quali- wie quantitativ nur die Spitze des Eisberges darstellen (lllh), lassen wir uns nicht von der schieren Masse der auch hier erhältlichen erdrücken, und fangen gleich an, mit dem absurdesten: マーメイドメロディーぴちぴちピッチ Mermaid Melody pichi pichi pitchi. Es geht um Meerjungfrauen, Perlen, und weil wir data-mining hounds sind, sei hier noch kurz gesagt, dass die Autoren Michiko Yokote (Text) und Pink Hanamori (Zeichnungen) sind, und die Verlage Heyne und Kodansha. Aber darum geht es nicht. Es geht nur und ausschließlich um den Titel. Ich bin seit all den Jahren nie über diese Unglaublichkeit hinwegkommen.
2. Jetzt zum Mainstream. Nunmehr bei Nummer 42 angekommen, scheint es kein Ende zu nehmen – ブリーチ BLEACH von Tite Kubo. Meines Erachtens auch zu Recht, denn zumindest bis in die frühen 30er sind Charaktere überzeugend und lustig, die Handlung treibend – um dann sich jedoch beständig zu wiederholen. Drei, vier Charaktere laufen durch ein Verließ, treffen auf ebenso viele Gegner, und quatschen und kämpfen miteinander. Leider bleibt es dann irgendwann dabei, ohne den Witz vom Anfang. Aber alles hat eben ein Ende.
3. Die nächste Kategorie besteht wie so mancher Superlativ nur aus einem einzigen Eintrag: Der beste. Abgeschlossen in zwölf Bänden, geschaffen von Tsugumi Ohba (Text) und Takeshi Obata (Zeichnungen), und mit einem Heer an begleitenden Medien wie dem Anime, den Filmen inklusive Spin Offs, CDs, Büchern, und vielen Videospielen, belegt er in so ziemlich jeder Kategorie mit Abstand den ersten Platz. Die Zeichnungen sind überirdisch, die Charaktere und die allgemeine Stimmung sehr fesselnd, und die Geschichte eine der spannendsten überhaupt, medienübergreifend gesprochen, die ich jemals erfahren habe. Nach den ersten Durchgängen fühlt man sich jedoch, als ob das Gehirn jetzt eine Spirale ist. Aber es gibt garantiert auf alle Fragen eine Antwort, Ehrensache.L aus デスノート DEATH NOTE.
4. Und zu guter letzt zu einem neueren Vertreter, wiederum von einem einzelnen Autoren – Tsutomu Niheis バイオメガ BIOMEGA. Abgehschlossen in sechs Bänden, meist Bilder und sehr wenig Text, geht es um einen Virus, der in der 1000 Jahre entfernten Zukunft die letzten Reste der Endzeitwelt zugrunde richtet. Ich bin nicht sicher, ob ich alles verstanden habe, ob man überhaupt alles verstehen soll, aber als gekonnte Mischung aus Atmosphärik-Klassikern wie AKIRA und ins Gesicht-Filmen wie Texas Chainsaw Massacre steht BIOMEGA sein Platz in der kleinen Liste hier mehr als zu.

Falls der eine oder andere noch nicht bekannt war, viel Vergnügen…aber wie gesagt, Spitze vom Eisberg.

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Die Schultern der Giganten

Mermaid Melody im Heyne Verlag,

Bleach und Death Note bei Tokyo Pop,

Bleach shot von Manga Resort,

und schließlich Ehapa für Biomega.

Sony VAIO VPC EB1M1E and ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx

So, I’ve gone out and put my hands on one of the last Sony VAIO VPC E Series (white) available out there. Funny enough, I ended up buying it at the Galeria Kaufhof (Berlin Alexanderplatz), which normally is the last place on earth you would look for tech stuff at decent prices. They even let an extra 20€ off of the price, because it had been previously returned. I booted it up, and a Windows 7 screen asked for credentials for its first bootup – the guy before me apparently just got the wrong machine or needed a different present.

Let’s go for the innerspace.

The VPC EB1M1E features an Intel Core i3 330M CPU@2,13 GHz residing on an Intel H55 Express chipset. For its wireless capabilities Sony chose Atheros’ AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express), and for the grafics ATI’s Mobility Radeon HD 5650 (1024 MB of GDDR3 SDRAM) on a 1366×768 display (15,5 inch which makes for a 16:9 display).

The 4 gigs of RAM are laid out over two SODIMMs of DDR3 SDRAM, the HDD on the other side is manufactured by Western Digital, a WDC WD5000BEVT-2 ATA Disk with 465GiB (500GB) of storage. I should mention the four USB ports alongside the SD Memory Card, Memory Stick Pro and Memory Stick Duo slots.

As a downside, hardwarewise, I’d mention the unusually short battery life. It says around three hours on the Sony www, but of course with your wi-fi running, 15 open browser tabs, email, chat clients, videostills, and music blasting, you can end up with less than 2 hours.

Of course, the big question around was, how will you perform under ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx, my new friend? I should find out soon enough.

While I really like to tinker with stuff I didn’t know before, I couldn’t be bothered to create the “rescue disks” for the preinstalled Windows 7. After those many years of rocking especially ‘buntu and ‘nux, burning those DVDs looked like work and I think that between the two of us, the laptop is the one who will have to do the work, and not me. So I skipped that specific step, and ended up not being able to properly partition the drive, especially with those three Windows 7 partition shenanigans, and just created one giant ext4-partition, where VAIO’s new spouse may take its residence. By the way, that was also my first time I did a single boot install.

Now for the part I was so excited about: Everything works just fine out of the box. Bummer. Nothing more to do. Especially the strange resolution set at 1366×768 points worked like a charm, and for additional details I was able to get the proprietary driver from ATI’s labs – the “ATI Catalyst Control Center”. So, ubuntu’s early mantra really came true, except for the one thing:

Needed to upgrade the ALSA driver

While I started to feel at home just nicely on the new machine, there was no sound at all. When I put in a pair of good headphones, I was able to hear a faint, distant noise, which could have been the song I was using to test. Now the last time I started off fresh with a new laptop and ubuntu, the sound was also hidden, as it was muted by default with the mute button hidden away in a secret menu. But that wasn’t it this time. Luckily enough, a kid on the official ubuntu forums had the exact same problem, and after a few tries they worked everything out. Just download the newest version of ALSA (alsa-driver, alsa-lib and alsa-utils) and install it, restart your system and you’re all set. Many thanks go to Stéphane Gaudreault, who did a pretty good outline of what to do, if you do not compile your code for yourself every other day. Also, quite useful if you’re having a hard time with your sound, a script for asking the right questions can be found at http://git.alsa-project.org/?p=alsa-driver.git;a=blob_plain;f=utils/alsa-info.sh.

Using this specific setup for a few weeks, I noticed that seemingly random actions shut out sound altogheter. Running, for example, KlamAV and punching in ctrl-alt-del, which prompts the locked screen on 10.04, may freeze the system, and upon rebooting the sound is wiped out for good. The system doesn’t recognize the soundcard(s) anymore. A quick

cat /proc/asound/cards

tells you “no soundcards”. ALSA is still version 1.0.23. However, just reinstalling this ALSA version re-institutes your sound capabilities, so it’s not much of a problem. Slightly ugly workaround though.

Also, a classic concerning sound problems on your first few run throughs under ‘buntu, is flash and your music excluding each other, as in you are unable to hear the sound of a youtube-clip if you started your music player previously, and couldn’t start your music player’s playback if you have just watched a flash clip of sorts. Solution, as always, is to install libflashsupport and the newest complete Pulseaudio software. Et voilà.

Last but not least, one thing keeps me wondering ’til this day. The system specs list two audio devices – “internal audio” at analog stereo duplex and a “Redwood HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 5600 Series]” as a digital stereo HDMI output. Maybe the latter gets used when connecting to an external device via said HDMI.

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On the shoulders of giants

A truthful review of the hardware-side of things in german – http://tinyurl.com/3ad8vho

Some neat sites to learn a bit about the ubuntu/Windows 7 dual boot – https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MultiOSBoot on the official sites, http://lifehacker.com/5403100/dual+boot-windows-7-and-ubuntu-in-perfect-harmony over at Lifehacker, and http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/dual-boot-windows-7-ubuntu.html for a few different approaches.

Smoking podcasts.

Nanausicaa wants to take you to her own little podcast world. I’ve always liked it when big, author-focused sites point you a little bit in the way of their favorite podcasts. So here we go, as a nearly non-existing site, with my little list.

1. A first little dip and fresh start into a new week is the albeit short New Yorker political scene podcast. It is hosted by one Dorothy Wickenden and usually covers a few interviews on one current topic. The obvious question would be, why should you listen to people talking about the inner workings of far away US of A? Maybe a strange affection to foreign countries alongside the sometimes thick american accent. However, it takes you nicely into the week and sometimes makes you ponder problems that do not concern you. Nice.
2. Let’s go for the seriously best documentaries of the world, be it as podcasts, radio or TV shows – the BBC documentaries. Never topped in terms of professionalism, you often have your correspondent talking to an actual Taliban who just beheaded eight people and got imprisoned by the Pakistan government, or ask the right questions to the wrong people, like a central-african corrupt minister who is not used to somebody insisting on getting to know the actual truth.
3. Now, for a little mental travel in your ears: The Economist’s short podcast on how each and every major city of the world feels like when travelling there, from the airport to the hotels to when to try and seal a deal. This is one thing I like, especially the part where they describe the locals. If you’re stuck doint your job, you can always load up this podcast and at least feel like traveling a lot abroad. Check it out at http://audiovideo.economist.com/ – “Doing business in…”
4. On a lighter note, and with the only german language ’cast inna dis selection, we have the Spieleveteranen podcast, out now for the twentiest time exactly. It features old school 80ies gaming journalism “veterans”, many of which where good company at school back in the days and the talk of the schoolyard for many of us. They tend to make fun of things more than actually give out real information, and especially Heinrich Lenhardt’s f*ck Nintendo stance is quite annoying at times, but it’s got a lotta heart! Even when they seldomly play any games at all anymore, choosing to visit facebook or do iPhone games instead. …and even with all those better-than-ever-killer-games out there now!
5. Now for the classic gaming podcast, Major Nelson’s weekly selection of interviews and different little features about the 360. This one does surprisingly well, being paid for by Microsoft, and more than often containing the phrase “…which I cannot talk about”, prompting the thought, “…so why do you mention it and bring it up in the first place?”. The major is a real nice guy and features a good sense of humor and a Cicero-esque voice inside your ear. So, this one isn’t really about information and hard news (things we aren’t that interested in anyways), but a few laughs and entertainment in its own sense. Highly recommended.
6. A younger podcast, having started only this year, comes from a handful guys from the US’ east coast: Joint Operations monthly. It’s all about “guys’ favorite franchise”, Modern Warfare 2, discussing news, weapons, maps, and playmodes, while at the end naming their favorite “Player of the month” and throughout quoting various 12 year olds caught playing a mature game. I really had to LOL several times through the first issue alone. All cool guys, good voices, good humor, you name it. If you ask nicely, they even send you their own starting music via gmail.



And, nearing the end of my little journey through the podcast world, I would like to leave you with Go Nintendo’s “Go Nintendo Radio”. This musical spin-off from the original podcast is made by Touchfuzzy and should be listened to for the sake of its authors name alone. Really though, while I hate the orinigal Go Nintendo podcast, as it contains all elements of a bad podcast I ever knew, and even adds a few new ones, Touch quietly leads you through each show’s selection, while spilling all the data there is to know and ending with a little quiz. He stopped doing regular updates for now, but says he will return someday. And that mustn’t even be a bad thing, considering that the now-for-a-few-months-current issue is a special walkthrough through Nobuo Uematsu’s body of work, namely the first ten Final Fantasys. So, go grab it while it’s still up, it’s the perfect Videogames music mixtape. Search for “Go Nintendo Radio” on your aggregator.

Why I live inside my chrome browser

And I have for several months now, and happily, I might add.

So, let’s talk a little bit about my portal to happiness, my stairway to heaven, although, I am sorry, I forgot – no stairway. Chrome from Google. Available on all big operating systems, I’ve been using it for hundreds of hours now on ubuntu. You simply have to hit the official site, and get the appropiate software package, which the site automatically chooses and offers to you. As a slightly confusing sidenote, you have to pay attention to the two versions that are available in the wild: The one we are talking about here, and the other one without the branding, the name and logo, called chromium, which runs under the BSD license, but for me just created many problems unknown to me before, like freezing the screen and refusing to play video on the web.

With Chrome proper however, you get a browser that is fast. Really fast. That takes up only half of standard Firefox’ primary memory consumption, which makes it even faster. And lighter. That ist stable, unlike anything I’ve seen before, and that’s saying a lot seeing I use ubuntu. And apparently, very secure. Can’t really talk about that, since I am still waiting for a proper virus under the ‘Nux family, and all I ever got offered online was some stale “download this *.exe and be happy instantly” – come on guys, you should be able to see the IP, ISP, browser and of course, operating system of most of your forced-upon visitors – and I didn’t even modify the user-agent.

So, let’s get to the shortcomings, as there still are a few, as of me running version 5.0.375.70.

First off, sometimes chrome hides, or “blacks out” the tabs. You have to point over them quickly in order to be able to see your tabs again. No biggie. But peculiar. Next, when trying to automatically add a RSS-feed to Google Reader, which usually takes like, one click, chrome just displays the text of the last few entries of that particular feed, but not the usual little site letting you choose between “iGoogle” and “Reader”. Minor inconvenience this. Moving on, certain sites display a big red warning saying that the site’s security certificate has run out or isn’t valid. Like this -

And you could be unlucky and have this without the left button letting you proceed all the same, effectively shutting you out without any real security reason. This problem usually has its reason in out-of-sync time settings, and it seems to be popping up again over time passing. So, no Gears of War stats for this browser, sometimes.

The only real big issue is, of all things, GMail. Google Mail under chrome doesn’t let you put in the recipient’s email address, you have to always type the first few letters of the email address, and hope that GMail does its autocomplete. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. Also, the attachments: 75% of times you like to attach something, and click the “attach” button, the button vanishes, and that’s it. So, no attachments for this baby. Gotta hit pidgin and try to move the stuff over there.

So there you go, my pros and cons of Google’s magical chrome browser. Besides the mentioned minor annoyances, I truly never have looked back. Also, it has Feedsquares.

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On the shoulders of giants -

Get the browser for free here – http://www.google.com/chrome/?hl=en-GB&brand=

After some time, you’ll need these shortcuts – http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95743

And for a little insight of how chrome’s separate tabs work, look at the official chrome comic book -http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/