DROIDICAL

I have been trying to figure out the cleanest Skype Out solution on Android.  The official Skype app for Android really only does IM and then uses your mobile phone (minutes) for outgoing calling. This is actually not bad if you can spend the minutes or don’t call frequently. I always thought it would be cool to get a ‘real’ voip solution using my existing Skype account (without spending on another VOIP solution like SIP or whatever).

The two best options I have found so far are Fring and Nimbuzz. I found Fring to be a little buggy and cludgy on the UI side of things. I liked the clean Nimbuzz approach. Easy to see the diff between your different IM accounts. For Skype out type calling I could only call land lines if they were in my buddy list… and if I ’showed offline contacts’ in the menu. 

The other advantage to Nimbuzz is after the outbound call connects it gives you a dialpad (going through an automated system) which is handy. The bummer is if you want to call someone they have to be a contact on your list… you can’t just dial a number like you can in your normal skype client.

I have read of people enabling sipdroid with Skype out info but it hasn’t worked for me yet.  Until something better I will probably use Nimbuzz (which also works well for multi-headed IM client)…. so if you know of a another solution let me know.

This is a general reply to all the geek writers that keep reporting how terrible it is that there are all these different android devices out there for users to try to figure out.  This is just writing from your own perspective.

Most users are not going around and trying to figure out all the different ‘Android’ devices.  They are not like you.  They are not comparing Nexus One with Droid or looking at the differences between 1.5, 2.0, 2.0.1 and 2.1 to make their decision. They are not sampling every possible smartphone on the market, looking at trends, attempting to make sure they are on the ‘best’ platform or device.

I think for most people the search starts with the network provider, then goes from there, especially now that there are ‘options’ on each network.

I saw a Motorola Bluetooth headset on sale at Amazon and decided to go for it.  Always wanted to be wire free but didn’t have a new enough device to take advantage of it, nor could I bare to even think about spending the type of money have have wanted for them.  There are better deals out there than before.

Take the one I got for example… 40$-ish from Amazon after shipping and tax, seemed like a decent enough deal (I think I missed this when they sold it at Verizon store for 24$ in one of their 24 hour sales).

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d.html/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/190-7720955-1250669?a=B002BH3I9U

Not really wanting to do a full review of the Motorola S305 headset for the Droid.  Suffice to say I can pair it and listen to music without having to mess with wires while working or working out.  Very cool feature that I did not realize about this headset is that it also has a mic built in.  If I get a call while wearing them I can answer as if I was wearing my regular bluetooth ear piece. I may shift it over to my mac for skype usage as well.

The *squelched* in the title really has nothing to do with the actual headset but with Android Bluetooth support.  Summary is that while a Bluetooth audio device will pair with your Android phone you can’t use any of the controls on the remote device to trigger functionality in Android. The most obvious is limited ability to push a ‘talk’ button on your Bluetooth ear piece it won’t do anything on your voice like… open the voice dialer.  Similarly, my new fancy headset has skip/repeat/pause/volume controls which do nothing on the Droid.

A lot of people discovered this when they bought the Droid and were a little upset in some cases and ready to return the device.

https://supportforums.motorola.com/thread/15939

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Android+Market/thread?tid=68ee7bd469245477&hl=en

http://androidcommunity.com/forums/f41/voice-dial-and-bluetooth-4999/

So if you go through and read a bunch of these the deeper developer types will tell you it’s not Motorola or HTC that is to blame but Android Bluetooth ’stack’ itself that the big G needs to improve to make this happy (so you know who to blame).  Either way it’s kind of lame…. seems like it would be priority for a phone device to get working.

One consolation is that this only came to the iPhone with the 3G update (so I read) or their latest OS release… but that’s not too consoling to me. The only thing that consoles me is to know that it’s only a software problem and not a hardware or device issues so it CAN be fixed.

One thing that has driven me nuts over the years it that though there is great software for keeping track of my todos from the simple to the complex… the lists eventually stagnate. I think this is because a lot of the todos that I really need help tracking are things that I need to do when I am away from my desk.  Eventually small lists end up going into little notebooks or stickies. Though they often do get done, just seems like a messy primitive process.  I loved syncing tasks onto my old Treo with the desktop apps so now that I have my Droid in hand almost everywhere I go it’s time to clean up my todo management.

What are my requirements for tracking tasks? For many this is a big list. Being a fairly simple todo-er I think my requirements are small. One thing I did want was some way to massage the list at my desk and on my Droid. Just looking for something to keep track of a todo list, may be categories or different lists,  someway to work with it while sitting at my desk without poking around on the Droid, free, and possibly attach some kind of date with it. I saw several (free) apps in the Marketpace that are inspired by ‘GTD’ (Getting Things Done). I grabbed several and played around

Astrid – very simple interface to add tasks, set dates, add to calendar, time worked, importance, reminders, tags, syncs with RTM

GOALS ToDo Free – big message at the beginning with demo expiring, setup seems clunky and interface doesn’t seem to be simple enough for me. May be more suited to someone that needs a lot more features.I am sure I missed some on purpose or accident.

gTask – very simple clean interface, set dates, add to calendar, create separate lists, additional notes for each task, syncs with Google

QuickTodo – super basic, add an item and set a due date, no sync

TagTodo – force close on Droid/Android 2.0.1

ToDo lite – pretty simple, list management as well as task management on main page, date driven, let’s you record an audio note with the task, dorky ‘No You Can Go Surfing’ message when tasks are done, no sync

Conclusion: I decided to go with gTask mainly for the sync with google tasks and google calendar. I am not wanting to create (yet another) account at RememberTheMilk.com to sync and manage there (while on the desktop).  Since I am in Gmail all the time anyway it’s easy to pull up the task list and add things that I think of there. Astrid does have some more features that were pretty cool and tempting.  If you are already a user or fan of RememberTheMilk.com or are not interested in sync it’s definitely a good way to go. I may watch and see if they add Google Task sync in the future. To me that’s the beauty of having keeping stuff in the cloud… it’s easy to change my local client/app to suite my needs.

What’s your favorite ToDo keeper?

Read more…

http://blogs.zdnet.com/gadgetreviews/?p=9881&tag=nl.e539

I will be even more excited when it actually hits the phone. Things like this will help build faith that your Android phone decisions should really be around the hardware deficiencies and not software. That’s what I thought when I first heard about the camera issues. It sounded like something that could be resolved through an update.

I would venture to say that many people buying a Droid have never  really delved into the online calendar world.  I use a calendar at work heavily but haven’t really done much personal calendaring.  Entering an appointment or event right on into the built in Calendar app is such a cinch I started doing it. Then comes the next question… how to view or sync this with your desktop calendaring software.

As many Androidites already know… by jumping into Android you are drinking the Google CoolAide for better or worse.  Your little calendar app automatically syncs with your Google account calendar.  You can view it simply by going to Google Calendar or by using CalDAV to sync with software able to sync with it Mozilla Sunbird and Apple iCal work well.  You can view and add to your calendar through these desktop apps….though I am finding I use the web based applications for most everything getting the same experience no matter what system I am on.

During Thanksgiving vacation the wifi at our resort was so weak that Verizon’s 3G was looking faster so I started to wonder if I could setup my laptop to use my Verizon’s data connection, often called ‘tethering.’  I had done this in the past with my old Treo and ATT’s network.  I knew that the Android OS has the capability and being fairly geeky I started to check into it.

In November several reports came about Verizon offering tethering in 2010 for the Droid…
http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/06/verizon-confirms-droid-tethering-cost-will-ask-subscribers-to-d/
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/11/tethering-droid/

It’s gonna cost $30/month, ahhh, no thanks. There are solutions reported using your USB cable which looks like something you wouldn’t want to tackle with out some technical saavy.

http://androidforums.com/how-tips/18532-mac-os-x-droid-tethering-usb-wired.html
http://mobiletech.knguyentu.com/2009/11/motorola-droid-how-to-tether-via-usb.html

As I added more and more stuff to my new Droid I began to wonder how secure is this? A kid could figure out how to slide the unlock. Can I secure it with a password? Sort of. I found in the ‘Location and Security’ menu the ability to set your own ‘Unlock Pattern’ which to be honest I thought was a little weird at first.  I still wonder how secure it really is as it seems easy for someone to see me entering it (vs typing something on a small keyboard).  On the plus side, once I got used to it… doesn’t really take any longer than swishing the unlock in than in the ‘no pattern’ scenario.  My initial thought was that I would just set it to be required when traveling but may just keep it on.

The process was just like setting up password, but does feel like your missing something. Thought it might help to see it so here are the steps I went through to set my pattern….

As I said from the home page open the menu and touch the ‘Location and Security’

Select ‘Set Unlock Pattern’ which takes you to an intro page giving the steps coming

‘Next’ will open an intro describing how to create the pattern with four dots

The next screen allows you to record your pattern, letting you retry (reset) if you don’t like it.

Once you feel comfortable with this… touching ‘continue’ takes you to a pattern confirmation page, where you enter it again

After touching ‘Confirm’ it takes you back to the preferences screen with the ‘Require pattern’ set and ‘Use visible pattern’ set.

Now when I ‘locked’ the phone and tried to come back I was prompted to enter my pattern

One tricky thing I found was that if I opened with the slider… had to enter my pattern sideways (in a way), but got used to that pretty quick

Otherwise, you can still disable sound and go into airplane mode etc.

Besides all the awesomeness, I started noticing the little foibles after two weeks deactivating compromise with the Droid. So, while I love it… got be objective and start a good feature enhancement list for Droid II.

Here is my list so far…

• the  phone has to be invoked from within android OS purely
• the four main ‘buttons’ are not physical buttons
• tap accuracy – this could be just me I have big hands, but seems like I have to tap above things
• power button too close to headphones
• would prefer to have usb on the side and not under the keyboard
• camera… waiting for a software update, trying alternatives
• random gold or brass colored accents… like why on camera button but not on volume toggle?
• the short cable that came with it does’t even reach from the wall to my nightstand
• sometimes it gets stuck in horizontal mode, even if I flip and swirl the thing around (probably something I am doing wrong)

What did I miss?

If your like me you have been looking at different accessories for your Droid.  The Dock is a cool idea.  I got to checking out the reviews of the dock and I agree with most people’s comments that it would be really nice if it had either audio out ability or speakers.  Still would like to have a nice alarm clock type functionality like that.

Dock Runner started floating around the interwebs yesterday (at least that’s when I caught it) so I gave it a try. It let’s me put my Droid into ‘dock mode’ giving all the same visual features… minus the plastic stand and easy usb plugin. You get a nice big easy to see clock, date, and weather summary (based on location which you can

override or change). It also gives you quick access to typical ‘by the bedside’ needs like the alarm settings, music, media and my fav the dimmer (light bulb).

I did notice that it is a little different from running other apps because it sets this ‘dock mode’ which bottom line means it is stuck in horizontal view no matter how much I rotated. If you click away to the Music or Media apps you will still be in ‘dock mode.’ Other typcical menu and touch options seem to be disabled, like double clicking the home button (love that one), but search still worked (can’t seem to get away from that thing). The only way to disable it is to click on the app icon again which will shut it off.

So if your willing to plugin the USB for charging and having a book or something to prop up your Droid (yep, times are tough) it pretty much does the same thing as far as I can tell.  It will be interesting to see if the Droid get enough base to entice third parties to build other hard accessories using these same features.