So far my list includes performing the SIM transplant, checking out that sweet splash screen, banging in my Google account, screwing around with Google Buzz’s additional Android features to troll my fellow New Yorkers additionally well, throwing on Street View and waving the phone around my head, firing up Google Maps Navigation and taking a cab somewhere (a taxi cab — you’re no longer going to hear me writing so much about cabs as you know them) and installing Swype if it’s not already installed. That’s all I’ve got.

I see there’s a lot of activity in the Android forums and I could just go there all night, but unless there’s a site kinda like blownfuze actually one of you have made, that’s a whole lot of XDA fat to trim my way through to get to the good stuff. I want to earn my power user stripes in a hurry. So if any of you could help me expand my Google phone to do list and usher me to the good stuff, that would be heavily appreciated. I know from watching the logs that a handful of you, God knows why, are using an Android phone to read this, so don’t make me look stupid for posting this kind of question here of all places by leaving me hanging.

This isn’t a trap. No need to remain silent or post anonymously because you don’t want to be called mean names by jealous and hostile Microsoft lovers for coming out of the mobile platform closet in enemy territory. I’ll protect you. I know how these people operate.

Doug Simmons

I don’t want to look soft. I need to preserve my street cred up in here and to do that I need to make good on these Google phone threats soon. Not interested in the Droid, no one seems to be in love with its keyboard plus I’m in Luke Wilson’s camp about talking and surfing at the same time being a key component to a fulfilling life. And now that Google’s selling AT&T versions of the Nexus One, the only thing (other than $529) keeping me trapped into a world of nonstop reboots and GPS tweaking adventures is my need for a hard keyboard.

But damn, the Nexus One, good to go on AT&T right now, who knows how long I’d have to wait for a successor with a keyboard. If I could just get over my fear of soft keyboards then I could talk trash with twice the authority having finally seen the promised land. Seems everywhere I look I see people using soft keyboards and they appear to be happy with their lives and no matter how fast I type they just won’t look at me and my badass keyboard. They won’t look.

Could anyone please talk me into outgrowing the hard keyboard?

Doug Simmons

UPDATE!
My Nexus One is on its way! Thanks everybody!

SBSH has just released version 2.1 of their profile and phone management solution called PhoneWeaver. The best features in this release is the excellent touch control.

The new touch control panel addresses the issue with most touch based applications. You can now navigate the new interface smoothly using your fingers. As in earlier version, You can create location-based profiles which are automatically switched to when you are in different mobile tower’s range. This does take initial setup effort but is really worth it. Here is a brief list of the main features in 2.0 and 2.1 versions:

• Empowered profiles
• Latest devices support
• Location based profiles
• Windows 6.5 compatibility
• More optimized application

The app comes in trial and paid versions.

Read More…

Google said today that while neither side has thrown in the towel completely yet that they and China reached an impasse. Google declared that they are withdrawing from the business of censorship, China declared that they shall follow the rules or leave town. “If Google takes steps that violate Chinese laws, that would be unfriendly, that would be irresponsible and they would have to bear the consequences,” their minister for industry and IT warned Friday. And if they do leave, according to an insightful and poetic Beijing, “the planet won’t stop spinning because Google leaves and Chinese Internet users will remain online without Google.”

Nothing you haven’t already heard, however this time the smart money suggests it’s really going to happen with Baidu shares jumping over 6% and Google down over 3% today precipitated by the ramped-up rhetoric. According to the Financial Times, “Google has drawn up detailed plans for the closure of its Chinese search engine and is now ‘99.9%’ certain to go ahead as talks over censorship with the Chinese authorities have reached an apparent impasse,” according to an unnamed Google insider. To try to tie this into phones for you, if you go to Beijing on Google Maps with the Google Buzz layer enabled, you’ll see that a lot of people are buzzing, people who would be very said not to be able to keep buzzing were their leaders not so obsessed with saving face which is by the way what they’re all about. Saving face and trying to hack into my server, that is.

I mentioned this to my old man yesterday. In spite of having a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (where he also taught), he knows virtually nothing of technology so his reaction, that of a layman, was intriguing to me. He said he admired Google’s stance, noting that it was a rare thing for any company, especially a public company, to exercise their beliefs at the probable expense of money and prospects of a lot more money and that in spite of this he’d be more inclined to invest in such a company.

Me too, Dad.

Doug Simmons

(via: WMPU)

“HTC has gone wrong. The nice clean look on the first versions of Manila has been abandoned.
The clean icons have been replaced by disorderly icons, in every color of the rainbow. Grey turned into color.
The evolvement of the interface itself was good, but the designers began to imitate Samsung.

GTX Sense is – what I think – the way HTC should design. I am not saying they should make a white theme, but that fancy flashing stuff is everything except eyecandy. The design of this theme is mainly inspired by HTC.com and the ZuneHD. The clean look of those interfaces is just excellent.

It’s been a hard job to get everything working. It was not only graphics work, but also a lot of scripts needed to be enhanced.”

Requirements: WVGA or VGA device with manila version 2.5.192X. Any additional mod, such as Co0kie’s mod, could cause bugs.
Important: If you haven’t got the Manila Locker installed, make sure to install this.
If you’re using an official (stock) ROM, or your manila is not CFC Compressed, download the CFC Uncompressed one.
Currently only Manila version 2.5.1921 is supported. 2.5.1922 is not advised. 2.5.201X will follow soon.
Size of theme: 2,6 MB, CFC Uncompressed 11,4 MB

Make sure you head on over to XDA and check this out and thank [ElCondor] for his awesome work. Remember, tipping these guys goes a long way and keeps them developing! A few dollars (seriously 2-3) does a long way if more people would donate. So skip that Mountain Dew, well, skip something else, gotta have your morning caffeine and show some love!

XDA Link: CLICK HERE

Source: WMPU

Once upon a time I was driving after dark on a windy unlit road in Westport Connecticut and as I got close to a blind curve on a hill I noticed a car pulled over on one side of the road and an incapacitated deer in the middle of the other. I did some calculations in my head and determined that traffic headed toward that deer wouldn’t be able to see him in time to make an evasive maneuver and that the deer, whom I’ll go ahead and personify for narrative effect as Mister Deer, was presenting a major hazard so I thought I’d do a good deed and pull over to drag him out of the way for the deer scooper man to deal with later.

As I approached Mister Deer, I saw that he was alive and conscious. I heard a car approaching, bam, the deer tumbled underneath was now twenty feet further away from me and the car kept going (Toyota maybe?). I was briefly relieved that there was no serious accident and that the deer was surely dead this time but as I got closer I saw that the deer was still alive and kicking. Five seconds pass, history repeated itself and if you can believe it he was still alive. Resilient little fella. That has got to be some kind of Westport deer record for surviving so many abrupt introductions to fenders, windshields and tires.

Depending on how your mind works this is going to get a little more disturbing. Don’t judge me.

I have a healthy relationship with animals. I like petting them (I’m really good at it, I know all the special spots) but I don’t mind eating them, I don’t carry around buckets of red paint either and I don’t give to PETA. I’m not a hunter. But Mister Deer needed to die right quick and the three cars had proven ineffective.

At the time I wasn’t packing so I asked myself what MacGyver would do. I surveyed the scene, found a bowling ball-sized rock, hauled it toward Mister Deer, fired off a quick prayer for good aim, acquired the appropriate target (we maintained eye contact actually), I raised the rock way up high, then I swiftly did the opposite — goodnight Mister Deer, may you heal a lot during your ascent into Deer Heaven.

Finally managed to accomplish my initial objective, got him and the improvised gravitational device out of the way. The woman who had first hit him was hysterical throughout all of this (did you know that the the Greeks came up with that word because they believed that it only afflicted women and was therefore triggered by disturbances in the uterus?) so I went up to her, told her that it wasn’t her fault, could have been anyone, the deer wasn’t suffering anymore, “maybe you should talk to someone about this tomorrow,” yada yada yada, and was Oscar Mike.

Doug Simmons

• showing map in fullscreen
• finger friendly user interface
• map tiles are automatically downloaded if internet connection is available
• map tiles are stored locally for offline use
• GPS support and GSM triangulation
• show actual position on map
• follow-mode to automatically scroll the map
• search addresses (testing)
• calculate routes (not yet implemented)
• gps and gsm tracking (not yet implemented)
• choose between different OSM servers (not yet implemented)

Download this app here. It is still a work in progress. So try it out and give the developer some feedback at his XDA thread.

I bought three batteries advertised on eBay as being OEM/HTC. Two of the three were counterfeits. It seems there is a sea of counterfeit batteries and that ain’t right so I want to waste a ton of time trying to do something about it. If you get burned with a fake OEM or otherwise unsatisfactory battery, here’s how I recommend you handle it: First hit the seller with a negative feedback rating using language like “counterfeit” and “fraud” then contact the seller demanding your money back — but not in exchange for sending the battery back as, and you can advise them of this if asked, sending something that is fake in exchange for money, either normal money or refunded money, may constitute mail fraud. I wouldn’t worry about being prosecuted, but why make the schlep to the post office just so they can make sure there isn’t any loose evidence of their fraud? And you don’t want to mail it back just so they can sell it to someone else. If you’re not sure if your battery is copacetic or not and want to run it by me, I’ll test that sucker for you and even cover the return postage, no problem (but right now I can only charge Tilt 2 batteries, sorry everyone else).

The one legit OEM, by the way, came from Brooklyn.

These people are desperate to protect their feedback rating so you have some leverage here, at least enough to get your money back if not more. Actually by this point you may already have gotten your money back but let’s aim higher: In exchange for retracting your negative feedback in exchange for a neutral rating and not pursuing the situation further with eBay, PayPal, HTC, or if there actually is any, an equivalent their country has of a better business bureau, ask for the contact information of their supplier or the manufacturer. There are so many resellers that it’s pointless to try to report them all but getting information on who’s cooking up the bathtub batteries with the fake labels, now we’re talking. About what exactly I don’t know yet but it just feels like the right direction to head. I could use your help in getting that information in order to have any affect at all on this dirty industry so let us all benefit from your being victimized and not let the deal die in vain.

But it’s a safe bet they won’t cough that information up (at least the two I tried to pressure wouldn’t). So, demand next (in exchange for the bad feedback retraction) that they take the listing down of the fake item along with any duplicates, searching through their other listings for others of the same item. If they won’t do that, for your next counteroffer I would recommend to retract your negativity and stop breaking their balls if they would just remove any reference of HTC, OEM, HTC model numbers and the like — anything misleading buyers viewing the item into thinking it’s OEM. That’s just too much not to feed back negatively over. If they won’t do that, leave the negative feedback intact, sting them with a counterfeit report to eBay and move on in life.

So that’s what I did with Lovely Betty from Hong Kong. It’s both a good how-to for this situation and an amusing read. Sweet girl, so polite and even left me and now you too with a happy ending. Hit more so I can hit you back with the transcript.

Doug Simmons

On 3/6/2010 8:22 PM, eBay Member: ibestone wrote:
—————————————————————–
eBay sent this message to Douglas Simmons.
—————————————————————–
negative feedback
—————————————————————–

Dear sir,

We notice that you put a neagative feedback to us to claim the
defective battery.

We are very sorry to hear that news, and would like
to solve the problem for you. Solve problem will be more important to feel
unsatisfied.

Could you please tell us the problem in detail? Then we can
come to see what is the problem of the battery. Please feel at ease, we
will do our utmost to solve the problem for you.

Sorry for the
incovience, and hope you can understand. Thank you!

We are looking
forward to hearing from you. Thank you!

Best regards
Betty

2010/3/7 Doug Simmons

On your listing you identify this battery as the 35H00125-07M HTC (OEM) 1500mAh battery for the HTC Touch Pro2. However the battery’s performance, though not “defective” per se, is inferior to that of the actual OEM battery of the same model number. Most importantly, the battery’s label is a counterfeit. This is fraud. Mail fraud, specifically.

If you’d like I would be happy to carbon copy you testing data and photographs I send to HTC comparing your battery to three different legitimate OEM models’ physical appearance and charts of their electric performance that illustrate beyond any doubt that this battery is fake which is disturbing because you sell many batteries also identified as OEM batteries.

Perhaps you were unaware of and not complicit in this and that your supplier has been cheating you without your knowledge in addition to your customers. Please tell me who the supplier is and how to contact them and I will recant my negative rating and leave you out of this.

Doug

On 3/7/2010 12:21 AM, yongbo li wrote:

Hi£¬

Thanks for your reply.

We are sorry for the incovience, because we are not the expert on this field.

We just called the people who sell the item to us, and they told us they are also a distributor. They won’t tell us the information about the company since they it is their business secret. I think I need to respect his professional ethics, but we have told him the problem, and he promise to find another reliable manufactures.

Sorry for the incovience, we do not want to make our customer unhappy with every transaction with us. Hope you can understand us. Whether you will revise the feedback, we would appreciate you, you are really a understandable customer.

Best regards
Betty

2010/3/7 Doug Simmons

All right, so you feel that damaging relations between you and the people you pay for these fake batteries by somehow exposing them is more threatening to your business that I am. Perhaps you’re right, but it’s a shame because maybe if you built a reputation for selling legitimate batteries at competitive prices, you could achieve greater success as so many seem to do what you are doing, selling fakes, and the market of legitimacy is potentially ripe. Instead, by contributing to the counterfeit market, you are ultimately driving more sales to the legitimate dealers and driving away potential customers from yourself when they find out about the likes of you before they make a decision to buy. And those consumers are beginning to share information more aggressively than before.

Just a polite suggestion from a gweilo.

So, Betty, protect the secrets of a criminal enterprise if you must but please send me a what I paid for, a legitimate HTC/OEM 1500mAh battery. Then I will remove this negative ebay feedback and call it even.

Doug Simmons

——– Original Message ——–
Subject: Re: negative feedback
Date: Sun, 7 Mar 2010 15:18:00 +0800
From: yongbo li
To: Doug Simmons

Hi,
Thanks for your quick reply.
Firstly, I want to say I am very sorry for the incovience. I sell the OEM battery to my customers since it will be much cheaper than the original. But maybe due to my poor professional, I made the mistake. I will care it.
I will refund you to show our sorry. But could you please wait for a while since I need to come to having a meeting. Thank you!
Best regards
betty

2010/3/8 Doug Simmons

Betty,

Thanks for refunding my money. I am dismayed that you continue to sell what you know to be a counterfeit battery (along, presumably, with 96 others), still identifying it falsely as the 35H00125-07M 1500mAh not just on the battery itself but right on the ebay listing in plain text. Not only, as we both know, is it not the HTC 35H00125-07M, your supplier actually screwed up the labeling as that model number, if you’d Google it, belongs to HTC’s 1100mAh version. That’s not only fraudulent, it’s sloppy and stupid. Maybe you should ask your bootlegging suppliers to try a little harder.

Because you might have kids to feed and this is all I’m going to get out of you I will retract the rating provided that, at the very least, please remove the “* Model No..: RHOD160, 35H00125-07M” from every listing you have for this particular battery. I’ll retract the rating and leave you alone and not test any of your other batteries. I will move on to someone else, I won’t get more help from eBay against you, I won’t email HTC pictures and your links and so on. The picture of the back label (along with the branding on the other side of the label) is misleading enough but listing the model number too? That’s just crossing the line and you know it Betty. But if you leave it there or take it off for a while then put it back I will have someone else you do not know buy the battery from you to send to me to test again and if there is further disappointment I won’t be so understanding.

Remove the model number from these listings and send me the feedback revision request, please.

Good night.
Doug Simmons

On 3/7/2010 10:57 PM, yongbo li wrote:

Hi,
Thanks for your reply.
Thank you for your notice. We are not attempt to sell the item, but we need to arrange the report for the problem, and hand it to our manager, then we can end the listing with his permit. It is the neccessory progress, and hope you can understand.
Today, I get the reply from the manager, and have ended the listing. You can check it.
I have sent your the feedback revision request, please accept it. Thank you!
Thank you for your understanding and kindness again.

Best regards
Betty

2010/3/8 Doug Simmons

Thank you Betty. I have fixed the negative feedback. Have a good day and good luck.

Doug Simmons

It is quite easy to sync your contacts, calendar, tasks, and emails between Windows Mobile Pocket Outlook on your phone and Office Outlook on your PC using Microsoft ActiveSync. However, ActiveSync doesn’t help if you use Thunderbird or Sunbird on your PC and not Microsoft Outlook. 

That is when BirdieSync helps you out. It syncs all Pocket Outlook contacts, emails, calendar, and tasks using ActiveSync. The synchronization happens automatically as soon as you connect your mobile to your computer. The most recent changes on any device you sync are synced to the other devices.  This ensures that everything is in sync on all devices.  It also supports the synchronization with WebDAV, calDAV and WCAP remote calendars.

You can try the trial version available with full functionality for 21 days before you buy the program. Read more details and the system requirements on the main website.

Read More…