Say Hi to my Nexus 5

So, I finally did it.

The lack of Android updates and the (inevitable) decline in battery duration - my HTC One S was already 2 years old - made me go to the Google Play store and get a Nexus 5 (32GB). With the wireless charger.

tl;dr: happy happy happy.

Buying it
Apart from UPS's blunder on literally the last mile (the guy cannot read building numbers or name plates) the buying and delivery process was excellent. Really close to one-click :)

Basics
It came with 4.4.3 and this night updated to 4.4.4.

This time I went for un-rooted and no bootloader.

Migration
Transferring apps and data was easy...Google-Login and then the apps just re-install from the play store, 99% of the data is in the cloud anyway... The most cumbersome part was getting the login and account credentials into all the apps.
Even this was easy with LastPass on Android - expect a separate post on this.

Only for two apps I needed to move local data; one was BeyondPod, my podcast manager and player. However, this was totally easy: do a backup on the old phone, choose to share the backup via PushBullet to my Nexus 5 (also an upcoming story), within a second receive a notification and the backup on the new phone, and open it in BeyondPod. That's it. All subscriptions incl listened-to state are now on the new device.
The other one was my weight recorder, and copying was easy as well, with the help of DropBox and Astro FileManager. I'll spare you the details of the file :)

The call history, sms/text and Wifi settings I got with a Titanium XML Backup (does not require root) and restore. Not too important for call log, but great for Wifi settings.

UI Experience
So now I'm sorting out where I really miss HTC sense, but it's not a lot.
Turns out the HTC contacts, mail and calendar apps had some nice advantages over stock Android.
Also turns out, that the (stock) Google Now Launcher does not have badges anymore, so I'll miss the little red number on my email/gmail and others.

The Google Now launcher is OK, especially with the Google Now just being there.
But - by Max's recommendation - I'm now testing the Aviate launcher... Sigh... 3rd story that I need to write. Suffice it to say, it's free, by Yahoo, intergrates well, and - most importantly - guesses your context (i.e. work, home, travelling, ...) and adjusts the app/widget groups accordingly.  Let's see in some weeks how this works.

So, stay tuned for some more stories on it.

Google Now on Chrome vs. Celsius

A couple of weeks ago, I enabled Google Now notifications in my (desktop) Chrome browser.

One thing I noticed, that on the weather card the temperature for Vienna, Austria, was given in Fahrenheit, instead of Celsius. Weirdly, there was no setting for this.

My PCs are definitely all running with Austrian locale (so it should be Celsius), this particular PC even with German language (and the combination of German and Fahrenheit is rather odd). And nowhere could I change this.

My mobile devices are also all on Celsius, so I thought it could not have been picked up from there.

Oddly, however, on my other PC (laptop), it displayed in Celsius. And even more oddly, this PC had English as language.

So did some Googling and found suggestions that you need to change this on the iPhone (iPad in my case), and that maybe switching to F and back to C could work.

That's what I did. Go to Google app on iPad, then into Settings > Google Now > Weather > Temperature.
Change for Fahrenheit, save.
Repeat with Celsius.

And voila, it is Celsius on the Desktop Chrome as well ...
Weird, but part of my software developer brain actually understands this.

My Next Android?

What should my next Android be?

HTC One M8 
As much as I hate HTC for dropping further support on the One S, they still have the best hardware (IMHO) of all the Android manufacturers. As this is their flag ship product, they wont kill support for it soon. Also, there is the Google Play Edition of it, so support of future Android releases is secured.

Google Nexus 5

Plain google, good HW, maybe not as fancy as the M8 but solid. A lot cheaper (in both senses of the word). Good choice for the money, I'd say.

And I think I'd love the wireless charging.

1+ One
OnePlus seems to have fancy HW and a weird go-to-market approach: selling hardware by invitation only... Only make me want to have it. You won :)

Google Timer

Just discovered this:
Enter timer in the Google search or awesome bar of your favorite browser, and Google will present you a nice little timer app/widget.

Just then enter whatever time you want/need and start.

You can also go fullscreen, e.g. if you need to project this during presentations or so.

Cool thing is, wherever you have google, you have this timer.

There are some nice short cuts, try them:
timer 10 minutes
timer 16:30
timer 5:30 pm

Where are the Mesh Networks?

With all the (justified) uproar about the NSA and GHCQ, which should actually be an uproar against the Telcos and ISPs (and backbone providers playing along) one wonders, why there is no rush to mesh networks, giving us a bit more independence of centralized networking providers.

REALLY!?! - On the Problem of Incomplete Data

A couple of months ago, the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) opened their data for Google (maps). Whether this can be already considered "open data" or not, is not todays subject.  Wiener Linien (let's call them the Vienna Transport Authority) did not.

My concern is, that Google now has the time table data of the railways, but not of the (local) public transport in Vienna (underground, tram, bus).

Which leads to incomplete data for commuters in and around Vienna (within Google Maps), or a segment, which I in reverence of SNL like to call

REALLY!?!

So, because there is no underground/metro/tube data. Incidentally ÖBB also operate the airport transfer bus, which happens to have a station right next to my office. And thus... Google Maps fills the gap in Vienna with a nice little transfer to the airport and back to my office... Because that's the only routing data (apart from walking) the find.

REALLY!?!

My regular commute time is around 50 mins.

So please, all, get your act together.

Lightning Drap'n'Drop Problem

In my earlier post (and comment discussion) about Opening ICS Files with Thunderbird/Lightning we mentioned that you can also drag the .ics link directly from the browser to the calendar pane in Thunderbird/Lightning.
I also found, that this is not always working.

So - as promised - I looked into this a bit.
First, narrow down the "not always" to something reproducible:

I took a link that I knew was working with drag&drop (actually from the timetable of the Austrian Federal Railways), and verified this. Yep, working nicely

Then I just downloaded the resulting .ics file to my local hard disk into a folder that was mapped into my webserver (Tomcat 7). I wrote a tiny .html file that mainly included a link to the .ics file.

Then open the html file in Chrome/Firefox and drag the download text/link into (or is it onto?) the Lightning calendar pane in Thunderbird. Ignore the second line for a second (no pun intended).

Nothing.

Well, that was surprising... So I went on to waste a lot of time with checking the mime-type etc etc.

But it was fine by responding with "text/calendar" - see:

So I took some Java drag&drop code I had, and took a closer look at the data included in the DnD object. Also everything fine there (I spare you the details here).

By chance I looked into the access log of the webserver and found the following:

GET /test/download.icsdownload HTTP/1.1" 404 1001

Which essentially says, that Thunderbird requests a broken URL. It should GET /test/download.ics and not /test/download.icsdownload

No wonder it gets a 404 and cannot import anything.

Quick test to include a "?" in the a href (see above, the second line I asked you to ignore earlier).
If you drag this one, you'll get a
GET /test/download.ics?download? HTTP/1.1" 200 949



As we are handling static files here, the "?download?" appended to the filename will gracefully get ignored and the file will get served (as can be seen by the 200 response code)
And with this link, Thunderbird really imports the file and opens the event dialog.

Fine there.

What Lightning does, is - wrongly - append the text of the html anchor ("download" or "download?") to the URL. You can test with naming the anchor asdfgh and will see that /test/download.icsasdfgh will be requested.

Why does it do it ?

It seems to be that Lightning picks up the HTML fragment data type that gets passed by DnD. The browser passes the full anchor, from begin tag to end tag (see above), and Lightning stupidly parses until the first newline (\n), and throws away the HTML tags.
This is wrong.
Should not happen.
I'll file a bug in bugzilla.

Google Maps Navigation now finally for Croatia

Since mid December Google Maps Navigation is finally available for Croatia.
I drive from Vienna to Zagreb every month or so (for business reasons) , and, yes indeed, I do know the way by heart now, but within Zagreb itself, it really annoyed me that I only had the maps, but no turn-by-turn navigation.

Well, this week when I went there again this week, it was just nice to have it available

UPDATE: Five Reading Tools - part IV: Read Quick

How embarrassing.

In my tiny review of Read Quick I lamented about the fact, that one could not mark an article read (in Pocket) directly in Read Quick.

Also, and option to mark the article as read, once you are done with it, would be nice.

Oh, was I wrong.

This apparent lack of a feature was so annoying to me, that I decided to click on the "finished" icon next to the article - and voilà... a new menu appears, with the usual range of sharing options, but also an Archive icon.

Archive - of course - is the pocket way to mark an article as read.

So I stand corrected, Read Quick does fully sync with Pocket.  Hooray!

Speaking of Pocket, here's a nice little info I got from them... it appears I'm amongst the top 5% of pocket users. Another hooray!

Five Reading Tools - part V: Reader in Safari

And finally... on my iPad in Safari I use the Reader.

It has about the same features as Evernote Clearly, except that it is not an extension and only exists on iOS.
Luckily it is built into the browser since several iOS version (not sure how long) and therefore is just there (for free).

It also comes with a reading list feature, but I never use that, simply because I want my reading list centralized (i.e. pocket).

I only use it to clean the article of all the clutter around it, and it works like charm.

All you need to do is press the little reader icon (seems to represent some text lines as in "text only") left of the URL bar.

Our Wikipedia entry looks like this (click to enlarge).

Nice thing is, that links work.

Five Reading Tools - part IV: Read Quick

Now for something quite different:

While I studied at TU Vienna (Computer Engineering) I took some lectures in Computer Linguistics offered by the Linguistics Department of the (regular, good old) University of Vienna.One of those lectures/courses was about Text Comprehension and Computers (this was 1990), and I was the proud presenter of the topic Reading on the Screen.

One of the methods I came across during preparation was Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP). It is about presenting one word (or very short phrase) at a time at a fixed location. This allows for reading rates of up to 700 words per minute [1].


Flash forward 22 years (ouch) and imagine the déjà vu I had, when I learned about ReadQuick. Because it is exactly an implementation of this.
ReadQuick is an iOS app, that uses Pocket, Readability or Instapaper as a back-end service to store/queue the articles and then presents them in RSVP style.

You can set the speed yourself (in words per minutes). I'm currently at 335 as you can see. You'll notice that over time your reading speed will increase - as advertised. I think I started around 220 or so.

One nice side effect is, since the article size (in words) and the speed is known, it can tell you how long in minutes this article is, or how much you have left.


It actually is a totally different reading experience. After a time you'll get rid of "reading" and just absorb the text as it flies by.

It's $4.99 in the app store, but totally worth it.

The longer or more narrative an article is, the rather I read it with ReadQuick. However, you do need a quieter environment then for the rest (at least I do), because once you get distracted, you cannot easily jump back one sentence or paragraph.

Also, and option to mark the article as read, once you are done with it, would be nice.

Unfortunately, this app is iOS only for the time being. An Android version is said to be in the works.

~~
UPDATE here.

--
[1] Mills, C.B./Weldon, C.J.: Reading Text from Computer Screens. ACM Computing Surveys 19,4 (1987)... to be found here. Well at that time, I got it from TU Vienna Library back in the days.

Five Reading Tools - part III: BeeLine Reader

Beeline Reader is a Firefox and Chrome extension very similar to Evernote Clearly, but with a little twist...

They use a color gradient that "flows" along the line and creates a high onctrast between two lines.
See how the color changes from black to blue to red and also varies saturation:

Supposedly this should make reading easier. Quite frankly, I cannot judge this, but it seems to work.

The drawback is, that it only allows for reading, no saving, printing, ...

If you are a Firefox or Chrome user, install it from here and try it. Worthwhile.
Again, here's our Wikipedia entry for comparison with the other tools. Click to enlarge.

Five Reading Tools - part II: Evernote Clearly

Evernote Clearly is an extension to both, the browser and Evernote.

I guess, it is fair to say, that it only makes sense to use Evernote Clearly, if you are an - at lest modestly - active Evernote user. But see for yourself.

To quote their own website:

Clearly makes blog posts, articles and webpages clean and easy to read. Save them to Evernote to read them anywhere.

And that's really it.

I use Clearly whenever I'm on a PC/browser and want to read some longer article or post [1], or when the web page is cluttered with too many gadgets, ads and nonsense - primarily when I need to read it now (otherwise I'd use pocket).

Once you installed the browser extension, you will find the Clearly icon in the toolbar. When needed, you just click on it, and it will overlay the current web page with it's own cleaner content-only view.

You can clip and save to Evernote directly from Clearly and you can also print the cleaner version.

Here's the reference Wikipedia entry as viewed through clearly (click to enlarge).

As you can see, this is really a clean and smooth reading experience. Try it on one of the ad-cluttered news sites for a start.

And most importantly: it comes with this cool Luxo Jr-like desk lamp as an icon. Always a plus.

--
[1] not necessarily long form, just longer than e.g. one browser page

Five Reading Tools - part I: Pocket

Pocket (formerly: read it later) allows you to save an article / URL to your pocket list for later consumption. The pocket list is not device specific, but kept "in the cloud", so you can access it from everywhere. You can see it as a competitor to Instapaper or Readability.

The main use is, that when I find an article or post interesting (or too long to read on the mobile while on the underground), or just stumble upon a post, but don't have the time to read it right now, I put it on my pocket list.

95% of the time this will be from Feedly [1], the remaining 5% are from Facebook, G+ or  Twitter. Yes, I'm still one of those grumpy old guys from last century, who use RSS.

Once click from Feedly, and it is in my queue.

If find the following important features extremely useful:

Easy to queue

Pocket makes it really easy to put an item into your reading queue or list.

Feedly, for instance, directly supports Pocket, and all you need to do is press the pocket button to send an item to the queue.

All my browsers have extensions that allow me to send the current document/URL to the pocket list.

On Android, Pocket is integrated in the Share menu, so all apps that can share content via the SendTo Intent, automatically support Pocket as well.

iOS introduced a similar share menu (now combined with AirDrop), however, Pocket does not (yet?) support it.

What Pocket does nicely (both on iOS and Android) is to detect that you have a URL in the clipboard, and allows you to add it with just one click. So you can easily copy the URL from the Facebook app or browser, switch to pocket and simply save it there.

Available everywhere

Once an article made it into the pocket list, it can be read from everywhere. PC/Browser, iOS, Android.

I personally do 90% of the actual reading on my iPad, 10% on my Android mobile.

So my pattern is, queue from Android (while on the road) and read on iOS (at home).

Easy to read

The number one reason I queue article to pocket, is that I don't have the time to read them when I discover them (again...commuting on the train / underground). Or the device is to small.

The other reasons is, that pocket (like all the other tools I show in this series) removes all the disturbing gadgets from the web page, and shows only the pure content (+ content related images).

This is how Wikipedia (which is quite clean on the web, to be honest) looks in Pocket [2] on the iPad. You can spot that it does not too well with structured content (the start of almost every Wikipedia entry) but does very well with "regular" writing. (Click both images to see compare)

Once an article is read, you can decide if you want to delete it, or archive it. Either way, when you're done, you should get it of of the queue.

When you decide to archive (which is what I usually do), it does help to add some tags to it (tag icon) before you send it to the archive (check-box icon).

That's how pocket works for me.

You mileage may of course vary.

--

[1] or Google Reader back in the good old days.

[2] I will use the very same Wikipedia entry for comparison in this series.

Five Reading Tools

No worries, this is not one of those link bait "10 best..." posts... I simply want to introduce 5 tools for online reading that I'm using or trying right now (apart from RSS readers, etc etc)

So over the next couple of days, I'll be posting about

• Pocket (formerly: read it later)
• Evernote Clearly
• Beeline Reader
• Read Quick
• Reader in Safari

Stay tuned.

Getting an iPad Air

A bit more than three years ago I bought an iPad (Generation 1 from today's point of view). 64GB, Wifi only.
There were good reason to stay on Wifi only, because I intended to use the iPad mainly at home and not as a "large" phone to carry around.

My iPad came to be a real companion at home...

• first email and news check in the morning - on the iPad
• last check in the evening/night - on the iPad
• second screen while watching TV - the iPad
• checking news (feedly), email, facebook, twitter in between - the iPad

It did not want to use it while commuting to the office, because I know that I'm an online junkie and that I'd be online all the time on the train/underground. In urgent cases I could still tether through my Android phone.

However, the performance and stability of the iPad deteriorated... or rather: began to suck.
For example. when entering a new appointment in the calendar app, the lag when trying to select the time was a couple of seconds (!). Feedly, Pocket, Facebook would crash, i.e. just exit, several times a day.
This really started with iOS 5.1... And since this is an Generation 1 iPad there is no upgrade path to iOS 6 or 7.

So, as much as I love my iPad I also started to hate it.
I used to work a lot (while at Sun Microsystems) with Thin Clients (specifically the SunRay) and loved the notion of a client device, that would not age. Meaning that the capacity in the client (CPU, memory, screen estate, ...) would suffice for all IT trends for say 7-10 years.

In a way the iPad started as a thin client, and - call me naïve - I expected an iPad to last 4-5 years.
It did not. Not even three years and it got obsolete (for my usage pattern).
That's a PC replacement cycle, not a thin client cycle.

So over the last couple of months I was actually considering switching to a Nexus 7. But then I decided to stay in both worlds, Android on my phone, iOS on my tablet.

Yesterday I ordered my iPad Air... to get back stability and speed. Still Wifi only.
The old iPad will probably stay around as a TV/raspbmc remote...

Screenshots with Dropbox

A couple of weeks ago, Dropbox (my favourite cloud storage or rather information sharing tool) started to support putting Screenshots directly to your Dropbox folder (for Windows and Mac).

Make sure you have Verison 2.4 (or later) installed (get it here), then open preferences and enable Share screenshots using Dropbox on the Import pane.

From then on, when you press the Print Screen button, Dropbox will save the screenshot to a (new) folder in your Dropbox named Screenshots.

Alternativeley when you hit Ctrl Print Screen it will save the screenshot and copy a public web link (URL) pointing to the screenshot to your clipboard. You can immediately paste this into the browser, or an email, or skype, or whatever you want to use to share this screenshot with friends or coworkers.

You will then see a notification on your Dropbox taskbar icon, once the screenshot is saved (and ready for sharing).

By the way,  those screenshots where taken with Dropbox (as descripbed above) and then edited with Gimp.

Remember S.E.T.?

The other day, while cleaning out some drawers at home, I found an old registration confirmation for S.E.T from VISA.
I must admit, I hardly remembered.
S.E.T. - short for Secure Electronic Transaction(s) - was an attempt by VISA (and others) to establish secure protocols for electronic payments.
I think we even implemented this in an online shop, around 2000. At least we had a plan to do so, not sure if we really did...

Anyway, if you want to get nostalgic, check it on Wikipedia.

And while you're at it, check out WAP as well, should go to the same drawer shredder.

Dryft Virtual Keyboard

Wow... if this virtual keyboard - just presented by dryft - really works, I need it...

Don't have an Android tablet yet, but I neeeeed this.

(via GigaOm)

OSCON 2013: John Graham-Cumming, "Turing's Curse"

The wonderful John Graham-Cumming debunks some new trends in IT as quite old... nice and excellent talk.