Blacklist in CyanogenMod

If you are running CyanogenMod on your Android device, and are surprised that some people seem to not be able to call you (half a ring, then hangup), you probably accidentally blacklisted that user.

My hope was that there was some simple method to clear this blacklist (which essentially "killfile"s phone numbers).  Either I misunderstood the user interface, or there was something desperately broken, but I could not figure out a way to clear the blacklist.  So I went digging in the source (yeah for open source!).

Turns out there is a file called blacklist.dat that stores these numbers, so here's my brute force solution for clearing the phone black list:

1. open terminal
2. su
3. rm /data/data/com.android.phone/files/blacklist.dat
4. reboot

Reboot is required.  Do it now.

And now, your wife is able to call you again, contributing to marital harmony FTW.

PS- no, I didn't tell you that you need a rooted phone, since you don't have this issue unless your phone is rooted. Read more...

Android is actually "Getting There"

I finally have all the applications I need for the G1 to be truly useable, and at least give it parity with the Blackberry or iphone.

The main things:

Push (Exchange) email, in the form of a $25 download called Touchdown. This app is a bit wonky from a usability standpoint, but has consistently gotten better as the developer has released improved versions.

While I feel that this should be DEFAULT FUNCTIONALITY (are you listening Google?!), I can say it's worth the price, and I haven't really had any major problems with it once it was configured (configuration is a bit of a pain).

PPTP VPN: Thanks to Cyanogen for backporting this to CyanogenMod (if you're not running this, you're missing out on a better experience). This is slated to be included in the Donut release, but CyanogenMod has it now, and it works (although I haven't been able to get it working on WiFi).

Those were the two biggest things that were just *missing* from the Android stack, and I can actually recommend the G1 for business users. The PPTP thing makes me really happy, especially since the PPP daemon has probably supported it since the launch, but there was no way to properly drive it.

Photo by Max.
Read more...

Blackberry SDK, Modifying messages

In an earlier article, I stated that I liked the BlackBerry SDK, and one of the things that I liked that the SDK seemed complete, in that it supported and documented how to do things that are "hard to do" (e.g. Bluetooth support).

I decided that a thought experiment was in order: could I modify email messages as they are sent?

The BlackBerry SDK makes this fairly straightforward: implement the net.rim.blackberry.api.mail.SendListener interface, which has a single method:

public boolean sendMessage(Message message)

By implementing this method, you can modify the message as you see fit (Message is what you think it is!), and even block the message by returning false from the method.

Now, based on things that Apple has said, I don't believe that the iPhone will support this type of development-- modifying the default behavior of the built-in applications.

Based on what I have seen in Android, it does look like this would be possible there (I haven't looked extensively, however).
Read more...

Android De-Fragmentation

With Android being released as an open source operating system, one of the risks is that the companies in the Open Handset Alliance could fragment the development of the OS. It turns out that Google has worked to prevent this.

It seems fairly obvious, but balkanization of Android would likely cause significant issues with its adoption. The real issue is: who does balkanization affect?

Answer: the users.

Up until now, the cell phone manufacturers and the service providers have been united in denying user choice. I have high hopes (some days I'm an optimist!) that Android can be the straw that breaks the camel's back in this hegemony.

If android actually lives up to my current expectations, we're due for a serious inflection point-- and another Internet revolution.

Vive la choice!
Read more...

Android SDK first look

Last week, I took a brief look at the Blackberry SDK. Well, it's November 12th, and it's A-Day. Here are some initial thoughts on the Android SDK.

• Kudos to Google for producing a cross platform SDK. Win/Mac/Linux is nice, since so many developers today use the latter two as their primary OS.
• In looking at the documentation, everything seems to follow the web development paradigm, but with a few detours for things like long running processes (like the example they use: a media player that plays music in the background even when the UI isn't showing)
• The interfaces look very open; you can register for external events (e.g. an incoming call or SMS message)
• The Content Provider interfaces look nice, and the XPath style access to data is a nice, clean, and open interface.

APIs are nice and all, but what about tools?

I'm happy to note that the tools all seem to be there: Plugin for Eclipse, debugger (both against the emulator, and remotely against a device), plus all the packaging tools. Nice.

Other things to note:

• Location based services, with integration to Google Maps.
• 3D graphics (OpenGL). The support looks somewhat immature, but with NVidia as part of the Open Handset Alliance, this might just become a decent homebrew gaming platform.
• Low level hardware access will be available, but isn't ready yet.
• XMPP support; this will enable P2P applications and communication (IM, games, etc.)
• Android has support for recording and playback of audio and video. As a musician, I like the audio recording bit. Nice.
• They have some really nice documentation available; They even cover some of the things that developer level documentation doesn't normally cover, like how to make an app responsive, how to understand the lifecycle of applications, etc.
  

With HTC announcing that they are going to release 3 handsets based on Android next year, it looks like Windows Mobile might be in trouble. If they can make a well-integrated, responsive phone that looks nice, they will probably start to cut into the iPhone market as well.

Looks like the smartphone market is about to get a whole lot more interesting. Read more...

Blackberry SDK

I've been considering a development project for the Blackberry, so I downloaded the Blackberry SDK from RIM. I was pleasantly surprised:

It looked quite complete (having looked at J2ME a few years ago, yuck!)

They included many examples, including some that would be difficult without an example, i.e. Bluetooth Serial

All in all, I'm quite impressed with the level of effort that obviously went into producing this SDK, and it is nice to see device makers actually courting developers.

I'm hoping to do some comparisons or at least an evaluation of Google's Open Handset Alliance/Android toolkit, so watch this space after the 12th of November (when the toolkit is due). Read more...