Tips
Tips & Tricks!
Free Box.net accounts for LG phone owners!
Dec 22nd
According to the Box.net blog, owners of LG phones can get a Box.net account for free.
Box.net is a file storage and synchronization service, which is more suited for buisnesses, indication that it may in some cases replace Sharepoint.
(I have not yet tested Box.net)
For LG phones, you have to have Android 2.1 or better.
All you have to do is just install the Box.net Android app from the market, and you will get 50GB free storage and synchronization!
(You will have to create and account when you are logging in.)
Some clever guys over at xda also made a workaround so you can get Box.net even if you don’t have a LG phone. But this method is meant for more xperienced users.
Try Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich in Virtualbox for a lag-free experience
Dec 10th
I have earlier made a post on how to try out Android 4.0 through the AVD manager, it works, but its rather slow. So I figured I would test the Android-x86 project now that they a couple of hours ago released an Android 4.0 image.
This article will guide you through the setup of Android 4.0 in virtualbox. It will work a lot smoother than through the AVD.
There are a couple of steps in this guide, but they are straightforward and easy to follow.
Eclipse ADT has been updated. Brings nice features!
Dec 10th
I just noticed throught Eclipse that ADT had been updated.
The new ADT version brings some nice touches to the layout editor.
Now you can select items and drag and drop them onto the layout. It’s a nice touch that will certainly help new android developers a lot.
To get the new features, in eclipse go to Help and then Check for updates.
You can read more in the ADT changelog.
They have also tweaked the XML formatting. Which is always a good thing 
I ran a quick test with a drawer layout on Android 4.0:
How to try out Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich!
Oct 19th
A couple or hours ago, the Galaxy Nexus was announced, along with Android 4.0.
At the same time, the Android 4.0 SDK was released into the wild. 
Here I will show you how to already get it up and running, so you can try it out, and start developing/adapting your Android apps for ICS. It will give you a nice “hands on” feeling for ICS
The steps in this post is quite similar to the post I wrote earlier about trying out Honeycomb.
If you want a faster working solution, but for the time being without internet connection, you can check out my post on how to install Android 4.0 in virtualbox. More >
How to connect usb sticks to your Samsung Galaxy S2 for extra storage on the go.
Aug 15th
Today I finally received my Micro USB OTG adapter.
So I thought I would test it out, connecting a USB stick to my Galaxy S2.
This was really straightforward, so theres not much explaining to do here.
- Put some content on your usb stick, like a movie, some pictures or a sound track.
- Put the usb stick into the OTG adapter, and then the OTG adapter into the phone.
- Browse the content of the usb stick with your favourite file browser app (I used Astro)
You find the contents of the usb stick under /mnt/sdcard/usbStorage/sda
This is great if you need some extra capacity, want to bring with you files, copy and paste from/to the phone, etc.
How to enable remote access to a MySQL database
Aug 6th
If you need to access your mysql database remotely, which I did, you can create a mysql user that has access locally, and remotely.
For example if you want to login and edit the database via HeidiSQL or other mysql tools.
CREATE USER 'username'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password'; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'username'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION; CREATE USER 'username'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'password'; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'username'@'%' WITH GRANT OPTION;
These commands will create a user called “username” with the password “password”, which has both local and remote access.
Took me some time to figure it out initially.
How to easily debug websites on mobile devices with “Weinre”
Aug 5th
If you do web development, chances are you sometimes need to fix something on the website adapted to mobile devices such as iPhone and Android.
Debugging websites in a browser on a computer is easy with all the good tools available, such as Firebug in Firefox, Webkit inspector in Chrome and Dragonfly in Opera. But mobile devices doesn’t have any such tool. What do you do then?
That was my problem the other day, a div element on the website rendered for iPhone got the wrong styles, so I had to investigate…
Which was not easily done from the iPhone Safari browser, to say atleast.
(And the solution was not as easy as just browsing the mobile website on my computer with iOS user agent.)
A buddy of mine had just recently come over a tool called weinre. Funny name, yes, but a very handy tool to debug websites on mobile devices!
About Weinre
- Weinre stands for “Web Inspector Remote” and is similar to the web inspector in chrome.
- It will allow you to use the inspector (run on your computer), on the website rendered on your mobile device!
- Changes you do in the inspector, are reflected instantly in the mobile devices browser. (such as changing text, color, dimension etc) just as in FireBug.
- You also get a javascript command line.
- Weinre is a simple jar file, you run through the command line.
It has a lot of documentation on its website, maybe too much, so I thought I would try to cook it down to a few simple steps to get up and running quickly.
How to update Samsung Galaxy S2 firmware with Odin instead of Kies
Jul 8th
After trying to update my Samsung Galaxy S2 with Kies, I quickly gave up after two attempts, on both x32 and x64 Win7, and settled with Odin instead.
Why Kies sucks
First of all, The Kies installation process is not very elegant;
- Its a 50+ MB package with alot of stuff you don’t want or need, such as an integrated music player.
- Drivers not getting installed properly
- About one hundred DLLs (no exaggeration!) not getting registered, each giving me an error message to click “OK” on…
- Kies couldn’t handle a custom installation directory
- And then theres the labels in korean or whatever:
When I finally managed to install Kies (and its 3 running background services…) it wouldn’t detect my phone. Great.
Updating firmware with Odin instead
This is the easiest way of updating you phone.
Its pretty well explained in 8 simple steps here.
But a quick summary:
(I take no responsibility for this.)
- Find your new firmware version and download the file from the links
- Extract the file, so that you now have a .tar file.
- Download and run the Odin software from the provided link (200KB)
- Reboot the phone to download mode
To do this, turn the phone off, then simultaneously press the volume down key, the home button and then press the power button. If you see a warning, press the volume up button to continue. - In Odin, click the button named “PDA” and select your .tar file (your rom).
If the rom has several files, also put in the PDA, Phone/Modem and CSC files. but do NOT put in a .pit file. - Connect the phone to the computer with usb cable, and wait till ID:COM turns yellow.
- Click the “Start” button, and Odin will flash your rom.
As simple as that.
When the flashing is done, your phone will reboot itself.
There are several different roms available for Galaxy S2, I am currently using Litening rom, which I am very happy with.
Edit: If you flash the litening rom, you will get root
Edit2: The litening rom has been discontinued, but someone picked up and continued the development in another thread here, under the name UltraToxic rom.
CyanogenMOD have also come with nightly builds, which mean they are putting effort into making the rom stable enough for everyday use.
Android Google Maps offline caching
Jul 8th
Google Maps for Android just got updated to version 5.7.0 and a new labs feature caught my attention; “Download map area“.
I have been wanting such a feature for a long time for Google Maps.
There are other ways to get offline maps, you have brut, MapDroyd and others.
But this seems promising!
Enabling the offline cache labs feature
You can enable the feature in Google Maps by hitting the menu button -> More -> Labs -> And then check the Download map area feature.
Offline caching enabled
To cache a Map area
- Long press in the map
- Click the Address that pops up (the bubble) to go to the more options view.
- And then choose Download map area (WiFi connection preferred!)
Use nicknames in Opera to save time and avoid typing the whole url
Jun 25th
Did you know, that in Opera you can give each bookmark (or folder of bookmarks), its own nickname?
That way, you can just enter the nickname in the address bar, hit enter and your bookmark (or folder of bookmarks) will open.
For example, when you are on your favorite website, press Ctrl+D to bookmark the website, click the Details >> button, and enter your nickname in the Nickname box.
You can also set a nickname on your folder of bookmarks. Just right click the folder (in the bookmark pane), go to Properties and then set a nickname for it.
Enter your nickname in the address bar, hit enter, and all the bookmarks in that folder will open.