5 things Android devices should be doing but aren't

After many months of frustration with these thoughts swirling in my head, I have decided to write them down and share them. So here are 5 things that Android devices could be doing to leapfrog Apple in the market, but aren't.

First off, I love android. I really do. And probably the number one reason I love it is because I feel like I own, and am in control of, my mobile life. No app store lock in. No vendor deciding what apps I am allowed to install. No restrictions on replacing my battery or upgrading my storage. Smartphones and tablets are nothing more than computers, and virtually no one would buy a computer where every application had to be approved by the manufacturer. It astounds me how many people are fine with this when it comes to mobile devices. I love my freedom and this leads me to point #1:

1. Android devices should advertise freedom and functionality.

So many discussions are taking place on social networks that begin something like, "Time for a new phone. Should I get an iphone or a droid?"

The use of the term "droid" aside, this is a very straightforward question that many people have. Let's take a look at some of the advertisements these folks see when trying to make a decision. Imagine a woman in her 50's trying to decide between an Apple product, or an Android device. For Apple products, she will likely see an advertisement like this:



Now, Android users will immediately know that they have had similar capabilities on their devices way before Apple ever added it. But do people see this advertised on TV? Nope. Do the Android ads talk about the things that make their devices different or better? Nope. Any discussion of how Apple limits your freedom with their devices? Never. Instead, that same 50 year old woman will probably see an advertisement like this:



Jeez. I don't even know what else to say. You have elements that make your products better than Apple's!!!! Why is no one advertising them????

What should an Android device advertisement look like? Some should be showing off new features that Apple doesn't have like the new face unlock feature in Android 4.0. Others should highlight their restrictive model: picture the old Mac vs. PC ads, but with the iPhone checking with Apple before denying the user's request to install an app of their choice. Then denying their request to upgrade their storage. Then denying their request to change their battery. Then denying their request to visit a flash-based website. Then the tagline: "[some Android device]: Freedom included."


2. Android devices should include a darn infrared emitter/sensor.

With the many millions of smartphones being bought and used every day, for the life of me, I can't understand how we STILL don't have an infrared emitter on our phones. I'm sitting with a computer in my lap, and it can do all these amazing things, but it can't turn my TV on and off? Especially when the hardware needed to do this is a few cents and requires basically zero power (think about how long the batteries last in your TV remote).

Well, I suppose if I wanted to control my TV, I could get my TV on my home network, and then connect my phone to WiFi, and then have an app to talk to my TV. Now, imagine telling all that to the same 50 year old woman above. Or, I could start the IR remote app on my phone and hit the power button.

If Android devices had an infrared emitter (and possibly a sensor as well), think about the huge range of applications that could be made to use them. Low power wireless communication, robotics, temperature measurement, blood oxygen level and heart-rate sensors, light detectors, direct phone to phone communication for games, transfer, etc. (everyone remembers palm-pilots doing this YEARS ago). And those are just the immediate things I think of.

Appliance and electronics manufacturers for fans, air-conditioners, lights, radios, dvd players, tv's, and many more, all either include infrared control on their products, or would consider doing so if everyone's smartphone was potentially a controller. Once a device's config file shows up in the open database for IR control, then the app could auto-configure and control it! C'mon manufacturers: the reach of the smartphone could be much further than WiFi networks!!!!


3. Get a standardized dock/interface connector.

Most phone chargers have finally become standardized, which is a huge win. The next step is to standardize an interface connector so that manufacturers can build a plethora of Android accessories. Not Motorola Droid Bionic accessories. Not even Motorola accessories. Android accessories. This would open up a huge market to let people buy all sorts of add-ons for their devices. A person need only look at the aisle in their electronics store for iphone/ipod accessories. Now imagine a global market much bigger than that for Android accessories. But the main reason I want this interface connector is for the docks that could be made. These could be docks that know what type of dock they are, and have the phone respond appropriately. Docks for the nightstand, or the car, or the kitchen, or - most importantly - the computer desk. Which brings me to my next feature that Android devices should have...


4. Still be a smart device when docked to my computer.

Why is it, this computer with all these sensors, connectivity to multiple networks, cameras, microphones, FM radio, bluetooth, etc... just shows up as a dumb disk drive when I plug it into my computer?

To get on google+ and join a hangout, or to video chat with someone on skype, I need a webcam and a microphone hooked up to my computer. I don't know about you, but most of the desktop PC's I see don't have both just sitting on their desk. Especially at work. What's even more ironic is that the smartphone in your pocket has both of these things, but your computer can't use them. Why can't I use the camera on my phone as my webcam and the microphone on my phone as my microphone? I know there are some apps that can try to create this experience, but they are far from any experience I'd like to see. When I sit at my computer, I'd like to dock my phone next to my monitor. I'd like a nice "computer dock" screen to pop up on the phone, maybe that lets me enable the webcam and microphone for the computer (as opposed to the nightstand dock, which would likely look more like an alarm clock). I'd like to easily be able to sync items, or manually transfer items. Perhaps my task list and mail notifications should be shown nice and big. My phone and network connected apps should also be able to see my computer network and interact with devices and let other devices interact with it.

This means the phone would be an accessory to the desktop computer. But these docks could really work both ways. Along with using the devices on the phone as accessories to my computer, these docks could let me use the computer peripherals for the phone. For example, maybe the dock would allow me to run phone apps and have the display show up nice and big on my computer screen. Let me use my full-size keyboard and mouse. Let me use my computer speakers to listen to Pandora.


5. Let users earn revenue from data collection.

This one seems obvious to me, but I don't see it happening. More and more, people are realizing that data is a currency. Everyone wants your data. They can use it to make decisions, look at trends, detect traffic congestion, supply ads, test products, and make money.

So, if that is the case, why is a device with all these sensors not able to make me money? Google maps already uses GPS data to detect traffic flow... that seems valuable!! Why not pay these users the same way we pay them to place ads on their website? I've got ads right here on this blog. Why? Because google pays me to put them here. Not much, but enough for me to place them here.

If I'm driving in my car, and my phone is charging so there isn't a power concern, would I allow Google to gather traffic data from me? Maybe. Would I allow them if they paid me? Probably. What if meteorologists could tap into a vast network of smartphones in an area and look at barometric pressure readings? Would that be valuable? I bet it would. What if the mobile phone companies could get detailed logging of cell tower signal strength? I'd think they might pay for something like that. What about WiFi access point logging? Or FM signal strength? Or temperature data logging? Or pictures of public places? Or...

Now granted, this would have to be opt in, and would likely only be viable when devices are plugged in and charging, but I still think there is potential for a data collection network like the world has never seen before. And, like web ads, users are more likely to participate if they are able to make some money. Even if it is a small amount, if this could be credited on their phone bill, I think it would be a win for the consumer.


Those are my top 5. My next 5 would be things like:

• better car integration
• fingerprint unlock
• embracing the linux community (possibly by partnering with someone like Canonical or Red Hat)
• an effort to reuse old devices on your computer network (perhaps for data collection, home automation, etc.)
• wireless charging to enable the first completely sealed phones that can survive submerged underwater
• better phone-to-phone wifi support to play games across multiple android phone models.

Ok, sorry, that's 6. Let's get going Android device manufacturers!!! I want to see this stuff before Apple gets to it. Please leave a comment with your ideas on how Android devices could be better.

even funnier:

http://flash-of-genius.com/blog/?p=8

WHAAAAATTTT!!!! IS that LEGAL?????

http://androidcommunity.com/droid-1-iphone-3gs-4-in-time-top-10-gadgets-for-2009-take-that-iphone-20091209/

too perfect. my thoughts exactly.

http://xkcd.com/662/

Finally managed to get the netbook onto my rsnapshot backup scheme. As I talked about in this post, there are issues trying to backup machines with rsnapshot that use WOL or are wireless netbooks that are sometimes on and sometimes not.

So, I wrote a script that constantly polls for a machine and backs it up if it is one the network (detailed in the linked post above).

But now... a new challenge. This netbook runs windows... and it is wireless so WOL is not really an option... AND.. it is XP home edition, so the samba sharing is not really what I would like. This means I need a rsync server on the windows netbook.

Downloaded and installed cwrsync server. Read through the documentation and this by itself just looks like a gigantic security hole, especially for a travelling netbook. So, I also installed copssh, an ssh server for windows, and then did the following:

Step 1: Install copssh and cwrsync server
Step 2: Configure cwrsync to only allow hosts "127.0.0.1" which is localhost
Step 3: Configure ssh keys for key based login
Step 4: Change copssh to run on non-standard ssh port
Step 5: Configure .ssh/config to specify the username and port to use when connecting
Step 6: Modify the rsnapshot script I presented in the linked post to open up an ssh tunnel before running rsnapshot, and then to kill the tunnel afterwards
Step 7: Create an rsnapshot configuration file but specify the host as "localhost" since the tunnel will provide the mechanism to the netbook

Ultimately, this seems to work pretty nice. When I catch the netbook powered on and on the network, and it hasn't been backed up recently, I back it up through an encrypted ssh tunnel. The rsync is protected by the windows firewall and the host blocking line. The ssh server is protected by running on a non-standard port, by having the nonstandard port firewall entry in Windows restricted to the two hosts I might ssh from, and using key based login. Lastly, all the transmitted info is encrypted.

For those interested, here is the mods to the previous script I presented:

rsnapshot_wrapper_some_machine.csh:

... previous script stuff ...

    ping -qnc 1 some_machine > /dev/null
    if ($?) then
        # If it has been more than a couple of days, alert the admin
        if ( $time_since_last_success > $warn_secs ) then
            echo "some_machine failed. Consider manual run"
            echo "some_machine failed. Consider manual run" >>/var/log/rsnapshot
        else
            echo "some_machine not awake.  Exiting..." >> /var/log/rsnapshot
        endif
    else
        echo "Found some_machine... Attempting backup..." >> /var/log/rsnapshot
        cd -

        # Kill any old zombie tunnels
        ps ax |grep "ssh" |grep "somehost |awk '{print $1}' |xargs -i kill {}

        # Establish the tunnel
        ssh -f -N -L 873:localhost:873 user@some_machine

        # Run the rsnapshot job
        rsnapshot -c /etc/rsnapshot.conf.some_machine $1

        # Kill the tunnel
        ps ax |grep "ssh" |grep "somehost" |awk '{print $1}' |xargs -i kill {}

... rest of script ...

Seems to be working!

I love Android, but I'm also very excited about this phone. I may consider switching if it comes to T-Mobile!!

You gotta love competition.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/27/nokia-n900-running-maemo-5-officially-500-in-october/

and so it begins:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html

I really like my T-Mobile G1 Google phone.  It has been working really well for me.

I'm making this post from it :)

On the computing front, got around to trying a couple of things.

A while back, I set up some simple software to use talk to X10 plugs from the computer so that I could schedule things (such as the Christmas tree turning on and off). I detailed it on this project page.

But now that my windows machines on all hibernate and use power saving features, the only machine that is on all the time is my linux server. I needed to move over the scheduling to the linux machine with some simple cron jobs.

And with this small software called BottleRocket, this was super easy. Now, turning on the Christmas tree (device a1) is as simple as:

> /usr/local/bin/br a1 on

Awesome.

Next up is to fix another issue caused by my windows machines constantly hibernating. Backups.

My current backup solution uses a really sweet piece of software called rsnapshot which uses a backup concept of rsync combined with hard links for super fast and super efficient backups. The only problem is, if the machines aren't on, then the backups fail. I have some of them using Wake-On-Lan (WOL) so that I can wake them up before I back them up, but if one machines takes a long time to backup, then the others could go back to sleep. Also, I have one machine which does not support WOL.

So, I started looking into BackupPC. This is a very highly rated backup system that is open source and very useful in enterprise environments. It supports the same concept as rsnapshot (rsync and hard links to de-duplicate data), but it also is set up to find machines when they are available on the network and back them up, which is what I need.

Long story longer, I fought with this ALL weekend. I actually got everything working with BackupPC. It does what I needed. But, the last part of my backup solution that I need is access to the snapshots so that I can duplicate it to an external hard drive when we evacuate for a hurricane, or just for archival.

This is where the BackupPC finally convinced me to go back to rsnapshot. BackupPC mangles the filenames in the backups. They have a reason for it: it is so they can differentiate between backed up files and their own attrib files. Plus, since their access to the data is supposed to be through the website, this should be a non-issue.

But for me, I don't even need the website. I'm the only one at home accessing backups. Also, in a lab environment, it is nice to let people mount the backup volume as read only and have access to it. With the file name mangling that BackupPC does, this does not work.

So, after an entire weekend of configuring, messing, trying, and testing, I decided to go back to rsnapshot, which of course left me with my original problem. So, I had to add some wrappers around rsnapshot to make it smart.

For the machine that doesn't support WOL, I needed to do something exactly like BackupPC. That is, I need to run a job often and check and see if the machine is available on the network. If it is, and it has been a while since it was backed up, then it needs to get backed up. If it isn't online, or if it was backed up recently, then it needs to get skipped.

In case anyone is interested, here is the csh wrapper script I am using in a hourly cron job to accomplish this. Since it is being run from cron, anything printed to stdout will get mailed to the system administrator email. So, if I detect that it hasn't been backed up in quite a while, I alert the administrator. (NOTE: The script needs a little cleaning... a few of the items in here should be in configurable variables, such as the log file to append to and the machine name. Apologies.)

rsnapshot_wrapper_some_machine.csh:

#!/bin/csh -f

if $1 == "" then
    echo "usage: $0 "
    exit
endif

##########################################
#                                        #
#    some_machine                        #
#                                        #
##########################################

set current_time_string = `date`
echo " " >> /var/log/rsnapshot
echo "  some_machine $1 attempt at $current_time_string" >> /var/log/rsnapshot

if (-f /var/log/rsnapshot_some_machine_last) then
    set last_success=`cat /var/log/rsnapshot_some_machine_last`
else
    set last_success=0
endif

set current_time=`date +%s`
@ threshhold_secs = 60 * 60 * 23
@ warn_secs = 60 * 60 * 72
@ time_since_last_success = $current_time - $last_success

if ( $time_since_last_success > $threshhold_secs ) then
    # Wake up machine
    echo "Waking up some_machine..." >> /var/log/rsnapshot
    wakeonlan 00:00:00:00:00:00 >> /dev/null
    echo "Sleeping ..." >> /var/log/rsnapshot
    sleep 35
    echo "Done sleeping.  Attemping to find via ping..." >> /var/log/rsnapshot
    ping -qnc 1 some_machine > /dev/null
    if ($?) then
        # If it has been more than a couple of days, alert the admin
        if ( $time_since_last_success > $warn_secs ) then
            echo "some_machine failed. Consider manual run"
            echo "some_machine failed. Consider manual run" >>/var/log/rsnapshot
        else
            echo "some_machine not awake.  Exiting..." >> /var/log/rsnapshot
        endif
    else
        echo "Found ping.  Attemping to automount..." >> /var/log/rsnapshot
        cd /misc/some_machine/
        touch foo
        echo "Found automount... Attempting backup..." >> /var/log/rsnapshot
        cd -

        # Run the rsnapshot job
        rsnapshot -c /etc/rsnapshot.conf.some_machine $1

        # Save the successful backup time
        date +%s > /var/log/rsnapshot_some_machine_last

        set current_time_string = `date`
        echo "some_machine $1 done - $current_time_string" >>/var/log/rsnapshot
    endif
else
    echo "Not enough time has passed for some_machine." >> /var/log/rsnapshot
endif

Seems to be working. I'm a little less stressed now.

Worked on trying to get a couple of my windows machines go to sleep when not being used and have the file server automatically wake them up when doing backups or virus scans. Hopefully this will save considerable power. Figured out how to get automount to work for the samba shares (mainly just setting up /etc/auto.misc). My only problem now is that my rsnapshot backup utility lets me run a script before running the entire backup, but not before each host. Changed my preexec script this morning to not only wake up the machines, but to also cd into the directories so that rsnapshot would see them as existing. Hopefully this will work better tonight.

I'm also having problems with my Dell Dimension 9150 staying asleep. I guess I'll just have to keep fiddling with settings.

Also, made my way into the garage for a bit to try and set up the old software for P.E.A.R.T. from long ago. Let's just say we weren't exactly creating a commecial software product!! After I get the software working, I still need to get a drum set, and a bunch of mic stands.

I installed Ubuntu Gutsy Tribe 5 (an alpha release) on my ASUS G2S. Things all seem to be working except the NVIDIA driver. Actually, it looks like the NVIDIA driver is working, but I just can't get the xorg.conf settings correct. Not sure what the problem is. For now, I fell back to running the VESA driver at 1920x1200.

Wow that's a big resolution. It really hits home when you start typing in a terminal :)

Sound seems to work. Also, wireless is detected and is working, but for some reason, my encryption key is not being accepted for my WEP encrypted wireless network. I haven't tried my network without encryption yet, so I don't know if this is a Ubuntu software problem, a configuration problem, or a wireless driver problem. It does detect the wireless networks though, so it seems like the wireless driver is working.

If anyone gets their G2S running with the NVIDIA proprietary driver, please let me know.

ok, i fixed the clock problem... turns out I had to run tzconfig as root instead of running tzselect.

I have been building/tinkering with a HTPC in my house for a few months now. My initial goal was to get a really nice mythTV setup in the house, but I have come to realize how young mythTV and linux drivers are (when it comes to HDTV that is... many of the regular tuners work much better since you can actually do decoding on the card and the hardware issues are much more familiar to developers).

After trying a few different mythTV setups on various OSes, I ran with mythTV on a xubuntu install for a while. I eventually punted, installed windows XP, and tried out the new open source contender for windows, Media Portal. I believe this project is from the same guy who started the XBMC (Xbox Media Center) project, which I absolutely love.

I tried Media Portal for a while, but it only detected one of my tuners (I am using a Kworld ATSC 110 and an Avermedia a180 - both HDTV tuners). Also, after watching TV playback for a while, it would freeze. The advantages of having windows drivers was obvious though: the performance was much better and CPU usage much lower. I wish it would have worked better.

My next thought was to buy an OEM copy of Windows Media Center Edition. I have heard good things about it and it would be nice to have this integrate seamlessly with other computers in the house, especially once Vista rolls around. But, then something changed my short-term plans... the Saints are playing in the NFC championship!!! The friggin' Saints!!! I needed something ready so I can watch the game on my big screen, and since Media Portal had the lockup issues, that was out of the question. The game will be played on Fox, which is one of the channels that the mythTV setup played well, so I decided to go back to the mythTV setup temporarily so I could watch the game.

I decided to try KnoppMyth for the second time. I had tried it once in the past and it was a nightmare for me. Of course, at that time, I knew nothing about the driver support for my tuners and nothing about mythTV. This time around, things were different. I managed to get things working pretty well and now some of my previous mythTV issues are gone as well!!! Maybe I will stick with mythTV a little longer.

To get things working in KnoppMyth (I am using the R5E50 release), I did have to do some work. First off, my first tuner was getting detected as a "V-Stream Studio TV Terminator"!!!

dmesg output:

saa7133[0]: subsystem: 1461:1044, board: V-Stream Studio TV Terminator [card=65,insmod option]

After quite a bit of digging, I noticed that one of the init scripts, /etc/init.d/KnoppMyth-tv, was calling a script way down at the bottom called "/usr/local/bin/tvterm.sh". Looking at that script, I saw:

/usr/local/bin/tvterm.sh:

Well, duh! The script greps lspci output for 7133/7135 chipsets and then assumes it is a Studio TV Terminator card!! At least I guess you could say the script is appropriately named though, as it did terminate my tv experience. :)

To fix, I simply commented out the call to tvterm in the KnoppMyth-tv init script. Then, I set up an init script to call "modprobe saa7134-dvb". I did some other stuff in there that is probably unnecessary, but here it is (I put it in /etc/init.d, then ran update-rc.d to include it as an init script):

/etc/init.d/saa7134-dvb-install.sh:

Next, I had to get my xorg.conf set up for my projector. I got the modeline setting for my InFocus SP-4805 projector off the web, but after putting it in, I was getting the wrong screensize even though the projector was reporting an 854x480 resolution. Finally, I fixed it by removing 800x600 as an option in the screen section. Now, my "Monitor" and "Screen" sections in my xorg.conf look like this:

/etc/X11/xorg.conf:

After that, things are working pretty well. I believe I am all set up for the big Saints game at least. I still have a problem with my clock setting. I cannot understand why after all these years it is still as hard and complicated as it is to set the darned time on a linux box.

If anyone is having any problems with their KWorld ATSC 110 or the AverMedia a180, let me know and I can see if I can help. Also, if anyone has gotten their Kworld remote to work, please pass the info along. I hear there is a kernel patch floating around to enable support for it, but I am hesitant to try patching the kernel right now since things are working.