Productive Organizer

I still have a love hate relationship with Evernote, mainly because I still have not really make sense of it yet.

But while I complain about it, what you like is to subscribe to a cloud app that is continuously value adding. And this update is rather small but provide something that many would appreciate.

I compose some of my notes on the go and before I actually save and upload the notes, I may stop halfway and get on the bus and my accidentally close the Evernote Android app.

This version of Android Evernote provide a feature to manually save when you are composing really lengthy note.

Small but really helpful.

Now if you were me, you will have this small problem of not liking to create playlists. Rather, the way I play music is to organize them into folders. I can always drag an updated folder in because most of my song folders are theme as

1. 01 Rock
2. 02 Chill
3. 03 Popular
4. 04 Podcasts

But somehow, perhaps influenced by iTunes not many Android music players are like that.

Enter MortPlayer [Android Market >>]. Here is a music player, that not ranked the highest but serve its needs.

Plays music by folders

Instead or artists, playlists, it enables you to scan available music folders. You can let MortPlayer to scan for you or choose a designated root folder.

Equalizer and Bass Boost

If you think this is just a lousy app that only plays via folders, think again. It comes with a range of audio enhancements. I love having an equalizer and bass boost settings.

Lock Screen Controls

Now this is something a lot of third party players do not have. My Samsung Galaxy S2 default player allows me to change track on lock screen, not many can.

MortPlayer allows you to do that! The image above shows a sliding door you can slide up when you are at your lockscreen. You can access most of what you need to do, change tracks, change folder, stop and play there.

When you click the notification bar it will launch a control pop up like this for fast control.

Conclusion

I am very happy using MortPlayer and have not found any faults yet. I hope you can give it a try.

I tell my readers that my favorite ubiquous note taking application is Evernote.

Here is why I like about it

1. It is ubiquitous. Its found on the desktop, Chrome browswer, firefox, safari and IE. Its found on iPhone, IPad, Blackberry, WP7, Android. I don’t have to worry which device I own because I know I can have access to my notes.
2. Taking notes is easy. I can clip notes on my desktop. I can take voice and picture notes from my smartphone. I can now sketch on my picture notes.
3. Its got rich text input on desktop client. Its got rich text input on its iPhone and Android app! how cool is that. The key to being able to take notes effectively is to be able to come up with bullet points and I Can do that with Evernote.
4. The guys at Evernote are trying to build Evernote into a platform. They are opening up the API so that third party apps can interface to Evernote.
5. The network is getting bigger and bigger. The more people in the network the greater the value.

How did Evernote come about? Read their story here

[The evernote story >>]

We talk about in the past the swyping virtual keyboard for multiple platforms SWYPE. It speeds up text input on your device but recently I have fallen out of love with it.

SWYPE comes as a default on my Samsung Galaxy S2 but no matter how I tried to use, I still go back to the standard keyboard application such as Ice Cream Sandwich or SwiftKey.

SWYPing is just not very normal. I still prefer good ol typing input. I am not sure about you guys.

Today’s update since SWYPE was acquired by Naunce comes the integration of Dragon Dictate technology into SWYPE. So now not only can you enjoy Swyping goodness but also quality voice to text input.

You can also download other language packs as well.

The update can be installed from the Swype preferences pane now, and you can join the beta from Swype’s website

The Amazon Kindle Fire. A $199 Android device that Amazon wants you to only use to assess their Amazon music, applications, movie and buy things from them. I am sure not many of you want to use it ONLY for that.

So how can you have more fun with it? We saw what happen to a cheap Android device with a relatively good hardware in Nook Color which got hacked pretty thoroughly such that so many people are buying it off Barnes and Noble.

It’s a matter of time before it happens to the Kindle Fire.

Root the Kindle Fire through SuperOneClick

To enable your device from being able to have that much freedom, you need to give it root access, which in layman terms is to give it the super user access so that they can do everything.

Note: Rooting your device can be risky, and may end up rendering the device in an unrecoverable state or void your device warranty

1. Download Android SDK and install ADB [Instructions and guide here >>]

2. Download SuperOneClick 2.2 [Download link >>]

3. Go to your %USERPROFILE%\.android on your system and local the file adb_usb.ini. Edit the file and append the following at the end of file: 0×1949 and save the file.

4. Go to the folder where you have the Android SDK installed and open the google-usb_driver folder and then edit the file android_winusb.inf. just add the following to the [Google.NTx86] section and [Google.NTamd64] section:

;Kindle Fire

%SingleAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_1949&PID_0006

%CompositeAdbInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_1949&PID_0006&MI_01

then save the file

5. If Kindle Fire is already plugged into the USB you may have to open device manager and find “Kindle” under other devices and choose the android_winusb.inf file.

6. On Kindle Fire make sure to turn on installation of apps from unknown sources.

7. Now launch a command prompt windows (cmd) and run the following commands:

adb kill-server

adb devices

8. You should be able to see you device listed there. If it is then you are good to go.

9. Finally just launch the SuperOneClick tool. Hit the root button to get the SU binaries, BusyBox, SuperUser etc. pushed to your device automatically.

10. Kindle Fire is rooted.

Sideload other android apps

Sideloading android apps not on the Amazon App Store is just doing 3 things

1. Get the app APK
2. Ensure that quick settings > More > Device > “Allow installation of applications from unknown sources” is turn on.
3. Move the APK over and install it.

You can find more detail instructions here [Instructions here >>]

Getting Android Market on your Kindle Fire

You would need to root your device first. XDA developers then have the GoogleServicesFramework.apk and vending.apk for you to install and configured to work.

[Files and instructions here >>]

Getting other Google Android Apps to work

Once you get Android Market working, the rest of the apps should be a smaller problem for you.

Follow the instructions here to get them downloaded and installed. [Instructions here >>]

Conclusion

I hope you have fun with this device. Its price point is lower than that of the iPad but looks like a good hardware to do a lot of the productivity stuff.

Amazon App Store for Android phones gives a different free app everyday. Some of them are crappy but some of them are down right gems!

Today they are giving away office productivity suite QuickOffice Pro which usually costs US$14.99 for FREE.

From current time there is 8h 30 mins left.

I written extensively about QuickOffice for both iPhone and Android and it is one of the companies that are dedicated to making sure wordprocessing and spreadsheet work well on smartphones.

So go grab it today at the Amazon App Store on your phone today!

If you are a fan of streaming English subtitled Animes, you would enjoy the use case of

1. Watching Anime in between commuting
2. Not having to bother about downloads
3. Watch for Free

Now we know that sites like

1. Anime Shippuuden
2. Anilinkz

Aggregates Anime episodes so that you can stream and watch English version of them. But can you stream and watch them from  your smartphone over 3G?

I believe you cannot do it for iPhone or iPad because Flash does not work on iOS platform. However, that’s where Android comes in because you can stream from a mobile browser window to watch these Anime.

What I tried was to watch an episode of Gundam Age on my Samsung Galaxy S2. The superior performance of the phone, plus the Dolphin browser makes the whole process rather enjoyable.

How do you guys find this use case?

We taught you guys how to get Android Ice Cream Sandwich’s Roboto Font on your Android device that requires rooting [Link here >>]

I found out that on Samsung’s Galaxy Series Android phones there are Flipfont APK created that enables you to switch fonts without rooting

1. Download the MonoType Roboto APK here [Link here >>]
2. Install the APK
3. Go to Settings > Display > Screen Display > Font style
4. Choose Roboto as the font style
5. Enjoy
6. If you would like to find more custom flipfont packages you can take a look at this XDA Developer topic [Link here>>]

Rooting your Samsung Galaxy S2 provides you with administrative privileges to install custom ROMs and many other configurations normal users do not have access to.

But do note that root is not supported by official hardware manufacturers so it effectively means warranty is not covered and it will be void. The saving grace is that you can unroot Galaxy S2 back to factory defaults.

I just gotten my Galaxy S2 so have done abit of research on this.

How to root your Galaxy S2

The best video that explains everything in simple terms is probably this video over here. When your phone is rooted they will show up an ugly yellow exclamation box. This is to indicate to Samsung that your phone have been rooted. I believe the way to get around this is to re-flash to the official firmware

1. For general Samsung Galaxy S2 Rooting Instructions can take a look at this topic [Link here >]
2. For Singapore Users who are looking for support on rooting Samsung Galaxy S2 can take a look at this topic [Link here >>]

How to unroot your Galaxy S2

This is usually carry out by flashing an official factory firmware over. Your firmware needed may be unbranded or branded, depending on your local telecom operator

1. For unbranded firmware take a look at this link [Link here >>]
2. For branded firmware take a look at this link [Link here >>]
3. For Singapore Samsung Galaxy S2 it should be considered unbranded. Go to the first link search for “XWKF1”

As usual I am only the messenger, not asking you guys to root. So do understand the consequences and the benefits as I am not bearable for any bricking.

What do you guys think of Roboto, Android 4.0 new font which will overtake Droid Sans’ role?

On first impression I find that it is a very refreshing font compare to Droid. Droid comes across as very edgy, very strong.

Fonts really determine the overall user experience. Steve Jobs told everyone how much his course on Typography helped create this overall successful user experience for the iPhone.

Without Helvetica on Mac and IPhone and Segoe UI for Windows 7 and Vista, users would not like using these electronic devices so much.  For me, Droid always make the original Android Cupcake and Donut look funny.

Where Roboto works best is that it looks much like Helvetica or Gill Sans. These are the set of highly readable font that you cannot go wrong, along with Frutiger and Segoe UI.

Roboto is meant more for 720p screen not on Desktop

One thing I did was to see how well Roboto look on Windows desktop. It turns out that it looks rather bad! There were much mentioned that Roboto released is much optimized for high definition display so that’s why there are glyph that makes it look very bad on desktop. (Top part is Roboto bottom is Helvetica)

Roboto a rip off of iOS’s Helvetica?

There are many that says Roboto is a copy cat of Helvetica, but I think it just prove that the kind of font used in Apple and iPhone is a very readable, presentable and at the same time make a good headline.

Why are we talking about it being a rip-off?

John Gruber have a point:

No one — no one — is criticizing Roboto because it isn’t Helvetica. If anything, the complaint is that it’s too similar to Helvetica. Nor is anyone suggesting that Android should use Helvetica as its system font. In fact, if they did use Helvetica as their system font, the criticism would be louder, insofar as they’d be seen as copying from Apple. (Of course, they couldn’t use Helvetica, because Helvetica can’t be included in an open source OS, but that’s beside the point.)

On Segoe, we agree. But note that everyone agrees. No one from Holwerda’s imaginary Apple-defending Helvetica-loving cabal has anything but praise for Segoe, as Metro’s system font. It’s attractive, readable, friendly, and distinctive.

Honestly, I’m just selfish. I want Android to have an attractive system font, if for no other reason than that the system font is going to be used to render Daring Fireball for anyone reading it on an Android device. This idea that designers who favor iOS criticize Android for being poorly designed just because it’s from an Apple competitor is nonsense — a bogeyman construct dreamed up by open source zealots who refuse to believe over a decade of evidence that open source UIs tend to be ugly, and that ugly UIs tend to be unpopular. We criticize Android for being poorly designed because it’s poorly designed. We favor iOS because it’s better designed. That’s it.

How to change your rooted smartphone

1. Download and install the app Font Changer from the market (requires your device to be rooted)
2. Download the zip file containing the Roboto font and unzip it (XDA Forum link, Mediafire, Or here)
3. Open System > Fonts and copy all the three .ttf files from the unzipped folder and paste them into your phone’s SDcard (inside the folder “.fontchanger“)
4. Open the app in your device and select the font
5. Reboot