AÂ recent piece in The Economist (which included the above graphic) got me thinking about just how Google pulled off such a massive global coup in the world of desktop web browsers.
After all, the choice of what web browser to use has long been a deeply personal one.
And when I say “long,” I’m going back to when we had to decide between the original Netscape (c. 1994) and AOL’s crappy browser (lovingly referred to as “Nyetscape”). Microsoft wasn’t a serious player in this fight—although they began rolling out Internet Explorer with Windows 95—until they forced it on the world with service packs and ultimately integrated it into Windows 98 (because it was necessary, of course!).
Let’s not forget that in those days Apple was in the toilet and a workable Linux operating system for home use—even geek home use—was many years away. So, for all intents and purposes, Microsoft completely controlled the operating systems of, well, all of us. Thus, they had a bit of an advantage when it came to providing the world’s default web browser.
And that’s exactly what Internet Explorer (“IE”) became… the world’s default web browser. Despite its security flaws, vulnerabilities and overall user experience, IE’s dominance was unshaken for many, many years.
We could discuss why this was true for so long, but at the end of the day, I believe it all comes down to “friction.”
Very simply, IE came bundled with Windows. Installing a new browser meant going out of your way to a different website, selecting the right download, finding the download on your computer and running it. Then… it meant changing your habits. Instead of looking for the little blue “E,” you had to find the icon for whatever new browser you installed… and then there was the matter of default websites, bookmarks/favorites, etc. For an average user, this represented a fair amount of pain (geeks did all of this a long time ago… more on that later), and was more than most would prefer to deal with.
Along Came Google
Ultimately, it was all the “friction” that Google solved. After all, they’re a default of their own… when it comes to search. By placing a simple little button on their famously stark and simple search page, they provided many with the opportunity to experience the web with a better browser.
Now don’t get me wrong… Google had to also build a great browser. And they did. Chrome was lightweight and elegant (and still is, for the most part).
But the more important factor was that it was easy.
Google built an installer that ran right inside IE and eliminated most of the steps required that might have represented some degree of pain for the average user. In fact, I would argue that a direct correlation could be drawn between the improvements made to that installation process and the spread of Google Chrome.
Global desktop web-browser market share, courtesy The Economist
And Google continues to innovate. Borrowing a page from the Mozilla playbook, they’ve created a marketplace for developers to contribute extensions that add features and functions to their browser, and they constantly look for ways to remove friction from processes—especially when they can carve a “path of least resistance” that leads to their own door.
Their latest innovation with Chrome involves streaming content from your browser to your television via WiFi. All it requires is the Google Chromecast, a simple device that connects to the HDMI port of your television and connects to your wireless network. The device is officially priced at only $35, but when it sold out in less than 2 days, it began selling for double and nearly triple that in no time.
In short, it’s the simplest and easiest way to enjoy internet-based content on your TV. Picture yourself sitting on the couch or laying in bed… you stumble across an interesting YouTube video on your smartphone, but you don’t want to be forced to watch it on that small screen… simply press a button and “Presto!” — it’s playing on your TV instead.
And the Chromecast isn’t limited to YouTube. All sorts of content can be sent to your TV. I believe it’s truly a game-changer… and it continues the tradition of eliminating friction.
 What Does Your Choice of Browser Say About You?
As a quick sidebar, most of the geeks of the world jumped off the IE train just as soon as Firefox became a real alternative (for me, that was about 10 years ago). Firefox was much safer, and Mozilla had grown a community that fostered innovation (remember when “tabbed browsing” was new?). Overall, it was much less painful.
Other browsers began to pop up… Apple gained decent market share in the desktop and laptop space, increasing the presence of its Safari browser. More and more people realized just how bad IE really was… and somewhere along the line, your choice of web browser began to really say something about you.
At one point, someone famously published a study that suggested IE users had lower IQs than users of other browsers. The study was a complete hoax, and the originators of this delicious piece of fun managed to prank a number of reputable outlets, including the BBC, much to the delight of geeks everywhere.
Where web browsing will go in the future is anybody’s guess. For now, Chrome is the browser of choice for geeks and non-geeks alike. And we appear to be one step closer to Google’s takeover of the known world. Resistance, apparently, is futile.
I’ve written previously about how to root the HTC Evo Shift. In that post, I identified the Android ROM I ended up using. For the last 9+ months, I’ve been incredibly happy with my EVO Shift without making any significant changes. I guess this is somewhat rare among people who tend to root their Android devices, but I don’t have a lot of time to waste playing with tweaks and mods. Consequently, once I find something nice and stable that performs well, I tend to stick with it.
Recently, however, my Evo Shift has been low on space quite a lot. For the last month or so, I’ve founded myself uninstalling some apps, double-checking some others to make sure they’d been moved to the SD card (another luxury that actually works on a rooted device), and frequently deleting the browser’s cache. These have all been band-aid attempts at freeing up space so that basic functions would work (such as GMail sync).
Finally, I’d had enough. I decided that it would be worth it to revisit the forums around rooting, tweaking, modding and hacking Android devices. Since I’d had such a great experience with the ROM I download last October, I decided to try out TheMikMik.com and see if they’d done anything new. Thankfully, they had!
Checking out this thread, I downloaded the MikShifted-G v2.1 ROM. This ROM features Android 2.3.4 (Gingerbread), HTC Sense, and lots and lots of tweaks and mods.
Something New: Titanium Backup
One thing I did differently this time was that I downloaded Titanium Backup from the Google Play store. After testing it out a little bit, I opted for the paid version because it added some great, worthwhile enhancements. I had already fulled backed up my Evo Shift via Nandroid, which comes with Clockwork Recovery, but I wanted to be able to restore certain data. In particular, my daughter has made lots of progress on the 3 versions of Angry Birds that I keep on my device for her amusement (OK… for mine too), and some other games & apps had data that wouldn’t have otherwise survived the upgrade. Titanium Backup permits the backup and restoration of this kind of data. I specifically used it to back up the data before proceeding with installing my shiny new ROM.
So… here’s what the steps looked like for me this time:
Download the ROM (.zip file) and copy it to the device’s SD card. I did this from my laptop and transferred it via a USB cable. You could theoretically just downloaded the .zip using the phone, but I was doing all my reading and research from my laptop.
Perform a full Nandroid backup
Reboot the device
Install Titanium Backup, then backup data from specific games/apps
Reboot to Clockwork Recovery
Wipe everything several times
Install the new ROM from the .zip file on the SD card
Step through the device’s configuration process
Reinstall apps and selectively restore data using Titanium Backup
I made a list of all the apps that I wanted to be sure to re-install. This turned out to be unnecessary because Google has greatly improved the user experience in the Play store. They’ve always permitted users to re-download purchased apps, but I found this time that even the free apps (some of my favorites are free ones) were readily accessible.
Another luxury for me this time around involved easily restoring my SMS messages. Unfortunately it didn’t occur to me to back these up separately before wiping my device, so after re-installing all my apps, I decided to see if there was an easy way to pull these out of my Nandroid backup. It turns out that Titanium Backup has a very simple procedure for restoring this data too. It’s just like restoring data from apps… the only trick is knowing which data to restore. It turns out that SMS messages are stored with the “Dialer History” (at least that’s the case with these HTC ROMs). After the restore and a simple reboot, all my SMS messages came right back. Thank you, Titanium Backup!
This whole process took a couple of hours of my time, some of which was spent on the minutiae of sorting out what data from which apps I wanted to backup. I also am a bit meticulous about configuration. Now that it’s all finished, I’m back to virtually the identical set of apps as before, but I have tons of free space and my device is running faster and more smoothly than ever!
I’m a very happy camper. Thanks very much to aamikam and all the others at TheMikMik and XDA Developers who work so hard at making such fantastic tools available to us!
Note: This post was originally published on the Nourish The Dream blog.
SOPA: Are You Prepared To Be Silenced?
Here at Nourish The Dream, we are incredibly passionate about the success of small businesses and entrepreneurs. We work tirelessly to produce events and resources that will help “nourish the dream” of business ownership and success in the lives of people. And that’s why we feel it’s important to bring SOPA (and its evil twin: PIPA) to your attention.
Depending upon when you read this, the links above may not be working. That’s because Wikipedia is “going dark” for the very first time (at least for its English version) in its history in order to protest this outrageous piece of legislation.
Why Sound the Alarm?
On the surface, the idea behind these bills is honorable and even noble: to stop the illegal downloading & sharing of content protected by copyright. The biggest beneficiaries of this action are relatively obvious: record labels, movie studios and others who create content which is ordinarily sold but which is being pirated (something which, I would like to note, is already illegal).
The egregious nature of the legislation comes not from its ostensible purpose but from its far-reaching, dangerous implications. Specifically, as the legislation is currently drafted, it gives incredible powers of internet censorship to the US courts. Further, it places ridiculous demands upon search engines to no longer provide links to sites which are accused of violating copyrights.
Picture a world where Google is required to police its search results at any given moment for links to websites which have not been proven to be guilty of violating copyrights. Picture a world where your small business website can be shut down at will by anyone willing to throw out a complaint.
In short: the legislation as drafted violates the free speech rights of US citizens via censorship without due process of law.
What About Piracy?
First let me say that we make our living creating content and enjoying the wonderful protection of copyright law. Without copyrights, it would be very difficult for our parent organization to recognize revenue from the training products it creates. Similarly, here at Nourish The Dream, we value very highly the ability for us to create and distribute CDs, MP3s and (soon) DVDs of materials to empower, train & equip the business owners and entrepreneurs we exist to serve… and to, in turn, achieve revenue from those sales to fuel our mission and to give us the ability to create new & better products as we go.
It is therefore of no small significance to us that there be appropriate tools in the hands of legislators and law enforcement agencies to go after piracy and shut it down where possible. We fully understand that no retailer would leave their shop doors unlocked at night with no one watching. There are evil people in the world, and the “honor system” doesn’t always pan out well in the end. Hence the need for proper protections for those who create items of value.
All of that said, SOPA & PIPA do not place appropriate powers in the hands of the right parties to solve the issues they purport to address. Rather, they place undue power in the hands of a few while effectively crippling the business model of many valuable companies who contribute to an open, free (as in speech) internet.
Latest Update: Since many of the apps we reference in the updates and content below are starting to remove the codes, you can see the codes are available in the commentsbelow.
2nd Update: The Unlock Code for Bonus Level 2 is divided between 4 apps:Elfster, Earbits, Astrid, and Hipmunk.
Update: Unlock Code for Bonus Level 1 is found in the BBC Good Food App for Chrome (more details below).
After playing the December 25th level of Angry Birds for Chrome (with the sequence of Christmas comics), 3 bonus levels appeared this morning.
Some quick searching online revealed that at least one of the Christmas Bonus Level Unlock Codes for Angry Birds Chrome Edition could be found by installing the Google Books app. After installing the Google Books app (which essentially just opens the Google Books website), there was a banner ad running. The ad said an unlock code could be found by reading at least 5 pages of Birds for Dummies. Purchasing the book was not required: I simply read through several pages of the free preview. Suddenly, the unlock code appeared.
Angry Birds for Chrome Christmas Bonus Levels Unlock Code
I entered it several times into the Angry Birds Chrome app on the screen shown here. While previous “guesses” had resulted in an “Invalid Code” message, this time I didn’t see that message. Unfortunately, however, it didn’t appear as though anything had changed. After re-entering it several times, I finally realized that level 3 of the Christmas Bonus Levels had, in fact, been unlocked! Great!
But now… where do we find those other 2 unlock codes?
Keep up with the Twitter conversation by following me: @TheDavidJohnson.
How to Install the Google Books App
From your Google Chrome web browser, visit the Chrome Webstore
It should now appear in your normal list of apps when you open a new tab in Google Chrome.
The code contained in the Google Books app is for level 3.
Where to Find the Unlock Code for Level 1
BBC Good Food App: Angry Birds Code Offer
For level 1, you need the BBC Good Food app. Install it the same way you installed the Google Books App (above).
Once you’ve got the app launched, look for an Angry Birds offer in the lower right-hand corner of the main app screen. Once you click it, the Unlock Code for Bonus Level 1 will be revealed.
Where to Find the Unlock Code for Level 2
For Christmas Bonus Level 2, the unlock code is contained in 4 chunks inside each of 4 different apps. Each app has its own trickery for locating the digits contained therein.
I started with Hipmunk. Once you get it installed, you need to login. I chose to use my Google Account (since I’m in Chrome and that’s what I use for Angry Birds login purposes). You’ll see an image of the Hipmunk mascot with a reference to Angry Birds on the home screen.
Clicking that only gets you the following set of instructions:
Click “Start Game!”
Perform a hotel search
Turn on a Heatmap
This seems a little vague and is obviously intended to force you to get to know what the app does a little bit. I ran a search, which was easy enough, but locating how to turn on the heatmap function was a little more ambiguous.
Hipmunk: Where to find the Heatmaps
After playing around with it for a couple of minutes, I finally spotted the heatmaps just above the Google map itself in the upper right-hand corner of the search results screen.
Once you click on one, a massive hover box containing the portion of the code that comes from Hipmunk will be displayed.
Knock on Wood Game: Play Angry Birds for Real!
Each of the other apps has its own methodology. The Hipmunk blog has a post with some additional info. If you get stuck on anything, just post in the comments below.
Angry Birds: Everybody needs a stuffed King Pig with Sounds!In the meantime, maybe you should pick up an Angry Birds item or two. The “Knock on Wood” Game is a blast… my 6-year-old daughter got it for Christmas. But she doesn’t yet have the stuffed pig!
Google celebrates its 13th birthday with a special Google Doodle!
It’s hard to believe, but the website most of us use everyday to start just about anything we do online didn’t exist until 13 years ago.
Their rise to dominance didn’t take place until later, but the company was incorporated in September, 1998. By 2000, they were processing 100 million searches per day… and of course, today they own the US search market. (Market share varies depending who measures it and what they measure… but for all intents & purposes, they’re the search engine that matters.)
In addition to the 28,000 people they employ directly, Google and its products have an impact on the businesses, careers and income on an incredibly high number of people. I’m sure someone has tried to do it, but it would truly be impossible to measure the economic impact of this behemoth. This could be why Google officials were recently testifying before Congress regarding the competitiveness of their operations… but that’s something for another day.
For today… on behalf of small businesses and marketers everywhere… Happy Birthday, Google! We’re celebrating right along with you today!
No, I’m not yet convinced that it will kill Facebook. (Is that even possible?)
Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook
But the CNN Tech coverage of this week’s big announcement from Facebook gave an interesting air to Mark Zuckerberg’s view of where his pet project is headed.
First: the big announcement. Facebook now has video chat via Skype. While it does seem clear that they’ve been working on this for some time, it’s awfully interesting that the big announcement took place without much drama only 1 week after Google+ announced “Hangouts,” which includes group video chat. (Zuckerberg says group chat isn’t important right now since most Skype users only chat 1 on 1 via video.)
The second big announcement was apparently an afterthought: Zuckerberg confirmed that Facebook now has 750 million users.
But what seems most interesting to me about this coverage was the quote from Zuckerberg about Facebook. The CNN Tech coverage gave the impression that Zuckerberg and his Facebook pals have accomplished their big goals. Third parties will be developing new “features” for Facebook, rather than Facebook itself, Facebook isn’t afraid of Google+, etc.
One quote, in particular, stood out to me. I had to look elsewhere for the entire sentence just to be sure I wasn’t misunderstanding it.
“Social networking is at an inflection point,” he said. “Mostly it was about connecting people and there was still this question about whether social networking was going to be this widespread, ubiquitous service in the world. That chapter is more or less done at this point.”
This is certainly lifted out of context, but really… what does he mean? It certainly left me wondering if Facebook has reached a point where they feel like they can sit back and relax.
This morning I made the startling discovery that an important WordPress site belonging to one of our clients had been hacked.
A Little History
If you’ve heard me speak in the last 5 years, you know that I’m a huge believer in the power of content marketing. We regularly recommend and teach business blogging basics to our clients. We have no desire to turn them into bloggers per se, but we’ve trained them that producing fresh, high quality content is a fantastic way to achieve visibility online and even provide fodder for social media outlets like Facebook & Twitter.
So… one of our clients who hired us to build out their WordPress site and for whom we’ve provided a fair amount of training and coaching for some time now began to experience a decline in search engine rankings. In their case, WordPress is installed on a separate domain from their main website. Their main website was historically not performing well from a search engine point of view (although it was great from virtually every other perspective when it was built), so WordPress was being used as a way to help prop up the main site. And it worked. Really, really well.
Imagine my surprise, then, when this particular site began to drop in the rankings for no apparent reason. Nothing had changed that we could tell. We did a little research and paid attention to what the competitors were doing and could see nothing significant enough to account for the change. It was very much an anomaly, because all of our other clients who were doing what we trained them to do were doing just fine.
So today, quite by accident, we found the culprit.
The WPRef Plugin
We were reviewing a piece of content before it got published when we discovered that a couple of the links had a rel=”nofollow” attribute. The content writer who was working on it had no knowledge of how to manually create that type of link (we certainly don’t train people to do that… especially for links that are created intentionally for search engine purposes!), so we knew something was up.
I inquired a little further to find out where the link had come from, and the answer was, “I copied it from another post.”
Hmmmm…. well… I assumed at first that something had crept its way into an earlier post and perhaps it had been duplicated a couple of times. I wasn’t looking forward to hunting down the original link. As I heard someone say recently, it’s like looking for a needle in a needlestack! But then I noticed that there was more than one link acting that way. So… I used the WordPress “preview” function to take a look at how the new post would look, and decided to “view source code” to see if the changes I’d made were taking effect.
That’s when I noticed this:
Every link within the content had been modified with a and a rel=”nofollow” sitewide.
That would be a problem. The site’s being running for a while and there was a significant amount of content.
Digging a little deeper, I found that a plugin had been installed and given the name “WPRef”
We had backed up and upgraded the site to the latest version of WordPress on February 3rd. So… we checked our backup and found that the plugin was not contained in it. On the server, we found (via FTP) that a file called “wpref.php” had been copied to the /wp-content/plugins folder on February 10th.
Not only had the plugin been placed in that folder, it had been activated.
Checking a little deeper, we discovered that the plugin’s only function was to add a tag and a “nofollow” attribute to every outbound link in the site’s content.
This amounts to a very specific, malicious attack. The only purpose of it can be to cause Google (and other search engines too) to ignore the site’s links.
Needless to say, I was infuriated. We’ve taken steps to harden that particular site. All my searching and other efforts to find evidence that others have encountered a hack like this have turned up nothing. It appears that (at least for now) this is a one-off, one-shot hack job. It’s hard not to believe that this site was specifically targeted on purpose.
The amusing thing was that the plugin added an options panel into the “Settings” menu. Within that, it output a bunch of gibberish, including some Russion domain names.  In the “Active Plugins” area, it purported to have “code.google.com” as its “plugin site” and its author was listed as, “Sergei Brin.” I was so distracted by the infuration and frustration of the whole thing that I failed to recognize that it wasn’t just a Russian-sounding name to match the other Russian references… it’s the (botched) name of the famous Google co-founder.
Humorous.
So… we’ve saved a copy of this little piece of php code. Obviously, we’ve removed it from the site in question and have tested the site out. Our links are back to normal now. Presumably, this client’s search engine rankings will return back to their prior positioning. Actually, since the rankings were declining, we’ve stepped up the game for this client with some additional efforts and so the rankings should actually move higher than ever. So… if this was, in fact, a malicious attack which singled out this particular business… the plan has backfired.
Update: On September 18th, a stable release of CyanogenMod 6.0 became available. Details are here. (The post below refers to my experience with the “release candidate,” which is the predecessor to the new stable release.) I updated my phone on October 23rd to the stable release and can attest it’s faster and better than ever! I was happy with the release candidate, but I’m even happier now!
HTC Hero for Sprint: Is There Any Hope?
I absolutely love my HTC Hero. I have since day 1, which for me was November, 2009.
But I’ve hesitated to recommend it to people… primarily because of the frustrations I’ve experienced with the device. It is plagued with significant lag (delays between when you expect something to happen and when it actually happens), some of the Android functions weren’t quite ready for prime time, and its battery life left something to be desired.
Nevertheless, I’ve been so thrilled with the Android operating system as a whole that I’ve personally just looked beyond those frustrations and made the best of it.
But a couple of months ago Sprint royally ticked me off. I’ll explain in a moment.
Cupcakes, Donuts & Eclairs
It may help here to provide a little background. My Hero originally shipped with Android “Donut,” which was version 1.6 of the Android Operating System.
For clarification, “Android” is the name of the open source operating system that is developed by Google (or has been since they acquired Android, Inc. about 5 years ago). There remains some confusion over terminology since Verizon licensed the term Droidâ„¢ from Lucasfilm, LTD. Verizon produces and sells several different devices under the name Droidâ„¢ as a way to brand their family of phones that run the Android operating system.
But any manufacturer is free to develop devices using the Android operating system. And many do. The devices began to take off when Android 1.5 (AKA “Cupcake”) released in early 2009. Google’s “Market” (their version of Apple’s “App Store”) began to explode with fantastic apps and the devices became more or less ready for daily use.
HTC Sense UI
So back to my Sprint HTC Hero. The Hero shipped with “Donut” (the successor to “Cupcake”), and as I said before, I loved it from day one. An important reason for it got so much love (from me and from others) was because HTC (the device’s manufacturer) developed an array of apps, widgets and modifications to the Android operating system that they labeled the “Sense UI” (UI is geek-speak for “User Interface”). Anyone who has used the Sense UI is spoiled.
I didn’t realize how spoiled I was until I picked up a friend’s Verizon Motorola Droidâ„¢ thinking I could use it. It was substantially clunkier and actually quite unfamiliar. I was surprised by the learning curve I had (considering I had owned and used my Android device regularly for months). But most surprising to me was how blazingly fast the Droidâ„¢ was in comparison to my Hero.
It was then that I began to realize just how unhappy I was with all the lag and the other frustrations I was experiencing.
This wasn’t just a case of device envy. I was syncing my Hero to an Exchange server and a Gmail account. I was regularly unable to answer calls because the lag was so long that they would go to voicemail before my phone was ready. Text messages were difficult at times. The browser was clearly powerful (especially when compared to my previous Blackberry and Windows Mobile browsers) but so painfully slow that it was rendered almost unusable.
So… imagine my delight when Sprint and HTC announced the availability of a significant upgrade from “Donut” (Android 1.6) to “Eclair” (Android 2.1) in May. Eclair boasted faster speeds — even on the same hardware (a rare occurrence in the world of hardware/software relations), and HTC had made substantial improvements to the Sense UI.
I backed up all my data (using an app that was readily available from the Android Market) and performed the upgrade. It was painful to watch the process run so slowly, but when it was over, my phone was noticeably more responsive.
But not responsive enough.
And even more painful was knowing that Eclair’s release date was October of 2009, fully 7 months before Sprint & HTC bothered to roll out the update. And also that “Froyo” (Android 2.2) was released by Google right about the time that I was downloading the Eclair update from HTC’s servers.
The Froyo Frustration
So… I said earlier that Sprint had ticked me off. Several things happened all about the same time in the world of Sprint. In June, they announced the HTC EVO… which they widely proclaimed the nation’s first 4G phone. It boasted a bigger screen, faster processor, and a big fat price tag. And even though I’m a Sprint “Premier” customer, I was still nearly 6 months away from qualifying for their “upgrade pricing.”
Another Sprint event: a leak. Word leaked out that although the EVO would be getting an upgrade to Froyo, the Hero (and a couple of other lesser phones) would not.
Whatever the reasons for their decision, here’s how it came across to the community of HTC Hero owners: a slap in the face. Some of them had just purchased the Hero, and in fact Sprint still sells it brand new today.
My wife is eligible for a Sprint upgrade and has been for probably 18 months or so since her last contract expired. No matter how easy to use, there was no way I was going to have her purchase the HTC Hero… because I knew that to a non-techie the problems I was experiencing would be absolute showstoppers.
But given Sprint’s attitude (“We’re not going to provide the software update, just buy our new $500 phone if you want something better…”), I seriously began contemplating a switch to another carrier.
I know, I know… they all screw their customers. And frankly, I’ve had almost no trouble at all with Sprint over the years… nor with Nextel prior to Sprint’s acquisition of it. Signal is good. Billing is accurate. Customer service (on the rare occasion when I’ve required it) has exceeded my (admittedly low) expectations.
So… why would I want to switch? It just felt like the decision was made purely to dangle a real expensive carrot in front of customers like me who pay significant fees every month for service.
It also happened that around July I began to face the fact that my dependence upon Microsoft was coming to an end. I’ve owned, managed or leased space on Exchange Servers for nearly 1o years. I’ve synced with a variety of mobile devices (as I mentioned before) and I am an enormous believer in “the cloud.” In fact, when I switched from my last smartphone (a Windows mobile device) to the Hero, my 1000+ contacts and an untold number of emails (even in the 3-day sync window) were synced before I left the Sprint store.
Realizing how good the sync is on the Android platform (including Facebook and Twitter integration), and that Google isn’t going anywhere, I decided to take the plunge and test out Google Apps For Your Domain (“GAFYD”). Holy cow. I wish I’d done it sooner. The Gmail platform (private-labeled for my team) is unbelievably powerful and easy to use. The extremely low cost ($50 per user per year) is an enormous cost savings over using (and supporting) the Exchange platform, and no software (Microsoft Outlook, you know who you are) is required.
So… a number of pieces were coming into place for me. I’m seeing a long term commitment to Google’s platform — including Android.
But man… the Hero was frustratingly slow.
So… last week, I bit the bullet and “rooted” my phone.
To Root or Not to Root
No… I’m not digging around in the soil. And no… I didn’t let it get acquainted with nature in an attempt to get an insurance upgrade (ever known anyone who’s tried that trick?)…
I did, however, void my warranty. At least temporarily.
The Android platform is closely related to Unix. On a Unix system, the “Administrator” (to use Microsoft’s terminology) is called the “Root” user. This user has “root” (the highest level of) access to the operating system.
For reasons that I’m sure are relatively obvious, Sprint (and every other carrier) does not provide “root” access to the operating systems on its devices. Instead, it locks down most configuration options and system areas so that the end user can’t screw things up too badly (and so that rogue apps don’t have the ability to behave too badly). Apple does the same thing with its devices.
Of course, there’s a vibrant community of hackers who will teach you how to gain root access to your Android device… and even provide software tools to avoid the most complicated, error-prone steps.
Why would you want root access? Well… for a long list of reasons, most of which involve gaining a higher level of control over the device. Want to overclock your processor? You need root access. Want to reconfigure your LED? You need root access. Want to do just about anything aside from installing the sanitized apps from the market? You need root access.
Want to install Froyo (Android 2.2)? You need root access.
Wait a minute… you can install Froyo? The same Froyo that boasts 3x-10x speed improvements (yes… on the same hardware) over Eclair? The same Froyo that allows for tethering (providing internet access via a USB cable from your phone to your laptop when not in range of wifi service… a feature blocked by Sprint in Eclair) and hotspot (turning your phone into a wifi hotspot so your laptop and other devices can utilize its internet connection… something Sprint charges an extra monthly fee for on the EVO even though it’s a built-in feature) and significantly-improved multiple Google account support?
Well… officially, no. You can’t have Froyo. You’re stuck with a slow Hero.
But unofficially… once you make the decision to take a few liberties with your device… you can do all of the above.
And let me tell you… the difference is nothing short of amazing.
On Saturday, I decided to take the plunge: root the phone and install Froyo. Of course, there’s no chance of just going to Google’s Android site and finding a download for Android 2.2 that’s going to actually work on your phone. But thanks to the community of developers/hackers I mentioned earlier, there are ready-made distributions available that are tailored to your carrier, device and desired configuration.
Let me be clear: this process is not for the faint of heart. There are portions that are highly technical in nature, and it’s best if you don’t expect someone to hold your hand. The community has produced a dizzying array of blogs, wikis and most importantly: forums, where answers can be found for all manner of technical questions.
I’m personally writing this post to inform some of the non-techies in the world that there are ways to get yourself a much better experience with your HTC Hero on Sprint (or just about any other Android device, for that matter). But I’m unable to provide technical expertise or guidance on this aside from sharing a few details that worked for me and pointing you toward the true masters of this game… the ones who have devoted untold hours to writing code, testing and supporting their work.
To these individuals — the ones who dared to say to Sprint, “Take that!” — I am truly grateful. I have today what amounts to a brand new phone. Yes, the hardware is no different. But how it performs… there’s absolutely no comparison.
So… let me provide a brief summary of the steps I took to get this amazing result.
The Process… Summarized
First and foremost, as with any operation that has the potential to affect valuable data, perform a backup. I highly recommend a phenomenal paid app from the Android Market called MyBackup Pro. Open the Market from your device, fork over a mere $4.99, and you can backup everything from your emails, contacts and calendar all the way to applications and even the layout of your homescreen. It will save to your device’s SD card and, if you choose, upload a backup to the developers’ servers where it can be retrieved later from the same device or from a replacement (if you’re switching hardware).
For me, my emails, contacts and calendar were all synced to Google accounts, so there was no need to actually store that data. But my call log, SMS (texts) and MMS (multimedia messages) and apps were valuable to me. I guess some people don’t see a need to hang on to those, but I like being able to refer back to things in the future. So I backed ’em up.
After you’re satisfied that you have a backup and can restore your phone to its current state if necessary (either because things go badly or because you need warranty service from Sprint because of hardware issues), then you can get under the hood and really start tinkering.
The short version is this:
Gain root access to your device
Download and install a recovery image (provides a boot platform as well as backup and other valuable tools)
Perform another backup using Nandroid (part of the recovery image)
Download and install a ROM that contains the distribution of Android and the configuration you’re looking for)
Install the ROM
Install the Google Apps (Market, Gmail, Maps, etc…) so that you can use the basic functions you’re expecting from Android
Install/configure Launcher software (if you choose — as I did — to go with something different than what came with the ROM you installed)
Selectively restore data from your backup (the one you performed prior to step 1). For me, this meant: call logs, SMS/MMS messages, and apps.
Locate some new apps (as desired) to replace the stuff from HTC’s Sense UI that you might miss.
Experience blazing speeds, better battery life, and overall… a fantastic phone!
I’ll provide a little more detail for you below. But here’s my caveat: this stuff changes… sometimes daily. Whatever I post here will be outdated by the time I hit publish, not to mention by the time you read it.
So… I’m going to point you in the direction of the valuable resources I have found. There are a few major players worth highlighting, but there are countless other players who may not be as visible or noticeable who have also played an enormous role in making this level of customization to your device possible. These are the real heroes, in my opinion. Obviously, Google and the original Android team deserve some major props as well.
The developers who have gone the “last mile” to us end users can be found in the forums at XDA-developers.com. This is where you’ll find heroes like Darchstar — who created the final actual ROM I’m currently using and would highly recommend — and theimpaler747, who is one of many who deserve recognition for their tireless support answering questions from people like me who are trying to wrap our heads around what it takes to get the job done.
So, by topic, here are some important links you’ll need in order to undertake the process. (Note: these links apply — in most cases exclusively — to the HTC Hero on Sprint and may be out of date — see my red ink above. If you need stuff for a different device or a different carrier, then search the forums for your specific situation. Chances are, you’ll find great results.)
Learn about (and download tools to gain) root access to your device here.
Download the ROM Manager from the Android Market (using the Market app on your phone). It will only work after you have root access. Give it “Superuser” permissions and it will install the appropriate recovery image and the other tools (such as Nandroid for backups) to your device.
Reboot to the recovery image and run a Nandroid backup to your SD card. This is a much more comprehensive, system-level backup of your entire device.
Wipe your device. In hacker parlance, this means perform a “factory reset.” This is required in order to effectively install the ROM you’ll need. Alternatively, you can download the desired ROM and install it via the ROM Manager, which will prompt you for the wipe (which you should have it perform in this case).
Here’s where to find Darchstar’s Froyo ROM RC1 for the Sprint Hero. (“Release Candidate 1” means it’s stable enough for you to use, but isn’t officially considered a full release yet as they’re still tinkering). Darchstar built upon the fantastic work of the CyanogenMod community in bringing us Froyo. This particular distribution bears the date of August 15, 2010. I’m sure I’ll be flashing (installing) a newer ROM when it becomes available — either RC2 or a formal release. There are also “nightlies” (nightly builds) available that may have newer features but may also be less stable. I’m not using the nightlies because my phone is something I absolutely depend upon on a daily basis and I can’t afford the luxury of testing at the bleeding edge for now.
Darchstar also maintains a link to the latest version of the Google Apps distribution you’ll need. It’s posted on the same forum topic as his distribution. Grab it. You’ll want it. You “flash” this ZIP file right on top of the ROM (don’t perform a wipe this time) that you just installed. I used ROM Manager to do it, which Darchstar was kind enough to include in his Froyo distribution.
Test, tinker and tweak.
I dug through the forums and decided to purchase the Launcher Pro App from the Android Market (after I synced my Google account, naturally). This brought some of the features of the Homescreen back that I would’ve missed from HTC’s Sense. I also gained some fantastic new features in the process (e.g. more rows for icons, a nifty all-new App Drawer, and some more fun stuff.)
I also decided to download the Dialer One app to regain some of the experience inside the actual phone functions that I liked from HTC Sense. It looks different, but performs very well. You can also turn it off and switch back to the standard Android dialer if it isn’t what you like.
For text messaging, I went with chompSMS. This was something I’d already switched to prior to rooting and upgrading to Froyo. It has a fantastic UI… including popups that appear when you receive an incoming text so you can answer (or not) without interrupting what you were doing. The threaded conversations are fantastic and visually appealing as well.
One of the most noticeable elements of HTC’s Sense UI is the big digital clock with the animated weather icons that typically adorned the Homescreen of most users. While Launcher Pro comes with some options, I ultimately decided to get the Beautiful Widgets app (and pay for the upgrade) from the Market. It has some obvious visual differences, but there are replacement widgets that look as good as (and are frankly more configurable than) the ones that come with Sense.
There are lots more tweaks available. And a few lingering issues are minor annoyances as well. The whole experience has opened my eyes to just how powerful the Android platform really is. At this point, I’m not sure I could ever be talked into buying an iPhone. Apple’s reputation for closing itself off to proprietary platforms is legendary… and ultimately not in the best interests of users. There are certainly those who think Google could be evil… and I’m mindful of the possibility that they could turn that direction somewhere along the line. But their commitment to open source development is clear. And there’s a clear path for getting your data off of their platforms at any point in time if you decide you want to switch.
As for the annoyances, there’s a lag that remains when you bring the phone back from sleep. Some users have overclocked their phone’s processors using “uncapped kernels” (another piece of software you can optionally flash on top of Darchstar’s Froyo ROM if you’re extra brave) and claim to have gotten rid of this. Frankly, I’m aware of it (it’s longer than the lag I had previously with Eclair/Sense), but it’s not a big deal. The blinding speed I get with every other function on the phone far outweighs any complaint I might raise about this lag. But the forums are filled with questions about it (typically the same question over and over), so some people are more annoyed by it than I am. Â Occasionally, I uncover some other “missing feature” that I realize was part of Sense. But there are replacements for almost all of these. There’s a bug that occurs when you try to open the camera from inside the gallery (something I did regularly before) that causes the phone to hang. The fix is nifty: you get to pull the battery from your phone in order to reboot it. Not cool, but as with the other issue: it’s something I’m aware of and in this case, I can avoid it!
All in all, I’m so thrilled with my experience that I wish I’d done it a lot sooner. Of course, every day that goes by produces better and better code from the crew that’s working on it. So… perhaps the timing of my switch was good.
Either way, if you own a Sprint HTC Hero, I highly recommend that you root your phone and upgrade it to Froyo. You won’t regret it… and if for some reason you do, you can go back to the configuration you have today (if you really want to) by using the ROM that Sprint/HTC made available when they rolled out Eclair back in May.
This may be the longest post I’ve ever written here. But… what can I say… I’m thrilled with my Hero! And I’m running Froyo on it.
Incidentally, there’s a fantastic thread now running on XDA-developers.com that was started by the aforementioned theimpaler747 for users of any of the CyanogenMod ROMs for the Hero (this includes the one I’m using from Darchstar). In addition to the thread containing Darchstar’s ROM download, this one is highly useful.
I hope this post helps you make the decision to move forward with upgrading your Hero. It’s worth every minute of effort you spend learning your way around and going down the road, as complex as it may be!
Once question I’ve been asked frequently by friends and business associates is this: “How are you able to help your clients increase revenues when none of our marketing efforts seem to be working as well as they used to work?”
There’s no short, simple answer to this question. And about a year ago, I sat down and tried to figure out the best way to help show our clients, colleagues and friends with small businesses how to put all of this into practice. What resulted was a 12-week marketing training program that we implemented for the first time early this year.
Before getting into more detail, I want to mention that we’re taking the major highlights of this process and presenting them in Sarasota in a half-day seminar on September 27th. Visit Results Now Marketing to find out all about it.
The results have been nothing short of mind-boggling. Instead of us actually providing services to these businesspeople, we’re simply showing them the process we use. It’s a strategic process, which means that it is transferable and can be adapted to just about any business.
One company put the techniques to work for them and, after having a website for 7 years that never made it anywhere near the top of the search engines, they put a brand new website on the front page of Google (for actual searches that their potential customers would run) in just a matter of a couple of weeks!
(They did it! We simply showed them how!)
That’s just the beginning… some of the strategies we show have multiplied the revenues in some of our clients within a matter of a few months.
Google recently added a setting to its Gmail service that allows users to always keep their sessions encrypted. It’s a really good idea to turn this one on if you want to keep hackers out of your account.
But I already login with https…
That’s true… the Gmail service handles your login in an encrypted fashion, but… unless you’re very specific about opening the site using https:// (or SSL), the service will authenticate your login and then switch you back to an http:// (non-encrypted) session. So… your password remains secure, but your session does not.
A tool is about to be unleashed to hackers that will allow them to get busy breaking into Gmail accounts. You’re particularly vulnerable if you access Gmail from a wifi hotspot or any public computer… which is one of the reasons we all have Gmail accounts, isn’t it?
Here’s how to make the change
Our “don’t be evil” friends have been kind enough to be very quiet about the new settings option, and then bury it so it’s hard to find. Here’s where to make the change:
Login to your Gmail account. Here’s a hint: use this secure login link.
Click on “Settings” (on the top, near the right)
On the “General” tab, scroll all the way down. I’m including a picture below for you, but click “Always use https” and then save your changes. Your settings will be remembered no matter what computer you login from.
Now you should be in good shape. Hey… when was the last time you changed this password? (You do change passwords regularly, right?)
