Recently I got the Samsung Galaxy S. I wouldn't use it as my everyday phone, but especially as a developer phone, it really sucks. The only good thing about the phone is the large super AMOLED display and storage space, but that's about it.

* UI wise, it doesn't come close to the Nexus One or especially the HTC Desire / Sense UI, which is my favorite. It's just too colorful and just doesn't look as sophisticated as N1 or HTC Desire. But that's not the main issue, that's just a matter of taste, which tends to differ a lot amongst users.

The main reasons are though:

* You cannot mount the device via USB while the developer debug mode is activated

* when the USB cable is plugged in and you want to turn off developer mode, you need to unplug the cable first, turn dev mode off, plug cable in again

* USB connection doesn't mount the device simply as a drive but I need to go through the Kies software or at least not to install it, even had to download from the internet

* Samsung doesn't provide only USB drivers on their website, you have to download the entire Kies Suite - even though you're not going to use it

* Kies software repeatingly wants to install the device drivers (any time I have the PC restarted and run Kies and plugin the device)

* when connecting the device via USB, the device randomly gets detected, sometimes I need to restart Kies and/or unplug/plug in the device again... haven't figured out the logic, but as seen in forums, USB connection seems to be a known problem with this device

* clicking on 'USB connection' in the notification bar doesn't do anything (Kies mode)

* accessing (i.e. copying to) SD card via Kies is slow

For developers it's really a hassle to develop with this phone.

But also for regular usage like getting media (photos, videos) off the phone is really tedious; and has to be lucky that the device eventually gets detected and mounts when you plugin the device.

The Nexus One seems to be faster and more responsive than the Galaxy S, but I guess that's also mainly because I'm running Froyo on it while the Samsung is still on 2.1update1.

bettercodes.org is a Germany based startup providing a platform for software developers to collaborate, share and discuss projects.
Recently subversion (svn) and git support has been introduced. To use the git support in combination with TortoiseGit on Windows, here are some hints:

The default git settings might have some problems with the verification of the ssl certificate, since git runs under a https url. Therefore you need to set the ssl cert verification to false, but when trying to run

git config --global http.sslVerify false

you might get an error:

fatal: $HOME not set

Therefore, first set the $HOME environment variable under Windows Settings to some valid folder, i.e. your msysgit installation folder, i.e. C:\msysgit

I also experienced some problem with git and also TortoiseGit not being able to find the libcurl-4.dll. To fix that, add C:\msysgit\mingw\bin to your $PATH environmen variable

If you experience any problems with a password prompt on TortoiseGit (error msg like 'Password: fatal: Out of memory, realloc failed') while pulling or pushing, upgrade to msysgit 1.7.1
(I found this hint at http://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit/issues/detail?id=113)

I think the Coloris Media Gallery app for Nexus One is far from perfect and there are some design flaws and essential features missing. I'm actually ending up using a file explorer (Aexplorer) to browse through the photos right now due to the inconvenient UI of the media gallery.

These are my observations:

1) not able to sort folders alphabetically

2) photo edit function (crop), doesn't have a scaling function (essential for sharing images to the web; why needing to send it in high res if it's used in a low resolution in the end anyway)

3) folders that exist on the sdcard and have a video in it (and definitely no .nomedia file in it) sometimes show up in the gallery, sometimes they don't. I experienced that when turning my phone off and on again - afterwards one of my folders doesn't show up in the gallery anymore. Ok, I must admit this might be due to the Froyo 2.2 FRF50 I'm running and the new media framework StageFright might not yet be complete.

Hope it will get better in a future release.

I was looking for a way to receive crash reports of my app, which isn't published through the Android market. On Froyo/2.2, Android supports user crash reports - but only for apps that are published through the market.

Another nice helper class which sends the stack traces to a google spreadsheet form is ACRA, very useful and easy to setup.
http://code.google.com/p/acra/

Supports both interactive and automated/background mode.

I don't understand the big buzz they make about Google fetching data from open wifis in Germany and now Italy. They're referring to '202b Strafgesetzbuch', but this only refers to non-public data transmission. So how does relate to an open wifi? It's like writing your confidential data on a postcard.

Ok, I agree leaving the door to your house open doesn't allow anybody to enter it. But if they really take the law as it's written, they should be precise. And read further in paragraph 202a: "... _und_ die gegen unberechtigten Zugang besonders gesichert sind." - well, that's obviously not the case with an open wifi.

So what's up with the German law and data privacy protectors, shouldn't they get the facts right first? I welcome any corrections to my statement in case I'm misinterpreting something here.

I'm not saying it's right (not meant in terms of legal/law) what they did - on the other hand I'm not a big fan of the currently very popular Google bashing either; and Google stopped this action now, but on the other hand, I don't see where they did anything against the law.

#germany #german #law #dataprivacy #google

I've been using the Nexus One skin provided by Tim Hoeck for Android development. Thanks for the work.
http://timhoeck.com/2010/01/16/nexus-one-emulator-skin/

Today though I came across a very sharp PSD file (at http://psdlist.com/gadget/179/google-nexus-one-psd-templates-and-png-files.html) that's even clearer and sharper than the images in the current skin set. Therefore I replaced the skin and the buttons.

Here's an updated version of the Nexus One skin. You can download it from the link below.
Thanks to Tim Hoeck for the initial effort to provide the Nexus One skin.

Just stumbled over Droid Draw, a user interface (UI) designer/editor for programming the Android Cell Phone Platform. You can either download the small application to your desktop or run it in the browser as an applet.

http://www.droiddraw.org/

Here's a good tutorial to it:
http://mobiforge.com/designing/story/understanding-user-interface-android-part-1-layouts

The CMS 3.0 is an open-source clinical management system project jointly implemented by the Hong Kong Medical Association (HKMA) and the Information and Software Industry Association (ISIA), with funding support from the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO) under the Sector-specific Programme (SSP) for the Medical and Health Sector, and was developed by Mobigator Technology Group.

Screenshots:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=119396&id=504063796&ref=mf

See the facebook group:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=123759717334&v=wall&ref=ts

Twitter: http://twitter.com/HKMA_CMS

Website: http://www.cms3.hk

The project has been published under GPL2.0 license (open source). Technologically based on Java, Grails/Groovy, MySql. Web based client using ExtJs.

 

Impressions from the eHealth Forum 2009, Hong Kong at the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine, 08./09.10.2009. It was also the inauguration of HL7 Hong Kong.

[From: http://www.isia.org.hk/]
Aug 2009, After two years of development, the TaoYuan Project team formed by ISIA and HKMA are pleased to announce that CMS 3.0 is born! The CMS 3.0 is the first Open-Source clinic management software in Hong Kong. The latest version 3.1 is available now for all registered doctors and clinics to download together with online e-learning and user manual. ISIA members provide various customized CMS service packages bundling hardware, broadband, data migration, training & hotline support.
For details, _http://cms3.isia.org.hk
_