Triple correlation

I used an iPhone before switching over to an Android 2.3. A basic function of a phone is manage your contacts, and I figured this should be handled well. Big surprise: Android contact management stinks. Here are some of the problems:

a) Several applications, such as Skype and Twitter, can access your contact list and clutter it with theirs. Skype is the worst, because you get the spam contacts too. I found my list included several viagra vendors, and others offering, well, services of a red-light nature.

Worse, every phone number I called with Skype phone appears as a separate contact, without an associated name.

b) You can’t delete contacts on the phone. The ones imported from the applications are marked as read only. If you open up Skype on the phone, it won’t show you the spam contacts.

c) I tried importing contacts from the SIM card, but during the import the software froze.

After some googling around to see what can be done, I figured out at least one way to fix the contact list.

1) Delete Skype from phone.
2) Turn off automatic syncing of contacts for all applications.
3) Manually sync contacts with Gmail. This gives you a list you can edit when you log in to gmail.
4) Merge contact on gmail to remove the duplicates, and then delete the one you don’t want.
5) Manually sync contacts again with Gmail. This downloads the list back on your phone.
6) Reinstall skype, this time being sure to select “do not sync” from the Skype menu.

This is way too complicated for the simple function of managing contacts.

Apple must have changed the scheduler in their latest OS, Lion. The keyboard response lags noticeably, the headphone output in Skype is choppy. I see the pinwheel of death often. I didn’t have any of these problems when using Leopard.

I read the complaints/fixes on the Apple forum. I used the disk utility to verify and repair permissions; I uninstalled login programs that I didn’t really need, and I upgraded skype. Nothing has worked so far.

I now have installed 10.7.1, and reinstalled Skype from scratch. Audio quality even to the Skype Test Call still sucks, very choppy.

I tried installing XCode 4.1, downloaded from the App store, on my Mac Pro running Lion. The progress bar went to about 97% complete, but then proceeded no further. After a couple of hours, I gave up, and tried a Rorra’s solution from

http://www.rorra.com.ar/2011/03/11/xcode-4-freezes-on-installationla-instalacion-de-xcode-4-se-congela/

1) Go to the Applications folder.
2) Right click on Install X code, and select “Show Package Contents”.
3) Go to Contents/Resources and double click on XCode.mpkg

You can check the install by using gcc etc

First I installed the Portable GIT application

http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/downloads/list

I asked it to install to “c:\git”. I created a shortcut on my windows desktop to git-bash.bat, located on c:\git

Next I went to github.com and created an account for myself. I followed their instructions for Step 1, Set up a Git. Then I followed Step 2, Create a repo. The repo is called TouchscreenTester. I want to use this as the master copy of my touchscreen tester development. Next, I launched “git-bash.bat” (see above). This creates a bash shell.

Here are some basic things to get up and running. First, create a README file for the project

cd c:\android\android-sdk\work\TouchscreenTester
vi README #enter "Android touchscreen app"

Now add the entire project

git init #you get message "initialized empty repository...
touch *
git add *  #you get lots of warnings about CRLF
git commit -m 'first commit of entire app'
#see lots of "create mode 100644" message
git remote add origin git@github.com:ramkakarala/TouchscreenTester.git
git push -u origin master
#see 'commiting objects, 41' message

Now clone it, so you can work on it locally

cd c:\android\android-sdk
mkdir scratch
cd scratch
git clone git@github.com:ramkakarala/TouchscreenTester.git clnTouchscreenTester

You’ll see messages that it’s cloning the repo into your local directory clnTouchscreenTester. Now use it in the Eclipse IDE

Launch Ecplise. Choose File->New->New Android Project->Create Project from Existing Source. Point it to clnTouchscreenTester as above. Make sure to give the project name a new name, such as clnTouchscreenTester. Now, run it.

Right click on clnTouchscreenTester. Under “Run as…” select AndroidApplication”. It should launch under the android emulator

Some more Git experiments are described below.

1) Edit a file, such as “TouchscreenTesterActivity.java”. See what’s new locally (assume you are in clnTouchscreenTester directory)

git diff

Update repo

git add src/com/touchscreen_tester/TouchscreenTesterActivity.java
git commit -m 'edited activity'
git push -u origin master

2) Remove an unwanted file (in my case it was a directory clonedTT in
clnTouchscreenTester)

git rm clonedTT
git push origin master

Note I omitted the -u for “upstream”, and it didn’t matter.

3) Update your local copy after someone else has pushed to the repo,

git pull origin master

Zebra-Xing is the open source decoder for QR, datamatrix, and barcodes.  Google’s code site recommends the following steps to build for Android:

cd core
ant clean build-no-debug

Followed by

cd ../android
ant

This last step failed for me. I got the error message

taskdef class com.android.ant.SetupTask cannot be found
using the classloader AntClassLoader[] 

After googling around to find the solution, I figured out that you need to edit “build.properties” file in the zxing root directory.  Look for the lines starting

# Set this to the location where you installed the Android SDK
#android-home = ...

Uncomment #android-home and and put in the directory where the android-sdk is located.

Next, I got the error complaining that

Unable to access jarfile ...${proguard-jar}"

The solution is to go back and edit build.properties, again, and look for the line

# Set to the location where ProGuard's proguard.jar file can be found
#proguard-jar=..

Remove the comment and set proguard-jar to the location of the jar file. It should be located in the android-sdk, under tools/proguard. You have to give the full path name, i.e.,

proguard-jar=<sdk>/tools/proguard/lib/proguard.jar

I was able to build successfully after that.

Why is it that no one says they were wrong?  Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, claims he misspoke when he said that Windows 8 will be out in 2012.  Actually, there is no plan to release Windows 8.  Read the sad story here.  This is not the first time he claimed a product that did not exist.  Remember the HP Slate that was going to be powered by Windows in 2010?    Well now it nearly June 2011, and probably no one you know has one, and few people even know it exists.  If you can find it on the HP shopping site, you are looking very hard.   Fortunately for Ballmer, many people claim to misspeak.  At the time of writing this post, Bill Clinton was getting more coverage than Ballmer for misspeaking about the US government failing to raise the debt limit.   That one I believe. It’s hard to believe, on the other hand, that Ballmer is still CEO.