Jens Bruntts blog

Category Android
I just read on the official Motorola Europe Facebook page that the Motorola Milestone will be getting an update to FroYo. In Europe. In other parts of the world it has not yet been decided if the upgrade will be available or not. The Droid twin of the Milestone is (I believe) getting the FroYo upgrade right now.
The upgrade for Europe is scheduled to start rolling out by the end of the year (2010).
FroYo is Android version 2.2, and it is a very important update.
Most important (to me) is the inclusion of a Just In Time (JIT) compiler. This should have two major impacts on the Milestone experience: Longer battery life and speedier execution of apps. So you can both have more cake and you will be able to eat it too.
Here is a more xtensive list of what's new: Android 2.2 Platform Highlights.

Posted by Jens Bruntt At 10:50:35 Location Skanderborg | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Android Getting Things Done
I have release a new version of Braindump to Notes - the Android GTD app. A major release.
New stuff since my last post is:

• SSL support is now a feature. You will need to edit the Preferences to enabled SSL. Remember to edit the Port number.
• Menu button available from both the New Note and the Saved notes tabs.
• A log is available from the Context menu. This should be of help if you get issues with synchronization.  
• Bug fixes. Including prevention of expiry of Domino authentication.

Posted by Jens Bruntt At 18:43:37 Location Provence | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Android Getting Things Done
I have just released a new version of BrainDump to Notes. Version 2.1 includes some important stuff IMHO.
BrainDump to Notes is an Android application that allows you to quickly get Stuff off your mind, an important part of the Getting Things Done methodology.
You can read more about it and see a demo from when I released version 1: BrainDump to Notes for Android - what is it?.

The new stuff is:
- A bug fix that hopefully removes Force close situations.
- An option for using voice input instead of typing. This of course requires a newer Android version (2.1 and up).
- Support for national characters.
- Support for deleting individual saved notes.

Here is a screen dump:

Posted by Jens Bruntt At 10:31:40 Location Provénce | Permalink | Comments (11)

Category Android Danish
Spændende. Det er ca. en måned siden at vi fik Android 2.0.1 på Motorola Milestone, og nu ser det ud til at vi får version 2.1 allerede indenfor en uges tid:
Milestone actually does updates – Android 2.1 comes to the Motorola Milestone.
I Hong Kong har de allerede 2.1-opgraderingen til Milestone.
I USA har de den ikke.
Og på androidandme.com skriver de altså at den er planlagt til at komme i Europa inden udgangen af marts: "European Milestone owners shouldn’t be waiting long for their little slice of 2.1 heaven as they are now slated for the update before the end of March."

Vigtigste nyheder ifølge mig:

• Koden afvikles hurtigere. Ikke at jeg oplever det store problemer i dag, men det er da ltid dejligt med mere krudt.
• Fem skærme i stedet for de tre vi har nu. Plads til flere widgets!
• Live Wallpaper. Altid godt til når man sidder i toget ved siden af nogen der har en iPhone

Posted by Jens Bruntt At 08:46:18 Location Skanderborg | Permalink | Comments (6)

Category Android
I have a data plan for my Android device which makes me interested in not having it move more than 500 Megabytes of data over the mobile network (3G, HSDPA) per month.

When I started out with my Motorola Milestone (a.k.a. Droid in the US) I could see that I had a base-use around 5 Megabytes daily. That would be what my installed apps used when I am not having the screen unlocked. Primarily email synchronization.
When my screen is unlocked (with me browsing the web or phoning someone) it will usually be using WiFi.

This blog entry is about what I did when I started to see my base-use moving to the 15 Megabyte range daily. What I did to force the number down again.

My base-use is the number that makes up the minimum mobile data transport for my device. This is when I do not really use my device very much.
If I start using Google Maps, Google Goggles, send emails, watch YouTube videos and the like, that is all something that comes on top of the base-use.

Here are some numbers for you.
My data plan says I need to use a maximum of 500 Megabytes per month.

Here is what my base-use looked like to begin with: 30 days a month of 5 Megabytes equals 150 Megabytes. That would leave me with 350 Megabytes to fool around with. A comfortable number.

This is what my base-use changed to: 30 days a month of 15 Megabytes equals 450 megabytes. Now that is not comfortable at all. It leaves me with 50 Megabytes, which is nothing really. I need to get away from that base-use number.

I expected that only one or perhaps two of my currently installed apps was the culprit. I need to find it and squash it.

I have done a lot of searching for an Android app that would tell me which apps are transferring how much data. I have not found such an app
Now, there is an idea for a great app. That idea is free for you to work on.

I have found a couple of apps that helped me narrow down my list of suspects though. Those apps are

• Advanced Task Killer Free by ReChild
• NetMeter by Bernhard Suter
• NetCounter by Cyril Jaquier

NetCounter helps checking how much data is getting transferred. I have configured it to show me how much was transferred today and how much was transferred yesterday. I also have it configured to alert me when those values go beyond 15 Megabytes.
NetMeter also shows me how much data gets transferred, but it is a bit more graphic than NetCounter, and it allows me to see the data for periods that are shorter than a day: 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 3 hours and so on.
And then there is Advanced Task Killer Free. What that app does is that it shows what apps are currently loaded in memory on the device and then it allows me to quickly terminate the ones that I want killed. Lots of apps are loaded in memory, and they get loaded even though you did not load them yourself by clicking them in the application menu - very interesting.

To start out with I just loaded NetCounter (illustration on the right) and NetMeter and had them running all the time. Every night before going to bed I had a look at the numbers. When I got up in the morning I would check the numbers again, and I could easily see that most of that 15 Megabyte use happened while I was sleeping. Then I loaded up Advanced Task Killer, and for a couple of days I now did something more than just noting the numbers before going to bed. Now every night I would first start Advanced Task Killer and then kill all apps except the ones I really want to be running and then take note of the numbers. The next day I had a look at the numbers when getting up and whoa! almost no data had been transferred during the night. We are talking about going from perhaps 14 Megabytes down to 500 Kilobytes. I was definitely on my way to solving the problem. Now I wanted to find the app(s) that need to be removed. The data hog(s).

What came next was that I made a list of the apps that were in the clear. Apps I was certain were not the data hogs. The first names on the list were the ones I just mentioned - the ones I did not kill using Advanced Task Killer. I wrote down the names of those apps on my "Non data hog list". Then every evening I would go through the same routine: Plug in the device for charging. Start NetMeter. Push Menu, push reset, Go to the Android Home Screen. Start Advanced Task Killer (see illustration to the right). Kill all apps that are not on the Non data hog list except one app. Write down the name of the app that I let live. Let's call that app the applicant.

And then every morning I would check NetMeter: Has more than 1.5 Megabyte of data been transferred during the night? If yes: This is a potential data hog. Put it on the list of apps to keep an eye on. If no: Put the app on the Non data hog list. In the illustration to the right you see part of the NetMeter app from a "bad" night, where my device has transferred 19.3+8.7 = 28 Megabytes.

You get the idea I hope. This method is straight forward: Eliminate one app at a time and in the end you will have a (very) short list of apps that are the likely culprits. Those apps on the list of apps to keep an eye on should then get extra attention.

In my example I had only one app on the list. This was Calorie Counter, an application for Android that I have been using a lot the last couple of months.

What I now needed to do was to establish that I could be sure that the app was actually the one responsible for all that extra data consumption.
What I did was a variant of the method I had already used, but focusing solely on the potential culprit.

What I did was to alternate between killing (using Advanced Task Killer) and not killing the app (but making sure that it was loaded by looking in Advanced Task Killer) every evening and then also loading and resetting NetMeter.
In the morning I would check what the data use had been.

After having done this 6 days in row, the verdict was clear: The app I had found was definitely the one that had brought my daily base-use from 5 to 15 Megabytes of data. On the mornings where I had killed the app in the evening data use had been less that 1 Megabyte, while on the other mornings data use was in the 10-20 Megabyte range.

What happens next of course is that I will contact the developers to ask them to do something about the problem. And in the meantime, waiting for a better release, I will kill the app every evening.
Make no mistake: Calorie counter is a great app. It just has a problem that needs fixing.

I wish there was an app for measuring exactly which apps are using how much bandwidth. But until someone invents one, I am afraid that my method or one like it is all that you have got when facing a problem like the one I had.

Posted by Jens Bruntt At 19:35:33 Location Skanderborg | Permalink | Comments (2)

Category Android
I have just tried out DoubleTwist, and it is great !

It synchronizes my iTunes content to my Motorola Milestone (a.k.a. Droid) including converting file formats to something readble on the Android.

Basically it is an application that runs on your PC. It reads your iTunes configuration. Then, when you plug in your Android, it lets you pick which iTunes playlists you want synchronized to the device.
The DoubleTwist application includes an option for picking Podcasts to synchronize to the device, including Video podcasts.

I had tried DoubleTwist out a month ago, but I discarded it because it did not work with iTunes if the music was located on mapped File shares. But now it works with mapped drives. So, DoubleTwist stays installed.

Posted by Jens Bruntt At 13:20:30 Location Skanderborg | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Android
I have just released an app for the Android devices. It's free. What it does is allow you to quickly save Stuff that is on your mind as small Notes on the Android device. The Stuff is saved locally.
When you are ready, you can click a button that will save those Notes to your Lotus Notes ToDo list in your email database, where they will show up as Uncategorized ToDo's in in your regular ToDo views. It is good for quickly collecting Stuff (as known to Getting Things Done followers). If you are working in the Getting Things Done way, you would label this app as one of your Buckets.
The app is available free of charge from the Android market.
The app works just fine with the eProductivity GTD template: Notes saved from BrainDump will show up in your Actions list as an Action without a Context. There is a setting in the eP options that, when enabled, will prompt you to give such Actions a context.
I have done a quick demo of the app. Have a look:

Posted by Jens Bruntt At 09:03:37 Location Skanderborg | Permalink | Comments (5)

Category Android Dansk
Der er mange der venter på opgraderingen til version 2.0.1 af Android på deres Mototola Milestone (som hedder Droid i USA - hvor de har fået opgraderingen).
Der er masser af diskussion på nettet om det. Hvorfor har vi ikke fået opgraderingen endnu, i har lovet at den kommer i januar osv osv. F.eks. her på Motorola Europes Facebookside (tilgængelig uden login).

Det er nogenlunde sådan det skal se ud når opdateringen ligger klar. Så får man tilbudet om at installere... og det er jo ret oplagt at vi her siger ja tak. Man opgraderer ved at gøre følgende: Menu -> Settings -> About phone -> System updates. Man får en advarsel om at det kan koste penge (data-trafik), hvorefter telefonen checker efter opgraderingen. I lang tid har min Milestone svaret "Unable to connect". Det betyder at den slet ikke kan finde den server der skal levere opdateringen.

Men her til morgen svarede den at "Your system is currently up to date". Det opfatter jeg som positivt. Det betyder at serveren rent faktisk findes. Det er jo de indledende skridt inden man kan få opgraderingen.
Det er rimeligt sikkert også svar på det spørgsmål jeg længe har haft: Kan jeg overhovedet få en opgradering over nettet når jeg sidder i Danmark med en telefon der er sendt fra Expansys som har sendt den fra et sted i Frankrig. Når serveren kan ses fra min enhed så vil jeg bestemt mene at jeg får opdateringen når den er lagt ud. Jeg vil tro, at jeg får den sammen med de engelske (UK) opdateringen. Expansys er så vidt jeg ved engelsk.

Det skal siges, at hvis jeg igen trykker på System updates, så kan den finde på at svare "Unable to connect". Jeg regner med at det handler om at serveren er for længe om at svare, fordi der er så utroligt mange enheder der prøver at hente deres opdatering.

Hvis du ikke har fri data på dit mobil-abonnement så skal du foretage denne opgradering mens du er  på WiFi. Jeg mener, at opdateringen "vejer" omkring 300 Mbytes.

Det der burde være adresseret i 2.0.1 udgaven er (mit uddrag af listen):
- Mere stabilitet.
- Længere batteri-levetid.
- Kamaraets autofocus er blevet forbedret, og ventetid mellem klik er forbedret.
- tre deltagere på linien.
- Bedre lyd på modtagne opkald.
- Når man lukker en applikation der bruger gps så forsvinder gps-ikonet i statuslinien (som den skal)
Kilde: Motorola DROID Android 2.0.1 update is on a roll.

Posted by Jens Bruntt At 10:25:51 Location Skanderborg | Permalink | Comments (2)

Category Android Danish

Jeg har lige afprøvet en app til Android. Den hedder My Tracks. Prøv at se dette skærmdump fra Google Maps. Det er et kort over en cykeltur jeg kørte fra min tandlæge og hjem her til morgen (nul huller iøvrigt). Og det kort blev lavet automatisk ved hjælp af en app til min Android telefon. Denne app hedder så My Tracks. Man starter My Tracks op, siger at den skal begynde at optage, og når man så er ankommet i den anden ende af ruten så vælger man at den skal stoppe, og så kan man klikke på en knap som gør at ruten bliver til et nyt kort i "my maps" på Google maps. Og den har så beregnet alt muligt smart omkring hastighed og afstand. Jeg synes at det er cool. Du kan se mit kort "live" her på Google maps: skb og hjem gennem skov.

Posted by Jens Bruntt At 09:39:08 Location Skanderborg | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Android
At the LotusPhere 2010 General Opening Session, there was of course lots of new stuff being announced. One of those things was how Lotus was expanding the Lotus Traveler products.
Lotus Traveler is a Lotus Domino server component that enables mobile devices to synchronize PIM (email, calendar, contacts and to-do) with the user's data on the Domino server.
Right now this feature is available on the Apple iPhone, Nokia Symbian S60 and on Windows Mobile devices. The exact set of features available on the different devices is not 100% the same. For instance there has not been an option for synchronizin todos to the iPhone.

Here is what I noted on new features for Traveler: The iPhone gets a new client called the Lotus Notes Traveler Companion which enables the user to read encrypted email. The Android line of devices gets official support through a new client built for Android version 2.0 and 2.1. That's just great to hear. I have just recently acquired the Motorola Milestone and I will be looking forward to getting a better client for synchronizing my PIM. I found a screen dump from an Android device showing a Lotus Traveler icon: IBM Lotus to Deliver collaboration software to Android devices and Nokia Symbian smartphones. An interesting bit here is the second icon from the right: "Sametime". A Sametime client has not been announced for Android.... yet The Traveler server addon for Domino will be available on the Linux platform, which is great news to me. I will be able to kill off that extra Domino server I had to get installed in our server environment because it used to be Windows only. Ed Brill has more information here: Lotusphere 2010: Lotus Notes Traveler in 2010.

Posted by Jens Bruntt At 11:50:55 Location Skanderborg | Permalink | Comments (2)

Category Android Getting Things Done
For the last week I have been working on a personal project. I am coding a native Android application.
The application is going to be able to quickly collect reminders, to-dos, things you think about. Those things that in the Getting Things Done terminology are labelled "Stuff". In the GTD way of thinking, it is very very important to move "Stuff" from your brain and on to some permanent storage: paper, an electronic document or whatever.

My app will be able to collect Stuff and when it is convenient for you it can save that data from the device and into your Lotus Notes todo-list as a very very simple Lotus Notes Task document.

What happens next, after your Stuff has been saved to Notes is going to be all-Notes client. I am using the eProductivity template, and when I open up my eP-enabled mail box it prompts me when it detects the kind of Stuff that my ToDoManager has saved to my mail database, asking me if I want to do something with them - get them organized in to proper GTD Actions for instance.

This is a personal journey at the moment. I am building up both Java and Android skills as I go.

At the moment my prototype looks like this:


I can add notes on the first Tab. You can see that I am writing one in the screen dump above.

On the second tab I can see what notes I have saved locally.
The notes are saved in a local SQlite database.
And that's it. No saving to the Lotus Notes mail database yet.


I am in the process of getting to the point where I can save to Notes using http POST. I have just successfully seen my app log on to a Domino server using the Multi Server Single Signon LtpaToken.

This is going to be so good

Lots of wins for me personally here:

• I am solving a real need that I have in my GTD implementation.
• I learn more Java.
• What I learn here can possibly be used at work. Convergens' standard Doc Management solution - now on Android!
• I have more cool stuff to show to my iPhone-using neighbours.
• My daughter Frederikke (aged 11) thinks I am cool (and she wants an Android too).
  

If you need to get your work life organized I can recommend having a look at eProductivity. They are represented at LotusPhere 2010 if you happen to be there. I know that Eric Mack is doing a presentation.

Posted by Jens Bruntt At 08:58:19 Location Skanderborg | Permalink | Comments (3)

Category Android
I have just recently had a look at programming with the Android SDK. And I have seen a demo of a project using Domino xPages and the Webkit facilities of the iPhone and Android devices. Mark Hughes has posted a handful of blog entries about xPages and WebKit, for instance Xpages: Free X-Page iPhone App Template.

Webkit is a rendering engine that web browsers can incorporate. And a lot of browser do use Webkit. The iPhone browser and the standard Android browser are both Webkit based. The Nokia S60 devices have a Webkit-based browser.

When developing for Android or the iPhone and what you are doing is actually creating a mobile version of a Notes/Domino application, I have had a few thoughts about pros and cons with going for a Webkit solution instead of developing a native application for the device using it's SDK.

Pros:
- If you want an app to integrate with a Domino application, you have Xpages. Rapid Application Development.
- You can have the same app work on both iPhone and Android.

Cons:
- You need to be online.

But then again.... If you need it to integrate with a Domino application, you would probably prefer to be online anyway even if you created the application using the Android SDK - or the iPhone SDK. Creating a native iPhone or Android application that has an offline capability that is near Lotus-Notes' offline quality (encryption) using an SDK is IMHO quite a task. A lot bigger than creating an xPages user interface for an existing Notes/Domino application.

Posted by Jens Bruntt At 08:56:14 Location Train | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category Danish Android

Min nye Motorola Milestone ankom i går. Her er de første noter om hvordan det er gået med den. Overskriften er: Helt fint. 3G netværk Jeg bruger TDC som mobiloperatør. Og jeg har et abonnement der tillader 3G netværkstrafik. Men jeg havde til en start ikke netværksforbindelse over 3G. Kuren var: Home->Settings->Wireless & Networks->Mobile Networks->Access Point Names->Tryk på settings Jeg udfyldte formularen med disse oplysninger:

Name: Tdc internet
APN: internet
Ikke mere. Jeg forlod formularen ved at trykke på back og kunne nu se at der stod Tdc internet i listen over apn.
Herefter kom der et H-symbol og nogen gange et 3G-symbol til venstre for det lille trappe-symbol der viser mobilnetværks-forbindelsen.

Og så er jeg iøvrigt lige skiftet til Telenor som teleselskab. Her hedder APN også "internet".

Installation af apps
Jeg tager fat i Market for at installere lidt forskelligt. Især selvfølgelig TouchDown som jeg tidligere har set køre godt med HTC Hero.
ToucDown findes nu i en version til Android version 2. Virker fint.
Havde lidt knas med kontakterne. Jeg går ind i TouchDowns liste med kontakter og trykker settings og beder om at kopiere til telefonen. Og det gør den.
Så går jeg til telefonens kontaktliste, men den viser kun en kontakt fra gmail.
Trykker settings. Her kan jeg konfigurere at den også skal vise TouchDown-kontakter. Alt OK.

Hardwaretastatur til at skrive med
Udemærket. Klart hurtigere end softwaretastaturet.
Danske tegn: Ja! Som forventet faktisk. Der er ikke en tast med f.eks. et ø på, men holder man o-tasten nede så kommer der en popup med forskellige tegn der er i famile med o frem, klik på skærmen og så har jeg et ø.

Diverse tests
GPS og Google maps. Virker.
GeoBeagle. Virker.

Posted by Jens Bruntt At 11:09:25 Location Skanderborg | Permalink | Comments (2)

Category Android

I just placed an order for the Motorola Milestone - aka Droid outside Europe. This is a computer that is also a mobile phone, not a Mobile that can do some web surfing. I have had the pleasure of borrowing a HTC Hero for a couple of weeks and there was no doubt that the Android-based devices are very interesting. Of course I have considered going for the iPhone 3GS, but it just does not match my profile. I want a device that I will be able to have a lot of control over. It's a bit like the Linux/Windows/Mac considerations when choosing a laptop. With Mac or Windows there is a lot of order and a set look and feel to things. But there is a price to that - you have less options when customizing the experience, you have to pay for a lot of the applications you install.

When going for Linux, things are a bit more messy, the look and feel is not as rounded and everything does not always work as expected. Same thing with Android - the freedom to set things up like you want them.
I have tested PIM synchronization between Android and Lotus Traveler, and it works fine with the TouchDown app. PIM synchronization was a must.
I have chosen the Motorola Milestone because it looks to me like it is the Android device that at this moment has come the longest way. It's fast, it has a physical keyboard, it runs the most current version of Android and it has a good solid, industrial feel to it.

Posted by Jens Bruntt At 09:18:02 Location Skanderborg | Permalink | Comments (7)

Category Android
I need a phone that can run apps.
Until today I thought that what i needed was an iPhone.
Now I will consider an Android-based device instead.
And what made me change my mind?

It looks like I will be able to have Lotus Traveler-based synchronisation between an Android device and my Domino email.

I stumubled upon Jake Howlett having created his own app on his HTC Hero (which runs Android as its OS): My Hero To The Rescue. And that is a great thing about Android - it looks a lot more open to me. I would be able to create my own Java Apps.
I had a look at how to create my own apps for the iPhone. It looks like I would need C programming skills. Forget it.

I also need an app for Geocaching. There are apps for both the iPhone and Android. A quick Google-based research shows this: GeoBeagle – Geocaching Android Style.

But I am addicted to the Lotus Traveler synchronisation. I have it on my Nokia E65 (running the Symbian OS), and it just works. No glitches.
well, Android is not on the list of currently supported device OSes for Lotus Traveler, and that is the reason I haven't really looked very much into what the Andoid has on offer. I did some more research, and look what I found:

A product called TouchDown from a company called Nitrodesk. List price is currently USD 9.99. And the feature-list is long.
And in a pdf brochure for TouchDown I found mention of Lotus Traveler 8.5.1:
Supports multiple servers

• Exchange 2003/2007/2010
• Kerio
• Zimbra
• Lotus Notes Traveler 8.5.1 (Beta)

It's beta, yes. But it is certainly interesting.

Posted by Jens Bruntt At 16:03:49 Location Skanderborg | Permalink | Comments (8)