Slacy’s Blog

One of the things that impressed me most about the Palm Pre (and WebOS) are the built in sound effects and system sounds.  The “I’ve just been plugged in” sound (alert.mp3, below) is especially great.

So, when I saw that a WebOS root image had been leaked, I thought it would be great to download it and extract all the sound files so I could use them on my Android Nexus One as ringtones or notification sounds.   It was a pretty straightforward process, although the files were nested in several containers (a jar containing a tar containing a tar).  Many of the files were in PCM or WAV format, and for your convenience, I’ve converted them all to high-bitrate mp3 files.  This includes the default ringtone, which has gotten a bunch of press recently, that’s available as Pre.mp3, below, as well as all the system “alert” sounds like the ones I mentioned above.  They’re great.

Here’s the complete list of files:

Anticipation.mp3
Discreet.mp3
Dulcimer.mp3
Flurry.mp3
Guitar.mp3
Older Phone.mp3
Pre.mp3
Rain Dance.mp3
Scamper.mp3
Triangle.mp3
alert.mp3
alert_buzz.mp3
appclose.mp3
back_01.mp3
browser_01.mp3
card_01.mp3
card_02.mp3
card_03.mp3
card_04.mp3
card_05.mp3
default_425hz.mp3
delete_01.mp3
discardingapp_01.mp3
down2.mp3
dtmf_0.mp3
dtmf_1.mp3
dtmf_2.mp3
dtmf_3.mp3
dtmf_4.mp3
dtmf_5.mp3
dtmf_6.mp3
dtmf_7.mp3
dtmf_8.mp3
dtmf_9.mp3
dtmf_asterisk.mp3
dtmf_pound.mp3
error_01.mp3
error_02.mp3
error_03.mp3
focusing.mp3
launch_01.mp3
launch_02.mp3
launch_03.mp3
notification.mp3
notification_buzz.mp3
pagebacwards.mp3
pageforward_01.mp3
phone.mp3
ringtone.mp3
ringtone_buzz.mp3
shuffle_02.mp3
shuffle_03.mp3
shuffle_04.mp3
shuffle_05.mp3
shuffle_06.mp3
shuffle_07.mp3
shuffle_08.mp3
shuffling_01.mp3
shutter.mp3
switchingapps_01.mp3
switchingapps_02.mp3
switchingapps_03.mp3
tones_3beeps_otasp_done.mp3
unassigned.mp3
up2.mp3

It’s easy to install lots of great Android applications that end up eating up all your standby battery power refreshing.

Big culprits are the FaceBook application, and any Twitter clients that you may be using.  When you install them, they generally come with a very aggressive and frequent update interval.  These updates will really shorten your phone battery life.

Personally, I prefer to just manually update these messages, and all these applications usually include a “Refresh” option to manually refresh their data.

So, disable those automatic FaceBook notifications (or set them to a very long amount, like 8 hours), and use the “Refresh” menu option instead!

I really like knowing when I get a new e-mail or calendar entry on my phone, but I get annoyed when my phone makes too much noise with notifications.

My preferred setup is to enable notifications, but to set the notification ringtone to “silent” for most things.

You can set the default notification ringtone to “Silent” if you want to disable all notification sounds.

1. Press Home
2. Press Menu
3. Select “Settings”
4. Select “Sound & Display”
5. Select “Notification Ringtone”
6. Choose “Silent” (the first item in the list)

If you want sounds for some notifications, but not others, then you’ll have to do this on a per-application basis.  For example, if you want everything to be silent except for GMail, then do the above to set your default ringtone to silent, then use GMail’s settings to override the notification ringtone to something else:

1. Run GMail
2. Press Menu
3. Select “Settings”
4. Select “Select Ringtone”
5. Choose the ringtone you like

You can follow a very similar procedure for SMS, Calendar, GMail, FaceBook, and any other applications that generate notifications.

One problem you might find if you send all your e-mail to your phone is that you’re constantly getting the “new e-mail” notification, and that means it becomes sort of useless, and you’ll begin to ignore your inbox (again).

The best solution to this is to create a set of filters for your e-mail, and apply labels to messages you don’t want to receive notifications for.  What other e-mail programs call “Folders”, are referred to as “Labels” in GMail.  (Although, unlike folders, one message can have multiple Labels)

One other thing you’ll need to remember is that GMail uses the term “Archive” to mean “Remove from your inbox”.  Archived messages are only visible through the Web UI and searches.  Think of it like “I’m done reading this but I don’t want to delete it.”

There’s a fairly easy way to set up Filters & Labels built into GMail:

1. Go to your GMail Inbox
2. Select a bunch of related messages (from a mailing list, of a given topic, etc.) that you’d rather not receive notifications for on your phone.
3. Click on “More Actions” in the top bar of buttons, and pull down to “Filter messages like these”
4. Make sure that the list of matching messages looks correct to you and click “Next Step”
5. Select the “Skip the Inbox” and “Apply the label” checkboxes.  Use the dropdown to create a new label if you’d like.
6. Click Create Filter

Done!  Now, all messages that are of the type you selected will skip the inbox (be automatically Archived) and will also get the label you selected.

By default, the GMail application on your phone only sync’s your Inbox, but you can always view other labels on your phone, and you can even set up syncing for those labels as well.   You can view messages with any label by pressing Menu from inside the GMail application, then selecting “View Labels”

To set which labels are sync’d to the phoneOn your Android, run the GMail application, and…

1. Press Menu
2. Select “Settings”
3. Select “Labels”
4. Find the labels you want and set the sync durations for those labels.

If you find that your phone often says “Lodaing…” when viewing your Inbox, then you need to sync more days of your Inbox.

A lot of the UI on Android is sort of hidden, but it’s really powerful.  Here’s how to share photos to FaceBook or Picasa.

1. Use the camera to take a photo.
2. After taking the photo, a small version of it will appear in the upper right corner, tap on that.
3. You should have a few options appear, one of which is “Share”.  Tap on that.
4. Select how you want to share the photo, each of which will have it’s own UI for sharing.  I like FaceBook.
5. Add a caption in FaceBook and click “Upload”
6. Done!

A very similar process works for sharing videos onto YouTube as well!

You can download all the Android Ringtones in their original .ogg format here.

I’ve been curiously watching the developments (or lack thereof) surrounding Adobe and the use of Flash on mobile platforms like the iPhone and Android handsets. Here’s my summarization of the situation as it stands today:

• No browser (mobile or otherwise) has Flash built in.  All browsers require a “plugin” provided by Adobe to play back Flash content.
• Mobile browsers are behind the times when it comes to plugin support, but even though, Adobe isn’t providing mobile phone manufacturers any sort of mobile flash experience. (FlashLight excepted, but this isn’t on major mobile platforms)
• Adobe got the short end of the stick when it comes to Flash.  Their playback platform powers the worlds largest sites (youtube.com) but they don’t see a dime of revenue from it’s popularity, because most users consume flash content but don’t produce it, and flash producers are who Adobe has previously marketed their products to.
• In all likelihood, Adobe wants to be paid for porting Flash to platforms like the iPhone and Android.  I don’t think that either Apple or Google would have any part in paying Adobe for such a “right” to use flash.  As proof of this, I present the YouTube non-flash applications on iPhone and Android, which offer a rich non-flash experience that could easily make it’s way back to the desktop browser.

Assuming that Adobe stands fast, and Flash never becomes an integrated part of the mobile browser platform, and, as the mobile platform base grows, sites that rely on Flash for their user interface will be locking out the mobile browsing platform.  So, these sites will realize that they would reach a larger audience if they offered a non-flash mobile-friendly experience.  Thus, they’ll port their flash user interface to AJAX, which works on both desktop and mobile browsers.   Flash usage will begin to decline.  As Adobe gets more anxious to squeeze the dollars from Flash, then the free mobile-supported alternatives will arise.  Greater use of SVG graphics, more AJAX, and possibly even some open-source flash-like technology that will be free and usable for mobile browser developers.

Did I mention HTML5’s <video> element?

Did I mention ViXimo?  This is just the beginning of mobile-enabled flash alternatives, and proof that the above is coming true already.

The Android SDK has been released. Why isn’t anyone talking about it?

Update: Looks like everyone just took a little while to start talking about the $10M Android developer challenge