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Power in the Cloud

With major service providers taking their users towards “the clouds”, it appears that the leaders in the space will continue to primarily advance products and services for mobile devices such as superphones and tablets where storage and processing are limited. Recent advances from Apple and Amazon have been hitting headlines however Google in [...]

Enterprise Data Decryption – Android Stands Alone

With the latest circumvention of Apple’s iOS hardware encryption, there are not many options left for users interested in enterprise grade security on a mobile platform. Not surprisingly the Google Andoird OS is the only market leading superphone to not appear on the feature list of tools used by the military and policy [...]

Fixing Google Contacts on Ubuntu 11.04

April 16th Update: I've added some bug reports related to Evolution contacts at the bottom of the post May 13th Update: Still no Google Contacts (except for small addressbooks) on 11.04 More here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evolution-data-server/+bug/755043

Last week the Ubuntu Beta 1 was released. The first beta is typically when I jump on board. This [...]

LiON Calibration in Nexus One Design

April 7th, 2011:Added some useful links and clarified that LiON full discharge is not good for LiON battery life.

June 30th, 2011: Added a good link with similar observations from the N1 Cyanogen Forums.

Every post I have read on Nexus One battery maintenance leaves out one important step, that I believe is an [...]

Daylight Savings still breaking Canadian Mobile Networks?

I awoke very surprised Sunday morning to see my mobile phone, synced to network time, was off by an hour. It was not my fancy new Cyanogenmod ROM either. I was flabbergasted to discover Rogers Communications’ NTP servers on their mobile network were broadcasting an unadjusted GMT-5 signal to my phone. A quick [...]

Web server operating system choice

Over the past two weeks there has been a lot of hype about the security consulting firm HBGary and the products and services it has offered to both public entities and the private enterprise. In my own opinion, two articles posted as featured stories on arstechnica.com were particularly informative on the events that transpired [...]

Turning a Negative into a Positive

The social and political instability in Egypt has been headline news in the past week. I find the discussion of the Internet connectivity that is a core issue to be fascinating, however I do not pretend to have good perspective on everything that is going on. My commentary on the negative aspects is going to [...]

Using GMail to access websites (aka Federation)

As of right now, you can use your Google, Facebook, and Yahoo accounts (or any other OpenID provider account) to post comments on ianbmacdonald.com. Most people will actually prefer using their day-to-day Google or Facebook credentials as it no longer requires remembering a new password, entering an email address or clicking on an [...]

Updated: GUI Install Android 2.2 Froyo on ERE54B N1 from AT&T or Rogers

You are likely here because you are growing impatient for a slow, unpredictable OTA update to your phone. Or, even more likely based on this post’s tags, you are already unlocked and rooted, possibly running CyanogenMod and want to experiment with Froyo.

Nandroid Backup before doing anything.

Update: After rolling back to Cyan [...]

Pre-Android 2.2 Nexus One Updates

There is a growing compendium of Nexus One knowledge out there, to the point where it was a bit confusing as to which instructions were the latest and greatest when it comes to upgrading the Nexus One phone. I call this an upgrade, although not one supported directly by Google, but obviously fully supported [...]