Phone space used by Pocket

I started using Pocket for offline reading on my phone when Instapaper stopped being useful enough. I used to delete articles when I was done, just because the alternative was archiving, and I just didn't see the need for an archive of my read articles. Also, I assumed that Pocket was going to keep that archive to make a profile and sell my data. I still assume they're doing that, but I started using the archive for one very simple reason: it was faster. Archiving an item is one click, deleting is two, because every delete has an "are you sure?" confirmation question. So my archive started building up. Now I'll have to start deleting articles again because, it seems, Pocket stores the archive on my phone, taking up extra space. I currently have 2.2GB - that's 20% of my phone's available storage - taken up with Pocket's cache of article images from Cracked.com alone. There's more than 3GB total, and a good chunk of that will be the archive (assuming my theory is correct). The archive has to go, which should release some space. I'm not sure how much. If I want to release the maximum amount of space that I can, right away, I need to find, read and remove any articles that contain animated GIFs. They are by far the biggest images stored by Pocket which, unfortunately, can't display animated GIFs anyway. Starting this week, I will be aiming to destroy my Pocket archive, because that will save space on my phone and prevent it from being used as a marketing tool against me.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I used an app called DiskUsage to figure this out.
PPS - It works pretty well.

The grammar of mobile app interoperation

I have to think in Yoda grammar when navigating on my phone. "person, navigate to", not "navigate to person". It's a weird adjustment I've had to make, but I know where it's come from. It's just the way the software handles app interoperation. If you have data of a particular type - say, an address - then a contextual action on that data can be handled by any installed app that accepts it. It's pretty flexible, and it means you don't need every app to have browsers for data that the others hold. It just means a different way of thinking.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'll get used to it.
PPS - Eventually.

Android app permissions

One thing I always thought would make a brilliant addition to Android is individual app permissions. Some apps I don't want to be able to use 3G data at all. Some that are just greedy with their permissions need to be put in their place. All of this is in Android version 4.3, and I intend to make the most of it, if my phone ever gets to update to that version.

Now, what are the potential side-effects? Well, legitimate app makers will want to explain why they need certain permissions, but will need to write their apps to deal with the situation if they are running without them. Less scrupulous app makers will actively ensure their apps don't work at all unless all of their sleazy permissions are enabled. Don't expect to disable the ability of the Facebook app to read your contacts and messages and still have it work. They don't want to lose that permission and the juicy, juicy data that makes their money in the process, so the app will simply refuse to operate if those permissions are denied.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Probably.
PPS - It depends how many people actually try to turn the permissions off and how many kick up a stink about it.

Google Keep dictation

Google Keep has the option to dictate a note, which is very handy when you can't type or when you just want to get an idea down quickly. I use it often. The thing is, it can't take dictation without a network connection. In that situation, why not just record the audio? If you need it turned to text, save up the audio and process it later. Would that be so bad?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - No. It would not.
PPS - Other than that, I find the dictation works fairly well.

Mobile operating systems need firewalls

We're getting to that point now where phone operating systems need to be written with firewalls built in. There will be apps we don't trust to read our contact details, but we want for other purposes. There will be some games that want to spy on us as their business model, and it is our right not to be spied on if we do not wish it. Instead of accepting or rejecting the whole collection of an app's permissions based solely on what the developer asked for, we need granular control to say yes, you may modify my USB storage contents, but no, you may not access the internet at all.

This will change a lot of things. For one, it will no longer be possible for app developers to just slap a banner ad control on their free app, request full internet access and rake in the fractions of cents for click-through commissions. We may have to pay for apps or the app stores will have to offer other incentives to developers just to encourage app development.

The banner ad controls are the main reason this seems like a problem at all to me. Every time I install a free app, it seems to request full internet access, just to show ads. I think the Android SDK should include an ad banner control built in, with its own specific permission, different to the "full internet access" permission. That way, if an app developer is after ad revenue, they can use the built-in ad control and their users can rest assured that requesting permissions for internet access is only done for ads in this case.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It would also make Google the primary ad provider on the platform.
PPS - And I'm sure that's something they'd like very much, assuming it's not already true somehow.

Android note-taking programs and subscriptions

Why are all notepad apps on Android sold as a monthly subscription service? I understand that they provide a website to access notes, and that running such a service is not free, but what if my notes synchronised to and from my phone via Dropbox and were accessible by a desktop program? Then there would be no ongoing costs for providing the online service and no need for monthly subscriptions. That would appeal to me as a consumer.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I already have my notes synchronising via Dropbox.
PPS - But those are only the ones I write on my desktop computers.

Keymonk

I've thought for some time that we are not really done with touch-screen text input yet. The QWERTY keyboard and its associated skills don't necessarily translate very well into the touch-screen era. Swype and its copycats do fairly well at speeding up text input, but it's still not as fast as touch typing.

This may be where double-swipe keyboards help. I've started to use one, called Keymonk, and for a while it felt very awkward, but now I'm getting used to it, and I think this might be the break I've been looking for. Initially I had some trouble with short words and punctuation, but those are common problems with any word-predicting soft keyboard. The one big difficulty I have with it is when my thumbs collide in the middle of the screen. I feel as if I haven't planned well enough, but I shouldn't need to plan how I'm going to type a word. I guess I'll get better more practice.

Check out this video of someone smashing the world record for the fastest SMS:
This is approaching physical keyboard touch typing speeds, which is what makes me think it might be the missing secret sauce. Kudos to Keymonk for a great app!

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I haven't tried yet on our Android tablet, but I know Keymonk can handle more than two-finger swipe typing.
PPS - I wonder whether eight-finger swiping is hard to learn and confusing for the keyboard.

Why Quickflix is not on Android (maybe)

If the Quickflix Android app really worked properly, it would be on the Google Play Store. Why is it only available on certain Samsung Android devices? A few speculative explanations. Maybe Samsung has guaranteed that their devices have impenetrable DRM that will absolutely prevent anyone from seeing Quickflix movies streamed when they're not supposed to, or saving or intercepting them for later. Or perhaps Samsung signed some kind of exclusivity deal with Quickflix (which sounds unlikely - it's not really in Quickflix's best interests to limit their availability). Or it's a matter of device compatibility. That also sounds unlikely, especially since YouTube has a video streaming app that works just fine on every Android device I've ever held. So the only plausible explanation is DRM, but if the Samsung/Quickflix DRM actually worked the way it should, the app could safely go on the Play Store, secure in the knowledge that their DRM was protecting their content exactly as designed.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - So someone, somewhere, is being inconsistent.
PPS - It's just not clear who or how.

AirDroid review

I like the AirDroid app because it lets me use my computer to send and receive texts from my phone, and the physical keyboard is much faster and easier to use. But it's still a bit limited. I have to run it on my phone, log into a website locally, and use the custom pseudo-windows interface to accomplish that task. And if my phone loses WiFi connection at any point, I have to log in again.

As for the rest of AirDroid, not much else of it is useful beyond the clipboard access and file management. If you don't have a cable with you, it could be useful for copying files between a computer and your phone, and since it runs in any web browser, you don't need to install anything on the computer itself.

In all, it's a solid app, but the interface makes it look like it does more useful things than you will probably use it for.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - One small annoyance is that using a secure connection is not the default.
PPS - It really should be.

Astrid app review

I've been using Astrid for my action lists on my phone and on their website for a little while now, and it's mostly good, but there are a couple of annoyances. Some are to do with the associated website.

For starters, the "forums" link on the website is broken. Either there are no forums any more, or they no longer live at "feedback.astrid.com". Whatever the case, I can't leave feedback there for the developers to see, so I'll have to do it here and hope for the best.

Next comes inconsistent handling of the Enter key. When you're adding a task on the website, if you hit Enter, it adds the task. Simple. If you're adding a comment to a task and hit Enter, it adds a new line. And you can't just compromise and get used to hitting Tab then Enter to go to the submit button, because Tab goes to different places from those two boxes. Not big, but I notice it every couple of days and it starts to grate.

A feature I wish Astrid had is projects or sequences of actions. You can have lists, and I do, and actions can belong to lots of lists, but a list is not a project where one action follows another in a logical sequence, only appearing one at a time. I would appreciate that.

Lastly and perhaps most seriously, the synchronisation to and from the phone frequently un-deletes and un-completes actions. If I mark a task as complete on the website, then open Astrid on my phone, the synchronisation (when it eventually finishes) is quite likely to pick up that task and un-complete it, adding it back to the list. I don't know why that is, but it's quite annoying. I frequently have to check my lists one by one just to make sure tasks have not started re-appearing after I completed them. The saving grace with this one is that Astrid displays a log of recent activity that I can visually scan for the prefix "un-" to see what has gone wrong.

In all, though, I do quite like Astrid. It's better than the text files I was trying to use before, it stays in sync automatically (which is something I demand of every program since I started using it) and the visual style is easy to use and kind of fun. I'm going to keep using it for now, but I'm hoping that some of these bugs, problems and desired features can be fixed or added in the near future.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's always a pain to change to a new app.
PPS - Data migration in any form is a pain.

UPDATE: I emailed Astrid support about my un-completion/un-deleting issue, and they provided this response:

This is usually the case in a bad sync. Sometimes the logged in data doesn't get sent to the phone properly.

When this happes, usually logging out and logging in will fix the issue.

Settings -> Sync & Backup -> Astrid.com -> Log Out
Then, "Synchronize Now"

If it's still having trouble, this page will usually provide an error report
as to why sync failed.

For me, that seems to have solved the problem.

Audio time shrinking

I listen to a fair few podcasts on the train, and most of them are either Escape Pod or PodCastle stories (which are awesome, by the way - you should definitely listen to them if you like science fiction or fantasy). Recently, a lot of the PodCastle episodes have been about an hour long, which is just a tiny bit too long for my train trip. I do have a few options open to me for this situation: I can listen to a bit one day and a bit the next, or listen during lunchtime and finish on the way home. That's awkward, though, because Google Play Music doesn't remember where you left off in a long file if you pause and leave the app. Usually what I do is load the file in another app called XSpeedPlayer that lets me tempo-shift without changing the pitch. I can then get through an hour of podcast in 48 minutes (125% normal speed), which is just right.

The problem is that the app isn't quite perfect, or my phone is not powerful enough. Either way, the poor thing heats up in my jacket pocket and, usually, gets so stressed and hungry for battery power that my phone becomes unresponsive. It can also sometimes change my phone wallpaper for some reason. And every now and then while playing, it does this weird thing where it swaps 2 consecutive seconds of audio. It's pretty disorienting.

So now I'm trying something new. I'm using Audacity on my PC to pre-shorten the files to 45 minutes exactly, and copy that to my phone instead. As far as the phone knows, then, I have an ordinary MP3 podcast that's exactly 45 minutes long, and I can use the normal, built-in audio player to listen to it. All the compressing hard work has been done already, so the phone doesn't get stressed at all.

It works pretty well, but with very long podcasts and readers with accents, they can get too difficult to understand. There's a limit to how quickly my brain can process audio, and accented English or too much time compression can push past that limit. That's the one advantage XSpeedPlayer has over pre-shrinking on the computer: you can change speed while the file is playing, if it turns out to be too fast.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - But usually, when it's too fast, I can abandon it and just read.
PPS - My mobile entertainment options have never been so plentiful.

Bad ads on Inkpad

I have been using an app on my Android phone called Inkpad for taking notes. It's fairly simple and it allows me to sync my notes to a website to copy them elsewhere manually, which is just what I need. It's free, so it's supported by ads, which I don't have a problem with in theory, but the ads it tends to display are getting worse. It used to be that they were for scam "battery updates", trying to look like a real, albeit more alarming, phone alert. I learned to tune them out, even though they were designed to be annoying and eye-catching. Then lately one of the ads featured a shivering, obviously ill Android logo with the headline "You have (3) viruses!" It's still an ad, and it said so in small print, but if that's the kind of ad that the creator of Inkpad thinks is a good way to support his business, I might try some other note-taking apps to look for one that doesn't associate itself with such obvious scams.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Those two ads are the only ones I have ever seen Inkpad display.
PPS - It really does cast the app in a bad light.

MyTracks review

I use an app on my phone called MyTracks to keep track of my running. It records a GPS position regularly and, from that, determines speed, elevation and everything you need to know. It recently got an upgrade to its user interface, which is very welcome because it's much more intuitive now. The map, chart and stats views are shown as tabs rather than hidden navigation buttons, the list of past tracks is displayed first when you start up, and the Record button is clearly visible and immediately available rather than being hidden in a context menu like before. It also displays tabs at the top for the map, chart and stats, which were previously displayed in hard-to-find screens of their own. I'm very much in favour of the new UI.

That makes the other changes all the more unfortunate. I really liked the calculated statistic from the last version of the average moving speed, because my running routes often involve stopping at pedestrian crossings. That factor is not taken into account by the average overall speed nor the top speed, which are the two speed stats displayed by default in the app. To see average moving speed, you need to go into the settings and untick the box that is confusingly labelled "Time measurement". The other problem is that MyTracks now seems much more insistent on a really good GPS signal. In my pocket it took forty-five minutes to get a signal it considered good enough to actually use. I didn't notice, of course, because I was busy running, so most of my run went unrecorded that day. I have since found the GPS sensitivity setting which make things slightly better, but I needed to set it to 1000m sensitivity, far less than the default 200m, to get a signal right away. I also sometimes have to start recording, then stop immediately, then start again to get it to recognise the GPS. I don't know why.

So on the whole, I think it's a decent update. The new user interface is a fantastic improvement on the old one, but the hidden/confusing average moving speed setting plus the insistence on a much more precise GPS signal makes the app just a bit worse than before. If it showed average moving speed by default and handled the GPS a bit better, I'd have nothing but glowing praise for this app.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Tonight I tried a replay of my route on Google Earth.
PPS - That was pretty cool, actually.

Android update procedure oddity

Something is off about the Android app update process when there is only one update vs several. See if you can spot the difference.

When there is only one app to update:
1. Swipe down and select the update notification.
2. Select the name of the one app that is to be updated.
3. Select "Update".
4. Select "Accept and Install".

When there is more than one app to update:
1. Swipe down and select the update notification.
2. Select "Update All".

The first case is also what you must do if an app's requested permissions change.

I'm just surprised that the "Update All" option only appears for more than one update at a time. It would be just as easy to have a similar button for single app updates, and it would save me manually distinguishing between apps whose permissions have changed and individual apps that just happen to have an update now.

It's not that big a deal. I mean, it's two extra taps to update one app as opposed to many, which seems backwards, but it's still workable. But the habit I find myself in lately is to put off single updates until another one comes along to do at the same time. Because of those extra taps, it doesn't seem like it's worth installing updates when there's only one app to do.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - And this is from a guy who, for some reason, kind of enjoys updates.
PPS - I think it's just that I know a fully updated system is more secure.

Google Play Music Android app concerns

The Music app on my Android phone has recently updated to be Google Play Music, obviously as part of Google's rebranding of the Android Market as "Google Play" for selling movies, music, books and apps (or just movies, books and apps in Australia). The new look is fine, and it's much the same app, but what I don't like is the lack of control. Poking around the updated application I saw an old podcast that I had since deleted, so I went to delete it again. The app told me that this file had been "sideloaded", which is not a thing, as well as uploaded to Google Play Music, and only the "sideloaded" content would be deleted, if that was okay. I said "yes", mostly because I did really and truly want to delete it, but it got me worried for two reasons.

One, if I copy a podcast to my phone, will Google Play Music then use my very limited mobile data bandwidth to upload it to the server automatically? Two, where are all the settings and options? All I see when I select "Settings" from the menu are two options, one of which announces the app version and the other which lists the open source licenses associated with it. What I expected, at minimum, was an option to tell Google not to upload my files to any servers at all, and to only play music that I have already stored locally on my phone. I don't want any apps that decide for themselves to use my very tiny mobile data quota to copy huge files to servers at unspecified times, or to stream those files from the server instead of my local storage. I could use up my entire month's quota of data in four individual podcast episodes by accident without even knowing it if that happened.

It's probably in part because the Google Play Music store is not available in Australia that some of the features are disabled on my phone. Also, my searches for help online are hindered by the existence of a desktop Google Music app. And because the desktop app is only available in the USA right now, but the Android app is worldwide and intimately tied to the desktop and cloud services, we Android users outside the USA get a crippled app that does things we can't control. Maybe. It's still not entirely clear. I can't check the cloud services because they're not available in Australia, and I can't find any discussion specifically about the Android app.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - At least the website knows not to let me see the music side of things.
PPS - If only the Android app were as smart.

Android market eternal purchase history

There is no way to permanently remove or hide apps on the Android market, even if you don't want them any more and they were free. The system remembers that you "bought" them, even if you didn't have to pay, and you can get them again for no charge. Great for paid apps, but not so great for free rubbish you didn't like, or for apps that are not compatible with an upgraded/replaced device. My own history even includes one that is now obsolete, replaced by a paid version. Anything you ever installed on an Android device, even for a minute and even after you uninstalled it, will get the same prominence as something you use every day, at least as far as the market is concerned. There should be a way to make it forget.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Your purchase history doesn't need to be your app install history.
PPS - Especially for free apps.

Google closing in on itself

The funny thing about Google consolidating and promoting its own services is that it starts feeling like Google is shrinking. When Google was merely the search gateway to the web, it felt like it encompassed everything. Now that they are pushing and preferring their own services over others, it feels like Google is a shrinking corner of the web where if it isn't on Google, it doesn't exist. That's the problematic mindset the walled-garden services had back in the days before the proper internet took over.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - What made Google start thinking this was a good idea?
PPS - Maybe it was Android, at least in part.

Sending links between desktop and phone browsers

I've been looking for a while for an app, plugin or service that allows me to easily move browser tabs between my desktop and my phone, both ways. So far, to send a URL to my phone, I would convert it to a QR code via a Chrome app, then scan that code with my phone and open it that way. To send a URL back to my desktop, I'd just have to email the link to myself.

Lifehacker recently featured 2SendTab for Android that might be just the thing I need, allowing me to post and retrieve links on all of my devices in any direction. The only problem I have is that it involves yet another web app that requires yet another login account, and some days that alone is enough to turn me away.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If Chrome synchronised its tabs with Android, I might not even need this.
PPS - But I imagine that's a hassle in its own right.

Android app permissions

On Android, you're supposed to read and accept the permissions each app requests before you install it. There are several problems with this user requirement. The first and most obvious is permission fatigue. After installing several apps, you start ignoring that button. You don't read the requested permissions and you don't care. This is a human trait that does not go away, and will always be a problem.

The next problem is understanding those permissions. Even if you read them all, do you know what they mean? Are they specific enough to give you a real understanding of what they will do with your phone? Usually not. Also, even if you do read and understand them, they can be misleading. Ad-supported free apps will usually include a request for "Full internet access", in order to get new ads, and sometimes "Fine (GPS) location" too, to provide location-appropriate ads. That might be fine if it's just used for ads, but that combination of permissions can also mean "reports your exact location to anyone who's listening", and you definitely wouldn't agree to that.

Lastly, you can't accept or deny individual permissions on a per-app basis. If this app requests full internet access and you don't want that, too bad. Take it with the rest or leave it completely alone, there's no middle ground.

What's the solution? Well, we could have a set of acceptable default permissions that we are happy to grant and some that we will deny by default so that we don't get nearly as many notifications about it. We also need a separate ad service on the phone so that we can see if a particular app wants internet access to display ads or phone home with private data. That "full internet access" permission needs to be more granular for ad-supported apps. Lastly, we do need the ability to grant or deny individual permissions for individual apps, so that we can still install them without having to take it all as one whole package. That will not be a feature of any official version of Android, because app makers need ads to keep their apps free.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - At best, you'd get an ad service you can't turn off.
PPS - And that still means you don't completely own your phone.

Notifications in software

I think a modern operating system needs to include a standard notifications service that any program can link into. I think that's one of the subtle things Android (and other phone operating systems, in their own way) have done right. There is a separate area at the top of the screen (while in the main launcher) that is only ever used for notifications. They do not pop up over anything else, they never need to steal space from anywhere, and you always know where to look for them. Compare that with Windows where there's an expanding area at the bottom-right corner of the screen, and it can pop up balloons over what you're working on. That's the unobtrusive version. A lot of the time applications have their own focus-stealing popup windows that just don't

Maybe this is more a discussion to have about modern GUI frameworks rather than operating systems. They're often tied closely together, though. Also, a GUI framework can't reserve space on the screen except in its own window, right? So a notifications area needs to be a feature of the OS window manager.

I guess phones have a bit of an advantage with a different kind of app structure than Windows. Apps are expected to be one-at-a-time and full screen, which forces the notifications area to be what it is. Windows, being built on legacy expectations, having more power and freedom for applications than a mobile phone, allows actions that can be very disruptive to the user's workflow.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - There are lots of ways to do notifications right.
PPS - Windows doesn't do any of them.