Tutorials

Sep

Android Central User Makes A Great Tutorial About Theming Android

Posted by Brad Ganley in Mods, News, Tutorials

There is talk of rooting and ROMs throughout this article. If you aren't familiar with the process or its pros and cons, you can check out our primers here:

Sprintgirl, a user in the Android Central forums, has put together a tutorial for people who want to start theming their rooted Android phones. While the process is a bit, well, ugly, to put it nicely, this tutorial should help to clear some of the fog from the process. The tutorial uses the EVO 4G as it's target device but, as we know, Android is basically the same across all different phones so the process will remain more or less the same.

Sep

[Hands-On] Android Remote Notifier For Your Win/Linux/Mac Desktop: For When Your Phone Isn't Notify-y Enough

Posted by Brad Ganley in App Reviews, Applications, News, Reviews, Tips, Tutorials

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

Most nights that I'm at home, my son is sound asleep in the next room. To avoid waking him up, I put my phone into silent mode faithfully every night at 9pm and, subsequently, miss a whole lot of calls and text messages. That's bad for two reasons:

I miss what could potentially be important information or, as in most cases, good times.
It makes me look like a jerk who never answers his phone and ignores his friends.

So I thought to myself "I'm on my computer all the time, I should make an app that puts my notification on my computer screen so I never miss this stuff." Turns out, somebody already made that app and it is as awesome as I had hoped.

Aug

EXCLUSIVE: enTourage Releases Kernel Source For The eDGe - AndroidPolice & Co Release Root Instructions

Posted by Justin Case in eDGe, enTourage, Mods, Tutorials, Videos

Those of you who actually managed to get your hands on an enTourage eDGe dualbook ebook reader/tablet/notepad device thingy (it's been in low supply lately) and have been waiting for it to be rooted just got your wish. Colin O'Dell and myself with the help of Sean and Jamezelle were able to root the eDGe, with full adb access.

How We Did It

No exploit or hack was needed. We were able to decipher the developer's debug password and use it to enable adb, which just so happens to be running as root.

What It Achieves

This root finally opens the eDGe to developers, enabling the debug bridge and allowing root apps to be used.

Aug

[Tutorial] How To Wirelessly Transfer Files To/From Your Android Phone And Your Windows PC

Posted by Brian O'Toole in Applications, Mods, Tips, Tutorials

This tutorial will show you how to access your phone’s storage for transfers to and fro over your local WiFi network. We will install FTP (File Transfer Protocol) server software on the phone then mount it as a network drive on a Windows PC. Your phone and PC must be connected to the same network.

1. Install SwiFTP

SwiFTP can be downloaded freely from the market. It is a small application which allows your phone to act as an FTP server. It can also allow you to access your phone from a remote network via a proxy, but that will not be covered in this tutorial.

Jul

CyanogenMod 6 Alpha For HTC Hero Now Supports CDMA (Sprint) Devices

Posted by David Ruddock in Froyo 2.2, Hero, Hero (Sprint, HeroC), HTC, Mods, Tutorials

Lox of the CyanogenMod developer team that unveiled an alpha release of CyanogenMod 6 for the HTC Hero GSM has now added support for CDMA (Sprint) HTC Hero devices.

Instructions and download links below, courtesy of Lox on the CyanogenMod forums:

INSTRUCTIONS:
- First time flashing CM to your Hero (or coming from another ROM)?
1. Unlock your device and install Amon_RA's recovery image
2. Do a Nandroid backup!
3. Update your radio if necessary
4. WIPE
5. Install the ROM
5. Optionally install the Google Addon
- Upgrading?
1. Do a Nandroid Backup!
2. Install the ROM (your Google apps will be backed up automatically)

DOWNLOAD LINKS:

Latest version: 6.0.0-Hero Test0 - 07/05/2010
Download: http://www.4shared.c...ro-test01-.html
Mirror: http://www.multiupload.com/XFIYDLORRO
MD5Sum: 30a58622af949489a64960faf6c09a89

Additional mandatory kernel update for CDMA users
Download: http://www.4shared.c...DMA-kernel.html
Mirrors: http://www.multiupload.com/X319MX7FW0
MD5Sum: 5d142c87711c6539de54ccdc47f83312

Google Addon: FRF91
Mirror: http://www.multiupload.com/HPAU548UGU

Install CM6 alpha on your CDMA Hero?

Jun

Latest Froyo Build For T-Mobile Nexus One Leaked (FRF72) – Now Available!

Posted by Ian Douglas in Dev, Froyo 2.2, News, Nexus One (Passion), T-Mobile, Tips, Tutorials

Discovery

Good thing for our readers that I’m a night owl, and I happen to love my Nexus One, and love me some frozen yogurt. Especially together:

And now I have my T-Mobile Nexus One updated with the latest and greatest FRF72 build.

I just happened to be browsing a forum about the upcoming official Android 2.2 Froyo release when I see someone leak a URL for the FRF72 build that Google Employees were given a week ago. Someone at xda-developers.com seems to be the original source.

Download URL and Instructions

Here’s the URL for the upgrade, while it lasts:

http://android.clients.google.com/packages/passion/signed-passion-FRF72-from-FRF50.bc033f9e.zip (1.9MB)

Based on the filename, it appears to be an incremental build from FRF50, so you must already have FRF50 installed to use this new build.

Jun

SysAdmin Series, Article #6: Network Tools And Whois Lookups

Posted by Ian Douglas in App Reviews, Applications, Reviews, Tips, Tutorials

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

This SysAdmin Series article will cover four of my favorite tools as a sysadmin: two for analyzing network information, and one each for doing DNS lookups and Whois lookups on domain names. As with most apps I cover in my SysAdmin Series articles, I need to fully uninstall the app and wipe all prior data before demonstrating it here for you to protect my employer in case there’s any sensitive information lurking about. As such, don’t be too worried if apps with historical data appear relatively empty.

As a teaser for this weekend’s SysAdmin Series article, I’ll be analyzing a few commercial (paid) VNC clients in the Market.

Jun

SysAdmin Series, Article #5: FTP Clients

Posted by Ian Douglas in App Reviews, Applications, Reviews, Tips, Tutorials

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

First off, my apologies for the late posting in the SysAdmin series (or very early since tomorrow is Thursday). I had to deal with a double HDD failure on my home PC this weekend which ate up 14+ waking hours between Saturday night and all day Sunday, which would have been my prime writing time. Then the third HDD in that system crashed Monday evening, egad, what are the odds. I digress…

I've been looking for an easy way recently to manage configuration files for remote servers without having to deal with subversion, and even looked at some sort of file sync with Evernote/Dropbox via Android using an FTP client, but neither Evernote or Dropbox give you easy access to files on your SD storage when you download files.

Jun

Viva Android! How To Watch Live Streams Of World Cup Games On Your Android Phone

Posted by Chris Dehghanpoor in Carriers, News, Sprint, Tips, Tutorials

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably noticed most of the world has been focusing their attention on the 2010 World Cup, which officially started yesterday. We know many of you would love to be able to watch the matches on you phone while you’re out and about, so we’ve put together a few ways that this can be done.

One of the really cool things about the World Cup games this year is that so many sites are streaming them live, for free, making it pretty easy to catch a match wherever you’re at as long as you have high speed internet and access to a computer.

Jun

SysAdmin Series, Article #4: Port Scandroid vs OscanO

Posted by Ian Douglas in App Reviews, Applications, Reviews, Tips, Tutorials

Last Updated: July 24th, 2011

A good diagnostic tool for any sysadmin is a port scanner to ensure a firewall is working as intended to open or close ports. When you want a quick and dirty scanning tool, there are some great free apps in the Market to do the trick. A quick search in the Market shows two apps which seem to be popular: OscanO and Port Scandroid.

Port Scandroid

This free app in the Market was written by Rich Jones of NewFreedomApps, found at http://www.thenewfreedom.net/ and the app is described by the author like this: