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There are a plethora of different home automation platforms like SmartThings, HomeKit, Wink, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and many more. Some of them play together nicely, but once you're mixing and matching, you're going to end up with a bunch of apps and hubs to control all of your devices, and some features just won't work with the provided software. Koushik Dutta (or Koush), the developer of beloved tools like ClockworkMod, has run into these limitations. To overcome his issues, he simply created a smart home hub himself that allows users and developers to script their own actions to interconnect their devices, similar to Tasker. Enter Scrypted.
ClockworkMod's Koushik Dutta is probably best known for his custom recovery, ClockworkMod Recovery, but he has other claims to fame too. One of his most popular apps, AllCast, has just hit a whopping 10 million downloads on the Play Store. And to celebrate, he's giving away 100 AllCast Premium codes to Android Police readers.
Koush had to take his device mirroring tool Vysor off the Chrome store last week after H.264 owner MPEG-LA came calling with a big bill. It seems the H.264 decoder in Vysor entitled MPEG-LA to royalties on Koush's free app. Well, after a weekend of coding, Vysor is back with a new decoder and a subscription option.
Koush's Vysor is pretty cool: a way to see your Android screen on a computer, using a Chrome extension. This is great for using an Android app on your desktop PC, or for developers debugging apps. Previously, Vysor's 'Share' feature has worked between two people who have both had Vysor installed. Now, however, you can share with anyone, even if they do not have Vysor.
After teasing the Material redesign of AllCast a couple of weeks ago, Koushik Dutta has finally made the updated 2.0 version available for everyone to install, enjoy, admire, and swoon over. And if you're wondering why it looks so good, it's because our own Liam Spradlin had a hand (mouse click?) in giving the app its fresh coat of paint and that is all you need to know. Article over. Nothing left to say. I'm dead serious. Why are you still reading this? Go scroll down to the end of the post and click install, dammit! Everything I say from now on is just pointless gibber-jabbering to fill space.
Developer Koushik Dutta, Koush for short, is well known around these parts for any number of apps. There's the ClockworkMod ROM Manager. There's AllCast. And if you want to back up specific apps and the data that goes with them, there's Helium (formerly known as Carbon).
Koush has certainly been busy since his departure from Cyanogen Inc. After getting AllCast working on the Fire TV with a receiver app, the AllCast Receiver is now in Google Play for use on any Android device. This essentially makes your device a streaming target in AllCast, letting you send media from one device to another.
Now footloose and fancy free, or at least self-employed and unencumbered, Koushik "Koush" Dutta is expanding his popular AllCast streaming app to Amazon's new Fire TV set-top box. Unlike the Chromecast, Xbox, Roku, Apple TV, and various other gadgets with relatively open streaming profiles, the Fire TV needs a separate app to receive content from your phone or tablet. Just install AllCast on both and you should be good to go for local video and audio streaming.
[Interview] Koushik "Koush" Dutta On Leaving Cyanogen, Inc. And His Return To ClockworkMod
Koushik Dutta, better known as "Koush" to the Android power user community, was one of the original Cyanogen, Inc. employees when the company incorporated last year. But he's been giving Android users some great stuff for much longer than that: most people's first exposure to his work comes from ClockworkMod, still one of the most widely-used custom recoveries available, not to mention various tools like ROM Manager, ClockworkMod Tether, and DeskSMS. Lately he's been expanding into more general apps like Helium Backup and AllCast.
All those photos and videos you're saving in Google Drive aren't going to fly through the internet and cast themselves on a TV, are they? Wait, are they? Because if so, I think we have a mystery to solve. Since that's pretty unlikely, it's good that Koush's AllCast app has just been updated with preliminary support for Google Drive.
Koush's AllCast app does a good job of streaming media to all manner of set top boxes, and of course the Chromecast. However, it hasn't always looked awesome doing it. Well, now it does – the new update comes with a refreshed UI and adds Muzei support for good measure.
AllCast pushes locally stored videos and photos to various AirPlay/DLNA connected devices such as Smart TVs, the Xbox 360 (and the Xbox One), Roku boxes, and, originally, the Chromecast. Ultimately, Google released an update that broke AllCast's Chromecast support. But the company finally released the Google Cast SDK yesterday, and then, after getting prodded by a member of the Google Chomecast team to re-add support for Chromecast, Koushik Dutta returned the functionality to his app in supposedly under 20 minutes of work.
We've covered Koushik Dutta's AllCast before: it's an Airplay/DLNA streaming app that lets you stream all the things. Now it's out of beta, and you don't have to jump through any hoops to get it: just head to the Play Store and download that sucker to your cell phone telephone. The free version includes advertising, splash screens, and a 60-second streaming limitation, while the $5 Premium unlock app is unlimited.
Android 4.4 has a new screen recording function for developers, but as the CyanogenMod team has already demonstrated, it can be adapted for more general use. Well-known developer Koushik "Koush" Dutta has taken advantage of this for Mirror, a new screencasting app for KitKat that allows any rooted user to either record video directly on a device, or stream to an Apple Airplay-compatible receiver like Apple TV. No custom ROM required.
If you love the idea of Chromecast but wish it worked with locally-stored media, then Koush's AllCast may be a solution. It doesn't actually stream media to Chromecast, but it does have support for Roku, Apple, TV, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TVs, Panasonic Smart TVs, WDTVs, and DLNA Renderers, so if you have one of those, then you're set.
Yesterday was kind of a big day for Android. The long-running and extremely popular custom ROM family CyanogenMod has been incorporated into a company which plans to further the software into a bona fide platform. CyanogenMod founder Steve Kondik and extremely vocal CM team member Koushik Dutta (CTO and VP of Engineering for the new Cyanogen Inc, respectively) did what you're supposed to do whenever cool stuff happens: head to Reddit for an "Ask Me Anything" session. Here are some highlights from Kondik and Dutta's responses to the community's questions.
It's no surprise that Google's latest update to our favorite operating system is in instant demand amongst power users and enthusiasts. Without fail, the people eagerly installing 4.3 are frequently the same ones who consider root privileges a necessity for a good Android experience. Unfortunately, it seems a wrench has been thrown into the works when it comes to exposing ultimate access, and people are experiencing more than a few hiccups because of it.
Longtime Google Voice users have had but one dream, total integration with the operating system. We've seen a few bits and pieces roll out from time to time, like support for automatic calling through your Google Voice number and having voicemail directly accessible in the stock dialer. But one feature continues to evade us: sending and receiving SMS messages through Voice with 3rd-party apps. CyanogenMod and Koushik Dutta (Koush) have officially broken that barrier with Voice Plus.
We don't need no NSA up is our business, right? CyanogenMod recently added the Privacy Guard feature to nightlies to protect user data from sketchy apps, but the next innovation might go deeper than that. Koushik Dutta (Koush) has started development of a secure messaging platform for CyanogenMod devices.
Koushik "Koush" Dutta's Carbon Backup App Renamed To "Helium" After Cease & Desist From Carbonite Software Maker
If you're an Android power user who regularly applies mods or flashes new ROMs, you've likely run across Koushik "Koush" Dutta's work. He's the maker and
If you're an Android power user who regularly applies mods or flashes new ROMs, you've likely run across Koushik "Koush" Dutta's work. He's the maker and maintainer of the ClockworkMod recovery and ROM Manager, and a publisher of several of his own independent applications. One of those apps is the powerful Carbon backup app, which we've featured before. It looks like the name "carbon" was a bit too close for comfort for the makers of Carbonite software (a more mainstream backup solution for desktops and mobile), who sent Koush a cease-and-desist letter back in February.