Author Archives: admin

Pirates of Silicon Valley

Posted on by

This is a great movie that I hadn’t watched in a very long time but I recently was able to get it through netflix. It tells the story of steve jobs and bill gates as they rose to the top:

Firefox OS

Posted on by

for those of us that love to flash roms on our android phones there is a new one that has the potential to be awesome – its Firefox OS. At this point, you cannot download it but when it becomes available I will be trying it out. I think if mozilla wants to have a chance they need to make phones with firefox os that are unlocked, inexpensive without contracts, and will work on all major carriers.

 

Best Android Roms

Posted on by

Android Roms are different versions of the operating system that one can install when rooted. What are the best? Well its really a matter of opinion but the most popular are by far Cyanogenmod and AOKP. I personally like AOKP and I have used cyanogenmod, aokp, paranoid android, pacman, and carbon. After using all of these I kept going back to AOKP. That is my preference though and downloads for them Download the best Mod Apk games on your Android device! Here are a few sites that discuss the features of each:

cmod vs aokp vs paranoid

Infographics showing the features of:

Carbon

Paranoid Android

AOKP

CM 10.2

*Note that pacman is not discussed in any of these. It is simply a combination of cmod, aokp, and paranoid. It is awesome but I was only using the aokp features it offered so I figured I would just switch back to the stock aokp.

Rooted your Android phone, now what?

Posted on by

Now that you have rooted there are many things you can do but one of the biggest is flashing a new rom. What does this mean exactly? It mean installing a new operating system on your phone. You can find these online in many different places like rootzwiki and xda. So if wanted the latest version on android you can get it. Now a few recommendations before you flash a new rom:

1. Back up your current OS by creating a nandroid. This will vary depending on the type of recovery rom you have installed. I personally prefer clockworkmod.

2. Find a good ROM. I have tried about 10 different. The most popular are cyanogenmod (cm or cmod) and AOKP. Here is a good article that breaks these down

3. Install it and have fun.

4. Once you flashed the rom remember to install the latest gapps package. This refers to google apps such as gmail, etc.

If you are curious how to flash a rom this depends on your phone and recovery software you have installed. For most phones you will boot into recovery and flash away.

Why root your android phone?

Posted on by

There are a million reasons why you should and should not root your android phone. I am going to go through some of the more popular reasons now. In a later post I will go through how to root your phone and how to use SXProjects once you are rooted.

Why Root:

1. Get rid of bloatware – unless you bought a nexus phone it will come preinstalled with tons of extra software that you may or may not actually need. This is referred to as bloatware as it bloats your system and can actually slow it down. Why not let me choose what software I want on it? With rooting you can choose what you want. I would root just for this reason alone. Then again I would never buy a droid unless it was a nexus device:)

2. Get the latest updates – when you root you can get the latest version of android within days of it being released. If you are not rooted you might actually never get the update. Only a very small % of phones are updated to the latest version of android out there. Do you know why your phone is not updated? It would require samsung/lg/etc to work on the operating system and test it on your phone. Why do they care to that if you phone is already 6 months old and they are focused on the newer ones that replaced it already?

3. Apps – Yes there are tons of cool apps out there that will not work unless you phone is rooted. However I will admit this isnt much of a concern for most people

4. Use cyanogenmod or AOKP or Baked Beans (among many others) – what does this even mean? These are groups that have taken the android operating system and improved it. If you are rooted you can install their version on your phone. They offer tons of great options and themes. For example putting the battery % on the notification bar, weather, or date. Basically allowing you to do whatever you would like.

5. A very advanced feature – access to the phones internal controls. If you do not know what that means just ignore this as a feature until you are ready to test it out.

Why Not to Root:

1. Voids warranty. If you are unsure you might want to wait until your warranty runs out. However remember you can unroot.

2. Brick – if you brick your phone (ie break it) you are out of luck. However its not very easy to do.

3. Nexus – if you have a nexus you might not really need to root. You have stock android to begin with and should get your updates fairly fast.

4. Rooted apps coming to non rooted devices – in some cases this is happening so some of the great features rooted users have always enjoyed are now on regular devices such as a wifi hot spot.

How to make a .keystore file

Posted on by

A .keystore file is needed when creating Android Apps. In order to create one (if you are not using Eclipse) do the following: One would do this for software like Adobe PhoneGap and its very easy to do on both the Mac and PC. Here are the steps:

1. Open up terminal (unix/dos dialog box). On the Mac this is under applications->utilities->terminal on the PC its under Start->Programs->Accessories. It will simply be a command prompt for you to type.

2. Type the following (you cannot copy/paste):

keytool –genkey –v –keystore my-release-key.keystore –alias alias_name –keyalg RSA –keysize 2048 –validity 10000

a. You need to change my-release-key.keystore to your own file name. So it could by like: raypastore.keystore if I wanted. This will be your file name.

b. alias_name should be changed to another name as well. PLEASE REMEMBER THIS. You will more than likely need this to use your .keystore file.

3. Press enter. You will be prompted with a few questions asking your name and such. Please remember your password.

4. Use the file. You will need your alias name and password. If you have trouble finding the created file just do a file search for .keystore and it will come up.