Fabian Rodriguez

I’ve just added a detailed guide on how to take Android phone screenshots from Ubuntu Jaunty to the Ubuntu community documentation.

I kept following other guides and blogs without success until I came across this bug report about a missing udev rule for the Android devices. Ew!

I also noticed many guides indicate Eclipse + Android plugins (latest release, manually installed) are needed for this which is not the case! Dalvik Debug Monitor (ddms) works just fine without any other third-party, manually installed apps. This is what it should look like once it “sees” your phone:

It’s weird that taking screenshots isn’t easier, as this effectively prevents documenting and illustrating many interesting features. I hope the guide makes it easier for anyone to share their findings in using their Android devices. This should also help prepare training or support material, hint, hint

The above screenshot shows missed calls, USB connectivity status, Change Settings shortcut in notifications, TwitDroid pending dents (despite the name, it supports identi.ca which is what I use it for), Wifi connectivity status, Vibration mode, cell phone signal, battery status, alarm enabled and the current time, all in the status bar.

I also have a few widgets on the desktop (if that’s what it’s called…), otherwise I am using the default launcher and configuration.

Unless something specifically involves Ubuntu, I’ll mostly be posting only to Planet Android, which I recently joined. See you there (or here).

Last week on June 2nd Rogers Canada launched their Android-powered phones, the HTC Magic and HTC Dream. “The Revolution is here” according to their slogan.

Well, I got my self an HTC Dream, and my very first reaction after turning on the device was:

HOLY **** IT PLAYS OGG VORBIS MUSIC! AND IT LETS ME SET ANY OF THEM OR EVEN MP3s AS RINGTONES WITHOUT FLASHING SOME RUSSIAN FIRMWARE!

I am happy to give my money to Rogers (and Google), as well as give up some of my privacy so this experiment AND implementation can go further than the OpenMoko has. I never imagined I could someday actually file bug reports against the operating system running on my phone! I know how this sounds. And it won’t be my opening statement about it

So I’ve started doing the free software thing and begun cleaning up a few wiki resources as they were all TMobile G1 – centric:

• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PortableDevices/Android
• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PortableDevices/RogersHTCAndroid

I managed to brick my phone the next day I had it, apparently there is some issue when you let your battery die while using an app that uses the SD card. Rogers answer… wipe all the data on it, reset to factory settings! That’ll teach me, I should have backed-up all before playing with so many third-party apps.

So my next question to Rogers was “How can this device be backed up ?” Uh… Rogers doesn’t know! And of course “We don’t support Linux”. So they dutifully pointed me to HTC customer support who didn’t even know what Linux was (much less Ubuntu). They only knew about Windows HTC Sync (a bit different than full backup). And guess what, they pointed me to the HTC Wiki! Because, “Sir, that’s where third-party support happens” (actual quote).

In case you are wondering why I didn’t ask the community first, well, I work in a support position at Canonical, and I wanted to find out if commercial support for Android was ready for me I am not sure if I am mad because this is a major fail (no one knows how to properly backup this Revolutionary device) or happy because I know the community will figure it out before they do. I’ll try to share about that on either Wiki and on the Android group on Identi.ca.

Oh, and don’t miss Cyrket, a public web front-end to the Android Marketplace.

I am just a few hours from flying back to Montreal, after spending an amazing week with Canonical in Barcelona, at our AllHands meeting.

Open this post on my blog to see image captions.

Imagine a few hundred people gathered in a big conference were presentations go from Android on Ubuntu to Making Ubuntu family-friendly to Ubuntu One development to Mastering Unicode to project updates … well you get the point. Oh, and everyone of them is a colleague. The challenge here was to go beyond shaking as many hands as possible and trying to find out what we all had in common to best push Ubuntu forward, while looking at our best shots without losing sight on things to improve and innovate on.

Pfew! If that sounded like an intense few days, it was. I am glad I planned on sleeping very little.

I hope this gives a small insight into how great this big Canonical-family meeting was.

Now UDS follows, although I won’t be attending I trust my many mates will drive this one home too.

Cheers to all and see you soon, somewhere

David Giard, a founding member of the Ubuntu Quebec LoCo Team, relayed these news to me this morning (via The Fridge):

NOT A FORK – as soon as I posted this I got a comment about this being a fork, well, it’s not! It’s a collection of modules and a theme, which are managed via a project in Launchpad. This is not a separate fork of Drupal!

Drupal 5.x and 6.x LoCo Suite Released

That long needed suite of tools has finally been completed.

This suite is designed for any Ubuntu Local Communities wanting to host a website. It is designed to allow any LoCo team to quickly create a website using Drupal for their team.

What this suite offers:

• An approved theme for any LoCo
• A highly customizable theme
• Launchpad OpenID integration
• -> Users don’t need to create an account on your site
• Launchpad Teams integration
• -> Can control access levels in site based on LP team memberships
• Fast and friendly support

Official project: launchpad.net/loco-drupal/

Release Downloads:

Drupal 5.x: launchpad.net/loco-drupal/5.x/0.5.0

Drupal 6.x: launchpad.net/loco-drupal/6.x/1.1.0

Drupal 7.x: in development

A Special Thanks:

This project would not be possible without all the collaboration involved.

The Ubuntu South Dakota Local Community – Michael Lustfield

The Ubuntu Quebec Local Community – David Giard

Joey Stanford

Stuart Metcalfe

If the amount of people that called for support for their Dell Mini 9 over the holidays is any indication, we’re bound to see quite a few new users of Ubuntu that own this nice system!

If you know someone that uses a Mini 9, remember there is official documentation for the Ubuntu version (8.04) that ships in it at http://help.ubuntu.com . That may sound obvious but many experienced Ubuntu users don’t refer much to those docs and as a result don’t know it even exists

I also wanted to share a lot of tips, tricks and known issues as well as useful links (such as where to ask a question in Launchpad Answers) that have been put together at:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DellMini9

If you have a Mini 9 and know your way around Ubuntu, you may also want to make yourself available as a contact for Launchpad Answers:
https://answers.launchpad.net/dell-mini

That’s particularly useful if you know about things that are specific to your geographic location (like ISP-specific settings, broadband access with USB keys, etc.).