in accordance with my new series “the best android apps (according to me)”, i’m also starting “the best htc desire accessories (according to me)”. they’re hardly ever limited to the desire, but that’s what i use (and test) them with.

first up is the tunebug vibe: it’s a tiny, portable sound system that uses other surfaces to transmit sound. in other words, it turns almost anything -- from an empty cigarette packet to your fridge -- into a speaker.
i didn’t expect it at first, but tunebug actually creates beautiful sound which is rich in both treble and bass.

i’ve tested it with …pretty much every potential resonance body in my apartment, and outside, and it has lived up to its promises.

tunebug vibe comes in a chrome finish, is compatible with every digital device that features a 3.5 mm headphone jack (such as the htc desire, htc hero, many other smartphones, and pretty much every mp3-player), and plays music for 5 hours before you need to recharge.

it’s not only a cool gadget, but also a piece of applied basic physics in pure form: you probably know the changing shapes that sand grains form on a flat surface, depending on the excitation frequency.
the same principle is at work when you try different sizes of boxes/surfaces and get slightly different acoustical results. the size of the box, and the position of tunebug on the box, pretty much acts as your equalizer.

i’m really fond of this product!

i found the tunebug vibe over at StyleMyPhone, who offer a wide range of iphone and smartphone accessories.

(this is the english translation of my earlier post android datenroaming problem mit bob, telering, …)

if you’ve tried to use your brand new android smartphone (e.g. the htc desire, motorola droid, …) with a SIM card of one of the really cheap mobile providers, you may have noticed that no data connection is established even if you’ve entered the correct credentials.
instead, (if anything) there is a notification popup that says:

You have lost data connectivity because you left your home network with data roaming turned off.

in the US, this problem occurs with a total of 48 individual mobile network providers.
in the UK, there’s a total of 19 MVNO, including virgin mobile, asda mobile and tesco mobile.

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with more than 100.000 applications in the android market (2010-07-30), it’s getting hard to find good apps by just browsing the market. in “the best android apps (according to me)”, i’m going to introduce my favourite applications for android handsets.
i’m using an htc desire with android 2.2 (froyo), but as far as i know, all of them are compatible to all android versions down to 1.5 (cupcake).

if you have any thoughts/questions/suggestions, please let me know in the comments.

today’s category: productivity

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one of the things i actually don’t like about my htc phone is the fact that htc has decided to remove the option to disable automatic capitalization.
i haven’t found a direct way to turn auto caps off, but there’s a modification of their virtual keyboard that re-adds this feature:

• go to this article on xda-developers.com and download the version that fits your phone (“high res version” for the desire, “low res for android 1.5″ for the hero)
• unzip the package. if you downloaded the file to your computer, transfer the .apk to your phone’s sd card.
• use your favourite android file manager to install. (i’m assuming you can also install through htc sync).
• you’re NOT done yet.
• open up the settings, language & keyboard, and allow “HTC_IME mod”.
• in a text input field (email, notes, sms, wherever), long press the field and choose “select input method”, there choose “HTC_IME mod”.
• if you now go to the keyboard settings (from your keyboard, or via settings), scroll down to the section “Mods by jonasl@xda”. “text input” will lead you to the long-sought option: “disable capitalization”.

this modified input method also adds a bunch of other options, such as: custom top level domains for the “.com” key (long press), a smiley key instead of “hide keyboard”, as well as speech-to-text (android 2.1 only).
you do not need root rights to install.

if you like to use keyboard shortcuts in firefox (such as [ctrl]+[tab] for switching between tabs, or [ctrl]+[t] to open a new one), you have probably noticed that flash takes the keyboard focus away from a page and limits it to the flash object.
to regain ordinary shortcut functionality, you usually have use your mouse and click somewhere in the page manually.

here’s a quick way to solve this little (yet annoying) problem:

• install the unfocus extension from mozilla’s official add-on library
• create a new shortcut somewhere in your start menu, e.g. in programs / mozilla firefox
• point the shortcut to
  "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -unfocus
  be sure to copy the entire line, including quotation marks and the “-unfocus” part.
• if necessary, modify the file path to adjust to your firefox installation. in the german version of windows, the correct path is most likely
  "C:\Programme\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -unfocus
• now, right click that start menu shortcut, select properties (“eigenschaften” in german), and set a keyboard shortcut (“tastenkombination”).
  i’m using [ctrl]+[shift]+[alt]+[e], but you can use anything as long as it doesn’t interfere with standard shortcuts such as [ctrl]+[x], [ctrl]+[r] etc.
• you’re done.
  in some cases, you may have to press the shortcut combination twice in order to regain focus.

i have just spent quite some time looking for an answer to this, so i’d like to share the solution. (deutsche version)

the problem:
i have a horizontal main menu at the top of a website, and a vertical sub menu in the left column.
in setup, you can use “special.value = x” to make the menu start from page id x. not setting the special.value will make the submenu relative, listing only the pages below the current one.
the effect of this is that on a main menu page, you will see the entire sub menu just as it was supposed to be, but on a subpage (level 2), you will only see the subpages of that level 2 subpage, loosing the rest of the “entire” submenu.

for illustration, here’s the relevant section of my backend page-tree:

the solution:
using “special.value.data = leveluid:1″ instead of “special.value = x” will return the pid of the level 1 parent page of whatever page you’re currently on. this way, you’ll always have the entire submenu.

the result:

for the typoscript setup code, please scroll down.
 

das ganze auf deutsch:
eine typo3-website hat ein horizontales hauptmenü ganz oben und ein vertikales untermenü/submenü in der linken spalte.
damit das submenü immer nur die unterseiten des aktuellen hauptmenü-punktes zeigt, habe ich die “special.value = x”, die eine fixe page ID “x” als ausgangspunkt für das menü verwendet, vermieden.
leider geht dadurch aber das level 2 submenü verloren, wenn eine level 2 submenü-seite aufgerufen wird, und nur die level 3 seiten werden noch aufgelistet.

stattdessen hilft “special.value.data = leveluid:1″ – damit kann man im setup die id der hauptmenü-seite automatisch von jeder beliebigen unterseite aus auslesen und als ausgangspunkt fürs submenü setzen. das ergebnis ist, dass immer das ganze submenü angezeigt wird, egal auf welchem submenü-level man sich gerade befindet.
den verwendeten typoscript code findet ihr im anschluss.

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photoshop actions allow you to record and automate frequently used procedures, much like the “record macro” feature does in microsoft office.
for example you could automatically insert a text or image into a photo, move it to the top left corner (0/0), set opacity etc., and merge the layers.
it’s that easy! well, almost.

usually, copyright notices are placed in the bottom right corner of a photo, so you’ll get a problem if you’re working with different image sizes – i.e. landscape and portrait orientation.
the top corner will always be at 0/0 pixels, but the position of the bottom right corner is variable.

i’ve been searching for a solution to this for a very long time, and eventually settled with two separate photoshop actions – one for standard 640×480 (landscape), and one for 480×640 (portrait) photos. everything else had to be modified manually.

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