Evernote on Windows 8

Author: JoshMiller

Mar 3

I will totally grant that this is the whole new Beta style experience and may not be, hopefully is not, final.

Evernote for windows 8 sucks. Specifically, the Metro App, Evernote, sucks.  It is completely useless.  I was pretty excited when I saw it was available in the App store because, as I’ve blogged extensively about recently, Evernote has become the center of my organization.  Here’s a shot of Metro Evernote, some stories I’ve clipped from online, some blog posts I wrote…

ScreenShot001

It looks nice, I will not argue with that.  I love this huge almost newspaper look.  Several Metro Apps use this and I really wish I had an RSS reader that would do this (there may be one, I have not figured it out yet).

The problem is all in functionality.  I can open and read notes all day long.  Great.  I can’t seem to edit these notes.  Most notes, I don’t need to edit.  The pages that are webpage snapshots, I don’t want to edit those.

The blog posts?  I do want to edit those.  I want to correct things, I want to add to them, I need to edit them.

I can make new notes.  So there is hope that the edit feature will be added.  Considering “editing notes” seems like it would be pretty high up there in a “note management app”, I am more hoping that I just overlooked it.  The interface is different and somewhat confusing.  I checked all of the menus though with no luck.  Slide to the left and get the Taskbar pop out thing, not there; Slide right, it brings up the charms menu, not in there.  Right click and it brings up a menu on the bottom with New Note and Sync, but no Edit option.

There is another issue though, which I hope gets fixed.  Here’s a contrasting look of the normal Evernote Program, which I installed alongside the metro version (because I use Evernote a lot).

ScreenShot002

Notice it has a great organizational system going on.  I get a list of all of my notebooks on the left, I get a list of things in each notebook next to that, and I get the Note I’m working on next to that, in this case, an old review of a Transformers Comic.

I went to a fair amount of work developing a usable notebook hierarchy so I don’t have to see everything at once and I can quickly find things.

Evernote for Metro gives me exactly one notebook, “All Notes”.  I also don’t think it syncs everything, because, as shown in the first shot, it says “January – 40 Notes”.  I’m up to something like 300+ total notes now.  January is when I started using Evernote “hardcore”, I transferred hundreds of articles from Instapaper, I started importing all of my old writing.  Probably 75%-90% of those 300+ notes were created in January.

And it lists 40 notes?  Really?

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Amazon Appstore – The New Has Worn Off…

Author: JoshMiller

Jul 17

aefae_amazon_apps I was pretty stoked for the Amazon Appstore release.  It seemed like it could be a new great source for Android apps and the promise of daily free apps was outstanding.  I went to the trouble of figuring out how to sideload these apps and everything just so I could use them on my AT&T phone.  I devotedly followed the daily free apps and got extremely irritated on the times when I was too busy and forgot, which I think happened maybe once over many months of use.

And then it happened twice.

And a few times it happened twice in a row.

Then sometimes I forgot on purpose because I wasn’t interested.

And I also didn’t get as irritated or frustrated that I’d forgotten about it either.

The point is, that I have not downloaded a free app for like a week now.  I don’t even check to see what it is some days.  The “New” has worn off.  Now i have a phone full of games I’ll never really care about playing and 4 different To-Do list managers.  I have only bought one thing from the Appstore, the Transformers G1 themed strategy game, and that was only because it’s not available via the normal Android Market where I prefer to make my purchases.  The two most exciting things I’ve gotten from the Amazon Free Apps were Plants vs Zombies and Peggle, both games that have been around for a while on the PC and iPhone and come from one of the better developers out these days, Popcap.

There was an article going around where at least one developer was talking about how they were pulling from the Amazon Appstore due to a poor experience.  Comments I’ve seen on this talk about how it’s a one off experience but based on their complaints, I doubt this is a singularity and there is a fair bit you can draw from the numbers mentioned in the article.

Most Notable… “He said he had 180,000 downloads, but only 1,000 of them were paid.”  I have a strong suspicion that most of the activity on the Amazon Appstore is like this.  Especially when you consider that Apparatus is one of the more interesting games I’ve gotten from the place.  Consider 1000 sales out of 180,000 isn’t even 1%.  It’s barely a half percent.

There are rumors that Amazon will be pushing it’s own branded android tablet, which would certainly include their own Appstore as the prominent default, this could certainly help turn this wreck around, assuming the tablet takes off at all.  The problem there lies more in the fact that despite Android’s quickly growing status in the phone sector, the Tablet space is still dominated by Apple and the iPad.

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Filed under: 2011, Phones and Mobile Devices | Tagged as: , , , , , , , ,

Some Notes on Podcasts

Author: JoshMiller

Apr 28

BeyondPodSo back before I had a fancy Android Phone I had an iPod.  Not an iPod touch, this was an old Nano, I think like 2nd gen, maybe 1st, it’s really not important and i really don’t CARE which generation it was.  For managing podcasts it was as simple as hooking the iPod up and letting iTunes sync the new stuff.  The small catch here was that I had to remember to update iTunes.  Also syncing an iPod with multiple computers doesn’t work very easily (which is really make BTW).

Since the iPod got washed by my wife along with my pants, it no longer functions.  This was part of the original motivation for upgrading my old Blackjack II.  I figured the phone could function as a media device.  Which it does, very well.  One nice bonus is that because the phone can connect itself to the internet, it can update the podcasts directly on the phone.  There are surprisingly few apps that handle this but I did find this one called BeyondPOD, which has a free simplified version and a full featured paid version.  This mostly comes down to how much work you want to do, the free version will only download one podcast at a time and you seem to have to do it manually.  I decided to opt for the pay version despite it’s somewhat steep price of 8 bucks.

It works well enough though it’s extremely buggy, especially given it’s somewhat pricey for an App.  For example, when i stop a Podcast and come back to it later, it often starts playing at a point much earlier than I stopped it.  At first i thought maybe this was some sot of built in 30 second replay, which would be ok, but the repeated section could be 10-20 minutes.  This also ruled out the possibility that the playback engine got confused by seconds and simple started over on the last whole minute.  my latest theory is that it doesn’t like Variable bit Rates and they somehow screw up the app’s calculation of where it actually is in the time line.

It also almost always shows the incorrect art for each Podcast.  For example, this morning, I was listening to the Gitmo Nation Roundtable, and it was showing an NPR Podcast logo.  Also for any show with different art each episode, it gets confused and often just shows the same art each time.

Still, it’s the only solution I’ve really come across so far.  I have been experimenting some with something called Stitcher Radio.  I like that it can be used to build playlists, though I have not quite got the inner workings figured out yet.  I really wish there was a setting in Beyond pod to simply “add any new podcasts to the bottom of the playlist pile.  I want to just pick up and play, whatever comes up, wherever I left off.  If i get behind I can skip ahead.  Stitcher seems to promise this.  The problem is, Stitcher seems to be streaming only.  Something like 75% of my commute is Edge and 10% is no service at all.  Streaming, just does not work for me.

If only there was a way to mash these two apps together, I might almost have the perfect Podcast experience.

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How to Get the Amazon AppStore on an AT&T Device

Author: JoshMiller

Mar 23

Yesterday, Amazon launched it’s Amazon AppStore for Android phones.  My original thoughts when this was rumored to be coming was “Big Wup”.  I mean really, what is Amazon going to offer that Google itself isn’t going to offer?  Well, “free stuff” is a hugely compelling thing that Amazon could offer to make we want to use their AppStore.  They also have a paid version of Angry Birds available which, presumably, would be ad free.  I don’t think I mentioned it on this blog but Angry Birds’ Ads almost break several levels since they cover part of the screen and make it hard to time certain attacks.

The problem I quickly discovered was that for some reason AT&T android Devices are not supported by the Amazon AppStore.  My first instinct was “well, I guess I’ll have to Root my phone”.  Rooting is basically the same as the iPhone term “Jailbreaking” which means to unlock the junk your carrier locked up.  The term “rooting” is a reference to the Linux “root” user which is essentially the super user with access to everything.

It turns out that I don’t need to Root my phone after all.  I’ve summarized how to get the Amazon AppStore working on an AT&T Android Phone.  It is adapted from this thread in the Android Central forums though I’ll add a few details I’ve ironed out through actively doing the process.  You will need to register for the Android Central forums to get the software needed for this procedure.

Firstly, download the Appstore APK file to your PC.  You can get it here.  You may have already downloaded this on your phone and gotten an error message about not being allowed to install it.  if you want to hassle with digging this copy off your phone you can but it ultimately needs to be on your PC so you may as well just download it again.  Also of note, an APK file is essentially an Android install file.  It’s similar to an EXE in Windows or if you want a better analogy, it’s more like a Linux RPM Package.

Next download the Android Central Sideloading Wonder Machine.  It’s a zip file.  Open it, drop the folder inside named AC-SWM.  Drag and drop it on your desktop for now.  If you want later you can sort it off somewhere else but you’ll need to know where you put it if you want to make shortcuts to the launcher or run it from another location in the future.  I’m not getting into the details of sorting Windows files here. 

Third step here, this may already be done.  Install the sync software for your phone.  If you’re more technical like I am you probably tend to throw these disks in a drawer somewhere and disregard them as not necessary.  If you really want to get technical you don’t need the software, you just need the driver from your phone which is probably on the disc.  If you’re not sure what I’m talking about drivers etc, just install the software off the CD that came with your device.  If you don’t have the CD, open Google.com, in the search box type <Device Name Here> drivers.  Chances are the first result will be the manufacturer’s page where you can download the software.  For example, since I didn’t have my disc with me I searched for ‘HTC inspire Drivers” and the first result was HTC’s website.

Now, this may vary on your phone slightly.  You need to enable USB Debugging under Menu –> Settings –>Applications –> Development –> Enable USB debugging.  I have not found any trouble in simply leaving this on with normal charging or USB Drive mode so I’d say just leave it on.

Now, using the USB cable for your phone, hook the phone to the computer.  For my Inspire, when I connect it, I have to chose which mode.  This works in Sync mode.  EDIT: Nevermind, it works in Drive Mode, just connect in Drive mode, get the .apk off and then move on to running the Sideloader.  Also of note during this process, you may get some complaints from the native sync software about loss of connections.  Just ignore this.  Basically, the Sideloader is taking control of the pipe.

Now, go tot he folder we created on the desktop earlier, AC-SWM.  There should be some files there including AndroidCentral-SWM.exe.  Now we have to move the AppStore apk file to the same folder as the Sideloader.  Unless you saved it elsewhere, it’s probably in your downloads folder.  Hit Start, then either My Documents (XP) or select your Username (Vista, Win 7).  Then go to the Downloads folder.  Find the file in the downloads, it’s called Amazon_Appstore-release.apk.  Drag and drop this from the Downloads window to the AC-SWM folder.

Next Double click AndroidCentral-SWM.exe.  You’ll get the following Window:
 ScreenShot048 
Select “Choose a file”, then select the Amazon.apk file.  Now select “Go”.  You’ll see a DOS style text window show up.  You’ll know it’s going to work if you get an ID code in the middle area of the box.  You’ll need to press Enter a few times and the DOS window will close.  The Amazon App Store should now appear in your list of Applications.

The slight bit of hassle now comes when you get a new App through the store so until it becomes natively supported, I recommend buying or getting most apps through the native store.  As for paying for Apps, there are up and downsides on this.  On one hand, this may not always work so you may lose access to the apps you’ve bought.  On the other hand, you still own the apps and there are signs pointing to this becoming a legit outlet for Apps on AT&T so you should still be able to keep the stuff you buy.

Anyway, loading the Apps themselves have to be done essentially the same way using the Android Central Sideloading Wonder Machine.  The key is how to get the apps themselves. 

First, you go through the App store on your phone and purchase the app as you normally would.  After it downloads you’ll get the message about how it can’t be installed for security reasons etc.  Now, hook the Device up to your PC in Drive Mode and open it up in Explorer.  Navigate to the folder Android –> data –> com.amazon.venezia –> cache.  Inside should be your .apk file.  If not you may need to redownload it.  It will have a funny name, for example, the Angry Birds RIO Free App from the launch day has the file name, vnz20746.apk.  Drag and drop this file from the Phone into the AC-SWM folder mentioned earlier.  I’ve found that the .apk files must be in the same folder as the Sideloader Program. 

Now all that’s left is to follow the same steps listed above starting below the graphic from when you loaded the AppStore.  The difference of course is that you’ll select this new .apk file instead of the AppStore.apk file we used earlier.  EDIT NOTE: I’ve only ever seen one .APK file in this folder, I suspect that the AppStore only cache one download at a time.  So you may have to download an app, load it, then download another app.  You can buy more than one app since the store keeps track of everything you own.

UPDATE AGAIN: So I tested this out.  After installing an app, the appstore removes the temporary .apk files.  So download all you want at once.  The real problem comes when you try to figure out which is which based on the cryptic file names.  On this note as well, I’ve also tested out renaming the files.  You may rename the files to something meaningful for archival/storage purposes.  Even files with spaces will still work in the AC-SWM program though you do need to keep the .apk file extension.

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The First Full Day of Android…

Author: JoshMiller

Feb 14

I think I’ve finally got something I like after rearranging my little icons all over the place back and forth.  I still have not figured out how and if I can rename the single folder I’ve placed on the screen.  Thankfully the pre-installed apps, while not uninstallable, are removable from the main screens.

Of note on tests and discoveries.  At one point I accidentally triggered something called “Car Mode”.  I’ll have to look into how this happened and it took me a second to figure out how to get OUT of “Car Mode”.  This mode is a simplified interface with larger icons for things like voice dial and Maps.  Essentially the idea is you’d put the phone on some mount and interact with it minimally while driving.

As for battery life, I removed it from the charger this morning at around 6:30 when I woke up and plugged it in to charge off my laptop at around 2:30 PM when it alerted me that it was getting low.  Eight hours isn’t too bad though It looks like I’ll want to invest (eventually) in a second charger for the desk at work.

I’ve been getting notifications about tying together “friend accounts”.  Irritatingly it seems to have doubled up my twitter followers.  i wish it would just take the obvious ones and pair them for me.  Guess what phone, Twitter.com/XXXX is the same person as Twitter.com/XXXX. 

The music player works so far.  I had little trouble with everything it played on random except for MP3s from an Allison Iraheta album I got from Amazon.  Everything else came from Amazon so I’m not real sure what the malfunction is.  I’ll probably just recopy these tracks and see if that fixes it.  The last.fm scrobbling works great.

I’m not real sure I like the built in FriendStream app.  It combines Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr together.  I like the Idea but I find it a bit cluttered and hard to follow.  Also I can’t open links directly in it without going to a secondary screen.  Finally I wish it would “remember” where I had left off instead of jumping to the newest items every time it comes up.  I’d rather scroll up into new stuff then scroll down and figure out where I left off.

Today’s installed apps… (I plan to get more detailed on a lot of these later)

Amazon.com – In case i feel the need to shop while mobile.  not that i couldn’t go to the website.

Barcode Scanner – This seems useful and it seemed to sort of work on the only barcode I found handy on some granola bars, though it said they cost 40 bucks a box, which is WAAAAY off.

Google Earth – Mostly a novelty.

Google Sky Maps – Because stars are fun.

WCIA’s Mobile App – I saw a short clip promoting this on a local television channel and figured hey, sure.  I have not tested it a ton but if the School closings tab works it’s worth keeping around.  Too bad we’re probably beyond school closing season.

A Handful of Games – I’ll get into this aspect another time.

I also installed another NoAgenda app then proceeded to completely uninstall all three of the apps.  None of them do the most basic thing desired of playing the most recent episode of the show.  I also exported my iTunes Podcast list to the Podcatcher App I’[d installed yesterday.  Basically, now i can download the show (among others) direct to the phone, who needs some lame program.

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