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  • 25Aug

    androotHi all, I’m back with another hack for all you android people! As always, do this stuff at your own risk, worked for me but it’s always possible that something like this may break your phone. Research your specific situation (phone, OS) and if it looks like your supported and you’re willing to take the risk then root away!

    Phone modding has always been a back and forth cat and mouse game between phone manufacturers and hackers. As a result of this, unlocking a phones potential has always been a huge pain in the ass! Long drawn out walkthroughs that can take well over an hour to complete the first time and often hours more research if you run into any roadblocks along the way.

    Recently iPhone users got a break with an easier than ever method of jailbreaking (Jailbreaking is the root of the iPhone world).  Simply point your iPhone’s browser to jailbreakme.com and you’re presented with a slider labeled “slide to jailbreak”, execute the slide and boom, your done.  Looks like us Android user’s finally get something almost as easy with “Universal Androot”.

    Simply search google for and download a file called “UniversalAndroot.apk” then copy it to your phones sd card.  On the phone, launch the file using your file browser of choice (I use Astro) and install it. Open the newly installed Universal Androot and your presented with the following screen.

    screenshot_1

    Click the Root button and wait about 30 seconds.  That’s about it, an entry on the screen should say something about “Generating Superuser Permissions”, this is actually installing and app called “Superuser Permissions”.  This app will grant other apps root access to the phone, if you try to open “superuser permissions” nothing actually happens, this is normal as the app doesn’t actually do anything on its own.

    If for any reason you want to Un-Root your phone you can simply click the UnRoot button and your phone will be reverted back to a stock pre-root state.  This method supports a pretty large list of android devices ranging from Android OS 1.5 to 2.2, that said, make sure yours is on the list of supported devices before trying this, wouldn’t want to break your favorite toy!

    Enjoy!
    Ed.

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  • 20Aug

    hintonburger3

    Hello all!  I haven’t written on here in a while but have been thinking a lot about using this place again lately, I couldn’t think of a better way to kick things off than to talk about the best damn burger in town!

    There is nothing quite like a burger, for me its up there with steak and pizza, definitely on my top 5 list of things that I could eat all the time.  Since moving close to one of the many “The Works” locations, Liz and I have enjoyed a few Works burgers and they have been consistently delicious but today we ate a burger that made every burger that came before it seem like mediocrity.  It all started a few weeks ago, Liz read an article about the best hamburger in Ottawa and we decided to try a few of them out.  Today’s burger from a place called Hintonburger was the second we tried off that list and may I say, we have a winner!

    To look at the place, it really doesn’t look like anything special but the burger, my God, it was the juiciest most delicious burger I have ever tasted.  We both ordered their Hintonburger and I would highly recommend it.  We also got a poutine to share and there was nothing wrong with their poutine either but that burger, seriously people, I think that burger is going to make it’s way into my dreams tonight!!!

    Hintonburger
    991 Wellington Street West

    Ottawa, ON

    [Hintonburger on: urbanspoon]

    Ed.

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  • 17Mar

    ph3Time to put the phone addictions on hold for a bit, this one’s gonna be interesting!  I have been searching for the perfect networked media player for many years now.  It all started with XBMC running on my modded XBOX.  I then graduated to my first Media PC, SageTV and a ton of HDD space, the combination created what was undoubtedly the best media center experience I could ask for.  It had all the geek factor associated with running a computer on your TV, all the ease of access to my networked digital media and it was the best DVR I could ask for, it was just perfect!

    Along came HDTV.  all of a sudden I found myself needing a whole new computer if I wanted to keep SageTV going as a DVR.  After doing some quick pricing of parts I decided I didn’t want to put out that kind of money for another media center PC and settled for the piece of crap Rogers HD PVR, it sucks but it works.  I was still using SageTV at that point but all it did was play local digital media and the occasional stream of an episode of Diggnation.  The final blow to that media PC came when I moved into a bigger place, the PC was perfect for the new “home office” leaving the TV sans media player.  The PS3 did a good job of playing my digital media so I left it at that for a while but something about it just didn’t feel right as I began to considered granting it a permanent media player status.  The Office PC still remained on all the time so that my RSS feeds would auto download new content as it became available, just seemed like a waste of electricity and total overkill to have that thing running all the time just for that.

    ph

    Popcorn Hour C-200

    Last January I was on a Server 2008 course and during some downtime one of my classmates started talking about his Popcorn Hour media player.  I remember thinking “what is this device that this guy is making sound so magical?”.  I started researching it and found that sure enough, I was able to put a check mark beside every one of my media player requirements and it also seemed to meet all my geek factor requirements and even had a torrent app built in so it would do my downloading for me.  It was a match made in heaven (I know, I’m a weirdo :) ).  Only decision I had to make at that point was did I want the top of the line C-200 with the option of adding a Blu-ray drive or did I want the similarly capable A-200 that could still take a hard drive but no option for Blu-ray.  The C-200 has the looks but was almost twice as much.  The C-200 also comes with an RF remote (cool!) but I want it to work with my Harmony so I would need to get the optional IR adapter adding another $12 to the price.  I decided in the end to go with the more expensive C-200.  I didn’t do this because I wanted to put a Blu-ray drive in it, I had the PS3 for that.  I went with the C-200 mainly because the thing was gonna look slick under my TV and you know what, it does!

    I can already tell that I’m going to geek out with this thing for quite a while.  I have already started developing a script to make it scan my podcasts folder for new downloads and display it on the screen so that I don’t have to check each folder manually, (this can be done because its running Linux in the background) and I may even post some of my apps here if I feel like any are good enough to release to the world.

    So, is this toy right for you?  This is not a “plug and play” solution for your TV, You have to play with it, massage it, add both hardware and software to it if you want to take full advantage of it.  You may run into a lot of bugs and flaws along the way and you may need to wait patiently for firmware updates to fix said bugs.  You may need to spend a few hours at a time figuring out how to install a new app that in the end will be worth the fight.  If all that sounds acceptable to you then this may be the media player for you, if not, look elsewhere :) .  If it does sound okay then you need to pick between the A-200 and the C-200.  If you need Blu-ray go “C”, if you love the way it looks and don’t care about paying more go “C”.  Other than that your probably going to be quite happy with the less expensive A-200.  Regardless of what you get you will be joining an amazing community of both users and developers not to mention years of fun playing with your TV’s new best friend.

    Later all,
    Ed.

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  • 23Jan

    rogers_htcI’m totally freaking out!  I got a text message from Rogers tonight saying that there was an update available to fix the 911 issue on my Magic. It went on to say that if not installed by the 24th of January that they would disable the devices data connection.  The thought of that made me a little queezy so I downloaded and installed it as soon as I got home.  On the first boot post install I hear a new sound coming from the phone and I look down to see a little animation of an android waving at me and thought “huh, could they have put Sense in this update”?  I wait in anticipation and holy crap, It’s all Sensed out!

    Not only is it all the prettiness of Sense but get this, it’s got f’n multi touch in the gallery app as well as in the browser!  All that and it works super smooth so far.  Like I said in the beginning, I’m totally freaking out man…lol.

    I wish I could play with it some more but I gotta wake up early tomorrow morning to do a little overtime, the servers are calling.  So ya, if you’re on the Magic then go get the update now!  There was also an update released for the Dream, That one won’t have the Sense UI but I’ll still install it first chance I get and report back to you with the results of that install.

    Later all,
    Ed.

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  • 15Jan

    rogers_htcHello all,

    HTC and Rogers have recently announced that do to memory limitations they will no longer update the HTC Dream after one more update to the 1.5 android firmware.  They have also announced that the HTC magic will continue to be developed at least as far as version 2.1 that will include HTC Sense UI, scheduled for release later this year.  I was one of the people disappointed by this being an early adopter of the platform with my purchase of a Dream handset the day it was released on June 2nd of 09 but it looks like there is some good news after all.

    Looks like Rogers is going to do us all a solid and offer a free upgrade from the Dream to the Magic.  Yup, you read that right, there offering a free upgrade and they are letting you keep your Dream.  Only catch is that you will need to renew your contract out to 3 years again so this will cost you up to 7 months worth of contract.  I called in 2 days ago now and the process was super easy, I just asked to take advantage of the promotion and they said “okay, we only have the black model in stock but you should receive it in 4 to 6 days”, fine with me as the black is what I wanted.

    The offer is valid from Jan 12th to Jan 26th.  To take advantage of it you can call Customer Care at 1-888-Rogers1 or online at Rogers.com, retail stores will not be able to help you with this.

    Later all,
    Ed.

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