After about a week of frustration and laziness (to search for a fix), I decided to buy a replacement battery. But the question was, whom do I contact for the replacement battery? HTC? Google? or Brightstar (the distributor) ? Phew….

While I was Googling around to find an answer, I came across the site of Mugen Power http://www.mugen-power-batteries.com/. It looked interesting enough to try shipping a replacement battery from here. So I decided to chuck out Google, HTC and Brightstar and go for Mugen Power. But it wasn’t a joy ride to start with. The first stumbling block was as follows:

Will Mugen Power’s ‘TMobile G1 Dream battery’ work for ADP1?
The battery that Mugen Power sells is labelled for TMobile G1 Dream. While TMobile G1 Dream and ADP1 are the same hardware, I didn’t want to take any chances.

So, I filled up the Contact Us form on the website asking whether the same battery will work for my ADP1. I got an E-mail reply within 4 hours asking me to send the photographs of the phone’s battery. After sending the photographs, I got a reply within 7 hours confirming that the T-Mobile G1′s battery will fit in my ADP1. The E-mail also mentioned the link http://www.mugen-power-batteries.com/htc/htc-dream.html from where I could buy the battery.

The take home from the above are:

• While the responses were coming from a Gmail address , Mugen Power’s support is quick and effective.
• The battery for T-Mobile’s G1, sold by Mugen Power, fits in and works for an Android Dev Phone 1.

The shipping experience
Following the link, I bought “Mugen Power HTC Dream T-mobile Google Phone G1 1200mAh Extended Replacement Battery [HLI-G1SL]“. Sorry for the long name, but that’s what it is called.

Note that I went for the 1200 mAh battery. The battery which ships with ADP1 is a 1150 mAh – so this Mugen Battery was hardly an extended battery. But, one can also go for 2400 or the 3900 mAh batteries which will keep your phone powered up for days! But note that the 2400 and 3900 mAh options need a extended battery cover due to the size of the battery. Fortunately the battery cover is shipped alongwith.

Coming back to my shipping experience, I ordered the 1200 mAh battery priced @ $26.95. I went for Free Shipping and not for the Speedpost option. The latter costs $36.13 (more than the cost of the battery!) but promises delivery within 2-6 business days. Free shipping quoted a delivery within 10-15 business days. But guess what, I received the battery in 8 days! I placed the order on 29 April and it got delivered to my residence at New Delhi, India on 8 May.

Seems I was lucky because one of my friends who ordered an extended battery for his HTC Touch, received the battery after 15 days at Gurgaon, Haryana, India.

Note that there were no import or customs duty to pay. That is, I owned the battery at the cost of $26.95 (all inclusive).

To sum up, the Mugen Power battery came to rescue when I was desperate. When fully charged, the battery keeps the phone alive for about 7-8 hours under heavy usage – Twitter, Facebook and E-mail sync, WiFi and GPS at times, screen at its full brightness and active wallpaper! This performance is almost same as that of the ADP1′s battery – which it shipped with. My phone is powered by Mugen Power battery for more than a month now.

To enable E-mail notifications, login into Google Wave. Move your mouse over Inbox (on the left). Click on the Arrow (pointing downwards) and select Notifications.

Google Wave: E-mail Notification Feature

You can opt to get notified about new and updated Waves immediately (as it happens), hourly or weekly. The notifications are sent to the E-mail address associated with your Google Wave. This will be the GMail or Google Apps (in my case) E-mail address at which you got the Google Wave invite.

I tested it with “immediately” option and found that Google Wave sends an E-mail when

• A new Wave is created and you are added as a participant
• A new Blip (message) is created in a Wave in which you are a participant
• When an existing Blip is updated in the Wave in which you are participating

Google Wave will not send a notification when:

• It has already sent you notification for a new or updated Wave. It will not send any further notification for any update in that particular Wave, till you log into Google Wave and click on the new or updated Wave.

A new Wave E-mail Notification sent by Google Wave

Issues/Bugs:

• The notifications are sent even when you are using Google Wave – logged into it and seeing the Waves. Why a notification when I can see a new Wave(s) being created and updated in front of me ? So what if I choose to click on them after sometime. Ideally the notifications should be sent after I have closed the Google Wave window on my Web Browser. I said “closed” and not logged out because logging out of Google Wave may mean to log out from other Google apps too.
• The “Immediately” notification is not so immediate. Few notifications were delayed by as long as 14 minutes! Though at times I have received the notification within a minute. This does not fit well with a real time app like Google Wave. Immediate notifications must be “immediate”, as it happens and within seconds.
• The notification settings link in the E-mail (notification) just opens Google Wave and does not show the Window or popup to change the settings. Note that this bug is a known issue as per the Google Wave blog.

Good to have in the next version:

1. There should be a provision to send notifications to any E-mail address and not only to the associated Gmail or Google Apps E-mail address.
2. The notification settings, besides being system wide and applicable to all Waves, should be present for individual Waves too. The notification settings for individual Waves should override the system wide settings. This way one can subscribe to notifications only for the Wave in which he/she is interested.
3. If point 2 is implemented, there should be an exclusive option to get notified about New Waves created by others – where you are added as a participant.

I was wanting this feature so much that last year I wrote a Robot for my own use (with a hard coded E-mail address) to send me notifications for updates in Waves. I add this Robot to the Waves of my interest. I even wrote an article in PCQuest magazine about this Robot. For those who are interested in the code, refer to this link at the PCQuest forums to download the article with the code intact. If Google Wave could bring the Notification settings to individual Waves, I would no longer need to use my Robot.

I supply my Google Apps credentials each time I wipe off (hard reset) the phone. Though optional, I wipe off the phone’s data whenever I update my phone with a new ROM. Following the official and non official upgrades, I’m currently running CyanogenMod 4.2.14.1 on my ADP1.

Then came a day when I did not want to wipe off the data but only wanted to change the Google Account associated with the phone.This was the day when I wanted to play with Google Buzz which requires a GMail or non Google Apps account. I googled around and found solutions suggesting:

• Clear data for Gmail and Gmail storage under Manage Applications
• Clear data for Google Apps and you will see a message in the Android’s notification bar to setup a new Google account.

None of these worked for me. What worked for me is as follows:

• Goto Home (by clicking on the Home hardware button).
• Click on Menu (hardware button)
• Click/touch on Settings>Applications>Manage Applications.
• Click on Google Apps.
• Click on the button labelled “Clear data”
• When prompted with “All information you’ve saved in this application will be deleted permanently”, click on OK
• Subsequently, click on back button thrice and then click on “Data synchronization”. Alternatively, click on Home>Menu>Settings>Data synchronizaion.
• This will start the wizard which will prompt for a new Google account. This wizard is the same that you would have seen when you first (after you bought it) powered on the phone or whenever you wipe off the phone’s data.

This is what helped me in testing out Google Buzz on Google Maps on my Android phone. In your case, this may simply help you in changing the Google Account without hard resetting your Android.

Update (February 14, 2009): After following the above procedure, I noticed that though my E-mails were syncing, I could not search my E-mails. Whenever I typed in a search keyword in the GMail app and clicked on the search button, I saw a message saying something as “E-mails will sync shortly”. This can be fixed as follows. Goto Settings>Applications>Manage Applications>Gmail. Click on “Clear data” button.

I guessed that it would require a Google Maps upgrade on the phone. Instantly fired Android Market on my Android Dev Phone 1 (a.k.a. ADP1), clicked on the Downloads tab and was greeted by an available upgrade to Google Maps – Google Maps version 4.0.0. Opted to install the upgrade hoping to spot the Buzz on the maps but alas – it wasn’t a smooth sail. After the upgrade, I fired the Google Maps app on my ADP1. clicked on Menu>Layers>Buzz and spotted a new icon  on the maps. Clicking on the icon showed me a screen where I could post a new Buzz (a message).

Post a Google Buzz using Maps on Android

Along with typing a text message, this screen also allowed me to upload a new photo that I could click via the phone’s camera or select an existing picture from the Android phone’s Gallery. Once I posted a Buzz, I could see a new speech bubble on the map at my current location – determined via GPS or Cell location (without GPS).  Over time, I realized, I could see only my Buzzes. Was no one else buzzing?

Buzz is not for Google Apps
Later during the day, I realized that my friends, using their GMail account, could see other’s Buzzes on their Nokia phones. Also they could not see my Buzzes.

I instantly suspected that it could be all because of using a Google Apps (not GMail) credentials on my Android phone. My Android phone is tied up with a Google Apps Standard Edition account which is not a regular GMail/Google account. That’s when I got onto the Net and  this blog post confirmed my suspicion. But the confusion remained for a while. How could I post a Buzz (as said above) but not see other’s Buzzes?

So I spent the remaining day (of 10th February) and 11th February ensuring that Google Buzz indeed does not work with an Android using Google Apps account. I changed my ADP1′s Google account from Apps to a regular GMail account as explained in this blog post – Android: How to change the Google Account without a hard reset. Subsequently,  I changed it back from GMail to Apps. Kept flipping the accounts several times. Witnessed a few erratic and confusing behaviour – call it caching. Eventually, I concluded the following:

• Google Buzz on maps in Android works with a regular GMail account and not with a Google Apps account.
• If you are switching from a Google Apps account to a GMail account on Android after installing Google Maps 4.0, refer to the following:
  1. Launch Android Market
  2. Click on the Downloads tab
  3. Select Google Maps
  4. Click on the button “Uninstall updates”. This will downgrade Google Maps.
  5. Subsequently, reinstall/update to Google Maps 4.0.0
  6. Now, launch Google Maps and click on Menu>Layers>Buzz
  7. And voila, you should be able to see what others are Buzzing on the map.
     

     Google Buzz on Maps in Android on February 10

• Buzz should work, if you have switched from a Google Apps account to a GMail account before installing Google Maps 4.0.0

Clicking on a bubble shows the Buzz with Photo (if any)

A few other observations and notes:

• Buzz on Google Maps for Mobile has no privacy settings. All your Buzzes along with photos will be visible to everyone.
• As per my friends, Google Buzz seem to work equally well on Google Maps in Nokia and Windows Mobile. Nokia and Windows mobile users can goto http://m.google.com/maps to install/upgrade Google Maps to version 4.0.0.
• As reported by friends using Nokia, the Buzzes may disappear at times. In this case, removing and adding the Buzz layer on Google Maps will show the Buzzes again.
• Seems that the “speech bubbles” for Buzzes, older than a day, disappear from the map.
  

  A list of all the Buzz at a location, along with comments

While I have been playing with Buzz on my Android for the last two days, I may soon switch back to my Google Apps account. I can’t sacrifice my official E-mails on Android for the Buzz. Hope, Google Buzz for Google Apps is released soon. In the meanwhile I will play with Google Buzz on my Gmail account

A blog post using Google Wave for content and comments

This became possible, recently, with the introduction of the read-only access feature. I created a blog post with a Wave talking about the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about Google Wave and a blank (to start with) Wave for comments. Click here to see this blog post. This was achieved as follows:

• Logged into Google Wave and created a new Wave about Frequently Asked Questions about Google Wave, as showed in the screenshot.
  

  A Wave about frequently asked questions about Google Wave

• Added the Public participant to this Wave. This can be done as follows:
  • Click on the + button on the bottom right pane titled Contacts to add a new contact
  • For Address type in public@a.gwave.com
  • Add this new contact by clicking on the Submit button.
  • Next add this contact to the Wave, which you want to make public. For this click on the + button on the top of the Wave.
  • On the Add Participants pop-up, search/browse, and click to add the contact named Public.
  • You will see a notification on the top of the Wave saying “You gave everyone access”.
• I gave Read-Only access to the Public contact/participant. Refer to this blog post on how to assign read-only access.
• Next I created another Wave, for comments, with just one blip or message which says: Wave your comments about the FAQs on Google Wave.
• Added the Public contact to this Wave but did not setup read-only access this time. That means, anyone (with a Google Wave account) can add/edit/delete blips/messages on this Wave. That’s what commenting is all about, right?
• To embed Google Waves in this blog post, I installed and activated the Wavr plugin for WordPress. You can download this plugin from here
• With Wavr plugin you can embed any Google Wave in a blog post using the following syntax:[ wave id = "<Google-Wave-ID> ]
  Please note that, unlike shown above, there should be no space between the opening/left square bracket and the text “wave id”.
• To find out the Wave ID of a Google Wave, Click on the Wave. Copy the URL (shown in your web browser) from googlewave.com upto the . (dot) or upto the end. Exclude the dot. Replace %252B with+ (plus). For example, in my case, the Wave IDs for the content and comments Waves are googlewave.com!w+3413MFFlD and googlewave.com!w+53bOqvqzB
• Next I created a new blog post in WordPress and embedded the Waves as follows:
  [ wave id = "googlewave.com!w+3413MFFlD" ]
  [ wave id = "googlewave.com!w+53bOqvqzB" ]
• You can change the default colors of the embedded Waves from the WordPress admin panel – Settings>Wavr. I changed the default background color and default color to #FFFFFF (white) and #000000 (black) respectively. I also set the height to 700px. Note that , you can set these options on a per Wave basis too. You can find more about it, at the Wavr’s download page.
• Last, since I wanted to encourage comments via the Google Wave only, I disabled comments to the blog post. This can be done while writing or editing the post. Click on the Discussions panel (at the bottom of the editor) and untick “Allow Comments”.

The output of the above efforts can be seen here. Be ready to catch me, in real time, when and while I update the FAQ wave. Though it is more likely that I may catch you while you are writing a comment and could reply instantaneously. After all I pledged to keep Google Wave always open in my web browser.

Update June 12, 2010: You no longer need to login into Google/Google Wave to view the Waves.

Refer to this post on how to use Google Wave for blog posts and comments on your own WordPress powered blog.

Kindle (Global Wireless) Image source: Wikipedia.org

Subsequently, I placed an order on behalf of my friend and the Kindle was shipped to New Delhi, India to my residence in about 2 days. I got to setup, configure and play with this nifty device, before I could hand it over to my friend.

I thought it would be a good idea to share my experience of the ordering, shipping, and how well Kindle behaves in India. Instead of writing the entire experience chronologically, I jot it down as FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions).

1. Where did you order the Kindle from?
   Amazon.com
2. Which version of Kindle did you order? Kindle 1, Kindle 2, Kindle DX or Kindle Global Wireless … ?
   The officially available and latest models are called Kindle (Global Wireless) and Kindle DX (Global Wireless). I bought Kindle (Global Wireless).
3. What does Global Wireless mean?
   With Global Wireless versions, you can browse/search through the Amazon Book Store and Wikipedia through a free Internet connection. This connection (which uses the mobile phone network) is pre-paid by Amazon and you do not have to pay any bills for the aforementioned browsing/searching.
4. Why did you buy Kindle and not Kindle DX ?
   Kindle DX is almost double the price of Kindle
   
5. What is the total cost of Kindle?
   $378.57 (USD)
6. Why do I have to pay so much ?
   This cost includes the shipping and the duty. Following is the bifurcation :
   Cost of the device: $259.00
   Import Duty: $98.59
   Shipping and Handling: $20.98
7. Can I reduce the cost by opting for an alternate shipping option, even if it takes longer to ship ?
   No, alternate shipping option is offered for shipping to India.
8. Is there any hidden cost ?
   No.
9. What is the mode of payment ?
   Credit/Debit Card
10. Can I pay through Paypal ?
    No.
11. How much time does it take to ship the Kindle to India ?
    2 days
    Note: I ordered the Kindle on 18th January at 21:00 IST  and got it on 21st January, around 11:00 IST. It was a Monday evening when I ordered and got the Kindle on Thursday morning. Note that the device was shipping during business days. If holidays or weekends fall in between, the shipping may be delayed.
12. Will  I be notified about the order and the shipping status ?
    You will get notified by two  E-mails sent from auto-confirm at amazon dot com and Amazon.com (ship-confirm at amazon dot com). The first E-mail is sent after a successful order with the order details. The second E-mail is sent as soon as the Kindle is dispatched for shipping and includes the tracking number to track the device in transit.
13. How much time does it take to dispatch the Kindle for shipping after a successful order ?
    Less than 24 hours.
14. How can I track my shipping ?
    You can track the device by logging into your Amazon account – which you used to order the Kindle.
15. What are the contents of the box that gets delivered
    The Kindle device, a getting started manual, a USB cable and a power adapter – U.S. or United States style, two pin plug.
16. How do I charge the Kindle?
    The USB cable can be plugged into the power socket for charging through AC power. For this you will need a U.S. to India power plug converter. Else you can charge the Kindle using your laptop/PC, using the USB cable.
17. The wireless connection works without any configuration?
    Yes. But for the very first time, when I tried searching through the Amazon Store, the Kindle complained about “no connection” and suggested to reboot. After a reboot the connection was up. Ever since. the connection has always been on and working.
18. Can I browse the Web using Kindle?
    No. Kindle does have a built-in Web browser which is suppose to work well for text-only or low-graphics Websites. But when I try to browse to a Website, the browser shows an error saying “Due to local restrictions, web browsing is not available for all countries”.   
19. Can I Google using Kindle?
    No. The search fails with the message saying “Due to local restrictions, web browsing is not available for all countries”. Only Wikipedia and Amazon Store search works, over the wireless network (refer to FAQ 3)
20. Does Kindle support PDFs?
    This question is not specific to India but to the device. Yet the answer is yes, Kindle supports PDF. But you cannot zoom or enlarge the text/font size of a PDF document. This makes some PDFs unreadable on Kindle.
21. Can I transfer my own documents or books to the Kindle?
    This question is not specific to India but to the device. Yes, you can transfer any Kindle supported documents on the device. I have myself transferred and read .pdf, .txt, and .mobi formats on the Kindle.
22. Can I transfer and read pirated E-Books, downloaded via Torrents, on the Kindle?
    Sorry, this blog is not a place to ask this question.
23. I have heard that not all books are available for Indian users
    I have heard that too. Will keep this post updated when I comes across such titles.
24. Instead of Kindle, why you did not recommend an Apple iPad to your friend?
    The launch of iPad was uncertain. As of this writing, its launch and pricing in India is not known. Also iPad is a multi-purpose and bulkier device.

Hope this FAQ helps my countrymen in going ahead and bringing home an Amazing Kindle!

Disclaimer: The above FAQ is strictly based on my personal buying and usage experience. Any or all information may be different in your case.

Update (March 30, 2010): Received an E-mail from Amazon today, informing about a refund of $36.93 on the export charges. No doubt, it means refund against the import duty. This reduces the total cost of the Kindle to $341.64 ($378.57−$36.93). The E-mail says that the refund has been processed and it may take about 10 business days for it to reflect in the Credit Card statement. Note that, this E-mail on the refund is received after about 2 months since the Kindle was shipped (refer to FAQ 11).

But hell broke loose, when I made the Wave “public”. While it was thrilling to see the comments of the participants, the Wave no longer looked like an organized list of questions and answers. Thanks to the blips (messages) from others inserted in between. What I wanted then, is launched now by Google – Read-only participants.Here is how it works. After adding a participant to a Wave, click on the participant’s photo (at the top of the Wave). On the pop-up window, select “Read only” from the dropdown (at the bottom right). Click on the close link (x) on the top right.  Henceforth, the participant will not be able to write or edit a blip. But the participant will be able to see the blips as before and, as they are typed.

Use Cases
Following are some possible use cases for read-only Waves:

• To share final or published documents
• Collaborative editing to start with, read-only access after finalization of a document
• To segregate participants into logical roles – collaborators and consumers.
• Embed (on a Web page) a read-only Wave with content, followed by a full access Wave for comments. This would give a blog like look-n-feel

What’s Next
Having tasted this feature, I wish I can have the following facilities too, in the near future:

• Access control at Blip level (overriding the Wave’s access control)
• Besides read-only, permissions to “Create Blips” and “Edit Blips”. Good to have would be a separate permission to “Delete Blips”

Note that, alongside the read-only feature, Google has also launched a feature to restore Wave from Playback. For more, refer to this blog post.

Each time, I upgrade my phone, I wipe off its data. This is because I took the upgrades as an opportunity to wipe off applications which I install, but do not use or use occasionally. But, following is the list of Android applications which I crave to install after each wipe off. These applications are my must-haves on my Android phone.

1. android-wifi-tether
A computer or PC/Laptop can be connected to a phone via USB, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi to use the phone’s Internet connection – typically GPRS/EDGE/3G. This kind of connection sharing (with the phone) is called tethering. ADP1 does not ship with tethering capabilities. But thanks to the android-wifi-tether app which can be found here. Don’t go by the “Wifi” in the app’s name. It supports tethering through Bluetooth too. I have used tethering via Wifi, till I switched to CyanogenMod (see below). Once installed, it turns your phone into a Wi-Fi ad-hoc point! Think about it as a Wireless Access Point. Therefore, no hassle of downloading drivers to connect to it from a laptop.

android-wifi-tether app for phone's Internet connection sharing via Wifi/Bluetooth

Features:

• Tethering through Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
• Access control based on MAC address. Notification, about connecting clients, on the phone’s notification bar – with sound.
• 128-bit WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy)

Pros:

• Behaves as a Wi-Fi ad-hoc point. This means, typically, no configuration/driver hassles on a PC/Laptop.
• MAC address based access control.
• Lots of configuration options for Wi-Fi, like SSID, channel, IP range etc.

Cons:

• Requires ROM update (a kernel update)

Go to Settings>Wireless controls and check Internet tethering. Works with CyanogenMod Android ROMs

I no longer use android-wifi-tether – after flashing my phone with  CyanogenMod. With Cyanogen ROMs, the capability to tether via USB is built-in. USB tethering works both on Linux and Windows – I have it working on Fedora 12 Linux and Windows 7. android-wifi-tether works with the CyanogenMod (version 4.2.13, as of this wiring) without requiring the kernel update. But you will need to download and install the app from here. With android-wifi-tether and CyanogenMod, you may like to enjoy the flexibility of tethering through USB, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth! Though, I’m my happy self with USB tethering.

2. BlueRSS
Once I discovered this free RSS reader named BlueRSS, from the Android Market, I never felt the need to look for an alternative. Lots of features, yet fast and responsive. This is what sets this app apart, for my daily routine, to check out the tech world through RSS feeds. I’m using version 3.0.1 of BlueRSS, as of this writing.

BlueRSS: A fast and feature rich RSS reader for Android phones

Features:

• Discover RSS feeds on Websites or using keywords
• Exports feeds to OPML, opens GMail (or the default mail client) with the OPML file attached, to send.
• Automatic background update
• Ability to refresh all feeds as well as individual feeds
• Add feed items to Favourites
• Full screen mode

Pros:

• Fast and responsive. Don’t remember if I ever had to “Force Close” it
• Import from Google reader

Cons:

• No feed categories
• The feed item’s description/summary does not open in landscape mode.

3. Twidroid (free version)
This app does not require an introduction to Android users. It is undoubtedly the best Twitter client for Android. I started with using Twidroid as the Twitter client on my Android phone. I switched to numerous other Twitter apps to check out the alternatives. I tried Swift, Seesmic, Twidgit and TwitterRide (now called TweetsRide). But I kept coming back to Twidroid and have settled down to it. Twidroid is available from the Android Market and I’m using version 3.0.9.

Twidroid: The feature-rich Twitter client for Andorid

Features

• Supports Twitter lists and the new Retweet feature (or API) of Twitter
• Ability to upload photos
• Twitter Trends, Search and Favorites
• Built it browser to open URLs
• Options to choose a preferred URL shortening service and image upload service
• Built-in profile browser with option to follow/unfollow
• Autocomplete of Twitter usernames while Reply-ing or Direct Message
• Share Tweets via Email, SMS and Bluetooth
• Stores data on the SD card

Pros

• Fast and responsive UI
• One touch access to most functions like Reply, Direct Message and Retweet
• New tweets notification, with the Tweets’ text, in the Notification bar of the phone.
• Automatically shortens the URLs
• Remembers the scroll position with an option to jump to the latest Tweet
• Frequent new releases.

Cons

• Features like widgets, video and multiple accounts available only in the Pro version

4. Nav4All
I have been living in New Delhi, India for 31 years. But Connaught Place a.k.a. CP is a place where I always lose my way to the destination and back home. Thanks to the large number of roundabouts. I recall driving for more than a hour in CP to figure out my way. That’s when I desperately started looking for a navigation app for my GPS capable Android phone. Nav4All is what I got and what I use. It works great for the Delhi roads. Nav4All is available in the Android Market and I’m using version 9.0.25. To be true, I haven’t used all its features. Yet following is the jot down of the features that I see on the application’s screen:

Nav4All: A simple and free app that works for turn-by-turn voice based navigation

Features

• A huge list of countries
• Option of large number of voices (for turn-by-turn navigation)
• Can pick addresses from the phone’s contacts
• View route to destination with turn by turn textual instructions and on the map
• Details like distance, driving speed and journey time
• “Start follow me” feature to trace your current route
• Alternate routes

Pros

• Free
• Precise, numbered, exit points on roundabouts
• Works in New Delhi, India
• Narrows down to the building name!

Cons

• Bad user interface, looks like wireframes
• Buggy with the hardware keyboard of ADP1
• Address search asks for too many details
• Not so good looking map

I haven’t been able to use the address search for Nav4All. It asks for too many details – upto the house number. The best way I use Nav4All is to record the destination coordinates – when I somehow reach the destination for the first time. On the contrary, Nav4All amazed me by telling the name of a client’s office building – located in the midest of a large number of houses.

Note that the Nav4All website hints that the app will remain free until 1st Jan 2010. But I have been using it for free, on my Android phone, till now. Hope it continues to remain free.

5. Car Mode
How many times it has happened, that, while driving you get a phone call. You, then, struggle to put the phone on the speaker phone mode. Car Mode is a nifty app which when clicked, places itself on the phone’s notification bar. Subsequently, it automatically enables the speaker phone for subsequent calls. Car Mode can be disabled by clicking on its icon on the notification bar. It can be downloaded from the Android Market. I’m using version 1.2.0 of this app.

Pros

• A simple and free app which works!

Cons

• It’s encourages to attend phone calls which driving

That’s all folks. Five must have Android apps that I live with. Note that this list does not include the built-in apps – like GMail, Calendar, Contacts, etc – else GMail will Gmail Push (instant push E-mail) is my most used app. Will keep this blog post updated with any future must-have apps which I get used to.

Update (February 2, 2010): I said above that Nav4All may become paid, but the latest update is worse. Got an E-mail announcing that  Nav4All will be discontinued.  Following is the exact copy of the E-mail as sent by CEO of Nav4All:

Subject: Nav4All navigation shut down by Navteq

Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 28-01-2010 16:30 GMT+1

Subject: Nav4All navigation shut down by Navteq

Letter to 27,625,631 Nav4All navigation customers

Dear Customers,

It is with the deepest regret that we hereby notify you that the
global navigation of Nav4All and the Tracking & Tracing will go
offline in 3 days. The reason for the same is that the data licence
agreement with Navteq (a 100% Nokia subsidiary) was not extended, in
a totally unexpected manner. It is not possible to implement data
from another supplier in our Nav4All systems within the short term.
The Nav4All navigation system was developed for Navteq data. Nav4All
has therefore been constrained to stop.

We greatly regret the fact that we have to suspend the operation of
our service. With your help, we have developed Nav4All into a global
product with 27.5 million users in 56 languages, in 5 years. This has
made Nav4All the largest navigation supplier. This large number of
users also has to do with the fact that Nav4All works on hundreds of
different mobile telephones of many makes such as Blackberry, Sony
Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola, Android, HTC, Nokia, LG, Iphone, Ipod
etc.

After 5 years of testing and market development, we witnessed rapid -
in fact, exponential - growth during the last two years. That growth
was reported in the licence reports to Navteq. In mid-December 2009,
the global coverage was extended to include the Philippines, Morocco
and Kenya.

Please contact the Nav4All support desk in case you have any
questions: www.nav4all.com/support. If there is any further
information from Nav4All concerning the subject of this letter, the
same will be published on our website: www.nav4all.com. For reasons
of privacy, Nav4All does not have the email addresses of all its
customers, and we therefore request you to forward this email to the
maximum extent possible, in order to ensure that everyone is
informed.

Kind Regards,

Hennie J.M. Groot Koerkamp (CEO)

Nav4All BV

Keizersgracht 62-64

1015 CS Amsterdam NL

Here is how it started. My initial wishlist from this integration was as follows:

1. Whenever I write a new blog post, it should be automatically posted (or tweeted) to Twitter
2. My tweets should get posted on my Blog

Referring to the second point, I did not want a blog post each, for every tweet. Instead I wanted a single blog post with all my tweets – say, for the day.

The plugin which served my above mentioned requirements is Alex King’s Twitter Tools which can be downloaded from here. After installing the plugin, I created a category in WordPress called Tweets.  Next, I configured the plugin (Settings>Twitter Tools) as shown in the screenshot below (click on the image to view the settings clearly):

Twitter Tools Settings

Note that I have set “Create a blog post from each of your tweets?” to No, but have set the option “Create a daily digest blog post from your tweets?”. Also I selected the Tweets category for “Category for tweet posts:”. With this, all my tweets will be automatically posted on my blog, under the Tweets category, at 23:59 hrs, every day.

I also opted to use the Twitter Tools widget to display the latest Tweets on my Blog’s sidebar. Depending on whether your WordPress theme is widget enabled, you can setup the Twitter Tools widget via Appearances>Widgets – just the standard WordPress way to display widgets. If you scroll down on my blog’s home page, you can spot this widget, titled “WHAT I’M DOING”.

As a Result
With Twitter Tools, the following is achieved:

• Whenever I write a new blog post, it gets automatically posted on Twitter as “New blog post: <blog-post-title> <tiny-url>”.
• All my tweets get posted on my blog at the end of each day, under the Tweets category, as “Twitter Updates for <date>”.  These tweets are searchable using the search on the blog.
• Hence my knowledge base = blog posts + tweets are now in one place.
• Google should (more on this below) index the tweets against my blog and lead more traffic to my blog.

But Some Issues
The popular Twitter Tools serves well but not perfect and hence the following issues:

• The blog posts corresponding to the tweets may not be properly indexed by Google due to lack of meta tags. The only meta tags that Twitter Tools would record against the daily digest of tweets are “twitter, shekharg and tweets”, in my case (see the Twitter Tools setting above). Editing each Twitter update post and adding tags is mundane.
• I tweet more frequently than writing blog posts. Hence my blog’s home page gets cluttered with Twitter updates. Also, people subscribed to my blog’s RSS feed will start getting more of tweets and less of blog posts – kinda redundant because many of them are following me on Twitter, as well.

I solved the above two issues with a WordPress plugin for each – namely WP Calais Archive Tagger and Ultimate Category Excluder respectively.

Automatic tagging with WP Calais Archive Tagger
This plugin uses the Opencalaisservice to analyze, semantically, the text of the blog post and automatically generates the relevant tags for each post. After installing this plugin, all I had to do is to supply it with a Opencalais API key, which I already had. You can get a API key  by registering, for free, at http://www.opencalais.com/user/register. Once registered, the key will be emailed to you. Type in that key in “Plugins>Calais Archive Tagger” page on the WordPress admin panel.

Subsequently, clicking on the link “Click here to start tagging your posts” automatically start tagging all the posts including the daily twitter updates. Note that it maintains the tags that were entered manually against the blog posts and adds onto them. As you may have guessed, each time you want the Calais Archive Tagger to generate meta tags, you will have to come to this page and click on the link. I do it once in a day or two. Someone has also written a  Cron friendly script to make this happen automatically. I’m not using it, yet.

Note that I have been using All in One SEO Packplugin which displays the past tags as meta tags, on the blog pages, for search engines. Without this plugin, the automatically generated tags may not help in the search engine context. This plugin is highly recommended whether or not you are integrating with Twitter.

Exclude Tweets from Home Page and RSS with Ultimate Category Excluder
This is a nifty and easy to use plugin. Following are the screenshots of how my blog’s home page displays without and with this plugin:

Blog Home Page without the Ultimate Category Excluder Plugin

Blog Home Page with the Ultimate Category Excluder Plugin

Note that with the Ultimate Category Excluder plugin, none of the “Twitter Updates” posts are showing on the home page. A visitor can still access these posts via archives, category (on the sidebar) or using the search. All I had to do, after installing the plugin, is to exclude the Tweets category in the plugin’s settings (Settings>Category Exclusion) as shown in the screenshot below:

Settings for Ultimate Category Excluder Plugin

Note that I have opted to exclude the Tweets category from the home page and from the feeds. I left it to appear in the Archives. Bottom line: integrating WordPress perfectly with Twitter requires more than just the Twitter Tools

Update (November 15, 2009): All of a sudden, after October 28, Twitter Tools stopped posting the daily digests of tweets onto this Blog. Similar/same issue is posted hereby others. Blaming WordPress upgrade to 2.8.5 and my server operating system upgrade to CentOS 5.4 did not make sense because these happened before this issue occurred. That is, the daily digests did work, for a few days, after the upgrades.

I kept trying miscellaneous ideas like downgrading to Twitter Tools 1.6, deactivating/deleting the plugin and re-installing the upgrade to WordPress 2.8.5, but nothing worked. Finally what worked for me is as follows:

• Deactivate and delete the Twitter Tools plugin
• WARNING: Take a backup of the database before proceeding further
• Delete all the Twitter Tools related options from the database table called wp_options.  Following is the MySQL query which can be fired using any MySQL database client say phpMyAdmin:

  delete from wp_options where option_name like 'aktt%';

  
  

• Reinstall the Twitter Tools plugin. I downloaded and unzipped the plugin into the plugins directory instead of installing it from the WordPress admin panel (via Plugins.Add New)
• If logged in, log out from the admin panel
• Re-activate the Twitter Tools plugin.
• Ensure that all the configuration under Settings>Twitter Tools are blanked out. If yes, re-enter the settings like your Twitter Username and password, daily digest frequency etc.

Henceforth you should start receiving the digests. I applied this fix on 10th November and it is working for me, for far, even after an upgrade to WordPress 2.8.6.

Update (December 23, 2009): Updated my blog to WordPress 2.9 on December 18th. Twitter Tools working so far without any issues.

Update (February 4, 2010): Updated Twitter Tools to version 2.1.2 on January 25th. Waited for this long to update this post because I wanted to ensure that the daily digests of tweets are posted, regularly, as before. It seems to be working! Expect that on January 30th, the digest got posted thrice. Besides this one of case, Twitter Tools 2.1.2 is behaving. Also after upgrading to Twitter Tools 2.1.2, Open Web Analytics dashboard started working. Earlier I had to deactivate Twitter  Tools temporarily to look at the Analytics dashboard.

Update (May 28, 2010): Again, Twitter Tools stopped posting daily digests – as explained in Update (November 15, 2009) above – from 8th May to 15th May. This time I noticed that my server’s (on which this blog is hosted) system time has gone out of sync. Note that this wasn’t the issue during the earlier occurrences of this problem. Nevertheless, Twitter Tools should have worked as per the wrong server time. I even upgraded to Twitter Tools 2.3.1 hoping that the issue will self heal. Waited for a week, for it to work (or call me lazy ). Finally what resurrected the daily digests is the same solution that I posted above – refer to Update (November 15, 2009). Since 16th May to till date (May 28) the daily tweets are being posted regularly.

Update (October 4, 2010): The latest version of Twitter Tools uses OAuth for authentication. This worked fine for me on WordPress 2.9.2. When I upgraded to 3.0.1, Twitter Tools stopped working. Note that the version of Twitter Tools  I’m using is 2.4.  Next, I followed the same steps as mentioned in Update (November 15, 2009). But this time, I faced a different issue. The authentication (the first step before setting up the plugin) kept failing saying “Authentication Failed. Please check your credentials and make sure Twitter is up and running”. After hours of troubleshooting at the code level, coincidently I happened to check my server’s time (system time). It was lagging behind by several minutes. Updated my server’s time (via ntpdate ntp.ubuntu.com) and voila! the authentication worked. Yet to see if the daily digests will start shooting up again. Will keep this space updated.

Update (October 9, 2010): With reference to Update (October 4, 2010), daily digests seem to be fixed. From October 4 to till date, daily digests are being posted regularly by Twitter Tools