Category: Technology

I’m not sure why I even have to ask – but what is going on in the world we live in when I have to continue to manage pictures the same way we did almost 10 years ago? You take pictures with your camera – then you have to connect your camera to your computer – upload the pictures from the camera to the computer – which means you have to decide where you want to put the pictures. You can create a folder named by the event or date or whatever – copy all of your pictures to the folder – and then what? You have to install a program like picasa to manage them locally – then you have to manually upload pictures to the web… Why is this so painful? Every picture you take today is automatically tagged with the date taken, the time taken, and if you are using a cell phone like the HTC Evo with an 8meg camera

– then its also geotagged with the location. Since the average parent taking pictures of their kids can be very happy with the quality from their smart phone – this can be SUPER SIMPLE! Just have the images uploaded AS WE TAKE THEM to an online service like Picasa. But take it the next step – don’t ask me what “folder” I want to put the picture in. Use the information already in the photo – location, time, date to ‘tag’ the photo like we tag an email in gmail. Think how quickly you could search your pictures – no more trying to find an event from a few years ago searching through folders for a few hours – just put the location in the search box and BAM! There are your photos from that location. If I want to see all pictures from Christmas 2008 – I should be able to do that without having to manage folders and uploads and blah, blah, blah… I should just type Christmas 2008 and see them. Then if I want to see all Christmas photos I have regardless of year – just remove 2008 from the search windows and BAM! There they are! This isn’t rocket surgery Google – make my picasa offering cloud enabled! It just shouldn’t be this difficult!!! Am I right here or what?

For all of you Evo users out there – you can now have Swype on your phone. If you don’t know what Swype is – move along, this post will bore you. Ok – for those of you that are still running the stock Sprint version of the phone – just download the latest Over The Air (OTA) update. Swype is included and you can confirm it’s there by simply hitting Menu, Settings, scroll down to Language and keyboard. If you see Swype – its installed. To use it – just touch and hold in a typing field (like when you search or create an email or text). After a second or so, you will see “Input method”. When you touch that, there it is – Swype. You are done – enjoy the awesomeness

of Swype. Now for the hard part – you reckless-rooting-master-of-your-own-phone person… If you have root’ed your phone and are running a custom ROM like the amazing CyanogenMod – then you have a few more hoops to jump through. First

– you need to get the OTA version of Swype.apk and the lib file (named libSwypeCore.so). Here is the link (OTA 3.70.651.1) that worked for me – BUT know this – all links for software usually go broken sooner than later – so if the link doesn’t work – google for it and check xda forums. Now you will find a system folder in the OTA zip file – in that folder there is a lib folder. In that folder – there is libSwypeCore.so. Copy that to your phone’s sdcard. Also in the system folder, you will see a folder called app. In there you will find the Swype.apk. Copy that to your phone’s sdcard. Here comes the hard part. You need to mount the system partition of your phone into read/write mode. I used a QuickSSH to access a shell – but you can use abd shell or whatever. If you are already lost – you shouldn’t be running a mod – go back to the sprint software and run the OTA. From the shell, you need to find the mount point for system.

UPDATE: You don’t need the following block quote of info – instead, just installed “Super Manager” from the app store – its free and it allows you to change the file system without all the complicated commands below. Once you have Super Manager installed, open it, click on settings, then Enable ROOT function, then file explorer. You can move to the sdcard, cut the lib file, and when you go to paste it in the /system/lib director – the software will ask you if you want to change it to read/write! Much easier process than the steps below:

I got that information using info from here. Before you continue: WAIT! Never cut and paste a command from the internet to your system – figure out what it does FIRST! Here is an example of the commands you need:

$ adb shell $ su # mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system

Remember – you need to get your /dev/block/mtdblockX path from /proc/mounts. I did a cat /proc/mounts | grep system to find that mine was mtdblock4. Once you have that – replace your path with the one in the example above.

After you have a read/write file system – you can copy the lib file to /system/lib/. Reboot the phone (this may not be a required step, but its good practice). Open your sdcard and install the Swype.apk. after that – its the same as the OTA – touch and hold on any text input field – wait for “Input method” then select Swype. For me, this worked like a champ! Let me know how it works for you!

Thanks goes to the EFF for setting our phones free from manufacture (http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2010/07/26). I donated $30 to these guys last week, so

you can thank me too… :) http://sackrider.org/category/technology/update-on-wireless-tethering-mifi-on-your-htc-evo-without-the-30-monthly-fee.html