Getting the Nexus One working on Fido (Canada)

Since the Nexus One is an unlocked phone and you can buy it without having to sign your life away, you will have to do a little bit of configuration yourself. It took me a little while to sort out what little conflicting information I could find in order to get all the bits in place.

As far as I can tell, the phone works perfectly on the Fido network at 3G speeds (I saw a lot of people saying it would not and would only work on EDGE).

Here are the steps you need to take to get the phone working on Fido's network.

Basic Phone & Voice Setup

1. The Phone will want to configure when you first turn it on (You need a gmail account or a Google Apps account for this). Leave the SIM card out until the initial configuration is done. You can do it with the SIM in, but it's better to use a WiFi access point instead.
2. Once done and booted for the first time, shut the phone down again (press and hold the button on the top left). Once the phone is off, insert your SIM (give attention to the orientation of the SIM card, it's labeled in the slot). Press the same button to power up the phone again.
3. You should now have a working cell phone. you can make and receive calls with it etc. however the data portion will not yet be working. Make a test call if you can to check that the SIM is correctly installed.

Get the Data Setup

At this point the phone is working but you have no data. It will work fine on a Wifi connection (which you have already created) but as soon as you leave the house and the wifi goes out of range, you will lose the data access. All is not lost, there are just a couple of settings to add.

1. On the phone, go to: Settings -> Wireless & Networks -> Mobile Networks
2. Click on "Access Point Names" (it will be an empty screen).
3. Click the menu button (centre left) and select "New APN".

You need to do that twice as there are two APNs to add as follows:

This is the one that will show the 3G icon in the notification bar.

Name: FidoINT

APN: internet.fido.ca

Username: fido

Password: fido

APN Type: default

leave the rest of the fields blank

This one will enable MMS from the phone.

Name: FidoMMS

APN: mms.fido.ca

MMSC: http://mms.fido.ca

MMS Proxy: 205.151.011.013

APN Type: mms

leave the rest of the fields blank

You should now have proper 3G data access and MMS working.

Update 1: It appears that MMS is not working. I'll see if I can sort out why and post it here.

Update 2: A commentator below (Milo) added the following to our knowledge base:

"To all those of you who are not getting 3g speeds and only edge:

I called Nexus One support about the issue, and I figured out why it is that I too am only getting edge. There are 2 versions of the Nexus One. The AT&T version and the world version. The most recent one which became available for sale in Canada will allow for 3g on all networks around the world, however if you purchased your nexus one from the states or a third party site prior to its release in Canada then you're as boned as I am. The newer Nexus One is identical except for the fact it works in wider cellular range for data. Now this doesn't mean the phone is completely useless for 3g. For example I just got back from Europe using an Orange sim and had 3g. Sadly I don't believe any provider in Canada at the moment works on the same frequency as the older Nexus One."

Nexus One - First Impressions

I've been an iPhone user for about 2 years now, but I ordered a Nexus One the same day they became availible in Canada.

Here are my first impressions.

- The packaging is as slick as an iPhone.
- The phone is a millimetere or two thinner than the iPhone, but overall its almost exactly the same size and it is going to fix in most of my iPhone holsters etc.
- It comes with a 4 gig microSD card already in the phone.
- Starts up with an animation as an indicator.
- The screen is much brighter than my iPhone. and faster.
- The onscreen keyboard is very similar to the iPhone, so I'm not having much trouble with it. It doesn't come withteh keyboardsound feedback enabled however which I'm missing right away. I may be able to turn it on once i get things going. (update: indeed you can turn on the click sounds).
- Battery status shows you what applications/features are taking up the most battery power... very handy.

I'll have to explore more, but I'll post anything else I find that is particularly cool or different.

Disillusioned with the iPhone

I have to admit that I've been an iPhone user for almost two years.

I love the interface, as it mostly works and in my opinion is much better than just about anything else currently available; including BlackBerry and Android phones.

The reason it's better has to do with the design of the user interface and the way it's controlled (android does pretty well, but is stuck a bit too much in older design concepts).

However I'm becoming more and more disgusted with Apple's goal of completely controlling the phone and all the content it gets. The recent move to kill iPhone apps that are competitive or are some how morally objectionable to someone at Apple (such as the recent decision to remove wifi finders from the app store), along with Apple's tendency to lock down anything they do in recent years is concerning me on a usability and moral level.

It only a matter of time before my disgust with Apple outweighs my desire to use the best device and I choose something else.

The question becomes what else there is. Android comes closest at the moment, but I'm not complete satisfied with that one ether.

Note: This image is not mine, and I don't know where it came from. If you know, let me know and I'll attribute it properly.

They are fighting for Your Future!

I found a good article, Tinkerer’s Sunset written by Mark Pilgrim.

Once upon a time, Apple made the machines that made me who I am. I became who I am by tinkering. Now it seems they’re doing everything in their power to stop my kids from finding that sense of wonder. Apple has declared war on the tinkerers of the world. With every software update, the previous generation of “jailbreaks” stop working, and people have to find new ways to break into their own computers

What struck me is that what he's saying is so obvious that I have trouble understanding why most people don't know what all the fuss is about. He says it well however, so I encourage you to read his article and actually think about the consequences.

Wake up people! There is a war going on that will significantly impact your future and the future of your children.

Ubuntu Netbook Remix: Getting the Wifi and Mic working on an HP mini 110-1118 (CA)

Ubuntu Netbook Remix works fine for this machine, except the sound drivers and wifi, but fixing them is easy:

To get the wifi working:

Update the OS, then use the Drivers control panel in the system settings panel.

There is a bug in 9.10 that prevents this from working out of the box, so you need to update the OS first.

To get the internal Mic working:

Sound works, all except for the internal Mic. A peer passed me a note he found in some forum that worked (sorry, I don't have the original attribution):

(You can install the backport module using the Synaptic package manager).

Here is the word-for-word original note I used:

Yes, that worked for me too, using the Mini 100c!
But you don't have to install the alsa sound package.
Just
- install linux-backports-modules-alsa-karmic-generic
- reboot
- open a terminal, enter "alsamixer", press "tab", and set both internal and front mic sliders to 100%
- press "esc"??

You can now use the internal mic using whatever tool you like.

US doesn't like Canadian copyright laws.

In the Canadian Press article Canada deserves spot on U.S. naughty list due to lax copyright laws, the author suggests that the US ambassador to Canada doesn't like Canadian copyright laws, and is not shy about saying so.

It's not really a secret however. The US, driven by entertainment industry lobbyists, has been at us for years to make our system like theirs.

What they are missing however is that in Canada, there is less power in the Lobbyist camp and more power in the people. The People don't want US style copyright laws or at least don't want to be dictated to by a foreign country.

Make no mistake, our copyright laws need revision (in progress) but they need to reflect the needs and wants of the People in this country, not the US.

So, to the US ambassador, By all means tell us about your system, we'd be happy to take the ideas from it that are useful, but we'll discard the points that we, the People, don't like about it.

If you don't like it, well, we all have to suck eggs now and then.

Apple OSX Security FAIL

More than once now, I've managed to get OSX to require me to log in, but allow me to access the machine behind the login prompt.

I have been unable to explicitly reproduce it at will however, and so I would like help from the people out there to determine what exactly is going on, so we can get Apple to fix the problem.

Here is what I know of the problem:

• Happens on Leopard and Snow Leopard (I'm currently running Snow Leopard 10.6.1).
• enable: Require password "immediately" after sleep or screen saver begins.
• enable: Use screen saver "Word of the Day" (mine is set for 5 minutes).
• Allow screen saver to activate and move the mouse before the the Word of the Day screen saver is fully active.

What you should get if you are able to reproduce this is that the computer pops up a dialog asking you to log in to unlock the machine, however you have mouse access to your desktop, and if you check, you will be able to change security settings as long as they don't require keyboard input. The keyboard will be captured by the login dialog.

I managed to take snapshots of the last two times this has happened on my machine, showing that i was able to access the preferences dialog (I have smuged out personal info in the images):

If you are able to reproduce this, please let me know and what you did to reproduce it, particularly is you are able to do it at will.

By all means call apple about the problem if you can reproduce it. The case number I put in is: Apple Expert Case 139146232

Update: This has been submitted to bugreport.apple.com as issue # 7318689

Update: This appears to be fixed in OSX 10.6.2 as I have not seen any further occurrence.