Gingerbread out for Nexus One

My Nexus one that I use for development has just updated to Gingerbread.

Metered Internet in Canada. Say it ain't so!

More information on the Metered Internet in Canada:

• Globe & Mail - A metered Internet is a regulatory failure
• ZDNet - Why metered Internet is a really bad idea
• The Pros And Cons of Metered Internet Bandwidth And Quotas

I don't know about you, but most of my services now come over the internet.
I rent movies and make telephone calls, do my banking, pay my taxes, renew my car license, interact with my city, provincial and federal governments all through network technology.

The network service providers are aware that more and more we are going to depend on the network for our day to day lives. They want to get the rules changed now before most of us are aware of just how much things are going to change.

What we'll end up with is a system like cell phone where you pay by the minute for every call you make and the cost can be as high as they like it to be.



This is not a good situation for us and will in fact make us a backward country in terms of our future compared to the rest of the world. Don't let this become the way things are. Help change the rules before they rules are implemented.

New Android version released

Well it appears today that that my Nexus One got an OTA update from 2.2.1 to 2.2.2.

The notice said it was a maintenance release, which would make sense based on the version sequence.

More on the update here:

Nexus One Gets Android 2.2.2 Update, Still no Gingerbread

Now if only Samsung would get off their asses and stop screwing their customers.

I am dropping my Galaxy S Captiva as soon as I can!

For my professional peers

Wired Magazine: Really? The Web Is Dead?

The Web Is Dead.

Or so says and article in Wired Magazine: The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet

They include a fancy graph at the top of the article as proof of the authors statements.

However, that graph seems to be misleading if I'm interpreting it correctly. Lets take a look.

Sources: Wired Magazine per Cisco estimates based on CAIDA publications, Andrew Odlyzko

Notice that DNS and Web are down relative to video and peer-to-peer however we know that they are not down; DNS alone still happens every time your computer needs to translate a name to a number and it happens a lot more in your computer and on more devices than it ever has... it's just a very small amount of data. If the values are a proportion of traffic, then even if Web (http) usage was increasing, the volume of a movie or p2p file transfer (also most likely a movie) would dilute the figures so that it looked like "the web" was dead as the author claimed.

In fact all this is really showing is that the proportion of data attributed to video is rising, which we know to be true as more and more people get their content via streams (Netflix, iTunes, Youtube, etc). It shows that more data is video, and possibly the web has become more efficient... in no way does it actually indicate that "the web is dead".

I am very surprised that Wired would make this kind of mistake, let alone that others pass it along without actually understanding what they are looking at.

It's one of those inaccurate mumbo jumo articles that can actually define the attitudes that make it come to pass, although I very much doubt that it will in the next 15 years at least.

It actually unfortunate that the authors (Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff) made this mistake, because even though they did have some interesting things to say, they caused themselves to be taken les seriously using that data as a basis of their article.

It really makes you wonder how many people are going to read that article and not actually look at the graph.

I can see it now; I'll be talking to some customer and he/she will tell me "The Web Is Dead"... at which point I'll likely apply palm to face.

iPod Nano: new version is missing the features I want!

Apple has just updated the iPod Nano line.

The trouble is that they have taken out the video camera.

Now I don't need an iPod, I have a phone that plays music just fine and gives me a whole lot of other features as well, however I would like to get an iPods for my kids.

To the kids, the music is important, but to me the camera is important. I want the video camera, because it give a passive device and active feature.

When you think of what sort of gadgetry you want your kids to have, a camera should be right up there with anything else, what better way to give them a tool so they can start building their own life record early on? What better way to encourage them to go outside and see what they can see?

Since apple has changed the line and removed the camera from the Nano, I've looked around and managed to find a few left in a local Apple retailer. I'll be buying the old iPod Nano instead of the new one this week, while I can still get them, even though I had not planned to give them to the kids for another year.

Now I can't believe I'm the only one disappointed that the camera is gone... so I have to wonder once again is Apple actually listening to their customers?

If I wanted an iPod that small, I could have purchased an iPod Shuffle instead... the new Nano is just a tad larger than the Shuffle... it's not the size I want, it's the features and removing a feature like the camera was a silly move.

Upgrading Nexus One from Android 2.1 to Android 2.2

Well it turns out that I had version 2.1 update 1 installed (build id ERE27) and my Nexus One would not update to Froyo (build id FRFxx).

So, I had to find out how to do it manually.

I used this article to run the update:

How to manually install Android 2.2 on your Nexus One

Tips:

• Be patient; Ready Everything!
• This will update you from ERE27 to FRF50. You can use the same instructions to get to FRF83. (download FRF50 to FRF83 update here).
• after step 8, you will see a box with an arrow coming out of it and a little droid. It takes a while, but don't panic. the phone is installing the update.
• The phone will do a few restarts on its own. Let them run.

Q&A For Fido Users

• Yes, the tethering option is available.