Google

Rooting Android - General Observations and OG Droid + LG Ally

After a couple years having had no experience with an Android phone of any variety, a generous Twitter follower I had met donated two older Android phones, an original Motorola Droid (running Froyo 2.2.2) and an LG Ally (also running 2.2.2), so I could learn the Android UI and work on porting a couple of my iOS apps.

One unfortunate reality of the Android ecosystem is that phones are often abandoned by their manufacturers after only a year (or less time), and even if not, they are not kept up to date past one or two minor Android OS releases. For instance, both the Ally and Droid are more than capable of running Android 2.3 Gingerbread (and I'm now running 2.3.7 on the Droid, faster than 2.2.x ever ran), but Motorola has ended support for the device.

Tabbing Between Fields in Google Chrome (vs. Tabbing through everything)

For some users, being able to tab through all clickable elements on a page is a blessing. For most, though, it's a curse (at least, in my experience). The default behavior of a browser should be to allow users to tab through form elements only (textfields, textareas, search forms, submit buttons, etc.).

For some time now, Google Chrome has only allowed users to tab through every. Single. Element. on the entire page. Luckily, there's a new setting that popped up in the 'Under the Hood' settings recently that allows a user to turn off this insane behavior.

How Apple's New iWork Could Defeat Google Docs

Earlier today, Apple announced they were starting a beta service of iWork applications online, free for anyone (with a licensed copy of iWork '09) to try, called iWork.com. The premise is this: You make a document in, say, Pages, and then click a button to put it online. You let your editor/friend know the document is online, and then he or she can login to the iWork website, view the document as you created it, and put sticky notes on it. This way, the editor/friend doesn't have to have a certain application (like Word) on his or her computer to view or make notes on your document.

Apple iWork Screenshots

Apple's not the first to have a product like this—Google has had its 'Docs' suite of online writing/sharing applications for a couple years already (it's free and it also lets everyone work on the document together)—but they have the opportunity to win the Online Office Suite battle, which has barely begun.

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