Great Android App: AdAway

Market Download - For rooted phones only. Installs a custom hosts file to redirect ads in browser or in app. I've previously used AdFree but found it to be less than successful.

SVG in Android Browser

I learned to my disappointment today that my favorite android browser Dolphin HD doesn't support Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG).  Luckily Firefox does!  I'm currently giving the beta version a try for checking the bandwidth usage monitor in DD-WRT, but it seems quite quick for general browsing as well.

Android FOSS Market

I'm always in the market for free Android software (free as in beer and/or speech). Today I came across F-Droid which is a new market catering solely to FOSS software. They have an app as well as a convenient mobile interface for downloading packages. androidVNC is already listed as well as a number of other very useful applications. I'm sure this resource will only grow with time.

Tor + Android = Orbot

I'm a pretty big fan of Tor, the anonymizing network known as an onion router. For this reason I was recently delighted to learn of Orbot which is a tor + local proxy implementation for Android! If you're not familiar with tor unfortunately an explanation is outside the scope of this article.

My android phone is rooted so I'm enjoying full transparent tor proxying. I read that on non-rooted phones Orbot will still provide some functionality with specific browsers so it's probably worth a download even if you don't have those magical superuser privileges.

Free Android Virus Scanner

The world of mobile computing is becoming increasingly risky. Viruses and other malware have been identified in both the Android and iOS marketplaces. As an Android user I've seen quite a number of different antivirus options on the market but until recently they were either a) from a developer I'd never heard of or b) expensive. Luckily I recently came across ESET Mobile Security RC.

I've used ESET Nod32 for desktop virus protection in my professional work and found it to be decently secure without requiring the obscene overhead of some other products. This product appears to be similarly light on resource usage while providing a complete suite of mobile security.

What do you get in the package? Well, real-time virus protection for one. ESET also provides call/sms spam protection with white and black list functionality. The security audit function scans installed applications and settings for anything untoward which could potentially leave you open for problems. The program also includes the ability to password protect any or all of these functions with a master password.

I've saved the best for last, though. ESET Mobile Security RC includes anti-theft functionality. With this program installed you can issue commands to your phone via SMS. Available commands are 'wipe' which clears your personal data, 'lock' which prevents use without your password, and 'find' which returns your phone's location data. In addition you can specify trusted contacts which are other phones (friends or family) from whose phones you could reset your password remotely if necessary.

True, it's only a release candidate and will likely cost a bundle when finally released, but this seems to be an awesome product. Grab it while it's free and give it a spin!

Install gmote on 64 bit linux

It appears that gmote and vlc may not play nicely together on 64 bit systems (specifically Ubuntu 11.10). Gmote consistently complained that it was unable to load libvlc.so even though vlc was correctly installed and working. I found this tip here to issue the following command to fix the problem:

sudo apt-get install libvlc-dev

One command, and 20 seconds of patience, and now gmote works like a charm.