Your next must-have widget... UCCW

Today's Daily 60 (seconds) is about an android widget that just about every home screen layout needs.  Here coms UCCW...

The Ultimate Custom Clock Widget (or Ultimate Custom Widget, or UCCW for short and shorter) is definitely a gem in the rough.  I gotta be honest guys, without reading the instructions, I nearly deleted it as soon as I had it.  It was a bear to figure out, but so many people said it was so great I had to keep tinkering until I got it right.  Now nearly every layout I make uses it, and I make a lot of layouts.

For those of you that don't know it, UCCW is a data display widget.  It lets you organize things like battery life, time, date, weather,  text, Tasker variables, unread emails, unread texts, and so many more things for clean display on your screen.  Most of the things in UCCW have a number of different display options.  After picking one, then you can choose layout, special effects, font, color, background, etc.  The idea here is you make a widget that does what you want.  With UCCW, that's pretty much always possible, and often without a lot of work.

I can't think of a widget I use more, so keep your eyes on this one guys and give it a try tonight.  Best of all, it's free!

So how smart are watches, really?

So I fell behind this week, and I'm sorry about that, but I'm back on the wagon and here's your Daily 120 (seconds), a little extra to make up for lost time!  Let's talk about Smart Watches.

First we had cellphones the size of briefcases.  Wow, awesome, I can make a call anywhere I feel like, as long as I lug this cumbersome ugly thing with me.  Then they got smaller, and smaller, and someone said "Hey, I need my phone to do more than just make phone calls!" so we ended up with text messages and crappy little "games" that were more frustrating than they were worth, unless you got the little Tetris version.  Then phones got touch screens, and android/iPhone wars, and yay, now it's today, the world of smartphones.  But wait, there's more...

Enter smart watches.  Yes, I said watches, and what's more odd about that is not only is it mostly superfluous and just gadgety, I really really have to have one.  Basically a smart watch in most cases is a peripheral to your phone, letting you access it's functions, like reading texts or answering/denying calls, without pulling it out of your pocket or backpack.

I want to clarify something now, and say that my comments here are based on research and reviews, not actual use.  I can't afford to buy all these watches to validate the facts I've heard, so please, just take these as opinions.

There are several watches on the market I'm looking into, and I'll give the brief 1-2 punch on each.

The Pebble.  It looks nice and is selling like hotcakes, but there really aren't a lot of apps available for it yet.  Battery life sounds good as it's an e-paper technology, but without a backlight night use is challenging at best,and honestly in an age of touch screens, having side-buttons makes me feel like I'm back in the 80s with my Timex.  

Sony Smartwatch.  This looks promising, but much of what I'm hearing about it means that it needs to be charged every 4 days (based on sony) or every day (based on reviews) and more than likely it's closer to the latter.  I could live with that since it's a touchscreen digital display, but it's rated at "splash proof" and I really don't want to take the risk on how much rain constitutes a splash.  I want to know that I can just walk outside without having to cover my watch in a ziplock baggie.

Honestly the only watch I've seen that looks really great to is the Sonostar Smartwatch. It looks sleek, has a touch e-paper screen with a backlight, and is waterproof, everything I'm looking for.  This watch sounds amazing, but then again, that might be because it's not even out yet so all I can go on is specs and pictures, not user reviews.

The moral of the story is that nothing is really "there" yet, as far as I can see, but I'm eager to see what's around tomorrow's corner.

Please leave comments on what you think, or if you know a model that I didn't mention here that would be worth looking into!

Android Launcher Basics

So as promised, I've gathered together some pointers and thoughts on making your android really YOUR android.  So let's go ahead with your Daily 120 (seconds).

When I first got my android phone, I played around with backgrounds, animated backgrounds, and putting icons all over the place.  While that was neat, it really was just slightly better than the defaults you can do with an iPhone.  I had heard android was much much more customizable, so I dove into learning about it. (NOTE: All my tips are root-free, you can do them all without affecting your warranty or hacking your phone)

First thing I learned is that you can change what's called your launcher.  This is the part of the phone OS that shows icons, manages screen transitions, and things like that.  Early in the process I learned that I didn't like having a grid making my icons all line up, so I searched around.  There were a couple gridless launchers, but I opted to go with Lightning Launcher, which you can get for free on the Play Store.  This launcher lets you zoom in and out, set up screens up, down, left, and right of each other, use ADW icons, and for me the most important part, use gridless positioning.  Down side is it doesn't have much in the way of screen transitions other then "slides over".

My first attempt at making a "pretty" home screen on my phone ended up like this:

I liked it, but it still seemed too plain.  I wanted pizzaz, style, uniqueness, so I made this one:

Yeah yeah, I just changed the pic and added the weather and battery.  Really I made this one because I thought the first was a little pixelated.  At this point though I realized I was just turning a clock and putting icons away neatly.  I wanted to push the envelope, hard.  So with a little work, I made this one and I think to date it's one of my favorites:

So take out of this the fact that you need to find a launcher you like that customizes the way you want, and keep that as the baseline for any new home screen customizations, and we'll go over other things like nice widgets next!

NOTE: A Launcher switching program, like Home Switcher, makes finding a launcher you like really easy, just install a few, then hop back and forth and see which features you like best.

Jail Breaking? Let's get to the Root of it...

It was posed to me on a previous blog to explain what jail breaking is, so here we go.  Put most simply, it's taking an iPhone and granting yourself access to the phone that you normally don't have.  Yes, you're giving yourself access to something you already bought, because buying it isn't enough to get full access.  This lets you "side load" software, or install things via USB rather than only through the iTunes store.

Doing this means you're taking full responsibility for your own device.  You void all warranties on it's functionality, and by side loading, you're bypassing all the safety that iTunes/Apple gives you by checking the functionality, security, and reliability of their code.

This means that you can take full control of the device you own, which is good, but if you don't know what you are doing, then you are stealing just enough rope to hang yourself, so do your research and make sure you know why you're doing it. 

Side note, with Android machines it's called Rooting rather than jail breaking.  Also, since launcher replacement and side loading is already allowed, rooting really only is used for changing the base operating system or more base functions of the phone. I'm not an expert in either process, but since I've owned both kinds of phones, the iPhone had me wanting to do the procedure the entire time I used it, while my android works just the way I want. Remember, rooting or jailbreaking a phone wrong can brick it right out of the gate, so be careful. (Bricking means your phone becomes a $700 doorstop)

Next week I'll talk about a few launchers and software I recommend to give your phone the functionality you want, without rooting it at all, stay tuned!

Hey baby, what's your language?

Hey baby, how you doin'?  Code here often?  What's YOUR language?

Ok, stop the eye rolling.  I wanted to take a second to talk about computer languages.  They're a lot like actual languages, except I can seem to actually learn them.  There are mainframe languages like Cobol and Fortran.  Then there are web-based languages like PHP and ASP classic.  Sometimes there are interface driven languages, like objectiveC's IOS interface kit. Then you have compiled languages like Java or C++.  Then again, lots of Java programs are used on the web, so wouldn't that make them web-based languages?  And I know that on Salesforce they use Apex which is edited and tested on their website, obviously a web-based language, but it's based in Java and you can "recompile" if you need, which means it's compiled...

Ok wait, i'm getting dizzy.  Here's the basics of just about all of it.  If you can code, you can code.  I don't care what languages you have experience with.  I was once hired for a PHP job because of my ASP classic experience, and within six months I was taking turns at being "lead developer".  Coding is coding, all that changes is the syntax.  If you know how to write solid code, you can learn to write solid code in any language pretty darn fast.

Yeah, that's like saying that German is like French, all that changes are the words.  Well it's really true, but instead of having thousands of words, there are hundreds of commands, and no one's gonna be waiting for you to type "fluently," just look that shit up.

So leave me a comment, are you a coder, scripter, developer, engineer, lackey?  Let's hear what you use, or where you learned it. We're a community, so let's share resources, literally.