Here’s what you need to do to get going.

1. Root the phone (this is very easy). Follow the instructions on Lifehacker.
2. Download ES File Explorer from the market
3. Enable these settings
   
   • Settings>Root Explorer
   • Settings>Mount File System

This will give you writeable access to the file system, now you can fix those annoyances.

Disable the Start Up Sound

1. Rename /etc/PowerOn.wav to /etc/PowerOn.wav.old

Disable Camera Shutter Sound

1. Create a text file /data/local.prop
2. Add this line ro.camera.sound.forced=0
3. Restart your phone

Disable Battery Full Sound

1. Rename /system/media/audio/ui/LowBattery.ogg to /system/media/audio/ui/LowBattery.ogg.bak

More Tips

If you know of any other tweaks, let me know. I’ll be keeping this list updated.

There’s also lots of power user features built in, so check them out too.

The Good

The simple fact that this app now exists is the best thing about it. Submitting meter readings is a pain in the arse, made less painful and less arsey with this app. It’s also (largely) easy to use, if you’re already registered for on-line billing, just log in with your account details and that’s it. Your account history, meter reading submission and all the other bells and whistles are there for you. Being able to compare your energy usage against the average for your area is a great idea and the information is displayed very nicely. Making people competitive about their energy use can only be a good thing.

Access to support is great, you can fire off an email (expect a reply in 24 hour apparently) and important contact numbers are all easily accessible. Also, using the camera flash as a torch on the meter readings page is a wonderfully clever idea.

The Bad

I get prompted to log in a second time when trying to compare energy usage, which is annoying. And for this login (not the main one), my credentials aren’t remembered. The comparison feature itself is quite fiddly to use, the app tries to download comparison data for most navigation gestures, which is frustrating. To view the comparison results, you don’t click the box labelled “click to compare” but the teeny tiny arrow next to it. Oddly the button on the information display is styled differently to the rest of the app, and looks out of place. In general the comparison feature doesn’t feel very well integrated with the rest of the app, which is a shame.

While you can view your previous energy consumption in a table, it’d probably be more effective to see it in a chart. That you can’t do this is all the more surprising considering the icon for this feature is a bar chart?! Update: I’m informed that you can rotate the device to view data as a chart.

The Verdict

A great app, but needs a bit more work.

Well done British Gas. Looking forward to the alpha release.

"Unable to mount SAMSUNG_Android Error initialising camera: -60: Could not lock the device"

Samsung uses it’s own software to sync and update the phone called Kies. Kies is only available for Windows (naturally), not Mac or Linux. But you can still use the USB storage and USB tethering, you just have to enable USB debug mode.

Settings > Applications > Development > USB Debugging

Now when you connect the phone with the USB cable, you can choose to mount the USB storage from the status bar.
Alternatively, you can use the USB tethering.

Settings > Wireless and Network > Tethering and Portable Hotspot Settings > USB Tethering.

Edit also check out my post on Galaxy S2 tweaks.

Google Reader

I keep an eye on a lot of blogs, mostly design/science/art focussed. Typically I’ve got about 100 feeds in my feed reader, but I’ve had a bit of a purge recently, and chopped it down to about 30. I use Google Reader to keep track of them all, sorted in to various tagged groups (Graphics, Science, Paper Craft, Comics etc..).

I tend to read through one group at a time, toggling the Expanded or List views depending on which group I’m reading. Expanded view is best for the graphics feeds making it easy to quickly scan through the images, picking out interesting pics. I prefer List view for text articles where I tend just to scan the headlines.

Tumblr

For a while I used to keep a photo album as a scrapbook of various images from magazines and what-not. As I tend to browse more articles online than off these days the photo album has become a bit redundant. For a while I kept printing off images and sticking them in, but this process was too cumbersome to keep up with.

Now I use Tumblr as my scrapbook, combined with a Firefox plugin and an Android app, I can quickly and easily add inspiring images to my collection.

In Firefox I use the Tumblr Post plugin. With this I simply right click an image and select ‘Post photo to my Tumblelog’. I copy and paste the page link (for reference) in to the comment field and hit upload.  Update: There’s actually a plugin setting that sets the image link to the page URL, no copy and paste needed! Easy as.

On my mobile phone (HTC Hero running Android) I have the Asuka Tumblr app, which allows me to send any image on my phone straight up to Tumblr. I can use this to take photos of things I see and stick them straight in to my scrapbook.

Twitter

I love Twitter. It’s awesome. However, managing followees and keeping an eye on conversations takes a bit of work. Lists and Saved Searches are the answer. I’ve got a number of lists grouping the different people I follow, and I take a gander at each on a semi-regular basis.

I’ve also set a few custom searches for words and phrases I’m interested in. Twitter search accepts logical search constructs, so I can search for "paper engineer" AND "paper engineering" in one go. This is a good way to find other people talking about things I like to talk about.

Incidentally, I’ve tried, but not really got on with any of these social network aggregation programs, I’m much happier with the good old Twitter site itself.

Follow me on Twitter
Check out my Tumblr Scrapbook

You know when you hear something and it sends ideas pinging off in different directions like a particle collision? Reading about this gave me one of those moments.

Think about any scenario where you’d want real-time location specific information pushed to you. There’s the obvious stuff, like retailers notifying customers of up-to-the minute promotions and offers. Imagine getting a message from the Deli round the corner, telling you that there’s only two peri-peri chicken baguettes left?

This could really take off for events organisers. Wouldn’t it be great getting info about bands in the signing tent right now? But more importantly not getting the info if you’re on the other side of the site?

But what about calling for help when you need it? In disaster situations, spreading information is essential. You can be told, not where all the heath centres are, but the nearest one to you, right now. This could make managing resources much easier. Messages directing people to the better equipped centres can be sent out over a larger area than the less equipped ones.

These are a few thoughts from a few minutes thinking. My brain’s going to be chewing on this for a while…

I wouldn’t expect that apps made using App Inventor would be better (faster, more efficient) than their hand-coded equivalents, but I can see that this would be useful for quickly knocking up a demo or for scratching out ideas. It’s clear from the blabber that Google aren’t trying to put developers out of work, this is aimed squarely at educators as a platform to teach about programming concepts. A good thing in my books.

Google will be granting access to App Inventor over the coming weeks, you need to register to get an invite.

Enjoy!

MyLineup is a simple app for Android phones which allows you to keep track of the artists you want to see at all the festivals your going to this summer.

Please note, this is still in (very early) beta, so if you encounter any bugs, let me know in the comments below.

To install, visit this page on your android phone and click the link below.

Click Here To Download myLineup