There has, however, always been an issue with cross-posting to Facebook.

Within the dlvr.it options for cross-posting messages to Facebook you have the option to post as a status update, a note or a link. As I want to make it appear as though I am actively using the network, I’ve always opted for the status update with as much content as it’ll allow. The difference between posts sent to Facebook and, say, Twitter is the link placement.

On Twitter, the link is posted after the original content to prompt you to continue reading:

On Facebook, the first thing you see is the link, this immediately puts you off reading the content that follows:

When I say “puts you off reading”, I mean it. After toying with the idea of turning the links off all together, I decided that it was ultimately necessary in order to regain the engagement I was always used to getting when I was active on Facebook and not pushing my posts from Google+.

The proof was in the pudding as highlighted here:

Naturally, this test was not very scientific at all, but since turning off the links the comments and likes have been rolling in in a manner that reminded me of the days when I only used Facebook, the days when people read what I posted and didn’t overlook it due to a ghastly (albeit custom) link stuck right at the beginning of the content.

When I cornered dlvr.it over this “issue”, they responded:

Personally? I don’t see why that matters. If someone is reading your post, they will click “read more’ to finish it off anyway. By stuffing the link in a reader’s face immediately I believe more harm is being done than not having the link on display until “read more” is clicked, if a post is infact long enough to require that.

So for now, links are disabled on my Google+ > Facebook route, and will remain that way until dlvr.it fix it. Even if that does cause the odd comment of confusion on occasion when a post cuts off prematurely.

Have you noticed a drop in engagement on Facebook since using dlvr.it with the links activated? Perhaps you should give this a go, also.

Cheers,
Jason

Follow the conversation on Google+

Posted from Faringdon, England, United Kingdom.

Changing the lockscreen icons, for example, requires re-launching HTC’s Sense Home, tapping the “Personalize” icon and selecting the lockscreen options.

ADW (and other launchers) has a way of assisting you in making this a lot easier. I’ll show you how:

Changing lockscreen icons from within ADW

Open ADW options - Tap Add.

Select "Custom shortcut".

Select "Pick your activity". Disregard the image and Label for now.

Select "Activities".

Scroll to and tap the arrow to the left of "Personalize".

Select the activity "Personalize(.idlescreen.shortcut.ShortcutSetting)".

Now edit the label and select a memorable icon.

Once edited, tap OK

Tap the icon to now open the Sense lockscreen settings.

Edit the lockscreen settings at will!

I hope you find this useful. There are many, many shortcuts that will allow you to bring up Sense options and applications. While it is fresh in the mind, take the opportunity to explore this further and see what else you can dig out!

Cheers,
Jason

Note: This is an unofficial method and will undoubtedly become outdated at some point in the not too distant future.

This post is extremely similar to my previous Pushing Buzz to Twitter with dlvr.it so if you see similarities, you’ll know why.

For this (and following) article, I will assume you are signed up and logged in. If you’re not, head over to dlvr.it now and get it done!

Logged in? Alright then, off we go.

The first thing you’ll need is your public Google+ Feed URL. There’s no need to go hunting around for it, as I’ve provided it here:

http://dlvritplus.appspot.com/PROFILEID

All you’ll need to change is PROFILEID. For you, this’ll be a number you see when you go to your Google+ profile, so for example mine is:

http://dlvritplus.appspot.com/107941235164261478540

Simple, right? Now you have that, you can create your new Route. Whenever you’re ready, you can click that all important button!

As soon as you’ve hit the button, you’ll be greeted with a screen you’ll no doubt become familiar with as you turn into a dlvr.it power user.. ;)

Give your new route a name and hit “+ add” in Sources. This is where we’ll get your Google+ feed in and set to be pushed to Twitter/Facebook when we’re done. Be prepared, there are a lot of options you can potentially set here. I’ll show what’s required and trust you can take all the time you need to check out the other options at a later time.

Feed URL is where you’ll enter the Google+ feed I posted above, though with your profile number, obviously.. unless you want to post my updates? I’d be flattered, I’m sure! I doubt you’d be too happy though..

When should we make your first post? gives you the option to post your latest Google+, wait until your next Post, or to publish every Post you’ve posted. If your Twitter or Facebook account is a little slow, you may find publishing everything gives the illusion you’re (suddenly!) very active on twitter!

Feed active simply turns the source on or off. We’ll definitely want it on.

Retrieve Log may come in handy later, it shows when your source was last polled and what was delivered for you.

We’re now ready to save the source. With this information set, all of your Google+ posts will be pushed to Twitter or Facebook every 15 minutes. Wanting more control? Take a look at the menu items along the top:

Feed update allows you to set how often dlvr.it checks for new posts. It’s every 15minutes by default.

Item text allows you to define prefixes and suffixes to every post, and to find & replace any content you wish within each post.

Filters allow you to specify on what words will trigger dlvr.it to pick up a post. You could, for example, only push posts you specifically want on Twitter with a #twitter tag. Any post then posted with that tag will be posted to Twitter.

Scheduling allows you to define when Feed update will run.

Location allows you to define whether location in posts will be transferred to Twitter or Facebook.

And finally, there are some Advanced options that you may consider quickly perusing on the off-chance there’s an option there that suits your needs.

We’re definitely ready to hit save source now. Let’s move on.

Once you’ve saved the source, your route will become visible again. Simply click on “+ add” on Destination to add your Twitter or Facebook information.

On the next screen, you’ll be prompted to choose a destination. There are a number to choose from, but luckily someone has decided to place Twitter and Facebook at the top of the list (it’s like they know what we’re doing).

Click new and wait for the next screen.

Almost there now – Make sure Active is ticked and click Start Authorisation. You’ll now be taken to Twitter or Facebook to sign in before returning to this screen after a confirmation message. Before you click save you can again set a couple of extra options, such as what parts of your Google+ post to post in Post Content and how dlvr.it will handle hashtags in Advanced.

Have you finished tinkering? As soon as you hit save you’ll be returned to your route list where you’ll see a new, shiny Google+ to Twitter route. The final step is to make sure Active is showing in the top right of the route, if it isn’t, click it.

And that, my good reader, is all there is to it. If you’re impatient you can hover over the Google+ source and click the little circle to the right of what I’ve called “Google+”. This will force a check for posts. Otherwise, carry on with your day. This is sorted.

If you have any questions at all, please let me know. If not, enjoy completely hassle-free Google+ to Twitter/Facebook deliveries!

Cheers,
Jason

Posted from Oxford, England, United Kingdom.

Evidently you’re not aware of Google’s multiple sign-in feature.

Once activated, you can log into up to 10 accounts at any one time and very quickly switch between them on most (but not all) Google products. Anywhere you see a “Switch Account” link when clicking your name in the top right corner is a product that Google supports multi sign-in.

Quick tip! “Right click > Open link in new tab” to remain in one account while opening another!

The setup of this feature is extremely easy, and takes only a few steps!

1) Log onto google.com/account

If you’re a Google plus user (and you really should be) you’ll see the Google plus settings page, if not, you’ll see the standard account settings page you always see.

2) Locate “Multiple sign-in” and click “Edit”. Turn it on.

3) Open a Google product, such as Gmail, click your name/image in the top corner and look for the “Switch Account” link.

Check it out, no more IE to access that second account!

Posted from Oxford, England, United Kingdom.

Out of the 4 operating systems I’ve now tested, Windows is by far the best and most stable on the Cr-48. It works almost fully after a bit of tweaking (the WWAN mobile broadband card requires some hacking before it’ll work) and took no longer than 30 mins to set up.

What you’ll need:

A small Philips head screwdriver
An external DVD drive
An SD card/USB stick
The Insyde BIOS firmware
Synaptics driver
Tape

If you haven’t already, you’ll need to hack the Cr48 to allow you to install the Insyde BIOS firmware before you can install anything other than Chrome OS. Here are the instructions for that:

The first thing I did was install Ubuntu as it’s a really easy method to get you started with the entire process. This was done using a script created by Jay Lee that basically takes the full set of instructions from the chromium site and no doubt adds a few extras. You can follow the instructions provided by Jay Lee here: http://goo.gl/X9YG8. Make sure you’ve set Ubuntu to boot by default.

Once you’ve installed Ubuntu, we can now move on to flashing the BIOS.

Flashing the BIOS is a little involved but is required in order to rid the Cr of Google’s propriety BIOS and install the bog-standard Intel Insyde BIOS that’ll allow you to install any OS from USB/CD. The first thing to do is crack open your Cr and disable the BIOS check. Instructions for opening the Cr can be seen here: Open your Cr-48

Once you’ve fixed the BIOS check (I used tape) and re-assembled your Cr, we can now look at Backing up and flashing the Insyde BIOS.

Boot back into Ubuntu.

Download the new BIOS from here: www.bayton.org/download/cr48.bin.tar.gz

Open Terminal and Install flashrom by typing sudo apt-get install flashrom

Once it’s finished and installed, you can now type flashrom -r backup.bin. This will save the backup file to your home directory, so please now move it onto a USB stick or SD card.

Extract cr48.bin.tar.gz to a directory, then head over to the Terminal and type flashrom -w /directory/to/cr48.bin
Don’t forget the space between -w and / !!

The BIOS will now start flashing. If you get 2 errors, ignore them. If you get more, you may have a problem. (Note, I cannot help you with this!).

As soon as you have a success message you have flashed the BIOS. You can now reboot, plug in an external DVD drive and tap F10 (Right arrow key) to get into the BIOS settings. Set CD to boot and go for it!

Install Windows as you would on any computer and let it do what it needs to. After a while you’ll find yourself on that ever-familiar Windows desktop undoubtedly wondering why it’s 800×600. Whoops! Not to worry though! There are two ways about this:

A) Connect to Wifi and start updating, in one of the optional updates, the most up-to-date VGA driver will be there waiting to be installed.

B) If you’re not interested in waiting, you can click Start > Control Panel > Appearance and Personalization > Display > Adjust Screen Resolution (left-hand link). Click “Advanced settings” then “Properties”, select the “Driver” tab and finally, click “Update Driver”.

If you’re connected to the net, it will find it. After this you’ll need to reboot.

The tech-savvy amongst you may ask “Why go through that when one can click Start > Right Click on Computer and click “Manage” to get the device manager?” – Well, you see, you don’t yet have right click. You could also bring device manager up through the run prompt, but I like the way I’ve explained, anyway.. No right click – which brings us on to the next hurdle..

If you haven’t already from the link above, please download the modified Synaptics driver here. Install this and reboot if required. Once completed (including a reboot, if necessary) head over to Control Panel > Hardware and Sound and click the Mouse link in the submenu. You’ll see a Synaptics tab – here you can enable right click, scrolling and 3 finger application launch.

A word to the wise, two finger tap for right click doesn’t appear to be an option. You can do it one (or both) of two ways..
1) Enable touch zones on the trackpad and assign a zone to right click
2) Use tap for left click and physical click of the trackpad for right click – This is what I went with, and I like it.

Also, the search key is now the windows key, how awesome is that?

During this process, you should get quite a few updates.. do let them install if you can, it will immediately help bring your system (and all drivers) as up to date as possible. Reboot when required.

Another thing you may notice is the lack of Aero when you first install.

(Click to enlarge)

Once you’re run your Windows Experience Index, you’ll get a score of around 2.3 – enough to get you on Aero as below:

(Click to enlarge)

And that, everyone, is a successful Windows 7 installation onto a Cr-48, also now known as “Wn-R48″ because it’s so completely awesome. There are some aspects I’m working on, such as enabling the mobile internet card. As I use my streak for Wifi tethering, I’ve not yet looked into the card in all honesty. There are threads about this on ChromeOS lounge so I will be getting to it at some point.

Additionally, if you currently open “Computer” you’ll notice you have under 4GB of storage remaining. I strongly recommend using a large(ish) SD card for storage where possible. I’ve even moved my User Data folder for Chrome to the SD as it takes up so much space.

At the moment, I have Skype, Chrome, FileZilla and Avast! installed with 3.6GB still available. Updates are now “notify, but do not download” so I can choose which to install as required in order to maintain as little C:\ storage as possible.

And finally, the battery has lasted around 6 hours on one charge, topping the 4 hours I got from Fedora but naturally not as good as the 8 hours from ChromeOS.

Have you already done this or are looking to do this to your Cr-48 or ChromeBook?

Why not join the conversation on Google+?
http://w.jaa.so/wn-r48

Posted from Oxford, England, United Kingdom.

Fill in this form and wait.

http://invite.bayton.org

That is all!

Posted from Bournemouth, England, United Kingdom.

With that said, first I’ll show how to set up the environment. You can alter the below to cover any service you choose to use (which accepts updates over email, naturally).

Using a dedicated circle, we can create dedicated contacts that’ll receive emails whenever a post is published to said circle.

Begin by creating a circle. From here we can add an email contact as below: 

You’ll have to give the contact a name, but then you’ll be ready to go. Click Create circle:

Voila:

You can now select this circle when creating a new post and, if you check the box to say “Also email X people not yet using Google+”, Google+ will send an email to the email address(es) you have specified:

So what services can you use this with?

Well, any service that allows you to update via email. Any, I’ve found, except Google Buzz as this will only read the subject and not the body of the email!

You can try this with WordPress, Twiitter (http://tweetymail.com/) and Facebook (check out posting via email in the mobile site) just to name a few!

Stuck? I’m happy to help..

Posted from Oxford, England, United Kingdom.

I’ve been living with the Dell Streak now for a few months, having the chance to test it to its’ limits and being able to see how it performs as a standard phone/tablet hybrid.

The one word that comes to mind fairly quickly is wow.

I have used some phones in my time, but I have never had anything as powerful and versatile (or unbelievably large!) as the Streak. Let me break it down into individual areas for you below..

Battery Life

In my opinion, battery life is the most important aspect of a smartphone and as such takes priority over other aspects listed here. After all, without a decent battery you can’t take advantage of the features the phone offers!

On average, I generally get around 36 hours of battery life with fairly heavy usage, it’s fantastic. I find Bluetooth and 3G generally hog the battery most, though 3G being far worse. As such, whenever I have the choice, I use WIFI and keep data turned off.

36 hours may seem alright, pretty much what you can get out of a lot of smartphones currently on the market. The difference is, however, the Streak is the only phone with a 5″ screen. Powering such a large screen can’t be easy on the battery and taking that into consideration it’s easy to see why 36 hours is quite impressive.

The battery itself is a 1400. Not a bad size considering how thin the Streak is.

Screen

The Streak’s screen is 5 inches with a resolution of 800×480. The screen is bright, crisp and provides a lot of real-estate for all apps that support it (now tablets are around, there aren’t many apps that don’t support the screen size).

The screen is made from Gorilla Glass which is designed to aid the prevention of scratches and cracks. There are plenty of videos on YouTube that show this in action and although they all look promising, I’ve still installed a screen protector, just incase. Despite the material it’s made from, the screen does appear to be under a lot of pressure in the shell. Tapping in any of the corners will show this with splodges where you tap your finger. It’s no problem for day to day use, but it’s something I didn’t expect to see and almost considered a fault until I researched it on the net. I believe this has been known to cause cracks in the screen relatively easy, which is a shame.

Beyond that, movies look extremely nice, games are fantastic (especially two-player) and as a general device, the screen is very nice to have – quite the ice-breaker!

Power and Hardware

The Streak sports a single-core 1Ghz Snapdragon ARM processor. There’s absolutely no stuttering or problems of any kind when undertaking any task I’ve tried so far and will play any game intended for high-end phones on the Android Marketplace.

Internally, it provides over 1GB of what I refer to as App storage (as I use it for nothing else) and is shipped with either a 16GB or 32GB SD card for any data you may have. One of the apparent contributions towards the Streak’s quick responsiveness has been put down to the fact the Streak runs it’s operating system off an internal SD card. There’s no fixed storage on the device at all which makes it extremely hackable should I choose to do so in the future. Storing different flavours of Android on multiple cards is not uncommon, though unfortunately getting to the internal SD card is not as simple as you might hope.

Beyond the CPU and storage, the Streak has a fairly decent loudspeaker and comes with a pretty nice set of headphones for music, calls and anything else you’d need sound for.

The only hardware I find lacking is the camera – even keeping as still as possible, photos are never fully focused and the flash often overcompensates in dark surroundings. As someone who uses phone cameras relentlessly, I feel a little let down whenever I take a photo. Hopefully, the other Streaks (7, 10) in the family have something a little better. I’ve included an example image to this post.

Android Development

With the Streak, there’s pretty much only 1 real developer working on ROM development. He goes by the name of DJ Steve.

DJ Steve has done some very exciting things for the Streak, including most recently bringing a dab of Gingerbread to the table. He has also brought over a CM7 alpha ROM!

Unfortunately, from a dev perspective the Streak doesn’t have the backing HTC and others have. What the Streak gets is few choices released when the only dev available has the time to release them.

Luckily for me, the Dell ROM is fairly stable.

Accessories

Accessories for the Streak are few and extremely expensive. Dell provide a Dock with HDMI output, a car dock and a few different cases, none of which are worth the money they’re charging.

So that’s it, in a nutshell the Streak is a fantastic hybrid that I would recommend to anyone thinking of getting a new device.

I give it an 8/10, failing on the camera but making up for it under varying circumstances.

Written and published from my Dell Streak.

Posted from Finland.

Do you find yourself typing far too much and too often on your phone or tablet? Are you struggling to get out all of the mails you need to in a relatively short time? Trying to blog on the go?

If so, then you’re no different to me. Changing from a phone with a slideout keyboard to a phone/tablet hybrid with an on-screen keyboard has severely effected how much I can type with my phone. I’ve looked at many different on-screen keyboards and looked into ways of connecting devices that’ll help speed things up but I came to the stark conclusion that I need a full blown keyboard to get things done. The problem is that Android doesn’t have a Bluetooth HID driver which leaves the thought of connecting a device like a keyboard just that – a thought.

Now though, I’ve found a solution.

Have you tried connecting a Bluetooth keyboard with BlueInput? If not I think you should.

BlueInput allows you to connect any Bluetooth keyboard or mouse without requiring a PIN and without any fuss.

Managing the devices is simple through their easy to use App and although from my testing the keyboard sometimes loses connectivity, it’s fairly stable and allows you to get so much more writing done in a single period of time than any on-screen keyboard could ever do.

Until Google decide to give us a HID driver so we can do this natively, BlueInput is a great choice.

The only downside to this application is the price.You really have to ask yourself: is 14 bucks worth the amount of time it will save me? If not, you may just have to wait for another solution, or until Teksoft realise how extortionately high their app price is.

The trial is in the Android Marketplace, why not give it a go?

Cheers,
Jason

Posted from Finland.

For those who may not know, Google Buzz is my main social network of choice. Sure, I’m on others (hence my need for dlvr.it!) but Buzz is the main hub and as such is the first topic I’ll be writing about. For this (and following) article, I will assume you are signed up and logged in. If you’re not, head over to dlvr.it now and get it done!

Logged in? Alright then, off we go.

The first thing you’ll need is your public Buzz Feed URL. There’s no need to go hunting around for it, as I’ve provided it here:

http://buzz.googleapis.com/feeds/USERNAME/public/posted

All you’ll need to change is USERNAME. For you, this’ll either be a number or your Gmail address without @gmail.com, so for example mine is:

http://buzz.googleapis.com/feeds/jmrbayton/public/posted

Simple, right? Now you have that, you can create your new Route. Whenever you’re ready, you can click that all important button!

As soon as you’ve hit the button, you’ll be greeted with a screen you’ll no doubt become familiar with as you turn into a dlvr.it power user.. ;)

Click to enlarge

Give your new route a name and hit “+ add” in Sources. This is where we’ll get your Buzz feed in and set to be pushed to Twitter when we’re done. Be prepared, there are a lot of options you can potentially set here. I’ll show what’s required and trust you can take all the time you need to check out the other options at a later time.

Click to enlarge

Feed URL is where you’ll enter the Buzz feed I posted above, though with your username, obviously.. unless you want to post my updates? I’d be flattered, I’m sure! I doubt you’d be too happy though..

When should we make your first post? gives you the option to post your latest Buzz, wait until your next Buzz, or to publish every Buzz you’ve posted. If your Twitter account is a little slow, you may find publishing everything gives the illusion you’re (suddenly!) very active on twitter!

Feed active simply turns the source on or off. We’ll definitely want it on.

Retrieve Log may come in handy later, it shows when your source was last polled and what was delivered for you.

We’re now ready to save the source. With this information set, all of your Buzz posts will be pushed to Twitter every 15 minutes. Wanting more control? Take a look at the menu items along the top:

Feed update allows you to set how often dlvr.it checks for new Buzzes. It’s every 15minutes by default.

Item text allows you to define prefixes and suffixes to every Buzz, and to find & replace any content you wish within each Buzz.

Filters allow you to specify on what words will trigger dlvr.it to pick up a Buzz. You could, for example, only push Buzzes you specifically want on Twitter with a #twitter tag. Any Buzz then posted with that tag will be posted to Twitter.

Scheduling allows you to define when Feed update will run.

Location allows you to define whether location in Buzzes will be transferred to Twitter

And finally, there are some Advanced options that you may consider quickly perusing on the off-chance there’s an option there that suits your needs.

We’re definitely ready to hit save source now. Let’s move on.

Once you’ve saved the source, your route will become visible again. Simply click on “+ add” on Destination to add your Twitter information.

On the next screen, you’ll be prompted to choose a destination. There are a number to choose from, but luckily someone has decided to place Twitter at the top of the list (it’s like they know what we’re doing).

Click to enlarge

Click new and wait for the next screen.

Click to enlarge

Almost there now – Make sure Active is ticked and click Start Authorisation. You’ll now be taken to Twitter to sign in before returning to this screen after a confirmation message. Before you click save you can again set a couple of extra options, such as what parts of your Buzz to post in Post Content and how dlvr.it will handle hashtags in Advanced.

Have you finished tinkering? As soon as you hit save you’ll be returned to your route list where you’ll see a new, shiny Buzz to Twitter route. The final step is to make sure Active is showing in the top right of the route, if it isn’t, click it.

Click to enlarge

(Feed – Dlvrit Feed is something extra I added, you won’t see this).

And that, my good reader, is all there is to it. If you’re impatient you can hover over the Buzz source and click the little circle to the right of what I’ve called “Google Buzz”. This will force a check for Buzzes. Otherwise, carry on with your day. This is sorted.

If you have any questions at all, please let me know. If not, enjoy completely hassle-free Buzz to Twitter deliveries!

Look out soon for deliveries to Facebook, Linkedin and even a way of aggregating all of your content into one simple RSS feed.

Cheers,
Jason

Posted from Oxford, England, United Kingdom.