And now you can even have my WordPress password!

Being slightly obsessed with security, I was delighted to discover that two factor-authentication (OTP) using Google Authenticator client is not restricted to Google applications, but is fully standardized and as such can be implemented without dependency on Google services on any system. There is code (off course varying in quality and scope) available for PHP, .NET, Java and Python (and I’m sure there are others).
As you might expect after reading the title, there is a great Google Authenticator WordPress plugin which I installed in 5 minutes time earlier today. For the Drupal-heads; Antwerp-based Attiks have a module that implements Google Authenticator OTP which looks worth checking out as well (and I’m interested in your experiences with it, actually).

Android battery drain no more!

Battery drain is a known problem for us smartphonista’s, especially if you’ve got multiple applications (sometimes secretly) connecting to the internet to get and/or push data.
Although the battery of my Samsung Galaxy SII lasted approximately 1 day (which I considered a success, after having battled Firefox Sync, Soundcloud and Exchange mail fetching), a couple of weeks ago I started to manually disable the data network mode at night. Who needs their phones online all of the time after all? This worked like a charm, which made me start thinking about an application that could automate toggling of the data connection. I did a quick search on the web and found this article on Stack Overflow with sample code to access the (hidden) dataconnection API’s.
While reading the comments I understood I didn’t need to find me someone to build such an application; Juice Defender does just that. The basic version is free and although it allows only limited configuration, just activating it with default settings almost doubled my SGS II’s battery life. So if you want your Android phone’s battery to last longer, you really should try out Juice Defender.

Firefox Mobile 16 & 17: continuous improvements

I updated Firefox Mobile Beta on my Samsung Galaxy SII a couple of days ago to version 16 and out of curiosity I participated in the pissing-contest which is html5test.com. It scored a whopping 372 points, which apparently makes it the best mobile browser (for now).
More important, as it is an immediate and noticeable advantage: reader mode. Reader mode,  as seen in the screenshots on the right, allows me see articles on e.g. the chaotic, non-responsive dewereldmorgen.be in a non-crowded context which is optimal for reading the article.
I also installed the latest Firefox Mobile Aurora (version 17) and I’m pretty pleased to see support for iFrame sandboxing (which would up the html5test.com score to 377) and integration with a.o. the upcoming Firefox Marketplace (which will also be core to Firefox OS).
So yeah, for me Firefox Mobile remains the best mobile browser no-one uses.

The SoundCloud of extreme battery drain

Never mind my initial enthusiasm about SoundCloud on Android; I uninstalled the bugger after noticing extreme battery drain, which seems linked to its background synchronization. Before uninstalling, I tried to:

  1. switch on “wifi only syncing”, which did not help
  2. disable all 4 items (left part of image) being synced, which did not help
  3. disable SoundCloud sync altogether, which did not seem to help either
  4. remove the SoundCloud-item from the list of synchronization sources, which inconveniently also logged me out of the app rendering it pretty useless

I contacted SoundCloud support, who confirmed they are working on a fix (although the release notes mentions battery drain a couple of times, guess this is not an entirely new issue). But until then I guess I’ll have to download the individual tracks from the SoundCloud website to listen to “It is what it is” on my Galaxy SII, no?

Hey you, what’s that SoundCloud?

I had already created my SoundCloud-account two years ago, but I only started to use it earlier this week after searching the web for DJ-sets by Kevin Saunderson (whom I heard play a mesmerizing set on “Studio Ibiza” shortly before). I clicked around and also found Four Tet, Floating Points and Flying Lotus and well … I was hooked. To my disappointment SoundCloud does not offer RSS-feeds, but I found CloudFlipper to be a nice workaround and started adding feeds to my RSS-reader.
Great and all that, but it turned out to be pretty cumbersome to add individual SoundCloud pages to my RSS-reader that way. After logging into the web app and installing SoundCloud’s magnificent Android app I found it a lot more convenient to just follow all those great artists (mainly electro) and seeing their work stream by on the dashboard.
So there I am, in trapped in that great walled garden that is SoundCloud (although they integrate nicely with that other closed social ecosystem). Now back to listening to Laurent Garnier‘s amazingly eclectic “It is what it is” radioshow.

Feedreading on the move with Tiny Tiny RSS for Android

I’m a RSS-junk and I use Tiny Tiny RSS as my needle, so I was happy to find an official tt-rss client for Android a couple of weeks ago. Works like a charm, quirks included. Especially the “Offline” functionality is a great help to read up on what’s happening while on the train, where the data-connection can be … flaky.
Now if all you guys & girls can make sure your blogs push out full feeds instead of those frigging teasers?

WP YouTube Lyte on Android: native or in-browser playback?

With the latest release of WP YouTube Lyte I fixed a problem where iOS users had to click twice to view a LYTE-embedded video; once to activate the iOS YouTube player and once to start the actual playing. On Android that problem does not exist, as LYTE embeds can be played inline in the browser.
Based on my own tests however, performance and quality aren’t always optimal when compared to the experience the native YouTube app provides. So now I’m wondering; wouldn’t it be better to not only detect iOS, but also Android and have both of them play in their respective a native players, even if on Android this isn’t an absolute requirement?
Advantages:

  1. better video playback performance/ quality
  2. somehow feels more professional (it’s the way the YouTube mobile site seems to work as well for example)

Disadvantages:

  1. you force visitors out of the context of your webpage
  2. a small percentage of Android visitors will get an ugly error message as they do not have a native YouTube player
  3. only works for single video’s, not for playlists (or at least so it seems) and the audio-only trick obviously won’t work either

What do you think? Speak now or be silent forever!
And let me throw in a vid (Spiritualized with “Hey Jane” live) just for the heck of it;

Spiritualized - Hey Jane (live @ Maida Vale for BBC 6 Music)

And if you’re on Android you can click here to trigger the YouTube app to see the exact same thing.

Extreme battery drain on Galaxy SII

[Update: Firefox Sync does not drain my battery any more, but I’ve had similar experiences with Exchange Sync and Soundcloud. My latest discovery is Juice Defender, my battery now lasts between 36 and 48 hours!]
From May 29th until yesterday I was experiencing unacceptable high battery drain on my Samsung Galaxy S II with Ice Cream Samsung. Instead of the normal 24-36 hours, my phone only lasted for 5-7 hours. According to the battery stats, “Android OS” was responsible for up to 80% of total power consumption, where one normally would expect the “Screen” to be the biggest consumer. CPUSpy showed that my phone only rarely entered “Deep Sleep”. The problem only disappeared when I disabled “Data” entirely, not when just disabling “Synchronization”.
Based on information in this issue on the Android-bugtracker, I wasn’t the only one to experience this problem. There seemed to be multiple solutions which worked for some but not for others. Apparently “Android OS” was just the poor sucker to get the blame, while in fact other applications can keep your phone awake.
If you ever experience a similar problem, here’s how I finally stopped the battery drain: I uninstalled a number of applications and checked battery usage. If the discharging continued at the same rate, I re-installed the application and went for the next bunch. And just before uninstalling my beloved Firefox Mobile, I deactivated Firefox Sync, which I (only then) noticed was trying to sync continuously. Ouch! I removed Firefox Sync from the Synchronization services and battery life is back to normal since. One of these days I’ll re-enable Firefox Sync to see if the problem returns. If it does, I guess I’ll have to dive into ADB for debugging info and report back to Bugzilla? Good times!