Despite all the amazing things Android phones are capable of, syncing your music and playlists is not as easy as it should be. On Windows you can use Windows Media Player, but that’s obviously a no-go on Linux and OS X. So for the benefit of all, here are the steps to get syncing working for your Android phone (I use a Nexus One, but the process is not device specific).

1. Download Songbird.
2. Install Songbird. On OS X, double-click the disk image you downloaded in the first step, then drag the app into your Applications folder.
3. Launch Songbird from your Applications folder. The first time takes awhile, but just be patient.
4. Click through the license agreement, and you’ll be presented with the Songbird Setup wizard. If you’re on OS X or Windows, you’ll see the iTunes Import/Export wizard page. Go ahead and check Import tracks and playlists from iTunes. I’ve switched completely over to Songbird now so I can’t say how well the export functionality works.
5. The next page has a list of recommended Add-Ons that are checked by default. I only selected LyricMaster and Gracenote. If you happen to have some DRMed files that you bought from the iTunes Store, you’ll need to check QuickTime Playback as well in order to play those on your computer, but even with that checked, you still can’t play those files on your Android phone (remember kids, DRM == bad).
6. At the next page, decide whether you want to send metrics to the Songbird devs, then hit ‘Finish’. Wait for Songbird to restart.
7. Once it’s launched go to Tools->Add-ons then click the ‘Get Extensions’ link at the bottom right of the dialog. Search for ‘foldersync’ in the new tab that opened and click Search. Click the Download button for the FolderSync add-on and when prompted, select ‘Install Now’. After installation completes, restart Songbird.
8. After Songbird restarts, drag up the drawer at the bottom of the application window. Click on the arrow at the top left of the drawer and select FolderSync. If this is your first time selecting FolderSync, you’ll be prompted with a message about syncing. Read it and click OK.
9. Now hook up your Android phone (Nexus One, DROID [Incredible], Hero, myTouch, Dream, EVO, whatever!) to your computer via USB. Slide down the notifications drawer on your Android, select the ‘USB connected’ notification, then tap ‘Mount’. Your phone’s MicroSD card will show up on the desktop.
10. Double-click the sd card and make a new folder called SongbirdMusic on there. This will be the folder where FolderSync/Songbird will store all your music. You can call it whatever you want, but I’ll continue to use SongbirdMusic in the rest of the directions.
11. Go back to Songbird, and in the drawer that contains FolderSync, click on Preferences.... In the dialog that opens, check the box for ‘Write M3U-Playlists’ and uncheck the box for ‘Delete not needed Files and Directories. Press the Escape key to dismiss the dialog (I have no idea why there’s no OK button there).
12. Back in the FolderSync drawer, click the ‘Browse’ button, find the SongbirdMusic folder we made earlier and click ‘Open’.
13. Now select whatever playlist(s) you want synced to your Android, then press ‘Start Sync’.
14. When it’s done syncing, eject the SD card from OS X, and ‘Turn off USB storage’ from the notifications drawer on your Android phone. Android will rescan your SD card (‘Preparing SD card’) and then your synced music and playlists will show up in the Music app when it’s done.

That’s it! To sync in the future, just plug your phone into your computer, mount the SD card, make sure the path to the SongbirdMusic folder is in the ‘to folder’ of FolderSync, then press ‘Start Sync’.

Like most developers, I’m not thrilled with the way the App Store presents my apps. There are several problems, but in particular, I really don’t like the user review system. It’s biased towards bad reviews, and that ends up hurting sales (there are odd exceptions to this). The only time a user is reminded or asked to rate an app is when you delete it, and you probably don’t care for the app if you’re deleting it. In comparison to the unhappy user, the satisfied user rarely takes the time to review your app. Which leaves you with crummy reviews from uninformed users hurting sales of your app.

If Apple would allow developers to respond to reviews, or more easily challenge the validity of a review, this would be no big deal. But I don’t have any hopes of Apple wising up and fixing anything, so I’m left trying to get more positive reviews of my apps to drown out the negatives ones.

Appirater
The goal of Appirater is to encourage your satisfied user’s to rate your app. To use it, place the Appirater code into your project, and add the following code in your app’s delegate class.

Finally, open up Appirater.h and change the APPIRATER_APP_ID to your apps software id. You can also change the other #defines, for a more customized reminder message and buttons, but the default should suffice for most apps.

Now every time the user launches your app, Appirater will see if they’ve used the app for 30 days and launched it at least 15 times. If they have, they’ll be asked to rate the app, and then be taken to your app’s review page in the App Store. If you release a new version of your app, Appirater will again wait until the new version has been used 15 times for 30 days and then prompt the user again for another review. Optionally, you can adjust the days to wait and the launch number by changing DAYS_UNTIL_PROMPT and LAUNCHES_UNTIL_PROMPT in Appirater.h.

Code: http://github.com/arashpayan/appirater/

BTW, if you like Appirater, please consider checking out my game, Jabeh or the lite version of it.

Just a quick post for everyone who’s lucky enough to be using T-Mobile on their iPhone in the US. It’s possible to get a data plan for your iPhone at only $9.99. It’s edge only, but that doesn’t matter because T-Mobile’s 3G network is incompatible with the iPhone’s 3G radio.

Here it is:

1. Log into your account at tmobile.com. Change your device to be a silver (the pink one won’t work!) Motorola RAZR.
2. As of this writing, there’s a bug in the site that prevents you from seeing the correct data plans for your newly selected device, so log out of the site, then log back in again. Now fFind your way to the page that lists the possible services you can add on to your plan, and you should now be able to select a $9.99/month web plan ($20 gets you unlimited texting as well). Select it.
3. In your iPhone go to Settings->General->Network->Cellular Data Network and for the APN use internet2.voicestream.com. Leave the username and password blank.

You might need to wait up to 24 hours for the service to be activated. Just keep restarting your phone periodically and check to see if it starts working.

I just setup my iPhone so I can control it remotely and ultimately perform video captures of my activity on it. It’s a quick and painless process, and here’s a step by step for those interested:

1. Jailbreak your iPhone/iPod Touch There are various tutorials around that take you through the jailbreaking process. Just make sure to use the latest version of the jailbreaking tools and install Cydia if you’re prompted.
2. Launch Cydia and install Veency If this is your first time opening up Cydia, you’ll be prompted about what mode you want the program to run in; select ‘User’. Next click on the Sections tab at the bottom, select the Networking section and scroll down until you see Veency. Select it and press Install.
3. Download and install a VNC client If you’re on OS X, you can download Chicken of the VNC. On Windows, you can use Tight VNC.
4. Find your iPhone’s IP address On your phone go to Settings->Wi-Fi then click the blue disclosure button for the network you’re logged into. Take note of your iPhone’s IP address, because we’ll need it later. Mine is 192.168.1.50.
5. Launch VNC and connect to your iPhone Make sure your iPhone is unlocked and logged into your Wi-Fi network. Launch Chicken of the VNC (or Tight VNC) from your desktop, type in your iPhone’s IP address for the Host, and leave the Display at 0, then hit Connect. You should see a prompt on your iPhone asking you to accept or reject the connection.
   Go ahead and accept.
6. Control the iPhone You can control the iPhone with left-mouse clicks and the keyboard. You can simulate a press of the ‘Home’ button with a right-mouse click, and you can simulate the ‘Sleep/Power’ button with a middle-mouse click.
7. Capture the iPhone screen I like to use Screenflow on my Mac to capture screencasts. I’m not up to date on the best screen capturing software for Windows, but I’m sure there are plenty of options out there.

A couple caveats: The frame rate’s not that great, which produces some artifacts during animations, and any app that uses OpenGL doesn’t work at all.

I recently discovered the beauty of mod_python and python server pages (psp), and I’ve been slowly replacing the php code on my server as I make changes. One thing that took me awhile to figure out was how to get the user-agent of the requesting client. In the hopes of helping others in the same boat, here’s the line of code:

As you can see all the request’s header information is in the req.header_in dictionary.