before this hack ( more about this below ) to run an Android phone emulator you needed to install and configure the Android SDK package which  on a Windows PC is a pain in the ass to do. but now, thanks to a developer at the xda forums, installing the SDK android developer’s package is not required. Just download the emulator below, and execute it.. that’s all.

please take note that I did not develop the emulator nor I have any association with its development. all credits and feedback should be given to the poster at this forum thread http://forum.xda-developers.com

I downloaded the emulator, added two patches, tested it, and then zipped it and uploaded it to my web server. the original link on the thread above points to a Rapidshare download link, and links there come and go without notice, that’s why I uploaded it to my web server so it can stay there as long as I want to.. please visit the forum link above for updates and improvements on the emulator.

Download the Android phone emulator by clicking on the download image below:

• open iTunes
• connect your iPhone to the computer
• Under devices, select your device
• click on the Summary tab, and under the Options section uncheck “open iTunes when this iPod/iPhone is attached”

that’s it.. that should stop iTunes from popping up every time you connect your iPhone or iPod to your computer..

1. 70MB for 10$
2. 2GB for 30$
3. 5GB for 50$
4. 10GB for 80

T-mobile has similar tiers, as does AT&T as well.

this Verizon data plan changes announcement come just a few days after Steve Jobs announced their iCloud music service, and about month after Google made their cloud music services available to the public. I heard BestBuy.com is building their cloud music service to be released by the end of this year as well, so you know music in the cloud is a hot trend in the tech industry right now.

there is one problem with music in the cloud though, it requires a lots of bandwidth. streaming music from services like iCloud and Google music requires a lot of bandwidth, and is almost absurd that at the birth of this new technology carriers are setting caps on their data plans.

I think as of now, the only carrier that still offers unlimited data plans is Sprint. though I read somewhere that they throttle their data speed, so their unlimited data plans are not really unlimited.

Now lets assume that you just got an iPhone or the latest cool Android phone, and want to use one of the music cloud services mentioned above. how much data will you be able to stream from those services to your phone until you run out data transfer? let’s assume you got the 10GB data plan, and do the math:

there are 1024 MB in a GB, so in 10GB you will get 10240 MB, let’s divide that by 4, which is the average size of an MP3 file, and we get.

1024 *10 = 10240/4 = 2560

so with a 10GB of data transfer plan you will be able to stream 2560 MP3 files to your phone a month. divide that by 30 days, and you will get roughly 86 songs per day. throw a few YouTube videos, and a few photos on Facebook, and you end up with a few less MBs for music. and here is another thing with cloud music streaming, the music player caches future MP3 files on the device just in case the device loses reception, so the music won’t stop playing. in other words, if I have a playlist of a few hundred MP3 files in the cloud streaming to my phone, the player will cache at least 3 of those files in advance just in case I lose reception in the next moment. and if you are like most people that skip songs a lot, then you will end up downloading a lot of files that you won’t listen to, so most likely you will run out of your data plan tier sooner than 30 days. 

cloud music streaming will not be any good until carriers align their data plans with it and give unlimited data transfer to customers, or at least offer higher data transfer tiers for cloud services.

at this point I told him to hold on a bit until I examine the logs in the blackberry server, and going through the server logs I could not find any error or any hint about the issue he was having. very humbly I told him that probably there was nothing I could do to help him with the problem. I told him that most likely the blackberry needed to be wiped and re-synched again, and I was more than willing to do that for him if he had time for me to do it. he said it was no biggie and we left it at that.

the next morning he emailed me to tell me he had figured out the problem. here is his solution:

Under “general options” under “messages” you can set “Hide read filed messages” to YES and the emails previously unable to delete disappear from my blackberry inbox.

there it is, I think he knows more about blackberries than me ( because I personally have never used one ) so I gave him kudos for it.

I was pumped!. I immediately click on the Get Started button and started going through Google music setup process. one of the first things that struck me was the bad design of the setup wizard. the buttons anchor text links were the same color as the background, so the buttons looked blank, I could only see the text by highlighting the buttons. not a big deal me thought, so I just kept highlighting the buttons to know where the next button was, and finished the setup.

during the setup I was asked to choose the type of music I like, so I chose my genres, and Google Music Beta chose some songs from these artists for me:

that looked like my music taste. then it was time to upload my own tunes. Google Music uses its own upload manager software, so I downloaded the software:

after downloading and installing the software, I was presented with the login window:

then I was asked to choose the location of my music. I keep my music in its own location, so I chose other folders:

I chose my music folder and then I click next. then I was asked if I wanted to automatically sync new files every time  I dumped music files into this folder. I said, No.

the tool started scanning for my music files:

that’s it. the software was ready to upload my music:

I clicked on the Start Upload Now button, and the songs were queued to be uploaded it to Google servers. after about 10 minutes, I checked the status of the songs  to see if they had  been uploaded, but nothing had happened. the songs were still in queued..

to be honest, I had better expectations for this Google service, so I got a little bit disappointed, and I uninstalled the music manager software. I have never logged in to Google Music Beta again. I hope they make the product better in the future, because as of now, even my own private music server is better than Google music beta cloud service.

mint.com is a very robust financial app. before moving to mint.com I was using Microsoft money, and I find mint to be more feature packed and easier to use than Microsoft Money which was a paid software. mint automatically sync up with bank accounts, so there is no need to enter data manually.  every transaction can be categorized and budgeted so you know where your money is going and have alerts sent to your email when you’re reaching the limit on the budget allocated to such categories. another feature I like is the saving goal, which is helpful to stay on track on a saving plan.

I’m not an expert on financial stuff, I only use common sense when it comes to money which is maximize income, and reduce expenses, and I’m glad mint gives me a good view on these two things right from my Android device.

the other financial App I use is Pageonce.com. I use this app as my everyday app. because unlike mint, pageonce pulls transactions still pending at my bank account. I also use pageonce for bill reminders. in pageonce you only setup the accounts for each service provider you pay monthly, and every month it will remind you when the bill is due, so you don’t miss any payment.

I remember not so long ago doing all these financial stuff was a very big hassle. it required the use of a desktop or laptop, and a big standalone program. now  with smart phones and these sophisticated apps, is even fun to manage our everyday finances. sometimes I do it while watching TV, and many times when I go to a fast food restaurant or coffee shop, I add the transaction to the allocated budget before I eat or drink what I purchase, so I don’t have to worry about doing it later. that’s how quick it is to manage our money these days..

I’m glad to be alive in such revolutionary technological era…

if you still have a plan with the provider you got the blackberry from, the best thing to do would be to call the provider and get the MEP code from them. if you already cut off the plan with the provider where you got the blackberry from, then you are on your own. here is what I did  to unlock the blackberry storm 9530 from Verizon.

go to ebay.com and search for “ unlock code for blackberry 9530” I chose the second result from unlockace for $0.99 cents:

within 2 minutes after placing the order through PayPal I got an email from Unlockace with the MEP unlocking code, and with the instructions on how to unlock the device. here are the instructions I got:

1. Ensure a SIM Card is inserted
2. Go to ‘Manage Connections’
3. Click on ‘Turn All Connections Off’
4. Go to ‘Options’
5. Click on ‘Advanced Options’
6. Click on ‘SIM Card’
7. Type ‘MEPD’ (letters will not appear on-screen but a menu will pop up. For the Storm, tilt the phone horizontally, click the BlackBerry button and Show keyboard)
8. Type ‘MEP2′ (user will be prompted to enter MEP code)
9. Enter the MEP2 code (CONFIRM you get “Code Accepted” message)
10. *If you also have a MEP4 code, type ‘MEP4′ (user will be prompted to enter MEP code)
11. Enter the MEP4 code (CONFIRM you get “Code Accepted” message)
12. Reboot device
13. Go to ‘Manage Connections’
14. Click on ‘Restore Connections’
15. Device is now unlocked

after doing the above I asked my friend to put his T-mobile SIM card on the blackberry, and sure enough, the T-mobile network was registered, and did a few test calls without a problem. I found some unlock code providers to charge more than 30 dollars for the code, but unlockace only cost 99 cents, and it surely does the job efficiently.

What is this cloud hype all about, you may ask.

The cloud is supposed to be a place where you dump all your music, videos, and photos, and then access that stuff from any computer or mobile device needing only an Internet connection and a browser. basically nothing is stored on local computer hard drives, or SD cards on mobile phones, all is there in the cloud. I don’t know how much money the cloud providers will be charging for their services, but I heard Google will charge around 20 dollars per month after their product comes out of beta, and I heard Apple iCloud will be free as long as you stay in their monopoly. BestBuy probably will charge an arm and a leg for it, etc.

My only concern with these cloud services is, how will they deal with pirate stuff?

let’s face it, most of us have music that we have downloaded using a P2P client, or any other file sharing software without paying a dime for the files. I have more than 20GB of music on my private cloud, and many many of them have been downloaded using a P2P client, or downloaded from YouTube. how will music record labels react when they realize people are uploading pirate music files to these cloud services? in my opinion most likely they will force cloud providers to delete “uncertified” files, or people will have to pay for a license for each pirate file they upload.

not good.

so how can we benefit from the cloud conveniences without worrying about getting caught with pirate stuff? the answer is by building our own cloud server. for many people the idea of building their own cloud server is terrifying because they think is too technical for them to do, but let me assure you, is not, its actually very easy. in this post I will show you how to build your own media server, and how to access that media stuff from any computer and from your Android, iPhone, or windows 7 phone device. bear with me, this will get interesting.

Getting the server ready for the cloud

This is the most difficult part in the tutorial, but bear with me and I will teach you ways to get your server ready and accessible from the Internet. the easiest and less technical way to get a server is to buy a VPS ( virtual private server ) from a server hosting provider. linode.com sells VPS machines with prices starting from 19.99 dollars a month. if you have a lot of media files probably their starting plan would not be able to fit you right from the start, but to begin your cloud experience you can start with that, and then add disk space to your VPS as needed once everything is up. the good thing about this option is that the VPS already comes with the operating system ( Ubuntu server )  and the external IP address you will need to access your media stuff from any computer, or your mobile device.

Use Amazon EC2 to host your server. Amazon EC2 is a very interesting concept, but requires a bigger learning curve to figure out. for those already familiar with Amazon EC2 I think is the easiest and cheapest way get a server to host their media stuff.

Use your own computer at home to host your media stuff. this method is probably the hardest and most expensive to go with. but let’s assume you have a decent box at home that you can use as your cloud server, then you will need to contact your Internet provider for a “static” IP address. most home Internet providers are reluctant to give static IP addresses to their customers, they will argue that you don’t need one, and if you want one you need to have a small business Internet account, la,la,la etc. tell them you work from home, and you need a static IP for VPN access, and terminal server connection. I know it’s a lie, and inaccurate, but sounding technical, you will come up more credible. see.

Getting the operating system on the Server ready

let’s assume that you already came up with a server to host your cloud. if you bought a VPS you probably got the option of what operating system to use ( I highly recommend Ubuntu Server ) because that is the OS I am familiar with, and I know is reliable and the easiest to use. you also should have gotten the IP address to access the server ( that’s the IP you will use to access your cloud ) and  pretty much, you’re all set to go. for Amazon EC2 users is pretty much the same, just create your instance ( the basic should be enough ) then assign an elastic IP address to it, and you should be ready to go.  for those hosting their own server from home will have to build the server from scratch, please follow the tutorial from this post Install Ubuntu on how to get Ubuntu Server ready on that box.

Installing the cloud software

OK. its time to get ourselves dirty. up to this point, you should already have the server with Ubuntu Operating System already on it, and an external IP address pointing to it. let’s download the software to build our cloud. the software we will be using is called Subsonic and is 100% open source which means is also free to use. download the Ubuntu package from here and save it to a directory on your local computer, remember you are downloading this to your local computer not the server.

now connect through FTP to the server. I use the FileZilla client ( remember to use FTPS and use your SSH credentials to login) and upload the subsonic.4.4.deb file ( at the time of this writing, 4.4 is the version number) to the directory called  /var on your server:

once the file is uploaded, we need to install the package. but first, let’s make sure JAVA is installed by running this command on your server command line:

sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jre

accept all the prompts.

now, let’s install Subsonic by running the following command:

sudo dpkg –i /var/subsonic-4.4.deb

that should install the package.

now open the browser on your computer and type the IP address of your server like this http://95.203.189.23:4040 ( replace the IP address in this example with yours ) you should get subsonic welcome page:

login with the username admin and password admin ( don’t forget to change this credentials as soon as possible )

click on Settings once you logged in:

then setup the Music Folders :

if you notice, subsonic is looking for the folder music under the /var/music path. let’s create the folder from the FTP client:

now, upload a few songs  to this music folder, and click on Music Folder > Search then click on Update Search Index now:

now those songs should be available to be played from the server!

upload all the music files you want to the music directory, and you can play that music from any computer using your URL http://95.203.189.23:4040 ( example )

now to access your music from mobile devices look at this page on how to configure your specific device http://www.subsonic.org/pages/apps.jsp

with some tweaks, found at the subsonic forum http://www.activeobjects.no/subsonic/forum/ you can setup subsonic for videos and photos as well…

enjoy your personal cloud.

I have tested this migration procedure from BES 4.0.2 to BES 5.0.3 and from BES 5.0.2 to BES 5.0.3. when migrating from one of these BES servers, re-activation of blackberry accounts is not necessary.

Step 1

Download the Enterprise Blackberry Transporter from here http://na.blackberry.com/eng/support/server_resourcekit.jsp Select “Download the BlackBerry Enterprise Server Resource Kit now” then Select Blackberry Enterprise Server Resource Kit v5.0 Service Pack 3 from the drop down. Click Next, then Select the download link for BlackBerry Enterprise Transporter 5.0 Service Pack 3.

once you have downloaded the Transporter, install it. preferably install  the transporter on the new BES server where you are planning to migrate the users to. the installation is straightforward, choosing almost just the default options.

step 2

Execute and run the blackberry transporter. the program should come up:

click on New and create a new Manifests file. I called me forevergeeksbbusers:

click on Save. now lets configure the Source Domain. this is your old blackberry server. click on Configure:

On the Label sect list choose “new” and then enter the Label, SQL Server, and Database name. if you don’t know these parameters, login to your old BES server and go to the “server configuration console, and you should be able to get that info from the data connectivity tab:

your source configuration database should look like this:

test the connection and then click on OK.

Now let’s configure the Destination Domain. this is your New BES server. enter the same information you enter above for your destination server. after you have done that, the destination database should look like this:

test the connection as well, and click on OK.

now let’s look for users to migrate. From the Manifests configuration section, click on Details:

then click on Find Users:

then on the find user Window, click on Server then select your source BES server from the drop down field, and then click on Find:

the Users will shows up on the Users field. select the users you want to migrate, and then click on Done on both windows.

now, click on the Console tab and click on Preview:

after running the preview, if you get errors, then check the ignore warnings and then click on Migrate:

that’s it. that should migrate the users you selected to migrate. check the console on the new BES servers, and the users should be already there.

very simple, uh.

set Internet Explorer as the default browser.

try to access the web on the BB, and see if you still have the problem.

I believe this issue is caused by corrupted routing tables, so if you continue having the issue, do a backup of the device then do a wipe to reset  it.

hope that helps.

Nelson