Conor’s Little Dangly Bits

There are many uses for a VPN and they are generally very easy to setup on desktop computers. The experience with phones can be variable. iPhone is a doddle but Android is a horror (see my last post). The built-in PPTN VPN is utterly broken and does not work over 3G at all or for more than a few minutes on Wifi. The steps to get an alternative working on a HTC Desire are as follows:

1. Brace yourself
2. Install Windows OpenVPN and get it working on your PC with your VPN provider
3. Root your Android phone. If you don't know how to do this, stop reading now.
4. Replace the standard ROM with the latest community Froyo. Either Cyanogen 6.0 Nightly or DeFroST are good (I use DeFroST). OpenDesire does not seem to work in the later steps of this process and I haven't had a chance to try any of the Modaco ones with Sense still enabled.
5. Install the Google Apps add-on too if your ROM doesn't include them.
6. In Android Market, install the "OpenVPN Settings App"
7. Note this is not the same as the OpenVPN Settings Page in Network->Settings. I wasted a ridiculous amount of time trying to get Cert files etc working there. Avoid it. That settings page is the source of most of the confusion around OpenVPN on all the forums. I'm sure there is a use for it if you have your own keys/certs etc but not for generic VPN users.
8. Copy the config directory from C:\Program Files\OpenVPN (including the sub-dir) on your PC to a directory like openvpn on the SD Card on your phone
9. Go to that OpenVPN Settings App you installed
10. Tell it where you have stored the config files and it should show you the configurations you copied from the PC
11. Tap on the config you want and all going well, it will connect for you
12. You are in business!
13. I've noticed that it sometimes disconnects after a minute or so and then reconnects and stays solid after that.
14. All of the above works on both WiFi and 3G

So Google, any ETA on fixing all those built-in VPN bugs?

I'm been trying and failing to get two features working on Android over the weekend: VPN and Proxy. A ton of googling revealed that both are utterly broken and have been since V1.0 of Android. Whilst my use-case is trivial (getting Facebook Places working outside of the US), the much bigger use case is a much bigger deal: the Enterprise.

I've been saying it for months, but Social Check-in will be owned by Facebook and Google. Startups that didn't take M&A offers from them are completely deluded. This is not a "we could be the next Twitter" scenario. Now that I've seen Facebook Places in action, I believe that even more

1. U.S. Only to start with. Grrrrrrrrrr
2. Mobile-Web-based for most which is fine
3. iPhone before Android. Grrrrrr.
4. Facebook Pages are not the sames as Places Pages. That's a bit odd. Surely the intersection of a Page's Fans (or Likers or whatever they are called now) and people who check-in is really powerful? Or is it that you have one Starbucks Page but you need 400,000 Starbucks Places Pages? Which makes sense I guess.
5. But it does mean every business starting all over again from scratch building a "fan-base". And on which one do Fans hang out and where do the companies interact with fans? Or will Pages start being deprecated in favour of Places Pages? Given that you can now advertise either on Facebook.
6. Haven't been able to claim our business yet (later today?)
7. This is gonna be huge. And I don't care what anyone says about pure-play check-in Apps like 4SQ or Gowalla. Unless they have something else, utterly unique, to build on top of this, they are dead-meat.

Facebook's upgrade of the Notes feature this week set me thinking. I asked the simple question if this is another step towards Facebook being "your web-page". First they had to open everything up, now you have permanent pages with your thoughts and simple formatting is allowed. What if they were indexable? What if you had a custom domain for your entire Profile? That's a personal web-site/blog.

When I upgraded to the HTC Desire, I gave my old G1 to my eldest son. We try to keep it up-to-date and it is currently running the Cyanogen version of Android 2.2 Froyo. One problem he ran into is that he is on a PAYG O2 SIM and relies on the indulgence of his Grandparents and Aunties/Uncles for call credit. He didn't fully realise that when he is out of the house, he is paying for mobile data as some extortionate rate. So all his credit quickly disappeared. To avoid a re-occurrence, we have disabled mobile data so he can only use Wi-Fi.

Last night he was listening to me convincing his Grandad to replace his old Nokia phone with the HTC Desire. This had a positive outcome despite two of the three iPhone owners in the holiday home having aneurysms as a result. One of the features I showed my Dad was the portable hot-spot in Froyo. It removes the need for a MiFi device. I have a 1GB data add-on with Vodafone which is more than sufficient for my hand-set needs and the odd bit of sharing to the laptop.

Today the youngfella came up with a genius idea. He asked if it was possible for me to turn on the hot-spot on my phone and for him to then use the data-connection by connecting via Wi-Fi to me. Initially the smartness of the idea escaped me. But he pointed out that if we are out-and-about somewhere and there is no Wi-Fi, he'd be able to use my data connection to play his Youtube videos etc etc. Smart little sod. The same solution applies to any Wi-Fi tablet, laptop, iPod Touch or anyone on a PAYG SIM. It's almost like a mobile version of FON for people you know.

I'm sure there is some idiotic T&C in the Vodafone site saying I'm not allowed to do this. Mobile carriers still seem to think the contents of packets actually matter ("Get Facebook for Free on your phone with Three Ireland"). In fact I've heard you have to pay $30 extra a month to enable tethering on Android phones with some carriers in the US!

I'm really looking forward to the glut of cheap-as-chips Android handsets that will start coming out of China. Even with resistive screens and minimal features, they will be the next must-have phones for pre-teens and teens in 2011.

In any case, well done the youngfella for figuring out a solution to his problem.

 

You can now connect your Amazon account to your Facebook account. The idea being that stuff your friends like might also appeal to you.

I'm not so sure when it comes to purchasing.

I don't have the same taste in movies as my wife, I'm not a vegan like my old college buddy Bernard, I don't read the same books as my nephew Tadhg and I'm not a big fan of pets like my sisters.

But hey, I'm a click-junkie so I set it up and this is what it gave me:

A bunch of blindingly obvious "You're 42, of course you like The Godfather" plus some movies in Mandarin Chinese. Pretty much what I expected (apart from the Mandarin). Nothing along the lines of "wow, never heard of that book, must buy it".

I'll take "people who bought the product you just added to your basket also bought......" any day over this. 

I'll now bang on about my favourite topic "filters" for a moment. I was taking the mickey out of Facebook last night due to their Page recommendations in the sidebar, they are hilarious. Here are some of them:

• Many who like House also like Bones
• Many who like Music also like Movies
• Many who like Comedy also like Drama
• Many who like Tea also like Breffmania
• Many who like Shopping Malls also like Comtemporary R&B

The problem is lack of filtering. I actually like the Breffmania one because it is non-obvious and adds a little discoverability. Amazon telling me that my friends like Monty Python is about as interesting as saying they like TV.

Purchasing is not the same as Liking YouTube clips or sharing jokes. Something far more powerful like Hunch is required.

And as I said on Facebook earlier, I'm be stunned if FB doesn't buy them this year.