Google – Page 3 – Paul's Notepad

Google shutting down more services

Paul Darr / 2012-09-30 / Leave a Comment

Google announced on Friday that it will be doing some “spring cleaning” of some of its services. The list includes AdSense for Feeds, Classic Plus, Spreadsheet Gadgets, Places for Android, and +1 Reports in Webmaster Tools.

The company also plans to merge its Picasa photo service with Google Drive, which means you’ll have 5GB of free storage for both Picasa photos and Drive items. I hope this means that the interface will be better integrated between the two services.

A service previously announced that my family will miss will be iGoogle for the browser. I’ll be sure to find a substitute for my wife prior to that being shuttered but it’s something she will miss.

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End Piracy, Not Liberty

Paul Darr / 2012-01-18 / Leave a Comment

Two bills before Congress, known as the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, would censor the Web and impose harmful regulations on American business. The intent of the bills is to stop the illegal downloading of copyrighted material… the outcome will be far different.

SOPA and PIPA would allow the U.S. government to order the blocking of sites using methods similar to those employed by China and Egypt. Do we want to model our country after totalitarian regimes?

SOPA and PIPA would kill jobs by legislation and litigation. U.S. Internet companies would have to monitor everything users upload or link to or risk expensive litigation. It’s also why 55 of America’s most successful venture capitalists expressed concern that PIPA “would stifle investment in Internet services, throttle innovation, and hurt American competitiveness”. More than 204 entrepreneurs told Congress that PIPA and SOPA would “hurt economic growth and chill innovation”.

While SOPA and PIPA claim they will stop piracy, they won’t even accomplish that. Nefarious sites will just change their names while law abiding companies will suffer with constantly attempting to stay in compliance with mandates given them.

When you add it all up these proposed laws will censor, stifle the American economy and fail to achieve the claimed outcome. How could anyone support these pieces of legislation?

Contact your representative now! [Link courtesy of Wikipedia]

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Why I rooted my LG Optimus S and installed CM7

Paul Darr / 2011-08-16 / Leave a Comment

I first decided to root it after an OTA update noticeably slowed down the phone. Any custom ROM will do a lot for performance on the phone. The best forum for the Optimus S is on Android Central. Gingerbreak is the current method to root the phone… I used an earlier more complicated method.

The directions for using Gingerbreak can be found at:
http://forums.androidcentral.com/lg-optimus-s-rooting-roms-hacks/79208-how-rooting-ls670zvd-gingerbreak-no-reverting-ota-works-too.html

I am using the latest Stable build of CM7 from Drew. He takes CM7 and builds it based on CM7 nighties with a few builds being marked as stable. He introduces his own hacks to CM7 to optimize it for the Optimus. I was running an earlier port of CM7 but love the optimizations and fixes that Drew has performed.

You can find the rom and directions for CM7 at:
http://forums.androidcentral.com/lg-optimus-s-rooting-roms-hacks/106518-drews-cm7-builds-stable-08-02-2011-experimental-08-03-2011-a.html
I wrote this post for all those asking me why I rooted my phone and how they could root their LG Optimus S.

Why I rooted my LG Optimus S and installed CM7 Read Post »

LG Optimus S with CM7

Paul Darr / 2011-08-04 / 1 Comment

I loaded the latest stable build of CM7 for LG Optimus S. It went pretty smoothly and included a few CPU tweaks in the newer kernel that came with it. I love how CM7 takes my cheap phone and places it on par with performance from a stock version of one the more expensive phones.

LG Optimus S with CM7 Read Post »