Droid 2.0 Email Force Close

If you run into the problem on the Droid where your corporate (exchange) email force closes when you try to click on a message, this should solve the problem.

1. Go to Home>Settings>Applications>Manage Applications
2. Click the Menu button and select "Filter"
3. Select "Running"
4. Scroll down to the "Email" application. Select "Clear Data" (This is effectively the same thing as deleting the account and starting over)
5. Re-configure your  corporate email.

This is an annoying issue that I hope is resolved in the 2.1 update coming sometime in the near future.

Matt

Essential Android Apps

UPDATED: 7/13/2010


More and more people I know are dumping their iPhones, BlackBerrys, and other smartphone devices for new Android powered smartphones.  I get lots of questions about what apps they should install, so this is just a quick post to list some of the apps I love having on my Motorola Droid.

In no particular order...well.actually it's mostly alphabetical...

• Advanced Task Killer - Lets you kill backgrounded apps when the phone starts getting slow.
• Apps Organizer - Speaks for itself.  Helps prevent app bloat by keeping apps neat and organized on your main desktop.
• Barcode Scanner
• Barnacle Wifi Tether (Need to root the Droid first if you're on 2.1) - Use the Droid as a wifi access point ANYWHERE!!!
• Bebbled - A great time waster, and it looks beautiful.
• Bubble - A construction level on your phone.  Great when I was trying to level out some new cabinets.
• CacheMate (rooted Droids only) - Clear your cache and free up space.
• FlightTrack - Flight tracking knows exactly where the plane is as it flys across the sky.  Also can keep you informed of delays and such.  Excellent for frequent flyers.
• Gem Miner
• Gesture Search (Google) - Search for items in your phone by drawing letters on the screen.
• Google Earth
• Google Goggles
• Google Sky Map
• gStrings - A guitar tuner on my Droid....very nice.
• Handcent SMS - A great replacement for the built in messaging app.
• Listen - Podcast aggregator....good...better than it was two months ago....still want it to be better.
• Google Maps - LOVE THIS....especially the voice search and turn by turn directions.
• Kindle (read books your Android device)
• Movies (Flixster)
• Pandora
• Qik and Knocking - Stream live video from your Android device to the Internet.
• Shazam - What's that song on the radio?  Don't know?  Shazam will figure it out for you.
• Silent Time Lite - Schedule quiet times for your phone.
• Speed - Fun little speedometer app.  Great when your own cars speedometer doesn't work.
• Swype (An awesome replacement for the stock keyboard)
• The Weather Channel - Nice weather app for Android.  I especially like the widget that drops onto the desktop.
• Tricorder - Fun Trekkie app....that really works.
• Twidroid - I'm still waiting for TweetDeck to build an app for the Android.
• Google Voice
• Where - Find important stuff that is nearby.  Gas, food, shopping, hotels, etc...

That's not all of them, but those are my favorites.

Using Github Private Repos Behind a Corporate Proxy

This is on RHEL5.

First thing to do is install the corkscrew SSH tunneling tool.

Edit the ~/.ssh/config file...

 # ~/.ssh/config  
 Host gitproxy  
 Hostname ssh.github.com  
 Port 443  
 ProxyCommand /usr/local/bin/corkscrew PROXYHOST PROXYPORT %h %p  

Test it with...

 # ssh -v -v gitproxy 

Git commands should now refer to the "gitproxy" name. In an already existing git repo you cad edit the .git/config file like so.....

 # PROJECTHOME/.git/config
....
[remote "origin"]
   url = git@gitproxy:GITUSERNAME/PROJECTNAME.git
....