Here’s an answer to a question I get asked often. For the super geeks in the crowd, try to remember that this is a high-level description. There’s lots of niggling details. For the geeks-in-training in the crowd, have fun with those niggling details.

Hey Keith, what is root? What does that mean to root my phone?

Android is based on Linux.

In Linux, like newer versions of Windows, accounts have different levels of access to the computer. The idea is that since most users don’t need to install software and change the hardware settings, they shouldn’t have access to do so accidentally.

In Windows, the account with the most access is called Administrator. In Linux, that account is called root. The root account can make vast and profound changes to the computer, to the point of crippling it. That’s why on Android you don’t get access to the root account.

By the way, your phone is just a tiny computer.

So, if you want to make big changes to your phone you need to get root access. The process of doing this is called rooting your phone. Generally this is done by exploiting a bug or problem in the Android operating system. This ranges from ridiculously easy to currently impossible depending on the phone you have. Newer phones and versions of Android fix these problems making it harder and harder to get root access to most phones.

Neat! But why would I want root? What can I do with it?

Most people who root their phones do so in order to install 3rd-party ROMs. A ROM, also called firmware, is essentially an operating system install file for your phone. Since Android is open-source software that means anyone can go get the original software, change it a bit, and then release it on their own. Lots of volunteers make improved versions of Android. Finding the right one for your phone is going to take some searching. But at least one popular bet is Cyanogenmod. Chances are there’s a Cyanogenmod ROM for your phone.

Some apps require root. Titanium Backup allows you to backup and restore your apps and data. This is very handy in case your phone dies or you install a new ROM (which will erase your phone). You can sometimes tweak the performance of your phone by increasing the CPU speed or changing memory settings. There are apps which allow free tethering, remote access to your phone, and more.

How do I get started?

Google it! But really, here’s a few links:

• http://forum.xda-developers.com/ — XDA Developers is a community centered around phone modification. They probably have a forum for your phone.
• http://wiki.rootzwiki.com/index.php/Main_Page — Rootzwiki has instructions for rooting lots of devices. There is also a forum there.
• http://www.cyanogenmod.com/ — If you don’t already have a ROM in mind, Cyanogenmod is a great one to try. It has lots of nice features.

There, that oughta shut the lit—err, hi. You’re still here? Why? Go play!

Ermine + Market = Allmine

What this is:

• Installs Google Apps
• Fixes a problem with the Edgejr which prevents it from talking to google talk
• Allows all google apps to function properly
• Installs Superuser.apk & su (Version 3.0)
• Installs busybox
• Yes, you will have a working Market.

What this is not:

• A full ROM.
• An adb/titanium backup/root hack which involves copying apps from your phone.

Prerequisites:

1. You must have a gapps zip file from http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/Latest_Version
2. You must have a microSD card.
3. You must have a USB flashdrive.
4. I have no idea if this will work if you have already tried installing google apps via other methods.
5. I have no idea if this will work on the full sized Edge. If you want to send me an Edge to play with, that would be swell.

Instructions:

I have only tested this package from a stock Dingo (Android 1.6) ROM. If you want to try without downgrading all the way back to Dingo, let me know how it works. If you brick your edgejr, I’m sorry

If you want to wipe your PE and start from scratch, start with Downgrade to Dingo.

If you have the Stock firmware your PE shipped with and haven’t monkeyed with it at all, you can start with Upgrade to Ermine.

If you have upgraded to Ermine already and haven’t monkeyed with installing google apps via other methods, you can try to start with Install Allmine. If you have any problems, though, you will probably have to start over from the top.

Downgrade to Dingo

1. I have made a version of the Dingo “Golden” update which skips some of the checks which stop the update from working. Get it here:http://bellybuttonporn.com/android/edgejr/Dingo-update.zip-hellbent.zipThis update will factory reset your PE! Do not proceed unless you have backed up all your data.
2. Rename the zip file to “update.zip” and put it on the root of your USB flashdrive.
3. Turn off your PE. Insert the flash drive.
4. While holding Menu and Rotate on the LCD side, turn the PE on. Continue holding Menu and Rotate.
5. The PE might reboot a few times before it actually updates. Once you see the Updating screen, you may let go of the Menu and Rotate buttons.The PE will reboot when the update is complete. When it boots up you will have the Dingo ROM. This is Android 1.6, and what it shipped with.

Upgrade to Ermine

1. Download the Ermine ROM. Get it here:http://bellybuttonporn.com/android/edgejr/Ermine-update.zip
2. Rename it to “update.zip” and put it in the root of your microSD card.
3. Turn off your PE. Unplug your USB flashdrive and insert the microSD card.
4. While holding Menu and Rotate on the LCD side, turn the PE on. Continue holding Menu and Rotate.
5. The PE might reboot a few times before it actually updates. Once you see the Updating screen, you may let go of the Menu and Rotate buttons.The PE will reboot when the update is complete. When it boots up you will have the Ermine ROM. This is Android 2.2, released shortly before Entourage went belly-up.

Install Allmine

1. Download Allmine. This update fixes a bug with the PE which prevents googletalk (and thus Market) from working. Get it here:http://bellybuttonporn.com/android/edgejr/Allmine-latest-update.zip
2. Rename it to “update.zip” and put it in the root of your USB flashdrive.
3. Download a Google Apps package from the Cyanogenmod wiki. Go here:http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/Latest_VersionScroll to the bottom. You want the Cyanogenmod 6 HDPI zipfile.
4. Rename it to “gapps.zip” and put it in the root of your USB flashdrive.Both Allmine (update.zip) and Google Apps (gapps.zip) need to be on your flash drive
5. Turn off your PE. Unplug your microSD and insert the USB flashdrive.
6. While holding Menu and Rotate on the LCD side, turn the PE on. Continue holding Menu and Rotate.
7. The PE might reboot a few times before it actually updates. Once you see the Updating screen, you may let go of the Menu and Rotate buttons.The PE will reboot when the update is complete. When it boots up you will still have the Ermine ROM. Sorry! But wait, there’s more. You’ll have Google apps, and they’ll work.When your PE restarts it will want you to complete the registration process. You will find that your on-screen keyboard is too wide so you probably can’t sign in to your google account. Whoops!

Setup Gingerbread Keyboard (optional)

1. During the setup wizard, choose to sign in later.
2. From your home screen, hit menu, then Language & Keyboard. Put a check next to “Gingerbread Keyboard”
3. Hit back, go into “Accounts & Sync”. Tap Add account.
4. Long-press on the input box for your email address. Choose Input method. Choose the gingerbread keyboard.

Setup

1. Sign in to your google account.
2. Go into your apps and into Market. Accept the User agreement.Watch about a zillion notifications popup that it’s updating your google apps to the latest versions.

Caveats & Things to Keep in Mind:

• The build.prop in your Pocket Edge is setup to fool Market into thinking it’s a Nexus One. The setup wizard also thinks it’s a Nexus One. As a result, you will only see market apps that will work on a Nexus One. Also, if you visit the market website your PE will be listed as Nexus One.
• You can try doing the various updates all from a USB flashdrive or from a microSD. I never had much luck. Dingo likes to upgrade via USB, ermine via microSD, and allmine via USB again. No idea why!
• A few people have tested this out. It seems to work fine. Proceed at your own risk. Let us know in this thread how it works.
• Keep holding the Menu & Rotate buttons until you see the update screen. Really.
• If your Allmine update fails for some reason, look in your USB flashdrive for an update.log file. Post that here.
• If you have tried some custom wackiness with your PE (perhaps you were hacking on it trying to get google apps to work?) and the upgrade(s) fail, your best bet is to start over with step 1 and wipe the PE.
• If your PE doesn’t respond during an upgrade for 30 minutes, you can turn it off by poking the reset button next to the USB port.

Library fix

su
sqlite3 /intstorage/.edge/.esi-data/.databases/library.db "update esimeta set device='SERIAL_NUMBER_GOES_HERE'"

Have you moved your Library to your SDcard? (Thanks to bobthesane of mobileread.com forums for this fix)

su
sqlite3 /sdcard/.edge/.esi-data/.databases/library.db "update esimeta set device='SERIAL_NUMBER_GOES_HERE'"

Version History

• 0.1.0 – Initial Release
• 0.1.1 – Fixed Library “could not insert” bug.
• 0.2.0 – Fixed trackpad, camera, and keyboard bug, big thanks to tarvoke and vldmr from mobileread.com forums for the build.prop edit. Added superuser.apk & su v3.0

Download links:

http://bellybuttonporn.com/android/edgejr/Dingo-update.zip-hellbent.zip
http://bellybuttonporn.com/android/edgejr/Ermine-update.zip
http://bellybuttonporn.com/android/edgejr/Allmine-latest-update.zip
http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/Latest_Version

That title makes sense if you follow the xda-developers forums

Anyhow, I have a Transformer Android tablet and there was an update today. It’s pretty cool; includes a kickass note taking app.

I use clockworkmod recovery and my tablet is rooted. This means in addition to the awesome things I get from root access (the tablet dispenses candy bars, I swear) I cannot apply the official upgrades. Why not? They’ll remove my root access.

So when a release is updated some brave soul must step up and modify that update to work on our rooted tablets. This time, I am that brave dummy.

So, if you have an ASUS Transformer TF101 US on stock firmware version 8.6.5.9, use Clockworkmod, and are rooted, then I have an update for you here:

http://bellybuttonporn.com/transformer/kwt-cwm-8.6.5.13-proper.zip

I got in on the $80 woot deal for an Entourage Pocket Edge. I was interested in its big brother (the Edge) when it was released but balked at the price. So did everyone else. Now that the company’s defunct I got this for a song.

There is a little bit of a community for the device. Check here:

• Mirror of the maker’s help forum http://somestupidwebsite.com/download/edgeforums/edge-forums/www.entourageedge.com/forums/
• Extant hacking community: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=218
• XDA-Devs: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1057206 (do more searching)
• OEM ROM downloads: http://dustyfeet.com/edge/

You may have looked up this very question elsewhere and were provided with the following URL to paste in to Google Reader:

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/users/my_youtube_username/newsubscriptionvideos

Trouble is, that doesn’t work. Google reader can’t seem to understand the feed. Google News users report the same issue. I bet my solution will work for them too.

There are a zillion blog posts and forum threads out there about this, so here’s the answer.

Open up a text editor like notepad and paste this in:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<opml version="1.0">
    <head>
        <title>My subscriptions in Google Reader</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <outline text="New Subscription Videos for Me"
            title="New Subscription Videos for Me" type="rss"
            xmlUrl="http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/users/my_youtube_username/newsubscriptionvideos" htmlUrl="http://www.youtube.com/"/>
    </body>
</opml>

Okay, now go back in and find “my_youtube_username” and replace that with your actual username. Save the file as whatever you want.

Open up google reader and go into the settings (currently available via the gray gear in the upper-right corner). Go into Import/Export, then choose the file you just saved. Once back on your Google Reader main page, you’ll see your subscription feed available with the rest.

39 easy steps!

I want a new phone.

It should have the following characteristics:

• Dual-core processor
• Big screen
• At least qHD display
• Lots of RAM
• physical slide-out keyboard
• 4G LTE
• Preferably on Sprint, but Verizon will work if my unlimited data is grandfathered in.
• NFC

I’ve run into this and from my searching it seems a few others have too.

Here’s the scenario: You’re running CyanogenMod 7 on your phone and you decide to try out a different ROM. You use Titanium Backup to save all your apps and data only to find that once you’re on the new ROM a lot of data doesn’t seem to stick around. Titanium reports that it’s successfully restored the data — and some of it really has been restored — but lots of data is missing. It’s restored to the default value from when you first installed the app.

Now here’s what’s really going on.

Titanium is indeed restoring your data. It just makes sure the app isn’t running and copies all of the database and prefs setting files into its data directory. No magic. That’s all it does and that’s all it needs to do. When your app starts up (if it’s coded well) it will check the integrity of its database files. If they are corrupt it will probably delete them and start over from scratch. Not exactly optimal, but at least the app can still run, right? Well that’s what’s happening here. Your app thinks its database file is corrupt.

CyanogenMod 7 uses a newer version of sqlite than other ROMs. (sqlite is the database engine underpinning android’s apps). This version introduces a new journaling method, the write-ahead-log, abbreviated wal for short. There’s a variety of technical benefits to using wal but that discussion doesn’t really impact our issue. Our issue is that the older version of sqlite on other ROMs doesn’t understand wal, so thinks your databases are corrupt. Bam, bye-bye data!

You can attempt this fix in one of two places. You can either fix the database files before you back them up, or after you restore them. In terms of having the right version of sqlite3 available, it’s probably best to try this before you back up your apps.

This fix assumes a few things. First, you have root. If you’re messing with CM7 and Titanium Backup you already have root. Not a problem. Second, you have busybox installed. Again, not a problem since Titanium requires busybox (and even installs it for you). Third, you have to have a sqlite3 binary somewhere on your phone. If your ROM doesn’t (some don’t for some reason) include it, you’re not screwed. I *think* Titanium will detect this and copy a binary to your phone when you click the “Problems?” button. If that’s not the case, there may be other copies of sqlite3 on your phone you can use. Open up a terminal, buddy, you’re goin in.

Find an sqlite3 binary:

find / -name sqlite3

This will locate sqlite3 for you, if it’s on your phone. Once you find it, (mine was in /system/xbin/, i.e. preinstalled in the ROM), make sure it’s new enough to understand wal.

/path/to/sqlite3 --version

If you get something 3.7.0 or higher, you’re in luck. If not, hopefully you found other sqlite3′s you can try. This is why it’s a good idea to do this BEFORE backing your apps up and flashing a new ROM. If your ROM has wal, its copy of sqlite3 does too.

I hesitate to call this a script, so here’s the command to run:

find /data/data/ -regex '.*databases/[^-]*' -exec /path/to/sqlite3 {} 'PRAGMA journal_mode=delete;' \;

Again, run this in a terminal. And yes, you do need to be root. What this is doing is going through all of the database files stored by your apps and setting them to the old journal_mode. You will get errors that certain files ending in -wal or -shm don’t exist. Don’t worry about those. When sqlite3 changes the journal_mode back to delete it will get rid of the -wal and -shm files automatically; that confuses find  but doesn’t hurt anything. If an app is running during the process we won’t be able to open and update its database files. So make sure to kill them all from the Applications menu (or your task killer if you still have one of those around).

IMHO the best time to do this is on your old ROM (e.g. CM7) before doing the Titanium Backup. If you’ve already flashed to the new ROM and you’re stuck, then you can try running the command immediately after restoring everything in Titanium Backup. If you mess something up try not to panic; Titanium still has your data safely backed up. You can try again.

Leave a comment to tell everyone if this worked for you.

I haven’t mentioned this before because I was embarrassed.

But it’s time to come clean.

After

Here’s what my car looks like now. Pretty good, eh? Thanks to Scotty’s Body Shop I’m all good to go. They did a great job and did it quickly. Their office manager, Curtis, even went above and beyond by ordering my bumper cover early just so I’d have it done quickly. I really appreciate it.

Contrary to my previous tweet, I suppose I will post a before picture.

Before

Note the giant cracks in the bottom.

The first time my car got fixed by Shaffer’s in Ames they did a real shit job of it. The bottom was wavy and droopy so it’d get caught on curbs and parking stops all the time. Eventually it got bad enough that the underside would pull out when I backed up, causing the huge cracks. To add to the fun, State Farm left me twisting in the wind in terms of paying another deductible to re-fix the problem.

Enter Scotty’s Body Shop. They came highly recommended according to my best friend, Google. So I went in for a free estimate. From the very start their employees were eager to make sure I was well taken-care of. They explained the process of dealing with State Farm, how they were going to order parts, and even how they were going to have to have the damage reassessed. I’m pretty particular about my car and I really appreciated the attention paid to make sure I understood everything. That’s not to say they treated me like a dumbass; they were all respectful and seemed to be honestly pleased to help me.

I really have no frame of reference for this level of service. I don’t ever want to get into a car accident or have anything go wrong with my car again. But if it does happen, I won’t waste a second deciding where to go.

A while ago I tried out all the android podcast apps I could find and settled on BeyondPod. Overall it’s pretty good but there’s a few niggling bugs I don’t like. My girlfriend would like to get into listening to podcasts at work and I’m not 100% sure I want to recommend BeyondPod to her without re-checking the competition. Ease of use and a minimal requirement for library-maintenance are primary concerns. So with that in mind, let’s get started.

I did a quick search on Appbrain for podcast catchers and jotted down anything that looked promising. The process of trying some of these apps out is going to be hampered by the ridiculous new 15 minute android market return policy, but I’ll do my best to give them a good going-through when I can.

DoggCatcher ($6.99)

DoggCatcher bills itself as “the premier podcatcher for Android devices” and there’s plenty of reasons to believe them. Paying $7 off the bat with no free trial version (and the afore-mentioned 15 minute window) is a bit of a stumbling block. But plenty of people have taken the plunge and a lot of them seem happy. Looking over the feature list on their site I see plenty I like: automatic podcast cleanup, automatic playlist, highly configurable, and frequent updates.

I finally bit the bullet to try DoggCatcher. The 15 minute window is really a pain in the ass here. I’ve had the app for about 9 minutes and so far i’ve managed to download 55% of the most recent Car Talk episode.

The UI is amazing. It looks really slick and has a sort of intuitiveness that BeyondPod lacks. I really like the minimum number of screens you have to wade through to get into the media player. There’s just a Feeds screen and a Downloads screen. Oh, and there’s playback controls on the bottom of both of them. Nice.

The Add a Podcast menu is great. There’s a nice scrolling menu of all your options including several podcast directories, recommendations, youtube, NPR, a direct RSS feed entry, OPML/XML import, and more.

The Playing screen is sort of hidden. On the main screen there are tabs for audio, video, news, and a filter. I assumed these were just filters for the feeds shown. Actually they wisk you away to a player for that type of media.

There’s no real playlist management to speak of. On the audio playing screen you can choose to sort by feed and then date, or just date. I actually like that. BeyondPod, my current player, has a very flexible playlist setup, but it’s kind of a pain to have to design a playlist and manually change the order when all I really want to do is play all my podcasts, oldest to newest. If you really need to rearrange your playlist, you can do it by long-pressing on an item and moving it.

There’s a 4×1 playback widget (4 icons wide, 1 tall) to control playback from the home screen. Pretty standard faire.

One pain point is that after I added a podcast it took a bit to figure out how to actually get it to download the podcasts. By default Doggcatcher is set to not download anything. I can understand not wanting to waste space, but really, isn’t downloading podcasts the point? In the settings you can specify how many podcasts to download by default. You can also specify per-feed. But you have to go look for the setting.

I guess I’m going to give DoggCatcher a bit of a longer workout. I really like it. Well, also I went over Google’s new 15 minute trial window. D’oh! Seriously Google, 15 minutes? what the hell. But really, I do like it.

Hapi Podcast (Free)

This looks pretty rough. The spelling errors on the description page notwithstanding (the author appears to be a non-native speaker, so I can cut him some slack), it appears to be rather feature-poor. The changelog shows a lot of activity, so that’s promising.

Aside from the obtuse engrish in the interface, it looks clean with nice icons. I don’t like the options for downloaded podcast deletion (At least I think deletion, it’s called ‘expiration’ in the UI). The shortest I can set a played file to stick around is 2 hours. The longest I can set an unplayed file to stick around is 1 month, which isn’t long enough for those of us who like to catch up on new podcasts from the beginning. I have no idea what setting the expiration on undownloaded files means. You need to specify that the podcasts should be downloaded for each podcast you add after you’ve added it. I don’t really understand that. Why am I adding this podcast if I don’t want to download it?

Hapi Podcast lets you import/export OPML files which is great for those of us migrating from other podcast managers.

The UI is inconsistent in its implementation of standard Android UI elements. For example, on the main screen the menu button does nothing. The settings menu is right in the main screen instead. Sure, putting things out in the open is nice, but ignoring UI conventions isn’t. It should be in the menu too.

I can’t recommend this one right now. Maybe in a while after the developer has had some time to add features and to localize it into English a bit more.

PodKast (Free)

The UI looks a bit cluttered but it is made by the guys behind Androlib so it’s probably worth a shot.

The App is named with a period at the beginning so it shows up first in your App drawer. Sure it’s cute, but do we really want app developers clogging our screens up with “…………..My App” in a ridiculous analogue to the “AAAA towing” phonebook phenomenon?

Podkast wants to stream podcasts by default and the only way I can see to download a particular podcast episode is to tap the disk icon while listening. That alone disqualifies it for me; I don’t want to have my data connection up and running all day long. Also there doesn’t seem to be a way to create a playlist, either automatically or manually. You must simply listen to an episode and then choose another one. Not very good for long listening sessions like a commute or while working.

The app loves to pollute my notification bar with spam too. I don’t care about the latest news from Magma Mobile (the developers). I tried PodKast because I figured the creators of a popular android website couldn’t be too bad. And now I’ve changed my mind about them.

BeyondPod (Free trial/$6.99 Full Version)

BeyondPod is free for 7 days, and then $7 thereafter. The way BP gets around Google’s 15 minute trial window is that BP itself is a free download. After 7 days it will stop working. There is a separate app you have to download which is just an unlock key. Once you get that BeyondPod works again. It’s a nifty tactic that several app developers use. I hope more move over to that model.

I paid my $7 for beyondpod quite a while ago. It had the best feature set at the time and has grown. Perhaps not as fast as the competition; it doesn’t see updates very frequently. There is an active google-groups for it, and I posted a question to it just now so we’ll see how fast the response is there.

As far as usage go, it provides a decent UI. Having to swipe back and forth between the various categories, feeds, items, podcasts, and finally the player is a bit much, though. When opening BeyondPod the wait during the “Loading Feeds” screen is excessive. I’m not sure what it’s loading, but couldn’t it just dump me into the player and load that in the background?

There’s a 4×1 playback widget for your home screen. I don’t use it because it has the same problem as the main UI; when you hit the play button for the first time it has to wait 5-10 seconds while it loads up all your feeds when all you really want is to play a podcast. That’s not worth 4 icons’ worth of space to me. I just have the regular app icon to open up BP’s regular UI.

I recently started using Tasker on my phone. It’s a tool which lets you automate a lot of things. Anyhow, BeyondPod has a plugin for tasker which allows you to directly control it. So, for example, I set tasker up to start BP playing my playlist at 6:34 a.m. monday through friday. That’s pretty nice.

Update: During the few days I’ve been working on this article BeyondPod came out with a couple of updates. The first made the Now Playing UI look nice and modern-androidy and a few video features I’ll never use. The second fixed some bugs introduced in the first one. And I still have some bugs with it not responding. The great news is the developer is very responsive on the beyondpod google groups. I don’t think my problem is indicative of problems for “normal” users who are running the version of android supplied for their phone.

Warning, Android nerdery ahead!

His hunch is that the latest version of his app is compiled against the Android 2.3 SDK and that it’s somehow not working with 3rd-party ROMs (myself and another user who reported bugs are running Cyanogenmod 6.1.2). He compiled a version against the Android 2.2 SDK and gave us a link to the APK. So far it’s been working fine for me, but I’ve only had it for a day or so. I’m going to keep him updated of how it’s going.

Android nerdery over. On to the next victim!

Car Cast Podcast Player (Free/$1.99 Donation)

“Car Cast is a simple podcast downloader/player” says the website, and I have to agree. It offers no automatic downloading, no automatic media management, and doesn’t seem to be able to load feeds which aren’t in its search database. I’m going to recommend a skip on this one.

MyPOD Podcast Manager (Free/$3.14 Full Version)

The developer unabashedly claims his app’s UI isn’t very good, but it’s got a lot of unique features. The player screen is very cluttered by the dual playback feature (you can listen to a podcast and music at the same time for some insane reason). It does offer a cool web-based control system so you can remote control your podcast playback via computer. The idea here is that you’d have your phone plugged into the stereo and maybe you’re across the room at your computer and want to change tracks.

It also allows you to add RSS feeds straight from your computer with this mechanism. Though, I have to add, that feature can be had with other properly developed podcast players (such as beyondpod) via chrometophone, foxtophone, etc.

I do like that you can configure your media storage based on free space; i.e. you can tell MyPOD to only use up a certain amount of space or you can tell it to always leave a certain amount of free space. Neat.

Given the garish and clunky UI and the fact that your average podcast listener (I assume my girlfriend will be one of those) won’t use the web UI or dual-player features, I’m going to recommend a pass on this one too.

PodTrapper Podcast Manager ($7.99)

Apparently this app is a big deal in the Blackberry world. Note that you can get a 30 day free trial by visiting their official website linked above.

This thing is insanely configurable. I do like the addition of a wake timer; something beyondpod lacks. The UI is spartan as all get-out. It’s just white text on a black background with little to no flourishes save a consistent header. I really like it. It’s responsive and though the settings menu is a daunting list of buttons I find the rest of the UI pleasingly simple.

Having finally downloaded an episode of a podcast (damn me for listening to long shows) I finally see the downside of the simple UI. The playing screen is atrocious. The buttons are labeled with characters rather than pictures, e.g. “<<” rather than a rewind icon. The menu has two stop entries; I can’t tell what the difference is, nor why they’d be in there anyhow. There’s also a “Fix Player” entry. No idea what that’s for. I don’t see a way to automatically enqueue episodes either.

These downsides are unfortunate. I was ready out of the gates to lambaste PodTrapper for costing $8 and sucking royally. The truth is it doesn’t suck. I really like the UI and the mega-customizability. I really really want to love this app. The bad UI in the player and apparent lack of automatic playlist creation is what does it in for me. Maybe in a couple more versions they’ll have that sewn up.

Since you can get a 30 day trial at their website I say go give it a shot. Maybe you’ll love the UI as much as I do and can forgive the player screen.

Google Listen (Free)

I tried this out a while back and found it lacking a lot of features I consider must-have. It seems to have gone through a few iterations since then so another shot is warranted.

There isn’t an option to automatically make a playlist; you have to manually queue individual podcast episodes to be listened to. That’s a big red mark for my usage, and I imagine for people who listen to more than a few podcasts. I’m not sure what Listen does when I’ve listened to a podcast (does it stick around forever? Delete it? How does it know when to delete them?) so I’m not sure I can trust it as my podcasting app.

I do like the simplicity of the UI (though I fear much of that simplicity is bought at the cost of features). I also like the integration with Google Reader; the idea of managing my podcast subscriptions along with my reader subscriptions on my desktop computer is tempting. Ultimately, though, I imagine this will be good in a few iterations but right now so soon after launch it’s going to have to be a pass.

Verdict

If you actually want to listen to podcasts instead of dabbling you’ve got 2 options. BeyondPod and Doggcatcher. As a total Google fanboy, I’d love to recommend Listen, but it just isn’t complete as far as I’m concerned.

Beyondpod is an app tweaker’s paradise. Just about every setting I would ever want to tweak is in there, as well as Tasker integration (Doggcatcher doesn’t have direct Tasker integration yet. It’s on his agenda to add, though). That flexibility is a hinderence, though. I don’t think most people will zealously organize their podcasts into dozens of categories with independent (but non overlapping!) update schedules. And when you don’t do that, you just end up lumping everything into one category, as I did. Every podcast is Entertainment to me! So I have a totally useless screen (the category screen) and a lot of places it shows the podcast’s category, wasting the space. While I use BP’s SmartPlay feature (to manually setup my playlist), I don’t think it’s really necessary. I’d much rather just have it play them all in order. Needing 5-15 seconds to start up (or longer, yikes) and then having to navigate 2-3 pages to actually get to the part where I can hit play is a bit much.

Doggcatcher feels much more responsive than BeyondPod. The UI is much cleaner because unneeded features like categories and a nitpicky playlist management interface just aren’t there. When I hit the play button on the widget or start the application up directly I hear my podcasts right away. It pains me to say it, but after using BP for quite a while that sort of speed feels like a feature.

Both BeyondPod and Doggcatcher feature OPML import/export and each can play the files on your SDcard as though they were a podcast. That makes the process of migrating from one to the other less painful; I can set up Doggcatcher with the podcasts from BP and then queue up my unlistened podcasts from my sdcard. Or vice versa.

Do this: Go to the android market and download BeyondPod. It is a 7 day free trial and $7 after that. Try it out for a few days. If you’re not 100% in love, download Doggcatcher. You have to pay $7 up front, but I bet you’ll decide you like it within the 15 minute trial.

As for me, I’m switching to Doggcatcher.

I am on drugs.

The problem with personal problems is that they’re so goddamned personal. Some problems you assume you’re the only person suffering so you’re embarrassed to ask for help. Does all the snot run to one side of your head and plug up only one of your nostrils when you lay on your side? Yeah it does for everyone, bub. Some problems you think are just normal so you don’t even contemplate getting help. Mine fall into the latter category.

A few years ago I started seeing a therapist about some of my problems. It came out eventually that I have social anxiety. I get worried about social situations, in other words. This is probably news to many of you; I come across as gregarious and fully at home around you, don’t I? In situations where I was comfortable I was fine, otherwise I was a terrified mess. Throwing a party at my place (my place is a-ok!) was no problem, including any newcomers who showed up. Going in to a see a doctor was horrifying. Doing things I’d done before and often (going to Dining Service at college, going to Hy Vee) were no problem. Doing new things like entering a new store or restaurant were maddeningly difficult.

I developed coping mechanisms. I avoided anxiety-provoking activities. I latched on to a few friends whose presence made doing new things possible.

At one point in college I began skipping classes. All of them. For about a month the only places I went were my dorm room and the dining hall. As time went on my anxiety worsened. “What will they say when I go back?” Eventually the problem went away on its own. Or rather, just receded into the background. I continued on with my life unaware that I even had a problem.

Another problem would soon come to the forefront of my mind. I thought about death a lot. Don’t worry, I wasn’t suicidal. In fact I was as far in the opposite direction as possible. I didn’t want to die. At all. Ever. I was so worried that I would die someday. When I saw something that reminded me of sickness, death, infirmity, or old age, I’d be momentarily paralyzed with fear of my own mortality.

I can’t remember what prompted it, but eventually I dedicated myself to telling my doctor. The problem with my anxiety is that it’s self-sabotaging. Asking for help is mind-meltingly difficult when your problem is that you can’t do things you don’t normally do, like asking for help. I made a list to force myself to commit to asking the doctor. During what my doctor thought was a routine physical (no way in hell could I mention this on the phone to the receptionist as the reason for my visit). I was so worried the doctor would think I was just trolling her for drugs, or that she wouldn’t believe me, or that she’d tell me to just suck it up and deal with it on my own.

I just took a deep breath and blurted it out:

“I want to talk about depression.”

I thought I had depression. Probably I do. I was referred to a therapist and we had weekly sessions. Eventually we decided that what I have is social anxiety disorder. I wish I could quote her exactly, but she took the time to look up and read the definition aloud and I was so relieved that it fit me to a tee.

We decided to try a mild dose of Zoloft to help. You probably know it from the commercials with the little guy sad because he’s rained on all the time. There’s a class of antidepressant medicines called SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) which are prescribed for depression, anxiety, OCD, and that sort of stuff.

It worked great. I was feeling better. I was doing better in my social life. I was doing better at work.

Then I got fired and lost my insurance coverage.

That time really sucked. I fell into a depression, ran out of money, and wallowed for quite a while. After getting a new job and some insurance I found a new doctor in Des Moines. (Obviously I couldn’t go back to my old doctor or old therapist. What would they think? How would they react?)

As an aside, I go to Dr. Marvin Huff at Johnston Family Physicians. He is really nice, respectful, and knowledgeable. If you’re seeking a doctor I strongly recommend giving them a call and setting up an appointment. He’s also really good with kids from what I see and hear.

He got me back on sertraline (Zoloft is available in generic) right away and it helped out.

I kept having problems at work. It was hard to get assignments done and I would abandon tasks in the middle to do other things. ADD is one of those things that people joke about having when they’re feeling harried. But what if you actually had it? What would it be like?

At home I’d often find extra tasks to do when I entered a room. Here’s an example: I want to make some tea. I go upstairs and put water and a teabag in the microwave. I notice the dishwasher is clean so I put some dishes away. There’s some pantry items left out on the counter so I take those over to our shelves and store them. Oh, there’s some seldom-used kitchen gadgets on the dining-room table so I put them in boxes to take upstairs. The dog bowls are empty so I fill them up. Man I could use a drink, so I grab a diet coke out of the fridge. The microwave goes off.

Yeah, that actually happens. I thought I was being efficient; finding things to do while I was up and around. Turns out I just was getting distracted. I often just stop talking in the middle of sentences when I think of something else. When working on a long task at work at the first sign of difficulty or a decision that had to be made I’d stop and do something else. Like browse the internet. When your job relies on being on a computer with a working internet connection that’s a problem. It’s like a sex addict working the bar at a strip club.

I just started a low dose of Adderall XR. Its in generic too but I can’t remember the name of it off-hand. It’s an ADHD medication that works via stimulating the brain. It’s actually a very low dose of kinds of amphetamines. Speed. Neat, huh?

I’ve only been on this for 5 days so I hesitate to call it a roaring success so early. However, I feel a lot better. I’m more alert; no more slogging through my day half asleep as i used to. I don’t fall victim to distractions as easily and when I come to a hard part of a job at work I just…do it. Seriously folks, I’ve gotten so much work done this week. I feel great about it.

I am looking forward to being able to do some of the stuff I used to. I used to be able to play long-form RPGs (like the final fantasy series). Recently I couldn’t get past a day or so of playing due to distraction. I used to be able to program for fun. Now maybe I can finish up some of the half dozen half-done projects I’ve started. The toilet used to be the only place I could read due to a built-in time limit. Now I hope to start in on the gigantic stack of unread books I’ve piled up over the years. I used to share my thoughts more frequently via blogging. I feel like I can again.

My dosage might not be right yet. I do feel myself getting distracted somewhat still. Of course perfect concentration isn’t normal either. I will have to talk to my doctor about it because frankly I don’t know what a normal level of concentration is any more.

I do have occasional headaches. I don’t know if that’s from the Adderall or because I’ve had a head cold the past few days. If it’s really a side effect it’s worth it. Another side-effect is decreased appetite. It’s not just that I’m not hungry; I feel full. Losing some weight would be a welcome bonus so I don’t mind at all.

Now to clear up the misconceptions.

I am not a zombie.

My personality isn’t changed.

I am not just using these drugs for extra advantages.

And I certainly couldn’t just “deal with it” and live a full and happy life without treatment.

Mental disorders are a touchy subject for some people. Some armchair psychiatrists declare that it’s all made-up or just a cynical ploy by drug companies to manufacture illness (and then treat it). Since they deal with all of their problems without “resorting” to drugs, they reason, we are cheating or something. If you’re feeling the slightest bit judgmental (I doubt you’ve read this far) please consider this: I am likely not your only friend on antidepressants or ADHD medication. People you already love, trust, and rely on are on antidepressants or ADHD medication.

We are doing much better with the medical intervention that we’d be doing without. And everyone deserves a chance to live a somewhat normal, somewhat happy, somewhat productive life.

If you think you need help or would like to do some research on your own, please check out these resources rather than your local quack:

• For reliable information on depression, ADHD, anxiety, or anything else, search http://www.webmd.com/.
• If you are feeling suicidal, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. They can help.
• If you want to chat personally with someone who’s going through a little bit of the same stuff you might be, give me a call.