I am a happy owner of Nexus One, though I have written about some quirks in the past. Now it is time to discuss one problem deeper: common software availability outside USA and couple other lucky countries. And the worst of it is that it affects software, that comes preinstalled in our phones.

For example, it affects Google Maps in Android phones. If you have tried updating this application from outside USA (and several lucky countries), you could not find it in the market. You get Google Maps with your phone, you get it updated during system updates. But you can not get an update through Android Market here – the application is unavailable.

And I do not know any good reason why Google does this. It is not payment collection issue: Google maps is free application. The navigation is one of the few services whose availability is problematic worldwide, so it could be disabled outside USA/UK, that would make more sense. Even then, some workarounds are posted.   The issue is not the driver’s original country, but the maps and understanding the routing in the countries.

There are plenty of other services where country-based availability does not makes sense whatever sort. For example, Google Places, Google Buzz, which is available through web interface anyway. Any user could use it through web at limited functionality.

Sigh. I do not expect an explanation from Google about this. I guess we will have to wait and see if something changes, or other applications will take its place locally.

People do not want to buy copies that cost that much as original. The same is true for the web. There are plenty of copywriting sites, and each year it is easier and easier to create another copy of website and try to get some market share.
For example blogging. 10 or so years ago there was livejournal – a wonderful blogging for all platform with paid accounts where one had to beg for invite to get a free limited one. People could skin them a little – change some colors, at some point layout as well. Then came wordpress, blogger, etc. Now anyone can get blog in 5 minutes, skinned to their likes. There are hundreds of thousands skins to choose from. And blog on itself is no longer special.
Same goes for more generic CMS’es. Before that, programmers would code a news portal for month. After that you just install drupal or joomla, configure them a bit and you got a new news site with lots of plugin choices. And a hundred or so similar sites doing the same. The technology improves, it value deflates over time.
This is the true with copywriting as well. You can write the best copy in the world, but the question is how it will stand out? How it will be different from others, that will copy same source, or maybe you? Can you offer something better?
This is the most critical question for successful site : individuality, originality, the brand. You have to answer for yourself and your readers how you are the best. And the answer should be good enough to convince yourself and your staff. Noone else knows everything so in depth as you and the guys in the same room. And if you do not believe in your site, no one else will.
By the way, cheating yourself does not work that well in a long term. You have to get a good understanding what you can do differently from competitors. Counting on being older, having better SEO or Social Marketing skills do not count- most of this do not matter or is achievable. There is always a chance that competitors would hire someone that knows better than your employees do. Heck, they can hire someone better than you to do things that you do now. And you will have to improve, find new things.
Shouldn’t you do same things as competition does ? Absolutely, but you should do them better. Using rewritten copies? Write better ones, gather more information. Presenting news? Get a person that can add unique and useful touch to them. Reviewing something? Think what customer wants to see in a review that is not at your competitors webpage. In terms of business management, raise the cost of entering this market. This will help you in the future.
And yes, I had to do that in the past, and I will have to do this again with one of my projects. I can’t tell if I do everything the best way. But I am trying to do it better.

Antivir Solution Pro is a remake of Antimalware Doctor and Antispyware soft. It is a fake antivirus, sharing the name with legitimate Antivir made by Avira. While Avira’s Antivir is one of the most widely recommended free antiviruses packages, the Antivir Solution Pro is dangerous for the PC.

First of all, Antivir Solution Pro is distributed by security vulnerabilities, like infected Adobe PDF files, Javascript ads on various websites. This is a first sign that a software can not be trusted. Secondly, it will start showing popups and alerts blocking normal processes and limiting access to legitimate websites to scare user into downloading and buying its full version. Thirdly, Antivir Solution Pro might reconfigure the PC to allow easier reinfection in the future, by changing proxy settings, modifying way DNS addresses are recognized and downloading other parasites to weaken the PC.

Antivir Solution Pro can be removed by rebooting into safe mode and scanning the PC with Spyware Doctor or Malwarebytes. Full scan is strongly recommended. As the trojans might block the scan, it is highly recommended to disable the processes before the scan by killing all processes named with random letter strings (especially ending in tssd.exe). If such processes are successfully killed, One can run msconfig and remove startup entries referencing such processes. Still many of the infected files might be missed by manual removal, thus a single secure way is scanning with several automatic removal tools for Antivir Solution pro.
Full removal guide is available here : http://www.2-viruses.com/remove-antivir-solution-pro

I have written about Ndrive in the past. It is one of the best available navigations for your Android phone outside USA and “lucky 11″ (countries, from which google accepts payments in their Android Marketplace). Most of other map software processes payments through google market thus they are not available in most of the countries. This is a shame.

This week there is an exciting opportunity to win a free map of your choice from Ndrive. You need to do following:

1. Download Ndrive on your phone, use it (7 days – all maps free).

2. Register at AndroidForums.com

3. Write a comment at android marketplace and rate Ndrive. Mention your AndroidForums username as well. It is required that comment would be made from your phone (to identify your phone I assume).

4. Write in the thread dedicated to the contest in Android forum: http://androidforums.com/android-applications/116315-ndrive-contest.html . You will have to register there.

Simple, eh ? The best part is there will be more than one winner, in fact it is promised that there will be more than 20! You will be contacted in AndroidForums by administration staff if you win.

I would participate myself, however, I have purchased all the maps I will need in the close future myself (Western Europe + Eastern Europe) .  They are worth the money. And even better if you get them for free

Most of my income is done in computer security market, and I have follow various tools and events to stay on the top. As with any other market, there are very interesting how the computer security is reflected in social media or how Social media is used in it. Security market got it all backwards and released semi-global unlike button for its own market in terms of MyWOT.

I have reviewed MyWOT positively in the past, and the points are still valid. However, it is time to talk about several downsides of it (and why I see no real use for it in the future).

First, it works as global unlike button in security market. Lots of people know about it in this area and use it to manipulate listings. Experts do not rate good sites in this area – there are too many, and no one cares if they are not their own. For example, one negative review of one Rogue cleaner in my blog resulted at negative review in MyWOT of my site by him (with several accounts). I know pretty much, that some of other ratings are voted by people advertising similar or same products:)

Second, the toolbar itself is made in the way that suggest auto-confirming votes. It blocks all sites with negative ratings, and many of the negative ratings are reconfirmed by users which do not see the site itself. I had a looong discussion with MyWOT platinum member to remove his comment (and rating), which was made WITHOUT checking website. The mailing forth and back lasted couple days, and I the last mail I got was that he removed the comment and will check the website once he has time.

Third, the sources of auto-rating. MyWOT uses 3 sources (maybe more) to confirm that site is valid : hphosts, delicious and digg. First one is negative, other ones have no bigger impact. All of them have no real basis. Everyone can submit to digg and delicious. Listing in hphosts is not purely black or white either: some of listings are irrelevant (“marketing strategies”) , some are out of control ( IPs history) , some are valid (distribution of malicious software). However, I haven’t seen users evaluating these properly. Everyone would just vote all bards the same.

4th, the site banner issue. I do not think it is ok, but whatever. If people would like to pay for displaying how crowd things the site is secure, then it is great for mywot. All banners based on real testing are much more useful.

5th. Malware, response time and such. MyWOT will not rate sites at once. Thus malware sites will not be rated as dangerous on first vote. Next, lots of malware is spread through sites with good reputation. Like facebook. Thus it will not make web any safer.

To summarize, to protect from parasites I would advice to use Site Advisor Toolbar and not Mywot. However, MyWOT could become much better if adding some changes. For example, incorporating Site Advisors ratings (including possitive and negative sides), checking spent time on the site on rating, checking overall distribution of ratings, etc.

Somewhat funny note is that my site was rated badly by Site Advisor as well, as I have provided a link to Malwarebytes executable or download page (can’t remember). Later on I get my WOT ratings because I am one of the few people that does not advertise Malwarebytes as “the best single protection” or smth.

Additionally, recently it started using name “Green AV security Suite”. It looks like it is same parasite in general.

So, I am married man. That thought still has to sink to me fully, but I am perfectly happy with that. The marriage commenced at 29th of May in the circle of family and friends in Kaunas, my hometown. Everything was perfect, including the fakir show in middle of the night, which was our surprise to the guests. We would like to thank “Ugnies ratas” for spectacular performance.

2 days after ceremony we left for the portugal with a pair of our friends. That was a honeymoon trip for us all, although they have waited for 9 months for us!. The trip was great, we made around 2700 km with a car there.

We flew to Porto, a bigger city in the Portugal north. The narrow cobblestone streets, lots of churches, great meals and very nice, helpful people: that was our first impression of the country. We started by visiting Porto itself and some neighborhood cities like Lamegos and Amarante.

Here is a photo of us in unknown restaurant in Sao Nicolaus, Porto.

After Porto we went to Praia de Mira – a nice resort close at the coast of ocean. Due to weather we could not enjoy the beaches, but the food there was great. We still remember the largest plate of seafood we ate at “Polar” and perfectly made Grilled Sea Bass for two at another place which name I can not recall. During that stay we visited Coimbra first time, a student town and a former capital of Portugal. That was a place we liked most in the whole Portugal and it is perfect city for buying gifts for family and friends. I can recommend restaurant Restaurante Praca Velha there, for perfect service and very tasty steak.

The next hotel was in Peniche – a nice resort for surfing and resting. The weather was much better than in Mira, and we had a very nice company there. Although we had not seen much of Peniche itself, we visited Obidos, old Roman road (twice!) and some other points from it.

Lisabon. There we had an apartment in the center of the city. The parking was terrible, but the place was in one of the main pedestrian streets. Everything was close by: the Cathedral, other historical churches. We visited sea park with aquarium there, which is one of the biggest in Europe. Sadly, the food in Lisabon is terrible, but I can recommend driving to Cascais and eating at Apeadeiro ( Avenida Vasco de Gama 252) – one of the most pleasant places during whole trip.

The last stop was Portimao – a town in the very south of Portugal. It was one of the longest trips as we have visited Evora on the same day. We were promised a bath there by my wife, however we found out that this particular bath was not used since roman times.

The south of portugal is quite different from the rest of it: cleaner, spacer and less more modern. The last apartment was located 100 meters from the ocean so we spend a lot of time enjoying sunshine and beach. It was perfect place to rest and enjoy the weather of Algarve. We had a mad ride on the boat in ocean from Lagos – the watter caves are great, and the boat captains are fearless.

I am really happy with everything concerning my marriage and trip, although it is kind of good to be back and start implementing new ideas again.

I was pleasantly surprised by seeing Android phones in stock at Lithuanian Omnitel store last week. They weren’t marked as Android phones, and their capabilities were unlisted. However, I am really happy that they have started selling more modern Smartphone’s than Iphone. However, there is no sign for paid applications in locally accessible Android Market yet.

This issue made me wonder how widely spread Android phones are in Lithuania. There are couple sources of data that can provide some insight.

Admob statistics does not show Lithuania in country list. Also, to get a statistically relevant insight some conditions should be met. That is, there should be enough users to run Admob enabled programs, which are not the ones that are pre-installed. The whole East Europe is responsible for 2.2% Admob clicks, which means that Admob is not strong in these markets yet.

Infusecreative.com data is not accurate enough. The pages lithuanians visit might not have clicky web analytics installed. This is seen from very spiky curves of both iphone and android usage. However, it is seen that iphone has some real market share, as there is a clear difference between Iphone and Android usage.

The main information source is App Aware – an application that lists software installed nearby and the phones used. This show couple of phones that use both App Aware and are in Lithuania, in its capital mostly. There are some older models here as well (Hero, for example), which were never sold through mobile networks here. Sure, not all of Android users have App Aware installed.

Conclusion? Putting together information, gathered from clicky and App Aware, I would say that Androids are not widely spread here yet, and exact numbers are hard to come by. Judging by clicky, Androids are 1/10 of iphone market, but I would expect an significant growth once more Android smartphones are sold in Lithuanian directly rather than through foreign eshops.

I am firm believer that knowing about places of common speed traps is a good thing. Thus I relied on trapster application on my android phone to report for the stationary and mobile traps in area I am driving. Sadly, it had far for complete speed camera map for Lithuania. Vilnius is marked quite well, Kaunas has little traps (one was missing), and the west part of Lithuania was not mapped at all. My NDRIVE had way less traps than trapster.

Now I have looked for solutions. GPS.lt has a nice list of current and forthcomming speed camera maps in Lithuania, however they target different, more mainstream navigation applications like Tomtom or Garmin. Thus I took some time to convert the list of coordinates listed there to KML file. This format is understood by Google earth and NDRIVE. The locations are not 100% accurate, but in most cases the trap locations are good. I have marked planed Lithuanian traps as (FUTURE) under their names. They can be deleted from KML file, but I would suggest not to – they are already in planning and should open quite soon.

To add Camera list to NDRIVE, upload the file to your phones SD card under directory NDRIVE/speedcameras . Then choose import from Ndrive. Thats all. It should work the same on other NDRIVE platforms.
If have any additions to speed camera list, or any suggestions, please drop me a mail. The list will be modified in the future, as not everything is done already. I am planning on fixing camera orientation properly.

The Lithuanian speed cameras KML file can be downloaded here. (Link fixed)

Lietuviškai :

Lietuvos greičio kamerų sąrašas KML formatu. Tinka google Earth ir NDRIVE navigacijoms. Ačiu GPS.lt.

To remove Antispyware Soft, first you have to reenable internet connection first. To do so:

1. Reboot into safe mode with networking.

2. Launch your internet explorer and make sure your internet connection does not uses proxy server. Do so in other browsers as well

3. Download Spyware Doctor using this link (it should not be blocked by Antispyware Soft). Run and perform full scan.

If it fails, try blocking Antispyware Soft manually.

The best way to do so is start task manager (or, for example, process explorer) and stop all Antispyware Soft processes. The processes typically end in tssd.exe.

Afterwards, I would recommend doing full scan  with Spyware Doctor or Malwarebytes anti-malware.  It is critical to have a security suite that provides real time protection against such infections like this.

Facebook just opened its Open Graph protocol API which allows implementing social interactions in websites that were limited to Facebook pages only: likes, commenting, etc. The question rises if webmasters should bother to create Facebook pages anymore if their sites can be integrated in Facebook’s system.

The short answer they both serve a bit different purposes. Open Graph API helps people to connect themselves to brands. Facebook pages provide easier way on interacting with your fans. There is a much wider ecosystem of Facebook Applications than Open Graph applications at the moment.

Also, one needs to use FB application for managing and monitoring all the interactions through a website properly. Open graph insights are still a bit limited for my tastes, but I hope that new tools will emerge.

Also, Facebook pages help controlling brand mentions in SERP results, which might be important for reputation management. This can not be replaced by Open Graph API.

However, Open Graph shines with ability to help users quickly share recommendations and likes. It is easy to create Like button or Facebook comment box which pluggins that are already here. New tools will emerge that will aggregate and process user tastes. There are some examples already.

Overall, I would skip creating facebook pages under single condition: you will not have time nor content to represent your business in facebook. There are some websites that would not take too much use from community (for example, quick-help howto websites), but facebook page would not hurt anyways. On the other side, Open Graph might not be really useful in cases of existing Facebook page and little content on the website itself.

Embedding flash into pdf files have many uses: enriching PDF’s with animation, playing movies, handling forms or creating games. However, there is a huge problem with some flash files embedded: pdf file size.

If one embed a (lets say) 200kb flash file into same-sized pdf file, you can get 4-6mb pdf file. This is way too much: it is like 10 times more than it should be there. And this is quite typical result for more complex flashes, like ones with animation or requesting something from remote servers.

The problem might be related to custom flash player used to play flash files from within PDF. The PDFs with Embedded flash work even if there is no Flash player preinstalled on PC. It might be that these flashes are pre-compiled in PDF. So, heavily animated multi-page flashes could reach sizes of 50-60m, which are not appealing to download.

However, there is an approach to reduce the size of the PDF, and it is not that hard. Adobe Acrobat pre-compiles the embedded into page flash only, and not ones that are loaded, no matter if they are embedded in PDF itself or stored on the web. The loader flash does not takes too much space, also it can be the same for many pages (if flashes are similar in size).

There are 2 drawblacks of this approach:

You cannot pass custom parameters for the loaded flashes, or at least we could not find a way. So each loaded flash has to be compiled separately even if the difference between them is small.

You will have to add screenshots/thumbnails of initial flash sequence to each loader insertion, as starting frame for loader is blank.

And thanks for Aidas for finding this solution.

I am responsible for hiring process both in my own company and in the company I am working with now. And the biggest headache is to pick a right staff for positions that requires lots of training. For example, programmers.

The problem with web programmers is that either they are young, solo workers, really bad or really expensive. However, there are guys that stand out from the general crowd which you have to find.

Typically, a programmer gets interested in programming and computers quite young. Many programmers know they destiny before they finish school. The best of them start coding something before university as well. In my opinion, university gives very little to improve basic programmer skills, but some knowledge might be useful in long shot. I have seen some good ones that have never studied computer science or programming at all.

The best way to determine how a programmer will perform is giving him a task that he never did before. For example, grabbing something from other page, creating something with exotic library or something along these lines. The reasoning beyond that is quite simple:

First, you can see if they are capable of finding solution. If a programmer gives up, he will not learn any new tricks on his own. Searching can give a lot of answers.

Second, you can see how you can communicate with that guy. If it takes time to explain problem, then you will have same issue in the future as well. One should pick a programmer one can work with, no matter how good other choices are.

Third reason is that you can see his code. Coding web does not provides excuses to use unreadable code, though many freelancer folks / solo workers code for speed rather than quality. I am not talking about comments, but about simple things like variable naming or clear code structure.

There are also couple good questions you should ask and listen. Personally, I do not like programmers that do not try new things like frameworks or cms’es that speed up coding. They have to be curious and willing to learn.

Additionally, one should listen when they are speaking about former jobs – what they liked, learned or disliked. This is good to determine personal motives and if you can make them happy in your team.

Lastly, I always ask about most interesting project: one that is most difficult or interesting.

The final consideration is not only if the person is right for the job, but if you can provide a job that is right for that guy.

I have made hiring mistakes in the past. I wish I could tell if I can work with a guy from first meeting. Though life would not be as interesting then.

Yesterday there was a change made in Apple’s developers terms and conditions prohibiting cross-compiling Iphone and Ipad applications. This addition is related to announcement of Adobe CS5, which should be able to convert Flash to Iphone application and open Iphone application development to Flash developers. This is not a huge step for Apple, however it enforces animosity between Apple and Adobe.

Some think that killing Flash is a good thing. HTML5 would be adopted faster if there were no flash. Computers are safer and more stable when they do not need to rely on third party plugins to display web pages. And all technologies are bound to die or evolve to something else.

However, this is not a question of technology only. This is question about keeping users and money. Adobe has two important and related technologies that compete directly with Apple. That is flash and Adobe Air. Flash allows implementing rich internet applications that are not dependant on Apple Itunes store. Air allows content delivery that can not be controlled easily. That will not be allowed by Jobs.

Frankly, I do not see why Adobe should fight for Iphone and Ipad market now. There is a lot of room for Adobe elsewhere: PCs, Macs, other mobile platforms. As long as Adobe focuses on Iphones, they will do crappy job elsewhere. Forget them for a while – do a superb job on Androids, on PC’s and later you might come back to Iphones as well. You will be forgotten if you will focus on this defeat. For now, Adobe can not gloat that it has way to develop fully cross-platform applications anymore. The biggest advantage is killed and might never return.

There is a lot of things that has to be done by Adobe to change and adapt to new world. Still no official Flash in Android Market. Adobe Air or mobile Air applications should be made available for Android and other mobile platforms. Make it easy for developers to monetarize flash applications as well and you will get a share of the gaming market money. I see very little movement to this direction. Can you make a cross-compiler from Cocoa to Flash as well?

The problem is that if Adobe waits, nothing of this will be possible. No one will believe that Flash is better than HTML5, no one will believe that Air is something better than other platforms. And it will be harder to return. Maybe even impossible.

Update

I have read this article by John Gruber recently. It has very good arguments why Apple will not allow Flash – based (or other intermediate layer) application development in the future. Adobe needs to move on. It is time to focus on other things to do, and work in other markets.

Recently I had to buy a new router for my apartment. My old router Speedtouch was rebooting constantly when third wireless device connected to it. After some testing, my theory is that it cannot handle lot of concurrent connections at the same time.

For router, I have picked Asus RT-N16 router. The key features that won me was support for 802.11n Draft, which allows communication at speeds up to 300 MB/s instead 54 MB/s. Also, gigabyte Ethernet support is nice too. Additionally, it claimed good support for concurrent connections e.g. during torrent download. RT-N16 has 4 LAN and 1 Wan sockets, which is enough for home environment, though one would need a hub or two in bigger office.

Asus RT-N16 came packed with 3 antennas, power supply, network cable, instruction manual and useless installation CD. The CD is useless as router can be configured through network interface. Default IP is 192.168.1.1 (like usual) and login/password is admin:admin. This should be changed, even if the router cannot be accessed from WAN side by default. I would strongly recommend going through network setup wizard to set passkey for wireless network. Also, I changed network type to WPA2-PSK with AES encryption for better security.

Not everything went seamlessly for me. I had several problems connecting to administration interface and connecting to WAN (dynamic IP). Apparently, router lags when it tries to connect to WAN interface and will not respond to LAN during that time. After some changes, I got an error message like this:

You have set the wrong dynamic or static IP address for your RT-N16. Refer to the diagnosis.

Sure enough, the IP was dynamic and received correctly. The problem was in faulty Cat5 cable in my apartment, so I had to move router into another place which is not as convenient as old one. After that the problem disappeared and router worked as expected.

Another issue is that you got single field to enter DNS addresses that are passed through DHCP server to client PCs. Personally, I do not want router to cache DNS requests, so this caused me some headache. I will see if I can enter 2 IP’s into single field there.

Overall, I can recommend ASUS RT-N16 for people that like having fast wireless and ethernet network at home for reasonable price (~95 USD at amazon at the moment). You might get some quirks, but I think they will get fixed with firmware upgrade.

NDrive is a Portuguese GPS navigation software with Android version available in Android Market. It can be downloaded for free, also there is 7 day free trial for all of the maps.

Ndrive Installation is quite straightforward. One downloads application from Android Market, and then selects maps one needs. I would recommend downloading maps using Wireless network rather than 3g as it would be (probably faster). Ndrive East Europe maps – 300Mb, West Europe – 2Gb, so it takes a while. Afterwards you are ready to use it. I assume that all software versions (Iphone, windows Mobile and Android) uses more or less same maps as long as you got latest software version.

Most of the settings can be controlled in Ndrive settings menu as well, including voice used, what is shown in maps and so on.

Here is my experience with Ndrive on my Nexus One phone:

The good:

1. Ndrive is the most easy to install and use Android navigation application outside USA and couple other selected countries (11) due to fact that it is free (only maps are paid). One does not has to deal with Google Checkout.

2. Works quite fast on Nexus one – no crashes, no problems for now.

3. Speed camera location integration is very nice feature.

3. Strangely enough, Ndrive price for East Europe (30 E) is smaller than any of the single maps of East European countries (45-ish ). I guess there is mistake in its Android purchase interface, as in website the price is bigger.

4. Seven day trial is a very nice thing.

The bad:

1. Poorly updated maps (at least for East Europe) and speed camera locations. Camera map is 1-2 years old, other maps are about the same age as well. This might be an issue for people that rely on GPS navigation only.

2. No good enough way to temporally silence the navigation without silencing anything else on the phone. There should be an icon to stop all sound from navigation.

3. Had problems on finding a way to fast-forward simulation mode. It is not very well done.

4. (UPDATED) There is a lack of routing modes. 2 times I were routed through roads that are not asphalted. This means that the travel was slower than anticipated (Non-asphalted road speed limit is 70, however it is highly non-recommended to drive at 7o km/h on most of them). These routing modes Ndrive should address.

I still need to test if Ndrive works well with trapster running, as Trapster speed trap database is much better. As it is single commercial navigation available for download here, I can not compare it to other Android applications except hacked Google Navigation which would not be fair. I would like to try Copilot as well, but if they do not want me to buy their software – oh well. I am perfectly happy with Ndrive for now.

You should give Ndrive a try if you are looking for Navigation on your Android phone.