Fast Web Installer is…well…fast.

If you like AppBrain as much as I do, you’ll love their new Fast Web Installer. With Fast Web Installer, there are just two steps to super-easy, auto-magic Android app installs:

1. Use the Fast Web Installer app to register your device with AppBrain.
2. Login to the AppBrain website from any computer with internet access, and go shopping for the app(s) you want to install.

In a few moments, you should see a notification on your phone that your app(s) has been installed!

XBMC + Android = superawesome

It’s true that there’ve been XBMC/Boxee remotes available int the Android Market for quite awhile, but only recently has there been an “official” one from the XBMC Team…and it blows the others away. I’d share my own screenshots I’ve taken with drocap2, but xbmc.org has plenty, as well as the system requirements and a QR link for the Market.

I’ve used it quite a bit with my HTPC, and frankly prefer it to my Streamzap remote. Another bonus is that now I don’t have to copy my custom Lircmap.xml over every time XMBC is updated.

Ubuntu, Linksys WUSB600N v1, Dish DVR: whose @#$% idea was this?

I love Ubuntu and give myself a little “mental hug” each day for making the switch from Windows to Linux. But, sometimes, the stuff I want/need to do in Linux just isn’t as obvious to me as I’d like; so, I beat my head against a wall trying to figure it out, until my wife gives me that “walk away from it for awhile so you can maintain the little bit of sanity you have left” look. This particular situation is one of those.

What I wanted to do: I have a Dish Network DVR in my living room that has an ethernet card in it, but I don’t have any ethernet wiring where it is. What I do have is an Ubuntu XBMC HTPC with an on-board ethernet card and a Linksys WUSB600N v1 (the version number is important here, I think), connected to a Linksys WAP610N AP (configured for 5GHz 802.11N only), so it stands to reason that I should be able to share the HTPC’s internet connection with the Dish DVR, right?

Ok, so it wasn’t. Twice. Once for Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) and once for 10.04 (Lucid).
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QR Codes +1

Since the last post about those nifty little QR codes was so awesome, I thought I’d add one more: creating QR codes using the goo.gl URL shortener, automatically. Hang on a sec, before you hyperventilate, it is possible.

If you’re a Google Chrome user, there’s a browser extension called goo.gl URL Shortener that will reach out to Google’s URL shortener API to create a short URL for you on the fly. Sadly, I don’t think the web interface for goo.gl is available otherwise. Once you have a goo.gl short URL, all you have to do to get the corresponding QR code for that URL is add .qr to the end of it, like so:

http://goo.gl/EFj6 becomes http://goo.gl/EFj6.qr

When wrapped in image tags, it looks like this:

And here’s the HTML:

<img src="http://goo.gl/EFj6.qr" alt="QR code for eison.net" />

QR Codes Demystified

If you have a smart phone, hopefully Android, you’ve probably seen a QR code or two. Yep, they’re those crazy, bar code-looking things that you can scan with your phone’s bar code reader, that will link you directly to something, like an app in the Android Market.

Turns out that there are lots of QR code generators out here that’ll help you create a code for quite a few things: Android Market apps, URLs, a block of text, or your contact information. If you take a look at the other posts and pages on this site, you’ll see examples of three of those. It’s great to be able to use someone else’s code to generate things for you, but what if you found out that you can do the same thing with just a little HTML of you own?

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Wordle me this, Batman:

Occasionally, I come across things, ideas that just seem really cool, and Wordle is definitely one of them. I’m not too sure how one would use it in everyday life, but it just looks, well…interesting, especially if you’re into words and/or examining the importance of words in different uses. Using Wordle, it’s really easy to see the patterns in your own, or someone else’s, text.

Here’s one based on my About Me:

First post, from my Droid, of course.

Drrrrroooooooooooiddddd!

Just imagine that in the voice from the Droid Does commerical–pretty powerful stuff, huh? In case you didn’t know, there’s a WordPress app in the Android Market. Frankly, it’s pretty impressive and easy use.

Take a look at it on AppBrain:

Or straight to the Android Market: