AmateurRadio.com

This is something pretty cool. CQ Communications, the publisher of CQ Amateur Radio (CQ magazine), CQ VHF, Popular Communications and WorldRadio Online will begin publishing electornic versions of their magazine starting this coming October. 

Richard Ross, K2MGA, made the announcement a couple days ago and Editorial Director Rich Moseson, W2VU, explained how the digital editions would be supplimental and not replace the print versions. He said they would also have added features to the digital versions as well.

“Versions will be available for a variety of online and mobile platforms and will be hosted by Zinio, one of the top names in the e-magazine hosting business. This will assure that our magazines will always be able to take advantage of new technology when it becomes available.”

Cover of CQ Communication's World Radio Magazine

Some of the added features will be links to websites, as well as audio and photo albums as well as video and software. He also added that with the continuation of the print magazines, readers will still have the tactile experience we are all familiar with.

This is a good thing in my opinion. It’s melding the two worlds and laying the ground work for the next generation to discover this magazine. In 20 years, I predict that most publications will be digital, while print slowly fades from the foreground. I’m sure they will still make printed versions, but not as much. It’s also better for the environment.

According to the article over at Southgate’s website, “The digital launch will begin in late October with the November issue of an enhanced, multi-platform, version of WorldRadio Online, which will again become a paid-subscription publication; followed by November CQ, which, appropriately, is the magazine’s first annual Technology Special. The fall issue of CQ VHF and the December issue of Popular Communications will round out the introductions. Digital editions will be available by single copy and by subscription.”

No word though on pricing for digital versions though. I would suspect, it’ll be much cheaper compared with the print version.

73.

Rich also writes a Tech blog and posts stories every Tuesday and Thursday on Q103, Albany’s #1 Rock Station website, as well as Amateur Radio stories every Monday thru Friday on AmiZed Studios and hosts a podcast called The Kim & Rich Show with his fiance’ Kim Dunne.

This weekend I had planned to write about my Android smartphone, a Motorola Milestone 2, which I bought in early July soon after I came out of hospital. It was a fantastic phone with a big, clear screen and a really usable slide-out keyboard. It became my main method of electronic communication. The Android user interface is great – far, far superior to Windows Mobile. It is well integrated with Gmail as you would expect and it has an excellent web browser that can display almost any website, unlike the IE browser in Windows Mobile which is just a piece of s***. I was also intending to write about an Android APRS application called U2APRS. Unfortunately, last night my Milestone turned into a brick.

The one thing I hadn’t got round to doing was install a good app to read the various blogs that I follow. Blogger Dashboard is one of the few sites that doesn’t work well in the Android browser. I decided to install Feedly, found that I liked it, and spent some time going through all the blogs marking all the posts as read. Having done that I was trying to figure out how to get back to the list of blogs now that there were no new posts when the screen froze and refused to respond to touch input.

Thinking that this was just a software crash, I pulled the battery. But when the phone started up again the screen still refused to respond to finger movements. And now I couldn’t get past the lock. This situation persisted after several attempts.

Time to go online. A Google search revealed that problems with the Motorola Milestone 2 touch screen were not uncommon and that the only diagnostic to try was to perform a factory reset to make sure that the trouble was not due to a software glitch. This would, of course, remove all my apps and settings. But there was no alternative. Except that the instructions for performing a hard reset – press and hold the Camera button while powering up the phone – didn’t work. Every time, the phone booted into its normal screen, which was still locked.

After wasting quite a lot of time making several attempts at this I found another forum post that suggested holding the X key on the keyboard whilst powering on the phone. This got me a step nearer to where I was trying to be – a screen with a warning triangle and an Android icon on it – but the instructions to bring up the menu – press and hold the Volume Up button and then the Camera button – did nothing. Again, a lot of time was wasted trying this several times, including different permutations of pressing and holding, and trying both of the Volume buttons since I couldn’t be sure which was Up and which was Down, to no avail. Deep frustration was setting in.

Olga found a forum post which suggested that pressing the keyboard Search button from the Android warning screen would bring up the reset menu. That didn’t work either. Then she found another one that said to use the the @ key. At last, the menu! I was finally able to format the system and wipe all my apps and data. When the phone rebooted it entered the initial configuration sequence, asking what language I wanted it to use. Which I was unable to select because the touch screen still didn’t work.

So my Milestone is currently as much use as a lump of rock. I’m missing it already. It will probably take several days to send it for repair and have it returned, which I can’t even start to do until Monday. But I’d rather do without a phone than go back to Windows Mobile, which may be a very good platform for running apps but is absolutely loathsome as a telephone and is totally useless for Gmail.

Deep frustration. Not to mention irritation over the valuable time I’ll have to spend reinstalling and reconfiguring everything once it’s back. And to add to my annoyance I’ve lost U2APRS because the developer JA7UDE’s web site has been offline for the last couple of weeks for reasons unknown and there is no longer any way to obtain it.

I’m not a happy bunny.

Announcements:

• Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all.
• Bill, KA9WKA, joins the podcast this evening.

Topics:

• Richard reviews a new ham radio podcast, wAVEGUIDES pODCAST, hAM rADIO…wITH a tWIST!!!, by Pete Landry, VE2XPL.
• We then discuss various podcasts:
  • Hacker Public Radio
  • Eerie Radio
  • The Linux Action Show
  • ICQ Podcast
  • Ubuntu UK Podcast
  • Linux Outlaws
  • Resonant Frequency
  • Practical Amateur Radio Podcast (currently on hiatus)
  • TuxRadar
• Richard test drives GNOME Shell and Unity after hearing about them on the Going Linux and Mintcast podcasts. It seems Ubuntu 11.04 will ship with Unity as the default desktop manager. He installed GNOME Shell on his eMachines test computer running Ubuntu 10.10. You launch GNOME Shell with command “gnome-shell –replace”. After a reboot, your default desktop manager will return.
• Neither Russ nor Bill have played with either one, but that doesn’t stop us from discussing them at length.
• Russ discusses Android applications for hams:
  • Callsign DB
  • Ham (Solar/Band conditions and QRZ lookups)
  • HamSatDroid satellite tracking
  • IRLP Finder
  • DX Cluster for Android
  • Amateur Radio Call Log
  • Echolink
  • Ham Radio Apps for your Android

Feedback:

• Richard, KR4EY, writes that Morse code is not dead! And 30m is his favorite band.
• Burt, K1OIK, says Richard looks awful cute with that pink bow in his hair. (We’re still wondering about that one.)

Contact Info:

• Contact Richard at [email protected], Russ at [email protected], or both at the same time at [email protected].
• Listen to the live stream every other Tuesday at 8:00pm Central time. Check the LHS web site for dates.
• Leave us a voice mail at 417-200-4811, or record an introduction to the podcast.
• Sign up for the LHS mailing list.
• Sign up for the MAGNetcon mailing list.
• Thanks to Dave from Gamma Leonis for the theme music.

Music:

• “Fat Blue Christmas Swing Medley” by Fatblueman from “A Fat Blue Christmas”
• “Kiyoshi Kono Yoru (Silent Night)” by Fatblueman from “A Fat Blue Christmas”

It’s the holiday season and we had time for one more podcast this year. We want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a prosperous New Year in 2011. Linux in the Ham Shack has undergone a few changes and weathered a few challenges in the last 2+ years, but we’re still going and expect to be going for a long time to come. We want to thank everyone for their continuing support and continuing listenership. We would not have a podcast without you, and we wouldn’t know what to do if you weren’t there.

So spend time with your families and enjoy all of the wonderful things that life brings at this time of year, and hopefully all the year through. And if you find the time, curl up on the sofa with year headphones next to the roaring fire, crank up LHS and sit back and enjoy our gift of holiday cheer.

73 and Happy Holidays de The LHS Guys

The Micro SD card I ordered arrived on Monday so I was eventually able to try installing the Google Android OS on my HTC Touch Pro. The delay turned out to be a benefit as I was able to take the advice of Eric SA5BKE who commented to my earlier post that he had found a better set of installation instructions to the ones I mentioned.

Still, as usual when I try to do anything with computers, if something can go wrong it will. First, the phone could not see the new SD Card. I had to format it with a utility from the SD Card Association. Then I messed up the screen calibration where you have to click, when prompted, on the corners of the screen, and wasted some time trying to recover from my mess-up. But eventually I was rewarded with the sight of the Android home screen on my HTC Touch Pro.

The effort was worthwhile. I really like the Android OS. It is so much better a smartphone operating system than Windows Mobile 6.1. You still feel that you are using a phone, not a Windows PC that has an annoyingly small screen. Making phone calls and sending text messages is really simple, as it should be. And once you have found out how the new OS is supposed to be used (since the download doesn’t come with a user guide) it’s easy to use.

I am a huge fan of Google – I have five GMail accounts and probably make hundreds of Google searches a week – and what I really like about Android is the way Google features are integrated into the OS. Until now I could never understand why people liked smartphones and would actually want to use them to answer email because my experience was based on trying to access GMail using one of the two awful web browsers on my Windows phone. But now I get a notification whenever a new email comes into any of my inboxes and I can either clear it or click on the email to read it in full or reply on a display designed to make full use of the small screen. I guess that’s how other smartphones work if you have a corporate mail server running Microsoft Exchange, but I’ve never had one.

I was also very impressed with the Google search widget on one of the virtual desktops of the home screen. It had a microphone icon so, out of curiosity, I clicked it and was invited to speak. A moment later it typed what I had said into the search box and was performing a search on it. Fortunately I hadn’t said something rude! I then had some fun composing emails and text messages without using the keyboard. Unfortunately the speech engine doesn’t recognize words like “comma”, “full stop” or “newline” as punctuation and formatting, nor does it recognize commands like “send.” But I was very impressed with the accuracy with which it understood what I said – the last time I tried voice input was at least a decade ago on a PC and I found it ultimately frustrating.

One of the applications I was keen to try out was Navigation, Google’s free satnav program based on Google Maps which is not available for Windows Mobile. I haven’t had a chance to test it in the car, but it seems like the full works, with a text to speech engine that barks directions at you. The optional but probably rather unnecessary satellite view looks rather cool, though I was rather less impressed by the route it suggested from home to Keswick, south-east of here, which involved turning right at the end of the cul-de-sac and going north, then west for a mile to reach the A66 before going east, instead of turning left and heading east which would save best part of two miles. My old satnav does that too, but that’s because the estate hadn’t been completed when the maps were made and it believes the top of the estate is still a building site.

The Android Market contains thousands of apps that you can download, either free or for a modest charge. However, sorting the wheat from the chaff seems like one of those things life’s too short for. It reminds me a bit of the early Windows “shareware” market when anyone who had taught themselves Visual Basic thought they would be the next Bill Gates by releasing some flaky software that did very little and usually crashed as soon as it experienced some condition the programmer hadn’t thought of.

There seem to be very few ham radio applications, though, and almost no really good ones. I saw quite a few apps to do with Morse, giving the lie to the idea that code is dead, but nothing that looked worth trying. The only professional quality radio application I could find is the new EchoLink client for Android.

My feelings about this have mellowed a bit since I wrote about it just over a week ago. Last Friday just before dinner I received a call through my EchoLink node from Practical Wireless VHF columnist and fellow blogger Tim Kirby, G4VXE, who was on his way home from work by train and called me using the EchoLink client for his iPhone. Though we’ve exchanged blog comments a few times it was very pleasant to speak with Tim for the first time. This was a contact we would be unlikely to make over radio and certainly not in that particular situation. Only EchoLink made it possible.

In the interests of research I had a conversation with myself using the EchoTest server and found the audio quality to be just as good as when I use my Kenwood TH-F7E to make contacts via my RF node. However the cellphone client has one disappointing limitation. You can’t make a direct connection using the cellular network. You have to use a communication option called “Relay” which only allows you to call other non-cellphone EchoLink users. It doesn’t allow other EchoLink users to call you. It’s a bit like having a radio and not being able to call CQ.

I was somewhat unimpressed by the Android APRS app, APRSdroid, not just in comparison with Lynn, KJ4ERJ’s APRSISCE for Windows Mobile, but even with the iBCNU app for the iPhone. The user interface is basically a console window: you can see position packets going out, and if you wish you can see raw packets of other users within a selected radius of your location. There is no support for messaging at all in the present version.

Tracking doesn’t seem to work very well either, unless you are also running another application such as Navigation that keeps the GPS on all the time. I think the problem is that the app tries to save power by turning on the GPS, waiting for a fix and then turning it off again until the next time interval. It didn’t work too badly when the phone was sitting in its charger cradle on my desktop, but getting a GPS fix when you are moving can take a very long time. There is a need for a simple APRS tracking and messaging application for Android but this has a way to go before it gets there.

The HTC port of Android OS is not an official release and has quite a few bugs and things that are still To Be Done. I’ve had the phone lock up and fail to respond to anything and have had to pull the battery a few times. There is no support for the built-in camera and the battery charge indication is completely fictitious. It’s also best not to use wi-fi as it warms up the phone and consumes a lot more power than under Windows Mobile.

Unlike most people I bought my HTC Touch Pro SIM-free and unlocked because I don’t like to be tied to a network. As a consequence I’m not going to be offered an upgrade for no extra cost when my contract runs out. I need to keep the phone for a while but I’d be more than happy to dump Windows Mobile because as a phone it’s too much hassle, even though it does allow me to run some pretty powerful applications. I hope that the issues with the HTC Android port will be resolved in order that it becomes stable enough and functional enough for me to use it on my phone all the time.

A few days ago I came across a forum thread discussing ham radio applications for smartphones in which someone claimed that they were using an HTC Touch Pro (the phone I have) dual booting into Windows Mobile and Google Android. I was interested, but imagined that achieving it would require the ability to follow exactly a lengthy sequence of obscure commands with a high probability of turning the phone into a brick. However I was unable to resist looking into it further and discovered that it should be easier than that. It should be simply a matter of extracting an image of the HTC Android port on to an SD card, copying a configuration file that matches your model of phone into the root folder and then running a program (under Windows Mobile) that reboots the phone into Android. Unfortunately I don’t have an SD card of the type used by the Touch Pro so I haven’t been able to try it yet.

I originally bought a smartphone running Windows Mobile specifically because it would run Lynn KJ4ERJ’s APRSISCE, which is undoubtedly the best APRS client on any smartphone by several hundred miles. However, for me that is really about the only good reason for using that platform. I don’t need the ability to sync with Outlook or use Pocket Office as I don’t use any Microsoft applications on my PCs, and I find Windows Mobile to be too much like Windows itself – complicated to use – and not enough like a phone – easy to make phone calls and text messages. Plus, the fact that running APRSISCE all the time drains the battery in a couple of hours leaving you without a working phone has been a big disincentive to using it in the way I originally envisaged.

Whilst Windows Mobile 6.x is an undoubtedly powerful platform, as you can tell from the range of full-featured applications (not just “apps”) available for it, it is also a dead end. I was surprised to find that Windows Mobile currently has just 5% of the market. Microsoft is hoping to reclaim some of its market share with the upcoming Windows Mobile 7. Personally I think it’s too late and Microsoft has missed the boat on this one. I think Microsoft has an over-inflated opinion of the Windows “brand”. People use Windows on PCs because they don’t have much of an alternative, not because they think it’s great. Smartphone users have lots of choices. People love Google because they are always giving us stuff for free, while Microsoft always makes you pay (and then keeps checking your receipt afterwards). So I think Windows Mobile 7 is doomed even if Microsoft hadn’t decided to make it incompatible with earlier versions so that it won’t run any legacy applications – including APRSISCE.

I really wished in the end I had bought an Android phone. Now this dual boot trick will allow me to try the Google OS out and see whether it is really is as good as the hype. More when I receive the SD card I ordered and am able to try it.

(Update: Just checked the status of my order placed on Wednesday with option for first class next day delivery and it is still shown as Pending. Grr! Clearly it wasn’t a good idea to order from MyMemory.)

Episode #044 of Linux in the Ham Shack makes its debut, and even on time. We’re still trying to catch up on a little bit of a backlog so this episode is mostly feedback from listeners. We touch on a variety of topics including packet radio, the AX.25 kernel driver for TNCs, the importance of Linux and Open Source, Android and emerging Linux markets, and much, much more.

Thanks for taking the time to download us and being an ever-faithful listener. We would be nothing without you and we want to let you know that we appreciate each and every pair of ears that hears us every fortnight. Don’t forget to send us your feedback, whether it be as a comment on the Web site, a voice mail submitted via our toll-free hot-line or an e-mail to one or both of us. Also, please don’t forget about making donations or buying some of our LHS merchandise if you have the wherewithal to do so. Enjoy our current offering and we’ll be back live in a week for more rowdy fun.

73 de The LHS Guys