There has been a lot of talk about Android ROM and how to flash it with a custom ROM to bring new features to your smartphone. People are also talking about rooting an Android OS, and installing aftermarket firmware on it. In the world of Android, the word ROM which stands for Read-Only Memory is being misused. A better term would be a "firmware" where binary image of Android OS is installed. Let's start out by defining a few terms used in the Android world.

There are many Android Apps allowing to convert your Smartphone or smart devices into an internet phone, which provides various features such as video calling, shearing pictures, and texting without or inexpensive charges. All the data can be sent or received via Wi-Fi or 3G/4G. If the data transfers using 3G/4G networks, there is a fee for the data usage depending on your service plan with your phone service providers.

We selected three popular Internet Phone (mVOIP) Apps – KakaoTlak, Talkatone, and Skype, and reviewed from this article.

Over the years, high-speed internet services are available for many families. It allows customers to consider switching an alternative phone service, VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol), instead of traditional landline. It could reduce or completely remove phone bills without losing voice quality significantly. AT&T and Vonage are one of known VOIP providers, but they are not economical choice. Nowadays, there are many VOIP providers and it makes difficult for customers to choose the right options for them. We reviewed the most popular cost-effective VOIP alternative options, Ooma vs.

Ever since I upgraded my Samsung Epic 4G to latest Gingerbread 2.3.6, I've missed out on Free Wifi Hotspot. I never really needed a Wifi Hotspot on my mobile phone as I'm always near a wireless network. Yesterday, my Comcast went down and I really needed to use Internet but nothing was available so here I am again rooting my Samsung Epic 4G. There were quiet a few websites offering information about rooting Samsung Epic 4G, but I found the following resource very useful.

Ever since I gave up my Blackberry w/ FREE tethering feature offered by Sprint, I have been using a mobile USB from Clear for by broadband access from my notebook. There is an extra $10/month fee associated with this service, but it's much better than $30/mo Sprint charges.

With a projected smartphone app market to surpass over US$10B in 2013, I have decided to experiment Android development platform on Eclipse IDE environment as recommended by the Android SDK site. I have followed Android SDK installation procedures as best as I can, but stuck at the missing "org.eclipse.wst.sse.core 0.0.0" error. I did Google search, but the answer wasn't readily available... so, here is my post in solving above error.

Environment:

Looking for a FREE GPS navigation "smartphone app" for Android and iPhone? Google introduced a free, turn-by-turn GPS navigation application for the new Android 2.0 smart phone platform. I've personally had an opportunity to experiment Google Maps GPS navigation on a couple of occasions and found it to be very useful. Compared to commercial brands such as Garmin, Magellan and Tom Tom, Android Google Maps smartphone app matches feature-by-feature, turn-by-turn voice guide, and real-time traffic update. This is one of the must-have smartphone available for Android 2.0 and above.

What is Specificity?

Each CSS selector has a specificity value, and more specific selector has the higher precedence it has. If multiple selectors apply to a single element, the highest specificity CSS rule apply to the element. Have you had an experience where you define a CSS rule for an element, and it doesn't work? You probably have a CSS rule that has a higher specificity value which causes your newly created CSS rule to not apply.

Which CSS rule applies to an element?

One of the time-saving setting you can add to your eclipse preferences is to limit your file searches to your source code, and exclude 3rd-party folders. Such folders may include .git, .svn, cache or templates_c folder from smarty. There are a few different ways to accomplish this.

1. On the Eclipse File Explorer, right click on the folder that you want to exclude and choose "Properties". On the "Resource" screen, mark a folder Derived. Derived folder is excluded from search by default.

I have been involved in software development for over 20 years, and have used various version control software including SCCS, CVS, Perforce, Clearcase, Visual Sourcesafe, and SVN. Over time, SCM trend has changed from file locking mechanism to distributed version control and GIT is gaining popularity with growing users. As a software engineer, SCM is critical part of your daily chores but you don't want to spend much time maintaining it.