As part of my newest app (Hacker News for Android), I needed to add the ability to click on links in a ListView, and have them open in the browser, while maintaining the ability for the user to click on the ListView row itself, and have the row listen to the click.

If you try using Linkify and LinkMovementMethod, which you’d use on normal links in a TextView, you’ll find that you can no longer use the ListView properly.

While looking through the Chromium bug tracker today, I stumbled upon an interesting bug. The interesting part I found was a screenshot posted by one of the Chromium team members.

If you look closely, it looks like the Google+ Messenger icon on the bottom right corner of the dock. Is this finally the integration of G+ Messenger and the web that we’ve been waiting for since G+ Messenger was introduced? Maybe we’ll find out in a few short weeks during Google IO this year!

Yesterday was a bittersweet day for me in the world of Google. On the bright side, I was one of the lucky few to acquire a ticket to Google IO 2013. This will be my third Google IO, and I cannot be more excited to attend this year. The first year I went brought about the introduction to Android 3.1 (Honeycomb), which began the improvments for Android’s Holo Theme, as well as layouts for tablets. Last year was even more groundbreaking, with the unveiling of a few new Nexus devices, Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean), as well as Project Glass. I can’t even imagine what they will have in store for us this year.

Here comes the bad news though: Google Reader is being shut down. If you don’t know, Google Reader is an RSS reader for the web, a hub for all your subscriptions online. This pending shutdown has caused quite a stir, leading to many users scrambling to new RSS readers, or building new ones. (There was even a petition on whitehouse.org for the government to intervene…)

Google Reader was one of my favorite Google applications, so it’s quite sad to see it go. Hopefully one of these replacements will provide a good enough experience so the switch is a bit less painful.

Suggestions for a new RSS reader? Predictions for IO 2013? Drop me a line on Twitter or Google Plus, or leave a comment.

Today I noticed something interesting about my blog: I’m now a verified author! What does that mean, you might ask? When one of the pages of my blog shows up in a Google search, it will look a little something like this:

Last week Sony confirmed the launch of the PlayStation 4 for 2013. They held a two hour announcement where they showed off some of the hardware, had developers speak about games that are in the pipeline, and touched on release info. There’s definitely things that I liked, as well as a handful that I didn’t. Here are some of the takeaways:

This morning Google put up some new details regarding Project Glass, including a video showing what it’s like to wear Glass, and a list of things that Glass can do. They are also sponsoring a new contest where anyone can join the Glass Explorers (people who will be getting the Developer Edition). I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the Glass Foundry event in New York earlier this month, and got to experience Project Glass first hand. While I cannot say too much more than what you can gather from the Google page, I do have some exciting news!

Recently I was trying to find a way to run Ubuntu off an SD card, so that I could use Linux on my Macbook Air (I’d have dual booted, but my Air has the 128GB SSD, which doesn’t leave much space after partitioning). Scouring the web, there’s not that many resources indicating how, or if this is even possible. Fortunately for you, dear reader, it is!

Like I said, I’m using a Macbook Air, so there’s two steps to this process: creating a bootable flash drive with the Ubuntu image, and the actual installation.

Something that is very popular in the Android world these days is rooting and installing custom ROMs on your phone. A problem that I’ve found however, is that information regarding the process, and the terminology involved can be quite confusing for someone getting started, and as a result might discourage them. I decided to write up a series of blog posts discussing various parts of this process, so that it might help someone who wants to get involved, but doesn’t know how. The phone that I’ll be using for these tutorials is an HTC One V, which can be used on Virgin Mobile. It’s a fairly modern phone, comes with a 1GHz single-core CPU, 512MB RAM, and a nice 3.7 inch LCD. This process will almost identical for other HTC phones, and very similar for many other Android devices.

Disclaimer: This may void your warranty, I take no responsibility, etc.

I was trying to install Ubuntu 12.04 in VMware Player on my PC and ran into some trouble during the “Easy Install” process. The installation basically hung at the console after the installation was successful, with a message telling me that the VMware Tools were being installed, and that I could login and use the system while they were installing. Maybe 10 minutes later, there was no progress, so I restarted the VM.

I decided to log in and start X manually, so I could at least mess around with it in the meanwhile. Without being able to resize the window/use the shared clipboard, I decided to try to install the tools manually. No dice here, since VMware won’t let you install the tools while the Easy Install process is still running. Here’s what you can do to fix it:

It’s a what? Ever since I returned from Google I/O, this is what people have been saying when they see the newest addition to my TV setup, the Nexus Q. It’s hard to blame them though, since it just looks so different, for a home theatre device. unlike those bland, black boxes that most living rooms are filled with, the Nexus Q is a heavy (about two pounds) sphere, which is lit by a ring of 32 LEDs. The top side of the Q spins freely to function as a volume knob, and can be tapped to mute.

On the back of the Q, things are less clean. There’s both micro HDMI and optical audio out, ethernet and a micro USB port for “encouraged hacking”. There’s also a set of banana connectors to allow you to hook up speakers to the built in 25-watt amplifier.

So how’s the UI of the Nexus Q, you might ask. Does it look as smooth as Jelly Bean does on the other devices that I showed you a few weeks ago? Funny thing is, the Nexus Q doesn’t have a UI of it’s own; it requires an Android device to set up. All you need to do is tap an NFC enabled device to the sphere, and it will take you to download the Nexus Q app from Google Play. Start up the app, log in with your Google account, and you’re all set to use the Q.

Since the Q doesn’t have it’s own UI, let’s take a look at the Nexus Q app for Android.

You don’t really use the app for anything after setting up the Q initially, all the media is controlled through the Play Music, Play Movies and Youtube apps. All you need to do is hit the little triangle that will appear when you’re on the same network as a Q.

My biggest complaint about the Q is the way you set it up to involve your friends. First you need to enable guest mode from the Q app, and then manually invite all the people you want to have access, which actually sends them an email to download the app. This seems like such a convoluted process, and I doubt people will actually care to do this. Not only that, but I see no way of revoking someone’s ability to use the Q after you’ve invited them. We all know that one person who takes their music privileges a little too far, but it seems that the only recourse in that event is to turn guest mode off all together.

Is it work $300 right now? Probably not, no. Unless you’re a huge consumer of Play media, you’ll probably be better off with a Roku, or something like that. Even if you are a consumer of Play content, you’re probably better off with a Google TV, since after all, that does other things.