Finding the Android Dev Phone 1 ROM Images

For some reason the ROM Images for the Android Dev Phone 1 have the links missing from the main ADP-1 download site. When you go to http://developer.htc.com/adp.html You’re greeted with a table of ROM images and file names but the links have been removed:

FirefoxScreenSnapz010.jpg

(You can click on the image to see the full-size version of the table.)

After some digging around I found that someone on the Android Developer List has found that the files are still on the website, only the links to them have been removed from the ADP-1 page. Creating the URL links are simple enough. You just start them with http://member.america.htc.com/download/RomCode/ADP and send with the file you want (i.e. ota-radio-2_22_19_26I.zip) The challenge here is that you cannot access those files directly, you have to be re-directed from http://developer.htc.com. If you’re a Linux or Mac user, this is solved with a simple shell script and the wget command. Modify the script for the ROM images that you want to download and you’re in business.

#!/bin/sh
IDIOTS1="http://developer.htc.com"
IDIOTS2="http://member.america.htc.com/download/RomCode/ADP"
wget "--referer=$IDIOTS1" "$IDIOTS2/ota-radio-2_22_19_26I.zip"
wget "--referer=$IDIOTS1" "$IDIOTS2/signed-dream_devphone_userdebug-img-14721.zip"
wget "--referer=$IDIOTS1" "$IDIOTS2/signed-dream_devphone_userdebug-ota-14721.zip"

If you’re a Windows user, you can accomplish the same thing if you have Cygwin installed: http://www.cygwin.com/


The script source for fetching the ROMs came from this discussion at The Android Developer mailing list. Thanks to Noah Tilton.

Bloo – the Facebook app for Android. Now on the Android Market

If you use and Android device like the T-Mobile G1 and you haven’t heard of Bloo yet, you will. This is probably the slickest application for Facebook on *any* platform. Excellent photo album and photo upload support, a slick user interface a small memory footprint, and it’s obviously clean, tight code judging from how fast it is. Configuring it does need a few simple steps that are all documented on his website. Use Facebook? Got the T-Mobile G1? Get this app. It’s a steal at the $1.49US price tag.

Useful Links for Getting Started with Bloo:

aTrackDog Revisited

A few weeks ago I wrote about a posting on the Android Community about aTrackDog being flawed and deceiving. I’ve since had a change of heart. Their website is very clear about how their tool works, and in answer to the “deceiving” claims they now include a Terms of Use screen upon first use of the product that explains exactly what data they send (and more importantly what they do not).

Google has not found anything about what the app does to counter those claims.

aTrackDog flawed and deceiving

I did some playing with this app. It’s definitely one to avoid unless you like sending your application usage data to people you don’t know for their own gains.

aTrackDog flawed and deceiving: “The new applications aTrackDog is designed to help users make sure that their applications are up to date. This application in theory would be a perfect solution to a flawed update system on Android. aTrackDog works by sending information about your currently installed apps over to the a0soft.com servers then …”

(Via Android Community.)