Database Develop

Froyo Car home has no shortcut options

I have found a few people with this problem on other HTC phones but no fix.
When you go to add an "action" to an empty short cut slot it only gives you the option of a car application, other application and directions and Nav. All I pretty much use those boxes for are "direct dial" shortcuts but I cant find the option. Does anyone know a fix?

New Version needed
I think that this feature is only available in the new Version 2.2.1.4
But I cannot update it, as I have a Desire, too and therefore the market link doesn't allow me to update.
I got it delivered originally by the LeeDroid ROM I have. And ther it seems to be Car Home Version 2.2
I will try to get an apk of the current version or is there a way to fake to the market, that I have a Nexus ??
Fritz
[UPDATE:] found a download for the apk http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=932000 (not the initial post, some below)
But I still do not have the direct dial option
[UPDATE]

[APP][NST/G] Google(ish) News

5-31-21 I've ceased development on this app because I think there is a better alternative. See post #7.
*updated to version 1.3, adding error trap for discontinued or blank feeds*
It's been awhile since the demise of the last working version of Genie Widget (aka Google News and Weather) but not so long since the big G retooled news.google.com so that our browsers can no longer deal with it and also put the kibosh on the Google News RSS feeds. Sigh.
I have a work-around
Google News 1.3 for the NST/G exploits the "alerts" that Google offers on news topics. These alerts can be optioned in the form of RSS feeds. My app downloads the HTML source for the feed, picks out all the good stuff and trashes all the rest, then builds up a local HTML document which is easily displayed by our browsers (I highly recommend Opera Mobile for ease of scrolling and general all-around function). You can build up your own topics, change your mind, mix them about, read that one more story you didn't get to the first time around, etc. I'm not saying that your browser will negotiate every target link. Some newspaper sites have just become too much. That was true even when Genie Widget was still working. But updating Opera Mobile for TLS 1.2 solves much of that. See this post for details.. The beauty of this app is in the simplicity. It's entirely browser-based once the feeds are downloaded, so you're not going back and forth between the app and your browser (like the current Google News app.......). Designed for both portrait and landscape.
Requirements
1. Android 2.1 has a security issue with opening local HTML files. In order for Google News to work properly you need to address that. Included in the zip below is a tiny app, android-open-in-browser-0.0.4-4-debug. Install that. It's not my app but I have used it for years and wish I could credit the originator.
2. This is a Tasker-generated app. If you already have one of my other Tasker-generated apps or have previously installed GApps, you don't need the two Google maps library files included in the zip and can delete them. If you do need them, copy the two files into the locations shown below:
/system/etc/permissions/com.google.android.maps.xml
/system/framework/com.google.android.maps.jar
Set permissions for both files to rw-r--r-- and reboot. Without these files resident, the app will not install.
3. Create a folder in the root directory of your sdcard: Google News (exactly as shown)
4. Install the app itself, Google News.1.apk
How to use
Before you run the app you need to select some news categories, set up the feeds, get the URLs, blah-blah-blah. All of this is covered in the PDF included with the zip. It may seem a little annoying at the start, but it goes quickly once you get started and it's not like you have to do it every time you use the app. You're just setting up your news topics, just as if you were using the current Google News (either the app or the web version). Once you have your topics and URLs and have edited the included text file google_rss_feeds.txt, copy that into the Google News folder of your sdcard.
Note: recently (June 2019) the big G has not been very consistent with the RSS feeds. Some days they are "empty" but come back the next day with lots of stories. Some feed topics simply "die" and a minor change in the topic will resurrect them (change "World" to "World news", as an example). Version 1.3 includes a trap for these eventualities so that the app should not crash, even if your first feed comes up empty. To inspect/edit your feeds, point your browser (on your PC) to your Google Alerts page. If you are signed in this will be found among the options on the Google home page, in the upper right corner where the "apps" grid is shown.
Now you're good to go. Start the app, make sure you're connected to WiFi. There are only three buttons on the app screen. The first one, "Fetch the news" does just that. You will see a little toast that the first news category is being prepared. Once that is done, you will be taken to the browser and that page will open. Meanwhile the remaining pages are being downloaded and reconstructed in the background.
The news page is very simple. I tried to aim for readability over all other considerations (this is the reason the news items are in bold black, even though they are the external links). I have my Opera Mobile set to 100% page zoom. It looks good to me, but you could probably get away with 75%. External websites are another matter. At the title bar left is a drop-down menu button that gives you access to your other news topics. Since no fixed navbar schemes work under Android 2.1, there is a duplicate drop-up menu bar at the end of the page. The use of NoRefresh, or to a lesser extent FastMode, is a plus.
Edit: you cannot use this app with Opera Mini. It lacks the ability to open local HTML files.
The second option on the opening screen, "Read old news" sounds a bit daft, but I just thought maybe someone might have been looking at the topic pages, saw something that interested them and then got interrupted. So this option opens the first local file in the browser again and you can navigate from there. Strictly speaking, WiFi is not needed to browse the local files once they have been created, but it is needed to pursue any stories.
The third option simply dismisses the app screen.
Whew! So this is new...and I think I exterminated all the bugs, but I did not try other browsers. I'm open to suggestions and would appreciate feedback.

Google alert change? No option for RSS alerts anymore...
First off, thanks so much for putting the time and effort into this app. I would love to have a more "future-proof" news reader solution for my NST. Sadly however, in typical Google fashion of constantly dropping/messing with feature support, it seems that there is no longer an option to deliver Google alerts to RSS feeds (only email addresses). If I'm reading this thread and your PDF correctly, I'm worried that this may break the app. In any case I'm stuck on page 3 of your setup PDF since I can't figure out how to get the RSS alert string from Google anymore. Any advice you can offer would be greatly appreciated!

v619284 said:
First off, thanks so much for putting the time and effort into this app. I would love to have a more "future-proof" news reader solution for my NST. Sadly however, in typical Google fashion of constantly dropping/messing with feature support, it seems that there is no longer an option to deliver Google alerts to RSS feeds (only email addresses). If I'm reading this thread and your PDF correctly, I'm worried that this may break the app. In any case I'm stuck on page 3 of your setup PDF since I can't figure out how to get the RSS alert string from Google anymore. Any advice you can offer would be greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm away from home right now but my copy of the app is working so the RSS feeds must still exist. I'll have to sit down with my instructions in front of the computer and see what mischief they've done. Thanks for letting me know.

v619284 said:
If I'm reading this thread and your PDF correctly, I'm worried that this may break the app. In any case I'm stuck on page 3 of your setup PDF since I can't figure out how to get the RSS alert string from Google anymore. Any advice you can offer would be greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK, so I've run through the instructions sitting at my PC. Everything is correct although Firefox no longer wants to open the RSS feed page as anything other than an xml "text" file. That just means the image on page 4 needs updating.
As far as page 3, everything is currently exactly as shown. Just to be sure, you have to be signed in to Google on your browser before you do any of this. Then when you get to the screen depicted on page 3 you need to change the "Deliver to" option to RSS feed. But even before that, it's important not to get sucked into the email alert business back on page 2. Do NOT click on "Create Alert" there, only on "Show options". That's how you get to the screen I show on page 3.
When you finally get to click on the little RSS symbol shown on the lower half of page 3, you (at least on Firefox) may end up at a page of xml code, or perhaps your browser may show a news feed page. Regardless, the URL shown for the page is the same and it's what you need to copy, just as described on page 4.
Let me know if you are still having issues with this.

v619284 said:
First off, thanks so much for putting the time and effort into this app. I would love to have a more "future-proof" news reader solution for my NST. Sadly however, in typical Google fashion of constantly dropping/messing with feature support, it seems that there is no longer an option to deliver Google alerts to RSS feeds (only email addresses). If I'm reading this thread and your PDF correctly, I'm worried that this may break the app. In any case I'm stuck on page 3 of your setup PDF since I can't figure out how to get the RSS alert string from Google anymore. Any advice you can offer would be greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So a few days after I wrote my last post, the app stopped working for me. It just hangs on "Preparing......News"
Google has apparently changed the format of their RSS xml file. Right in the middle of something else at the moment, but I will get it fixed.
Nope, nix that. After fooling around with the app and an xml file from the Big G, I find nothing out of place and it seems the app is now working again
They're just messing with us.
Edit: Indeed they are. Today I caught another malfunction but this time looked at the Tasker routines for an error. Google is sending out (at least today) RSS feeds with empty content fields. That messes up my app. So I wrote an error trap for that. Updated in first post. Have to watch the big G like a hawk....

v619284 said:
If I'm reading this thread and your PDF correctly, I'm worried that this may break the app. In any case I'm stuck on page 3 of your setup PDF since I can't figure out how to get the RSS alert string from Google anymore. Any advice you can offer would be greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Whilst looking around for a solution to a different issue, I came across this: https://medium.com/@cassandragraft/...tion-not-appearing-heres-the-fix-bf842ca32b88
It appears to address the issue you describe. I never encountered the issue, but obviously some people have.
The Big G is making me very angry lately. Even version 1.2 with a new error trap is crashing. I'm finding that some of my feeds are "empty". The skeleton of the RSS file is there but there is no content populating the file. A category as ordinary as "world" is simply blank. This is new and very annoying. Just a change of topic to "world news" brings up a list of stories longer than your arm. I encountered this before with "science" and fixed it with a slight change in name, so I should have seen this coming. It's a nasty game Google seems to be playing....
Anyway, if the app crashes on the first topic it leaves an overlay artifact behind when you exit. To remove this, go to the App Manager and force stop the app. I will work on a fix which will alert you to the effect that the feed appears dead but allow the app to complete the download of whatever is still working and exit properly.
Grr....
Edit: App updated to v1.3 in first post. I hope that solves the problems. For now.

As I mentioned in my edit of the first post, I think my app is exhibiting creakiness already owing to Opera Mobile's increasing difficulty negotiating many websites.
I have an alternative to suggest, however, that is totally browser based. It seems to work "OK" with Opera Mobile although text display is a bit small with a default zoom of 100%. In Opera Mini, however, it shines, especially with NoRefresh.
Thanks to XDA member @SJT75 , I found out about a list of text-only news sites. One of them is a text version of Google News! The list is at: https://greycoder.com/a-list-of-text-only-new-sites/
While the Google News option does not allow for custom categories (hey, there's an app for that!), it does cover all the usual suspects. Even better, all of the links lead to text-only versions of the sources. Occasionally you go to a page and find it could not be fetched by whatever mechanism the author is using, but pages (even those error ones) include a link to the original source
Also notable on the list are the NPR and CNN sites. Both work well.

[APP][NST/G] BBC News

Back in Nov. 2018, the BBC News app (1.3.4) finally stopped working. Here's a browser-based replacement similar to my Google News app.
The BBC News website gives access to a considerable number of RSS feeds, likely much of the source of the old "carousel" of stories in the now-defunct app. My app collects the information from the RSS feeds of your choice and assembles them into a series of HTML pages suitable for Opera Mobile (see attached images below). It turns out that the actual BBC News website is pretty friendly to Opera Mobile, although--of course--a little slow, so any stories you choose to pursue are very readable. NoRefresh is nice.
Requirements
1. Android 2.1 has a security issue with opening local HTML files. In order for BBC News to work properly you need to address that. Included in the zip below is a tiny app, android-open-in-browser-0.0.4-4-debug. Install that. It's not my app but I have used it for years and wish I could credit the originator.
2. This is a Tasker-generated app. If you already have one of my other Tasker-generated apps or have previously installed GApps, you don't need the two Google maps library files included in the zip and can delete them. If you do need them, copy the two files into the locations shown below:
/system/etc/permissions/com.google.android.maps.xml
/system/framework/com.google.android.maps.jar
Set permissions for both files to rw-r--r-- and reboot. Without these files resident, the app will not install.
3. Create a folder in the root directory of your sdcard: BBC News (exactly as shown)
4. Install the app itself, BBC_News.1.apk
How to use
Before you run the app you need to select some news categories. You can get the feed URLs from the BBC News RSS page linked earlier. Only part of the URL is used in the file bbc_rss_feeds.txt. Here is the file as I have supplied it in the attached zip:
Code:
<cat>World</cat>
<url>/news/world/rss.xml</url>
<cat>US & Canada</cat>
<url>/news/world/us_and_canada/rss.xml</url>
I've just used two example feeds. You can see that the first line in each pair is a news category name (don't use names with "." in them). The second line in each pair is the last part of the RSS feed URL from the BBC News site. Be sure to edit out the first part of the URL or the app will not work. You can, of course, choose other/additional categories. Just follow my example. When the file is complete, copy it to the "BBC News" folder on your SD card.
Now you're good to go. Start the app, make sure you're connected to WiFi. There are only three buttons on the app screen. The first one, "Fetch the news" does just that. You will see a little toast that the first news category is being prepared. Once that is done, you will be taken to the browser and that page will open. Meanwhile the remaining pages are being downloaded and reconstructed in the background.
The news page is very simple. I tried to aim for readability over all other considerations (this is the reason the news items are in bold black, even though they are the external links). I have my Opera Mobile set to 100% page zoom. It looks good to me, but you could probably get away with 75%. External websites are another matter. At the title bar left is a drop-down menu button that gives you access to your other news topics. Since no fixed navbar schemes work under Android 2.1, there is a duplicate drop-up menu bar at the end of the page.
Edit: you cannot use this app with Opera Mini. It lacks the ability to open local HTML files.
The second option on the opening screen, "Read old news" sounds a bit daft, but I just thought maybe someone might have been looking at the topic pages, saw something that interested them and then got interrupted. So this option opens the first local file in the browser again and you can navigate from there. Strictly speaking, WiFi is not needed to browse the local files once they have been created, but it is needed to pursue any stories.
The third option simply dismisses the app screen.
Enjoy!

Twinview Dock 3 - keyboard

Does anyone know if it is possible to have an onscreen keyboard on the bottom screen (ie the phone) when using the Twinview Dock 3? For example, if using it to type emails etc, the bottom screen would be the keyboard and the top screen would be the mobile app.

yes, took me a minute to figure out but it can be done

Thanks @biotoxin, might send you a message when the unit arrives for a hand in setting it up if that is ok. Will also post details here for other users.

heads up it's app specific, not broad form, the screens are effectively 2 independent systems, so it's up to each app to make it work
I've been looking at apps like an2an to maybe get something more universal but it seems like the twinview doesn't like multiple instances of the same app simultaneously but I remember there being an option to make it happen so I'm researching...
the twin apps feature might be one way but I'm not entirely sure... details below
Code:
1.Download file twinapps_required_apps.xml
https://gist.github.com/shakalaca/9c7a8c6769cb87c6e7d83e809cbe6e5d#file-twinapps_required_apps-xml
Remember, you must download the file from right corner "Raw" button, do not press "download zip" to download or copy and paste the strings from the link
2.Find out the app package name that you want to add , As the example from the tutorial, they choose "GoShare" as an example, you can check its package name from the website version Google play, the hyperlink after "id=" is its' package name.
For Example "https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gogoro.goshare"
"com.gogoro.goshare" is the package name.
3.Edit the downloaded twinapps.xml. Find out this string from the file "<string-array name="twinapps_required_apps">" (for apps)
or <string-array name="twinapps_required_apps_games">(for games). Added <item></item> in the front and after the package name. For example if you want to add "Goshare" in the app list, it should be<item>com.gogoro.goshare</item>. Add it after <item>com.imo.android.imoim|imo free video calls and chat</item>. And Save the file.
4 Connect your phone to your pc and use adb to push the edited twinapps.xml into your phone adb push twinapps.xml /sdcard/.
5 After pushed the xml file to your file, use this command to update the twinapps list
adb shell am startservice -a "asus.intent.action.TWINAPPS_CDN_FILE_UPDATE" -d "file:///sdcard/twinapps.xml" --ei "ACTION" 1 com.asus.twinapps/.TwinAppsService.

@biotoxin - just got the twinview dock 3 - great piece of hardward, well built and the power/volume buttons are handy!
In relation to getting a keyboard working on the lower screen - which apps did you use that it worked on, are you able to share the settings? Thanks!

Basically everything that officially supports it is listed in the armory crate, there's a jank way to do some things but it irritates me on a fundamental level so I'm looking into api level access to see if maybe I can make a wrapper that'll launch anything/ everything, or at least wrap a keyboard, if you want to give it a stab unity has the api info readily available or there's the jank way mentioned above

Hmm definitely can't seem to find a way to launch a keyboard on the bottom screen, how did you manage to do it?

Could someone port something over from the Microsoft duo perhaps? Android is capable of it, would be awesome for so many things!

whatevvz

Switching Gmail accounts in Google Home

Hello,
I’m looking for any suggestions from users that have migrated their Google Home email address to a new Gmail and Home.
What I’m looking to do is:
Move Google Home from my current Gmail address to my new Gmail address in newly created “Home” in Google Home app
Move Nest devices (Wired doorbell, Speakers, Yale Lock, Protect, Thermostat, sensors) to newly created Home in Google Home app without losing my Nest Aware (1st Gen) subscription. And without factory resetting the Nest Doorbell as it is wired and not easy to get to the QR code.
Move YouTube TV from current Gmail address to new Gmail address.
Reasons:
Current email is associated with other things. Not just the Smart Home and have been getting more junk mail over the last 4 months.
“Issues” in Google’s development procedures and updates to the app have caused some devices to show up multiple times. Even after using the old method of downgrading the version of Google Home app and removing the duplicates, they still exists somewhere in Googles infrastructure. When giving voice commands, Google Assistant does not execute properly because it either doesn’t see the device or sees the device under a previous name.
After creating a Test Home environment for the Preview program, I moved one Chromecast w/Google TV dongle and a Nest mini to that environment. I had removed the devices from my main Home, factory reset and added them to the Test environment. Now, when I ask Google to sync my devices in the main Home, Google now responds that “two devices are not available and you might want to try setting them up again”
I’m waiting to execute this project until the new updates for Matter are released. Just in case there are problems so I do not have to factory reset devices or create a new Home, etc; more than once.
Any advice on the best ways to do this with minimal issues will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
I know these following problems will not get fixed by creating a new Home in the app, but I wanted to list them to see how many others have been affected as well.
Because of the three major screw ups this year by Google, (the three I’m aware of) I’ve moved the majority of my Google Home routines to Amazon Alexa.
Google using code from Sonos costs us the use of being able to control Speaker groups. Still no fix.
The update pushed out to the Google Home App around October 20th 2022 time-frame broke the use of color light bulbs from major 3rd party vendors (that I know of Feit, Geeni, Tuya). Google Assistant no longer recognized the bulbs as color and only responds with an error when used in a routine or vocal command.
The fix for the above issue pushed out the following week only corrected part of the problem and broke Location. Whenever the Google Home app was opened, there was an error of “no location”. The App however does recognize color light bulbs again, but the update to power on/off, change brightness and set color, broke any routine that had a Starter that was time based. Example: For setting night functions of Locking the door, setting ADT alarm and turning off lights no longer executed. UNLESS, I remove the light bulb functions.
So basically I now have all routines that turn lights on/of, change brightness or color handled by Alexa.
It’s also weird that I could tell Google Assistant to run the broken routines and they worked, but it does not execute them based on a Time Starter.
4. Does anyone know how to dismiss ALL the notifications at once in the Google Home app like in previous versions. Instead of having to click the 3 dots next to each message and then click Dismiss?
Thanks again.