And now I've just been told by my wife that it's spamming her and, presumably, everyone with status update messages. And frequently! Just check out that screenshot.

I've set both the iPhone and Android client to not do that. But, guess what? It's still doing that. Amazingly annoying, especially since I don't even use fring for IM.

With the recent removal of Skype, I don't see why I should keep using it. Maybe I'll go back to it later. Maybe not. The video quality was decent, the audio quality was great. And, unfortunately, there are basically no other alternatives yet. So, we'll see... for now, that, I have to remove it and hope that the status updates stop!

When Android FroYo SDK (Android 2.2) came out, we got some requests to write about it. Here are two of the articles:

• Top 10 Android 2.2 Features Developers Can't Wait to Use
• Android 2.2 and Its Previous Versions: A Sweet Developer Review

We've also written a number of tutorials. Here are a few of them:

• Android SDK: Building a Localized Phrasebook: Teaches some of the basics of localization and internationalization on Android
• Android SDK: Unit Testing with the JUnit Testing Framework: You'll learn how to quickly get started with JUnit Testing on Android
• Quick Tip: Enabling the Android "Move To SD Card" Feature: You'll learn how to easily allow your users to place your app on to their SD card to save valuable device space
• Android SDK Quick Tip: Launching Maps In-App: Quickly learn to use the built-in maps app on Android in a variety of different ways

And don't forget about our two books:

• Sam's Teach Yourself Android Application Development in 24 Hours
• Android Wireless Application Development

When in between two of my routers, it keeps losing Wi-Fi connection -- even though two are in range. It then asks for the password to one or the other (seemingly at random). This is odd, because it has the correct passwords for both.

But, the real odd part: It can't login to whichever one it's asking for the password to. I can switch routers and that works to get back on Wi-Fi. But it absolutely refuses to accept the password for whichever one it has lost its mind with.

Until it switches which one it lost its mind with. Then it's the reverse of whatever was happening. This just keeps happening. Every day. The iPad doesn't suffer from this. Though, the iPad actually supports 802.11n, so I connect to a different router with it.

The iPhone 4 can't see my N routers that are on 2.4Ghz. They use upper channels, not the normal G channels, so they don't interfere with G (and vice versa). This cuts out the supported devices, but still works great with the iPad and laptops that have real 802.11n support.

Could be the routers. But since the problem alternates, I doubt it. This never happened with the iPhone first-gen, either, or the iPod touch. Very strange.

All your peers have a shiny new Apple iPhone 4 with its amazing retina display! Your phone is feeling blue, not having a retina display of its own. What are you to do?

It's simple!* Just create your own retina display. All you have to do is follow these easy instructions and all of your devices will have their own retina displays! We'll call this Retination: that act of making a retina display out of a normal display.

Stage 1: Determine Device Pixels Per Inch

First, you need to determine the pixels per inch of the device you want to retinate. You can do this by looking up the specifications for "ppi" or "dpi" or use simple measure the width and divide the width in pixels by the width in inches. Apple's documentation says their retina display is 326 ppi. Your display will be different. As an example, we'll use the Motorola Droid. It has a ppi of about 265.

Stage 2: Determine the Distance of Retinality

Now, using the same trick Apple uses to call the iPhone 4 display a retina display, you'll determine this for your display. The human eye has specific, well known optical characteristics. That is, the effective resolving power of the human eye for someone with 20/20 vison is, and has been, measured and agreed upon (just check Wikipedia!).

Using this data, we can determine the distance at which a display becomes a retina display. For the iPhone 4, Apple states this is 10-12 inches. My own calculations show that this correct; I get 10.4 inches. I don't know about you, but I don't hold my phone up that close to use it. I do a pinch-zoom and hold it farther away.

Anyway, the formula to convert PPI to DTR (Distance To Retinality) is 3438 * (1/PPI). The 3438 number is the scaling factor number derived from a 1 arc-minute visual acuity for a person with 20/20 vision.

Keeping to the Motorola Droid, we can now calculate that its display needs to be a whopping 13 inches away to be retinated! Gosh, more than a foot away before you can't distinguish pixels? The Horror!

Stage 3: Using Your New Powers of Retination

Now that you're empowered to retinate all of your displays, don't hold it over your Apple iPhone 4 toting friends too much. Their display is still a higher density and retinates so close you'll feel cross eyed when trying to unretinate it. And, there's no doubt; it's a nice display, retina or not.

Some Examples

I went ahead and calculated the distance to retinality for a number of common devices.

• A Nexus One display retinates at just under 14 inches
• The Evo 4G, with it's large display, retinates at nearly 16 inches
• The Archos 5, with an even larger display, retinates at almost 18 inches
• The T-Mobile G1, having a small, but low resolution display, needs 19 inches to retinate
• The Nokia N900 has a 3.5" display and high enough resolution to bring it's distance to retinality down to just 12.9 inches. That's 2nd only to the iPhone 4, currently.

That is, every one of these devices -- even the low resolution T-Mobile G1 -- can easily retinate within arms length.

What about your computer, laptop, and TV? I've calculated a couple of common display sizes:

• A 15.4" MacBook Pro sporting a 1440x900 display retinates at 31 inches, just over 2.5 feet. That's about my normal working distance at my desk.
• A 24" monitor with a standard 1920x1200 resolution takes 3 feet to retinate. That's not a terrible working distance, but I'm usually closer and the display definitely appears grainy.
• A 30" monitor with a standard 2560x1600 display, however, needs just 34 inches to retinate. That's definitely a great working distance for these beasts. Apple even makes one of these. Apparently they didn't realize they already had a display on their hands that was often used at the retinality distance.
• A 40" FullHD (1920x1080) TV needs just over 5 feet to retinate. A 40" TV with a sloppy 1280x720 Half HD (720p) display needs nearly 8 feet to retinate. This means two things. First, it means that if your TV is closer than either of these numbers, it's big enough to truly see the details. Second, it means if your 40" TV is under 8 feet away, an average person can easily see the difference between 720p and 1080p. For bigger TVs, this distance increases. Going Full HD does, mathematically, make a difference to the average human eye. ;)

Did you enjoy this retination of your display?

Now go out and retinate something!

(*Note: Yes, this is meant to be a little tongue-in-cheek. However, the math should be accurate. A Discover magazine blog post brought these numbers to my attention. I also checked with Wikipedia.)

(UPDATE: 7 July, 2010: Added Nokia N900.)

Except, what if you want to run native applications? What if something requires a much higher level of performance than JavaScript can provide?

Turns out, Google thought about this long ago: they recommend using NativeClient. Right now, though, it's a download for your operating system of choice (Win, Lin, or Mac). The implication, though, is that it will be part of Chromium OS. This could be the missing key for filling in the gap between web and local performance issues and interfaces. Would we ever see a version of Premier, or even Photoshop, written to support such an environment? Yeah, probably not. But it could enable such types of applications and games that require more than what a Javascript environment can handle.

Yet, it could still be delivered through the network, so updates are always applied. Local caching can fill in for when the network isn't available (which happens, regardless of how pervasive it becomes).

But, is it enough? I suspect it would be for most folks. But, for creative folks, back-end business work, engineering, development, and other things, it won't be enough for a while.

And where does Java fit in to this? It fills the gap -- plus some -- on Android.

Have a look. That's just not a very good showing for a system that's documented to be on the other end. I used a tool called namebench, which is open source and created, apparently, as a Google 20%er project.

For kicks, I decided to run this on a dedicated server I have.

These results had a better ranking for Google DNS, but equally slow responses. That's a bit strange. It is interesting, though, that many servers are quite slow, but highly dependent on where you are and who your ISP is.

So, just why is Google Public DNS so slow, anyway? Why isn't it leaps and bounds better than other DNS servers? Is Google slacking? Or is there something else at work here? I can't imagine they'd put this out without running their own tests...

For instance, you can start a new Incognito session with Chrome, login to a different GMail accounts, and then close the session without ever worrying about your primary tabs getting confused with Reader, Calendar, GMail, etc.

This works because the cookies and session information isn't kept. On Chrome, though, it is shared with all incognito tabs that are running at once until they are closed. This means you can only do one additional session at a time (in addition to your primary one). But, it's often faster than opening a new browser.

Truth is, I've been really busy with lots of other stuff. I also have other outlets for writing that are soaking up a lot of my writing energy. Check them out:

• Developer.com Articles on Android Widgets (written with my wife, Lauren Darcey):
• Creating an Android Widget
• Handling User Interaction in a Widget
• Handling Lengthy Operations in a Widget
• Working with Android Calendar Entries
• Writing on our Android blog
• Guest Blogging with my wife at Network World
• Writing a new Android Book, Sam's Teach Yourself Android Application Development in 24 hours, also with Lauren Darcey

Over at the Chrome Techa blog, they ask if you'd take a free netbook from Google. I would. Why not? Chrome OS basically just runs Chrome. I use Chrome. So what's wrong with that? More machines accessing the net gives Google more revenue. Why? They have such pervasive advertising that simply getting more people online is good for them.

But would Apple and Microsoft just roll over and die? Probably not. In fact, Apple has over $23 billion in cash and short term investments, while Microsoft is sitting on nearly $37 billion. There are just 304 million people in the US. Technically speaking, these three companies could subsidize netbooks for every single citizen -- and have cash left over. And, the idea being, they'd make money on each one and thus, come out in even better financial situations. Crazy, huh?

Sure, that probably doesn't make sense for them to do at that scale. There would also need to be pervasive Internet access for all which is, arguably, a much larger cost (maybe whitespace spectrum tech will solve that?). Still, it's an interesting concept that, if implemented on even a small scale, could really change computing for the masses. It'd be considered a disruptive marketing tactic -- something all of these companies have done.

We finished one book (buy it here!) and are starting another.

We have an amazing vegetable garden going. The June rains helped keep things watered with lots of visitors around. They also slowed down the growth, since we didn't get as much sun as normal.

We're heads down with software consulting, heads up with our own software projects, and some other small writing. Hopefully there will be more to report soon on those last two. ;)

In the middle of all of this, we're trying to get out more. Working from home is great: you don't have to leave to go to work, you don't waste time commuting, and you can do more. It also means you're at the same location every day. We've begun geocaching as a way to get out to fairly random locations we haven't been to. That's been fun, though continuing to find the time for it isn't easy. At least, with this, we can find our way out. :)

It's clear, though, that one thing hasn't happened: blogging. I share items on Google Reader, post quick thoughts on twitter, and share more personal things on facebook. Big thoughts, though, are just getting lost in the mix. Sorry.

(Image is of me at Mt Washington on an amazingly clear day. (c) 2009 by Lauren Darcey.)

But why is it normally considered a bad luck day? Apparently, one of the earliest written references was from 1869. That doesn't date back very far. However, Friday may have been seen as unlucky since the 14th century and The Canterbury Tales. The term "Black Friday" has been associated with stock market crashes and disasters since the 1800s. Apparently, on October 13th, 1307, the Knights Templar, a very wealthy and powerful group formed to protected pilgrims during the Crusades, were mass arrested. It was, naturally, a Friday the 13th.

Combined with fear of the number 13, one can see how it might be viewed as an unlucky day. It's interesting, then, that the popularity of the phrase, "Friday the 13th," may barely date back century.

Also interesting is the fact that a 13th occurs on a Friday more than any other day of the week - 14.33% of all thirteens of the month vs 14.25% for the least appearances on both Thursday and Saturday. Although a Friday the 13th occurs only once every 212.35 days, if it occurs in a February, such as today, it was also occur the following March. The longest you have to wait between Friday the 13ths is 14 months and the next time that will happen is after a Friday the 13th in July, 2012 -- the next one won't be until September, 2013 - thirteen! :o

Source: Wikipedia

Without looking, I don't even know if one comes with Vista or Windows 7, by default. I didn't even know about this one until I started seeing words defined in Spotlight, either. It also serves as a thesaurus, too.

But wait, there's more! Did you know it also has Wikipedia? This is pretty cool stuff! I don't know that I'd use the Wikipedia part more than just searching in Google, but it's neat. Unlike the Dictionary and Thesaurus, though, the Wikipedia portion requires a web connection. A locally cached version would make it super cool -- and, then again, super big.