If you enable USB debug mode on the Q, then use adb shell you can start the settings app using the command; am start -a android.intent.action.MAIN -n com.android.settings/.Settings Once you have done this you can “configure” it using; input keyevent xxxx where xxxx is one of the key events from http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/KeyEvent.html (e.g. input keyevent 20 is the same as pressing down on the dpad). It’s a bit time consuming, but it should be enough to get the Q working with a mouse ;)

After chatting with Billy Rutledge yesterday I’ve got a few ideas spinning for how people could use the #NexusQ so I thought I’d put them out there as they seem to revolve around one theme; The Q as a hub device. Multiplayer gaming could use it as the server/co-ordinator for multiple devices running on the same WiFi network so that no-ones individual device needs to be nominated as the primary device (and take the processing hit), and any peer-to-peer co-ordination alogrithms could be offloaded onto the Q creating a star topology instead of a mesh, which tends to be more efficient.

Did I mentioned I was told yesterday that Googlers already have some Android apps running on Project Glass? I had an OMG moment when I was told that, then I remembered Sergey Brin’s “US-only” statement, and once again I felt like a mug spending over US$2500 in flights, hotel costs, and the ticket, and, over the course of IO, spending over 21 hours on a plane for a round trip and spending a week away from my office.

Sometimes you have to put your money where your mouth is…. Not so long ago I mentioned that writing a home screen / launcher app which changed with the environment around you wasn’t something I thought would be too hard and certainly wasn’t something I thought would take tens of thousands of dollars to write. I had some spare time, so to back this up I’ve put together a quick and dirty prototype for Android 4.

t’s now over 6 months (OK, 6 months and 1 day) since the #GalaxyNexus was launched in the UK. Even if the Android release cycle was stretched out to one release every 12 months that means we’re half way through a release cycle and currently the installed base is around 5% of devices. 5%, or 1 in 20 devices, is a small percentage of the market. To put this in context developers could extend the appeal of their apps to more end users by translating English apps into Korean than by adding ICS features.

Seems to be the day for rumours about Google selling the next range of Nexus devices through the Google Play store. Given that currently you can only buy the Galaxy Nexus in the US via the Play Store I personally don’t see this is a good route to take. I know a lot of non-US developers were pretty pi**ed off when they found out that only the US Xoom was a Google Experience device, and the non-US Xoom has suffered severe OS update lag since.

I really wanted to like the HTC One V. It had all the makings of the ‘phone I’ve been waiting for; A sub 4" screen with Ice Cream Sandwich, and then I played with it. Sense combined with physical buttons made me feel like I wasn’t gaining anything over Gingerbread. The UI felt a little clunky. And the chin… I’ve never been a fan of HTCs chin-‘phones, and I’m still not.

I’ve been asked how I tracked down an AOSP build issue on OS X (http://goo.gl/J9mOL), so I thought it might be worth putting the process up here so others can get an idea of whats involved; I picked the first error which was stopping the build. With a build problem there may be many error messages, but by focusing on them one at a time in the order they occur you can find that fixing an early build fail also fixes several later ones and so you don’t end up wasting time fixing things which are symptoms of a problem rather than the cause.

I’ve been asked how I tracked down an AOSP build issue on OS X (http://goo.gl/J9mOL), so I thought it might be worth putting the process up here so others can get an idea of whats involved; I picked the first error which was stopping the build. With a build problem there may be many error messages, but if you focus on them one at a time in order you often find that fixes to early build problems also fix later ones and so you don’t end up wasting time fixing things which are only symptoms of a problem.

After spending 3 weeks not having a house (due to legal delays during the purchase) I should be reunited with all my tech this weekend in the new house, so I thought it might be worth reflecting on some of the changes made to accommodate life on the road. My normal tech set-up included a hefty Mac Pro (8 cores, 32GB of RAM), a Subversion server, multiple Time Capsules (one per machine I have), so it’s just not practical to take all of that on the road.