In Gmail, tap Menu, then More, then Settings. Scroll all the way down to Vibrate. The default is Never. Tap the down arrow to change this. Select Only in Silent Mode or, to be safe, For all Gmail notifications.

In Email, tap Menu, then Account settings, and scroll down to Vibrate. Here’s where it can trip you up, because it is different from Gmail. In Gmail, what you see is what you get; i.e., if you see For all Gmail notifications, that’s when it will vibrate. In Email, it will say “Also vibrate when email arrives,” but that’s not what you get unless you select it. As with Gmail, the default is Never. To change this, tap the down arrow and select either Always or Only in Silent Mode. I select Always to be safe. Note that you will have to repeat this process for every one of your Email accounts.

In Messaging,
follow the same directions as for Email. As always, the default is Never. Why Google would make never the default for all these messaging apps I cannot understand, especially when the wording is misleading in the settings for Email and Messaging. What’s even more misleading is that the messaging apps settings do not honor the system settings for the device itself. I had already set device settings to Vibrate: Always. So why should Always not apply to messages? Pretty stupid, if you ask me.

So, now you know how to make sure your Android device vibrate when new messages come in. I’m happy to give free advice as a netizen who has benefited from other bloggers, but I’m also happy to donate to bloggers when their helpful hints save me a lot of dough. If this blog post saves you money, please consider donating to my blog by going to the home page and clicking on the PayPal Donate button. Thanks!

I work as a freelance interpreter for the deaf, and the agents I work for send out mass emails whenever they need to fill requests. In this age of email, when every interpreter I know carries a mobile device with them, I can respond to a request in 60 seconds and the agency will tell me it was already filled by another interpreter who responded in 30 seconds. It’s not always that fast, but when I don’t even realize I got an email from an agency until 20 to 30 minutes after the fact, it does me no good to have a mobile device. That’s why it’s so business-critical that I be notified the moment an assignment offer goes out.

Posted from WordPress for Android

After careful consideration, I’ve decided not to root my NOOKcolor. I’m no troglodyte; in fact, I’m an early adopter and an Android OS fan. I bought the G1 and, later, the Nexus One, the day they came out. I was aware before I bought the NOOKcolor that it was, at its core, an Android tablet. I had read the reports that you could root it; that is, hack into it to unlock total access to the Android OS and all the apps one can download and install from the Android Market. I considered rooting or, rather, having a friend root my NOOKcolor for me, but then my wise husband asked me, “What would you be able to do on it rooted that you can’t do now?” After some time, I realized the answer was, “Well, um… nothing, really.” Here’s why:

1. I already own an Android phone. Anything Android I can do on my Nexus One.
2. I already own a laptop. Anything creative–writing, spreadsheets, presentations, photo & video editing–I can do better on a laptop than a tablet. And then I can view it on my NOOKcolor.
3. I’m not a gamer. I don’t know nothin’ ’bout killin’ birdies. If I wanted to shoot aggressive avians, I could do it on my phone.
4. I already spend too much time on the Internet! The NOOKcolor comes out of the box with a built-in Wi-Fi card and Web browser, and I already spend a lot of time using both. When I’m not using the Share feature to update my reading status, post a quotation, or rate/recommend a book, I’m shopping for more books on the nook store– and that’s before I even open the Web browser. Once I load the browser, I can do practically anything Internet. The mobile versions of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube work great on the NOOKcolor, so why bother with Android apps? In fact, with the larger screen, even the full versions of several of the websites I normally go to work fine on the NOOKcolor. The only one I’ve found that I must use the mobile version for is YouTube. So, I think I’m set for the Net.

Barnes & Noble already made a bold move by giving readers full access to the World Wide Web, not just a few Net Apps, and I can tell you personally that the ever-present Web makes it hard for me, sometimes, to stay tuned to a book. Rooting my nook would only complicate matters. Now, let me get back to that book I was reading…

Daniel Greene isn’t paid to write this stuff– he’s just a super nice guy with an insane need to spend hours writing blog posts for nothing. Won’t you stop the insanity with a small donation?

This is a brief video I uploaded to see if a movie rotated in QuickTime 7 Pro can appear on YouTube in vertical format. I took this video with my Nexus One upright (vertically) at the Sea Life Aquarium in Tempe at the Arizona Mills shopping mall. Looks like it worked!

How to do this? Quoted from QuickTime 7 Pro help:

To resize or rotate a QuickTime movie:
In QuickTime Player 7, choose Window > Show Movie Properties.
In the Properties window, select a video track and click Visual Settings.
To resize the movie, type new numbers in the Current Size fields.
To keep the same height-to-width proportions, select Preserve Aspect Ratio.

To rotate the movie, click one of the rotate buttons.

I got Froyo (Android 2.2) on my Nexus One yesterday and found out that the camcorder could now record video with the LED flash on constantly. My first thought was to do a Blair Witch Project spoof. Me so silly. By the way, I forgot I had my night guard in. Ha!

2x digital zoom

1.5x digital zoom

1x digital zoom

I ordered the Nexus One Car Dock the day after it was released, and it arrived today by FedEx Ground. I put it in my car tonight to see how the car dock, Car Home, speakerphone, etc. worked. I’m happy I got the Car Dock, though I do wish the other Android apps like Phone and Contacts would go into landscape mode, because that’s the way I like to view my Google Maps GPS navigation.