Android application Tasker gives you total rules-based automation for your Android phone. It’s not free, but it offers a free 14-day trial download. In the Android Market, it’s £3.99 in UK money—a little over $6 U.S. If you grab the trial, or shell out the cost of a Double-Double meal at In-N-Out Burger to buy it in the Market (scan the QR code at left), you’ll discover it’s worth the cost, even if you only have one super-specific use for it.

Since Tasker can do nearly anything on your phone (it’s mostly limited by your imagination), here’s some up-front ideas about what kinds of uses seem particularly attractive:

• Set preferences for each application: Give the Kindle app a longer screen time-out. Make Maps or Foursquare automatically turn on GPS, and have a file browser launch when you trade out SD cards. Have your music and other audio apps lower the volume to 50 percent when you plug in headphones, so you never get a way-too-loud moment.

• Time of day automation: Make your phone go into airplane mode overnight, but re-connect for a few minutes every 30 minutes to grab messages. Set up your phone to play specific or random songs from your collection as an alarm, back up files from your SD card every day, load up an application at a certain time.

• Set up contact rules: If you’ve got a friend who talks too loud, make your call volume go down when they ring. Create a home screen widget that sends an automatic SMS (“In the car,” maybe). Set your phone to pop up a more iPhone-style message box, rather than background notifications, when you miss calls or get SMS from certain people. Have your phone always record messages from a certain caller.

•: More fun, crazy-advanced stuff: Encrypt and decrypt data on the SD card based on your rules. Have speaker phone turn on when you lay your phone flat on a table. Change the home screen icons for apps, have your phone get drastically efficient when battery’s below 10 percent, and change your wallpapers to reflect the time of day or the number of messages.

Those use cases barely scratch the surface, really. Take the developer’s tour, and you’ll see there are variables, hundreds of events and triggers, and nearly infinite setups. Want to have Reddit.com launch on your browser if your alarm clock goes off on a Tuesday while Wi-Fi is on? You got it.

We’d need to write a research-paper-length treatise to cover everything Tasker can do for you, so we’ll instead offer up a few examples of app models we’ve found handy.

Task 1: Turn on GPS/Bluetooth/Wi-Fi for Certain Apps Automatically

I don’t keep GPS positioning on all the time, both for battery efficiency and a niggling sense of privacy. At the same time, I dislike when Maps, My Tracks, Navigation, or Foursquare ask me to turn on GPS, and I’m required to click “OK,” then make the toggle in Settings, then head back. For just those apps, I want my GPS to automatically click on. When I’m done with those applications, the GPS should shut off, too. You can easily pull the same trick for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or most any system function, but we’ll just show how GPS works.

From Tasker’s main screen, hit “New.” You’ll be presented with six options, or “Contexts”: Application, Time, Day, Location, State, and Event. Think of “Context” as an “If”—”If X is happening …”

In this case, we’re going to choose Application, then pick out the app we want to apply a rule to. You can pick out apps one at a time and apply your “Tasks” to them, but you can also apply Tasks to all applications, or pick out apps you don’t want your Tasks to apply to with the “Not” button at bottom. We’ll just pick out one app, Maps, which I almost always want GPS to be turned on for.

After you pick your Context, now it’s time to add one or more Tasks. Thinking ahead though, we’re going to apply this kind of action—turn GPS on when the app launches, then turn it off when it’s moved away from—to a few different apps after this. So hit the “New” button in the upper-right corner, then type in a name for your Task that you’ll easily grasp later, like “Auto-Launch GPS.”

Now it’s time to tell Tasker what Task we want to fire when this Context is happening. As you can see at left, you basically get your whole system to play with. The thing we want, GPS, is under “Misc.”

In the bar under the GPS “Set” option, you’ve got three options: On, Off, and Toggle, the last of which just flips the setting the other way, whichever way it is. There’s also a checkbox for an “If,” which, if clicked, drops down a box where you can enter in a variableand make it a condition. You could, for example, only have GPS turn on if airplane mode is set to off (“%AIR – Isn’t Set”). Our needs, for now, are simple—just have GPS set “On,” no matter what.

Well, that was pretty easy. Now you’ll see that “GPS Auto-Launch” has just one task: “GPS – Set On.” Let’s say you were a little more protective of your GPS chip, though, and you wanted Tasker to ask you about GPS, Wi-Fi, or whatnot. The gear-and-screwdriver logo in the lower-right corner gives you that option. Set your “Task Type” to “Menu,” and you’ll get options to set how long the menu stays up, if there’s a default option selected, and even set a background image, if you’re feeling extra-custom. But we’re just having Tasker take care of the GPS switch for us, so get back to the Tasks screen.

You could hit “Test” in the lower-right corner to see how Tasker handles launching Maps and turning on GPS automatically, but we’re going to specify one more detail of our auto-launcher. Hit “Done” to get back to the main Tasker menu, then tap on the right-hand side of the process you created, the side with “GPS Auto-Launch” and a green arrow. From the menu that pops up, choose “Add Exit Task.” When we told Tasker to do something when Maps launched, we created an “Enter” task. By adding an “Exit” task, we can have something else happen when Maps is closed down or put away. You can add these Exits to all kinds of conditions—when you’re no longer near a certain location, when it’s no longer a certain time, etc.

Update: Not all Tasker tasks need an Exit task—in general, whatever settings you’ve changed while a task is running will set themselves back when you’re done. In this case, though, we’re getting a little more extra-cautious control over turning the GPS off.

After hitting “Add Exit Task,” you’ll run through the same process you used to create the GPS turn-on: create a new name template, add the task GPS from the Misc menu, then set it to Off and hit “Done.” Now, back at the main screen, you can see that there’s a Context (Maps launches), an Enter task (GPS Auto-Launch), and an Exit task (GPS Shutdown). Hit the “Apple” button at the very bottom, and now Tasker will be watching for Maps to launch, then do its auto-GPS thing.

This trick worked fairly well on my Nexus One, despite Tasker providing a pop-up note that application exit watching wasn’t as stable on Android 2.0 and later. Worst case scenario, it doesn’t launch GPS, and I do it myself.

Task 2: Create an Ultimate Morning Alarm

The next step, adding multiple tasks to a time condition, isn’t all that different, but it does show off how far Tasker can go in automating your phone. So let’s create Kevin’s Ultimate Alarm.

Hit “New” and choose Time as the Context. I’ll have this alarm go off at 6 a.m. and, if I don’t respond, play for 3 minutes. You could just set 6-6 as your time to run until you take action, but I’ll be nice to my morning self. We’re going to add another context, the days of the week, later, but for now, you’ll be moved into the Tasks section.

For my own Ultimate Alarm, I’m having a song play from my collection, make my Remember the Milk tasks load up on the screen, and have my phone say, in text-to-speech, “Good morning, Kevin. It’s going to be a great day.” Why? Because, why not? For these pieces, I added three Tasks:

• Media—Music Play—Music Play Dir. After long-clicking on the “Dir” field and choosing my Music folder, I also checked “Audio Only” and “Random.” If you wanted a particular song, you could swap “Music Play” for “Music Play Dir.”
• App—Load App—Remember the Milk. Fairly simple, and I could set a different starting page in Remember the Milk’s own settings, if I liked.
• Misc—Say. Then just fille in the text you want, choose a language, and mess with any other fields you’d like. “Stream” sets the output you’d like the audio to go through, which helps if you’ve got other things, like songs, going too. You can, of course, mess with the pitch and speed of the voice, too.

When you’re all done and hit “Done,” tap on the left-hand side of your Ultimate Alarm entry, where the clock is. From the menu, roll down Context and hit “Add,” then choose “Date.” From the pop-up chooser, you can get very specific about the months, days of the month, days of the week, and other selectors for when your alarm goes off. Mine’s a basic Monday-through-Friday deal.

That’s all there is to that one, but it’s a pretty nice package.

Task 3: Make Your Phone Quiet Down When Face-Down

Now I’m going to create a kind of “Quiet Down” mode for my phone. When I put it face down on a flat surface, like arriving at my desk for work, it should turn off GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth (and, heck, you can turn off EDGE/3G data, if you’d like), and then turn the system, ringer, and media volumes all the way down but keep vibrate on. You could add an Exit task to turn some or all of these back on, but that’s giving a bit too much leeway to the phone’s sensors.

For our context, choose State, then pick Orientation. You’ll get the options you see at left. I like to stay away from “Face up,” “Standing Up,” and “Upside Down,” because they’re pretty common occurrences. For this example, “Face Down” is a pretty deliberate action you take with your phone.

For the tasks, I added “Bluetooth” and “WiFi” from the Net menu, set to Off, “GPS” from Misc set to Off, and set the volumes for “Media Volume” and “System Volume” to 0 from the Audio menu. “Silent Mode” with Vibrate could simplify your setup, but I like to be sure. Hit Done, and you’re all set.

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Speaking in a recent interview, Schmidt added:

“If you’ve got a one-trick pony, you want the one we have. We’re in the ad business, and it’s growing rapidly. We picked the right trick.”

Clearly he’s on the mark… in the second quarter of 2010 alone, Google posted revenues $5.1 billion with advertising accounting for 96% of its revenues during that period, 66% of its total revenue in Q1 and Q2 combined. Apparently, Google isn’t sitting still in the emerging mobile ad market as they are shooting for a billion a year with the help of its Android operating system. Schmidt has been quoted saying: “If we have a billion people using Android, you think we can’t make money from that?” – If you think about it, that’s just $10 per Android user. With Google setting its sights on recommendation engines, building Admob (its mobile advertising platform) and incorporating location-based advertising, it certainly could achieve that.

While Android has matured very rapidly some see the real problem is customers not going back to Android if the handset makers use different versions of the OS as a marketing tool. Android 2.2 is rocking better Exchange support and portable hotspot capabilities. Both are big deals for perspective buyers, particularly the former as Exchange integration means business customers can use their handsets for work. But when handsets come to market running Android 2.3, you can bet the people stuck on 2.2 are going to feel shafted. When their contracts are up, a lot of those people may jump to the iPhone or something else where they always know that they’re going to at least be capable of running the latest software. Of course handset makers could fix this problem by hiring more coders (or we as users could simply root our phones and run custom ROMs) and pushing out updates faster. However, it’s usually the case that handset makers would prefer to spend resources on the NEXT phone rather than keeping their older phones up to date.

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GeekTool for OS X is capable of many things from showing the weather outside to what’s playing on iTunes and more. It can display both static and dynamic information.

There are a lot of different Geeklets available that you can find at the link below. Here is an example of our desktop running several different Geeklets for iTunes, IP info, iCal, Weather – which pulls weather data from Yahoo, and the Time and Date we looked at above.

A more in-depth article can be viewed on HowToGeek.

Download GeekTool 3.0
Download fun Geeklets to Customize Your OS X Desktop

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This gem of a site is totally awesome *if* you want to know what it feels like to have a gun pointed at you… or flashed in your general vicinity; or maybe you want to see what your baby would look like with a gun on her lap? Pure Internet gold if you ask me. Oh!  And you’re gonna see a lotta dat ass, too!

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Why would you want to do that?  Well, the Flojuggler folks came up with a bunch of reasons which I’ve simplified into these bullet points:

• You’re sleazy enough to track women’s periods, yet having sex with a woman who is on her period disturbs you for some reason
• You coach a woman’s soccer team
• You want to follow the menstrual cycles of your younger sisters

If those reasons aren’t reason enough, consider this added bonus: Your new pick up line can be, “Wait?  You’re on the rag?  Give me one second while I enter that info into the Flojuggler app on my iPhone so I can track your menstrual cycle.”

Oh!  And don’t forget the charming follow up questions “How long is your cycle?” and the always popular “How long do you bleed for?”

Not sure if Flojuggler is right for you?  Go watch the “demo video” and you’ll immediately realize the only thing worse than the kind of guy who would actually use this app is the kind of guy who created it. Mad props on the name of the app though.

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The app uses the built-in camera to project an image of what’s in front of you and put it as a background on the screen while you are texting. That way, you’d be able to see what’s coming up even if you’re just focused on your phone typing away a text message.

This Android app from the Samsung App Store that came pre-installed in the Galaxy S i9000. Seeing as this is an Android app I wouldn’t be surprised if this showed up in the app market

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It’s unlikely that Google is preparing to roll out a Facebook clone. Whereas Facebook is basically a universe unto itself, Google emphasizes openness. A Google service that runs on open standards and with an open ID system, i.e., letting users punch in one password on multiple sites, take their personal data with them when they leave a network or maintain the same profile on multiple services, could give Facebook a run for its money.

The stakes are high: Facebook is speeding ahead, gathering tons of data through its recently launched “Like” feature. “Like” buttons on tens of thousands of websites yield invaluable information about the preferences of its users (and their friends), which could ultimately help Facebook develop a more personalized method of ranking Web pages and of targeting advertising. It’s because of this that Google is intensely interested in social media.

Another project which recently gained steam (and a lot of seed money) is Diaspora. One month into development and Diaspora current implementations include GPG encryption, scraping Twitter and Flickr, awesome design aesthetics, and the initial stages of connection infrastructure (“friending” other Diaspora instances). Websockets are already in the Diaspora core, and any Diaspora plugins will be able to have rapid two-way functionality, (think chat, games etc) almost effortlessly! Diaspora aims to be for social networking what OpenID wants to be for user authentication… an end-to-end open system that can even be personally hosted. In other words, it will take social networking out of the walled garden of Facebook (or whatever Google creates) and placing control of your content into your own hands. You can view their 1 month of development demo here:

Diaspora Message Propagation (pre-alpha!) from daniel grippi on Vimeo.

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True to form… you have to check out w00t’s blog post about the whole ordeal because it’s HILARIOUS!

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In the event of a national emergency, the bill would grant the power to control, and even shut down, large swaths of the Internet to the National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC), a new office created within the DHS by the PCNAA. The legislation has garnered support from Senators Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe who proposed similar powers last August, but it’s bound to run into serious opposition from tech lobbyists, privacy groups and those who wish to limit the power of the federal government.

Of course, similar legislation was introduced August of last year and that was shot down so maybe I need to take my tinfoil hat off. Still, the idea of a single point of failure for the entire US Internet infrastructure is frightening. If our cyber security is so poor that we need a kill switch for the Internet then how can we be assured that security around that kill switch would be strong enough to prevent hackers, or an unfriendly government, from accessing and using the kill switch?

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