Service Droid, for your ministry record keeping

After getting my android tablet, I wanted to make sure I put it to good use.

At first I wanted to use it for the epub files that are available at JW.org.

Then I had someone tell me that there were apps available for Android for Jehovah's Witnesses who wanted to record their ministry time, return visits, etc..

After trying several, I found Service Droid.

The number one reason I chose Service Droid is because it ran without having errors or crashing.

I am not certain why Ministry Assistant didn't want to work for me, but it did not.

Service Droid also is very simple and straight forward, and so I do like that. The service time recorder gave me some issues, namely if I turned the device off or let it go into standby it would not accurately record my service time.

But since I can do that for myself, It's a non-issue for me.

Here is what App Brain says about it:

Screenshots

About ServiceDroid

A field service assistant for Jehovah's Witnesses. Keep track of your service time, return visits, and placements.

Record placements and visits in the Call Book, and the stats will update accordingly.

Stats can be viewed either monthly or by Service Year (Sept - Aug). Also easily offers to move your extra minutes to the next month when you send your report via email.

NOTE: This application requires you to use it for your Call Book to get the best out of it. If you simply wish to record your time and number of magazines placed, I recommend another app, like "On The Ministry Lite".

ServiceDroid makes automatic backups to your SD card. To see how to restore to a new device, read here: https://github.com/seanmonstar/ServiceDroid/wiki/Restoring-a-Backup

Languages Available:
* English
* Spanish
* Italian
* French
* Portuguese
* German
* Danish

Source code is available at http://github.com/seanmonstar/ServiceDroid

Please report issues to the email address listed, I will be able to directly respond and act quicker than issues mentioned in reviews.

Recent changes:
* Updated design, works better on newer phones without a menu button.
* Added support for future years of magazines
* Sort order is saved
* Fixed some crashers 

 

It is available on quite a few of the Android Markets. I got it from AppBrain.com.

 

You can get it here: http://www.appbrain.com/app/servicedroid/com.monstarlab.servicedroid

Good free Android Markets

About a month ago I bought a Visual Land Android tablet.

While the device runs excellent, it did not come with "Google Play" the Google Android market.

The Android markets that came with it seldom wanted to work, or didn't have the software I was looking for.

I found these 2 while trying to get software I needed for my tab.

The first came as a extra gift. I installed Opera Mini, and along with mini came the Opera Mobile App Store.

Not a giant selection but a decent one, and I have never had a problem getting an app to install from it.

Then I found the mother lode. Aptoide.com.

Aptoide takes a little getting used to. Here is how you use Aptiode:

1 You install the Aptoide Android market app.

2 You Search for what you are looking for on Aptoide.com, not the Aptoide market app.

3 You add the store that offers the software you want to install. (By clicking install on the appropriate Aptoide.com app page)

4 You choose install when Android asks if it is OK to install this software.

If you just use the Aptoide app, you will only get a small portion of the apps available to you via Aptoide.

If you are interested in the Opera Mobile App Store, then click here:
http://apps.opera.com/en_us/

If you are interested in the Aptoide App Store, then go here:
http://www.aptoide.com/

I think that these Android markets will make it so much easier to get what you need on your Android tablet.

-Denny

FBReader, an excellent epub/ebook reader

 I personally have gotten into epub books, or "ebooks" because of using my Android tablet.

The documents from JW.org are many times available in epub format.

I really like the Watchtower and Awake epubs, because the scriptures are right at your fingertips. You tap (or click) the scripture, and you can read it, you tap it again, your back to your place in the Watchtower.

Here are some screenshots of FBReader in action on an Android tablet http://www.fbreader.org/FBReaderJ:

FBReader ends up being not only my favorite epub viewer in Ubuntu, my personal favorite OS, but also is my favorite epub viewer on Android.

FBReader in my opinion, works better, faster, and is less clunky than the Nook and Kindle software available for Android.

Simple is usually better, and in this case there seems to be no exception to this rule.

From "man fbreader" on Ubuntu:

"FBReader is an e-book reader. It supports most open e-book formats, and can read compressed e-book archives."

From FBReader.org's About Us page:

"First public version of FBReader (for Sharp Zaurus platform) was written in early 2005 by Nikolay Pultsin. In July 2007 Nikolay founded Geometer Plus LLC. The company is registered in Russia, St.Petersburg."

If you are in the market for a epub reader on your computer or your tablet, give FBReader a try.

Here are some screenshots from my Ubuntu laptop of FBReader:

You can get FBReader on Ubuntu by either searching for it in the software center, or by typing sudo apt-get install fbreader in a terminal application, which is usually available via ctrl alt t, or the menu.

On Android, you usually can get FBReader via your Android Market of choice.

The website http://www.fbreader.org/FBReaderJ also contains downloadable versions for Android.

P.S., On the tablet, their are options to change the background image. I personally went with a solid color instead of the distracting background images, and made the background color less than perfect white which is all 255's in the color settings. I made red 245, green 245, and blue 245.

 But lower = darker, so if this is too bright for you, then you might want to go to 235, for instance.

The reading glare was too much for me at perfect white. (Again, all 255's for perfect white.)

LXMenuEditor, fast & small menu editor

Earlier I wrote about adding CLI based apps to the menu using terminator terminal emulator.

For this task I usually use Alacarte, a menu editor made for Gnome.

In my search for everything with a smaller footprint, I came across an excellent menu editor for LXDE, XFCE and Gnome.

LXMenuEditor's tar file is only 78k in size. Fully extracted and installed it is only 222 kb.

So the first thing I like about it is that it downloads in a blink of an eye.

Secondly, unlike Alacarte, it has no dependencies other than Java, which I install on all of my daily use machines anyway.

And it runs faster than Alacarte in my opinion, and is solid as a rock in the version I tested, LXMenuEditor-20120515.

And it has a fairly straight forward, simple gui interface:

Click to enlarge picture

 LXMenuEditor's official SourceForge page is here:
http://lxmed.sourceforge.net/

They have very simple and easy to follow install instructions here:
http://lxmed.sourceforge.net/help.html

Check it out for yourself if your in the market for easy menu editing without the bloat of Alacarte!

Get to know Xubuntu!

Before I start diving into this subject, let me explain what Xubuntu is.

Xubuntu is Ubuntu (a Linux based operating system), but with XFCE, a much faster and rock solid desktop environment than Unity (In my opinion), which is the default Ubuntu desktop environment.

Over the years I have played with many distributions of Linux, and the many ways available to render the desktop.

KDE, Gnome 3, Gnome 2, Unity, XFCE and LXDE for starters.

I have even used Blackbox, Openbox, and a plethora of other available "window managers".

After Unity became the standard for Ubuntu, I started shopping around for another desktop environment.

I don't hate Unity, especially now that it has grown up a bit. It just does not fit, it is a round peg, and I am a square hole, if you will.

I decided to retry XFCE. I wasn't a fan in the past of the look, but the Xubuntu team has gone a long way towards making XFCE look more rounded off and polished.

Older versions of Xubuntu had fairly normal XFCE. XFCE has a plethora of settings options, which in my opinion is just one of the reasons why it is head and shoulders above LXDE, and above the window managers like Openbox.



Here is a screenshot from Xubuntu.org:

And here is a screenshot from my desktop configuration:

Click the photo to enlarge it

XFCE responds much quicker than KDE, Unity or Gnome 3. It also responds quicker than Gnome classic "no thrills" edition.

I have yet to see a speed difference between XFCE and Openbox, which I have used extensively.

These are just a few of the reasons why I suggest you give XFCE, or better yet, Xubuntu, a try.

Get started

• Get Xubuntu
• Help & Support
• Get Involved

Your Ubuntu Tweaks

It seems that tweaking Ubuntu is a popular past time. Something I hadn't realized until just now.

The fact that I tweak Ubuntu myself should have been a clue.

So I am going to talk about my personal Ubuntu experience.

The first thing I do once Ubuntu has been installed is run a script I made some time ago. This script gets my most used apps installed, along with Wine, Flash, and a lot of codecs for my audio.

Here is my script:

sudo apt-get install mc moc irssi links htop ubuntu-restricted-extras wine mplayer cheese gftp synaptic unetbootin terminator ubuntu-restricted-addons audacity lame stellarium kompozer gimp gftp cheese alacarte cowsay leafpad openbox obmenu tint2 feh gmrun thunar lxappearance gkrellm gkrellweather xfce4-panel

Breaking down my script, this is what it does for me:

First it installs my CLI (Command Line Interface) applications. mc is a file manager, moc is my default music player, irssi is a irc client, links is a web browser, htop is a process viewer/terminator, and mplayer is another media player I use for watching videos and also for playing shoutcast audio streams.

Next is Wine, because there is a few apps that specifically need it, and I need them. (I.E., the Watchtower Library).

Then I install flash and codecs with the ubuntu-restricted-extras and ubuntu-restricted-addons packages.

Following that I install synaptic because i find it to be much better than the Ubuntu Software Center.

Cheese is a webcam picture taker.
Gimp is an image editor.
GFtp is a ftp client.

Stellarium is a very nice "view from earth" planetarium program. (Don't forget to set the location, unless you do live in Paris, France.)

Kompozer is the best html editor for Ubuntu, in my opinion.
Leafpad is my favorite text editor, very simple and quick to load.

Cowsay is a goofy, fun program I use to entertain my nephews with. It prints to screen a ascii cow with a talk bubble, with your message in it.

Alacarte lets me make changes to the unity and gnome based menus (which i use for xfce4-panel)

Terminator is the best terminal emulator on the planet.

Audacity and lame together give me the opportunity to cut audio how I see fit, and then turn that audio into open mp3's.

UNetBootIn allows me to put Linux based distros on usb key drives. (Very useful!)

Then there is my favorite window manager, Openbox, and the software I like to run with Openbox.

Openbox is what I use instead of Unity. obmenu is a menu editor for openbox.

Tint2 is a very handy task bar, with clock and a place for indicator applets like nm-applet.

Feh changes my background for me at start up (without feh, and a properly set up openbox autostart file, you will only have a grey blank desktop with openbox).

Gmrun is my favorite "run box" or "run dialogue box" program.

Thunar is my preferred file manager, minimalistic footprint and fast but yet full featured.

LXappearance is needed with openbox sometimes because you will have no icons in programs like thunar without it.

Gkrellm with Gkrellweather I use for the current weather conditions and to check my gmail.

Xfce4-panel I use because I forget the names of applications from time to time, and/or because I forget the proper cli command to launch them.


Then I copy over my backed up Openbox files, and then I switch to Openbox.

My openbox files have terminator tied to control alt t, and gmrun tied to alt-f2.

If you are interested in my Openbox set up, I have a more detailed article here:
http://dennygoot.blogspot.com/2012/03/openbox-rocks.html

Here is a look at my setup:

Click to enlarge picture

Ok, so you have now heard me go on and on about my setup, lets hear about your setup/tweaks to Ubuntu!

Duck Duck Go!

I talked about DuckDuckGo.com 2 years ago on this blog. Back then it was something I stumbled upon on some now forgotten Ubuntu forum or blog.

Since then I have used it on and off.

It was a little too simple for me back then.

It has done a lot of growing up though in 2 years.

In many ways DDG is a lot like the open source community at large. It's not being developed only by those on the DuckDuckGo.com payroll, which is good because there is only one person on that payroll,  Gabriel Weinberg.

It is being developed by a large community of individuals, much like the open source projects running today.

Not only has Weinberg and his helpful voluntary staff accomplished a lot, but there is a lot still on there To Do list.

To check out the growing DDG community, go to http://duck.co/

Just like all the search engines today, DDG is continuously changing, but with the intent still on anonymity for the user, which is one of the big reasons I was drawn to it in the first place.

DDG doesn't track you. They also don't filter bubble you.

There's a video on this page that explains this better than I can:
http://duckduckgo.com/about.html

My 2 favorite reasons for using DDG as my homepage are,

1: Quick Loading. On a slow broadband connection, Google is so massively entangled in it's own "services a plenty" that it can be quite slow to load.

2: I don't get the strange, useless ads I get on Google. If you where to search for feces on Google, you will get search results like "buy feces here!" or "buy feces now!"

I am not a Google hater. Google has many services I love. Gmail, Google Calendars, this blog, Google Image search, just to name a few.

And that brings me to my next point. The DDG crew know they can't duplicate all the wonderful services Google and Bing offer. So instead of recreating the wheel, DDG lets you directly use those services though DDG, like Google Image search.

Try out DuckDuckGo.com today, I think you will be pleasantly suprised.
-Denny

P.S. Here is a list of all the DDG Goodies. It will probably do a much better job of explaining the awesome uses for DuckDuckGo then I can.

https://duckduckgo.com/goodies.html