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Remove vim color coding in Ubuntu

By default Ubuntu’s vim utility is configured to color code certain keywords, comments, extensions, etc.

I personally do not like this. So I just disable that feature. And while I am at it, I also enable the ruler, which displays the line number and the character position of the cursor.

To do that for all users, edit the /etc/vim/vimrc file add the following lines to it:

syntax off		" Clear any font/color/hilighting
set ruler		" Enable the ruler

If you want to do that just for a particular user, create a .vimrc file in that user’s home directory (if it does not already exist) and add the same lines to it.

How to Switch your Google Checkout Account in the Android Market Application

With Google’s last update of the Market application on the Android devices, it became a lot easier to now switch your Google Checkout account associated with all your application purchases.

Just fire up the Market application on your device and press the Menu button. That gives you the “Accounts” option, which allows you to switch the Google Checkout account associated with your Market application:

Of course you have to have added your new Google account to the available accounts on the phone before you can do the above switch. To do this, go to:

Menu -> Settings -> Accounts & sync

and add your account (new Gmail email) here. Then you can go to the Market application and switch to this new account.

In the past this used to require a factory reset of the device or a root access.

Although this is a great feature for the consumer, it might also turn out to be an issue in the long run. All downloaded/purchased applications are associated with the Google Checkout account used at the time of acquiring them from the Market. So if you switch your account in the Market application, you will no longer have access to the applications you purchases or downloaded with the previous account. For example, when you go to “My Apps” in the Market application, you will not be able to see the application you downloaded with your old account.

Furthermore (unless Google is doing something new that I am not aware of) all the licensed application you purchased from the Market with the old account will begin to complain that they are not licensed for your new account.

How to sign an unsigned Android package (.apk file)

If you develop with Eclipse, you most likely use the built in Export Wizard to export and sign your Android applications.

There are some cases though, when this method will not do. For example, if you decide to publish your applications on the new Amazon App Store, you will find out that they require you to submit an unsigned apk first. They do some optimizations and DRM (if you chose to use it) processing of it, and then they allow you to download the new package and sign and re-upload the final .apk file.

Amazon provides an option to sign the package for you, but in a lot of cases that will not work. For example, if you use some Google API’s (like Google Maps, etc.) you must sign it yourself! Otherwise the application will not work!

Steps to sign your application:

1. Export the unsigned package:

Right click on the project in Eclipse -> Android Tools -> Export Unsigned Application Package

2. Sign the application using your keystore and the jarsigner tool (comes with the JDK):

Change directory to where your unsigned .apk file is. Then run:

jarsigner -verbose -keystore /path_to_keystore/mykeystore.keystore my_application.apk my_keystore_alias

It will ask you to provide your password:

Enter Passphrase for keystore:

Once you enter the password it will sign your apk. To verify that the signing is successful you can run:

jarsigner -verify my_application.apk

It should come back with:

jar verified.

Just an FYI: The jarsigner tool should be in your /usr/bin directory by default.

Here is a detailed documentation on signing your Android applications: http://developer.android.com/guide/publishing/app-signing.html

Eclipse Project is Flagged with an “Android Packaging Problem” Error

Sometimes while developing in Eclipse you will notice that the Android Project will be flagged with the red “x” but none of your source files or resources will have errors. If you look in the “Problems” tab you will notice that the project is flagged with an “Android Package Problem” type and the “Location” will be Unknown.

To fix this, just do:

Project->Clean

This will rebuild the project from scratch.

Android Version 2.2.2 Prevents Applications with Copy Protection Turned on from Displaying in the Market

Today I got the Over the Air update of my Nexus One phone to version 2.2.2. To my surprise I could not see some of my applications that were published in the Android Market. Neither could I see a big chunk of the total applications in the Android Market.

After some tests and digging it turned out that applications that have the “Copy Protection” turned on in the “Developer Console” would not be displayed in the Android Market on devices running version 2.2.2.

I have not tested this on devices with ver. 2.3 and 3.0, but I would suspect that the result would be the same.

For a long while the “Copy Protection” feature has been marked as “will be deprecated soon” by Google. No date or any other pointer has been published by Google as to when that will be. I guess we got the answer with this last OS update.

If you want your application to be available to all the devices running the latest OS versions, you will have to turn off the copy protection feature. Of course if your application is paid you would still want to make sure that only people that have purchased it will be able to run it. To do that, just implement the licensing service in your application.