I recently, two or three months ago, rooted my HTC Incredible and haven't looked back since doing so.  So many doors have been opened and the phone is truly way more fun to use.  It's been an interesting and enjoyable ride trying to find the perfect user experience through experimenting with different rom/radio/kernel combinations and it wasn't until recently that I became truly inexplicably frustrated with my phone.  I had found the perfect rom, delivering an excellent user experience.  This thing was smooth, fast, and friendly.  I could use me wiimote with nesoid and playing contra has never been so fun.  And then it happened... My once less than awesome battery life was way worse!  Almost to the point of making the phone unusable.  On an average day, my battery would fully draid within 8 hours.  An average day for me consists of perhaps 30 minutes of phone conversations, 20 text messages, 30 minutes of reading emails or forums, and 45 minutes of angry birds (I'll get you pigs back for what you did to those poor birds!)  After much reading a coworker hands me an article that I have just implemented.  I would like to use this post to log the results of the process.  So, without further a due, here is the process:

1. Charge the phone fully (ignore the green light and keep an eye on the battery reading under system-power settings)
2. Boot the phone to recovery mode and select Advanced-Reset Battery Stats from ClockworkMod
   1. for those not using clockworkmod, go to the console and type the following:
      • mount -a
      • rm /data/system/batterystats.bin
3. Reboot the phone and unplug from the power
4. Drain the battery completely until the phone shuts itself off
5. Recharge the battery fully

Thats it.  I am currently draining the battery, but I'll let you know what the outcome is...

BTW: the rom is MIUI and can be found here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=804446

So, I recently started using the HTC Incredible (aka the Droid Incredible) and I love it.  It's so much better than previous phones I have used.  Now that I've been using it for a couple weeks, I've started getting a little more advertrous in the app market looking for things that may or may not impact the performace of the device.  There are some great apps out there, but so many of them come at a cost (all be it only a couple bucks) and not all of them have demos available. Well, long story short, my son has an iPod Touch and has found a few apps that don't exist in the app market. Me being the big nerd I am, I'm thinking some of these things are pretty simple and perhaps I could reproduce them for the android os.  The following blog post will be my ledger for thoughts and resources I happen apon as I venture to produce something usefull.  Fell free to comment or make suggestions if you feel you have something usefull to contribute.

Handy Links To Get You Started

1. http://www.eclipse.org - Because android runs applications written in Java, you will need a compiler like this to get started
   1. http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/technology/epp/downloads/release/galileo/SR2/eclipse-java-galileo-SR2-win32.zip
   2. If that link doesn't work hopefully this one will - http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/
2. It's recomended you install the SDK prior to the ADT (Android Development Toolkit)
   1. http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing.html#Installing - It will helpfull if you actually read this.
   2. http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html - Location of the most recent SDK for different OS's
3. Ok, now for the ADT (Android Development Toolkit)
   1. http://developer.android.com/sdk/eclipse-adt.html
4. Now that you have it all installed and configured, time for your first program
   1. http://developer.android.com/resources/tutorials/hello-world.html - Yup, the good old "Hello World"
5. Hopefully things have gone smooth to this point,  the next step is boaring...
   1. http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/fundamentals.html - JUST READ IT.  Ya, it's not fun, but tough it out.  You will be better off for it.

So, a couple of my observations as I worked down through the list of tasks above.  Eclipse has a number of downloadable builds.  You don't need anything special.  Just get the plain jane "Eclipse IDE for Jave Developers".  It's half the size of the other options and has everything you need.  The SDK installation was straight forward.  Just follow the instrucitons and don't be afraid to download more than you need for this.  To install the ADT if you missed it in the docs is done from within eclipse by click "Help" -> "Install new software".  Click the add button and ender the following url, with or without the https, https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/.  Check the Developer Tools box and hit next.

More to come as I have time... Sorry for not proof reading this first :P

So, after spending too much time tring to page a repeater, I'm considering replacing my repeaters with the listview control. Let's look at the differences:

 And the winner is the ListView.  I understand each control has different overhead so if your sensitive to such things then perpahs it's necessary to take a closer look but for from a functionality aproach, your best bet is the ListView.

Seeing as how this site is new and has very few followers (none actually) I will be compiling a list of notes as reference materials, so as I read and experiment with the different facets of

SEO, I'll have a reference, a reset button if you will, to look back upon to ensure I haven't lost focus of the important stuff.  If you have comments or thoughts on anything covered here, by all means, chime in and let me know.

Lets start with a definition what SEO is and what it consists of.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site or a web page (such as a blog) from search engines via "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results as opposed to search engine marketing (SEM) which deals with paid inclusion.

The process of optimizing a website can consist of may things, some in a positive way others in a negative. 

The most common aspects of SEO can be categorized into two buckets:

1. On-site - changes made to the function of the website being optimized
   1. Good site menus and site navigation
   2. Page titles
   3. Use of keywords on the page
   4. many many more...
2. Off-site - Efforts to affect the rankings or traffic to a website through actions outside the scope the website itself
   1. Backlinks - links from other sites to the site being optimized

It is my opinion that these should be viewed in the following order of importance

1. LINKS!!! - Other sites linking to yours is the #1 way to optimize a site.  If someone is selling you optimization for your website and doesn't discuss a link build strategy, get up and walk out!
   1. Link anchor text - The text in between the <a> </a> tags.  The text between these two html tags plays a highly into the words your site will show up for.
   2. Source of links
      1. Links from 10 different sites will carry more weight that 10 links from 1 site (assuming each site is similar in reputation and relevance)
      2. Links from trusted sites carry more weight that links from no-named sites
      3. Links from sites outside your subnet carry more weight that sites on your subnet
2. Title Tags - are the title tags on the individual tags for structured and concise?
3. URL - Can the targeted keyword be found in the url or domain name?
4. All the other little stuff...

So now we know whats important, how do we start checking these off the list?  Well, we know links are the most important factor to ranking well, but I would suggest we start with the sites navigation.  We don't want to seo a bunch of pages that can't be spidered and don't share the love with the rest of your site, so lets start there.  In the next blog of this series, I'll transcribe my thoughts on site navigation and site structure.

After many strugles, the new site is online.  Still needs a lot of polishing, but it's a start.  Let me know what you think...