It isn’t actually that difficult to get ADB (Android Debug Bridge) working correctly under Windows x64 (Windows XP 64bit, 7 and Windows 8 x64 are supported) – you just need to perform a few steps in the right order.

1. Download the latest 32-bit and 64-bit Java JDK from here: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html (click the JDK link).
2. Install the 32-bit JDK first, then the 64-bit. Note — Technically you can just use the 64-bit version, but you will occasionally get errors about the 32-bit version (x86) being missing. Best bet is to install both. Both Java 6 and Java 7 are supported.
3. Once Java is installed, download the Android development kit for Windows from here: http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html – you can now opt to download the SDK install in .exe format, which is recommend (and will be used by this guide).
4. After the installer has finished downloading, run it. If you haven’t yet installed the JDK packages, the installer will remind you that they are required and won’t let you proceed.
5. The installer will automatically launch the Android SDK Manager and prompt you to install a number of default packages. Of those listed, only the first two options (Android SDK Tools and Android SDK Platform Tools) and the Google USB Driver package (located in the Extras tree, near the bottom of the list) are needed. After you have selected the packages you want, click Install (x) Packages. A new window will appear – any items without a green checkmark require that you select them, then click Approve before you can proceed.
6. After the process has finished, allow the Manager to restart the ADB process, then close the dialog box.
7. When it’s finished downloading and installing, enable debugging mode on your Android phone and plug it in. Windows should now automagically detect the correct ADB driver. Once Windows has completed the driver installation, open Device Manager and ensure that the “Android Phone” category at the top has an entry called ‘Android Composite ADB Interface’ (pictured below). If the driver wasn’t installed automagically and appears in Device Manager as a Nexus One (or whatever your model of phone is), you can find the driver downloaded by the SDK Setup in the folder you extracted the SDK to (by default, C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk-windows\google-usb_driver).
8. Finally, open a command prompt, navigate to the platform-tools directory in the SDK folder and type ‘adb devices’ — ADB should now list your device (note: adb used to reside in the tools directory, but was moved to platform-tools with Gingerbread. As of r16 (the ICS update to the SDK), fastboot is also now located in platform-tools).

Device Manager showing the ADB Driver is correctly installed

Note that some devices aren’t supported by the official ADB driver. Check the comments below for instructions on how to modify the driver INF to support your device.

This is a problem for anyone who needs to modify a driver .INF to support their device (*cough*Android ADB Drivers*cough*). Fortunately, there is a (slightly complicated) workaround.

To get started:

1. From the Metro Start Screen, open Settings (move your mouse to the bottom-right-corner of the screen and wait for the pop-out bar to appear, then click the Gear icon).
2. Click ‘More PC Settings’.
3. Click ‘General’.
4. Scroll down, and click ‘Restart now’ under ‘Advanced startup’.
5. Wait a bit.
6. Click ‘Troubleshoot’.
7. Click ‘Advanced Options’
8. Click ‘Windows Startup Settings’
9. Click Restart.
10. ???
11. Profit!

When your computer restarts, select ‘Disable driver signature enforcement‘ from the list. You can now load your modified driver. Reboot again once the driver is installed and all will be well.

For Data/Text:

Name: Rogers
APN: rogers-core-appl1.apn
Proxy: <Not Set>
Port: <Not Set>
Username: <Not Set>
Password: <Not Set>
Server: <Not Set>
MMSC: <Not Set>
MMS proxy: <Not Set>
MMS port: <Not Set>
MMC: 302 (might be different – is auto-set by your SIM card)
MNC: 720 (might be 72 – is auto0set by your SIM card)
Authentication type: <Not Set>
APN type: <Not Set>
APN protocol: IPv4

For MMS (edit the bottom entry in the APN list called ‘Rogers MMS‘):

Name: Rogers MMS
APN: media.com
Proxy: <Not Set>
Port: <Not Set>
Username: media
Password: mda01
Server: 172.25.0.107
MMSC: http://mms.gprs.rogers.com (IMPORTANT: in the default settings, this is listed as grps rather than gprs – make sure to correct this!)
MMS proxy: 10.128.1.69
MMS port: 80
MMC: 302 (might be different – is auto-set by your SIM card)
MNC: 720 (might be 72 – is auto0set by your SIM card)
Authentication type: <Not Set>
APN type: mms
APN protocol: IPv4

And that should be it. Make sure that the first ‘Rogers’ entry is selected, and your MMS messages should now send correctly.

I took a trip to the UK at the beginning of the month, and when I returned on the 13th immediately checked my credit card statement. I wasn’t surprised to see that the refund still hadn’t been processed (now past the 14-business-day cut-off mark for credit card refunds). I called HTC yet again, and after a bit of hold time was given some good-ish news.

The agent confirmed that yes, HTC’s warehouse had received my phone and they had accepted it. However, someone at said-warehouse hadn’t closed the ticket in their system which prevented the refund from being processed. I was promised that the ticket would once again be escalated and that the escalations team would get the warehouse to close the ticket and things would get moving again.

I asked if HTC would compensate me for the interest accrued on my credit card from having this charge sitting on it for nearly two months, but was told they wouldn’t do anything. It was worth asking about, though.

So, on Tuesday the 17th I once again checked my credit card statement and there it was! A line item showing a credit for the DoA Nexus One. Although I wasn’t happy with the time it took to deal with the issue, and the interest charges that built up from it, I was ready to put the issue to bed.

And then I got the following email from HTC:

Dear Laslow,

Thank you for using HTC Customer Service. We want to make your next visit even better and would like your feedback. If you haven’t already done so please help us improve by taking a quick survey on your experience using HTC Customer Service.

Get Started

Thank you very much for your time. Be sure to visit us online at http://www.htc.com to read the latest announcements and check out our newly released products.

We are unable to receive replies to this email account. Please visit us at http://www.htc.com if you have any questions or need further assistance.

Sincerely,

HTC

I couldn’t pass it up. I filled out the survey and was completely honest about the experience I had with trying to get a refund for a DoA unit and how ridiculous that I had to choose that route in the first place, rather than having the option to simply get a new, non-refurbished replacement like American customers. I submitted it, and then completely forgot about it.

This morning, while I was off rebuilding a borked IPCop box, HTC left me a voice mail message that went something like this:

Good morning Mr. Laslow. My name <redacted> from HTC, and I’m just calling to follow up on your return. I am very, very sorry that it took so long to process your refund. I’m also very sorry that you received a DoA unit in the first place. If you need any further assistance with this, please call us at 866-449-8358. Once again, we appreciate your business and are very sorry about this whole thing.

I was stunned; I never expected to hear back from HTC at all. I’m not, however, surprised by the fact that they simply apologized rather than offering some form of compensation (be it an accessory, a t-shirt, anything really). Regardless, I’m happy that this is over and I can finally end the tale of an HTC DoA.

I know it’s impossible to expect Google to preload hundreds of megabytes of map data on to your phone (you know, those pesky storage restrictions and all), but how about this: after Maps provides the directions for your route in text form, and you click ‘Show on map’, Maps could pop up an option (this could also be a configurable setting) asking if you want to preload map data.

My crappy mock-up of the prompt made on my netbook with a trackpad.

If you choose yes, it downloads the map data from Google’s servers for the planned route and caches it to your SD card. If existing map data is present that overlaps, it uses that after checking to make sure it’s up-to-date.

Probably a long shot that something like this could ever be implemented, but it would make life for those using their Android device as a Sat Nav so much easier, especially if you’re going on a long trip.

So the unthinkable has happened – I actually received the shipping label from HTC yesterday! I immediately boxed up the phone and dropped it at a nearby FedEx box, and then proceeded to hammer the F5 key on the FedEx tracking screen.

Also to my surprise was the fact that the shipping label was for Priority Overnight shipping, and that the package reached its destination at 7:45am (PST) this morning! I’ll update this post later on when HTC contacts me regarding my refund.

Update (07/16/2010): Still no contact from HTC. However, after re-reading the initial email they sent, it does state:

Once we receive the items we will review the condition and we will contact you by phone or email if we have any further questions. If no additional information is needed a refund should show on your credit card within 14 business days of receipt of the return.

So at this point I’ll be sitting back and waiting for my credit card balance to update. I did end up ordering the replacement phone from Google on Tuesday, and it arrived (in working condition, no less!) this morning! Good thing, to, because I hear that this is Google’s last batch of N1′s that they’ll be selling through the web store….

Concluded in Part 5.

Day four of the return process and no real progress to report. According to the details given to me by HTC on Monday (see part 1), I should have received a shipping label in my email the following day. When I didn’t, I called HTC support back. The agent I spoke with told me to check my spam folder (already done – nothing), and then said that she would ‘escalate the ticket’ and a label sent out right away. I thanked her, disconnected, and waited.

And waited.

End of day Wednesday rolled around and still no shipping label. I called HTC again and was told that it can take an extra day when things go through the escalation process and that I should expect it to show up in my email no later than Thursday.

Well, here we are on Thursday and still no label.

I called HTC yet again, and was told that yes, I should have received the shipping label today. The agent then proceeded to tell me that he update the ticket, ‘increase the priority’, and that I should keep waiting.

Really, HTC? I’m normally a pretty patient guy, but come on! I’ve heard of American customers getting new, replacement phones within days, but we Canadians need to go through this gong show of a return process and then re-purchase the device because otherwise we end up a refurbished phone instead of a new one. This is bad PR, people. It’s time to start spreading the news.

Find out what happens next in Part 3.

Click ‘Continue Reading’ below for the wall-of-text review.

What’s This Twitter Thing About?

Well, the short of it is that Twitter was originally designed for mobile phone users. You could setup an account linked to your phone and text your thoughts. When someone you follow updated their status you’d get a text in return. This is the reason for the 140 character limit. SMS messages can be a maximum of 160 characters, so Twitter gives 140 for the message, and 20 for your username.

These days, most people use either the Twitter website of one of the plethora of clients to tweet their thoughts, as when you follow a lot of people (in my case, just over 100) you’d get more text messages than you’d be able to deal with.

What’s With the @’s and the #’s

There are a few different special symbols you can use on Twitter. The most common one is @, which you place in front of the username of someone you want to mention. For example, if you tweet “Hey @laslow, what’s up”, you tweet will show up in my ‘Mentions’ section regardless of whether I follow you or not. If you start a tweet out with an @, though, such as “@laslow What’s up?” none of your followers will see the tweet unless they either follow me or click on your profile to see all of your tweets.

The # symbol denotes a hash tag. The intent of this is that if you tag a tweet with something that follows a particular theme, and other people do the same, you can easily find similar tweets. For example, my favourite hash tag is #firstworldproblems – I use it when I whine about something that’s more of an inconvenience than a real issue (a perfect example: @ferrous My hot chocolate is now a lukewarm chocolate. #firstworldproblems). People also tend to use them as one-offs that really bring attention to something (“@angelamelick Of course there is a BOATLOAD of work AFTER that but I am NOT thinking about it right now #denydenydeny”).

What Do You Tweet About?

Some people tweet about the mundane (“I just ate a turkey sandwich #lunchtweets”) or for profit (“Follow me to get another 2000 followers instantly #scam #spam”), or to impersonate celebrities/fictional characters. Some actual celebrities use Twitter to tweet about their daily lives, and others tweet about what they do behind the scenes.

Myself? I tend to tweet just about anything that happens to pop in to my head. Odd thoughts, rants, when I post to my blog, technology advice, and occasionally even to help people. I also have a penchant for getting in to arguments with people.

So Is It Fun?

If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be using it.

…Okay, that’s a bit of a cop-out. Really, though, it is. You get a quick way of staying up-to-date with things (I tend to follow a large number of Android developers to stay on top of what’s going to be coming to my phone), you can quickly communicate with any number of people about any number of topics, and best of all, there really are no privacy issues (unlike Facebook).

Wait, No Privacy Issues?

Well, it’s more to the tune of, you don’t post anything to Twitter than you want to keep private, even if your profile is marked as such. By making your Twitter profile private, you have control over who can see your tweets. Unfortunately, you have no control over what those people do with your tweets. If you post something personal that you don’t want getting out, someone who has access to your profile can still re-tweet that message and all of their followers will suddenly have access to it.

The best policy? Don’t post anything that you don’t want public.

In regards to personal information, though, Twitter really doesn’t want it. Unlike Facebook, which immediately asks for the password to your email account(s) when you sign up (just so that they can get your contact lists — honest!), Twitter doesn’t require any of it. You can fill in what you want and leave it. They only ask for your cell number if you want to use the SMS features, and otherwise couldn’t care less. Even your location is totally up to you – I have GPS coordinates listed as mine (48.5236 S 123.2336 W, if you’re curious). As such, even if someone does happen to break in to Twitter’s servers, they aren’t going to get a lot of information on you.

What’s With the Fail Whale?

The Fail Whale is Twitter’s one truly annoying point – occasionally their servers get overloaded by increased demand (usually when there’s breaking news of a celebrity dying or a massive oil slick, or Justin Beiber), and the site tanks. When this happens, you get the Fail Whale:

What’s a Trend?

When enough people are tweeting about something, Twitter picks up the key related words in the tweets and adds them to the Trending Topics list. For a long period of time (far too long, really), Justin Beiber was a Trending Topic because a massive number of people would only tweet about him, and some created accounts just to tweet about him. Fortunately, Twitter changed their method of determining trends and now focuses on thing that are recent – topics now rarely trend for more than a few days.

Often, the reason a topic is trending isn’t always clear. When it a particularly strange topic (for example, “Bellana”) trends, you often get more tweets asking “Why is x trending” that obscure the original reason for the trend. One site, What the Trend, is a community-based system that allows people to comment on a trend and spread insight as to why something is trending. Twitter itself has recently added a line at the top on the page when you click on certain trending topics that explains what’s going on (in the previous example, “Bellana”, the text is “Bellana means ‘Whale’ in English”, which goes in line with Twitter continually going over capacity at the time I was writing this post). Sadly, this text doesn’t appear for all topics.

Mobile Tweeting, and Clients in General

I tend to stay away from Twitter clients on my computer for a few reasons – they rarely add anything to the experience beyond what Twitter’s own website can do, and typically, when I’m not gaming I have Chrome open. As such, having yet another program running doesn’t make a lot of sense.

However, I do tweet from my phone quite a bit, and that’s where third-party Twitter clients really shine. For a while I was using Seesmic for Android, but I recently switched to Touiteur (pronounced the same as Twitter, just with a French accent). The darker theme is a lot easier on the eyes, and the built-in browser is much less flaky than the one in Seesmic (although you have to buy the premium version of Touiteur for the browser).

There are a plethora of clients for Android, and even more for the iPhone, but the vast majority of them are buggy and ugly. Twitter recently entered the mobile app market by buying Tweetie for iPhone and turning it in a free, Twitter-branded client. They then proceeded to make an Android client as well. I’ve tried Twitter for Android, and although it is pretty slick, it’s full of bloat (who needs an animated background, anyway?) and misses some key features such as the ability to remember your place in the timeline (Seesmic and Touiteur both do this).

In Summary

So, will I still be using Twitter in another year? Most likely yes. As long as there are interesting people tweeting about things I like, I’ll check it, and as long as I have something that I want to write/rant/scream about, I’ll be tweeting. It’s a fun, mindless time-sink that keeps me up to date with the world and some of my favourite things, and as long as it does that, Twitter will be my social network of choice.

Now if only they’d upgrade their damn servers….

I’m no fan of browser redirects in any form, and I’m even less of a fan of Yahoo which Rogers partners with to, among other things, provide results on their hijacked landing page. But what can you do? It’s their service, and there’s no opt-out link on the page.

Well, the answer is to manually opt-out. Unfortunately, you need to have a rooted/jail-broken phone to do this. As stated above, I have a Google Nexus One which runs CyanogenMod, but this should work with any other rooted Android phone and even jail-broken iPhones (although the paths are different — you’ll need to alter them as applicable).

To manually opt-out, do the following (assumes Android phone):

1. Open a shell on your phone. You can use ConnectBot, Terminal Emulator, or adb shell.
2. Assume root (su command).
3. Remount the system partition in to read/write mode —  mount -o rw,remount /system
4. Browse to /system/etc.
5. Use your favourite text editor to open hosts.
6. Add the following to the bottom of the hosts file — 127.0.0.1 www20.search.rogers.com
7. Save and quit!

You’re done! You’ve just manually opt’ed-out of Rogers Wildcard DNS hijack. Now you’ll just get the normal ‘Not Found’ errors, as when Rogers see that the domain you’ve entered doesn’t exist and tried to redirect you to their search page, your phone will point that domain to itself and fail as it isn’t running a webserver.

TL;DR Version: To prevent getting directed to Rogers’ Search Page when you mistype an address, edit your hosts file to point www20.search.rogers.com to the 127.0.0.1 loopback address.

Update (05/01/2011): You can now officially opt-out using this link: http://searchassist.teoma.com/templates/rogers/optout