How many times have you heard, "there's an app for that"? But sometimes, there actually isn't "an app for that", or the apps that do exist don't meet your needs. As Linux users, we tend to like to scratch our own itches, and if that means we write some code to do it, so be it.

I've owned two different Android phones since they first were released, and I eventually rooted both of them. My Droid (original) was such a popular phone that rooting it was very simple. I used my rooted Droid until it wore out and rebooted every time I slid open the keyboard. My second Android phone, the Samsung Galaxy S2, is the phone I have right now.

The ASUS/Google Nexus 7 arrived at my door on August 1, 2012 with a lot of anticipation from both me and the rest of the consumer electronics world. A quad-core Tegra 3 processor from NVIDIA, a 1200x800 HD IPS display covered with the latest scratch-resistant Corning Gorilla Glass and a 1.2 megapixel front-facing camera were among its most notable cool features.

I'm often compared to the Absent-Minded Professor. I take it as a great compliment, because in the movie, he's brilliant. Unfortunately, when people refer to me as him, it's the "absent-minded" part they're stressing—not the "professor" part.

Anyone with an iPhone probably is familiar with the AirVideo application. Basically, it's the combination of a server app that runs on your Windows or OS X machine, and it serves video over the network to an AirVideo application on your phone. It's extremely popular, and for a good reason—it works amazingly well.

“Change is inevitable in a progressive society. Change is constant” Benjamin Disraeli 1867. Quite a fitting quote if I say so myself. When I started in systems administration back in the mid 90’s everything was done either remoted in from your desktop, a server, or you plugged a terminal into the back of the server.

I have a new day job, and as part of the hiring package, I was issued a smartphone. I'm a little bitter that it doesn't include a tethering plan, but that doesn't upset me nearly as much as the lack of Wi-Fi analysis apps. See, my new job issued me an iPhone. I really like the iPhone (it's true, I can't lie), but in order to scan Wi-Fi, I'd have to jailbreak my phone!

The Audible app for Android is a great way to consume audiobooks. You have access to all the books you've purchased on Audible, and you can download them at will. Plus, the app provides all the bookmarking features you'd expect from a professional application. Unfortunately, if your audiobooks are from somewhere other than Audible, you need something a little more flexible.

Drag and drop your way to Android programming. MIT App Inventor, re-released as a beta service (as of March 5, 2012) by the MIT Center for Mobile Learning after taking over the project from Google, is a visual programming language for developing applications for the Android mobile computing platform.

This past summer, I went to a beach resort in Mexico with my wife. It made sense to get into a little better shape so as not to cause any beached-whale rumors while I soaked in the rays. Typical geek that I am, I wanted to track my every move so I could see how much exercise I really was doing. And, I wanted to do that with technology.

One of my biggest beefs with Gmail on my Droid (rooted, running Cyanogenmod 6.1.2) is that I could never reply with an address other than my gmail account. I have several accounts tied to gmail, and with the web client, you can choose which account to reply with. In fact, Gmail does a good job of replying with the address the email was sent to. Except with Android.

Thankfully, Google has started the release process for their latest and greatest Android version -- Gingerbread. I'm looking forward to installing CyanogenMod's spin of 2.3 as soon as it's available. The big frustration for me, however, is that Gingerbread turned out not to be the tablet killing OS we all hoped for.

Android is everywhere. Really. It runs phones, tablets, and recently, I even saw it running on an iPhone. Just a few years ago, that would have thrilled me to no end. Truthfully, it still does, but I'm more skeptical now. See, two years ago, Linux was everywhere on Netbooks. I thought it was a big break—Linux finally hit the mainstream.

With Google and Verizon recently announcing that several Android phones will be coming out on their network, a Linux lover might have smartphones on the brain.  Obviously, having Linux running on your phone is awesome, but which Linux OS should you choose? Android?  WebOS?  Maybe even

All your phones, are belong to Google — an overview of Android, the new software stack created by Google for the Open Handset Alliance.