Android Hack To Prevent Data Throttling By Carriers

Most people signing up for unlimited data plans often miss out on the fine-print that legitimizes carriers to throttle your data speed when you breach a data cap. Such policies are quite evidently an annoyance given that most of us pay a premium for unlimited data plans just because we need to satisfy our mobile web requirements.

So if you are one of those Android users frustrated with such data throttling from carriers, you can now make use of a hack to ensure you do not have to suffer these slow internet speeds any longer. Folks at XDA Developers have this tutorial to take you through the process. As with any of the tutorials from this site, you must realize that the procedures can be risky and you may end up bricking your phone. Also, the carriers have other ways to ensure you don’t continue your voracious data consumption – they can suspend your contract, for instance.

In any case, should you try the method, don’t forget to tell us how it works in the comments below.

Create Photo Slideshows From Facebook Or iPhone With MediaStory App

Want to create slideshows of your Facebook photo albums? MediaStory is a nifty application that will help you with that. The app will allow users to upload pictures either from their Facebook album or upload them directly to the application while creating the slideshow.

MediaStory is available as both a web application on Facebook or as an iPhone app. Android users fret not. There is also an Android app to achieve the same. All you need to do is give the application the necessary permissions, upload the pics, style them and publish.

There is one step before you publish the pictures that is contentious. The app requires you to become a fan of the application. That’s understandable and if you are not the kind who is bothered by these, you can try out this application by visiting the app’s Facebook page or iPhone app ($1.99).

How To Root HTC Desire Android Phone

Paul from Modaco has released the full guide on steps to root HTC Desire. Unsurprisingly, the rooting tutorial guide comes with several caveats with the most important one being that rooting will completely wipe your phone off and that there is no way at present to backup your device ROM. You can follow the complete tutorial here

Here is a gist of how to go about it

Step 1 : Backup your microSD card and turn it to a goldcard (A GoldCard is a special SD card which, when inserted into your device, allows you to flash RUU files with a different CID to your own device.)
Step 2 : Download a copy of ‘rooted update‘ and copy it on to your SD card
Step 3 : Turn off your HTC Desire and turn it back on by pressing the back button down. The screen will now display ‘FASTBOOT‘
Step 4 : Download ‘Test Ruu‘ to your computer. Connect your phone to your PC and run the file. Wait for it to complete the upgrade
Step 5 : The phone will now be turned off. Unplug it and press the volume button down to power it back on. You will see ‘HBOOT‘ displayed on the screen. Use the volume and power buttons to navigate through the options and select ‘RECOVERY‘.
Step 6 : The phone will display a Red triangle. At this point, plug your phone to a Mac OS X or Linux computer
Step 7 : Download ‘Push Files‘ and extract them to a folder on the computer. Run the ‘recovery-linux.sh‘ or ‘recovery-mac.sh‘ file as is appropriate
Step 8 : Use the optical trackball to navigate through ‘Wipe -> Wipe data /factory reset‘ then ‘Flash zip from sdcard‘. Select the rooted update and confirm.
Step 9 : The update will begin. Once the flash is complete, reboot the phone and your are done.

Farmville On SMS Launching Soon? iPad And Android Apps Launching Too

Will you soon be able to hatch your mystery eggs on the go. There are speculations that Zynga, the company behind the popular Facebook game Farmville may be planning to expand their channels beyond Facebook. According to reports on JoyStiq, the company has recently purchased the domain names FarmvilleSMS.com, FarmvilleiPad.com and FarmvilleAndroid.com.

While it is not explicitly known whether these domain names were indeed purchased by Zynga, they are at least under the ownership of the same third party that also manages the Farmville.com domain name.

iPad and Android are logical extensions. SMS? Not so much. What do you think?

[via JoyStiq]