When working at home I’d rather use Ubuntu instead of OS X but couldn’t get ADT to find out my Nexus One, so I was stuck on the emulator which was not feasible since one of the apps (.™) uses the accelerometer. I needed to test on the real device.

First I went to the Android documentation and then after Googling quite a bit I finally ended up in this very good tutorial: Nexus One USB in Ubuntu 9.10. But still no luck. ADB was still showing ??????????? instead of my precious. Finally, somewhere, read a comment about the USB cable being involved in the party as well.

Since I don’t want to carry around the USB cable, 3 weeks ago I went out and bought an extra one so I can keep one home and one in the office. First went to a Carphone Warehouse shop and they told me generic cables will NOT charge the phone. Transferring files would be ok, but no charging. After that I went to a T-Mobile shop and they told me that yes, the generic cable would indeed charge the phone. Are you sure? Yes. Are you really sure? Yes. Ok, so be it.

And indeed charges the phone, the guy at T-Mobile was right. However, it prevents USB debugging… in Ubuntu. Cause the same generic cable with the same Nexus works ok on OS X, but it prevents testing on Ubuntu. God knows what kind of shit there’s going on in there (why everything works on OS X, but on Ubuntu files and charging do, debugging does not), but just keep it in mind:

Mind your cable!

(at least on Linux)

Our tools set is pretty standard: FDT, MTASC, SWFMill, PureMVC, Ant, command line scripts, haXe…

WARNING: You MUST be willing to do AS2. We know it’s a pain in the neck (tell us about it) but until FP 10.1 / FashLite 4 is a reality on mobile devices we are stuck with crappy AS2. Believe me, we would LOVE to ditch it, but that’s just not a possibility at the moment.

As for the things we do at ustwo™: a ton of Flash stuff for mobile devices, also quite a few iPhone apps, we were part of the private beta team that tested the Flash to iPhone CS5 exporter, we work with some big names, some not so well known names, we do Android apps… Check out the blog for latest info.

ustwo™ London is based in Shoreditch and we also have offices in Malmo (Sweden). We are a bunch of nice people, we put music for the whole studio (despite the occasional cheese shite played by Mills we have good music on), we play footy once a week, we have a beer fridge… but we also work our asses off and push to keep delivering awesome stuff.

So, check out ustwo™’s website and if you feel like it, get in touch.

Kids treat you like a taxi service? Now you can act like one with this GPS enabled taximeter application on your mobile. It even includes additional annoyance tolls and children-friendly payment options.

It’s a simple looking app but it does indeed use the GPS and the calculation of the fare is done following London’s official taxi rules. It also takes into account if for whatever reason you lose connection with the satellites. Well, not so simple after all!

But I cannot take full credit, fellow ustwobie Dain Demmel did a big part of the app (if not the biggest), plus we teamed up with WorkClub for art direction.

Anyway, very happy to release an app that people actually use and are happy about.

[UPDATE] Here’s a video demo of the app. [/UPDATE]

And lately we’ve been releasing quite a few apps at UsTwo:

** Ben 10 MouthOff in partnership with Turner.
** .™, brutally addictive first release of the 48hours app series (watch the interview with Mills if you want to know more about the concept).
** Hell-oween MouthOff special.
** And the soon to be released inkstrumental in collaboration with Jon Burgerman.

We don’t stop : )