More main-stream media coverage on “the cloud”, this time from The Current
“They ask young people what do you think the cloud looks like? They use almost religious terminology to describe it when in fact the internet is just a bunch of data farms on the Colombia river or routers in a room in suburban Ottawa. Everything’s beige.”
Douglas Coupland on Alcatel-Lucent, in a The Current episode produced by Kristin Nelson.
I was pleased to see “the cloud” described in plain terms in this CBC news article:
“Don’t call it ‘the cloud.’ Call it someone else’s computer,” wrote security blogger Graham Cluley in a post last December, saying that mentality will make people more mindful of the security risks.
Hopefully, we can go back to calling data centres “data centres” again, soon.
I got an Android phone a while ago. I’m trying very hard not to have to connect to any “cloud” services when I use it. It pretty much makes the phone useless as a PIM and I am actually still using my old Palm.
However the battery on my aging Z22 is holding less and less charge: its days are numbered. So I’m going to have to make the Android phone more functional.
Step one. Backup the apps I do use to my own computer.
Apps I use:
| Contacts | com.android.contacts |
| Gallery | com.google.android.gallery3d |
| Note Everything | de.softxperience.android.noteeverything |
| K-9 Mail | com.fsck.k9 |
| Messaging | com.android.providers.telephony. Or not. Restoring this did not get the messages back. |
| qPDF Viewer | com.qoppa.activities.viewer |
| Apollo | com.andrew.apollo |
| Clock | com.android.deskclock |
| Phone | com.android.providers.telephony |
| Timer | org.dpadgett.timer |
| Terminal | jackpal.androidterm |
| Settings | com.android.providers.settings |
| Offline Calendar | com.droidwave.offlinecalendar |
I got K-9 Mail from fDroid, the free-and-open-source-app store for Android.
It seems I will have to backup all this data app by app. I’m making a list of apps I use … and adding to it as I discover more of them that I use.
Contacts
settings — import/export — Export to storage — saves as a file to /mnt/sdcard/nnnnn.vcf
Can be copied off with adb. I don’t think my phone has a separate SD Card for general storage, although it is a separate partition in flash.
Gallery
I’m already using digikam to copy the photos off.
The photos are saved to /data/media/DCIM/Camera/ by the camera app.
Edited photos are in /data/media/Edited/
Note Everything
settings — more — export textnotes to SD-Card
saved to /mnt/sdcard/noteeverything/text
There is also a directory /mnt/sdcard/noteeverything/backup
The directories:
/mnt/sdcard/noteeverything/ /mnt/sdcard/noteeverything/text /mnt/sdcard/noteeverything/paintings /mnt/sdcard/noteeverything/voices /mnt/sdcard/noteeverything/photos /mnt/sdcard/noteeverything/videos /mnt/sdcard/noteeverything/backup
It may be that Note Everything saves to SD Card even without the export step.
Perusing fDroid, I see there are some more choices now for note apps than there were when I first got Note Everything. Will have to revisit this. Although I like the way Note Everything stores data, I’d prefer an open source app.
See also
/data/data/de.softexperience.android.noteeverything
Not sure yet what info is stored in the different directories.
K-9 Mail
No need to save — this is just a view on an IMAP folder that I can see elsewhere. Although I suppose it might be nice to save the account info and settings.
/data/data/com.fsck.k9
Messaging
Messages are stored in
/data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases/mmssms.db
in some kind of binary DB.
Contents of that directory:
mmssms.db mmssms.db-journal telephony.db telephony.db-journal
I suppose the telephony.db is the list of phone calls I’ve received/initiated. Could be handy to save that too.
qPDF Viewer
Some items in
/mnt/sdcard/Download/
Some items in
/data/media/Download
One item in /data/media and /mnt/sdcard (!) Perhaps that’s an anomaly. Not sure why it’s in two places. Maybe /data/media is the same as /mnt/sdcard. Apart from having (some of?) the same files, I have no other evidence of this.
Items in /mnt/sdcard are owned by user 0.1015 (root.sdcard_rw)
Items in /data/media are owned by user 1023.1023 (media_rw.media_rw)
Moving along …
Apollo
I have nothing in here at the moment
However …
/data/data/com.andrew.apollo /system/app/Apollo.apk
That could be backed up I guess
Clock
clock info to back up
/data/data/com.android.deskclock
/data/data/com.android.deskclock/shared_prefs/AlarmClock.xml /data/data/com.android.deskclock/shared_prefs/com.android.deskclock_preferences.xml /data/data/com.android.deskclock/databases/alarms.db /data/data/com.android.deskclock/databases/alarms.db-journal
I wish these apps would have an “about” entry in the settings, I can’t remember what came with Android and what I got afterwards.
Phone
Phone preferences
/data/data/com.android.phone/shared_prefs/ /data/data/com.android.phone/databases/
See also
/data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/
Not sure where the phone calls rec’d/initiated are kept.
Timer
I probably got this from fdroid also
/data/data/org.dpadgett.timer
Very nice app.
Terminal
Perhaps settings are stored
/data/data/jackpal.androidterm
And the app itself
/system/app/Term.apk
Settings
The android stock settings app, if the settings can be said to be an “app”. And apparently it can.
Offline Calendar
Apparently a fork of ancal. It needs work — on my platform at least.
Other
for investigation
/data/data/com.android/backupconfirm/data/data/com.android.camera/data/data/com.android.certinstaller/data/data/com.android.magicsmoke/data/data/com.android.mms/data/data/com.android.packaginstaller/data/data/com.android.providers.applications/data/data/com.android.providers.calendar/data/data/com.android.providers.contacts/data/data/com.android.providers.downloads/data/data/com.android.providers.downloads.ui/data/data/com.android.providers.drm/data/data/com.android.providers.media/data/data/com.android.providers.settings/data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/data/data/com.android.providers.userdictionary/data/data/com.android.soundrecorder/data/data/org.fdroid.fdroid/system/app/Apollo.apk/system/app/Calculator.apk/system/app/Camera.apk/system/app/Calendar.apk/system/app/CalendarProvider.apk/system/app/SuperUser.apk- … etc.