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Tag: Android Mods

  • CyanogenMod Domain Moves After Original Is Shut Down By Owner

    It would be a bit of an understatement to say that CyanogenMod is the most popular Android modding group on the Internet. It’s more accurate to say that these guys are the face of the Android modding scene. They weren’t always like that though, and their humble beginnings have presented a problem that has taken its original domain down.

    The team that would eventually become CyanogenMod got their start by releasing a ROM for the G1 over three years ago. Back then, the team’s public face, CyanogenMod.com, was bought by a third party and donated to them. The person responsible for buying the .com domain remained a member of the team and handled the team’s Web presence.

    The team claims that this person began to impersonate another member of the team to make money off of referral deals. The CyanogenMod team confronted the impersonator and asked for the domain back. Unsurprisingly, the answer was no.

    Now, this is where things get weird. The person responsible for the .com domain is now demanding $10,000 for control of the domain. Understandably, the CyanogenMod team refused to be extorted. So they took to their social media accounts and removed all permissions that pertained to the guy who owned the .com domain. Unfortunately, he still owns the team’s Google Apps for Business account so all of the team’s email accounts have been deleted. They also warn that any emails from @cyanogenmod.com are to be disregarded until further notice.

    To make maters worse, the owner of the .com domain has also taken down all the CyanogenMod Web sites that he could. That means the original .com domain is no longer available for use. The team has moved to their own .org domain, but are now going through ICANN to get their .com domain back.

    The team will still be working on quality Android ROMs, but there might be some delays in releases. They obviously have to sort out all the legal matters that have suddenly exploded in their collective faces.

  • Google Music Now Preventing Device De-authorization

    Most Google Music users will never know it, but there is a limit to the number of devices that can be authorized and associated with a single Google Music account. Specifically, only 10 different ROMs may be authorized. This limit was never a problem for ordinary users. For edge cases, such as tech journalists who review many phones, a simple, if roundabout, solution was to de-authorize old phones or ROMs in the Google Music settings.

    Now, however, the hackers over at the XDA Developer forums have discovered there is a new limit to the number of devices that can be de-authorized. User Amphibliam on the XDA Galaxy Nexus forum revealed that Google is now preventing the de-authorization of more than 4 devices per year for each Google Music account. The smartphone users in the XDA community often root their Android phones and flash them to an updated ROM frequently, meaning this new limit prevents them from experimenting with their phones as much as they would prefer.

    There is no word yet on why Google has implemented this limit. It really only affects three very specific types of users: the aforementioned tech reviewers, the Android modding community, and Android app developers, who must test their products on a wide variety of phones to ensure compatibility. These are precisely the users that Google does not want becoming unhappy with its services.

    (XDA-Developers via Slash Gear)