Two Android bits

I am now a proud owner of HTC Desire Android phone (I am very happy with it) and I would like to share two interesting bits of information with you:

1. Android 2.1 (at least on HTC phones) includes the option for USB Internet tethering. I was pleasantly surprised when I found out this works as a charm even in Linux (at least in Ubuntu 10.04). Just connect your phone to your laptop using USB cable, select "Internet Sharing" on the phone and that's all - your laptop now has full Internet connectivity. No need for any configuration or special drivers.
2. There is a nice site called AppBrain which allows you to install Android Market applications to your phone from your PC, using normal Internet browser. Amongst other things, it also suggests what apps to install and allows you to share with the world the information about what you have installed. See this link which shows what is currently installed on my phone.

"Signing could not be verified"

This post is here mainly for the benefit of people who encounter the same problem and are looking for a fix in vain...

This post is about Ubuntu Linux and Firefox 1.5.

I decided to completely reinstall Firefox browser in my Ubuntu because it was getting rather sluggish, encumbered by many extensions I installed during the previous months. To this end, I completely removed the "firefox" package, backed up my ".mozilla/firefox" directory and then re-installed the "firefox" package. My plan was to install all the extensions I really need from scratch and use only the bookmarks.html file from the original configuration.

However, I hit a snag while installing Google Browser Sync extension. Firefox told me that "Signing could not be verified" and refused to install it. After more digging (and help from nice people), I discovered that, in Firefox preferences, under "Advanced / Security / Security Devices", I don't have the "Bulitin Root Module" item which should be there, and this is indeed the culprit. Now, this module needs the file "usr/lib/firefox/libnssckbi.so" in order to work. However, this file was not on my disk and, furthermore, was not part of "firefox" package!

After more digging, I discovered that this file belongs to package called "libnss3" which was installed on my machine. I reinstalled this package (the file magically re-appeared), added reference to this file into the "Security Devices" window and Firefox started working correctly.

I have absolutely no idea how could this file be removed. I certainly didn't do anything with /usr/lib/firefox/ files. I hope this fix helps someone who encounters this weird problem...