tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91156446058333841382024-03-13T21:16:17.380+01:00X de XavierUnos y ceros. A veces, en el orden adecuado.-Xvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12954073038736466058noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9115644605833384138.post-9999629788577508762008-05-19T22:18:00.002+01:002008-05-19T23:13:42.615+01:00Notes to self (voice to gmail)I often <a href="http://xdexavier.blogspot.com/2007/06/dictate-to-self-to-avoid-tiny-phone.html">use my phone as a voice recorder</a> to keep track of things that I don't want to forget while on the go. It has proven to be more reliable than my unreadable hand written notes. As an additional bonus, my kids love the idea and they often want to have their say in the recording, so processing the voice notes is often more fun than just listening to my odd ideas.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.bassboy.com.au/getreel/site/samples/vintage/tk820/tk820.htm"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.bassboy.com.au/getreel/site/samples/vintage/tk820/images/820.jpg" alt="1955 portable recorder" border="0" /></a><br />However, the phone's interface to listen to them is quite crappy, and checking if I have some unprocessed note has not become part of my habits. They really belong in my mail inbox, so I now have setup things to send them to my gmail account (after an unsuccessful attempt of using <a href="http://www.shozu.com/">ShoZu</a>, that's already gone from my phone).<br /><br />Teaching my <a href="http://developer.sonyericsson.com/site/global/products/phonegallery/k610/p_k610.jsp">Sony Ericsson k610i</a> to contact gmail has not been obvious, since the net seems to be full of uninformed advice about this. As correctly reported <a href="http://developer.sonyericsson.com/message/61379">here</a>, the problem is that the phone is missing a root certificate required by to verify smpt.gmail.com. To fix it,<br /><ol><li>Download a zip with a bunch of root certificates from <a href="http://www.thawte.com/roots/">http://www.thawte.com/roots/</a> (no need to answer to the form that you get there)</li><li>Extract the missing certificate, <code><br />thawte-roots.zip\Thawte Primary Root CA\Thawte_Primary_Root_CA.cer</code></li><li>Send it to the phone using bluetooth, so that the phone recognizes it and prompts you to install it.<br /></li></ol>I only use the native email interface to be able to quickly send files from the phone, since <a href="http://www.google.com/mobile/mail">http://www.google.com/mobile/mail</a> feels more convenient.<br /><br />I also had to upgrade RealPlayer to be able to listen the AMR format used by the phone. And fix the wrong .3gp extension associated to mime type <code>audio/amr</code> in <code>HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\Content Type\audio/AMR</code>-Xvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12954073038736466058noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9115644605833384138.post-25692802497396670472007-12-04T22:57:00.000+01:002007-12-04T23:35:13.027+01:00Bus o taxi? Opera Mini i TMB t'ajudenDues coses que em fan la vida més fàcil:<br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.tmb.net/ca_ES/tmbmulticanal/ibus/ibus.jsp">iBus</a><span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span>, un servei de TMB que et diu quan falta per que arribi el bus a una parada. Pot dir-ho amb un SMS o, <a href="http://yoigo.es/">gairebé gratis</a>, via web.<br /></li><li><a href="http://www.operamini.com/">Opera Mini 4</a>, que et deixa definir-te les teves pròpies cerques personalitzades (molt semblant a les <a href="http://lifehacker.com/software/geek-to-live/geek-to-live-fifteen-firefox-quick-searches-129658.php"><span style="font-style: italic;">quick searches</span></a> del Firefox).<br /></li></ul>En lloc de buscar a Yahoo!, Wikipedia, Amazon... (les cerques predefinides) pots fer-te una cerca a<br /><a href="http://www.tmb.net/piu/ca_ES/piusolucio.jsp?parada=%s"><span style="font-family:courier new;">http://www.tmb.net/piu/ca_ES/piusolucio.jsp?parada=%s</span></a><br />i amb pocs clics podràs introduir el codi de parada (cal incloure els zeros a de l'esquerra si n'hi ha) i veure si tens temps d'anar a comprar el diari abans de que arribi el bus.<br /><a href="http://www.operamini.com/demo/?url=http%3A//tmb.net/piu/ca_ES/piusolucio.jsp%3Fparada%3D0437"><br />I aquest és l'aspecte que té l'Opera Mini quan et diu quan tardarà l'autobús.</a><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.operamini.com/"><img src="http://promote.opera.com/operamini/operamini_215x40.png" alt="Get Opera Mini" /></a><br /></div>-Xvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12954073038736466058noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9115644605833384138.post-4596122122344345002007-06-10T10:42:00.000+01:002007-06-10T11:08:52.902+01:00Dictate to self to avoid the #%@! tiny phone keyboardMy fat fingers used to fight against my cell phone's calendar application to add appointments and reminders while on the go. I also used to take unreadable notes in tiny pieces of paper whenever an interesting idea appeared while on a crowded subway.<br /><br />I learned that my cell phone can be used as a voice recorder, and now I use my best Private Investigator looks while recording whatever I want to remember when I'm away of any decent writing gear.-Xvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12954073038736466058noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9115644605833384138.post-13636630606934224342007-05-13T12:41:00.000+01:002007-05-13T11:41:58.492+01:00Nimbuzz: a new cell phone ettiquete coming?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.nimbuzz.com/"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.nimbuzz.com/img/header-logo.gif" alt="" border="0" /></a>Stumbled upon <a href="http://www.nimbuzz.com/">Nimbuzz</a>, that brings instant messaging (IM) and mobile phones closer. Beyond its skype-like features (international calls at local costs), or its group calls, what I find specially interesting is their <a href="http://www.nimbuzz.com/help/the-buzz/what-is-a-buzz-alert">Buzz alert</a>, a "conscious unsuccessful call attempt" that gives official status to lost-calls, one of the most used resources for any one scared about mobile phone rates in my corner of the world.<br /><br />My most used features of IM is the ability to have the very short conversation "-ok if I call now? -ok/5 minutes, pls". Bringing that to mobile phones, much more intrusive than land lines, can only be a good thing.<br /><br />Another thing that makes me consider looking into Nimbuzz is that maybe it provides a decent IM client. Yesterday I used for the first time Yahoo! Messenger from my cell phone, and the experience was just awful (e.g. once you read a message, it is gone forever). Having a semi decent IM client in my phone could be useful from time to time.-Xvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12954073038736466058noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9115644605833384138.post-16843927974809353652007-04-25T10:50:00.000+01:002007-04-25T11:00:17.054+01:00Turn them off!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.tvturnoff.org/"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.tvturnoff.org/images/header/logo.gif" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />It is <a href="http://www.tvturnoff.org/week.htm">turn off TV week</a>. Just do it!<br /><br />And if it is not TV but your PC/phone what is keeping you from <a href="http://xdexavier.blogspot.com/2007/04/healthy-urge.html">having green knees at the end of the day</a>, it is a good week to give it a thought to this: who is in charge, you or your gadgets?-Xvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12954073038736466058noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9115644605833384138.post-60909116005629212412007-04-08T03:32:00.000+01:002007-04-08T02:34:06.728+01:00New phone: PyBluez and Gammu to the rescueMy <a href="http://xdexavier.blogspot.com/2007/04/new-gadget-new-problems.html">Sony Ericsson K610i may end up being friendlier to my ThinkPad</a>. I downloaded the binary version of <a href="http://wammu.eu/">Wammu</a> and have been able to send an SMS from my PC via bluetooth, send a file to my phone, retrieve calls, contacts, calendar info...<br /><br />Wammu sits on top of<br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.gammu.org/">Gammu</a> (<span style="font-style: italic;">a project which encompasses applications, scripts and drivers for managing various functions on cellular phones and similiar devices</span>) with <a href="http://cihar.com/gammu/python/">Python bindings</a><br /></li><li><a href="http://org.csail.mit.edu/pybluez/index.html">PyBluez</a> (a Python wrapper for Bluetooth)<br /></li><li><a href="http://www.wxpython.org/">wxPython</a> (a Python API for the great <a href="http://wxwidgets.org/">wxWidgets</a> toolkit, formerly known as wxWindows)</li></ul>Looks like synchronizing with Google calendar will require some hacking, unlikely to happen any time soon. Add to that the general calendar mess in my life, where there is the phone, Lotus Notes, Google Calendar and <a href="http://monkeygtd.blogspot.com/">MonkeyGTD</a> tiddlywiki.<br /><br />The Wammu logs start with<br /><pre>(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):1 - "OBEX SyncML Client"<br />(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):2 - "Dial-up Networking"<br />(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):3 - "Serial Port"<br />(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):25 - "Music Streaming Service"<br />(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):23 - "Remote Control TG Service"<br />(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):23 - "Remote Control Service"<br />(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):15 - "PAN Network Access PointNAP (...)"<br />(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):4 - "Hands-Free Gateway"<br />(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):5 - "Headset Gateway"<br />(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):6 - "OBEX Object Push"<br />(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):7 - "OBEX File Transfer"<br />(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):8 - "OBEX IrMC Sync Server"<br />(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):17 - "HID Mouse & Keyboard"<br />(00:19:63:91:D2:9C):9 - "OBEX Phonebook Server"<br /></pre> I'm guessing that this comes from PyBluez, and that, as soon as I change the binary installation of Wammu with the original Python packages, it should be quite simple to take advantage of some of this services, or, at least, start some educated googling.-Xvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12954073038736466058noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9115644605833384138.post-57380544668064304172007-04-05T02:07:00.000+01:002007-04-05T03:44:59.531+01:00New gadget, new problemsI just changed my cell phone service provider and the move got me a <a href="http://developer.sonyericsson.com/site/global/products/phonegallery/k610/p_k610.jsp">Sony Ericsson K610i</a>. It is my first Bluetooth/USB enabled cell phone and I had high expectations on this: using my PC keyboard to type SMSs, synchronize the phone's calendar with Google Calendar, use my PC to manage contacts... After playing with the (buggy and feature-poor) supplied PC software, googling for hours, learning a bunch of names new to me (SyncML, <a href="http://openobex.triq.net/introduction">OBEX</a>, <a href="http://www.openmobilealliance.org/">OMA</a>...), looking into <a href="http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-syncml3.html">toolkits</a> and the Sony Ericsson's Knowledge Base, I think that the bluetooth/usb connection will only be useful to use the cell as a modem and to exchange music/pictures. Maybe I'd be happier if I were an Outlook/LookOut user.<br /><br />Since the phone was cheap (39€), my disappointment is only mild. But I think that I'd be very annoyed if I'd had to pay for the full phone price.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.operamini.com/"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.operamini.com/images/screen/homepage_wiki.png" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />Additional notes from the field after my first UMTS/GPRS experience ever<br /><ul><li><a href="http://www.operamini.com/">OperaMini</a> is much nicer than the phone's built-in browser.</li><li><a href="http://www.google.com/mobile/mail/index.html">GMail movile java app</a> is quite nice (it would be nicer if it allowed to save drafts)</li><li>Using <a href="http://mobile.yahoo.com/">Yahoo! Messanger from the phone</a> is hardly compatible with my fat fingers</li><li>Internet access was quite fast when using an UMTS network, but did not work as soon as the phone decided to use a GPRS one. Unlike in <a href="http://yoigo.blogspot.com/2007/03/la-conexin-internet-con-el-mvil.html">some reports about recent changes</a> by <a href="http://yoigo.es/">Yoigo</a>, I had no probem using the phone as a modem for my laptop,<br /></li></ul>Although this was not my main driver to change provider and phone, I like the idea of being able to browse the web/check email/connect my ThinkPad from any place for 1.2€ at most during a day. I hope that I'll remember that "being able" is not the same thing as "having to".-Xvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12954073038736466058noreply@blogger.com3