Halow! pada kali ini Nge.re.wis akan membahas sedikit yang berbau teknolohi.

Diawali dari Atom milik aing yang tida memuaskan lagi dikernakan tinggaleun jaman ! Nah, mulailah aing utak atik sedikit dengan segala kemampuan tehnoseksual yang Aing miliki. akhirnya! sukses euy! Atom standar berwindows Mobile 5.0 sekarang menjadi 6.0

Emang si soal perpormens mah tida jauh beda, cuma soal kompatibilitas dengan software” baru dijamin cihuy, malah bisa pake Pesbuk por Mobael yang bisa di dawnlot dari Microsoft. mantep gak tuh? tida usah pake yang java itu dari getjar.. huh! busuk! atawpun dari broser.. huh! katro!

Dah lah, gausah banyak bicara lagi.. lesgo! step bay step! uuuh beybeuh!

Yang harus disiapin!

• Mesti punya henponnya siah! kalo nggak mah percuma! nggak akan berpungsi kalo dipake di batu atau ganjelan ban.
• Kempyuter, ataw leptop gapapa.. yang penting windowsnya XP SP2/SP3! jangan pake pista! atow sepen! eror siah!
• Microsoft Activesync 4.5. Downlot dari Microsoft sana.. cari Google juga bisa!
• Download file ROM WM 6.0 nya ini KLIK (Kalo ada yang mau nulungin abis download nikin mirrornya uy.. biar tetap bisa didownload darimanapun!)

Cara Upgradenya!

• Install dulu Microsoft Activesync dan “Pair’ kan dulu Atom anda!
• Cabut setelah udah bisa konek sama windows
• Soft reset Atom maneh! (Colok itu yang dibawah pake stylus.. jangan pake golok)
• Udah beres resetnya, konekin lagi ke MASync.
• Ekstrak rar berisi ROM yang sudah anda downlot ke desktop, buka foldernya.
• Cari DSUU.exe dobelklik itu.. lalu ikuti perintahnya.
• tunggu sampe beres! INGAT! jangan sekali” nyabut PDA maneh pas lagi di flas begitu.. ntar gabisa dipake lagi, sabar aja nunggu. Orang sabar disayang Tuhan!
• Pas udah selesai dia bakal reset sendiri itu, maka tampillah WM 6.0 baru maneh! CIHUY! berhasil!

Dah ah, segitu aja dulu, mudah”an pada sukses! ntar lagi ni post bakak Aing update deh dengan kabar” terbarunya. kalo ada tanya” silahkan post di comment! more power to you guys! until later.. Aing undur diri.

Finding time for reading has been hard for years, and to compound the frustration most of my recent book choices have been disappointments.

Normally I have both a paper book and an audiobook on the go, thus using technology to extend “reading” time to commuting, dog walking and the like. Now a third front has been opened with ebooks on my Windows Mobile phone. I was getting fed up with my increasingly absurd “dead tree” book, The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld, and had nothing else to read so bought Gibraltar Earth by Michael McCollum in PRC format (mobipocket), based on a ringing endorsement by SF fan Steve Gibson of Spinrite and “Security Now!” fame.

Buying Gibraltar Earth as an ebook made it both cheap ($5) and near instantaneous by the miracle of Internet file download, followed by a dangerous dabble with WMDC (aka ActiveSync) to straddle the final, short hop from PC to phone. I’d have preferred to get it on a Kindle but such delights have yet to make their way across the Atlantic.

My wife has denounced my ebook venture as a terminally geeky thing to do. She insists the very idea of attempting to read a book on a phone, even one with a large high-res screen, is wacky beyond redemption. I was sure to wreck my (already pathetic) eyesight. I pointed out that I can adjust the font size so that it is bigger than the paper book I was reading, as readily proved by a side by side comparison. You end up with rather fewer words per screenful than you would have on a page of a paperback, but navigating from screen to screen is very easy with the phone’s “joystick”. The wife remained unconvinced, even when I pointed out that I no longer needed to worry about losing my place or fannying around with bookmarks, as the software would always keep my place.

I can even do a text search, so if I come across the name of a character in the story and can’t remember where they last appeared, I can search for previous occurrences by name rather than having to scan the pages of a physical book by eye. Best of all, because my “book” is in my mobile phone, I always have it with me so if I have a spare moment, say waiting outside school to collect my daughter, I can steal a few minutes of reading time. So whether or not reading a book on a phone sounds or looks ridiculous, it is perfectly feasible and has many enumerable advantages.

Sadly, though, this did not turn out to be the hoped for happy solution to my reading material crisis. Not because of any particular issue with mobipocket books on Windows Mobile phones in general. It’s just that the book itself turns out to be dire.

It is such a let down, after the build-up Steve Gibson gave it. The premise sounds riveting. Centuries from now, mankind makes first contact with alien life but discovers that the galaxy is ruled by an all-powerful cruel race which enslaves or destroys all other life, so humans are only still around and free because they have yet to come to the super-aliens’ attention. But it is only a matter of time before they are discovered, which raises the question of how mankind will deal with the problem. Fascinating concept, which unfolds over a trilogy.

But the writing is so amateurish and cliched. Almost stomach-churningly so. I may stick with it a bit longer but am finding it hard to take.

I had been tempted to start reading some SF by Peter F Hamilton, based on Steve’s effusive praise, but have been put off as I’m not sure I can trust his judgement. This is possibly unfair on Hamilton who is a far better known and more prolific author. Maybe I’ll sneak a read of a couple of pages in Smiths or Waterstones just to make sure it’s not another complete turkey.

After many years from buying my AT&T 8525 phone I finally decided to start using its built-in video recorder. Recording was very easy and in about five minutes I had a video of my wife cooking breakfast. We never had a digital video recorder so after making a couple of other recordings we decided to transfer them to our family PC just to see how they look on a bigger monitor. I used Active Sync and quickly moved our mp4 files from Windows Mobile to a folder on our PC. Then … I double-clicked on one of the movies to play it. What a disappointment – simply speaking, Windows would not play a MP4 file. I tried to associate MP4 files with Internet Explorer, still no success. I decided to search Google for a MP4 to WMV converter. I have found a number of them but their websites did not look very trustworthy (zillions of banners etc.). Eventually I stumbled upon so called AVS Video Converter. What a difference, I was able to download a trial version and I had the software up and running in minutes. The main screen looks like on the picture below:

AVS Video Converter main screen

As you can see the software has a good number of target formats. I have selected WMV because I was sure Windows Media player is comfy with this format. The conversion worked and I was so happy to see my wife on my 32″ monitor. With a little bit of help from a third party software vendor I was able to copy a file from one of Microsoft’s OSs to another and use it! I did not buy the software yet so the converted video has a small watermark image but  I am pretty sure I will buy the video converter because I see it is very stable and has a lot of options which I may need later. Also, the good thing is that I did not have to know anything about video formats and their parameters to use the software.

More details regarding AVS Video Converter are here: http://aotutorial.wordpress.com/2009/06/20/convert-dvd-to-any-video-format/

Facebook Mobile,tanıdıklarınla iletişim kurmanı ve hayatında olup bitenleri paylaşmanı sağlar sloganıyla bu hizmeti veren facebook web uygulamasını windows mobile cihazınıza aktarmayı sağlar.Yazılım oldukça kullanışlı hale gelmiş.

İndir(Windows Mobile 6)

Diğer Microsoft Uygulamaları

As I have been documenting over the last few months, I have got my WM6 phone pretty much doing all the same things as an iPhone but with the added advantage of wireless stereo Bluetooth earphone support.

Of course there are some downsides.  The device, an HTC TyTN II, is not as svelte and elegant as an iPhone and the user interface, being based on Windows Mobile, is not as slick and well integrated as the Apple equivalent. Also, the looser software/hardware integration of Windows Mobile devices, and in particular the greater reliance on third-party utilities, is more likely to cause grief.

A case in point is the clash between Windows Media Player Mobile (WMPM) and Audible.com’s player. For reasons best known to themselves, Audible will not allow their audiobooks to be played on WMPM, instead requiring users to install Audible’s proprietary audiobook player. Maybe it’s because WMPM does not support bookmarking. It  would not have been that much of a problem to have to use two separate applications for music/podcasts vs. audiobooks were it not for the fact that they conflict with each other causing the phone to crash.

The culprit appears to be the Audible player.  Once it has been run, it seems to result in some persistent locking of resources which interferes with the operation of Windows Media Player, even after the Audible player application has been closed.  You can still open and use Windows Media, but when you try to close the latter down, as you would if say updating your podcasts or synchronising your music, the phone locks up and requires a time-consuming soft reset.

I have tried installing various bits of kit to try to troubleshoot or debug the problem, but whatever it is has its hooks too deep down within the operating system and I cannot fathom it.  It is very annoying but I guess I’m stuck with it for the foreseeable future unless anyone has any bright ideas.

מערכת ההפעלה (מעה”פ) של ויסטה, אינה המערכת “המתחדשת” היחידה, חברת מייקרוסופט השיקה גם מערכת הפעלה חדשה למחשבי כף יד
ומכשירי סמארטפון.

למרות שמערכת ההפעלה החדשה אינה מציעה “אוברול כללי” למעה”פ
הקודמת, היא בכל זאת מציעה כמה שינוים שימושיים שיכולים לגרום לביצועים טובים יותר,
בקלות רבה יותר. אנו התרשמנו במיוחד מיכולת סריקת מיילים החדשה, התחדשותה של אופיס
מובייל, ושילובה של Windows Live לערכה, אבל עדיין חושבים שמייקרוסופ יכלו להשקיע
מעט יותר. לדוגמא, שיפורי מולטימדיה הם כמעט ולא נוספו, וממשק המשתמש עדיין “קצת”
מגושם. בנוסף, חלק מישומי הOutlook והיומן, יידרשו עבודה מול Exchange Server 2007.
אך למרות כל זאת, שדרוג למערכת ההפעלה Mobile 6 עדיין שווים את זה.

החדשות הטובות ביותר, הן כמובן, שמערכת הפעלה חדשה תביא עימה
מכשירים חדשים לשוק. למערכת החדשה תהיינה 3 גרסאות והן תקראנה “קלסיק”, “סטנדרט”
(למכשירי סמארטפון) ואחרונה “Professional”.

למשתמשים במערכת ההפעלה Windows Mobile 5, מייקרוסופט הודיעה
שהשדרוג למערכת ההפעלה החדשה תהיה תלויה ביצרנים של המכשירים בלבד.

ממשק
משתמשי WM5 כמעט ולא ירגישו בשינויים
מיוחדים בממשק העבודה של המערכת החדשה. אומנם למערכת ההפעלה יש איזושהי נגיעה
בעיצוב של Vista, אבל חוץ מכמה שינויים קוסמטיים במערכת החדשה, הממשק נשאר מאוד
דומה לישן והמוכר.

אחת התלונות הנפוצות ביותר בקשר למערכות ההפעלה של Windows
Mobile, במיוחד בזמן השוואתה למערכות של Palm, זה מספר הצעדים שאנחנו צריכים לעשות
על המסך על מנת לבצע פעולה אחת פשוטה, כמו למשל, סגירה של תוכנית הרצה בזיכרון.
מייקרוסופט ניסו לפתור בעיות אלו, אבל עדיין יש להם הרבה מאוד עבודה
לעשות.

מאפיינים
WM6  אינה מציעה באמת חידושים
“מטריפים”, אל בכל זאת, היא מכילה כמה שיכלולים שיעשו את המכשיר הרבה יותר נח
לתפעול, תוך כדי הידמות למחשב PC. אך בכל זאת, עלינו להזהיר את הקורא כי מספר
שינויים בניהול אנשי קשר ויומן, כמו סנכרון מרחוק, יידרשו מהמשתמש עבודה מול
Exchange 2007, כך שאם לך או החברה שלך אין תוכניות לשדרוגים בקרוב, מייקרוסופט
“השאירה” אותך בצד בינתיים.

אנשי קשר ויומן
מעתה ניהול אנשי הקשר והיומן
יהיה קל יותר וידידותי יותר. היסטוריית השיחות הועברה עם קיטלוג לפי אנשי קשר. דבר
זה יישמע אולי לא משמעותי, אבל אחרי שימוש של כמה שעות תבינו שזה מועיל ביותר,
והרבה יותר נוח לתפעול. בנוסך, מערכת ההפעלה החדשה, מוסיפה כפתור לשליחת SMS
לאיש קשר ברשימה, דבר המייעל ומזרז את פעולת שליחת ההודעה וצפייה בהודעות ישנות,
שיחות קודמות וכו’. אפליקציית היומן החדשה היא גם ידידותית יותר, מפני שהשדרוג
למע”הפ החדשה מביא איתו קלות רבה יותר בצפייה ביומן. קודם כל, יש פס חדש בחלק
העליון של המסך, המראה לך מתי היומן שלך פנוי ומתי הוא כבר תפוס. בנוסף, הינך מקבל
צפייה שבועית, פרוסה בצבעים שונים על מנת להקל על הניהול של היומן, תוכל גם לקבל
פרטים נוספים על כל פגישה, כמו לדוגמא מיקום הפגישה, כך שאין צורך לפתוח כל “פגישה”
בנפרד. יכולות היומן החדש עשירות עוד יותר, אם אתה משתמש בשרת Exchange 2007.
בשימוש כזה, לא רק תוכל לראות מי משתתף ב”פגישה”, אלא גם תוכל לשלוח, לאשר ולקבל
אישורים על כך דרך מכשיר הכף יד.

דואר אלקטרוני
אפליקציית האי-מייל הרבה יותר “חכמה” במערכת הפעלה Mobile 6.
ראשית, כל המכשירים יהנו מטכנולוגיית ה-Direct Push Mail, כך שהמכשיר יוכל לקבל
ולשלוח בזמן אמת דואר אלקטרוני, ולסנכרן מול יומן הOutlook לפגישות, משימות ואנשי
קשר, ובנוסף, המשתמש מקבל חווית  Outlook חדשה, שכן המכשיר יראה בתוכנת הדואר
האלקטרוני, סימוני נוספים למיילים הנכנסים, כגון “דגלים”, “חשיבות” וכו’. ושוב, עם
שרת Exchange 2007 המשתמש ייהנה מאופציות נוספות, כמו לדוגמא, משלוח אוטומטי של
מייל. (“מחוץ למשרד”, “ביום חופש”, וכו’).  חיפוש דואר אלקטרוני כבר לא תהיה
משימה לא נעימה, תודות לפונקציית החיפוש החדש. בדומה לפונקציית החיוג החכם ב-WM5,
גם כאן בהקשת מספר אותיות בלבד, המערכת תביא למשתמש תוצאות חיפוש של מיילים בתיבת
הדואר, לפי שם של איש קשר, ולפי הנושא של המייל.  בנוסף, קיימת כמובן, תמיכה
בדואר חיצוני POP3 ו-IMAP, ועכשיו, ניתן יהיה לראות את המיילים המקוריים בפורמט
HTML מלא, מבלי להתחשב בסוג חשבון הדואר. אם קיים לינק לאתר אינטרנט בתוך הודעת
הדוא”ל, תוכל לגשת אליו ישירות עם הדפדפן של המכשיר, ואם קיים מספר טלפון בתוכן
ההודעה, המערכת תזהה אותו וניתן יהיה לחייג אל המספר הזה ישירות מהמייל.

תוכנות Office לעבודה מהמכשיר:  המערכת החדשה מביאה עימה
תוכנות אופיס כגון Word, Excel ו-PowerPoint.  עם תוכנות אלו המשתמש יוכל
לקרוא ולערוך מסמכי אופיס ישירות מן המכשיר. לצערנו, לא נמצאו שינויים מיוחדים
בתוכנת ה-Media Player.

ציון סופי:

הטוב: WM6 מציעה מגוון רחב של קיצורי דרך חדשים
על מנת לעשות שימוש ביעילות רבה יותר במכשירי הכף יד. נתוני צריכת הסוללה ביחס
למערכת ההפעלה המוכרת (WM5) אינם משמעותיים, אך הם משחקים לטובת המערכת החדשה.
שיפורים בתוכנות הדוא”ל, כגון חיפוש חכם, ותמיכה בפורמט HTML. תוספת יעילה של
תוכנות האופיס בתוך  המכשיר.

הרע: כמה מהשינויים ביומן, בדוא”ל ובאנשי קשר
דורשים שימוש בשרת Exchange 2007 בלבד. אין שינוי משמעותי הנראה לעין ביכולות
מולטימדיה של המכשירים.

שורה תחתונה: למרות שהמערכת החדשה אינה מציעה
תווי פנים חדשניים, וממשק המשתמש נותר כהיה, מערכת ההפעלה Windows Mobile 6 מביאה
עימה שדרוגים חדשים אשר הופכים את מחשב כף היד ליעיל קצת יותר, נוח יותר, וידידותי
יותר למשתמש, ונותן למשתמש בגרסת ה-Pro כלים מתוחכמים יותר לעבודה.

חזרה לדף הבית

A hideous disappointment, and that’s being kind. Describing it as a steaming pile of camel droppings is not too harsh. I’m talking about O2’s XDA Zest, the only XDA branded phone to date not made by HTC.

The Zest is made by Asus, better known for motherboards and notebook computers. Their first foray into the smartphone market has not been auspicious.

It looks cheap, feels cheap and the battery won’t hold enough charge to keep it alive overnight. I got my son Alex one of these as a stopgap, to replace his dead LG phone and dead iPod Touch. The plan was to find a phone that would also handle media, in particular being able to take a large (32GB) micro SD card. On paper the Zest fitted the bill, despite being an unfashionable Windows Mobile phone. As I recently found, you can get WM phones to perform perfectly well as media devices.

In practice, twice in a row his alarm failed to go off in the morning because the battery had died, despite having been fully charged the evening before. I wondered if GPS might be on all the time or the power/display options were screwed, but was able to eliminate all issues of that type.  Maybe the battery was defective. Even so, the plasticky build quality compared with every HTC-built XDA I have ever seen was enough to deem the Zest a reject.

It has this morning been collected by the courier.  Good riddance.

Con los últimos cambios de mi vida laboral me quede sin blackberry y que mejor momento para recuperar mi vieja ipaq hx4700.

Sin embargo, todo el software interesante para usar ahora esta hecho para Windows Mobile 5 o superior, así que la ipaq (hx4700) se quedaba colgada, pues de fabrica viene con Windows Mobile 2003 SE (algo asi como la versión 3 del WM).

Las opciones entonces eran comprar otro dispositivo movil, no usar pda ó finalmente actualizarla

Despues de mucho indagar (google es una maravilla) vi que mucha gente lo ha hecho con buenos resultados (un video en youtube aqui)  basicamente los pasos a seguir son:

• Conseguir un loader : que es el programa que permite flashear la rom de la ipaq
• Conseguir un rom : que es el sistema operativo a instalar  (pueden bajarse de aca)
• Conectar la base al pc
• Poner la pda en modo “bootloader” presionando itask + contacts + reset queda con el logo de hp y cuando se ponen sobre la base dice “usb”
• Luego se ejecuta el loader y se le indica la ruta del rom (es importante que esten en c:\ y que el directorio y/o nombres de los roms esten sin espacios)
• Despues de un rato el sistema queda listo y se debe reiniciar la ipaq (en algunos casos con un par de resets basta)

Listo! queda la ipaq con WM6 lista para los nuevos programas, ya se pueden instalar los paquetes que se deseen instalar.

En la mia tengo:

• Skype: funciona chat y voz 100%
• Fring: para sip phone + chats (msn, yahoo gmail)
• un app para facebook  (ver lista de usuarios, status update, subir fotos etc)
• Opera (web browser)
• comic reader (para leer scans de comic en formato cbr o cbz) <– de este programa me gusto es que al hacer tap sobre una parte de la pantalla logro zoom
• tcpmp para reproduccion de videos (soporta mp4, avi, etc)

Por ultimo en http://rapidshare.com/files/83522035/RealVGA_e_idioma_espa_ol.zip estan los archivos necesarios para dejar la ipaq en español.

y bueno, la verdad ahora estoy contento con este aparatejo

My trusty white E71 broke down. I think the LCD screen just got crack. Well, is about time too, it fall down way too many time and many dent and scratch over the white steel body. Fear not, it will be soon resurrect into the Dark Knight…muahahaha, i giving my E71 a complete face lift, change its casing and add on all those prototype equipment i can found in my workshop.

But damn, after i solder and putting on the new LCD screen and put everything back in piece…i just notice that the LCD screen i just change is defect !!! ARGH !!! Wasted my 20 min and now i need to send my defected LCD screen for warranty…and guess what, that my last 320×240 Nokia LCD i have in stock !!! And my plane gonna depart in like 1 hour plus time?

In the end, i rush back with a Junk phone and i revived my old Asus P527…flashing new OEM Asus Firmware and configure everything to receive my exchange setting.

And i thought i am done…until i go browse my internet and feed…what with the [][][] character !!! Turn out that OEM Firmware come with no Chinese character support.

Oh well, since i am doing it now, might as well putting up a Guide for it:

Window Mobile 5/6/6.1/6.5 – Adding Chinese Character Support

There are many commercial Chinese software out there for WM machine, but most of them very version dependent and resource consuming.

The best way is to get some Chinese Font (with codepage) install onto your WM machine and get a IME (input Method Editor) that will work on the new Chinese Font.

This is what you need:

Chinese Font Base File – http://www.droprecord.com/K5FAGIT8 (One of the best tool in internet, upload to all free upload site ^_^ )

1. Unzip the cab file.
2. Put the cab file into the phone.
3. Install the CAB file and make sure it install in the Device and not the Storage Memory.
4. Restart the phone.
5. That it, you now can view Chinese.

————————————————–

If you wish to use Chinese input as well, i would recommend you use the famous A4 IME. Or better known as ZTA4.

The installation step is same as above and you will get a very nice apple theme IME skin to get used with.

The best part, ZTA4 is FREE !!!

Download Link –> http://www.a4user.com/A4_down_history.asp

I guess if you looking for Chinese IME, you must be able to read in Chinese as well, i skip the translation then…hehe…

Remember to download the correct version and Screen size.

ETC: Asus P527 is a Window Mobile 6/6.1 Touchscreen Phone with QVGA (240×320) screen size

You need to download http://a4input.googlecode.com/files/A4_PPC_SIP_QVGA_v2.0.45.rar

Remember to install onto the device and not Storage Memory. After restart you will have this beautiful Chinese Input Interface

There are masses of geotagged photos in cyberspace nowadays, by which I mean jpegs with location information (latitude, longitude) included in the embedded EXIF data. It’s all thanks to the popularity of the iPhone with its camera, built-in GPS unit and ready connection to the Internet. Social networking sites and interaction with on-line map services such as Google Maps all help to fuel the fun.

The geotag bonanza is not limited to iPhone users. Modern Windows Mobile phones and other platforms all have the same capability, if not the surrounding hype. And we are starting to see GPS units incorporated into point and shoot cameras, for example the Nikon Coolpix P6000 which geotags pictures automatically before they ever leave the camera.

But what about DSLR users? When do we get in-camera GPS? And why would we want it?

I for one don’t see it as a gimmick. For people who take a lot of photos on their travels it can be hard to keep track of exactly where you took every photo. It’s not as if the Eiffel Tower will be in every shot. For example, I took the picture below on a Far East cruise two years ago. I shot this from the deck of the ship as it was making its way from Nagasaki to Osaka, meandering around the Japanese islands.

I was fascinated and bemused by the unexpected sight of a mock-up of Venice. I’d love to know what it was all about and where this was. But I don’t have the details of the route the ship took, so my chances of finding out are probably slim.

GPS-enabling DSLRs would be such an obviously useful thing, but as of today there are none. The closest we have come to it is Nikon’s GP-1. This is a stand-alone GPS unit which attaches to the hot-shoe of the D90 D3, D300, and D700 cameras and adds automatic geotagging of photos. Nothing at all yet for Canon, Sony et al. So what to do?

Purpose-built geologging devices

Well there are dedicated devices for geologging, that is keeping a log of your geographical position by taking regular GPS readings and writing them to a file, along with a corresponding timestamp. The idea is you later use suitable software to match the photos to the location data, by reference to their respective timestamps, and the EXIF data updated to include the geotag. There are also fancy geologging devices which accept an SD card with your photos on it and add the geotags automatically. But such wonders do not come cheap. This one from ATP is about $90.

Windows Mobile phone used as geologging device

I wondered whether I could do the whole thing for free by using the GPS unit built into my Windows Mobile phone, instead of buying a dedicated geologger. My phone (HTC TyTN II) certainly includes GPS in the spec, but did not come with any satellite navigation software and I had never bothered with any, so the GPS unit had probably never even had juice through it. Still, maybe it had not totally atrophied from months of being ignored.

I hit upon a free application, GPSToday, which is essentially a clone of the Google map application for mobile phones. Crucially it has a geologging function. You can set it going and, as you walk around, every 30 seconds it writes your location to a file. You can change the frequency of readings or let it vary it “intelligently”. I guess that means it takes more readings when you are moving about more.

This sounded desperately promising, so I installed it and got it working. It works perfectly, happily latches onto legions of satellites when you are out and about, and on request records your travels in a text file (I elected to call it geolog.txt) in the following format:

time,latitude,longitude,altitude (feet),speed (mph),heading
06-16-2009 17:14:48,34.361445,21.317156,440,0,0
06-16-2009 17:14:59,34.361486,21.317144,407,0,0
06-16-2009 17:15:10,34.361502,21.317144,404,0,0
…

That’s the first snag. It’s just a flat file, not in any recognised format for location data such as GPX or NMEA. How could I expect it to be recognised by any suitable photo geotagging software? GPSToday assure us that a future version will output in GPX format, but for now we’re stuck with the existing non-standard format.

Getting the location data in a recognised format

Enter GPSBabel, a free software application that translates location information between a myriad of formats (including all the proprietary SATNAV manufacturer systems) and even “custom” formats such as the one used by GPSToday. Mind you, it is hardly straightforward. You have to use the “xcsv” mode and create a “style file” to tell GPSBabel how to interpret the non-standard location data.

This is how I did it. I created a folder on my C: drive called GPSBabel and in there put all the files downloaded from the GPSBabel site. I also copied the location data file geolog.txt from my phone to the GPSBabel folder. I then created a text file called GPSToday.txt, in the same folder, into which I inserted the folowing text:

# Format: GPStoday

DESCRIPTION GPStoday
EXTENSION txt

#
# FILE LAYOUT DEFINITIIONS:
#
FIELD_DELIMITER COMMA
RECORD_DELIMITER NEWLINE

PROLOGUE time,latitude,longitude,altitude (feet),speed (mph),heading
IFIELD ISO_TIME,”",”%s” # time
IFIELD LAT_DECIMAL, “”, “%f” # Latitude
IFIELD LON_DECIMAL, “”, “%f” # Longitude
IFIELD ALT_FEET,”",”%.0f” # altitude
PATH_SPEED_MPH,”",”%.1f” # speed
PATH_COURSE,”",”%f” # heading

I saved it and changed the extension to .style so the file became GPSToday.style.

Now I should explain that I did not arrive at that style file at the first attempt. Most of it wasn’t too bad but the time field setting was a nightmare. I tried just about all the options in the GPSBabel help system and none worked. GPSBabel could not understand the date/time data in the format output by GPSToday, no matter what I did.

In the end I decided to use the ISO_TIME option and run a script to rearrange the date/time information into a format that would be understood by GPSBabel in conjunction with the ISO_TIME setting. In practice, this meant writing a bit of Visual Basic code. For convenience I did this from Excel.

This is the code:

Sub FixTime()

Dim TextLine As String
Dim LineBuffer As String

Open “C:\GPSBabel\geolog.txt” For Input As #1
Open “C:\GPSBabel\geologISOTIME.txt” For Output As #2

Line Input #1, TextLine
Print #2, TextLine

Do While Not EOF(1)
Line Input #1, TextLine

LineBuffer = “”
LineBuffer = LineBuffer & Mid$(TextLine, 7, 4) & “-”
LineBuffer = LineBuffer & Mid$(TextLine, 1, 2) & “-”
LineBuffer = LineBuffer & Mid$(TextLine, 4, 2) & “T”
LineBuffer = LineBuffer & Mid$(TextLine, 12, 8) & “Z”
LineBuffer = LineBuffer & Mid$(TextLine, 20)

Print #2, LineBuffer

Loop

Close #1
Close #2

End Sub

On running this VB macro, a new file, geologISOTIME.txt is created in the same folder, with the same data as geolog.txt but with the date/time format changed so that it would be acceptable to GPSBabel.

You can then run GPSBabel, by double clicking the file GPSBabelGUI.exe. You have to point it at the input file, geologISOTIME.txt, and specify that it is in xcsv format and also specify the style file, GPSToday.style. Give the output file name as say geolog.gpx and specify the gpx output format. Then run the translation process to get your location data into a standards compliant format you can use with a photo geotagging program.

Applying the geotags

The final step is to feed both the gpx file and your photos to a program which can do the timestamp matching and write the geotags to the photo files. I picked a free open source program called GPicSync.

It is fairly self explanatory in use. If you managed to cope with the format conversions then running it will not be too taxing. It creates new versions of your photos, with the geotags written into the EXIF data, and saves the untouched originals in a backup folder. Job done.

Proving the geotagging has actually worked

As an independent check I downloaded Microsoft’s Pro Photo Tools 2 suite, again free. If you open one of your geotagged photos in that application you can use the built-in map function to locate where the geotag is saying the picture was taken.

I did that and was amazed to find that my pictures were all correctly geotagged. Having done the hard work I now have a proven workflow for geotagging photos taken with my DSLR, and it did not cost me a penny.

Using the geotagging solution in practice

It’s simply a matter of making sure you take your phone on your photo trips and the geologging function is in operation from before you take the first picture in a batch, and until after the last picture in the batch. You can keep starting and stopping the logging function. You don’t have to change the logging file name, GPSToday just appends new time/location records without overwriting.

It is important to make sure the GPS is logged in to some satellites before starting shooting. Best to turn the GPS on in persistent mode (see GPSToday help) and just leave it on for the day. And check periodically it is still locked on. You don’t want to be caught out by finding the GPS is off or not latched onto a healthy bunch of satellites as you are about to start taking pictures.

One important point: time zone. The workflow will only work if the timestamps on the photos and the phone are in sync. Make sure, particularly if you are travelling abroad, that the time settings on both camera and phone are in sync.

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that with a little bit of effort you can set up a WM phone so that it can do all the things you would expect from an iPhone.  Maybe not with quite the same slick style and chic design, but there are some compensations.  Pocket Outlook is a better calendaring and contacts tool than comes with the iPhone, much better suited to business needs.  And the Pocket Office applications, although limited, are occasionally useful.

The whole balance may change though when the ZuneHD comes out, particularly if the rumours are true that the Zune software will be made available for WM phones, effectively creating the ZunePhone. I don’t know if that will be new WM phones only, but I can always claim an upgrade.

Since I had my Omina problems the other week (it’s about to go in for repair as there are still some strange hardware issues) I lost lots of basic information on the phone.  One of the things I lost was the ring tone.  I can’t remember what I had before, but I like to have something simple and professional that won’t cost me and won’t embarrass me in the office.  I don’t want the latest polyphonic chart hit blaring from my pocket as I sit at my desk.

Download Ringtone

I spent a little while trawling the web and it’s growing more difficult every time I get a phone to find such a ring tone (and I always forget where I saved a copy).  This time around I decided I’d see what I could do myself.  With a bit of sampling and Audacity I created a simple oscillating tone followed by a brief silence.  When this is repeated during a call ringing through it sounds quite like an old simple mobile phone ring tone … simple, obvious, and for me just what I wanted.

• Download Simple Ringtone.mp3 (23.7 Kb MP3)

If you have a QR code reader on your Internet capable phone, click on the “download ringtone” graphic to display it full size and then you can download it direct to your device.

To add the file to the the Omnia it just needs to be downloaded and placed into the \\My Device\Application Data\Sounds\ directory.  Then the file can be selected as a ring tone from the phone drop down list in the phone settings – it appears as the file name without the extension – i.e. Simple Ringtone.mp3.

Having tried a number of Windows Mobile audio player programs I am back with Windows Media Player Mobile (WMPM), at least for everything apart from audiobooks.  And I am back to AudiblePlayer for the latter.

As I explained in a previous post, I had moved away from AudiblePlayer because it did not support my bluetooth A2DP earphones properly, with the result that the audio (which is mono) was coming out of the left channel only.  I had therefore embarked on a tour of proprietary media player solutions, in the hope of finding one that would play audiobooks properly and (ideally) handle my music and podcasts as well.

I had all but settled on Pocket Tunes, which ticks most of the boxes but is quite expensive. It also offers syncing direct with iTunes, as opposed to my current two-stage solution of  using  iTunes for podcast capture followed by WMP for syncing with the phone. Ironically, it was my attempt to get this iTunes sync functionality working which ultimately did away with the need for Pocket Tunes at all.

To explain how this came about we need to introduce my old nemesis, ActiveSync, into the story. Strictly I should call it WMDC, as Microsoft have rebranded it for Vista in the hope that we’d all be fooled into thinking it really isn’t as bad as we remember it. It turns out that when I installed WMDC on my Vista PC a year ago it was missing certain key drivers.  An updated version was released later but not rolled out automatically. Of course, I had no way of knowing that. But I had noted that some applications for the phone refused to install over WMDC, giving error messages of various descriptions. Where CAB files were provided by the vendor I could use them to get software installed on my phone, but in other cases I was stuck.  For example, I had not been able to get the latest versions of Audible Manager and AudibleAir installed on my PC and phone.  The installs failed and, at the time, I didn’t understand the error messages. It wasn’t stopping me enjoying audiobooks at that point so I didn’t waste time trying to get to the bottom of the problem.

Of course, when I attempted to install the Pocket Tunes iTunes sync software I hit the same issue again, the error message being “Can’t find CE Application Manager“.  This time I was less inclined to give up.  Googling took me to this website. Now being aware that I had an out of date (and incomplete) installation of WMDC I installed the current version.  This had the benefit that I was at last able to install Pocket Tunes iTunes sync and establish that it worked very nicely.

And while about it I also installed the latest Audible software, both to my PC and my phone, now that the path was clear.  This included an upgrade from AudiblePlayer 5.5.0.6 to 5.5.0.7.  And guess what? The new AudiblePlayer supports bluetooth properly so audiobooks play on both channels.  Still mono of course but at least in the middle of my head rather than in one ear only.

Conclusion? I don’t need to spend money on Pocket Tunes. I have gone back to WMPM and am using the latest AudiblePlayer for my audiobooks. Problem solved for an outlay of nil, plus a modicum of perseverance.

Mind you, ActiveSync/WMDC had the last laugh. After I installed the latest WMDC, it wouldn’t sync with my phone unless I removed one of the two established relationships.  I wasn’t sure which one was the one I needed so picked one more or less at random. After the next sync every single appointment had been wiped from my Calendar in Pocket Outlook. Thank you, WMDC. So kind. At least it had the good grace to leave my contacts alone.

Most iPhone users will think of the media capabilities of the device as mainly about music and video. So far, in looking at my Windows Mobile based alternative to the iPhone, I have been focusing on podcasts and audiobooks. That’s partly because they are important to me and partly because they need the most effort to get working smoothly on a WM PDA-phone, whereas music is obviously trivial, right?

Well, maybe if all your music takes the form of CDs you ripped yourself in mp3 format, using say iTunes. Provided it is all sitting in a folder which is “watched” by WMP on your PC it will appear in your WMP Library. If you want to sync a particular album to your phone, you just go the Album view in the Library, find the desired album, right click and select “Add to Sync List”. Next time you synchronise with your phone the album will be copied across. It is then easy to find and play in your phone’s WMP Library, and the album art will be there too if you had added that.

It gets more complicated though if you have bought iTunes music and have songs in say .m4a (AAC) format. Natively, WMP will not recognise them so they will not appear in the Library, whichever folder they are in and WMP will not be able to play them. Thankfully, there are WMP plug-ins available to fix that. As far as DRM’d music is concerned (.m4p) you really can’t use those in the Windows world outside of iTunes. The only option is to remove the DRM encryption so you end up with an m4a. I’ll leave you investigate that for yourself if you wish.

To enable desktop WMP playback of (unprotected) AAC there is a free plug-in from Orban technologies. The plug-in works well but on its own won’t make your m4a files visible to the WMP Library. For that you need a tag extender plug-in. There are several available and generally seem to work well. You can try the Softpointer Tag Support Plugin, or maybe this plugin among others.

With all that in place music is fine on a WM6 phone. The AAC files play fine natively on the phone in WMP. No click wheel but I would have to say that WMP works well enough as a vanilla music player.

Speaking of click-wheels and Apple, did I get this wrong or does the iPhone NOT support bluetooth stereo streaming (A2DP), even in its 3G manifestation? That’s a complete and utter showstopper for me. I had been giving serious thought to getting an iPhone when my WM phone’s contract runs out in December.  But my bluetooth Sennheiser earphones have transformed my mobile audio and no way would I go back to wired. Suddenly, I’m entirely happy with my iPhoneless life.

Following on from my voyage of discovery, I had settled into using Mobile WMP for playing podcasts on my HTC Windows Mobile phone, and AudiblePlayer for playback of audiobooks. All was fine and working well.

Then my kids, bless them, took my hints and bought me a set of Sennheiser MM200 bluetooth stereo earphones for my birthday. Fantastic bit of kit.  No fiddling with wires.  No tangles. Great quality audio. Only one teensy drawback.  AudiblePlayer didn’t appear to support A2DP properly so that my audiobooks played out of the left ear only.  The books are mono so I wasn’t missing anything, but it’s very disconcerting to have the narrator’s voice just coming out of one channel.

In the search for a solution I found myself trying a sequence of alternative Windows Mobile audio playback applications, looking for the magic bullet that would play audiobooks on both channels and, while about it, meet my podcast and music playback needs too.

PocketMind’s Pocket Music

I found Pocket Music by Googling for WM music players that could play audiobooks.  There don’t seem to be many of those, and the ones that do aren’t free. WM players seem to come in three categories: free, around $20 and around $40.  The free ones presumably pay no licence fees so have the most limited coverage of music file formats.  Pocket Music is $19.95 and claims to play audible books.  It looks like you have to pay an extra $9.95 for AAC support, which affects me because at least one podcast I listen to is in that format.

At first I thought I’d found a real winner. It did, as billed, play audiobooks in .aa format. And out of both ears over bluetooth. Not only that, it had some other features that were a positive boon to audiobook/podcast playback.  For example, you can program hardware buttons to carry out actions chosen from a wide range, such as 30 second skip forward or back. The former is perfect for going past adverts in podcasts, Tivo style, or short boring bits. The skip back is great if you didn’t quite catch something and want to hear it again without risk of zooming way past it.  I also like the excellent support for bookmarking of both audiobooks and podcasts, and the ability to remember the place in a podcast even after the player was closed and relaunched.  These two features alone put the podcast experience on my WM6 phone way ahead of an iPod, and that is saying a lot.

I thought I had it, my all in one solution, and was quite ready to pay the $19.95 at the end of the 15 day free trial. Alas, it was not to be. Sadly, Pocket Music does not like long files. After a while it starts to struggle with playback.  It stops in mid sentence, pauses and goes back a couple of seconds then restarts.  It is then fine for a few minutes, then does it again.  After a while, on a long podcast, it starts to become very, very irritating. No amount of fiddling with the ample options for thread priorities and buffer sizes could cure the problem.

It was definitely the fault of the player.  This never happened with any of the others I tried, even in combination with the bluetooth earhones, and I tried a fair few.

Pocket Music was also a bit buggy. There was a facility for re-ordering playlist items but it was clunky to use and never seemed to work. Worst of all was the tendency, after making settings changes, to lose the application-specific options in the lower menu bar.  The standard Today screen options of Calendar and Contacts would appear instead of Playlist and Menu as in the picture above.  The only way out was to close and relaunch the player.

I decided to move on.

Pocket Tunes

Pocket Tunes has been around for years in the Palm OS world, but only fairly recently became available for Windows Mobile.  It is a premium product at a premium price: $37.95.

It is very slick in use and playback is exemplary; definitely no skips or jumps. It is supposed to support audiobooks, but not the free trial version.  Still, I gave it a fair try-out listening to podcasts.  It was excellent at locating my podcast playlist and sorting my podcasts into correct order of date/time created.  Better at it than any other player, including WMP, but didn’t allow manual override of playback order.

Pocket Tunes is well specced, but lacks the excellent forward/back skip feature of Pocket Music.  It does though have good bookmarking capabilities.

One particularly cute feature is the ability to sync directly with iTunes, but this does require various bits of extra software installation to set up.

Pocket Tunes does seem more promising than Pocket Music, but it is expensive and does not quite seem to tick all the boxes.

Might keep playing musical music players for a bit longer.