Nov20

CKS EBE Construction Finished?

After some false starts and delays, I have finally gotten CKS EBE working on this prodiuction server. True, it is not the prettiest or most customized theme in the universe, but it is working.
 
Next, I have to try and get the Windows Live Authentication configured correctly so y'all can use your MSN/.NET Messenger IDs to sign into the site. I also have further some customizations to the banner and theme planned. Oh! And, a complete reworking of the post catagories.
Published: Nov-20-08 | 0  Comment | 0  Link to this post

Nov19

From Bricked to Tricked Part III: Adding That Personal Touch

One thing I am very particular about is that I like to customize my tech so it suits my personality and represents me. With Windows Mobile, this is pretty easy to do, but the pieces are scattered all over the place, and you’ll have to develop some new skills if you don’t want to just go with a theme developed by someone else.

Because it came with my ROM, I started with a theme called HTC Black. This is a nice theme in glossy grayscale that purports to be similar to the look and feel of the iPhone.  I like the glossy black bars for their clean design and neutral colors that go with practically everything. My OpenTouch ROM included a background graphic that did not impress me much but was good enough for quite a while – a black cross-hatch backdrop that sort of reminded me of the eye of one of those alien “greys” that hail from a Bud Hopkins or Whitley Strieber paperback.

When it came to making the phone really mine, I wasn’t sure what direction to go in. When the MDA was my phone I had named it GladOS. Eric has since inherited it and renamed it Companion Cube. My earlier XDA I (Wallaby) phone was named for Naomi Armitage (from the anime Armitage the Third) and it had a custom theme to match, but I hadn’t done any hardcore customizations since then. I seem to have a thing for naming my phones after scary women. For the Wing, I named it Revi (after the character from the anime Black Lagoon), continuing this tradition.

Today Screen Theme: Desktop Wallpaper

As it happens, my default ring tone is still GladOS saying “Are you still there?”, but for the visual appearance I wanted something considerably more badass for a character like the gun toting Revi.

There are lots of good desktop wallpapers for Black Lagoon, many developed by fans, but they're all sized for the PC. You have to be careful when porting them into Windows Mobile, not only because of the size, but also you have to consider the smaller, more cluttered, and likely more difficult to read Today screen.

I found an excellent article on creating properly sized images for Windows Mobile 5/6 themes. Because I want to conserve space in main memory, I decided to go with the single image sized 320 x 294 pixel format. You can use two different images instead: one for portrait, and the other for landscape.

The trick is to use images that don’t make the start menu or today screen too hard to see or read. I took a suitable graphic, and after sizing it down appropriately, I reduced the brightness considerably. For a startup Image, I used the same graphic, but reduced the saturation quite a bit and also made it even darker.  This has an interesting, and sometimes eerie, effect in that it often looks as if the start menu is causing parts of the today screen and menu bar to become transparent.

Revi with Guns (normal)
Revi with Guns (dark)
Revi with Guns (normal)
Revi with Guns (dark)

Once you have good images, you need to make a theme. I used a program called ThemeGenCE (download here) to develop my theme by downloading HTC Black directly off the phone and then making changes to it. This application was not very intuitive, and not completely in English, but it was very functional and I was able to muddle through doing basic modifications like wallpaper without any problems at all.

Slide 2 Unlock

For the S2U2 screen saver, things were much simpler. I simply had to find appropriate images and scale them down to 320 by 240. (Actually, I accidentally made them 320 by 200 which was a mistake that I intend to correct soon.) S2U2 already does some darkening with software that makes white text easier to read. Once you have these graphics, you just copy over the Wallpaper.jpg and WallpaperL.jpg files in the S2U2 program folder.

Black Lagoon
Revi
Portrait
Landscape

The Full Package

Here are some screen caps to show how this turned out. Sorry there aren't any for S2U2, because the screen capture hotkey won't work when it is active.

Start Menus
Today Landscape
Start Menus
Today in Landscape
HTC Clock
HTC Weather
HTC Clock
HTC Weather
SPB Tasks
SPB Notes
SPB Contacts
SPB Notes

Looking at these now, I think I might want to make some more modifications to improve the readability of the start menus and make the theme just a bit more stylish. Also, though I like Dutch's Desktop, the landscape image doesn't really thrill after you cover it up with S2U2's clock and other screen clutter, so I will probably replace it.

 

Published: Nov-19-08 | 0  Comment | 0  Link to this post

Nov19

From Bricked to Tricked Part II: Applications You Can't Live Without

[Author's Note: I will add screen shots and links at a later time, so if you'd like anything in the meantime, just contact me.]

Over the past year I have tried many, many apps on my phone. If you do the same, you will likely find many that don’t work at all, and some that are so difficult to use that they aren’t worth having. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of software hanging around from the Pocket PC era, so it can be difficult to tell what is truly useful - especially now with the improved capabilities offered by Windows Mobile 6.

There are some real gems out there in the wastelands, though. I’d rather not bore to death with an endless laundry list of the applications I have tried, what they do, and where to download them. In fact, I already have a list for that if you really want to know. Instead I want to focus on what I call the “must haves”, and how they were truly transformational in that they changed how I use my mobile device.

Google Maps Mobile

I can’t tell you how many times this application has made a real difference to me when I was in a pinch. Having access to a map and your location when you are out and around is something I don’t honestly know how I ever lived without, but having all the features of Google Maps on your phone - plus more – is totally awesome!

 Even if you have a car-based GPS (I did, but my wife destroyed it) there are still those times when you will be out on foot. In my case, this is especially useful, since I commute to work by train, Metro, and good old fashioned shoe leather. Also, when you consider that my eyesight is extremely poor – so much so that I can’t read street signs on the opposite side of the road – this application does wonders for helping me know where I am and where I should be going.

Google’s My Location feature works amazingly well even with my GPS-less T-Mobile phone. It gives me a radius of certainty around where it thinks I am, and I have only ever caught it once or twice where I was in fact sitting outside of that circle. I can only imagine it will be that much better on phones with built in or USB/SD based GPS devices.

The traffic feature is useful for all major interstates between New York and DC. I admit that I have not really travelled outside this area, so I can’t speak to other parts of the country. However, I will say that they could do better by providing more granular data for local streets, accidents, etc. I don’t know why, but I think it helps to know why you’re stuck in traffic.

The search features are excellent. Over time, I have found that Google has more or less replaced your phone book, 411, Switchboard.com, and practically any other means of finding a business. Having the same ability to search for the nearest FedEx Kinko’s or Starbucks while you are out and about as you did when you were at home planning your trip really sets you free.

Things I would improve about this application are its absolute need to have a network connection at all times. Mobile apps should not close or crash when they can’t find the Internet, IMHO. At least it should offer a chance to retry, but the ability to cache some data (especially in your home turf) would be of great benefit. Also, I don’t know how one could implement it technically, but a virtual compass would make a great feature – so I can tell not just what corner I am on, but will crossing the street take me in the right direction. Lastly, I would like to see better integration between PIM Contacts and the Google Maps application, so that I can say get directions to a contact’s address, or add a location that I found on Google Maps to my Contacts.

Tome Raider 3

I will simply say this. When you spend two hours plus on the train every day, you will want to bring a book. Over the summer I carried a backpack with a laptop, but the current job provides a desktop PC, so I am not weighed down. This means not only that I am served very well by anything I can do with my mobile that could have been done on my laptop, but also carrying along a paperback book is no longer a trivial matter of stuffing it into my bag. If I want to keep my hands free (more or less), then e-books are the way to do.

Tome Raider is a great product. I have not yet had to pay for it to get enjoyment out of it, but I suspect I will eventually do so in order to get access to their extended library. For now, I am more than amused by the full collection of material by Cory Doctorow and various works by other authors both new and old.

To make this application really complete, you need to download the CIA World Fact Book as well as a copy of the Wikipedia. This makes Tome Raider not just a great tool for your amusement, but an indispensible reference manual that you can rely on even where the Internet itself fears to tread. (Oooooo, DC Metro - scary!)

pRSSReader

RSS feeds have been around for quite some time, but I was always sort of behind the curve in figuring out how to make them a useful part of my life. Some of my thoughts on this would apply to any RSS Reader, but they have specific relevance to RSS readers on mobile devices in particular. In fact, I have long since wanted an RSS reader that was a bit less heavy handed with memory and offers a nicer user interface. But, no such application forthcoming, I will take the best that is available.

One of the best things that RSS is good for is for making good use of my time on the train. I noticed some time ago that I spend about 2 hours virtually every day reading my favorite blogs, news sites, and so forth. On my PC, RSS lets me do this without identifying to my coworkers that I am surfing Digg, DailyKos, Politico, and so on. Moving these feeds to my mobile I can shift my browsing into the morning and afternoon hours, make better use of my time, and resist the urge to fool around at work (excepting those days when I just feel totally useless, of course). The list of feeds I have currently includes a mix of news, politics, work related technology, and fun stuff. I have more material than I can reasonably sift through given only a few hours a day, so I can skim over it or dig it at my leisure.

I have begun to find other useful applications for RSS, especially as information providers have made more and more information available in this way. For example, I now have Google Alerts trained with several searches that will return results as they appear bearing my own name or online alias. This helps me protect my privacy and better manage my net presence. I can do the same sorts of searches for topics of interest: for example, give me all “Barack Obama” appearing on Google in the last 24 hours.

Also, SharePoint provides excellent access to its lists and libraries via RSS, and I am only beginning to envision how I can leverage this, but one example would be to tie our home shopping list to my phone, so I will know if I need to pick anything up (from one of the many stores in DC) before heading home. Because RSS works in the background, I don’t need to remember to connect to a web site to check for updates about this kind of information.

pRSSReader can be configured using OPML files, which I suggest that you do so you can set up your feeds on a real PC where it will go so much faster. Once you have them imported, you can organize them into folders. I recommend you avoid nested folders, at least with the current version (v1.4.2).

You can configure caching and image downloads to suit your memory capacity and network connectivity, but I like to keep offline copies of everything in case I am underground.  Note that some feeds will not work well with offline browsing. For example, the Washington Post is virtual useless because of its user registration requirements and non-mobile friendly web site (the Baltimore Sun is a much more mobile friendly newspaper). Also, I have not tried the application for use with “pod-casts” or RSS feeds that deliver streaming media. It would be nice if these were supported, but I am not holding out much hope.

Eventually, I would like to see a much more powerful RSS reader with a better UI based on the .NET Compact Framework. Failing that, I will continue to stand by this open source application, in the hopes they will maybe take in the direction I’d like it to go. (You can download pRSSReader and its source code at Google Code.)

Office Mobile 2007

Simply having the ability to work with MS Office format files while on your phone can be priceless. Though I would never want to rely on my phone as a platform for creating documents from whole cloth, being able to read these documents is indispensible, and being able to work with early drafts can be very useful at times.

Of particular interest, my son found that Pocket Excel was a very useful tool in his cryptography class, as he was able to develop spreadsheet based tools for performing Caesar, Vigenere, and Affine ciphers - as well as useful tools for finding modular inverses and prime numbers. This got me to thinking that there might be many other applications for mobile friendly spreadsheets that I haven’t yet considered. For example, I used to enter my work logs into Excel, so that I could track hours worked independently from the hours on my time sheet or invoice. Just having access to your household budget on the phone could be a useful thing.

One Note and/or Pocket Notes

I used to carry a notebook and pen with me to meetings, and I know many people who still do – even if only so they look like they’re paying attention. The information I would collect generally took extra time to drag into the computer for later use. Now, I enter my notes directly into my phone, or even record the entire meeting. When people ask me if I brought a pad, I smile and flash them my phone.

Doing things this makes everything easier in so many ways, but I do worry just a bit that people may think I am distracted. How do they know I am not surfing the net or writing emails? I just have to try very hard to stay focused on what is going on in the conversation, so I am not caught off guard should someone try to test me. Of course, if I am falling asleep, it is probably better to be surfing the net. Over time, I think people will come to accept this way of taking notes, especially when they see the benefits.

One other thing: for the record, I don’t really see OneNote as being better in any way than the Pocket Notes that comes with Windows Mobile. They both work with ActiveSync, and Pocket Notes supports pen drawings, but it does not appear that OneNote does (I could be wrong). The only real difference is where the information is stored on the PC and when/how they sync. Use what works for you.

SPB Diary

The author brags that Diary may cause you never to leave your Today screen again, and I think they may be right. In my opinion, this is one of the best apps ever made for Pocket PC. The only bad thing about it is that it is only available as a Today plug in, which makes it slow and can make it a little more difficult to read depending on how your Today wallpapers are set. I’d like to see the same functionality from a stand-alone application. But, it is still damn useful.

What SPB Diary does is to portray your common productivity information in a much more useful way than you can get from the standard Pocket Outlook suite (Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, and Messaging). Contacts support categories, custom colors, and icons. You can also display contact photos.  The task list supports categories and other filtering options, so it is well suited to show your goals both long term and immediate. The calendar will include tasks that are due on specific dates.

The Notes panel will display all readable text files on your device (Word, Text, Pocket Notes) organized by the date created or modified, so you won’t lose information regardless of where you saved it. There’s a tab for mail that helps consolidate mail from multiple accounts, and a special events tab that can turn even the most thoughtless schmuck like me into someone who remembers birthdays and anniversaries. Now, how shall I find my anniversary without asking the wife? Hmmm

There is even the ability to include extra tabs with other Today controls, so you can really reclaim space on your Today screen. I like this a lot, and recommend you use it in horizontal mode so that it does not automatically trigger the need for horizontal scroll bars. This worked very well for me, as I added HTC Home (which is itself a kind of tabbed plug in) as the default tab, and Diary will switch back to it if I am idle for five minutes.

Slide to Unlock (S2U2)

Slide to unlock is the mobile equivalent to a screen saver. It locks your screen when you are inactive, so that random pocket calls do not occur. S2U2 has a great interface that is very slick and will make Pocket PC users feel like they just bought an iPhone.  It is very personalizable, so you can and should customize it with your own wallpapers to give your phone that extra touch. Further, it can display time, weather, upcoming appointments, message status, and other information – so you may not need to unlock the phone for example if you are just checking the time. It includes a nice feature called Slide 2 Answer which displays large photos when people call (note that you’ll need the companion app S2P in order to upload high resolution contact photos).  There is also a media player, S2P, which integrates with the lock screen so you can see what is playing while the phone is locked.

Resco Explorer

Every Windows Mobile device needs some kind of upgrade from the weakling File Explorer that ships with it. There are many choices, including Total Commander and products from SPB, and SKTools. However, Resco has become the gold standard. The new version boasts settings that are touch friendly, letting you get a lot more done without having to whip out your stylus. It is a worthy addition which includes a registry editor and FTP client, so you won’t need to install separate applications to do these jobs.

Sprite Backup

There are lots of backup tools out there. This is the one that I like. You can schedule regular backups from ROM to SD, and perform complete backups of everything while it is docked. I have not even begun to scratch the surface of creating a decent backup plan. Knowing how many times I have customized myself into a corner, you think I would learn.

AirScanner Virus Checker

Personally, I don’t really care which anti-virus suite you choose (as long as you have one), everyone needs a good virus checker. AirScanner was one of the first for Pocket PC. It is affordable, and relatively frugal in terms of CPU and memory resources.

Pocket RAR

Just like WinRAR has become the programmers’ compression tool of choice on Windows, Pocket RAR ensures that no matter the type of compression (including ISO and CAB) you will be able to dig into it and get the files you want.

Snood for Pocket PC

If you have only one game on your phone, it might as well be snood. That’s all I really have to say about the matter. This game is unchanged since the days of the Pocket PC, and it really doesn’t need to be, because the original port was excellent.

Other OS Modifications

There are a number of other enhancements to the Windows Mobile operating system that you should have. In my opinion, if your ROM doesn’t come with these preinstalled, you may want to consider a better ROM.

·         BatteryStatus: the best thing about this app, other than the battery meter, is the OMAP Scalar functionality, which can programmatically over-clock your CPU. I was able to boost my 201 MHz processor to 234 MHz without any issues, and the scalar function reduces the CPU to conserve power and reduce heat when the processor utilization is low.

·         HTC QuickMenu: Not to be confused with QuickMenu by Nanling, this task manager application replaces the X button in the upper right, and it fully compatible with QuickMenu and BattaryStatus. To enable it, go to System > Settings > Task Manager > Buttons.

·         Nanling’s QuickMenu: great improvement over the conventional Start menu. Be advised that some features of BattaryStatus are incompatible with it, namely the TaskBar Indicator.

·         HTC Home: a stylish clock and jump panel for contacts and commonly used apps. It also has very nice weather panel and some other useful features.

·         Task Manager: This is a great little application that extends the basic TM capability to include many more system processes and settings. It is a must have for people who like to tinker.

Published: Nov-19-08 | 0  Comment | 0  Link to this post

Nov19

From Bricked to Tricked Part I: The Un-boxing and Flashing of HTC Windows Mobile PDA Phones

Some people will want to dig right into un-boxing their phones and installing a custom ROM. I was not ready for this, but if you are either tech savvy or very reckless, then you might be. If you’re not sure, you can always back up the factory ROM before you flash a new one. By far the definitive site for flashing HTC phones is www.xda-developers.com, but chances are if you have such a phone and access to Google, then you already know that.

It took me quite a lot of digging before I got the hang of un-boxing and flashing phones. There are a lot of guides out there, and each individual phone is slightly different. That said, most of the HTC/T-Mobile phones I have done were similar. Though I would not take it as a bible for every phone model, the XDA-Dev Wiki for the HTC Excalibur (T-Mo Dash) has two excellent walkthroughs (here and here) that help to explain the process. Though what follows is specific to HTC phones (will probably not help you with iPhone, BlackBerry, G3, etc), I will try my best avoid hardware specific stuff that might be different on each phone and just try to convey the concepts.

First things first, make sure you have a computer with ActiveSync installed. For my installs I used ActiveSync 4.5. There are processes for getting all of this to work with Vista, and I have done so in the past, but you will spend less time and have fewer headaches if you work from Windows XP. I have recently seen some phones that say they can be flashed with ROM files from the SD card, which would let you bypass the whole ActiveSync thing, but I have never tried this process. All the instructions I have followed say that you should remove your SD card during the flashing process.

Next, you’ll have to install a policy change to Windows Mobile that will let you run unsigned applications. (If you ever want to benefit from all that free or semi-free software that is out there for Windows Mobile and Pocket PC you will need to do this anyway.) This is done by means of a CAB file that you can copy to the phone memory and run, but some unlocking tools will do this for you automatically. (For all these steps described, the level of automation will vary depending on the unlocking utility used.) When this is done, it will need a reboot.

Among other things, the step above lets you put a RAPI application on the phone so that the unlocking application can access it over the USB/ActiveSync connection. RAPI is how many of the automated boot loader and flashing utilities do their heavy lifting, and it saves you a lot of frustration and the potential for manual error that could result in “bricking” your phone.

This would be about the point where you can unhide the Extended ROM and back up its contents as well as your main memory. There are many tools to help you do this, and they will likely be different for each device, although they do seem to overlap in some cases. I can’t stress this enough: back it up now. You may find someday that you need to restore it to the factory ROM to prevent any issues with the warranty. Besides, there will be some CAB files in the extended ROM that you may want to re-install later, a licensed copy of Office Mobile for example.

 Next comes something called “CID Unlocking”. This allows you to put any custom ROM on your device, as opposed to only those certified by T-Mobile for example. Note that this is different from “SIM Unlocking“(also known simply as “Unlocking”), which allows the phone itself to work with any carrier’s SIM card. Some CID unlocking tools can also SIM unlock the phone, while other phone/tool combinations can’t. I believe there is now a law that says that the provider must offer you a code to unlock the SIM if your account is in good standing.

Whether you need to CID unlock your phone and how it is specifically done will depend a lot on not only the hardware model but also the version of the core firmware, or AKU (analogous to a ROM “Service Pack”), that is installed on it. For example, my old phone was easily unlocked because I had an AKU before version 2.0, but if I had gotten my hardware a little later on (or perhaps a warranty replacement) then I would have had to downgrade the phone first, unlock the phone, and then upgrade the a newer factory ROM, all before being able to load my custom ROM on it. My understanding is that once you have CID unlocked the phone you will never need to do it again, no matter how many times you flash it.

Having gotten the phone to where it is fully unlocked and can communicate with your PC via RAPI, the next step is to get the phone into the correct boot loader. Tools for this step come by many names, such as “USPL/Jump SPL”, “Hard SPL” and “Soft SPL”, and the way these tools work varies considerably (so read the docs carefully). There is also typically a manual key combination for doing this which loads the factory installed boot loader. The trick here is to get into a boot loader that does not care what version of the ROM you put on the phone; the BL from the factory will typically neither let you downgrade nor install a ROM with “weird” version information. Boot loader screens have various appearances. Here are some examples:

·         Factory installed boot loader with three-color screen

·         Boot loader turns screen completely off-white

·         Boot loader black screen with penguin and some text

Once the phone is in this state, it is ready to take a new ROM. Enter the ROM Upgrade Utility. This is a modified version of the same tool that is provided by HTC and T-Mobile for upgrading the factory approved ROMs, but in this case it will be installing a customized file. The ROM files have the extension RUU, named after the tool, but they are packages that contain .NB files that will be flashed to the phone’s ROM and Extended ROM.

Since now is a good time to ask, you did remember to back up your ROM and Extended ROM, just in case, right?

Which ROM you use depends on your preferences and whether you have done all the right unlocking steps above to ensure it will be accepted. For my Wing, I used a version of OpenTouch, but you can pick from any of the ROMs that have been published by the community for your phone model. It’s a good idea to get familiar with all the applications they include; hence my earlier failed experiment with installing practically everything available. Also, consider how much of the main memory you want to preserve. If you have a large SD card (who doesn’t these days) you might want a smaller “lite” ROM with fewer features pre-installed. Remember, you can always install more applications later.

So, that’s un-boxing and flashing your phone in a nutshell. Next, you’ll want some applications, so I’ll talk about the some of the applications that I’ve tried, which are killers, and which ones should just be killed.

Published: Nov-19-08 | 0  Comment | 0  Link to this post

Nov19

From Bricked to Tricked: The Story of my Mobile Metamorphosis

I have been a fan of the idea of mobile transformation for a long time – or rather, the idea that you can use mobile technology to transform your life. That said, I am something of an old dog, and though I have always been something of a gadgeteer, but old habits die hard. At times, I’ve had a shortage of imagination when it comes to figuring out what that process looks like. At other times, the technology itself has gotten in the way. Also, there is the time investment required, which I never seem to be able to overcome. About a year ago, I promised myself that I would devote time to making this transformation work, and that I would write an article about my experiences. This is the culmination of that effort.

My story begins about a year ago when my T-Mobile MDA (a.k.a. HTC Wizard) went on the fritz and I began to realize exactly where I did (and did not) rely on it. At that time, it was interesting to notice that it was a sometimes useful phone and e-mail appliance, but that I was not really making use of it in any other way. Nonetheless, I deal emotionally handle with the concept of living without a cell phone.  While I was willing to wait for a few days to have a new device shipped, I wasn’t prepared to go longer than that for the minor USB port repair the MDA needed.

When my replacement phone arrived, a shiny new Wing (a.k.a. HTC Herald), I resolved to discover for myself exactly how far I could push mobile computing and my own imagination. I spent several iterations installing, refining, and eventually destroying my device.

My first attempt was done on the T-Mobile Factory ROM that shipped with the phone. In retrospect this was a mistake, since these ROMs are generally loaded with all kinds of garbage and have a reputation for being unstable. Also they are typically “boxed”, meaning that you can’t take your phone from one mobile provider to another, or sometimes even install custom applications.

Like many others before me, loading the phone up with software (that itself was often potentially unreliable) eventually led to it being completely instable. I had started installing applications around Christmas of ’07, and before February the phone was nearly useless and had to be hard reset (and eventually completely re-flashed). However, trying out many different apps helped to form the basis for most of what I learned that got me to the platform I use today.

Thus began a journey that would carry me over an entire year of installing, configuring, exploring, breaking, uninstalling, loving, hating, and occasionally even writing software for my Windows Mobile phone. All this was done in an attempt to reach that illusive nirvana where the mobile device is truly life enriching – and an endless series of still more IT housekeeping chores. This series tells the story of that process.

Published: Nov-19-08 | 0  Comment | 0  Link to this post

`