Yearly Archives: 2010

Windows Media Centre remote for Nokia touch phones & Vectir

There is a fantastic piece of software written for Windows called Vectir. Using Vectir you can control different media players running on the computer with your Bluetooth or WiFi enabled mobile phone. I have been using Vectir since the days of Nokia N79 & even did a review sometime back. However, things changed once I got my Nokia N8.

I did not like the bundled skins with Vectir graphically. Functionality wise they work nicely but they need some design love. So, I am making a remote profile for Vectir using which you can control Windows Media Centre with your Nokia Touch Screen phones. Here is how to use it.

The developers at Vectir have now bundled my theme with the release of Vectir 2.4. Thanks a lot to them. You can check the blog post & download Vectir 2.4 from here.
Go to Vectir & configure your phone as said on Vectir configuration page. Install the Vectir app in your mobile phone.
Select my profile called WMC for Nokia Touch phones from the list of available profiles which will show up in your phone once connected.
The keys are self-explanatory.

Since most of the Nokia Touch screen phones now are coming with AMOLED screen, I am making another theme for controlling Media Centre with black accent because with black colours the battery usage of AMOLED screens is further reduced. Both the white & black theme will be available.

I have also created the Windows Media Player profile half way. I will be posting it soon, after converting it to black accent.

: Here is the work in progress for the black theme. This is made with Nokia phones having AMOLED screens as black colour is more energy efficient on AMOLED screens then White.

The new mobile theme is alive

Posted by Saurav Srivastava on November 9, 2010 1 comment

I am happy to announce that this blog is now compatible with smart phones and other smart devices. I just finished creating a custom theme which is similar to the current blog theme in look & feel but adjusts the blog automatically when viewed on a mobile device.

For this I am using on few WordPress plugins and some tricks.

WordPress Mobile Pack – This plugin automatically detects whether the user is viewing the blog from a mobile phone, smart device or a computer and depending on that it loads the mobile centric theme & layout.
I had to disable Lightbox & Contact form 7 for mobile theme as they were loading JavaScript files which were not required in case of user reading the blog in a mobile phone. I am using a simple Wp-contactform for mobile view.
You can contact me using the contact form whose link is given in the header as an email Icon. You can also find me on twitter, Facebook, Ovi, Flickr & LinkedIn using the links given in the footer.
The theme is tested & working fine in Nokia browser, Android 2.1, iOS 3.0 & Opera Mini/Mobile. I request users to check my blog in as many devices as possible and let me know of any bug you encounter.
The best way to read my blog is to subscribe to the RSS feed in your device using the RSS icon in the header. That will ensure that you get all my latest posts & updates delivered to your device automatically & with proper rendering for the device.

Nokia BH-214 Bluetooth hands free

Posted by Saurav Srivastava on November 4, 2010 8 comments

As I mentioned in the previous post about Nokia N8, I did not like the bundled earphone bundled with Nokia N8 so I was looking to buy a new handsfree in which I can plug in my own earphone of choice.

I purchased Nokia BH-214 & now using it with my existing Philips SHH-9700 earphones which are detachable.

The claimed battery life for music is 7 hrs. It takes about 2 hours to charge completely. It can be charged with the regular Nokia 2mm charger which comes with Nokia N8. Although a charger is still bundled with the package.

Once connected, the volume of audio playback is configurable only through the handsfree & the regular slider or the volume keys on Nokia N8 will not control the volume. Instead they will control the volume of the phone call.

One thing to note that if you want to listen to F.M Radio, you will still need the bundled wired handsfree as F.M Radio will not work with this Bluetooth handsfree.

Update – January 24, 2011.

The biggest gripe I had with this handsfree was that I couldn’t connect it to my PC to use as a Bluetooth headphone or microphone for Skype. Well, looks like this device can indeed be connected to PCs but there is a small trick for this.

Install the latest drivers for your Bluetooth adapter. In most cases Bluesoleil 6 is what you would need. In case you have a laptop, then check the manufacturer’s website.
Now, turn on your device by pressing and holding the power button. The power LED will first turn green but if you keep the button pressed, the device LED will turn blue symbolizing “searching for connection” mode.
Go to your PC and search for a new Bluetooth device. This time your PC will detect the BH-214 properly & connect. If the operating system asks for a pairing code then enter 0000.
Let the operating system install drivers as required. Once this is done, BH-214 will be visible in Windows 7’s Device stage (or your OS’ equivalent of device stage) as visible in the screenshot.
Now, go to your control panel & open “Sound” control panel. There, in the speaker section, select BH-214 or Bluetooth Audio & set it as default device. In case of BlueSoleil, you will have to connect to the “Bluetooth Advanced Audio” service.
Set is also as the default Mic. Now, you can also use this handsfree to talk over Skype.

The new precious: Nokia N8

Posted by Saurav Srivastava on October 14, 2010 70 comments

Note: I have recently upgraded my phone with Symbian Anna so I am updating this post with new and updated apps and feature list which I am now using.

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As most of the regular readers of my blog already know, I was using a Nokia N79 since December 2008. However, change is inevitable so I had to move on. With Nokia N8 I couldn’t resist buying a solid offering from Nokia in terms of camera & video quality. My primary requirement in a phone is camera & video.

This post is not a review of Nokia N8 as if you want to read that then you can check GSMArena’s review or Slashgear’s review. For a detailed hardware analysis and review, check out Anandtech’s review.

Some of my friends asked me why I am not buying a Windows Mobile 7, Android or iPhone. Well, although people will not agree but these are the reasons I decided to purchase a Nokia Symbian device…

Easily available service in India: Nokia has a strong market in India. There service centres are also easily available and the devices are easy to service. iFixit gave Nokia N8 8/10 in ease of repair.
Value for money and resale value: Nokia phones cost less compared to other brands here and usually more value for money. They are also easy to resale.

Familiar OS: Symbian^3 is a evolution of Symbian S60 v5 found in Nokia N97, X6 etc which results in a familiar OS to what I have already used in the past.

Strong build: Nokia N8 is made of anodized aluminium. It is as tough as it can get. After using N8 in a demo session, I was sold on its durability. Plastic body does makes the phone lite but Nokia N8 isn’t heavy either at only 135gm. My N79 was 100 gm. & just a few millimetres short.

Camera: Nokia N8 has a 12 MP camera with the biggest image sensor which means more light can be captured at one time which enhances the quality of pictures. 12 MP is huge size which isn’t even required in regular cases but inclusion of Xenon flash is why I opted for Nokia N8. After using my N79 in night or low light conditions, I realized the importance of Xenon flash like what Nokia had in Nokia N82. In regular life, most of the pictures we take are insides rooms or buildings with tube lights so having a Xenon flash helps a lot there. On a well lit outdoor environment a 5MP camera of N79 also provides good quality. On top of that Nokia N8 supports video recording at 720p HD. This makes N8 a long term purchase. You can check some Nokia N8 Sample pictures I took in New Delhi under various condition.

Efficiency: Symbian is a mature OS. The app development is native code using Carbide.C++ or Qt unlike Android which uses a Java Virtual machine. Due to this Symbian^3 is able to use the resources of the phone in a better way compared to other devices.

Things Nokia needs to improve in Symbian^3.

Symbian Anna has a new web browser compared to old Symbian^3, but it still needs changes compared to Opera Mobile or Safari Mobile to compete in the market. An update to the rendering engine is coming with Symbian Belle

Reduce the menus further.

Create a “Nokia certified apps” market.

The inbuilt Social networking features need change. The twitter app is not good enough. The Facebook app is a web Widget, which they should change to a native Qt.

The apps which I use with my Nokia N8 on the desktop PC & in the phone are…

1. Nokia OVI Suite is a must for any Nokia phone user. Using Ovi Suite, I can send & receive SMS from the computer itself over Bluetooth, edit contacts, sync songs & download map data easily.

You can also use it to play songs purchased from Ovi Music Store although this store is about to be shut down. Once your PC is authorised to play the DRM locked music, you can also play it in any media player in your PC.

For Music sync Windows Media Player will do just fine. It can also sync files purchased from the Ovi Music store.

2. Nokia Ovi maps is free with lifetime voice guided navigation but it has limited utility if you don’t have a vehicle. This comes bundled with your phone.

You can also use Google Maps, however it is not very optimised for Symbian’s UI guidelines.

3. Nokia has given the Symbian Web browser a much needed overhaul with Symbian Anna. However, even if you don’t like the default then you can use other browsers like Opera Mini & Opera Mobile.

4. I use Nokia Ovi chat for Google Talk.

5. For personal expense management I use Toshl. It’s free version is good enough for casual users.

6. Using Vectir I am able control my PC over a Bluetooth connection & control Windows Media Player, Media centre, Desktop etc. There is no need to buy a Windows Media Centre remote now.

7. For Twitter I prefer Gravity.

8. For Facebook, I use fMobi which I helped in designing.

9. To save links for reading later, you can subscribe to Readitlater. You can use your desktop web browser to add any web page to your ReadItLater list and then you can read it in your Nokia N8 using SymPaper.

This app removed all the unnecessary images, ads etc from the webpage and gives you a simple, easy to read text only content.

10. For reading RSS feeds which you have synced with Google Reader, you can use gNewsReader. I am helping with the UI design of this app too with Yogeshwar.

11. For checking into places with Foursquare, I am 4squick. An amazingly designed application.

12. Use Best screensnap for taking screenshot of your Nokia N8. This way you can share how your N8 looks like with others. This is equivalent to Print Screen features in PCs.

13. MeeToDo is an upcoming To Do list application for Symbian. It is not yet complete though.

14. You should use Swype. It eases typing on a touch screen phone a lot.

Nokia N8 as a portable media player

Nokia N8 is made with Windows 7 in mind. Not only it is supported by Windows 7 device stage, it is also automatically identified in Windows Media Player due to which syncing songs with full album art is very easy.

Video Features

Nokia N8 supports DivX/xVid format so now there is no need to convert most of the videos downloaded from torrents. If you sync videos then Windows Media Player in Windows 7 will also automatically convert the videos for you. If you want to edit a video & then convert for your phone then you can simply use Windows Live Movie Maker. You can use the following settings as a reference…

Keep the aspect ratio same, but reduce the resolution to 640X360.
Video bit rate should be 1 Mbps.
Keep the frame rate as original.
Audio = 128 kbps unless the source has lower bit rate.

On a separate note, I recommend buying a good graphics card if you have a desktop or if you have a laptop then making sure you have proper graphic card drivers installed to enable either nVidia CUDA or AMD Stream depending on your graphics card’s brand. This helps a lot during video conversion.

Getting the most out of IE 9

Posted by Saurav Srivastava on October 1, 2010 1 comment

Microsoft tried to make a comeback with Internet Explorer 7 & Internet Explorer 8 for Windows Vista & Windows 7 but the market share of Windows XP is too much to remove IE 6. New versions of IE did bring CSS & HTML enhancement to the software but a complete layout engine re-design was required for Internet Explorer to survive in the new era.

Today the browser market is very different compared to what it was at the beginning of this decade with Firefox, Google Chrome giving IE a very strong competition on Windows platform. Internet Explorer 9 is here is the beginning of GPU hardware accelerated web where a browser & websites are no longer just software & portals. They are now parts of our life & Web Applications/services.

Internet Explorer 9 with Quick Tabs open

Internet Explorer 9 beta 1 can be downloaded from the official website for Windows Vista & Windows 7. Windows XP is no longer supported.

Microsoft has also created demos to show the power of IE 9 & enhancements over the browser of competitors. Considering that more than any other vendor, Microsoft is able to better integrate IE 9 in Window, things couldn’t be better for regular Windows users for who IE is finally all what they were looking for.

This post is not about what is new in Internet Explorer 9, to know that you can visit here. This post is about how to get the most out of Internet Explorer 9. I am assuming that you are already familiar with the UI of IE 9. Well, there isn’t much of a UI anyway as IE 9 is very cleanly designed.

Get Quick Tabs back – Internet Explorer 7 had a very nice feature called Quick Tab which used to show you a tiled view of all your open tabs when pressing the shortcut key Ctrl+Q. This feature is still there in IE 9 but hidden by default as Microsoft recommends to use the aero peak feature of Windows 7 to navigate between your tabs. To enable this feature back go to Options menu -> Internet Options -> General tab -> Tabs section & click on Settings. Now click on the checkbox for “Enable Quick Tabs”. Now restart your browser.
Internet Explorer supports Add-on but most of the old versions are not supported by IE 9 right now. However, you can edit your hosts file which will block all unwanted Ads not only in IE 9 but also in other browsers. You can download from the mvps.org file & install using the methods written there. Keep in mind that this will not remove the boxes or section where Ads appear, it will just prevent the Ad from loading at all.
Internet Explorer also supports blocking Ads using InPrivate filtering which is also available in IE 8. To go Options menu -> Manage Add-On. Click on “InPrivate Filtering” in the left hand column. Now, import this xml file. Restart your browser
To enabled ClearType for all Webpages by going to Options menu -> Internet Options -> Multimedia section & select the check box “Always use ClearType of HTML”.
Internet Explorer provides an option to load your own CSS file to change the look & feel of websites as you like. This can also be used to block Ads on websites such as Facebook. To load your own custom css file, first create a CSS file somewhere in which you write all your custom css styles. Now, go to Options menu -> Internet Options -> General tab -> Appearance section -> Click on Accessibility & select to browse for the CSS file. Now, next time when you will browse any webpage, it will have the new style attached. As an example, here is the CSS code which will hide all Ads from Facebook.

#ssponsor, .footer_ad, .banner_ad, .social_ad, .ad_capsule, .sidebar_ads, .adcolumn, .admarket_ad, .sidebar_item.sponsor, .emu_sponsor, .home_sponsor, .UIHomeBox_Sponsored { display: none !important; }

If you are like me, you have subscription to multiple Web services with multiple password. Although I prefer to use AiRoboform which is a paid solution, there is another equally good solution for IE named LastPass. It is an automatic password manager for IE9 which saves all your password data in your computer only.

These are just a few of the tips & tricks for enhancing the usability of IE 9. I will be writing more of these soon

How I use my new toy….I mean Nokia N79

Posted by Saurav Srivastava on June 20, 2010 103 comments

This is to inform everyone that I have shifted to a Nokia N8 & I am no longer using my Nokia N79. If you need some help, kindly look into the comments & in most cases, your problem might have been discussed before too.

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Since I use my phone for everything, I like to customize it. So far here is the list of all the applications I am using. I won’t be needing anything beyond these I guess. Most of these applications are freeware.

1) Opera Mini – Although Webkit is inbuilt but Opera Mini is still better & faster then Webkit & most importantly it saves lots of bandwidth & money when using over Pay-per-KB usage model usually available with Indian GSM Carriers. When I need to browser websites with a desktop like experience I use Opera 10. I use the Official GMail App for checking my GMail, and also the inbuilt mail client to check mails when I need to download attachment, send attachment etc.

2) For text chatting I use Slick & for Video Chat or Voice Chat over Skype & Google Talk I use Fring

3) For personal expanse management I use Best Expanse. It costs $12.

4) For downloading torrent files in the phone itself over Wi-Fi I am using SymTorrent.

5) I found a great application called WordMobi for managing WordPress blogs. I can write new posts, moderate comments, Delete comments, & reply to comments. It lacks the best UI out there but better then visiting the Dashboard using the inbuilt browser which is very small for this task.

Word Mobi & some other applications require the Python Runtime for Symbian S60, however, installing Python runtime on Nokia N79 is tricky so I recommend either using the inbuilt Nokia App update to download the latest version or downloading Python runtime 1.9.6 fixed or above from Maemo Garage. Keep in mind that all python applications should be installed on the same storage where the runtime is installed.

6) Although I convert videos to native H.264 AVC based MP4 file before copying to phone, I still have CorePlayer installed in case I have a DivX encoded video to play.

7) Since I was having trouble installing unsigned applications, I installed SignSis & registered at symbiansigned.com to get my own certificate & published ID for my phone’s IMEI. Now I can sign any application in my phone itself, for my phone only.

8 ) The file manager of Symbian OS is good enough for my needs but I have also installed Y-Browser, just in case I need it.

9) For task manager, I use Handy Taskman. It’s quite good & simple & takes over when you press the Symbian menu key for some time. It costs $15.

10) Since N79 already has inbuilt search, I use it to search for information anywhere I am either on GPRS or Wi-Fi. It support searching on multiple search engines but I prefer to use Google.

11) To upload images & videos to Facebook & Twitter, I use Furtiv. It allows me to upload from the inbuilt Share online app of Nokia

12) I use Screenshots for Symbian to capture screen shots of my Mobile phone’s screen. Its quite simple & easy to use. Just start it & press the camera key for sometime & it takes a picture & saves it in memory card under a folder by the name screenshots.

13) For watching YouTube videos I use the official YouTube app for Symbian OS which can be downloaded by going to m.Google.com from your Nokia phone’s inbuilt browser.

14) If you want to use a picture with your contact which you will see when they call or you call then use Full screen caller.

You need to have good resolution pictures of all your contact if you want to use them. The screen resolution of N79 is 240X320 so ideal size which I have found for the picture is 120X160 pixel. Convert your contact’s picture to this dimension then use Nokia Ovi suite to attach the pic to a contact. On the next sync, the edited contacts will have the picture associated when they call.

15) When it comes to video conversion I use MediaShow Espresso on my PC to convert video with the following settings…

Video size = Keep the aspect ratio same, but reduce the size to 320X240. 16:9 Videos look contracted when converted to 4:3.

Video bit rate should be 384 kbps, H.264 AVC, keep the frame rate as original.

Audio = 128 kbps MP4 unless the source is having lower bit rate.

16) For Music sync, I simply use Windows Media Player which automatically syncs the song to the phone when connected in Media transfer mode.

17) Using Vectir I am able control my PC over a Bluetooth connection & control Windows Media Player, Media centre, Desktop etc. There is no need to buy a Media Centre remote now.

18) There is a great handy software called JoikuSpot Premium using which we can connect a PC to 3G internet of a Mobile phone. JoikuSpot turns your phone to a secure mobile WLAN Hotspot. No need for USB dongles, cables or Bluetooth. The light version is pretty much useless so premium is all you should buy if this is what you need. However, if you have Nokia Ovi Suite, you can also tether the connection.

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