Dennis Bareis' 2 Cents Worth

Fix Metadata in Samsung Galaxy Nexus Panorama Photos

2011-12-31T15:32:00.001+11:00

The camera in the Samsung Galaxy Nexus makes it simple to create landscape panoramas, the problem is (at least in ICS 4.0.1 ) that it has a bug which forgets to add the camera and picture details (meta data).

Apart from not being able to easily see what camera took what picture in Windows Explorer, it prevented me from fixing up images modified by Picasa as described at "https://plus.google.com/101791833503159629380/posts/ceH1fTsWRyM".

I have created a batch file which can be run over these file, it prompts for the name of a JPG file or directory name and will create a copy of the image and mark it "FIXED", it does not change the original image as a safe precaution.

You can download "FixUpPhotoMetaData.zip" from my site, it has been tested in Windows 7 but would be surprised if it didn't run everywhere. It does require that you also download "exiv2.exe", you can install this in the "PATH" or in the same directory as my batch file.

It easiest to create a shortcut to the file on your desktop.

This is an example of the added metadata:

Exif.Image.Make = [Samsung]
Exif.Image.Model = [Galaxy Nexus]
Exif.Photo.DateTimeOriginal = 2011:12:21 12:03:00
Exif.Photo.DateTimeDigitized = 2011:12:21 12:03:00
Exif.Photo.UserComment = _FixUpPhotoMetaData_.cmd (FIX_NEXUS_PANORAMA_PHOTO_INFO, v11.263)

Pig of an APP: Nero MediaHome 4 Essentials

2011-11-20T11:47:00.001+11:00

This is Nero's DLNA server and it came for free with my LG 3D TV.

Every time I turned my media drive on my machine would grind to a halt, I found this was Nero's service. Closing down the application was not enough as the service would remain. After deciding to uninstall it, I still had to wait for about 20 minutes for this to complete. My machine is quite highly speced...

I'll find a good free DLNA server, I used oone years ago on quite inferior hardware with the massive resource usage of Nero's piece of garbage.

Hate McAfee...

2011-10-05T20:16:00.001+11:00

Got this security product with the DELL otherwise I wouldn't be running it. It has one of the worst user interfaces I've seen so any time I need to use it I end up doing a lot of swearing.

Well the picture on the right gives me one more reason to hate it.

Not only isn't there a virus but McAfee told me it knew that in a separate popup (which popped up in the background and unfortunately I didn't capture).

It couldn't actually scan the file as it was in use, the message on the right is in my opinion a very stupid way of saying that...

It frequently fails to do anything at all when selecting something like "history and Logs", I've just realized one of the reasons for this it often opens it in a new window of the same size UNDERNEATH the current one so its effectively invisible.

Of and one of my other pet hates is products that force an update then nag for reboots, hoping that you'll accidently agree to it while in the middle of doing something important.

Recursive touch command for Windows by Steve Miller

2011-09-13T17:56:00.001+10:00

It took me a while to find so I'm documenting it here but this is the only windows command line "touch.exe" program that I could find that not only handles file masks but has a recursion option to process a whole directory tree!

Its another application by Steve Miller and is bundled in his "Win32 Console ToolBox 1.0" download. I knew it was a winner as soon as I realised he is also the author of "Dependency Walker" and "pure text", the latter is in my opinion is a must have application on any windows machine.

If GoldCardTool fails use GoldCard Helper :-)

2011-08-09T18:39:00.005+10:00

Hi,

For my HTD DESIRE HD, I tried "GoldCardTool.exe" version 0.0.7 and 0.0.5 as recommended, this failed to retrieve a CID for MMC1 but did for MMC1, unfortunately this (reversed) CID did not work resulting in the "Error [131]: CUSTOMER ID ERROR" message. Of course they wouldn't have wanted to check this earlier in the RUU's execution would they :-(

After proving with a hex editor that "GoldCardTool.exe" was correctly updating the first sector of the sdcard, after much googling I found "GoldCard Helper", this tool gave me two reversed cids, MMC2 and MMC0, unfortunately it would only copy MMC0's which was the same as I'd already tried, so I manually typed MMC2 off the screen, used the website to create the gold card image and then the "GoldCardTool.exe" to update the sdcard and it worked :-)

As I'd seen a different CID reversal scheme which reversed nybbles (characters), I can say that certainly that is not the case for my HTC DESIRE HD and it reverses bytes (character pairs) and changes the first two to "00" (as "GoldCardTool.exe" and does and most other websites specify).

Anyway hope that helps someone else...

Diagnosing Intermittent Android Events Such As Reboots via Log Capture

2011-04-17T13:03:00.007+10:00

When your phone's problem doesn't involve reboots and it is fairly predictable etc you can use tools like "Log Collector" to manually send an email to yourself containing the log of Android's activity after you have noticed the issue occur.

When a reboot is involved (like the HTC one that occurs to me overnight) you really want to record what is happening all the time and the reboot will effectively stop the recording for you :-)

I've been using "CatLog - Logcat Reader!" but another possibility I found was "aLogcat (free) - logcat" (just found a CatLog varient called "LogViewer (LogCat)").

The "CatLog" program has a "Write Period" setting, the smaller the value the closer you will capture to the time of reboot but the more it will impact (I'm guessing) your phone's performance. As it writes to the SDCARD, if its the cra@ppy one that came with your phone the performance won't be as good as with a class 10 card :-)

I'd also recommend that you power your phone or at least watch the remaining charge closely to know how much it impacts your battery life.

If you don't mind being attached to your computer then the Android SDK's "Dalvik Debug Monitor" (DDMS) can capture this trace information also and doesn't have the "Write Period" issue either :-)

Issues with the Android Market

2011-04-05T18:18:00.011+10:00

There are many thing right with the market however these are the main issues wit it (in MY opinion):

Regardless of what some people think having only FREE & PAID categories (which can't sell for $0.00) force authors to call DEMO and TRIAL products "free" when most people (except perhaps the author or a lawyer) would consider that unreasonable. Free does not just relate to money and no one can take something freely given to me from me. The PadGen standard defines "Shareware", "Freeware", "Adware", "Demo", and others so I'm not alone in thinking two is crazy.
You can't sell or transfer purchases (even to yourself on a new email address).
If you do choose a refund, you can't do it again when a new release comes out (which hopefully fixes the reason you refunded in the first place)!
You only have 15 minutes from when you paid (not after download!) to decide if you want a refund.
There are many products where even 24 hours is not enough to evaluate the product which is why products like "Touch Down" are forced into producing trials outside the market or deceptively categorising trials/demos as "free". The author should be allowed to specify the refund period. Hopefully users will be loyal to those authors who allow a longer return period.
You can't choose the default install location (SDCARD or PHONE), mine defaults to SDCARD (when the app supports it) and on my HTC DESIRE HD this causes constant issues with A2SD corruption and the SD CARD unmounting itself.
You can set up "auto update", however unless you don't pay for 3G data you won't as the there is no "Auto Download on WIFI Only" option.
You can't get a clear list of purchases you have made.
When you can't auto update because permissions have changed, the permission changes are not highlighted.

Anyway thats my list :-)

HTC Desire HD Boots Loudly and Nightly

2011-03-28T17:46:00.004+11:00

I've been noticing that HTC have been doing stealth updates of their "HTC Sync" (and probably sense etc), I think this had fixed my nightly reboots as I haven't had any for quite a while but they are back.

I've been woken up the last 2 nights. I've rebooted the phone as its been 17 days just in case but I'm guessing I'll probably get woken up tonight :-(

Microsoft 'Improves' IE to Break Automation

2011-03-09T17:15:00.004+11:00

If you are finding that IE automation ("InternetExplorer.Application") is hung then you can blame Microsoft for an extremely badly thought out "enhancement".

If IE dies and you manually invoke it it will may display the "Your last browsing session closed unexpectedly. Would you like to restore your last session, or go to your home page?" dialog shown on the top right.

Not related to automation (so bug #2), notice that there is no button for "continue doing what I told you to" option so basically command line automation/invocation is also broken.

Anyway back to automation, if IE was in a state where it wants to display the dialog, it will hang when automated. Some really bright people designed this...

IE has recently become so reliable I have converted to Chrome :-)

Auto Rotate not working on Samsung Galaxy Tab? Blame Samsung...

2011-02-26T10:38:00.008+11:00

My wife asked me why auto rotate (swapping between portrait and landscape modes) wasn't working any longer on her Samsung phone. I found this was fairly common but no one had a fix, I was hoping it wasn't a hardware issue...

After a bit of playing I posted this solution.

Basically some idiot decided that the "Orientation lock" in Samsung's notification bar should toggle a different value than Android and all existing toggle widgets! This means that there are two autorotate locks and both have to be on for it to work!

So to avoid this issue either never use Samsung's "Orientation lock" (and leave it turned on) or always use it and never use a widget.

To fix the issue make sure Samsung's "Orientation lock" is on and then reinstall or use your widget/tool to also turn it on and confirm that autorotate now works (then uninstall or never use it again). If you have a hardware issue then bad luck...

I documented this issue to help you, so hopefully it has :-)

Using ADB.EXE to Capture a Bug Report (useful way to capture phone properties and logs)

2011-02-16T17:48:00.009+11:00

I created the batch file "BugReport.cmd" so I could use the "Android Debug Bridge" to capture debug information into a date stamped filename. This captures firmware build versions, the system log (logcat), System properties, service states and much more.

First off though you need to install "ADB.EXE" and any dlls it might require. I tested this on Windows 7 (64 Bit) but can't see why this wouldn't work on WINXP or even WIN2000.

If you have install Samsung KIES or HTC Sync (or any similar sync software) you will already have a version of "ADB.EXE" installed, its easiest to either install the batch file into the same directory or make sure that the directory is listed by the "PATH" environment variable. If you can't find it you'll have to install the SDK etc.

This is "BugReport.CMD":

@echo off

setlocal

cls

echo []--------------------------------------------------------------------[]

echo ^| Generate Andoid Bug Report Version 11.047a (C) by Dennis Bareis 2011 ^|

echo []--------------------------------------------------------------------[]

echo.

@rem *** Find AD.EXE or abort *********************************************

set BatchFileDir=%~dp0

set AdbExe=%BatchFileDir%ADB.EXE

if exist "%AdbExe%" goto FoundAdbExe

set AdbExe=%CD%\ADB.EXE

if exist "%AdbExe%" goto FoundAdbExe

set AdbExe=

for %%f in ("AdbExe") do set AdbExe=%%~$PATH:f

if not "%AdbExe%" == "" FoundAdbExe

echo ERROR: Could not find "ADB.EXE" (have you installed it?)

echo.

echo To find ADB.EXE this script:

echo ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

echo (1) Looks in the same directory as the batch file ("%BatchFileDir%)

echo.

echo (2) Looks in the current directory (%CD%)

echo.

echo (3) Looks in the PATH, that is one of the following directories: %PATH%

echo.

pause

goto :EOF

:FoundAdbExe

echo USING ADB: "%AdbExe%"

echo.

@rem *** Wait for Android to connect and display its setial number *******

set LogDir=%BatchFileDir%$BugReports$

set TmpFile=%LogDir%\SerialNumber.tmp.txt

del "%TmpFile%" >nul 2>&1

md "%LogDir%" >nul 2>&1

echo Waiting for Android Device (it must have "USB Debugging" turned ON)

"%AdbExe%" wait-for-device

"%AdbExe%" get-serialno > "%TmpFile%"

set SerialNumber=

set /p SerialNumber= < "%TmpFile%"

echo.

echo Found Android Device with serial number "%SerialNumber%"

echo.

set ReportFile=%LogDir%\Android Bug Report - %SerialNumber% (%date:/=-% @ %time::=_%).txt

echo GENERATING: "%ReportFile%"

"%AdbExe%" bugreport > "%ReportFile%" 2>&1

echo Generated Bug report, opening in notepad.

start "" "%LogDir%"

start "" notepad.exe "%ReportFile%"

SDCARD Unmounts and Android Market Installation Error, Unknown Reason 18

2011-01-29T11:41:00.015+11:00

With my new HTC Desire HD I was getting my SDCARD auto-unmounted and with the older firmware there was no way to remount it without pulling the card out and reinserting! This was causing problems with the camera (Please insert an SD card before using the camera) and other apps mentioned the SDCARD being busy or unavailable.

I was originally thinking that it could be a hardware issue but started suspecting the apps2sd functionality in android 2.2+ (aka froyo). Or perhaps some broken "Apps2SD" functionality in some of the market application managers...

Anyway I had the phone repaired for a different reason and it came back factory reset and with the latest firmware and it was still occurring!

However now I was also having a different issue with some apps not installing with an "Installation Error" dialog containing the text "Unknown Reason-18", as this was not all apps (or even most), I suspected that these might be trying to install on the SD card so I started doing some serious Googling...

It was suggested that you run this command in a terminal "rm /mnt/secure/asec/smdl2tmp1.asec", the trouble is that requires root access. In any case this sounds like a temporary solution.

Someone suggested that the solution is to put the sdcard into a card reader and attach to your PC and remove the "\.android_secure" directory (sorry can't remember if this is hidden or not), I did this and can now install the application "memento" and sure enough if you use Android's built in "Manage Application" and click on "On SD card" tab it shows that that application did indeed install on the SDCARD by default.

Hopefully this fix also gets rid of the intermittent card unmounts. I didn't have any apps installed on the SDCARD, if I had of has some then I'd probably have attempted to move them to the phone before trying either of the above.

UPDATE: It didn't fix my unmounting issue (and I just noticed the mount option is greyed out!). Anyway it appears that this is probably a known bug in the "1.72" firmware update! I've also noticed that when the card unmounts the phone loses cell radio signal (NO SIGNAL).

Since I've had the 1.72 firmware my phone has been rebooting overnight (I know as it wakes me up every time), taking a very long time to do so yet not updating the "uptime"...

Pretty Poor Customer service by OKMe.com.au...

2011-01-24T17:10:00.005+11:00

Hi,

"OKMe" were claiming a high Recommended Retail Price on an item where an alternative web site had the RRP on the same item at the "OKMe" discounted price, I gave "OKMe" a chance to explain and asked them about this. I got the acknowledgement email quite quickly, this did not include the text of my query (mistake #1).

Their fairly quick response was:

You can view the ticket and reply from web interface from here.

Of course the fact that they didn't include the response is mistake #2. Clicking on that link takes you to to a ticketing login system, why should I need to register to see their response (mistake #3)?

Determined to see the response I created an account, I was able to login with my email address and password. No tickets available, mistake #4.

Back to the ticket logon system, its a separate system (mistake #5) that needs a "user name", but doesn't explain what that is (neither did the registration email or the online profile). Certainly typing email address, name and all likely variations got me nowhere.

Anyway I raised another query on this and got (you probably guessed it):

You can view the ticket and reply from web interface from here.

I'll call that mistake #6. They claim to be Australia's biggest online store, at least their responses were quick, pity its not possible to know what they were. Given their claimed "discounted price" is the same as another's "Recommended Retail Price" and my experience with communications, I'm buying elsewhere :-)

Samsung G3 Station 2TB External USB Drive, what cr@p. No power switch!

2011-01-11T17:35:00.004+11:00

Well just when you thought it couldn't get any worse with the penny pinching, here come Samsung who produce an external desktop drive without a power switch.

Thats all I need to say about this product... No wonder there was FA written on the box (and no picture of the back).

Like the HTC Desire HD, but that's not to say everythings Rosy...

2011-01-08T12:58:00.020+11:00

Its an Android phone and given the powerful hardware and large screen I was always going to like it and in general I do, but listed below are the things I don't like...

The Phone Itself

The battery/SIM-SDCARD plastic bits are cheap as sh1t and don't feel solid like the rest of the phone.
Really love the big screen. My old 3.7" LCD Milestone looks tiny now :-)
CardioTrainer gives me more accurate results so I think it has a better GPS than the Milestone.
The contacts (and call log etc) doesn't support Google's "custom" phone number (or other) types! This is EXTREMELY disappointing and means I always have to remember to update the contact online.
The "notes" field while editing is one line high so almost impossible to edit. I'm really starting to wonder about HTC...
The phone can't edit calendar events! Or at least it can't modify the start/stop dates on repeating events! Not a biggy for me as I try to do most changes from my laptop anyway.
The speakers are horribly quiet. A work around for me was to use Audacity to amplify the sound (a lot) for the ringtones. Can't do that with internal ones, I have my own set in any case which I name based on function in any case ("zzCall-WORK.mp3").
Average quality alarm/ring tones installed. Milestone had a way better assortment. Be nice if Google ever standardizes this.
Swype never works after a reboot (button presses Ok, just won't swype)! You have to alter the input method, then alter it back!
Another Swype issue is that HTC's sideways menu bar (for copy/paste etc) frequently ends up overlaying the Swype word choice menu!
I gave "HTC Sense" a go but decided its mainly designed to look good while sacrificing functionality and was nowhere near as good as the "LauncherPro" I put on within the first week.
The "HTC Friends" is so buggy its unusable assuming I wanted to, I don't, and it can't be disabled without turning off sense which I assume would also prevent the wanted "htcsense.com" stuff working, of course they wouldn't want to document any of this would they? It keeps popping up notifications!
Been getting "SD card unexpectedly removed" notifications (Unmount card before removing to avoid data lo | ss ...). This happens intermittently and I managed to capture it in a log (partial extract below). It sometimes occurs immediately after a reboot. It requires a reboot to correct. I think this is software and suspect APPS2SD functionality (Google or HTC's fault?).
I am so missing the "pure" google functionality of the Motorola Milestone. I would have stayed with Motorola except they don't supply timely updates (still on 2.1) and have locked the bootloader preventing me from updating it myself (they have forgotten who owns the phone).
HTC have devolved the Android functionality, if they wish to change it then they should improve on it. Anyway Gingerbread will force them to rewrite sense (Sense 3.0) and this time do it right.
The phone just died (within first month) with green/orange flashing LEDs while charging. This apparently means overheading. As the phone is cold, its a sensor issue of some type (not sure if sensor in battery or phone). For now I'm back on my "tiny" Milestone... Lets see how good MobiCare warrantees are...
Battery doesn't last anywhere near long enough (when it was charging, was calibrated to HTC recommendation). You need a charger at work after charging to 100% overnight.
I don't think the "turn on USB debugging" workaround improves anything for me.

I just got my wife a Samsung Galaxy Tab (nice), however out of the 3 Android phones I've used that is 3 different Google Buttons orderings with 3 different sets of symbols Drives me crazy, I keep pressing the wrong buttons, Google really need to standardize this.

The htcsense.com website

If constantly forgets which country I'm in...
Only once has updated my location
Making it ring mostly works immediately (or once not at all)
Locking the phone doesn't actually do that, it just sets a lock code but it won't immediately lock! If also takes a very long time to apply and once not until a week later!!!!

LOG of SD CARD UNMOUNT

This is a partial log with obviously unrelated messages removed (blog stuffs up formatting...):

17 V/WindowManager( 1292): Remove Window{47a8bb40 com.android.vending/com.android.vending.UninstallActivity paused=false}: mSurface=null mExiting=false isAnimating=false app-animation=null inPendingTransaction=false mDisplayFrozen=false
01-01 08:49:39.407 D/WifiService( 1292): releaseWifiLockLocked: WifiLock{NetworkLocationProvider type=2 binder=android.os.Binder@47d053a0}
01-01 08:49:39.407 D/WifiService( 1292): enable and start wifi due to updateWifiState
01-01 08:49:48.287 V/NotificationService( 1292): Battery Full, Charging
01-01 08:49:53.707 D/TelephonyRegistry( 1292): notifyDataConnection() state=0isDataConnectivityPossible()true, reason=null
01-01 08:49:53.707 D/TelephonyRegistry( 1292): broadcastDataConnectionStateChanged()  state=DISCONNECTEDtypes=null, interfaceName=null
01-01 08:49:55.430 I/ActivityManager( 1292): Start proc com.htc.android.worldclock for broadcast com.htc.android.worldclock/.AlarmInitReceiver: pid=17645 uid=1000 gids={3003, 1015, 3002, 3001, 2001}
01-01 08:49:57.140 W/BackupManagerService( 1292): dataChanged but no participant pkg='com.android.providers.settings' uid=10180
01-01 08:49:58.230 I/ActivityManager( 1292): Start proc com.jonasl.gmailnotifier2 for broadcast com.jonasl.gmailnotifier2/.GmailReceiver: pid=17658 uid=10169 gids={1015}
01-01 08:49:58.490 W/InputManagerService( 1292): Window already focused, ignoring focus gain of: com.android.internal.view.IInputMethodClient$Stub$Proxy@480b76d8
01-01 08:50:00.340 I/ActivityManager( 1292): Process com.jonasl.gmailnotifier2 (pid 17658) has died.
01-01 08:50:11.541 I/ActivityManager( 1292): Starting activity: Intent { act=android.intent.action.VIEW cmp=com.android.vending/.AssetInfoActivity (has extras) }
01-01 08:50:35.620 D/WifiService( 1292): acquireWifiLockLocked: WifiLock{NetworkLocationProvider type=2 binder=android.os.Binder@47d053a0}
01-01 08:50:35.640 D/WifiService( 1292): enable and start wifi due to updateWifiState
01-01 08:50:40.660 D/WifiService( 1292): releaseWifiLockLocked: WifiLock{NetworkLocationProvider type=2 binder=android.os.Binder@47d053a0}
01-01 08:50:40.680 D/WifiService( 1292): enable and start wifi due to updateWifiState
01-01 08:50:49.570 V/WindowManager( 1292): Remove Window{47936c10 Uninstall application paused=false}: mSurface=Surface(name=Uninstall application, identity=469) mExiting=false isAnimating=false app-animation=null inPendingTransaction=false mDisplayFrozen=false
01-01 08:50:49.580 E/WindowManager( 1292): return in removeWindowLocked
01-01 08:50:49.580 W/InputManagerService( 1292): Window already focused, ignoring focus gain of: com.android.internal.view.IInputMethodClient$Stub$Proxy@47c88088
01-01 08:50:55.550 V/WindowManager( 1292): Remove Window{47a30ab0 Rate it! paused=false}: mSurface=Surface(name=Rate it!, identity=470) mExiting=false isAnimating=false app-animation=null inPendingTransaction=false mDisplayFrozen=false
01-01 08:50:55.550 E/WindowManager( 1292): return in removeWindowLocked
01-01 08:50:55.560 W/InputManagerService( 1292): Window already focused, ignoring focus gain of: com.android.internal.view.IInputMethodClient$Stub$Proxy@47a7fdd0
01-01 08:50:57.640 I/ActivityManager( 1292): Starting activity: Intent { act=android.intent.action.VIEW cmp=com.android.vending/.UninstallActivity (has extras) }
01-01 08:50:57.740 V/WindowManager( 1292): Remove Window{47a7e6f8 Uninstall application paused=false}: mSurface=Surface(name=Uninstall application, identity=471) mExiting=false isAnimating=true app-animation=com.android.server.WindowManagerService$DummyAnimation@479f9550 inPendingTransaction=true mDisplayFrozen=false
01-01 08:50:57.740 E/WindowManager( 1292): return in removeWindowLocked
01-01 08:50:57.920 I/ActivityManager( 1292): Force stopping package com.als.usagetimelines uid=10211
01-01 08:50:58.320 I/ActivityManager( 1292): Force stopping package com.als.usagetimelines uid=10211

01-01 08:50:59.210 D/DirectVolume( 1212): Volume sdcard /mnt/sdcard partition 179:33 removed
01-01 08:50:59.210 I/Vold    ( 1212): Unmounting ASEC com.vp.whiteNoizzz-1 (dependant on /mnt/sdcard)
01-01 08:50:59.230 I/Vold    ( 1212): Unmounting ASEC com.rovio.angrybirds-1 (dependant on /mnt/sdcard)
01-01 08:50:59.241 D/Vold    ( 1212): Volume sdcard state changing 4 (Mounted) -> 5 (Unmounting)
01-01 08:50:59.310 W/MountService( 1292): getSecureContainerList() called when storage not mounted

Exporting Note Everything to CSV - sick of waiting for SYNC

2011-01-02T20:08:00.004+11:00

While Note Everything is in general a very good notepad there are two major things wrong with it:

There is no sync which means all editing has to occur on the phone.
They lock you in by not providing any export functions (NE GDocs only allows you to copy a single note at a time into a flat structure within Google Docs).

The first point is the most annoying but the second is my problem getting off Note Everything...

Anyway I had a look at the backup it creates and its an SQLLite DB, I downloaded the open source SQLite Database Browser and dragged the "notes.db" file onto it and viewed the "Notes" table in the "Browse Data" tab.

Using File, Export, Table as CSV file" I created a CSV which looks good. I'll probably want to clean it up depending on what I want to import it into but for now I'm happy :-)

I am now looking for a notepad that syncs notes and can import CSV files.

Migrating from Motorola Milestone (v2.1) to HTC Desire HD (v2.2)

2010-12-22T17:36:00.009+11:00

I have recenty bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab (for a phone+eBook) for my wife and now a

HTC Desire HD for myself from MobiCity, I could have got the phones cheaper by importing them myself from the UK, but boy are those guys fast delivering.

Anyway so far:

The phone is much faster as expected. Not only is the CPU faster and better, it has more memory and 2.2 runs Java programs way faster also.
I have installed Launcher Pro, I was going to give HTC sense a go, but quickly worked out that its meant to look good and isn't as functional. I can fit way more icons on each screen now.
I really like Andoid 2.2's wireless hotspot. Very handy. Set it up for WPA2 and my laptop had no trouble connecting.
Coming from the Milestone I was used to capacitive buttons, but the ones on the HTC don't seem to light up enough (when off power). I think my phone is pending a few updates. I'm not going to update now on as I'm on 3G (on holidays), I'm crossing my fingers...
The speakers on the phone are very quiet for ringtones etc, again I'm hoping an update improves things otherwise I'll try upping the volume via Audacity...
What is it with the button order? Google need to mandate the order of the buttons, out of 3 phones I've used I have 3 button orderings...
I also think that Android needs its own set of standard wallpapers, ringtones and alarms etc, its annoying to move to a new phone and not be able to set up the same ones.
I'm also hating setting up all the apps and settings etc, hopefully this will improve as apps can now save settings etc in the "cloud" via your Google account.

Exporting Thunderbird Emails to GMAIL

2010-12-12T16:33:00.007+11:00

Most people tell you to copy the ".eml files from Thunderbird to Outlook Express then export to Outlook and go from there but it is actually possible to directly drag and drop between them within Thunderbird! I did see mention of tools that "forward" the emails to gmail, but I wanted to keep the original header details.

The basic steps (I used Thunderbird 2.0.0.23):

Set up an IMAP connection within Thunderbird (more info here).
I created a new gmail label called "ExportedFromThunderbird".
I clicked "Get Mail" with loaded all the labels from gmail
You can now drag individual messages onto the label. If you drag folders it looks like a subfolder within Thunderbird but it actually creates a new gmail label based on the "base" label.

The copying can be very slow and it can stall, I restarted Thunderbird a number of times, may pay to update to the latest before migrating!

Motorola Software Update downloads FULL update to check if an Update is Required!

2010-12-07T12:18:00.002+11:00

If you ever wondered why it takes so long for Motorola's Windows update tool to tell you if your phone needs updating its because it first downloads the updates! Obviously Motorola have never heard of versioning, CRCs or MD5 hashes.

After having weird networking issues on my phone and find the way software updates are checked, I no longer doubt those that say Motorola make good hardware but absolutely suck at software.

My phone didn't need an update (obviously 2.2 Froyo hasn't been out long enough for Motorola to feel the need to grace us with an update even though the Milestone 2 already has it...) and this is the main part of the log:

12/07/10 12:05:47  [Device ID: 0] Start Task (2 steps): Downloading Firmware files
12/07/10 12:17:40  [Device ID: 0] Ending TASK: Downloading Firmware files
12/07/10 12:17:40  [Device ID: 0] Task succeeded: Downloading Firmware files
12/07/10 12:17:40  STATUS: DownloadFirmware finished!

Issues with "Event Flair" and Google Calendars

2010-11-19T20:20:00.008+11:00

If like me you set up the labs "Event Flair" option and wondered why it never works (just sits there displaying "Select an event to add flair") then these are the reasons I know of:

It doesn't work in Agenda view, it will display them but not let you set them.
The above point obviously means you can't search for the item to then allow you to change it.
It doesn't work when editing the calender event.
It doesn't work for all day events, turn that off, add the icon and then set it up again!
It doesn't work for events that span midnight

Hope that helps as a Google search shows that many people are having problems but not much detail is known.

I suppose I may as well go on and mention other issues I've noticed:

Not many icons available
Can't add your own icons
Flair not visible on my Android phone (2.1).

iHate my iLuv i913/i903 BlueTooth headphone

2010-11-06T11:44:00.008+11:00

Hi,

Just some quick comments (I use it mainly for playing podcasts from my iPod), so a mini-review:

PRO's:

Actually doesn't sound bad

CONS:

Sound breaks up every so often for a second or two (music source within a metre).
I use a bulldog clip to stop the headsets folding up on my head (and this makes them uncomfortable)
Its "noise cancelling" doesn't do that at all it simply amplifies the sound a bit, but no evidence of any cancelling effect (unlike my previous headset which was excellent).
Its tiny cups don't sit well on my ears.

Issues when paired with iPod via Motorola's D650 blue tooth adapter (and I'm leaning towards blaming it):

I need to pair the D650 with the head phones every time!
When I pick up a phone call, it doesn't pause the music/podcast.

Hope that helps someone decide...

Whoa! Google Chrome has crashed. Restart now?

2010-10-25T20:16:00.021+11:00

Not sure whose fault it is but after using the "fetch icon" in the Android "ChromeMarks" application (which I like a lot) and it syncing the bookmark's change with Google I was getting the "Whoa!" message every time I tried to start Chrome.

Using IE I found a webpage mentioning the data at "C:\Users\[YourUserName]\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default" on Windows 7 and

"C:\Documents and Settings\[YourUserName]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default" on WINXP. I have since also found this at Google Chrome's help page on this error.

Sure enough I could successfully start Chrome after renaming the "Default" directory, it was pretty much back to basics, no extensions etc.

The rename proved that I could recover and something in there was corrupt so I copied the backup back and started playing, my solution was to clean out the files in "..\Default\Sync Data". This stuffs up syncing of computers and turning sync back on will cause the issue to return so for now its a partial solution only...

Update: Removing the last bookmark I changed from ChromeMarks and syncing solved my problem so it would appear that my desktop's user data was perfectly OK and it was the sync that was killing Chrome. Still not sure whether to blame ChromeMarks or Google, but I'm leaning towards blaming Google and as further evidence the issue happens whether the bookmark exists in the "cloud" or on a computer. It has been reproduced and would appear to be a Google issue with the "tinyurl.com" favicon, this is an Chrome export of of the problem bookmark:

<A HREF="http://tinyurl.com/tdbetadroid" ADD_DATE="1283984697"

ICON="data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAABAAAAAQAQMAAAFSOl20AAAABlBMVEX///8AAJncEfieAAAAP0lEQVQImWM4wNDAAMIfGB4AcQAQf2DYwPCf4S8Q/2c4z3AWSLqD4X+GrqsMt2Yz/P8PQruuM+wqZzh2EcgGAJnBHbEe9Z+7AAAAAElFTkSuQmCC">Touchdown USB sync beta</A>

In any case Google do not provide any mechanism to override normal syncing for example a "this browser overrides the Google copy for next sync" option (or way of clearing the data online) and for this they should be shot...

Hope that helps someone :-)

DropBox allows you to Sync across Phones and Computers World Wide

2010-09-15T10:10:00.013+10:00

DropBox is a area of your hard disk ("My DropBox") which is automatically synced to the dropbox web site and/or other computers (Windows, Mac 10.4+, Linux, and Mobile).

If you go to a friends place then you will be able to access your files via the web interface (password protected) or if you are on the run with your phone then you will be able the access them that way.

I just found the link "https://www.dropbox.com/anywhere/apps" which I assume is for applications that have been officially certified to work well with DropBox file sync.

I've been using Dropbox for a fair while now and while the Android (iPhone and other phones also supported) version could use some more work it has worked well. The ways I've used it (or plan to):

Installing portable programs.
SplashId is not portable but I can sync its data which is in the DropBox, so it syncs between the computers and I just need to sync my phone's SplashId with my home computer.
I put my favorite tools on there (I used to keep these on USB stick), you know the tools you need when your friend asks for help :-)
Transferring files from one computer to another.
I put backups of some important files in DropBox. The web version keeps some revisions of files giving me some additional protection.
Making files easily accessible via my phone or anyone's internet connection.
I plan on setting up an encrypted filesystem (perhaps using TrueCrypt) to hold some more sensitive information and sync that along with the rest.
You can have a public area in your dropbox so you can easily share selected files with others.

Anyway if you want to try it make sure you use a referral from someone as you will be allocated more free space (2.25 GB) than if you just went to the site to sign up. The referrer will also benefit.

Now that I've used it for 5 months I'm happy that its reliable and can recommend it, if you wish to sign up you can use my referal link "http://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTY3MzU2NTM5", thank you ;-)

You can buy additional space if you wish and this allows for more revisions of files being kept and other extra features, I'm using the free version.

Cloud Sync Google Chrome Bookmarks with Android Phone

2010-09-09T17:16:00.011+10:00

Hi,

As per my previous post, after losing my phone's bookmarks during a factory reset I decided to either back up my bookmarks or sync them so I installed "GoMarks for Google Bookmarks" to sync with "Google Bookmarks", this was fine except that I really wanted my links in a tree structure and Google Bookmarks only allows a single level of folders. IE 8 has also been having problems with some sites (compatibility mode on or off) so I really wanted to start using Chrome.

I have since moved to "ChromeMarks" on my phone and now use Google's "Chrome Browser" to maintain my links. I have added the Chrome extension "Bookmark Tree - Version: 0.2.3" to display the links in a "proper" tree view (and with the right options return to the same view every time).

It was easy to export the Google Bookmarks and import these into Chrome. I have set up Chrome's sync options so that I will have the same bookmarks across all computers I have running Chrome and now "ChromeMarks" allows one way sync of these (currently manually invoked) to the phone.

"ChromeMarks" doesn't display the tree structure but does allow you to view a single folder and navigate up and down the tree. It is very much early days for the application but it was good enough for me to buy.

I posted these comments on the author's blog and he was quick to respond:

Font too small, configurable would be nice
It would be nice to at least be able to set where it opens to avoid the "Bookmark Bar", but better to remember where it was opened last and return there
".." should sort first
Some color wouldn't hurt, it would help folders stand out more for starters.
Its too easy to close it when pressing back button exits, could it actually do same as ".."?

Replaced LockBot Pro with Tasker (now have security again)

2010-08-06T17:29:00.009+10:00

Hi,

I think it was a bug in the Milestone's 2.01 firmware but for whatever reason I lost the ability to pattern unlock my phone as removing all exchange related settings and data didn't fix the issue. In any case I was getting desperate as entering PINs every single time the screen blanked was driving me crazy. I found a product called "Lockbot Pro" which basically resolved that issue and allowed for a delayed pattern unlock.

The trouble with it was that its completely unreliable and hardly ever presented the pattern unlock! No security at all! Note I don't autokill tasks :-)

Anyway a summary of pros:

Its pretty
It solved the exchange issue I had so I didn't go insane (since "solved" this with a factory reset).

And the cons:

It doesn't pattern lock the screen when its supposed to.
The first time after a restart it doesn't work. Sometimes many times after as well.
Depending on the update you end up with the Android Keyguard as well as the programs!
Most of the time the Keyguard doesn't appear either.
All the buttons wake the phone up!!! That plus the keyguard or pattern unlock not working a lot of times means that its easy to wake the phone (small bump or as putting hone in case) and then do something completely random.
No support or forum for problems or help, no FAQ.

Anyway I've now bought "Tasker" and its replaced "LockBot Pro", "Timeriffic" and it will replace other applications on my phone and generally do a better job than the task specific applications!

I based my "code" for the unlock delay on the "keyguard-off" sample in the wiki. Its not perfect (yet) but its much better and my phone has security again.

No more Motorola Phones for me!

2010-07-19T17:44:00.003+10:00

My Motorola Milestone still hasn't been rooted due to the signed bootloader and of course without root access your phone can't be fully backed up (a google issue).

I can understand that Motorola would not want to handle phones with custom ROMS installed under warrantee however they could simply make their stock ROMS available to restore and require that the phones are returned that way.

While the OS is open, Motorola is busy closing it, I was already iffy about every buying another Motorola phone and then I read about what they have done to the Droid X!

Backup and Sync Android Bookmarks

2010-07-17T10:39:00.006+10:00

Since the 2.1 update for my Motorola Milestone, I have been having intermittent reboots and one of these removed my google account and it could not be added again due to another apparently well known Android bug... Anyway a factory reset later and I can see the need for backing up my bookmarks as well as the advantage of the cloud (automatic recovery).

There are a number of backup programs for book marks but most of these require you to manually invoke it (and of course remember to do it). I looked for a sync solution as as I already use "Google Bookmarks" (not really flash but at least portable) I decided to try "GoMarks for Google Bookmarks".

This doesn't integrate with the browser but does mean I don't haveto remember or worry about backing up. As most of my existing links are meant for desktops I created a "label" called "(Android Specific Pages)" and because of the brackets this will sort on top of the list of sections in the Android application.

Now I'd like to do the same thing with a "tree" like structure so I'll probably keep looking but this is a good solution for now.

Optus Blocking Android Access to Paid Apps... Surely Illegal?

2010-03-01T21:38:00.003+11:00

Hi,

Just a warning for anyone looking at a carrier for their new Android. Keep in mind that Optus are blocking access to any paid apps in the Android Market because they are trying to set up their own (and they talk about competition).

If you have a choice you probably want a different telco.

How to Fix GMAIL NOTIFIER's mailto: Links

2010-01-21T19:50:00.008+11:00

Hi,

I was using thunderbird for email but recently converted to GMAIL. I am on 64 bit Windows 7 and the notifier option was set for gmail, unfortunately this didn't work (it continued to open up Thunderbird).

After a bit of registry searching I tried this (the commented out value was the original value):

REGEDIT4
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Associations\UrlAssociations\mailto\UserChoice]
;"Progid"="Thunderbird.Url.mailto"
"Progid"="MAILTO"

Don't blame me if it fails and I'd recommend backing up the original value just in case. It worked perfectly for me but you never know.

Gmail Notifier is obviously failing in a number of ways as it wasn't even a valid target for a mailto link in control panel (internet options).

VOIP echo and Garbled Voice Issues Solved!

2010-01-18T20:32:00.003+11:00

I'd been with Telstra BigPond cable for 2+ years and VOIP has gradually been getting worse with the other end hearing echos and voices being garbled at times.

I thought it was issues with my SPA3000 ATA (updated firmware, tweaked settings) but the problem disappeared as soon as I changed to my new Optus cable plan!

Now I don't think its the provider as much as the fact that I went from an upload speed of 128kbps to a much faster 512kbps.

Anyway while I'm still crossing my fingers, I believe the problem has gone.

You must broadcast Wi-Fi SSID for Android to connect!

2010-01-17T19:44:00.005+11:00

I believe that most people think its a good idea to disable Wi-Fi SSID broadcasting, those that disagree appear to believe you don't need to lock your house's front door if the front gate is locked.

What those that agree do is broadcast for the initial connection and then disable the broadcasting as its not required for future reconnections. Unfortunately it is on Android (at least on my 2.0 Milestone).

Android's Search City

2010-01-13T16:49:00.007+11:00

Hi,

One of the things that is getting really annoying on my Android v2.0 phone is the fact that when google displays a search button this is mostly (always?) titled "Search City", this gets really confusing when searching the market or contacts but sometimes while searching the market it does search the web instead!

The search settings are under "Search City", not a single option for searching the city to be seen...

When I search contacts I'd like to see a button called "Search Contacts", when I'm searching the Market then perhaps "Market Search", "Web Search" for a web search, "City search" for a city search and for a generic search "Search"!

If you search contacts and then select one of the matched entries and then click back you are not taken back to the search results but back to the full contact list!!!!! As far as I can see it is also not possible to filter the contacts by the groups I so carefully set up, so I have to see all my work contacts etc when I'm searching for friends or family. Anyone would think Google had gone out of the search business...

Also saved market searches don't search the market but search the web! Maybe I'm going insane but can't get it to do that now... Market search is the one of the few (perhaps only?) place where search queries are remembered as "shortcuts", Rather that invoking the search immediately, I'd rather it populated the entry field allowing me to refine it, rather than the phone making me type out a near identical query again!

Anyway thats my rant for the day :-)

The Android Market Place is way too hard to use

2010-01-10T14:53:00.012+11:00

A lot of things in Android are very well done and others are extremely "average", the market place and its integration into the phone is one of these where the implementation is lacking...

Note that while "http://www.androlib.com/" shows whats in the market place and itself could use improvements, I'm talking about in this post is the phone and its online market place.

If you look through the market place you will see that there are some rough categories of applications, once you are in one of those you will note that:

You can't sort apps (for example by # stars)
You can't search that category for apps (search looks through whole market).

For a company making a lot of money out of searching, the search engine is near useless, it badly needs an advanced search and I'd like to suggest that the simple search not find matches in the user comments etc...

My Download list if not sorted in any way I've managed to work out, its just one huge list of everything (randomly ordered) I've downloaded at any time (and not in categories).

If you look at this application "Note Everything" (quite good notepad that imports palmos memos) you will see that its in the category "Applications > Productivity". Once downloaded to my phone it just gets dumped uncategorised in any way along with all the rest of the apps and games (and not even always under the same name). To put it on a home page I need to first find it, it would be better if firstly it was categories on my phone and secondly clicking the notification shouldn't start the app but "locate" it (I'm perfectly capable of clicking on it myself).

A lot of apps don't even say what they do (they list last change details) and no screen dumps. I'd like to suggest that a bit of quality control over the listings wouldn't hurt any...

Anyway I could go one but I won't :-)

Can't Sync Android v2.0 (Milestone) with Google Apps!

2010-01-08T20:33:00.004+11:00

Hi,

Who would have thought that you can't sync documents with google apps!

On my Motorola Milestone "http://gears.google.com" reports: "Your browser is not currently supported" and refers you to a list below which does refer to Android as supported! I'll have to do more research but this isn't a good look...

So basically I'll be able to edit documents while "online" but not otherwise. I've found an application called "GDocs" but you loose all formatting if you save/modify a document and can only view it as plain text also (and manual sycing).

Pretty annoying... Let me know if you have a solution! Thanks.

Android WI-FI Settings - Can't Configure Proxy!

2010-01-07T18:11:00.003+11:00

Hi,

I've had my Milestone for a day and its got the 2.0 firmware, and I have to say in general I'm pretty impressed. One area badly lacking is in the Wi-Fi Network configuration:

You can't change a network once its created so if you got your password wrong you may need to remove the existing entry and retype other info (Enterprise WPA2) and then hope you don't make a different mistake (if it fails you can't even view the seetings). Surely google employees don't enjoy typing on a mobile that much... Note that some networks at least have a "Change password" option.
There is no Proxy support so although I can connect to work's intranet, it is impossible to get out onto the internet! This must must be a serious issue to some people (or at least to anyone rolling out android phones within a company), I'll use 3G (and pay for it)...

This wasn't at all well thought out...

Migrate PalmOs Contacts to Android (the beginning)

2010-01-02T17:44:00.012+11:00

Hi,

I've just ordered my Motorola Milestone and hopefully it arrives soon :-)

My many Contact Details are probably the most important so I started looking into their migration in more detail.

I'm using a Palm Desktop software version 6.2.2 (and phone TREO 680), you can select the contacts you wish and export these as VCARD.

While Google can import VCARDS it ignores the photos! After a while I found mention of the "http://www.soocial.com/" site. At first it wouldn't work so I decided to create a single contact and export (backup) to my workstation and look at the binary in detail.

After examination of the file and a small amount of trial and error it appears that the issue is that this site doesn't like Windows files (CR+LF), so the carriage return needs to be stripped. A bit of error checking and handling wouldn't hurt....

There are probably easier ways but to strip the CRs I used my "filter$" program as it was handy. This command creates a text file (text.txt) containing the hex sequences:

filter$ -BinToTxt < AllContacts.vcf > Text.txt

Using a text editor (I used jedit) I simply replaced all "0D\n" with "" and then ran the opposite command to rebuild the binary vcard file (now in "unix" format):

filter$ -TxtToBin < Text.txt > AllContacts2.vcf

Because the upload can take a while I suggest a dry run on a small number of records to start with, at the end of the import a yellow message will appear for a milisecond or two before the "backup" page is displayed, so be sure to watch for it very carefully.

It took me a while to see the message but when it was originally failing it would say it imported "0" records, here is a more successful example:

After a quick check of the data it would appear to have migrated accross pretty well and with the pictures. I think the photos will probably look average on the android phone but its a starting point.

The next step will be to add a link to GMAIL but I haven't had time for this today.

Dell Remote Access and Decrapifying my Dell Laptop

2009-10-20T18:54:00.005+11:00

I was willing to give the Dell software a chance but decided to remove the "Dell Remote Access" which had previously nagged the cr#p out of me, the last straw was finding millions (I'm prone to exageration, but not this time) application event log messages with source "PHP-5.2.4", I'd already wondered about the high CPU usage.

The messages began "The description for Event ID 2 from source PHP-5.2.4 cannot be found." so OK, not DELL but installed by DELL and these messages indicate that its garbage anyway otherwise it would have registered itself correctly.

Some examples of the actual messages (20/min):

The text of the event was "php[6732] gets Content-Type: text/vnd.wap.wml; charset=utf-8
PHP Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Dell\apache\htdocs\media_tags.php:0) in C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Dell\apache\htdocs\dsl\include\mob_header.inc on line 0

Anyway, glad thats over, will look at the others when they give me a reason. Hopefully that also removes the occassional 2-5 second hang that I get where even mouse doesn't move (in Vista Ultimate 64 bit).

Microsoft and 64 Bit Drivers - Schizophrenia or Just Arrogance?

2009-10-17T18:10:00.008+11:00

Apparently Microsoft feels hardware vendors (other than itself) should be producing 64 bit drivers for its 64 bit operating systems.

As I've just installed 64 bit Vista I have just discovered that the "Microsoft Keyboard with Fingerprint Reader" I bought new less than a year ago doesn't have 64 bit drivers and that Microsoft has been promising them since 2006.

Now the keyboard was average to start with as was the fingerprint reader (so much for trusting reviews) but you'd think that they would make an example and at least create drivers for their own hardware before throwing stones.

Anyway as my wireless Microsoft mouse is also the one of the most problematic piece of cr@p I own, I think thats it for me and Microsoft hardware.

As for the solution (I do want a fingerprint reader), DigitalPersona, have an upgrade offer which is a discount on new hardware/software which does support 64 bit. I decided to take them up on it otherwise Eikon also make models that support 64 bit OS.

My Dell came with some face recognition software, but to get it to recognise you, you spend most of your time making funny faces at the camera and in any case it can be fooled (so I hear) by a photo, maybe I should just keep a good one next to my laptop... Nah, just kidding.

I just remembered another thing... I'm sure most of us assume a fingerprint reader is for security, apparently Microsoft don't belive this. They don't tell you how the passwords are stored (in the clear no doubt) and also specifically say say it shouldn't be used to secure important information, it is only to be used for convenience!!!!!! My new fingerprint reader not only works much better but is a security device and not an expensive toy...

Online Android Application Browser

2009-10-16T18:11:00.003+11:00

Well it looks like you can use this online site to see what is in Google's Android Market without the need for an Android phone.

Google Contacts can't import Pictures! No Android phone for me?

2009-10-11T14:36:00.004+11:00

Hi,

I would really like an Android based phone (probably the HTC Hero) but am unsure because its hard to tell "how connected" you need to be (as I just want GSM and no data plan) and what features are available disconnected. You have to be in the secret society to tell what most of the available applications are and what these will cost (you need to commit yourself by buying have a google phone and go to the market place to find out).

Anyway the above issue aside I had a look at the Google Contacts Application online and it looks like it would suit my needs and contacts can be members of multiple groups (unfortunately you can't nest groups). I decided to give the import feature a go.

The import reads the vCard file and seems to create contacts OK but all without the contact's picture. I have confirmed that the vcards do have the picture (it contains "PHOTO;JPEG;BASE64") so the issue would appear to be google's.

Unless someone tells me I'm wrong then I have to assume that Google contacts is what the google phone will sync to and if it doesn't want to accept photos then you have to wonder what they were thinking when they created the import (and from some searching the export) feature. Surely I can't be the only one who doesn't want to spend untold hours to upload and attach about 100 photos...

My other main alternatives are the iPhone and Palm Pre, which I'll now be spending more time looking at.

iHearSafe - Earbuds and Headphones that prevent Hearing Damage from iPods etc

2009-03-20T12:19:00.004+11:00

These earbuds and headphones can be used with any audio device and no matter how high the device volume is turned up, the volume level will always remain below 85 decibels and prevent damage to your hearing.

Sounds like a good idea to me.

The device "Generic volume" cannot be stopped right now. Try stopping the device later.

2009-03-01T11:28:00.009+11:00

I don't know about anyone else but I'm sick of this problem, Windows seems to have many different flaws in this area.

Apart from the obvious reason that data could still be in the process of being written to the drive due to caching (depending on drive options), there are still many times where there has been more than sufficient time to have completed writing to the drive and it fails the first time but always works on the second attempt!

Now for those times when a retry fails (if that isn't annoying enough) you first need to look for open applications that may be referencing the drive, having explorer open viewing the drive will of course cause these sorts of issues. Start by looking at obvious processes and then start closing any open applications which you have used (since the last boot) to view the problematic device and then retry.

If that doesn't work then use the Sysinternal's "Process Explorer" (recommended task manager replacement) or its command line "handle.exe" can locate the process(es) holding the device open. For example, I used "handle t:" and it will say something like "explorer.exe pid: 4704 C: T:\".

You will find that "explorer.exe" sometimes holds directories open long after you have moved on to a completely different location, you will also find the root or desktop "explorer.exe" is frequently the problem (this requires you to stop and restart the desktop process (process explorer's "restart process" option makes this easy).

Yet another "explorer" bug is demonstrated with the image on the top right where "explorer" remains running (holding T: open) even though as a user I have closed it (and it has disappeared from view). I assume it has bugs in the handling of "/e" and/or "/root" command line switches.

Anyway I hope that helps. I can imagine that processes like acrobat reader (which can remain in memory after closing for a period of time) can also be the cause but you should now be capable of identifying your problem...

Camera Video Recorder Glasses like the EVR130

2009-02-27T13:17:00.010+11:00

There have been a couple of time driving or riding my bike it would have been handy to have a camera for the incriminating evidence, at those times I also generally wear glasses, so it seems like a good idea to have contantly recording glasses where the camera always follows you!

I don't like that its only 1.3 megapixel, and uses the much slower USB 1.1, but still, it doesn't appear to be too expensive (and available on eBay), I'll keep my eye out on alternatives for now...

Here is an example of some captured video (best to right click, save as) which actually looks quite good.

From the web site:

The EVR130 is a 1.3 Mega Pixel Eyewear Camera/camera glasses/eyewear camera/video recorder/eyewear recorder/recording sunglasses with built-in 2GB Memory and Micro SD card slot.

1.3 mega pixels CMOS camera for clear digital recording Built in 2G memory for as long as 5 hours video recording With extended memory slot for TF/Micro SD card Sleek and elegant design suits for both men and women users A must equipment and highly recommended device for journalist, traffic police, travelers and etc Real time recording, never let memorable moments sneak away from life Easy connection with PC/Laptops by USB port, no driver needed User friendly operation button for easy control.

video glasses (lose the TV?)

2009-02-27T12:32:00.002+11:00

Again not what I was looking for but this has to be the way of the future. 3D TVs will need glasses and once you have glasses why do you need the TV?

Most (but not all) actually look pretty ugly but that would not stop me!

I will do some more investigation when I get more time.

Hindsight cyclist's Glasses for "eyes in the back of your head"

2009-02-27T11:58:00.004+11:00

I was looking for something else and found "hindsight" glasses which seem like they'd be great for cyclists (watch for idiots without needing to turn you head).

As the Nike site is garbage I won't bother to link to their site, in any case I assume there are other similar glasses that a google could uncover, I will have a good look later when I have more time...

No sound from Canon HD (or any) Video on BeyonWiz

2009-02-13T17:54:00.015+11:00

Yet another movie/format that won't play on my BeyonWiz :-(

Whenever a movie or video won't play correctly it is almost always the sound that is missing, I can only think of one movie where the video didn't work.

I used to have a canon S2IS digital camera and the BeyonWiz couldn't play its video or audio, with my new SX1IS the BeyonWiz plays the video but loses the audio (an improvement I suppose)...

I have seen many instances where the BeyonWiz sees the audio channels and supports the codecs but still won't play the audio, however in this particular case of the SX1IS generated video (which vlc etc plays fine) the Beyonwiz reports 0 channels.

Unfortunately the manufacturers don't have any real bug resolution process or I'd be reporting it there.

I have attached a small 320x240 video demonstrating the issue for those with a BeyonWiz, I used this resolution to keep the video size small the same issue occurs in high definition (1920x1080). It can be downloaded for testing from here. I am using the latest firmware (01.05.280).

The images show what VLC reports (2 channel "sowt") as well as what the Beyonwiz shows (0 channel "AAC"). The Canon website for says my SX1IS generates: MOV (Image Data: H.264; Audio Data: Linear PCM monaural).

TomTom Go 730 Firmware 8.301 kills "Operate my Go" functionality

2009-02-12T18:01:00.004+11:00

Hi,

Well my first update of firmware (from 8.300) was only a few minutes ago and already I'm swearing :-)

They broke the TomTom Home "Operate my Go" functionality, you will probably get a message like "This function is not yet supported for your navigation device or operating system". At least I'm not the only one with the problem, hopefully will be fixed soon...

Anyway I didn't make a backup just before the firmware update and TomTom home doesn't prompt for one (another failing in my opinion).

I've only just realised that tomtom can't actually import contacts as claimed (at least from my Treo) so I'm not really happy with "them" right now...

Using TYRE and Google Maps (or Earth) to create TomTom Itinerary Files and POI

2009-02-01T15:17:00.005+11:00

The TomTom (like all small devices) is not ideal for doing complex things so I started wondering if there was an easy way to do route planning on the desktop and simply send the data to the GPS...

As the "TYRE" website says "Google Maps is a nice application. You can view any place on earth you like. A TomTom is a very nice device. You can go any place on earth you like. But why don't these tools work together?".

I thought it was going to be hard but I installed "TYRE" and told it I was using Google Earth. You can then simply use Google Earth to add placemarks ("pins") at all your stops.

As long as you have "TYRE" in "active" mode whenever you right click on a pin and select the "copy" (to clipboard) option "TYRE" will detect this and update its list of waypoints. It is a simple matter to alter their order.

You can save the data as a TomTom itinerary file, csv, POI and some other GPS formats. The data can also be sent to TomTom home, USB sticks etc.

I've only justy started using this application but its looking very good.

Playing Movies from PC via BeyonWiz DP-S1

2008-09-27T16:08:00.025+10:00

This describes how I got my BeyonWiz DP-S1 to play movies off my PC (USB attached portable enclosure). I had previously unsuccessfully tried getting a NAS drive to attach to the BeyonWiz and failed but have since found out it is known to be incompatible with it.

To start with the BeyonWiz is hopeless with its error messages and this is where all the problems come from, you never have a clue where its gone wrong.

This is my environment:

LinkSys WRT54GL router with Tomato "1.21" firmware.
Netcomm NP285 HomePlug adapters (ethernet over power) for my remote connection to the BeyonWiz.
BeyonWiz DP-S1 on firmware "01.05.261".
WinXP SP3

The first thing you should do is create a userid and assign it a password in Windows. I called mine "MultiMedia" and for added security made sure it was "Limited"), the account details need to be entered into the BeyonWiz "Windows Sharing" setup.

My USB attached drive with the movies is "T:" with my movied in the "T:\$Movies$" tree so I right clicked on "$Movies$" and opened the properties at the "Sharing" tab (simple networking must be turned off for the tab to appear).

You want to "Share this Folder", and I chose "MultiMedia" as the share name. I changed the share permissions by adding "MultiMedia" and giving it only read-access as I don't want to accidently have someone on the BeyonWiz (my daughter perhaps) deleting the movies. I also did the same for the file permissions ("Security" tab).

To get the BeyonWiz to attach to the PC you choose the "Scan" option (49% for the BeyonWiz means the same as 100% for normal people). If this fails there may be firewall or other issues, its worth trying the "Find PC" option, if this also fails, its worth knowing that the BeyonWiz needs to see visible share(s) on the PC for it to "find" the PC.

Up until now I don't think user names, passwords or user permissions matter at all, just that a PC with at least one share is visible. Now if you navigate into the share and see no files one of these items is likely to be incorrect. At this stage I don't think the BeyonWiz recovers very well so between tests remove PCs (yellow button) and rescan or find PC, I have also had to do this after setup so BeyonWiz share handling doesn't appear to be very "flash".

If you can't see eveything under the share (folders or files) check the permissions of these objects, when setting permissions on the "root" folder its best to go to the advanced tab and check "Replace permission entries on all child objects with entries shown here that apply to child objects" and click apply (then check again)!

While I was having problems I turned off my PC's software firewall as well as relaxed the hardware firewall in my router, at the end of the day it wasn't causing problems but thats an easy way to determine if they are the cause.

Now there appears to be a Windows Bug which will cause problems with sharing removeable drives, basically your share gets deleted after a reboot (Linux is looking better every day...). My solution was to:

Create a batch file containing "net.exe share MultiMedia=T:\$Movies$".
To handle reboots where the drive is attached (you may or may not have it permanently attached) create a shortcut to the batch file in the "Startup" folder to have it automatically launched at user logon.
To handle cases where the drive wasn't connected at boot time, use Microsoft's "Tweak UI" tool to create an "autoplay" handler (look under "My Computer") and then edit the drives properties and choose the new handler for all content types. When testing this put a "pause" in the batch file as it took me a few goes to even get it to invoke the batch file, my command was: cmd.exe /c ""C:\SomeDir\Share_T_DRIVE.cmd" "%L""

Some resources:

BeyonWiz Networking Forum (ask questions or read the "sticky" tips)

BeyonWiz Guides: (How connect to shared files on Windows / How do I play a file on the network)

Hopefully that has helped you! One other thing, I don't know if its required but after each failed test, I turned the BeyonWiz off then on to be 100% sure it was reset.

Download from BeyonWiz DP-S1 to PC with WizFX.exe

2008-09-22T15:56:00.028+10:00

Since I had a bit of fun setting this up, I thought I'd document it to help others.

It all started because I wanted to create a DivX avi from a recording, one way is to copy the file to removable media and transfer it that way. This is time consuming and effectively locks up the BeyonWiz to only viewing live TV.

Once you have the files on the PC, the issue is the format that the BeyonWiz records in. I tried the "Add-Remove .ts" conversion tool (version 1.3.1), but it failed leaving me with a single ".ts' file with the end of the movie missing and the end of the movie located at the start (may have been other issues)! My guess is that this tool can't handle recordings that have been edited on the BeyonWiz.

Reading forums a bit I found people were using "WizFX" to point to a directory on the PC and convert it to a ".TS" that way. This worked perfectly for me.

I have since found that you can use "WizFX" to download over the LAN and convert to a single ".TS" file in one go. This is also slow but easier! It also doesn't lock up the BeyonWiz and you can use it as per normal operation (watch movies on HD and DVD etc). Hopefully the BeyonWiz will prevent me turning it off during a transfer (but I haven't tested this yet).

My hardware is:

LinkSys WRT54GL router with Tomato "1.21" firmware (with MultiCast allowed).
Netcomm NP285 HomePlug adapters (ethernet over power) for my remote connection to the BeyonWiz.
BeyonWiz DP-S1 on firmware "01.05.261".

Now the hard part was finding the latest version of the tool as the binary available from the "Other" menu (for the "DP-S1") at the BeyonWiz Download Site is only version 1.0.1.4 and I knew that there was a 1.0.1.14 version somewhere. I found it in a zip called "WizFX_src.zip", select "Source Code" in the first control and then choose "WizFX source code" from the "other" menu. This zip contains the binary as well. Note that the exe's file properties do show the version number, but the programs "about" box doesn't (at least for me, it sounds like it does for some people)!

Anyway I also had trouble connecting to the "BeyonWiz" so to begin:

Make sure the BeyonWiz is turned on!
Make sure you have the "WinPNP" server enabled on the BeyonWiz. Take note of the configured port number.
You need to work out or know the BeyonWiz's IP address and you should be able to ping this from the PC.
As a final sanity check you can "contact" the server via "http://192.167.1.77:49152/index.txt" in a browser which should respond with some text that lists most of the recorded movies. That url is obviously an example, you should replace "192.167.1.77" with the real IP address of your BeyonWiz and if you have configured a different port you should also change "49152".
When you first started the "WizFX.exe" program your software firewall may have prompted you for action. Hopefully you told it this program was a trusted application or at least allowed the request. If you disallowed it you may need to searh this setting out and fix it.
Its possible that a (hardware) firewall in your router may give you some fun and mine may have as my "WixFX" can't "discover" the beyonwiz, I don't care I'm happy to set the IP address as I've made sure its static.
Programs such as peer guardian could potentially be interfering, close them while you get things working.

At some stage I may use this information supplied to me by others to improve this:

Now for how to get the program connecting (where auto discovery clearly failing):

Click on Favorite
Click the "+" icon
Type in the IP Address (and port if not default)
Press Check Button

You should now be attached with the left pane showing the BeyonWiz info and the right showing the recordings (the the image, top right). You can right click on these recordings to select a download option. I use "Download TS file", this can also be made the default and then you can press the "Download" button.

Once you have a ".TS", it can be converted with "AutoGK", other tips and links:

Topic: Converting .ts to Divx files
Topic: Ripping and converting videos from BW
Site with Lots of information, guides, tools and links (http://www.rita.lt/)

My Fun with File Systems on USB attached Drives on the BeyonWiz DP-S1

2008-09-20T14:50:00.010+10:00

I now use a 160GB USB drive for watching movies as I got sick of trying to shuffle things around on smaller flash drives.

I noticed that the BeyonWiz (on firmware 01.05.261) would navigate and play the movies perfectly but was not able to delete the files. It would not display any error message (a bug) but it would clearly fail.

Later I tried to move some files from the internal drive to the USB drive and at that stage there was a brief popup message telling me the drive was read only (whatever that meant).

Anyway it turns out that the BeyonWiz can read (but not write) NTFS formatted drives!

My next trick was to try to reformat the drive with "FAT32". Windows didn't have any option for FAT32 so I used a command prompt to kick off "format.exe", it failed at the end of the format with a message "The volume is too big for FAT32" (which is not true so obviously a WinXP SP3 bug!).

Apparently there are many utilities available to format drives to FAT32 and I used ones called "SwissKnife". While I found the interface a bit "average" it did the job.

I copied a few movies to this drive and attached it to be BeyonWiz which didn't like this at all, it showed many files and folders with random characters in their names. I nearly gave up at this stage but eventually noticed that the BeyonWiz had an option to format external drives so I gave it a go. It successfully formatted the drive to FAT32 and this was OK for WinXP also.

If I had to guess, I'd say the BeyonWiz has some limitations on the allocation unit size and would recommend formatting any new drive to FAT32 on the BeyonWiz. I have read (but haven't tested) that you can't write to a drive unless it was formatted with the BeyonWiz...

Treo 680 SIM PIN BUG and Service LED Application

2008-09-13T11:17:00.005+10:00

I have now migrated from my TREO 650 to a TREO 680 which was a bigger step than I expected :-)

There are a few annoying things I'm working through one of which is the fact that the 680 has a bug which means that if the telephone's radio signal is lost then it will request the sim's PIN when it comes back up. Both the 650 and the 680 request the PIN when the phone is turned on (as they should).

I originally thought that I needed to make the connection better (by the old paper over the sim card trick) and in fact this may have helped so its possible I started with two sim pin issues!

Unfortunately the Telstra network also seems to fade in and out quite often (never had this issue with Optus) and after much experimentation I confirmed the pin gets requested when the signal comes back.

This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that the phone doesn't alert you to this fact by any means. The 650 would have made the LED a blinking red and it would have blinked green when the connected.

Some Idiot decided that the 680 wouldn't do this so I tried the "Service LED" application, this would then makem it easy to confirm everythings fine by occassionaly glancing at the LED.

I did read that ServiceLed used up the battery quicklyand unfortunately that was the case for me so I had to remove it.

Which left me only the option of removing the PIN on my SIM, not happy but what can you do...

Password Validation Schemes - Why fail if caps lock on? Stupid!

2008-07-11T11:10:00.006+10:00

Don't know about anyone else but I'm sick of password failures (and possible locking out of accounts) when the caps lock is on. It would seem to me with only a minor change to the entry mechanism a password could be "normalised" to work whether or not the caps lock was on with only trival impact on the password's security.

I think the case of all letters in a password could be adjusted so that the first letter found in a password would be lower case or converted to lower case. If the first letter was converted (from upper) then the case of all other letters in the password is adjusted to the opposite state (lower to upper and upper to lower).

For Example:


Before    Adjusted
======    ========
1ABC      1abc
1abc      1abc
2Abc      2aBC
2aBC      2aBC

Because this scheme still supports use of both cases (looks are transitions in case rather than absolute case) there is minimal impact of the complexity of a key...

Anyway thats my 2.1 cents worth for today.

Why I'll Never Buy Another GigaByte Motherboard

2008-03-01T17:15:00.007+11:00

From :
Dennis Bareis [ me@gmail.com ]
Sent :
1/15/2008 13:58
Question :
Works OK with Windows XP. Remember computer shop telling me about bios bug and conf setting needing disabling. Had to reset to defaults. BIOS has 2 identical settings for LAN ROM (another bug?). In any case booting linux (Ubuntu) either hangs or doesn't recognise the network depending on which combination of the 3 LAN related options I enable/disable (2x2x2 = 8 alternatives).I was looking for a later firmware but can't find it on your site. If you know what the issue might be with Linux or what the setting is that would be a bonus...
------------------
I have just discovered CTRL+F1 for advanced options. Now there is only 1 LAN related option in advanced/standard modes! Also F6=Safe defaults doesn't appear to work at all anywhere. Do I need to reset some persistent memory?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Model Name : ga k8nsp
--------------------------
M/B Rev : cantfind
BIOS Ver : f13
Serial No. : cantfind
Purchase Dealer :
C/tick Number :
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VGA Brand :
Model : CPU Brand : AMD Model : 64 3200+
Speed :
Operation System : Linux SP :
Memory Brand :
Type :
Memory Size :
Speed :
Power Supply : 400 W

Answer :
Dear Sir, Thank you for your kindly mail and inquiry. About the issue you mentioned, after checking the model name, the board is a OEM model. Due to the board has special H/W design/BIOS, we are afraid that we cannot provide the proper suggestion/solution for your reference. Therefore, we suggest you contact the shop/reseller you purchased this system before for more help later.At last, if you still have any further suggestion about our products/service, please do not hesitate to contact with us. We will try our best to help you ASAP.******** Thank you for supporting Gigabyte products ***********

From :
Dennis Bareis [ me@gmail.com ]
Sent :
1/18/2008 15:57
Question :
Thanks, but this is the last Gigabyte board I will ever buy.

Answer :
Dear Sir, Thank you again for your kindly mail. Your valuable feedback is the motivation for us to improve and serve you better. If you still have any further suggestion about our products/service, please do not hesitate to contact with us. We will try our best to help you ASAP.******** Thank you for supporting Gigabyte products ***********

My new BeyonWiz DP-S1 DVD, Media Player and High Definition TV Recorder

2008-02-27T18:06:00.060+11:00

I recently bought the BeyonWiz DP-S1 model you can see pictured on the right. It is a good device in general but definately could use a lot of polish. As BeyonWiz do produce firmware updates, there is hope yet :-)

This is my comment, bug and wish list...
It concentrates on what I see as issues or flaws as those are changes I'd like to see in future firmwares.

I suppose I should say that I don't regret buying the BeyonWiz DP-S1 although it might sound like it after reading the following! I've had the device for about 3 weeks now and decided I'd collect my thoughts as to what its issues are and at his stage I'd buy it again.

These are my opinions and I don't really want to argue about them... Please note that it has been mentioned that I'm very picky!

I noticed a few stupid bugs when I first started using it so I upgraded the firmware to the latest thats available (01.05.197).

It took me over a week and two userid creations to get access to the official BeyonWiz forums. I've never had to work so hard to join a forum before...

The HARDWARE

Not that it looks like a poor quality remote, but some of the remote's keys "rub" like one and this is very annoying.
The device seems to have nice deep rubber feet and plenty of ventilation holes so it shouldn't overheat, but despite the rubber feet it vibrates very loudly on my wooden (hard surface) entertainment unit, it probably needs spring loaded feet! I currently have it cushioned with a towel underneath a tray to isolate it. I'm thinking either a bed of bubble wrap or little carpet squares under the feet...

The hard drive can be a little noisy (lot of short "ticking" noices - head movement) although most of the time it is not noticable.

I can see that the BeyonWiz site now allows you to buy different color side panels, but I'm 95.21% sure that when I last looked at it it said it came with the 2 other colored side panels and as I didn't like the grey I was going to attach the black. Needless to say it came with grey only. Everytime I don't capture all the details (called "proof") on a web site I end up regretting it...

The BeyonWiz has a DVD reader, this should have been a writer.

Obviously it would be nice to have a blue ray writer or reader.

Firmware Upgrade

I think its fair enough to require a factory reset, what is not fair enough is to lose all your configuration.

It should be possible to save all your channel and other options on the hard disk (automatically when upgrading firmware I'd suggest) or elsewhere as XML (text at least). On load it can ignore options it doesn't understand when from a previous release or not if from current.

Perhaps there could be an "autoexec.xml" which gets loaded at boot time. If XML is used this could allow external programs to tailor the config.

WLAN

My Wii didn't have too much trouble where the BeyonWiz is now, but the Beyonwiz struggles to connect and stay that way. Just bought some Netcomm HomePlugs...

Fairly basic security support. I didn't like having to downgrade my router's security just to get the BeyonWiz to attach, and then have to change my Wii, computer and everything else thats attached.

Capabilities

It should have internet access via browser (therefore "YouTube", java games etc).

Video podcast support sounds good also...

It would be great if it had arcade GAME emulators (not sure how you'd control it without joystick, are there USB joysticks?).

No screensaver mode when paused etc.

User Interface

If a button brings up a dialog then I think its fair that the same button remove it.

The file (movie etc) list is just that, no tag information and as far as I can see no way to display IMDB data.

The file list should display "((12 audio files))" or similar when browsing for movies and other categories found (its way TOO easy to accidently change categories)...

There should be a small (500ms?) delay when moving down OVER DVD to USB etc so that it doesn't immediately start the DVD and read it (delaying you) when you don't care either way.

As far as I can see the "guide" doesn't use unused turners to update itself automatically so you have to scroll to each channel, select it, wait some ("long enough already?") time. It also doesn't appear to visually update unless you then scroll off this channel to another.

The "(i)" button could be used for context sensitive help particularly in setup options.

There are many assumptions made in the manual, fo example what a "timer" and "favourite" is, these should be explained in detail.

The BeyonWiz should log user and its activity (detailed) in a file which can be viewed and downloaded. I'm sure this must be useful for reporting bugs and trouble shooting. I had a lot of trouble with the Network to start with (due to its limited security support) and this took a while to work out. A log may have helped.

The file deletion dialog is too Microsoftish, displays no meaningful information that might help you make up your mind (assuming that you know you are deleting anyway). It should say how many files its deleting (when more than 1) and should either list them or not popup over it/them so you can visually confirm correct selection of what is about to be killed...

The BeyonWiz does make good use of the colored remote buttons, however the use of color wasn't thought through, RED normally means stop or bad, perhaps cancel and the color GREEN normally means the opposite. The BeyonWiz reverses this...

I think at least standard DVDs should autoplay, thats pretty much expected...

It should integrate with IMDB.

In the "file manager" see "weird" non existant folders (below its root) like 'device1/unit0_p1" for USB, so you have to navigate down two folders just to get to the root folder of the USB device!

Power Off

While recording, pressing "power off" on remote displays a dialog with buttons "Later", "yes" & "no". Choose Later. Then play movie, BeyonWiz turns off while playing movie! The fact that this was one which the BeyonWiz couldn't fast forward didn't improve my mood...

The "later" dialog shouldn't even exist. It should go to an intermediate mode between off and on where no output goes to the screen ("grey or perhaps a nice "off" bitmap) but it records. If you do anything or power on it goes back fully on. As a possible (poorer) alternative don't allow shutdown at all when recording but display a msg telling you to hold button for x seconds if you really want to do so.

If anyone has pressed "Later" then you will not even know (until it turns off on you) and as far as I know can't be cancelled.

Also while recording and you have pressed "Later" the LCD shows the last station viewed not what is being recorded. This scared me the first few times as I thought it was recording the wrong channel...

Of course the lack of any idea as to its state means that I sometime leave it on when I expect it to turn off (then it doesn't).

Recording

The BeyonWiz won't let you say that you wish to create a weekly schedule for a Wednesday (as an example), you have to know the date of the next Wednesday, what was that again... 30 days has September, April.... This is stupid. I notice that you can verify its correct on the timer list. If its not for a specific date, then dates shouldn't be used.

The timer list doesn't show the channel being recorded!

Common convention says that a recording from 8:00 to 9:00 starts at 8:00:00 and ends at 8:59:59, that is the recording stops before the end time. The BeyonWiz either ends the recording at "8:59:00" or it simply is out by one minute for the duration as it thinks that 8:00-9:00 is a 61 minute recording.

Two recordings on same channel one after another, (1) should never have problems overlapping (if other tuner not required, use it!) and (2) I shouldn't have to know about the padding (supposed to be invisible) but, you have to be, for example I have a 1 minute prepadding, for two one hour episodes the first can't be longer than 59 minutes!

Clash detection should happen on initial startup and after timer added, clashing timers should be marked. Timers should not be discarded if a change causes it to clash!!! At least add a cancel option so I don't have to kill one of two timers and there is no other option!

You can't set a timer for a currently in progress program!

You can't edit (probably fair enough) a currently executing timer, but it should open in view only mode. I tghink you should be able to edit and this would solve anther issue in that the BeyonWiz defaults to "once" for a program chosen from the guide and then you can't edit it and you lose it before you can change it to "weekly". Note that I don't mean change the time of the current recording via the popup menu...

There are the occassional but very minor recording blips (tiny splits). Actually yesterday these turned into major glitches recording "House", I have read that there may be a memory leak so I have turned the device off (at power) and back on.

The recorded filename or details don't include the channel name. Still haven't worked out what the "*" in a filename does (manual assumes too much again) and have not see it do anything either (seems to get dropped).

The device plays files in order, this is not good for recordings where they are listed most recent first, it should play in the reverse order so that the end of the one recording can flow onto the start of the next perhaps following one (where 2 or more consequitive programs recorded).

It should not be possible to exit a recording with any button other than "stop" (also shouldn't play files in order). For example "forward" to end should pause at end of movie.

I saw someone say in a forum that it is possible to record to an attached USB hard drive (and therefore you need not bother upgrading the internal one). If this is possible, I haven't seen how yet...

The "padding options" should be DEFAULTS which can be overridden on a per timer basis. For some things such as news, I don't care, for some movies I'd like to have bigger padding.

Another timer option should be how many copies of timer recorded files should be kept. I really only want the last news output (effectively for it I want an "overwrite" option).

I think there should be quality options so I can decide how much of my hard drive is used...

In one of my recordings there were two or three scenes "tinted" green!

Play Back

Shares not correctly supported. Userid/password are SHARE attributes, not computer attributes, BeyonWiz talks to the share not the computer! Basically there is no mechanism to provide a userid/password unless these are identical accross all machines and shares!

No "YouTube" etc.

Because there is no "to the end" key (functions as a "end this file" key), it is very hard to see if your recording has the end of a movie etc, don't know about you but I don't watch 90% of a movie just to miss the end. The end key should take you to the end o the movie and pause, you should then be able to go back a bit and play.

Generally does a good job but won't play all files correctly, not all sound produced and no trick mode etc possible, you get an error message "Not supported Action" when trying to fast forward etc. Not only is this not English, it is in any case a supported action, but for whatever reason the BeyonWiz can't process it and it should say why. In any case VLC on my laptop plays it perfectly on WinXP (including ff & rewind), so there is no technical reason the BeyonWiz shouldn't be able to do the same.

No BOOKMARKS, can't believe it. If a DVD or DivX stops (easy to do with the tiny remote keys too...) it should remember where it was and allow continue and it should also allow you to set your own bookmarks.

It is possible to set start and end (yellow "A" and "B") points to cut or save a portion of the file being played. Once you have selected "B", it limits you to playing that portion, EXCEPT that most of the normal keys like upparrow for +10% and "goto end" don't work on this and effectively cancel your choice.

When you have a yellow "A" (starting) point you should see next logical choices displayed to lead you correctly to the correct sequences reuired to do what you want (add"B", move "A" and "B" etc).

You should be warned if you are about to lose your "time-shifting" buffer! Better still why lose it, store it on disk until next startup and deleted it then or start a recording with the buffer and continue it (perhaps a dialog for this)...

No UDP streaming client (for Tversity etc).

Won't play off or see my movies on my NAS (NexStar LX). I have seen mention that they don't work too well with the BeyonWiz... I suspect the BeyonWiz rather than the NAS as I could not find any other mentions of incompatibities for the NAS but could for the BeyonWiz.

After struggling with this blog's software to get the formatting right (and I think it won), my next blog post may be about that...

My experience of Customer Support for GlobalSat BT338 GPS Receiver

2007-04-25T16:30:00.000+10:00

Both the "GpsInfo.exe" and "SiRFDemo.exe" Windows utilities (on supplied CD and latest from their web site) use incorrectly sized non-resizable and non-scrollable dialogs (see right) which which cut off vital parts of the information.

To get support from the GlobalSat site you must raise a support ticket, they do have a forum but they request that you raise a ticket!

I raised a ticket(s). I told hem my screen resolution was 1920 x 1200 and suggested that a quick fix was to make them resizable.

Support tickets 1 & 2 were closed immediately with #2 telling me to do what I'd already told them I'd done in that same ticket. Ticket #3 was closed by them with a vague promise of some future fix.

Each time I raised a support ticket it was immediately closed. Obviously their pay depends on how many are closed as they are really keen to close them!!!!

The obviously flaw (if they really cared about customer service) is that it should be the customer closing the ticket when they were happy... I assume most people give up fairly quickly. From my experience you'll get better support from google...

GPS Receivers for the TREO 650

2007-04-17T17:57:00.000+10:00

I recently borrowed a bluetooth GPS receiver and played with Tom Tom version 6 software. After realising I liked what I saw (and that I wanted a more sensitive GPS receiver) I decided to do some googling. It was surprising how little information there was on GPS systems on the PalmOs... Hopefully the information here will help people in similar trouble.

The GPS I borrowed was a BTGP-38 that was bought very cheaply on ebay. This immediately worked once I chose a nice open spot to test it. I was thinking about buying one of these for myself but didn't like that the fact that the unit didn't have auto-off and I thought I'd try for a more sensitive unit with a better chipset.

I was really keen on the QSTARZ Q818 but had seen posts about problems with palms (vague, no details). The manufacturer didn't know which is a pity as it sounds much better than the BT338 (auto power off AND on for starters).

I bought a GlobalSat BT338 for twice the price of the BTGP-38 and got it working reasonably quickly (but not immediately). It is a more sensitive unit but shorter running time and heavier. It works in many places where the other didn't as it can handle much weaker signals.

Since buying my GPS I have since successfully tried the "Holux GPSlim GR236".

My main tips:

Pair the bluetooth device first (phones bluetooth configuration). Most (all?) devices use a key of "0000" (four zeros).

A Palm program will ask you which device you'd like when establishing the connection. If you have not been asked it must either be being remembered (check app config) or something is going wrong (some apps can take a while to prompt for GPS device). Tom Tom 6 in particular is a major "pain in the but-t" (I've taken 30 minutes to get it going at times the first time and I have done it many times...) and for bluetooth devices has no supported way of entering baud rate or choosing the trusted device, stupid, but it will eventually ask (and I think its better not to have the TREO attached to USB cable/cradle)...

If using a Windows laptop or PDA you will need to create an outgoing COM port to that specific GPS device so when an application wants to communicate with the receiver it will know which trusted device it needs to talk to when esablishing the serial connection.

If you haven't been asked for (or configured) the baud rate and you are having trouble, then its possible that your application doesn't autodetect it (or is failing to do so). TomTom 6 is buggy in that it has no way of specifying baud rates for the device, what I think worked for me with the BT338 was changing config to a hard wired device, this prompts for baud rate, after entering this correct device to say is a bluetooth device and "Bobs your uncle"... Check GPS doco for correct baud rate (38,400 for the BT338).

Once a bluetooth session is established (see GPS receiver documentation for what the LEDs mean) I recommend moving to the clearest outdoors location you can find and trying to get the app to work. The GPS receiver will probably not work well indoors, around tall buildings or trees. If that works try walking and/or the car.

Initial connections can take a very long time. I have seen mention of 5 and 10 minutes. Leave it alone for a while, try to find a test progress or screen which shows satelite information (position/signal strength etc).

Belkin USB 2 File Transfer Cables

2007-03-21T19:14:00.000+11:00

When I read the review about this cable I was excited! However as usual reality set in (this never seems to happen to hardware reviewers...).

> The Belkin usb 2.0 File Transfer Cable provides the perfect solution
> that allows you to copy files from PC to PC without the need to install drivers
> when used with Windows ME, 2000 or XP.

Yeah, right, the first thing I had to do was install the drivers and then a "laplink" (PcSync) transfer program (for WinXP SP2).

> Simple drag and drop operation.

Another classic, not only are there no drive letters for drag and drop in explorer but the "you buet" transfer program required me to create a batch file so I could quickly create the destination directories rather than add an extra step to its million step process for setting up each pair of directories I wanted to syncronise.

After this it crashed in many interesting ways which makes me conclude:

* It has a problem with long (but obviously legal) file name/path lengths
* It has problems with large amounts of data
* It has problems with large numbers of files.

Error messages are hopeless, the confirmation screen tells you virtually nothing and progress indication where not wrong is misleading and is in any case minimal.

So how did I fix it? I threw it away and wrote a batch file which uses the free Microsoft "RoboCopy.exe" program to do the copy.

Haven't seen such a piece of cr*p in quite a while. They really excelled.

ScrBtn (Screen Button)

2007-01-29T18:47:00.000+11:00

This is an app that allows you to create your own navigation structure. The top right image shows my "Default" (main) menu and navigation into "Utilities" and then to "Calculators".

The bottom right image is the "official" demonstration image and shows some of the options (also notice my calculator menu has two huge buttons).

I have set this application up so that in any submenu pressing "Home" navigates to the root and the left arrow goes up one navigation level. In the root menu pressing home a second time starts the native TREO "Applications" menu.

This application lets you define the grid size for your "On Screen Buttons" (OSB) and has a swap tool to allow moving of buttons. It also allows you to launch applications off an inserted card.

You can download this application from "http://www.freeware-palm.com/download-scrbtn-screen-button-v2-42.html".

The author appears to be quite receptive to constructive feedback so if you have any ideas email him! Let him know how great his program is and son't forget its free! I have replaced Button Launcher with this application (currently version 2.42).

KeyCaps650 - Easier entry of capitals an symbols

2007-01-27T19:15:00.000+11:00

KeyCaps650 allows you to easily capitalize letters or use punctuation without using the shift or option keys on a Treo 650 (there is another version for the 600).

I got annoyed with the default options as it would create symbols when I typed words like "look".

The options shown on the right are what I'm using, the delay is too small to happen accidently (I'd really have liked to disable it).
I have set it up so that holding a key converts:

Lower case to Upper case
Upper case to symbol

Unfortunately, I'd prefered it if it then looped back to lower case etc if you continued to hold the key but its quite good as is.

For entry of many symbols or upper case characters the normal TREO keys would be easier but for the odd upper case character or symbol this program makes it much easier and faster to enter them.

TimeSync TREO with PC (therefore Atomic Clock)

2007-01-26T20:04:00.000+11:00

Hi,

If you are connected to the internet you WinXP PC automatcally syncronises its time with a servers clock (there are freeware sync programs for other operating systems). What this application does is sync the time on your TREO to that of your PC.

It will also handle timezone changes (daylight savings).

Bye,
Dennis

KeyguardTime (simple clock and status)

2007-01-26T19:46:00.000+11:00

Hi,

This application can automatically display the time and other selected status information when the TREO is powered on (no need to unlock the device to see time etc). It can also display when a selected button is held down.

The default view is sort of transparent with the currently running application still visible through the status application (this can be turned off).

I have mine configured to popup if I hold the phone key down, this does not prevent the button launcher program I also have tied to this key from working.

You can download it from "http://mytreo.net/downloads/details-640.html?KeyguardTime%2B".

There is another freeware product called "SOnTime" (http://www.freeware-palm.com/download-sontime.html) which replaces the TREO keyguard with a clock plus other basic info (but doesn't popop on button), you may wish to compare these.

Bye,
Dennis

Button Launcher Program for TREO 650

2007-01-26T19:36:00.000+11:00

This is a free launcher program I am using, it is a self contained part of PalmCommander which allows you to set up the Phone, Calendar and Messaging hardware buttons to display a menu containing up to 9 programs.

The image on the right shows how I have set up the "Phone" button (I make the first in each screen that keys original function).

You can download the program from http://mytreo.net/downloads/details-917.html?PalmCommander.

By default you can press the hard key many times to select a menu item and have a timeout. I have disabled the timeout as I'd rather select it myself, the on screen menu buttons are big enough for fingers in any case.

Note that I am not completely happy with this program as you have no real control over the positioning of the items on the menu (you can only add to the end) and the "B4" hardkey configuration doesn't work at all.

I have now replaced this application with Screen Buttons (although there is no conflict).

Dennis' List of Must Have Applications for the TREO 650

2007-01-26T19:19:00.000+11:00

Lets begin with a list of some other good "must have" (or "popular") pages I've found:

Now for my list you should understand that I prefer freeware applications whereever possible so most if not all of the following are free (this is a work in progress):

ScrBtn (screen buttons) is a simple navigation system which I have assigned to the "Home" hardkey on my TREO 650 (to replace the default "Applications" menu app).

KeyGuardTime displays time and status on startup (without unlocking phone) or when button held.

OnCradleOn prevents TREO powering off when its charging on cradle!

TimeSync keeps the time in your TREO in line with your computer when HotSyncing (takes care of drift).

KeyCaps650 is a program which makes entry of the odd upper case character or symble easier and faster.

Treo Allegro 0.2 is a program I use to make my TREO's LED blink fast green when a VM or SMS is waiting. "LedOff" is frequently mentioned for this but that doesn't work and in any case is not intended to work the way I'd like. I want to keep all existing LED functionality and add to this. I also tried but discarded the shareware "Butler".

Now for some things I'm looking for or would like:

A good PDF viewer. I've tried Adobe and PalmPDF.
Alternatives to the normal KeyGuard.
Decent stopwatch and countdown timer.

This is a list of applications I used to use and think are very good but for one reason or another no longer use:

Button Launcher is a self contained part of PalmCommander which allows you to set up the Phone, Calendar and Messaging hardware buttons to display a menu containing up to 9 programs (I make the first in each screen that keys original function).I have now replaced this application with Screen Buttons (although there is no conflict).

Why can't my TREO stay on when its got External Power?

2007-01-21T13:47:00.000+11:00

When I have my TREO 650 connected to power (charging), it is really annoying that it continues to "conserve" it by powering off all the time, now that I have bought a USB cradle which also charges its been annoying me even more.

I have found a freeware tool called "OnCradleOn" which at least fixes my problem when I've got in it it's cradle (haven't checked if it also works while charging without the cradle), you can download it from:

http://www.freewarepalm.com/utilities/oncradleon.shtml

There is an alternative freeware product called "STOIC" which I have not tried.

Vexed - Puzzle Game for PalmOs (Treo 650 etc)

2007-01-07T11:32:00.000+11:00

Hi,

Just discovered a great puzzle type game that takes little while to work out but is very good.

Its open source, see http://vexed.sourceforge.net/

You have to clear all objects by combining similar into at least pairs, they fall under gravity.

There are many level packs which are quite small, and although the game can run from the expansion card, the levels need to be in the handheld.

Bye,
Dennis

Hated my Nokia 6230, Love my New Palm TREO 650

2007-01-07T10:57:00.000+11:00

Hi,

My first phone was a Nokia and it was simple but I loved it. I had since had two other non-Nokia phones which were OK but had a few "features". Since my first Nokia phone was so reliable (and without bugs) I decided a couple of years ago to replace my phone with the Nokia 6230.

For quite a few weeks after I first bought the 6230 I was a literally finding one or more bugs a day!

The Nokia "PC SUITE" desktop software has not had any less bugs and has never reliably worked (at least with bluetooth), frequently requiring reboots to recover. The latest version even refused to see my phone contacts at all! Support is non-existent (they don't reply - except for the "we will reply within 48 hour" response).

The PalmOS based TREO 650 smartphone has a number of things I don't like "out of the box" but I have eliminated or worked around these with some freely available software (freeware or open source) , some good links to start you off are:

http://www.freeware-palm.com/
http://www.palmopensource.com/
http://mytreo.net/downloads/cat1.html (freeware + shareware)
http://www.freewarepalm.com/ (lookout for popups...)

See "http://dennis2centsworth.blogspot.com/2007/01/dennis-list-of-must-have-applications.html" for some lists of "must have" applications.

The camera is poor by todays standards but this doesn't really worry me as you need a "real camera" for decent photography no matter what phone you have.

The SYNC to the desktop works well and since I to syncronise to the PALM DESKTOP I don't have to worry about things going wrong (for example I don't want to sync with outlook - I use the better "Thunderbird" in any case) and I also want to know what it is doing so I can be sure I've backed up everything I need to. It correctly categorises my contacts and never includes stuff I don't want.

The palm desktop is still a 16 bit application ! It also needs some modernising and appears to have been negected... It needs multimedia and extended backup options, other appications such as Adobe Reader need to integrate better.

I bought the 650 because I found it dirt cheap (nearly half the price of the closest competition) otherwise I'd either have bought the newer TREO 680 or waited for a decent smartphone with GPS and mapping software (which I'd really like - they are available but "need more work")...

Well I intend to keep this phone for at least 2 years and by then GPS has probably become "main stream" (the right time to put my toe in). I would prefer that my next phone to be a PalmOS based phone and now have good reason to be confident that it could be (http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3647801).

Some forums I've found:

http://mytreo.net/forum/index.php/board,4.0.html
http://forum.treonauts.com/treo-models/treo-650/
http://www.expansys.com.au/f.aspx?i=116430 (not many posts but good "sticky" ones)

Some good "FAQ" info:

I'm sure my Power Plug Packs are breeding

2006-12-12T19:26:00.000+11:00

Am I the only one who is sick of getting a new power pack with everything I buy? Not only does the voltage differ, so does the size and shape of the plug and even when identical the tip may be positive or negative!

This is not only idiotic but its not very good for the environment. I have many unwanted adapters in my shed and I'm sure they are breeding...

I think we can start by making it illegal for a product to include a bundled adapter and let market forces loose... This would force vendors to get together and quickly standardise voltages, tips etc to a very small number of variations and allow you to reuse your old phone adapter with your new phone. Hopefully you'd rarely if ever need to buy one in any case.

And why not have adapters with many tips or even imbed them in the mains power points?

My First Post

2006-12-03T14:21:00.000+11:00

Hi,

I've been thinking about starting a blog about Windows Installer, but have decided against it as I put everything I know into my MAKEMSI manual in any case (http://makemsi-manual.dennisbareis.com/), this manual includes a section called "Windows Installer Basics" which I gather is well liked (http://makemsi-manual.dennisbareis.com/windows_installer_basics.htm).

Note that the downloaded Windows Compiled Help version is much easier to use and search. I may make exceptions and mention MSI related information on these pages but in general, I going to rave about things that really annoy me!