Digital Streets

I recently took a vacation with my family and found that the camera on my cell phone to be of great assistance. Prior to this, I couldn’t think of any productive ways to use my phone’s camera. Here’s what I’ve been using it for:

1. Parking Space at Airport – Instead of having to write down your parking space number (or worse yet, remember it!), use your camera to take a quick pic of the parking space number and any other markers (floor number, section markers, etc.) that will help you locate your car when you return from your vacation.

2. Rental Car’s License Plate Number – Most hotels require your vehicle’s license plate number.  If you are renting a car, it’s doubtful you know what it is.  You can save yourself a trip to the parking lot by taking a quick snapshot before you go into the hotel to register.  You should also take pictures of any dents or scratches on the rental car before you leave before you leave the rental agency.

3. Hotel Room Number – Since hotels are moving away from actual keys and moving towards pass keys and bands to open your door, they don’t imprint the room number on the pass key.  If you’re rushing out of your room to get started on your vacation, take a snapshot of the room number so you are sure to find your way back instead of having to ask the front desk where you are staying.

4. Luggage – Take a picture of your luggage so that if you can’t find it at the airport, you can save time in trying to describe what you are looking for.

You should also take the time to enter the customer service numbers for your credit cards and bank into your phone’s address book.  If your wallet is lost or stolen, you will be able to quickly call to guard your accounts.  You should also save your health insurance info as well, including the identification and group numbers as well as the customer service phone number.

I replaced my RAZR with the Motorola W490 a couple of months ago.  I liked the features on the new phone and was really looking forward to getting my various applications installed and running.  I use the Gmail for Mobile application for keeping in contact with my friends and family when I’m on the go and also use Opera Mini for quick web browsing and research.  While both applications installed with no problem, getting them to work was an entirely different situation.  When I would try to run either application, it would halt, stating that the application needed to have permission to access the network.  Try as I might, I could find no settings on the phone to give the application the required permissions.  T-Mobile had locked that functionality out of the phone.  Time to unlock some features on the phone, here’s what I did:

First, you will need to install the drivers for connecting the handset to your computer.  I used the Motorola Handset USB Driver for Windows (32-bit), which I downloaded from Motorola’s developer site.  If you’re running a 64-bit version of Windows, you can get the drivers for 64-bit here.  You will also need to download the latest version of P2K Commander.  I downloaded version 4.9.E from E398mod.com.  Once download, extract the contents of the downloaded file.

Before you connect your phone to your computer, make sure that the Default Connection is set to Data Connection.  You can check this by  doing the following:

1. Select Main Menu.

2. Scroll down and select Settings. 
3. Select USB Settings.

4. The Default Connection should be set to Data Connection.  If it’s set to Memory Card, select change and select Data Connection as the new default.

5. Select Back until an Exit option appears, then select Exit to return to your main screen.

Connect your phone to the computer by using a USB cable.  After the hardware has been detected and is functioning properly, open P2K Commander.  At the bottom of the left pane, you should see various information appear as P2K Commander reads the contents of the phone.  Go to the menu at the top, click on Seem and select Functions.

When the Seem Functions window appears, make sure that the checkboxes for Menu: Webaccess > Web Sessions > Menu > Set Default and Menu: WebAccess/Internet are both checked.  If a checkbox is unchecked, double click the checkbox.  

Click the Write seems button, on the right side of the window.  After the seems have been written, click the Close dialog button.

Go to the dropdown at the top of the screen and select /a P2k Phone system.

When the contents appear, double-click the mobile folder, followed by the certs, root, x509, and kjava folders.  Right-click the j2me_domain_registry.sm file and select Copy.  This puts a copy of the file into your P2K Commander directory.  Put the file somewhere safe, just incase you need it. 

Once you have a copy of the file, right-click the file again and select Delete.

Close P2K Commander and disconnect your phone from the computer.  You need to check your Web Sessions on your phone.  To do this:

1. Select Main Menu.

2. Select Fun & Apps.

3. Select Tools.

4. Select WebAccess.

5. Select Web Sessions.

You probably have one Web Session, called Java Session.  You can edit it, or better yet, create a new session to play with.  Either way, select the session and then select Options, followed by Edit.  Your session file needs to look like this for Opera Mini or Gmail for Mobile to work:

Name: Custom

Homepage: http://wap.myvoicestream.com

Password:

Service Type 1 and Service Type 2 can be reversed (with the proper ports assigned) however, my tethered connection with my Nokia N800 fails to work is Service Type 1 is set to WAP.  When your changes are finished, select Done.  If you created a new session, select Options and then select Set Default.

Now you are ready to install and run your applications.  Both Gmail for Mobile and Opera Mini ran fine on the basic T-Zones internet plan.

I have run into several situations where I have found some useful information that I wanted to text message to a friend’s phone (and sometimes my own).  I would have to pull out my phone and plug away.  I recently came across the Google Send to Phone extension for the Firefox browser that lets you select text from a web page and then send it as a text message to a mobile number.

To install the extension, open your Firefox browser and go here.

Go down to the Install Now box and click the google-sendtophone.xpi link.

Read the privacy notice and the terms of service and then click the Agree and Install button.

When the Software Installation window appears, click the Install Now button.

The Add-ons window will appear.  Click the Restart Firefox button to complete the installation.

When Firefox comes back up, you will notice a new button (with a cell phone icon on it) in the upper right corner.

Now when you find info on the web that you wish to send to a mobile phone,  simply highlight the text on the web page and click the new button.  The Google Send To Phone form will appear.

Input the target mobile number, select the carrier from the dropdown and input a subject and any additional text that is to be sent.  Click the Send button and the message will be sent to the mobile number.

If you are an Outlook user and often find yourself needing to text message a friend or business associate, you should check out the Outlook plug-in from Joopz.  Joopz users can send SMS messages from the web to any mobile number, allowing them to utilize an actual keyboard instead of poking away at their phone keys.  The plug-in allows you the same freedom, but allows you to use Outlook.

You need to got to Joopz and set up an account.  Once you have finished that and entered the activation code that was emailed to you, it is time to grab the plug-in.  Go to the bottom of the Joopz page.  Click the plug-ins link.

Beneath the description for the plug-in, click the Download Now! link.  The download process should begin.  Once downloaded, install the plug-in by double-clicking the msi file.  The installation is quick and painless.

Now open Outlook.  Go to the toolbar at the top of the application and find and click the Joopz.com button.  Select Log On to Joopz.com.

Input your login information (your mobile number that you used to register the account and the password).  Click the Log On button.

Now you can SMS any mobile number from Outlook.  To do so simply follow these steps:

1. Go back to the Outlook toolbar and click the New SMS button (next to the Joopz.com button).

    

2. In the new window you can either input a phone number and click the Start button or select from your Outlook contacts (any contact with a mobile number will be listed).

   

3. Go to the bottom portion of the Message window and type out your message.  When you are finished, click the Send button.

   

4. Your message will be sent.  It will also move into the upper portion of the message window.  If the recipient responds, their message will appear in the upper portion as well.

    

If you have a data plan on your cell phone, you can utilize EQO Mobile to post to Twitter instead of relying on SMS and possibly racking up some unnecessary charges for texting.

First, you’ll need to set things up so that you can use the Google Talk protocol with Twitter, see the tutorial for doing this here.

Once that is done, fire up EQO Mobile.  After you have added your Google Talk account, you will see the user twitter@twitter.com.

Start a chat session with twitter@twitter.com so you can create your Twitter posting.

Once you have finished typing your post, click Send.  The message will show up in the message window.

Now go to Twitter and you will see your post in all of its glory.

 
 Found another little gem for my T-Mobile RAZR, EQO Mobile.  This application allows you free IM on all major networks (AIM, Google Talk, MSN Messenger, ICQ, Yahoo, and Jabber). 

While it does allow unlimited free calls to other online EQO Mobile users as well as free EQO Messaging to those members, I rely on the free IM, since it doesn’t matter if the party you are chatting with has EQO Mobile or not.

I use T-Mobile for my cellular service.  For a few months, T-Mobile was allowing the Gmail App to be utilized on it’s tzones internet package.  Long enough for me to become totally addicted to it.  The Gmail App for accessing your Gmail on your cell phone is a super application.  I guess too super, since T-Mobile is now blocking the ports that are required for the application to function.  I don’t understand the decision, since I can tether my cell phone to my laptop for internet access, which would be a lot more traffic than just email.  I could use my WAP browser, or better yet, my Opera Mini to access Gmail, but it just wasn’t the same.  Then I came across flurry. 

While it is by no means the Gmail App, it does fine in email access, but it does quite a bit more.  It allows you to check multiple email accounts on your phone, imports contacts, acts as a RSS feed reader, sends pictures from your phone, and even can send you a text message when you get new mail.  If you’re a T-Mobile user (and even if you’re not), it is definitely worth checking out.

Opera Mini is a great little browser for your cell phone. If you’re a T-Mobile user, you will have some problems since Opera Mini wants to access it’s proxy on port 80. T-Mobile’s WAP browser uses port 8080 and Web Sessions are closed on T-Mobile phones. Time for a little hacking to get things moving. First thing you’ll need to do is hop onto Google and download a copy of P2KTools and decompress it. After you have done that, follow these steps:

1. Connect your phone to your computer, and as the computer locates the new hardware, direct it to the drv directory in P2KTools for drivers.
2. Execute P2KTools.exe.
3. Click on the arrow next to Switch To and select P2K Mode.
4. Click Connect.
5. Select the Seem Editor tab.
6. Under the Seem section, look for seem and rec and make sure the seem reads 0032 and rec reads 0001.
7. Select Read From Phone.
8. Click on byte 2F.
9. Under the Bit operations section, under the 1, check the checkbox.
10. Select Write To Phone.
11. Click Restart to restart your phone.
12. On your phone, go to Office Tools and select Web Access.
13. Select Web Sessions.
14. Create a new web session with the following info:

Name: Custom
Homepage: http://wap.myvoicestream.com
Service Type 1: HTTP
Gateway IP 1: 216.155.165.50
Port 1: 8080
Domain 1:
Service Type 2: HTTP
Gateway IP 2: 216.155.165.50
Port 2: 8080
Domain 2:
DNS 1: 000.000.000.000
DNS 2: 000.000.000.000
Timeout: 15 minutes
CSD No 1:
User Name 1:
Password 1:
Speed (Bps) 1:
Line Type 1:
CSD No. 2:
User Name 2:
Password 2:
Speed (Bps) 2:
Line Type 2:
GPRS APN: wap.voicestream.com
User Name:
Password:

Set the new web session as your default and open Opera Mini to check if it is connecting to the internet. If your Opera Mini still doesn’t work, go back to the newly created Web Session and select Launch.

Opera Mini is an impressive little web browser for your phone. It allows you to access the web via a remote server that pre-process web pages before sending them to your phone. The content is optimized for your device, providing good performance and a suprisingly great experience. I loaded it on my RAZR and have been pleasantly surprised by how well it works and how well it displays the pages. Definitely something to check out.

You can download Opera Mini using your phone’s browser and going to http://mini.opera.com/

I was happy to find that Google allows you to customize your personal Google homepage so that you can view it on your phone. From your PC’s browser, go to http://www.google.com/ig/cp and you will see your homepage layout. Select what you want to be available on your phone (not all options are available). After you are done, simply go to google.com/ig on your cell phone’s browser to see your mobile homepage. Now I can keep up with new recipes at Tech-Rx plus the blogs as well as weather, sports, stocks, etc., all on one page. It works great on my RAZR and hopefully it will help me with my computer withdrawal when I am out and about.