Well, it seems that there are a lot of updates on my favourite freeware apps! A new version of PocketCM Contacts was out on 25/1/09, and it's v0.29. What can we expect from this new version by tene?
What's new in 0.29? (01/25/2009)
Support for SMS forwarding
Support for sending SMS to multiple contact at once
Better VGA support: more usable, react better to the finger, improved Black and Dream theme
Big speed improvment on animation (looks nice on VGA now)
Speed optimization for all text rendering (smoother than ever)
A_C has just updated S2U2 v1.44. I'm sure you've read my post about him. He's the man behind S2P, S2V & S2U2. S2U2 is a slider lock for our Windows Mobile devices. It's based on the slide lock of iphone, but is fully customizable. I've been using it since I had my Prophet & now on my Touch Pro. Excellent stuff from A_C.
Changes of v1.44 ================ - added one more choice when the headphone is disconnected, close both S2P & Bluetooth. - fixed the occasional problem that the same appointment was shown twice. - fixed the occasional double lock problem. - fixed the occasional problem that under Power Safe mode, the device behaved weirdly when another program running in the background. - fixed the occasional problem that the temperature was always shown as zero. - some minor bugs fixed.
Great news for all Mozilla/Firefox & HTC Touch Pro users. Fennec - the mobile version of the popular browser Firefox, will be released in the 1st week of February, meaning next week, for our HTC Touch Pro. That is really good news! So now we have 1 of the best browsers, Firefox on the PC to our Touch pro. There might be a browser war going on after this. We PIE, Opera & now Fennec. I will give this a try on my Touch Pro & see how it compares to Opera. I don't do a lot of internet browsing on my Touch Pro nowadays. Might just settle for Opera, but if it is brilliant like Firefox, then I'll make the switch to Fennec.
The news was picked up on 26/01 from the Fennec wiki.
Windows Mobile We are targeting a Milestone release for the first week of February, targeting the HTC touch pro. We are two patches away from the meta goal of building from trunk. The tools changes have review from dougt, and are waiting for review from ted, who has promised review by the end of the week. NSPR changes are waiting for review from Nelson, who asked for and received a patch against NSPR trunk
This is another application that makes use of the G-sensor of the Diamond/Touch Pro/HD. It was made by dally at, where else, xda-developers. This is essentially like a car alarm. If somebody moves your phone, then an alarm will be set off. Very cool isn't it? It's still in beta release but works fine on my Touch Pro. Only snag is that it only can use wav files as an alarm, but this is a good 1st release. It requires .net v3.5
Here is a massive thread on xda-developers on themes, tweaks etc to customise TF3D. It is quite extensive. It's in the Diamond sub-forum, but can be applied to the Touch Pro as well. Go & have a look and customise your TF3D!! No screenies for this post... Here is the thread
This is a must have piece of software for all Windows mobile users! It has all the tweaks needed to enhance our devices. This 3G on/off tweak needs Advanced Configuration Tool. Now this may be old news to some of you, but I went to schaps' site & found out, he has a newer version out since October 08! Version 3.3
Main features:
Extensible tweak list
Multi-devices support
Multi-languages support
Customize key mapping
Customize file associations
Custumize ClearType settings
Customize connection settings
Customize HTC Comm Manager
Customize HTC TouchFLO 3D
Import/export settings using provisioning XML
Changelog:
Friday, 10 October 2008 19:13
Fixed crash of the file browser on Samsung Omnia i900/Player Addict
Fixed restoration of TouchFLO 3D settings
Added support for non-standard TouchFLO 3D tabs
Added dddd-mmm-yyyy date format in TouchFLO 3D settings
Added HTC Task Manager tweaks
Added custom values for font sizes
It's jam packed, full of tweaks for our devices, it's too many to list here, 1 by 1. Get it here and see it's full features. Advanced Configuration Tool requires .net v3.5
Head on over to schaps' site for more info & download. He's also the author of FTouchSL . He's working on TouchXperience, a next generation GUI for our devices. Go on & have a look.
Here is a program I used a lot on my Prophet. It's called QuickMenu. A new version just came out - v.28. It acts as a start menu replacement & makes the start menu like Windows PC's. Look at the screen shot & you will see it. It also has toggle menu for Wifi/BT etc. so you don't have to go through the Comm Manager. This version also has big menu option, you can play around with the menu height to get the height. Some users at xda-developers have noticed that the translation from Chinese to English was not that good or complete & they get the "squares" in place of a Chinese character. There are some versions apparently with better translation. I guess you just have to use it & find out. I recommend installing to internal memory & running it from there & ticking the option to replace start menu. After that arrange your programs link folder into folders e.g. office, entertainment, games etc, so that it looks better & saves a bit of time finding them.
Change Log: 2.8 version of the major improvements :2009-1-14 1. Increased support for WiFi (again thanks to yonsm find a good way) 2. Icon electricity use green, yellow and red color-filled 3. For non-English language environment, customizable "Settings" menu item name 4. As the "background lights" set up relatively large differences between models have been removed 5. Menu items can be set intervals to adjust the size of menu items
An official ROM update from HTC for the Touch Diamond. Hopefully there will be one for our Touch Pros. Note this is only for GSM Touch Diamond version.
Release Date:2009-01-16
An updated ROM is now available for HTC Touch Diamond users to download. As always, HTC is committed to providing customers with the best possible mobile experience.
Installation Instructions: Improved Functions and Fixes
1. When you launch the Camera while the system is working on other programs, the preview screen may become black.
2. When playing a video, sometimes a portion of the video will be cut off a little bit.
3.Fixes Audio playback problem with the speaker. Specific issues: sometimes the music will turn off and on after 10 minutes, or there is a buzzing sound or no sound at all.
4. Fixes the problem of not being able to receive MMS when in standby mode.
5. When launching music via the Music tab on TouchFLO 3D, the sound may intermittently turn off for a second and come back on.
Dimitar Berbatov's last-minute header earned Manchester United a 1-0 win at Bolton and sent his side to the Premier League summit for the first time this season.
I thought this should go in here somewhere. If you've just bought a new Touch Pro or any Windows mobile device, and this was your 1st, chances are you wouldn't know how to install programs into it. Windows mobile is windows based, but it may not be as straight forward.
Now connect your PDA with the sync cable and it will prompt that it will sync with your device. Tick what you want synced & your data will be synced. Simple.
Now to install programs. There are two file types that programs usually come in with. The .EXE and the .CAB files.
.EXE files (executable files) are run from the computer and the application will be installed to your phone the next time you sync it. If you get an error that the .EXE file is not a valid win32 application, then copy that .EXE to your device and it should run from there.
.CAB files (cabinet files), on the other hand, require to be imported to your phone. Connect your phone to your PC via USB as mentioned above, and copy the .CAB to the phone's memory (either sd card or main memory). Run the pasted file on your phone using the built-in file explorer and follow the on-screen instructions to install that particular program.
Something I found while trawling through the net. Hopefully the new pdas coming out would have better graphics or at least the proper drivers! Shame on Qualcom, hopefully Nvidia would serve HTC better.
SAN FRANCISCO - Chip maker Nvidia will power new mobile devices made by HTC, the maker of the popular 'Touch' series handsets, as it moves to shore up what could be a disappointing 2009.
The maker of popular Geforce graphics cards -- technology enabling computers to render 3D imagery -- is pushing a new Tegra processor that is aimed for mobile devices and lower powered Netbooks. The new platform comes at time when other core Nvidia business are expected to see a slow down.
"We believe that HTC has selected the NVDA Tegra applications processor for a new handset design that will ramp in [the second half of 2009]," Doug Freedman of American Technology Research says."We estimate Tegra could add $100M to 2H09 results."
Announced in early 2008, Tegra puts an Arm-based processor core, a GeForce graphics core and other components onto a single chip. The product lineup will include the Tegra 600 running at 700MHz and the Tegra 650 running at 800MHz. The lineup also includes the Tegra APX 2500.
"This revenue will likely be very high margin, given the low-power design in a small-profile package is helping HTC achieve small form factors," Freedman adds. "We expect Tegra to sell in a range of $15 to $25 and have more than one customer in '09."
Nvidia is suffering from a slowing global consumer demand. The firm's new GTX295 -- announced at CES this year -- will likely regain the price performance crown in the GPU market, but the reward will likely be muted given the weakness of the high-end consumer. Market demand is for low-end mainstream, causing a mix shift to lower revenue and margin products, Freedman says.
Freedman contents basic business metrics are likely all very poor: revenue, margins, and inventory (driven in large part by the collapse of desktop enthusiast GPUs). Weakness is likely to persist into a seasonal soft period,
"We continue to recommend that investors avoid the PC-related semiconductor food chain due to the incredibly challenging short-term environment, though we remain optimistic on long-term design wins, stable pricing, and eventual inventory replenishment providing a floor of support."
AmTech maintains a neutral outlook on Nvidia, and reduces their price target to $7 from $8.50.
Shares of Nvidia fell 36 cents, or 4.54 percent to $7.57 by mid-day trading.
The Tegra 650 that is targeted for handheld devices has the following specifications: 800 MHz LP-DDR (200 MHz) 2.5 ~ 4 watts envelope All-day media processing, for 130 hours audio, 30 hours HD video playback HD image processing for advanced digital still camera and HD camcorder functions Optimized hardware support for Web 2.0 applications for a true desktop-class internet experience Display support for 1080p HDMI, WSXGA+ LCD and CRT, and NTSC/PAL TV-Out Direct support for WiFi, disk drives, keyboard, mouse, and other peripherals A complete Board Support Package (BSP) to enable fast times to market for Windows Mobile-based designs
If you are still unconvinced, then the next video (a prototype device powered by a Tegra processor) will definitely have you standing in line for the next Tegra powered HTC phone. We should also remind you of the recent reports, about HTC choosing Ericsson’s platform (EPM) instead of Qualcomm’s. This fact, compined with what the awesomeness of above video, should add up to some great devices. What do you think?
Just read this on the fuzemobility forums. I will give this a try. You readers, try this & leave a comment to see if it did or did not work.
If you want to have faster charging of your Touch Pro/Fuze etc. via USB, once you connect your TP, it will ask what would you like to do e.g. active sync etc.
Choose Disk Drive and then hit the power button to lock the screen it unmounts the drive and seems to charge the Touch Pro faster.
I don't use 3G alot, heck I'm on a pay-as-you-go plan or pre-paid plan. It costs shit loads of money to use 3G or even GPRS so I don't really need it. I also don't need my Touch Pro to try & find a 3G signal if I'm not in a 3G cell, like where I am. Doing this eats some precious battery life. Some clever folks found a way to add an On/Off button for 3G in the Comm Manager:
2. Once installed, go to the Phone settings and enable Show Band Page.
3. Then go to Menu (right soft key), Comm Manager and check the 3G box. You will need to disable another button since TF3D only has 6 buttons. Since I don't use Push Mail, I disabled it.
4. Go to OK > Done > Soft reset.
After it resets & your Touch Pro is on, go to Settings, Communications and you should see a 3G tab, disable it and your battery should last longer. Your Touch Pro will use GPRS since it is always available.
We all can use an explorer program like Total Commander to see what's inside our PPC's. It's a pain in the ass if you want to copy/delete/paste a lot of stuff using TC to do it. Luckily during active sync you can browse the contents of your PPC but not your windows folder. One forum member from PPCgeeks has shown a simple 'trick' or tip to enable the Windows folder to be seen on Windows PC e.g. to delete/add some TF3D files etc. It's so simple, this is the way I used to hide my pr0n collection... heheh
1. Connect via active sync/WMDC 2. Open up My Computer or Windows Explorer 3. Goto folder options:
Win XP - Tools>Folder options, click on the View tab Win Vista - Click Organise on top left hand corner>Folder & search options>click on the View tab
4. Make sure to click the radio button with Show hidden files and folders. 5. Next remove the checkmark for Hide protected operating system files (recommended) 6. You will get a dialog box with a warning, click yes, then OK 7. Go back to your device on my computer, you should now see the windows folder
Some of you who are just beginning to use Windows mobile/PPC or even those not techinically advanced in Windows PCs may not know how to change registry settings to apply the tweaks that I or other sites posted. Changing the registry can be dangerous if you don't know what you're doing & can screw up your PPC. So always at least back up your registry or write them down before you change the values so that you can use them again IF something goes wrong.
PHM regedit has been around for a while, 2002 in fact. It has been used a lot and still being used today because it works fine as a simple registry editor & it is free as well. I use it on my TP & Prophet.
Go here for the authors' site. Click on download PHM regedit. Tick that you agree to the T&C Under Package Selection, choose "Pocket PC 2002/2003 (ARM/PXA)" for our PPC/Windows mobile touch screen devices. Do not download the Desktop installer. It will not install via active sync since our PPC's are newer & it will not install to it. Download the file. Then copy the .cab file to your PPC & install from there. Then open it, check out the registry tweaks & start tweaking!!
Edit 27/04/09: Seems the author's site is down and serves me right to hotlink images as well! Images uploaded to my photobucket and I've uploaded the cab file for PHM regedit to my megaupload. Just copy the file to your device & install from there.
This is something I found when looking for any software updates for my Touch Pro recently on the HTC site. Some may already know this from forums of just by finding out about it like me. Not too sure whether it is only for the Touch Pro or the US variations - FUZE etc. or CDMA as well. But I've installed in ok on my TP.
When users access the Internet via wireless, some websites may present security concerns. This hot fix enhances the URL filter function in WAP (Wireless Access Protocol) security to prevent access to those web sites which are insecure.
Date: 2008-12-04
Go get it here at the HTC site (direct to TP subsite with additional Arabic upgrades as well) or download via my megaupload.com.
I picked Asia from the dropdown menu because it was the closest location from me in NZ. I've seen some people report that there was a compatibility issue with this hotfix, so don't know whether your location makes a difference. If you do get this issue, just go to the HTC site above.
Personally I haven't noticed any changes, but it's a hotfix, so maybe just install it?
ThrottleLauncher is a very nice & free today plugin & app launcher. So if you guys are not happy with TF3D & would like a change to another today plugin, this would be the 1. There is also HomeScreen ++ (HS++ for short) which is another excellent app, but would require a knowledge of some XML to make or edit a theme which might be hard for the majority of us, myself included. v0.9.6 of ThrottleLaunch was just launched on 12/1/09 and is a vast improvement according to APBilbo. There is also an iphone theme which you can use if you want that iphone look. Try this out! It will work in QVGA or VGA. I'm gonna test on my Prophet & see how it goes. Have used a previous version a while back & thought it was great! Prerequisites
- Phone enabled device (Themes for non phone enabled devices can be built though)
- CPU: 200 Mhz
- Storage Memory: ~3,5 MB (depends on the themes installed)
- Main memory: ~ 6 MB
- NET.CF 2.0 installed. Though 3.5 is strongly recomended.
Here's another finger-friendly contact application called iContact. It's been around for a while as well and is going strong. It's just been updated to v0.9 on 10/1/09 which adds more speed both in list load time and in drawing time (especially for VGA), contact categories, and many bugfixes. Reworked by supbro. Have a look at iContact here and at xda-developers.
Here's a nice and free MP3 player for our PPC's. Called Nitrogen and is from microfi. Comes in all flavours of Windows Mobile - 5 & 6.x and VGA & QVGA as well. It's still in beta but looks promosing. A great contender to S2P. Finger-friendly as well. Current version is 0.2.1 and it does support skin which has it's own thread here
Features :: High-quality MP3 playback with MAD decoder; :: Intuitive and customizable user interface with full skin support; :: 10-band equalizer with preset support; :: Large buttons that makes it easy to perform common tasks without stylus; :: File browser that scans directories to make playlists; :: "Shuffle" and "Repeat" modes; :: Adjustable sleep timer; :: Amazingly fast to load and to play; :: Command to blank screen while playing to save energy; :: Native C++ code: no need for .NET frameworks; :: Extremely lightweight: less than 2mb of storage, around 1.5mb of RAM; :: Saves the settings in a separate file - does not fill the registry with useless data; ...and much more!
Now a bit of a detour from HTC/Win mo today. My favorite football or some of you call "soccer" club, Manchester United will play Chelsea tonight. I've cancelled my subscription to Sky Sports because I haven't watched it that much but when it comes to big matches like this, I regret it! But waking up at 4.30am to watch a football match on Monday morning is not that nice either. Damn the time zones, here its GMT +13 due to summer time. Hmmmm Anyway, I wish my club would win against Chealskey!
p/s thanks to all the visitors to this blog, it's great to see the feedjit widget on the right & see visitors from all over the world! Can you guys click a few ads esp. the ones in black, to make me a few cents? Thanks
Here is the theme that I'm using for my contacts as I said in th previous post. Very nice. Only thing I find a bit annoying is the options page was not in its usual space, need to press & hold the right most button & drag your finger to the X to close contacts. Otherwise very nice theme.
One of the best freeware finger-friendly conact manager & keyboard. I've used both for my prophet & still use contacts for my TP. Don't use the keyboard anymore for various reasons! It's improving with every release, but the developer posted in his site that he may no longer update these excellent programs because his pda is broken!! Hopes he gets it fixed or replaced! If you do use it, please donate so the dev. can have his pda fixed. Both are fully customisable to suit your needs. I will post a contacts theme that I use & like in the next post. You can find more themes etc on his website forum. Why is PocketCM different from other mobile applications:
It can be used with fingers, no need to get your stylus. For instance, finding contacts with your finger is really easy and different: if you press you finger on the left or right border of the screen it will allow you to select the letter you're searching for; release the finger, it will show you the contacts starting with this letter. Why does it work? Human being cannot point directly to the right letter on a small screen, however humans are very precise while moving their finger. So you press the screen, see the feedback, adjust the position to the right letter... and you're done! The same technique is applied to the keyboard.
It's animated: You can scroll your contact list or the pictures from your favorite files with your finger in a natural movement, the transition between various screens is animated.
PocketCM proposes unique features that you cannot find in other softwares. Just try them! You can set contact as favorites, they will appear in the favorite list, perfect to get a quicklist of contacts under the finger.
In each PocketCM applications, you can customize about everything by changing the setting.ini or the layout skin: color, font, background image, etc...
Is it free?
Yes it is free, for your personal use only (in short: you can use for anything you want, you just can't redistribute it... however you can point anybody to this website). Even more if you want PocketCM to stay free and support my work, consider making a donation. Anything is appreciated and will encourage me to continue the development of PocketCM as a freeware.
Here is an application for you to backup your contacts, sms/mms & emails. Oh and it's free too!!
The PIM backup application is a tool that allows to backup/restore personal information stored on windows mobile based pocket devices. Concerning the personal information, I refer to contacts, appointments, tasks, messages, calls,... The backup is totally independent of the version of Windows Mobile running on the device and independent of the device itself. The backup is also independent of the language used on the device. You can easily backup on a Chinese device and restore in a German one.
There are two kinds of backups. The binary based backup has been implemented in order to have a backup/restore process which is fast and more reliable, the disadvantage being that the backup contents cannot be easily modified or viewed. The text based backup has been implemented in order to see/edit the contents on a pc for instance.
I couldn't resist! I saw this today over at xda-developers. Now I'm not an Iphone hater or anything, just hate the fact that the masses feel it's the most awesome thing since sliced bread...
Here is another registry tweak to make panoramic photos to 7 mp! Now I must warn that obviously these pictures are gonna be bigger than usual, ~700kb to ~1+mb. Open up your registry app:
HKLM/Software/HTC/Camera/P3 Adjust MainCamCaptSize to 1024 and MainCamSupportCaptSize to 1744.
Make sure you write down the default values so that if you are not happy with the results (I doubt it!) you can put in the default values back.
The backlight manager on the Touch pro is not the best, so 1 member from xda-developers, nik3r made LUMOS, a complete HTC Auto-Backlight replacement. The 1st time you install it, will calibrate, just follow the onscreen instructions. That's it. You can also put in exceptions for programs like GPS navigation etc, that you want the backlight to stay constant e.g. Tom Tom etc.
Here's a reg hack to manually rotate your screen, only when desired. In Settings/Buttons/ one used to be able to assign a button to . This feature is hidden on the Touch Pro.
To get it back: Using a Registry editor, go to: HKeyLocalMachine/System/GDI/Rotation Change the "HideOrientationUI" from 1 to 0
Now you can remap the talk key to do this on long press.
Hi guys. Before this I was using pTravel alarm for my alarm needs because it was finger friendly. Now there is an alternative which is even better. Juse read this:
About G-Alarm
G-Alarm is a reliable and very powerful alarm clock with probably more features than any other alarm software. You can define unlimited alarms of different types, you can set your own music files to wake you up (mp3, wma, wav, ogg, mp4, aac), customize the look and optionally choose between two special wake-up mechanisms: If you want to, you can set G-Alarm to force you to guide a ball through mazes or solve a calculation task before you can snooze or stop the alarm. Of course there are a lot more things you can adjust, so here is a more complete list of G-Alarm`s features:
Supported devices: all devices with Windows Mobile 5, Windows Mobile 6 and Windows Mobile 6.1 (with touchscreen only!)
Supported languages:
Skinnable user interface (Lots of skins are available here)
Customizable today plugin which shows you all your alarms and lets you activate or deactivate them with one click
Define unlimited alarms with many options
Choose between different alarm types
Weekdays: select on which days of the week an alarm should go off
Singular alarm
Alarm patterns: you can define more customized alarms (e.g. play the alarm every 4th week on friday at 7:00 PM)
Quick alarms: Simply wake me up in x hours
Define playlists with unlimited mp3/wma/ogg/aac/m4a/wav files for each alarm
Schedule the start of executable files
Force a specific volume if the device is on vibration mode or muted
Repeat and playing options:
Play alarm for a specific time
Repeat an alarm for x times
Auto-snooze the alarm after a specifc time
Supports all resolutions (VGA, QVGA, WVGA, WQVGA, Square resolutions etc.)
Power saving methods:
You can set to turn off the display after a specific time so you can listen to your music while the device doesn't eat too much battery
The display is turned off if the alarm snoozes
Tilt sensor support (only on supported devices)
Guide the ball through the maze by tilting your device
Snooze the alarm by turning the phone upside down
Light sensor support (only on supported devices)
Snooze the alarm by turning the light on
You can decide wether you want to complete mazes or solve calculation tasks before you can snooze or stop the alarm or not.
See your next alarm in S2U2, TouchFlo3D, Manila2D and others
It's not your run of the mill alarm. If you like to snooze, there is a feature for you to do a tilt based maze before you snooze! The developer has also made some other WinMo apps. So head on to http://www.ageye.de/ or the xda-devs forums
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