Pimp up your Windows Mobile !

It surely is the ‘Touch Generation’ now. With most of the major cell phone players now in the touch screen market, you have a bundle of options when it comes to buying one.

I use one from the good old HTC Gene family, the P3400i, one of the cheapest products from the Pocket PC giant, HTC. Its based on Windows Mobile 5 platform. No Wi-Fi or 3G, but it pretty much does everything I need and fits perfectly for me when considering the price/performance ratio.

Now that you own one, making your gizmo productive is one tricky part. There are hundreds of apps available on the Web, but it’s rather difficult to find one that completely satisfies your needs. I mean, when you are happy with the performance, the looks bug you, or when the looks are good, you find that the app is eating away most of the internal memory.

Well, these are some of the apps that I feel can make your PPC come alive.

Videos

• When it comes to playing videos, the built-in ‘Windows Media Player’ in WM5 is a complete nuisance; it takes up longer time to load, can’t play the videos smoothly, and doesn’t really support a wide range of video formats that you really dig for.

I use the TCPMP. When it comes to video playback, this seems to be the best. Its super-fast, supports a wide range of video formats, has a completely free-license DivX Player, and the good part, it’s free! The latest Beta release is TCPMP 0.81 RC1. A more stable version, that I use is the 0.72 RC1. The 0.81 RC1 has additional support for WMV9 vidoes, and it looks slightly better than its predecessor.

You also need to install additional plugins for advanced functionality like playing flash videos, AMR, AC3, Matroska, HQ, Flac et cetera.

http://tamspalm.tamoggemon.com/2006/12/25/tcpmp-072rc1-incl-nearly-all-plugins/

Download and install the player first and then the plugins.

TCPMP should suffice your needs when it comes to portable video playback.

Music

• The Audio Manager in WM5 is pretty much what you need to listen to your favorite tunes. It doesn’t impress you, but it’s quite good at its functions. The Audio Booster functionality is pretty good with its clean equalizer and bass-boost effects. Only minus point is that it takes up quite a bit of memory. Now, you just listened to a song and you desperately want to make it your ring tone, what’ll you do? Well, the Audio Manager has a trimming functionality too. You can trim your songs instantly and make it as your ring tone or send it to your ring tones folder.

Personally, I use the Audio Manager, but if you consider using a third party software, I recommend the GS Player. It’s a basic mp3 playback software for PPC, and its free too. Get it here:

http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA032810/

Utilities

Clear Temp

• Clear Temp is all you need for clearing your temp, cache, cookies, history etc. It’s somewhat similar to the CCleaner, which is a PC App. It frees the internal memory and the Recent Program list. It’s a quite fast in its working and again a freeware.

http://cleartemp.en.softonic.com/pocketpc

Hide Folers

• Hide Folders is another good application that lets you do what the name suggests, “hide your folders”.

Hide your private stuffs with ease!

http://handheld.softpedia.com/get/System-Utilities/Enhancements/Hide-Folders-67768.shtml

WM5torage

• If you copy a lot of files back and forth between your PC and PPC, the ActiveSync might annoy you when copying very large files, like a MP4 movie for instance.

WM5torage lets your PC recognize your Storage Card as a Flash Drive. You activate this utility, plug in to your PC with the data cable, and there it is, ‘redemption’! Now, you can copy your files without using the ActiveSync. A good tool if you travel a lot, or visit the Internet Cafes in the city frequently.

Use your PPC as a Flash Drive.

http://wm5torage.en.softonic.com/windowsmobile

Internet

Opera Mobile

• Opera Mobile 9.5 Public Beta is the ultimate in browsing experience on a PPC. This version is built up on top of the rendering engine for Opera web browser, Presto. It tries to bring the real-time PC browsing experience to mobiles with its zoom, tabbed browsing and touch interface functionalities. You even could download files, videos, mp3s straight to you mobile with ease. This is a must use app for PPC users. Opera has release a new version of the browser, the 9.7 Beta Public, find the download link below.

A must-use app!

Download the new Opera Mobile 9.7 Public Beta here.http://www.opera.com/mobile/download/

YouTube for WM

• Mobile video streaming is simply the best thing to happen, ever! Playing YouTube videos on your mobile just got funkier with the release of the new YouTube for Windows Mobile streaming app. It’s a stunner! It’s fast and neatly designed for the average PPC user and the interface never looked so good. Find your videos on the search box, click play and the app will play the video nice and fast in the landscape mode. But be sure you have a good data plan it will give you a run for your money because of YouTube, as usual, will chew up a hell lot of data. For installation visit http://m.youtube.com with your device and follow the instructions.

Google Maps Mobile

• Determine your current location with our without GPS, get driving and transit directions, get phone numbers and addresses for local business; that’s what google maps lets you do, but only this time it’s on your mobile.

http://www.google.com/mobile/products/maps.html#p=default

I think this should do it. These are just the essential, the basics, when it comes to your PPC. Try these out today and know the difference..;-)

Time Travel – Myth or Realty?

Parallel Universe

Time travel has been one of the fascniating subjects that I’ve ever come to know yet. When I think of Time Travel the first thing that comes to my mind is Terminator 1, the very first movie that made me familiar with the concept. The concept of time itself is something that is very hard for me to understand and comprehend.

Time Travel is a concept in which one moves between different moments in time i.e. traveling to ones future or past. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had a chance to go back in time and correct all the mistakes we did? Or go into the future to see how our world looks? Yeah yeah, I got inspired by “Heroes”, so what? Time Travel is not a reality yet but it is proven that it is possible at least on paper. Time Dilation is a concept that explains that time travel is indeed possible and it is derived from Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

Now, nobody has ever known how did the time originate? Or is there an end to time? What do we understand by Present, Past and Future? What we call our present is not even lasting for a moment. Each letter I am typing in this blog entry is continuously converted into my Past. As I said earlier Time itself is a very hard subject for me to understand.

Heroes Has It All

We know time as something that we measure in seconds, minutes or hour. But there is another face to the concept of ‘Time’. It’s also defined as the fourth dimension of our universe. The other three dimensions are of space, the usual stuff that we learned in our 10th grade, the XYZ axes. Time cannot exist without space and vice versa. This relationship of time and space is defined as ‘Spacetime Continuum’. What it essentially means is that any event in the universe involves both space and time.

Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity states that time slows as an object approaches the speed of light. This leads to the conclusion that traveling faster than the speed of light could open up the possibility of time travel to the past as well as to the future. Now here is the problem. Speed of light is believed to be the highest speed at which something can travel and as an object nears the speed of light, its relativistic mass increases until, at the speed of light, it becomes infinite. Accelerating an infinite mass any faster than that is impossible, or at least it seems to be right now.

That’s not the end of it mates! Time Travel is supposed to happen in a very natural way as Hiro Nakamora does it elegantly in the hit series Heroes. Scientists believe that the existance of Black Holes is the key to Time Travel. When stars more than four times the mass of our sun reach the end of their life, they would have burned up all of their fuel and they would collapse under the pressure of their own weight. This implosion creates “Black Holes,” which have gravitational fields so strong that even light cannot escape it’s gravity. Anything that comes in contact with a black hole’s event horizon will be sucked in.

Enter White Holes

If ‘Black Holes’ exists it might be possible to pass through them and come out of a ‘White Hole’. A ‘White Hole’ would have the reverse action of a black hole i.e. instead of pulling everything into its gravitational force, it’ll push everything out and away from it. These white holes would be the way to enter other times or other worlds. This is just one theory. There are two more, the Wormholes and the Cosmic Strings. I know you probably didn’t understand anything, neither did I. Just scribbling fellas !

Nokia Universal Codes

Common Codes

 

(1) *3370# Activate Enhanced Full Rate Codec (EFR) – Your phone uses the best sound quality but talk time is

reduced my approx. 5%

(2) #3370# Deactivate Enhanced Full Rate Codec (EFR) OR *3370#

(3) *#4720# Activate Half Rate Codec – Your phone uses a lower quality sound but you should gain approx 30%

more Talk Time.

(4) *#4720# Deactivate Half Rate Codec.

(5) *#0000# Displays your phones software version, 1st Line : Software Version, 2nd Line : Software Release

Date, 3rd Line : Compression Type.

(6) *#9999# Phones software version if *#0000# does not work.

(7) *#06# For checking the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI Number).

( #pw+1234567890+ 1# Provider Lock Status. (use the “*” button to obtain the “p,w”
and “+” symbols).

(9) #pw+1234567890+ 2# Network Lock Status. (use the “*” button to obtain the “p,w”
and “+” symbols).

(10) #pw+1234567890+ 3# Country Lock Status. (use the “*” button to obtain the “p,w”
and “+” symbols).

(11) #pw+1234567890+ 4# SIM Card Lock Status. (use the “*” button to obtain the “p,w” Go to Top
and “+” symbols).

(12) *#147# (vodafone) this lets you know who called you last.

(13) *#1471# Last call (Only vodofone).

(14) *#21# Allows you to check the number that “All Calls” are diverted to

(15) *#2640# Displays security code in use.

(16) *#30# Lets you see the private number.

(17) *#43# Allows you to check the “Call Waiting” status of your phone.

(18) *#61# Allows you to check the number that “On No Reply” calls are diverted to.

(19) *#62# Allows you to check the number that “Divert If Unreachable (no service)” calls
are diverted to.

(20) *#67# Allows you to check the number that “On Busy Calls” are diverted to.

(21) *#67705646# Removes operator logo on 3310 & 3330.

(22) *#73# Reset phone timers and game scores.

(23) *#746025625# Displays the SIM Clock status, if your phone supports this power saving feature “SIM Clock Stop

Allowed”, it means you will get the best standby time possible.

(24) *#7760# Manufactures code.

(25) *#7780# Restore factory settings.

(26) *#8110# Software version for the nokia 8110.

Go to Top

(27) *#92702689# Displays – 1.Serial Number, 2.Date Made, 3.Purchase Date, 4.Date of last repair (0000 for no

repairs), 5.Transfer User Data. To exit this mode you need to switch your phone off then on again. ( Favourite )

(28) *#94870345123456789 # Deactivate the PWM-Mem.

(29) **21*number# Turn on “All Calls” diverting to the phone number entered.

(30) **61*number# Turn on “No Reply” diverting to the phone number entered.

(31) **67*number# Turn on “On Busy” diverting to the phone number entered.

(32) 12345 This is the default security code.

press and hold # Lets you switch between lines

NOKIA5110/5120/ 5130/5190

 

IMEI number: * # 0 6 #
Software version: * # 0 0 0 0 #
Simlock info: * # 9 2 7 0 2 6 8 9 #
Enhanced Full Rate: * 3 3 7 0 # [ # 3 3 7 0 # off]
Half Rate: * 4 7 2 0 #
Provider lock status: #pw+1234567890+ 1
Network lock status #pw+1234567890+ 2
Provider lock status: #pw+1234567890+ 3
SimCard lock status: #pw+1234567890+ 4
NOKIA 6110/6120/6130/ 6150/6190
IMEI number: * # 0 6 #
Software version: * # 0 0 0 0 #
Simlock info: * # 9 2 7 0 2 6 8 9 #
Enhanced Full Rate: * 3 3 7 0 # [ # 3 3 7 0 # off]
Half Rate: * 4 7 2 0 #

NOKIA3110

 

IMEI number: * # 0 6 #
Software version: * # 0 0 0 0 # or * # 9 9 9 9 # or * # 3 1 1 0 #
Simlock info: * # 9 2 7 0 2 6 8 9 #
NOKIA 3330
*#06#
This will show your warranty details *#92702689#
*3370#
Basically increases the quality of calling sound, but decreases battery length.
#3370#
Deactivates the above
*#0000#
Shows your software version
*#746025625# This shows if your phone will allow sim clock stoppage
*4370#
Half Rate Codec activation. It will automatically restart
#4370#
Half Rate Codec deactivation. It will automatically restart
Restore Factory Settings
To do this simply use this code *#7780#
Manufacturer Info
Date of Manufacturing *#3283#
*3001#12345# (TDMA phones only)

This will put your phone into programming mode, and you’ll be presented with the programming menu.
2) Select “NAM1″
3) Select “PSID/RSID”
4) Select “P/RSID 1″
Note: Any of the P/RSIDs will work
5) Select “System Type” and set it to Private
6) Select “PSID/RSID” and set it to 1
7) Select “Connected System ID”
Note: Enter your System ID for Cantel, which is 16401 or 16423. If you don’t know yours,
ask your local dealer for it.
 Select “Alpha Tag”
9) Enter a new tag, then press OK
10) Select “Operator Code (SOC)” and set it to 2050
11) Select “Country Code” and set it to 302 for Canada, and 310 for the US.
12) Power down the phone and power it back on again
ISDN Code
To check the ISDN number on your Nokia use this code *#92772689#