Tag Archives: Nokia

Dribble

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Just a few dribbling’s today, thought I’d provide updated information for some old posts.

I’ve blogged about Optus pushing their femtocell to resellers. Exetel are apparently trialing the femtocell with some of their agents. They expect to sell them in 3 months time.

I blogged about sending business cards (vCards) in SMS messages using Nokia’s Smart Messaging v3 (SCKL format). I later discovered that essentially only Nokia devices support this and that most mobiles in use today don’t. Sending vCards as an MMS is the more accepted technique which I presently cannot do as I do not have a gateway. I asked Exetel if they intend on adding MMS in addition to their existing SMS gateway and was told that they intend on doing it within 3-6 months time.

I blogged about migrating my internet hostings from dedicated servers to cheaper Virtual Private Servers and in more numerous numbers. Great idea, still want to go ahead with this, except Jumba at present aren’t offering new VPS accounts and keep pushing back the date they expect to resume offering them. Sucks because I was hoping to make this month my last month with iWeb for a couple of my dedicated servers but so far I can’t do any work on migrating. One of my servers (the one that hosts this blog) seems to continually crash so it would be nice to migrate to something more stable.

I blogged about Google Adsense suspending my publisher account and stated I’m migrating to Clicksor. In the end I found Clicksor quite shocking as there was no way to disable text link advertising (where Clicksor will find words on my page they want to link advertising from). So I ended up going to adBrite who are fantastic. Later that day I also changed the template of my blog and fixed up a few aesthetic issues. Over the weekend for my business website I created something similar to tinyurl.com and bit.ly, where URLs can be shortened – with the intent of later adding adBrite ads so that when I post articles to my businesses Facebook page I have the opportunity to display ads for a few seconds before redirecting users to a website. I also feel more motivated to blog because I’ll now earn a revenue from it.

I blogged about my Samsung Galaxy Gio S5660 that my partner got me for my birthday. I ended up having to send this back for warranty repair at Fonebiz. Randomly it would just lock up – appeared to still be powered on but no buttons would respond until the battery was removed and replaced. Also it would randomly say “File type not supported” when playing MP3 files. Fonebiz’s repair report says they reloaded the firmware (something I can’t do since its Optus branded firmware). But this doesn’t seem to have fixed the issue.

Nokia Smart Messaging v3–SCKL format

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I had an idea some time ago about business cards. I worked out a business card costs me 9c however customers often lose them and will regularly ask for more business cards.

If I were to send a business card to their mobile phone however… it’d cost me 21c and the customer should never need to request it again and is unlikely to lose that information (unless of course they get a new handset).

So I coded up a function sckl($message,$port) in PHP. Essentially it encodes data into the SCKL (Smart Messaging v3) format outlined by Nokia. I can then define RFC compliant vCard data as $message and send it on port 23F4. The function will divide the data in up to 3 messages if necessary.

Its worth noting (as when I researched the format there was little information about this) that messages exceeding 160 characters need to be split into multiple messages, and each message should start with the //SCKL header.

This page proved extremely helpful.

Now I have the encoding sorted all I have to do is code up my contact page to have a form for sending that out, and some appropriate anti-abuse measures.

An example of a multipart SCKL vCard…

//SCKL23F423F4900201 BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:2.1
N:Doe;John
TEL;HOME;VOICE:0123456789
TEL;CELL;VOICE:0123456789
EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:user@email.com
ADR;POSTAL;

//SCKL23F423F4900202 PREF:;;2 First St;Suburb;State;Postcode;Country
URL:http://www.johndoe.com
END:VCARD

My further tinkering with Android

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I still continue to play with my Android phone a fair bit, being a nerdy type who can make good use of its features.

I’ve discovered that my Samsung Galaxy Gio is lacking in that it can’t run Adobe AIR (Flash for Android) as the Samsung Galaxy S II can. This doesn’t bother me though, my use of Flash rarely enters the Android.

I’ve set my Asterisk machine to email my Gmail account on a voicemail deposit. I’m still yet to find a recording codec that can be easily played. I’ve also set my email to fax service to send to my Gmail account and I can easily open the attached PDF file with ThinkFree Office.

sipdroid3CX Phone seems to be quite badly written as it regularly loses SIP registration. So I’ve started using Sipdroid instead which works really well. My only desire is that it inspected the phones Address Book to try and apply Caller ID Names when none is provided on an inbound VoIP call. VoIP over WiFi is proving very useful as all my fixed line numbers are VoIP and I can use them over SIP at basically any home I ever visit.

I’m still yet to find a decent push to talk app. Mumble on Android doesn’t really work as the app continually closes. Ventrilo on Android with Mangled doesn’t really work either as the app frequently crashes asking if I want to close or send a report.

gpsstatusI ended up buying Endomondo Pro and GPS Status – donation because I found these apps very handy. I would of liked to continue using Sports Tracker but so far they haven’t ported their app to Android. I’m using Google Latitude alot too because it can send your current position in SMS or E-mail and can send your position in real-time to other Google Latitude users with compatible devices. I’ve also used Google Navigation a couple times and found it alright, compared to my old Nokia 6220 Classic which could run Ovi Maps but hidden in the terms and conditions of the “Free turn by turn navigation with Nokia Ovi” TV ads – was specified as not eligible.

The screen protector and silicone cover from eBay is a nice touch, makes the phone much more durable.

I have noticed the WiFi strength of this system is pretty weak. Generally its the first device to drop off a WiFi network because of signal strength. Because of this I will later setup a second WiFi Access Point with WDS to improve WiFi coverage. I’m going to put it on the other side of the house, but I haven’t yet decided if its better to have ethernet backboning from a position downstairs or WiFi relaying from a position upstairs. The position upstairs would be better for distant signals but the position downstairs would have better performance. I could run an Ethernet cable to any point I like but I’d want to do a proper job which means its a big job installing a new wall outlet leading back to my GigE 24 port switch, so I probably should just put it upstairs.

Perhaps when retail & service numbers begin to return higher, I’ll get some 802.11n access points for home and work to improve performance because I have GigE at both locations and find 802.11g is too slow. At work I provide free Internet over WiFi to the ADSL2+ line which has full line sync, so there I’d probably end up adding to this access point rather than replacing it.

Push to Talk over Cellular

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Every now and then with my work there are jobs that require voice communications over some short distance on a regular basis. Jobs like aligning antennas and cable installations.

Some other jobs, push to talk (PTT) communications are handy over a large distance like when performing remote desktop works to numerous PCs at the same site where some intervention by a person on-site is required.

I currently use Mumble to solve long distance problems in my business which has the draw back of requiring a computer to use it.

I have used CB radio to solve short distance problems, but CB is likely a problem of its own. Keeping others out of your communications isn’t always possible and everything sent over the air could potentially be listened to by anyone who has the right equipment.

I considered that Push to Talk over Cellular (PoC) could solve all my problems. Everyone has a mobile phone and I own several myself. PoC is very flexible as it’ll work anywhere the mobile network does, so unlike CB I could talk to someone on the other side of the country. The big 3 all appear to have inter-carrier support so I can communicate to anyone with a PTT enabled mobile phone. PoC messages are also recorded by the handset so if you miss a message you can play it back later. PoC seemed quite ideal.

But then I ran into troubles…

First of all TPG Mobile don’t offer PTT. Most my handsets are TPG Mobile. TPG are just an Optus reseller, and Optus tend to charge 95c per day flat rate to use PTT – apparently its free to receive messages and you’re only charged when you transmit. So I considered I could operate my own PoC server as its just a variant on SIP. Wrong. It may be a variant on SIP and the specifications all open but there is no free PoC server software available. Nokia do sell PoC server solutions, but they’re typically hardware, and they’re expensive. wippies.com claim to operate a PoC server and offer free accounts – but thats only good if you could get their signup page to load.

The other problem I faced was that a couple Samsung handsets I have do not support PTT – so I’d have to buy a few new handsets. Every Nokia handset I use supports PTT.

So apparently due to TPG not offering the full suite of services as their wholesaler does and PoC being very proprietary with the lack of free options, it seems that Mumble and CB radio are still the best solutions to my problems. Its a shame really.

Nokia and Microsoft announce partnership, staff protest

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Nokia and Microsoft announced a partnership yesterday after both facing tough market conditions. Nokia has seen its market share drop due to competition from iPhone and Android, while Microsoft launched Windows Phone 7 but has so far made no dent in the market.

Symbian is expected to be used for the next few years by Nokia with more than 150 million sales predicted. However ultimately Nokia is moving to a Windows Phone platform. This sparked mass concern with Nokia staff working on Symbian and other software with up to a thousand employees walking out. So far no job reductions have been announced.

nokiasymbianprotestsI think this announcement will make Nokia quite a strong product in the mobile communications sector, as Nokia have an excellent history in this area, and Microsoft do produce really good software. There are a couple things Microsoft should learn from Nokia though – the main one is that change only confuses customers and a uniformed interface pays off.

I think I’ll hold off my purchase of new mobile handsets until the Nokia Windows Phone 7 handsets are available at a reasonable price.

Playing with mobiles

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nokiaoviI migrated some of my family across to TPG mobile just recently, mostly from a Virgin Mobile contract that came with handsets.

The change to TPG’s $1 per month budget plan made sense as there aren’t many calls, instead of paying $20-50 per month per service for a cap plan. I’m expecting all these services will drop to a few dollars per month. And if they’re more than about $10 per month, I can always log on to the TPG website and upgrade them to one of their highly competitive cap plans but I really doubt that’ll be needed.

Another advantage over the old plans is having 50MB data per SIM  included. It made sense to setup a few apps on all the Nokia handsets. I ended up installing the latest Nokia Ovi software  so I could easily install Opera Mobile, Trapster, Sports Tracker & Snaptu. I then also installed Google Maps from http://maps.google.com. I use all of these apps myself on my 6220 Classic and find them highly useful at times.

As all the handsets are GPS enabled Nokia S60’s its a real shame that there is no turn by turn navigation available for free from Nokia, despite all the fancy Ovi Maps ads on TV. Apparently Nokia have limited the offer to handsets current as the promo came out or newer. No real loss here at all – also in time I expect we’ll replace these handsets with either Windows Phone 7 or Android handsets with the monthly savings we make from moving from free handset contract packages.

One annoying disadvantage is there is no Push to Talk over Cellular offered by TPG Mobile. Soul who now own TPG offer it for service sold under the Soul brand name. I’ve always wanted to get the family using this as most our communications are seconds at most. The costs of PTT are kind of reasonable too on the Optus network, 95c per day if you transmit – so listening is free. However I can always setup a PTT server but this appears to take a bit of work and will break easy communication with other mobile numbers – so hopefully TPG Mobile decide to offer it.