Hackszine.com: Mobile Phones Archives

Archive: Mobile Phones

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March 8, 2007

HOWTO: Tether Your Mac and T-Mobile Dash with Parallels

I have almost no complaints about the T-Mobile Dash. It's small, it's fun to use, and T-Mobile's data plans are cheap ($30 for unlimited EDGE+T-Mobile Hotspot). But it's got one annoying flaw: instead of Bluetooth Dialup Networking (DUN), the Dash uses Bluetooth LAN Access (kind of like a Wi-Fi access point, but for Bluetooth). For some reason, Mac OS X Tiger doesn't support this part of the Bluetooth standard (there are reports that earlier versions of Mac OS X could support this through the Bluetooth Serial Utility, but that's no longer part of Mac OS X, and I had no luck running the Panther version of the Bluetooth Serial Utility on my Intel Mac).

Sharing the Internet connection over USB is out of the question too. As best I can tell, the Mac expects USB networking devices to use something called CDC, but the Dash uses a Microsoft-specific protocol called RNDIS (I'm pretty sure I fumbled that explanation, so feel free to add more information in the comments). People who have gotten their hands on the unreleased updated to Windows Mobile 5 (called AKU 3.3) have reported that the devices work correctly with Mac OS X. But until that's released, you'll need a tricky hack to get this to work.

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Scanning and Whiteboard Archive Via Cell Phone

scanR is a free service that transforms phonecam photos of documents, business cards, or whiteboards into cleaned-up PDFs that it will then fax or email on your behalf.

Documents are placed through an OCR process, so the text is selectable and searchable (though I'd probably rather have my documents converted to plain text or html). For whiteboards, you don't even need to take the shot head on. The software will take cues from the whiteboard's edge to transform the image into proper alignment.

Save a trip to the fax machine, and never write "Do Not Erase" again -Link.

February 23, 2007

Play Atari 2600 Games on Your Pocket PC or Smartphone

Stella for Windows CE recently added support for some of the newer Windows Mobile smartphones, including QVGA devices like the T-Mobile Dash. This screencast shows how to set it up. - Link to video download.

Related:

Stella: "A multi-platform Atari 2600 VCS emulator" - Link
Buy the Rainbow Invaders Cartridge - Link
Rainbow Invaders - Link
Retro Gaming Hacks - Link

February 13, 2007

Play Flash Lite 2.1 Content On Your Device

If you have an older Symbian or Windows Mobile device, it probably either came with support for Flash Lite 1, or no Flash support at all, whereas the newer devices are starting to be available with support for Flash Lite 2 content, which will allow developers to make use of more advanced programming features, not the least of which are functions. I suspect that this is going to motivate a lot more cross-platform application development for mobile devices, especially in the hobby and open source world where code signing costs and fragmented SDKs are a pretty significant barrier to entry.

Thankfully, last December Adobe released free end-user Flash Lite 2.1 installers for both Symbian series 60 and Windows Mobile platforms. So if you don't have the most recent hardware, you can perform a quick upgrade and extend the usable life of your device. For thos of you who are interested in developing Flash apps for devices, Adobe's dev center also has some decent starter howtos on the subject.

I'd love to get your opinions on mobile development. So if you have any thoughts on the subject or know of any good open source tools, guides or resources, please share them in the comments!

References:

February 9, 2007

Scripts for Escaping Cell Contracts

Cingular Escape

The Consumerist has a couple step-by-step scripts for getting out of your Cingular or Verizon contracts without paying an early-termination fee, based on the former's new arbitration clause and the latter's recent raise in basic text-messaging rates. It looks tedious and a lot of work, but it doesn't look nearly as difficult as my attempt to cancel Cingular service when my actual contract had already expired (in the end, I had to mail a copy of my 1-year contract to Cingular to prove it wasn't a 2-year agreement, because they apparently don't keep contracts on file, just database records).

We'd be remiss in our duty if we didn't point out that attempts to follow these scripts have been hit-and-miss (a number of folks have posted interesting comments, and it seems like it really is the luck of the draw as to whether you get a CSR who will go along with what you're trying to do), but it's still worth a shot and you gotta love the ingenuity here.

Now, all we need are Sprint and T-Mobile scripts (well, except people don't seem to loathe those two the way they do Cingular and Verizon). Anyone have experience here?

January 11, 2007

Run Pocket PC Apps on a Windows Mobile Smartphone

Over at Diary of a Mobile Addict, Mordy has a great write up of the various ways you can trick a Pocket PC app into running on a Windows Mobile Smartphone. It starts out with the first thing you should do: just try installing it because it might work. From there, the article moves on to tips for yanking the binaries out of the .cab, setting up a Pocket PC emulator as a staging area for the install, and using an application that will let you send screen taps for Pocket PC apps that demand it. Unfortunately, this won't work perfectly for landscape QVGA devices like the Q, Dash, or Blackjack. -Link

Update: Mordy wrote to point out that landscape QVGA devices should work fine with this approach in many cases, but some applications may have problems with it.

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