Hackszine.com: Screencasts Archives

Archive: Screencasts

July 19, 2008

Citizen Engineer 01 - SIM card and payphone hacks

Ladyada and PT have kicked off the first episode of their Citizen Engineer video series in style. This episode explores GSM SIM card technology and the more retro tech found inside a retired Bell payphone. Ladyada shows how to create a SIM reader which you can use to do things like read deleted SMS messages or brute-force the card's secret key. In the second part, the team dismantles an old Bell payphone and hacks it to function as a home telephone, require quarters for use, and make Skype calls.

Citizen Engineer

July 1, 2007

The other WebKit-powered phone(s)

Click To Play

One of the iPhone's strengths is the amazing web browser that it uses: Safari. Safari itself is based on an open source web browser called WebKit, and Nokia is also a huge fan of this software. They've embedded the browser into a number of their high-end phones. The video shown above is taken from my Nokia 6290, a clamshell that retails for about $400 unlocked (I got mine for $275 on eBay).

After using both phones, there is absolutely no question that the Apple implementation is much easier to use, but oh, the Nokia phones are super hackable. The very fact that I could get video off of it is proof enough of that: I used the Mobiola Screen Capture utility, a third party tool that displays your phone's screen on a Windows PC. (From Windows, I used the open source CamStudio to record the action.) I'll admit that I ran out of memory a few times while doing this, but if you think about it... running a powerful web browser and a utility that's pumping a video stream over USB at the same time is a mighty stress test. iPod-friendly video

Resources

Nokia's WebKit-based browser - Link
Mobiola Screen Capture - Link
CamStudio - Link
WebKit.org - Link

May 7, 2007

Openchange: open source Exchange MAPI library

The Openchange project's libmapi looks really promising. It's an open source MAPI implementation that allows you to talk to an Exchange server from your own code.

The OpenChange MAPI library aims to provide interoperability with an Open Source implementation of Microsoft Exchange protocols under UNIX/Linux. The current implementation offers a client-side library which can be used in existing messaging clients and offer native compatibility with Exchange Servers up to 2003.

As of last weekend it now supports the creation and extraction of not only messages, but also contacts, calender events, and tasks. This should be really useful for developers who want to interoperate with Exchange from other platforms and external mail systems.

Openchange: open source Exchange server alternative - Link.
Feature demonstration screencast - Link.

April 11, 2007

Skitch Screencast

Click To Play

A couple months ago, I mentioned the new (Mac-only) Skitch screen-capture and annotation app from Plasq. At the time, I wasn't able to register for their mailing list (the captcha issue is fixed now, so do head over to sign up), but I just got a sneak peak at the private beta, and it's everything I'd hoped it would be. Check out the screencast for a quick walkthrough and my initial impressions. In brief, I can think of many productive uses for it, but the time I waste playing with it will likely negate all of them.- Link to video download.

March 6, 2007

Teach via IM with One-Way Video Chat

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Over at O'Reilly's Mac DevCenter, Erica Sadun points out a little-known (at least to me) feature in the current version of iChat:

By control-clicking (right-clicking) a buddy's name, a contextual menu pops up offering the option to invite that person to a one-way video chat. This means that they can watch your video but will not send video back to you in return.

How have I missed this option for so long? Though Erica wants to use this feature to iPodcast (stream via IM) movies and TV shows to her friends, I see this as a great opportunity for "hands-on" instruction you normally don't have access to when you're not physically in the same room with someone.

For example, crafts like knitting are notoriously hard to teach without visual cues, and even the most detailed books often suffer from their lack of moving pictures. When I learned to knit, I used books as a crutch, but actually learning required sitting next to my mother-in-law to see how it was done. Even now, when I hit a roadblock with a new technique, I need to wait till the next time we're together. But if we had a feature like this, we likely wouldn't have to wait. I could just "look over her shoulder" as she described what she was doing.

The most obvious benefit of one-way video is that it doesn't require the recipient to have a video camera on their end, but as Erica notes, for instructional content as with streaming movies, one-way video has another notable advantage over two-way video conferencing:

you don't have to watch the other person watching your video. You don't have to see them adjusting their hair, performing nasal maintenance, or any of the other unconscious things people do when they get involved in watching TV as opposed to engaging actively in a social situation.

The pedagogical opportunities for this feature are virtually limitless, and it will add a whole new dimension to tech support with the release of Mac OS X Leopard, when we finally get iChat Screen Sharing. - Link to video download.

February 28, 2007

Run Windows Apps Within Your Mac Desktop

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Since its beta release, Parallels has let Mac users run Windows simultaneously with Mac OS X on any Intel Mac, which is a real boon whenever you need that one Windows-specific program you just can't avoid. But the recent Official Update (free for all registered users of Parallels Desktop) offers the ability to bypass Windows altogether and get right to the apps you need. With Coherence mode, you can now launch and run Windows applications directly within your Mac desktop, just as you would any Mac app.

Even though the windows for your Windows applications are now divorced from the virtual Windows desktop in Coherence mode under Parallels, you'll still want to have your Windows virtual machine running before you launch any programs under Parallels. Otherwise, launching the application will take as long as launching Windows. But as long as Windows is running, launching a specific application is pretty snappy. Just click on its icon in the Dock, as you would any other program, and up it comes.

I've been testing out Word 2007 lately, which now lives right next to Word 2004 in my Dock. As you can see, opening it and getting straight to a new document takes no time at all, and I get my own Word 2007 window, making it look (almost) like a native Mac app. You can also access Windows applications that don't live in your dock by just clicking the Windows Start menu in what now effectively becomes a Windows-specific Dock just above your real Dock. - Link to video download.

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 10, 2007

Hackszine Screencast: Infect Your Computer on Purpose

Last week, Hackszine fielded a reader request to come up with a way to infect a computer without letting too much heck break loose. This procedure was so much fun that we decided to use it for our first Hackszine screencast. Check it out for a little surprise near the end: I managed to sneak the test malware past the virus protection, but it kicked in as soon as I tried to actually run it.