How I use my new toy….I mean Nokia N79

It’s been 5 days I got my Nokia N79 & so far i have been busy in configuring it. Since this is the first time I am using a Nokia Smartphone, I was completely blank at the start & even now I am only 40% aware of the full capability of my phone. I bought Nokia N79 because I find Nokia N82 a bulky device to carry & I am not exactly a fan of its keypad. Nokia 5800 Xpress Music is also launching soon, but I am not a fan of Touch screen phones, although the 2D Icons of 5800 are quite good for the UI of a phone.

Since I use my phone for everything, I like to customize it. So far here is the list of all the applications I m using, I won’t be needing anything beyond these I guess.

1) Opera Mini. The inbuilt Webkit browser is good but Opera Mini is still better when it comes to browsing over pay-per-kb Vodefone Live service. I use the Webkit browser when I am on WiFi.

2) GMail App. I use the inbuilt mail client for checking my Yahoo & GMail over WiFi but when I am on Vodafone Live, I use GMail App because Vodafone Live doesn’t support POP3.

3) For chatting I use IM+ or Fring as applicable. For some reason they are not working over Vodafone Live.

4) For Personal information like passwords, ATM card number etc I use Best Safe from Smartphoneware. It is a simple & no nonsense application.

5) For personal expanse management I use Best Expanse again from Smartphoneware. Another simple & handy tool for keeping tracks of expense the way I want to note down. I also tried Handy Expense from Epocware but it was overkill for me.

6) For downloading torrent files in the phone itself I am using SymTorrent. It is quite good, few days back i downloaded a song directly in my phone from torrent over WiFi.

7) For recording calls I am using Best Call recorder, it does the work fine for me although I would want it to record the call even after picking up the phone instead of asking whether I want to record in the beginning of a call or not.

8 ) I found a great application called WordMobi for managing Wordpress based blogs. It lacks the best UI out there but better then visiting the Dashboard using the inbuilt browser. This requires Python Runtime for Series 60 to work.

9) Although I convert videos to native H.264 AVC based MP4 file before copying to phone, I still have DivX mobile Player installed in case I have a DivX file to play.

10) Since I was having trouble installing unsigned applications, I installed SelfSign & registered at symbiansigned.com to get my own certificate & published ID for my phone’s IMEI. Now using SelfSign I can sign any Symbian OS application in my phone itself, for my phone only.

11) The file manager of Symbian OS is good enough for my needs but I have also installed X-Plore, just in case I need it.

12) For task manager, I use Handy Taskman. It’s quite good & simple.

13) I also installed Wavesecure & activated it.

Since I like to use a picture for every contact, I had to remake all the Contact Pics as the previous ones from my K750i were too small. The ideal size for Nokia N79 is when you have the face of the person cropped & the largest side of the picture should be 240 pixels.  Anything big is down sampled automatically. Do not use Nokia PC Suite to attach these pictures to a contact or they will be reduced in dimension again. Copy the images to some folder in the memory card & then assign them to a contact. This way the pics will be big.

When it comes to video conversion I use TMPGEnc Xpress 4 to convert video to H.264 AVC MP4 with the following settings

Video size = Keep the aspect ratio same, but reduce the size to 320X240. 16:9 Videos look bad when converted to 4:3

Video bitrate = 384 kbps, H.264 AVC, keep the frame rate as original.

Audio = 128 kbps MP4 unless the source is having lower bit rate.

For Audio Sync, I simply use Windows Media Player 11 which automatically syncs the song to the phone when connected in MTP transfer mode.

For a custom theme I am using PureBlack my Pizero.

2008 : It could have been worse

Today marks the end of the year 2008. This yeas wasn’t as bad as 2007 but it wasn’t that good either. I had some good experience & some bad experience. This was the first year when I actually realized that I have grown up & its time to move on from the stupid things I have been doing since the last few years.

The year started with me leaving the friendship of Ashya, well the moment I left her…things took a new path. I got my Interview Call from SCIT Pune as well as Christ College Bangalore for MBA admission, but I found that it is better for me to get into a job then to study further right now. I got two jobs this year, first in Nukeation Studio under the supervision of Dax Pandhi & second in Virtual Studio Pvt. Ltd under the supervision of Venkatesh Sharma. I learned a lot from these jobs but there was still a lot to learn so I decided to leave jobs & come to back to first study & practise a bit & jump back to jobs.

By the end of this year, I got the big news of Santsheel’s Marriage. Its hard to believe that a girl who is our age, who was with us since school is married….are we that old today? I mean, comon…Marriage. But then again, she is happy with her husband so all equals up. I met Pooja, Arvind & Amrita again this year, Pooja has proved to be a real good friend, & Divy is a guy who takes me out of any depression by showing me what I truly am.

I left all the crap of my previous 3 years. I left all the girls I had in my life once as friends, Ashya, Surabhi, Priya & Gauri. I don’t know what happened to Priya & why she decided to break the friendship but she was my best friend & she was someone who understood me more then anyone ever has in my life. Oh! well…if staying away from me makes her happy, then be it. Even Aakriti said how much can I try if she doesn’t want which is indeed true. I did try but if the person isn’t paying attention to me, it’s time to delete that person from my life. Oh! & these were Priya’s words which I had to use on her case too. The only girl left from that time in my life is Nitisha & she has proved to be a real friend indeed, we had arguments but we both came back to track. Well, I realized something when Nitisha kicked my this year, I excel the most when I m alone & not doing useless stuff. I m following that only now. So far it is working.

I upgraded my Computer this year & finally started working on a LCD Monitor & few days back I bought Nokia N79. My Gadget requirements for the next few years are complete.

2008 wasn’t that good, but it wasn’t that bad either. At least I learned how not to get emotional & depressed when your “once good friend” leaves you just cos her BF is getting jealous.

Windows 7 beta 1 & Nokia N79

What better way to start new year then to buy a Nokia N79 & trying Windows 7 beta 1

I don’t have a spare hard disk so it is installed in VirtualBox right now.

My newest toy…

Windows XP - Tangofied

Windows Vista is all the rage these days & with cheap Windows Vista capable hardware available these days, you can very well make your Vista certified PC within Rs 20k. However there are many users out there who are still running old or low end hardware configuration for today’s standards & the herald of Netbooks have sparked another interest in Windows XP as Windows Vista is heavy on the GMA 950 available on most Netbooks out there. This is soon to change with nVidia Ion platform but till then, those using a Netbooks or low end configuration are either stuck with Windows XP or can install Linux.

In my office, I got a workstation running Windows XP SP3, so I decided to make the look & feel a bit more consistence, new & something black…like Vista. Now, instead of going with numerous Vista Shell Packs available, I decided to try something new & decided to go with the Tango Icon theme & something matching to it for Visual Style & Icons because Tango theme is simple on the eyes & easy to work with. They are not 3d Icons, they are all 2D Icons but still they do the work just fine & look good. I found some resources & made some of my own icons etc to make my Office’s Windows XP look like this.

This is how some applications look on my setup

When it comes to Casual Home use, Netbooks or Cyber Café or Office or even schools, users do not need much application to be installed. They just need some application as neither Netbooks are supposed to be uber powerful nor they are supposed to replace a desktop. So for place like this who are still using Windows XP, I decided to make this guide which can give their Computers running Windows XP a new & refreshing look. Keep in mind that I m making this guide strictly for the usage scenario’s I mentioned above. This isn’t some performance or tweaking guide; this is a guide to enhance the look & feel, as well as User Experience of the old & arcane operating system for today’s standards. All the applications mentioned below are free & there is no piracy. The icons are at a maximum size of 48X48 only.

Requirements.

1) A Clean unmodified installation of Windows XP. If you have any previous Shell pack or skin or theme installed, it will be removed. I am assuming that you have a newly installed Windows XP PC.

2) The following downloads…

a. Uxtheme Multipatcher & Luna Elements Black Visual Style for Windows XP

b. Tango Icon set for Windows

c. Tango Shell Patch for Windows

d. Tango uTorrent theme

e. Free download manager & tango theme

f. Abiword (In case you don’t want to use Microsoft Office or OpenOffice)

g. Tango Firefox 3 theme for Windows XP

h. XNView & Gnome theme

i. Segoe UI font

j. CCleaner

k. 7Zip & Tango 7Zip theme, also Tango WinRAR theme if you want to use WinRAR which in my point of view is useless for our use here. You just need to zip & unzip files so for that 7Zip is enough

l. Miscellaneous Tango Icons for various application

m. IcoFX. A free software to make your own icons from PNG files

n. Tango Icons which I have collected or created.

Customization

1) Start by installing Uxtheme Multipatcher & restart Windows. After this, extract the Lune Elements Black zip file & copy the “LE Black” folder to c:\windows\resources\themes. Extract the Segoe UI font & copy it to the Fonts folder. Now apply this skin by simply going to Display properties ->Appearance tab. Now click on advance & set the following fonts to Segoe UI.

a. Active/Inactive Titlebar

b. Icon

c. Menu

2) Now install the Tango Shell Patch for Windows & Install the Tango theme. There are other themes too which you can try. Let it patch the whole system & reboot windows.

For a PC like this, you don’t need many applications if it is a netbook or a cyber café or casual PC. So I will only install some simple & generic Application which are enough for a new or novice user but might help power users too.

1) For torrent client, nothing beats uTorrent for Windows. I prefer to use a portable uTorrent. To do this, just make a folder with any name, anywhere on your Hard disk. Copy uTorrent.exe to this folder, & then copy the content of the following folder to this new Folder.

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\uTorrent

After this, extract the content of the uTorrent theme given above & copy them to this new folder. Now your uTorrent is running in Portable mode with Tango theme & doesn’t need to be installed. You can simply zip it & take it with you anywhere you want.

2) Free download Manager is what it says it is. Install FDM, then extract the content of the FDM theme I gave above in the following folder

C:\Program Files\Download Manager\Skins

Now start FDM, configure it the way you want for speed, default download location etc & go to Tools -> General Settings -> Skins & select Tango from the Combo Box.

3) You can either install Abiword or Openoffice.org suite as you like or Microsoft Office.

4) Download the Tango Firefox theme mentioned above & extract it. Copy the folder to the “extension” folder of your firefox profile folder. After this select to use this theme from tools -> Add ons -> Themes

5) XNView is a free Image browser with some basic editing capability which should be sufficient for any casual user. Install XNView, then copy the XNView theme given above to the “skins” folder Inside the XNView installation folder. After this select this theme from Tools -> options -> Toolbar section -> Skins.

6) I prefer WMP11 but many might prefer something else. For a generic scenario I recommend VLC player as the new version is using Tango Icons. Install VLC Player & associate it with the file types you want. Since it is not your home PC (unless it is a netbook, in which case WMP11 is the way to go), a Library management is not required in most cases but still VLC should be able to do it just fine.

7) For CD Burning try InfraRecorder which already uses Tango Icons.

This does for the application customization for tango theme. You can search for or download many other icons all over the net for various applications as you require.

Is it time for Optical Media to die?

Since the last few years, I have been buying a new Optical drive almost every year as the tray soon starts to give problem which is the most common problem & the drive isn’t being used much either.

I was thinking, do we really need an optical drive now anymore? Other then Installing Windows on a new computer, I seriously see no use of my Optical drive today at the end of the year 2008. The availability of cheap bandwidth & Torrents has changed the way I get my digital media.