Rohit Mordani’s Blog

I couldn’t believe that the Motorola Q9h doesn’t have an option to turn off the shutter sound while clicking a photo ! I knew this had to be a stupid  registry setting and so I fired up my Registry editor and made the necessary changes and voila !

First of all, you need to download a registry editor for Windows Smartphone. There are a couple of registry editors such as PHM registry Editor, Resco Explorer and Total Commander. I used PHM Registry Editor which is a free tool. Download the CAB file, transfer it to the Q9h using ActiveSync or a memory card and install it using the file manager application on the Q9h. Once installed, run the PHM Editor and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE –>System–>Pictures–>Camera–>OEM. Click on “Values” which is the left soft key. This will bring up another screen with 3 list items:

• ForceShutterSound
• ShutterSoundVolume
• SoundFile

Select SoundFile (center select) and change the Value Data field value to \windows\*none*\. Click on the Done (the right soft key).  Thats it ! You’re done - no more shutter sound ! You can quit the PHM Registry editor. Now, you can set a ringtone of any size !

So the whole world is raving about the new App store that iphone and ipod touch just got today ! I saw the apps and they look good. Kudos to Apple to get it to work so good ! They do know how to do some stuff really well.

Well - this post is not about iphone apps - that you can get directly from the phone and read about it all over the place !! This post is about what Windows mobile apps are out there and where you can get them. I have a Motorola Q9 and I installed some of these apps and they make me feel better - at least for the time being until I get my iphone 3G !

NOTE: I would recommend that you get an unlimited data plan before using any of these apps. These are usually data heavy apps

Skyfire
http://www.skyfire.com/

Skyfire is a full fledged mobile browser designed for Windows Mobile platform. It is a very nice browser  that displays web pages as you would see it on your desktop. Its no Safari on the iphone but it is much better than a lot of other solutions. I like Opera mobile a lot and used it a lot before I came across Skyfire. I use this all the time. I can visit sites like Facebook, digg etc. and do all that I want to do as I would from the desktop.  It plays video and does Flash too ( 1 up on Safari ) !! Sadly enough Skyfire is not openly available and you need to be on the Beta program to be able to use it. Sign up at their website - its a good chance that you will get into the program (if you have a windows mobile device). I have been on the program for a while now.

Google Maps
http://www.google.com/mobile/default/maps/index.html

This is one of the best apps that I have had on my phone for the longest time. It has evolved well and has a lot of features. One thing I like about this is that when you search for a business it gives you the phone number and you can click on it and it calls the number - very nice integration considering this is a third party app ! I have a 3G phone and that makes a BIG difference and I would recommend you getting a 3G phone if you want to optimize the performance of these apps ! This app also shows you satellite view and traffic conditions !

All in all - a very crisp and useful application

Microsoft Live Search Mobile
http://www.livesearchmobile.com/

MS Live is a lot like Google Maps with a little bit more like the ability to search for a lot more things than just the business locations and phone numbers and maps. I have used it in the past but I am not a very big fan of it. That being said, it is still a good app amongst the few good ones that exist for Windows Mobile

Shozu
http://www.shozu.com/

One of the really good apps. with continued improvement ! This app allows you to upload photos and videos directly from your phone to various websites such as Facebook, Flickr and YouTube. You can set up various websites where you can post to and also set up one-click websites (default ones) to upload to. I like this app a lot - it doesnt do contact backing up as well as they claim. I still like this app a lot - very smart idea ! Posting to some websites doesnt always work to well, however it has improved ten-fold since the initial versions !

Dashwire
http://dashwire.com/

This is one of the newer apps that I found recently. It backs up your SMS, Call registry and even your contacts. It claims that if you have a new phone you can download your backed up contacts too - I haven’t tried that yet ! You can post (share) your backed up contect to various websites using the website and not the phone (unlike Shozu) but it has its own usefulness. It can also backup your ringtones !

zaTelnet Professional
http://www.zatelnet.com/

I just found this most awesome application that allows you to telnet, ssh, ssh2 and ping from your Windows Smart Phone. Since the Q9 has a keyboard this is the most awesome app ever !! I downloaded the trial and it works right out of the box and it supports proxies ! There is one catch though - it is not a free app and in the trial mode, the app. disconnects from the server in about a minute I thought I would buy the app (its for $19.99 for 1 license) however I saw that the payment goes to a company in Russia or Germany and that dissuaded me from buying the app. I will keep this blog updated if I buy it in the future … I still want to but I am a little apprehensive !

UPDATE : I took my chances and ordered it and I got my activation code immediately ! I was pleasantly surprised ! I did use PayPal to pay the amount and that made me feel a little safe ! My trustworthy Firefox also showed me that the PayPal site I was visiting was actually verified by Verisign.  The activation code worked well and now I can stay logged in using SSH as long as I want ! The payment did go to Germany but the company selling the software does have some customer support etc. in the US. The person who wrote this software is from Russia - makes me a little nervous but I think it should be fine. Reputed sites like softpedia (that are in the US) actually point to zatelnet.com so that makes me feel more and more confident. I think this company is actually a trustworthy company !

Others that I tried and did not care too much for…

• Zumobi : http://www.zumobi.com/
• Point UI : http://www.pointui.com/
• AvantGo : http://www.avantgo.com/

Check out more Windows Mobile Freeware at : http://www.freewarepocketpc.net/

Well - everyone, including my wife, thinks I spend wayyy tooo much time at my computer and they always wonder what the hell is it that I do ! Well over the years the technology has improved so much that now I can do pretty much anything using my computer. Be it watching TV, writing a blog, reading news, seeing a gallery of photos, planning a trip, checking mail or just listening to music. Here are the tools that I use - I bet there are more, but here is what I use.

Watching TV/Videos

• NFL : I use SOPCast to watch those games that aren’t aired in my area. As I write this blog entry, I am watching the Colts vs. Bucaneers game. Want to know where I find the appropriate channel addresses to watch the games? Here is a link to the page that has links to all the games - This is updated weekly.
• Bollywood Stuff :Want to watch Zee TV, Sony and other hindi movies? Check out muft.tv
• Joost : Ye, I do have a Joost account. A friend of mine invited me to it and I have been using it for a while. It is a great software tool and I really like it, though it does have a long way to go where content is concerned. The quality is really good. I think Joost is now open to anyone who wants to use it - they can download the software from the official site
• YouTube : YouTube of course is the tool that I use to search for all the videos that I might have missed over the week. It is awesome though not as awesome after Google bought it out - They had better content before that !! Nevertheless - they still do have some good stuff. For example they have an official page for clips from late night shows like Conan and Jay Leno.
• Online shows : ABC, Fox, CBS and all others now host their recent past shows on their websites. So if you missed the last Desperate housewives episode or Heroes or Lost episodes then check out the respective channels - though they are put up online a day later

Photography Tools

• Adobe Photoshop CS2 : A Graphic Designers best friend ! This is by far the best softwareI have ever used ! Read my blog entry about Adobe Photoshop here
• Panoramas : I take a lot of photographs and I use the best stitching tool that I have come across so far - Autostitch. I love this tool and the guys over at University of British Columbia have done an awesome job ! There is no other tool that I consider better than Autostitch
• HDR Composition : Recently I started taking a lot of HDR photos and to compose them I use Photomatix. There are a lot of other tools there including Adobe Photoshop, however I think Photomatix does a good job - it has some presets for noobs.
• Online Hosting : My brother hosts a web server at his house and we run Gallery. We have been using Gallery from a very early version and we have a lot of photos now ! I also use Flickr and Picasaweb.

Downloader/Conversion Tools

• SUPER : SUPER is an awesome tool that I found a little while ago. You can convert a lot of media from one format to another. The biggest plus - its FREE - woo hoo ! I love these guys who make awesome software and distribute it free of charge !
• flvconvert : flvconvert is another great tool based on an open source tool called ffmpeg that allows you to convert flash videos (flv videos used by nearly ALL online video sites like YouTube etc.) to mpeg or avi files. You can then transfer these to your iPod or any other PMP.
• Audacity + lame encoder : Audacity is another free tool that I use. I love ringtones and Audacity is what I use to create my own ringtones from the mp3 files that I own.  lame is the encoder that is used to export the snipped songs as mp3s. You can then transfer these to your phone. Someday soon I shall write an entry about how to create ringtones.
• AVI MPEG RM WMV Joiner/Splitter : Join or split the video files. Sad to say its a paid utility.
• SDP Downloader: Some time ago, I wanted to download some wma and wmv files and I couldn’t. I grabbed this tool and voila !
  
• Firefox +DownloadHelper add-on : Download all those flv videos from any site using the DownloadHelper add-on with Firefox 2.0

There are ton of other tools that I use. I shall update this blog entry whenever I find out about them and use them !