Rohit Mordani’s Blog

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/

A few weeks back my Motorola Q9h display died on me and wouldn’t come back. After searching the net and not finding anything I was wondering if I could open it to see if the display connector was loose, since, at times it would come on and go off again. I searched the net again for directions on how to disassemble a Motorola Q9. Unfortunately there was no site that explained how to to do that. I know there was one for the Motorola RAZR (which I found) but there wasn’t one for the Q9h.

So I went ahead and started to disassemble on my own with a lot of uncertainty. I have broken electronic gadgets (while opening it) in the past that I meant to repair. When I started doing this I realised how nice it would be to actually know what I was doing and refer to some guide with pictures like I did when my RAZR died on me ! I thought to myself at that moment – “Why don’t I do one guide which will benefit others !”. o here it is – in the least possible words:

Read the rest of this entry »

This post of mine has been rusting in the drafts folder and I thought that I should really post this before I forget the details of the trip.

I took a trip to Alaska in July 2007 and it was an awesome experience ! I liked that place a lot ! It is very different than the other places that I have been to. I loved the 20+ hours of daylight – no wonder it is called the “Land of the Midnight Sun”. I felt the place was very raw – It is left untouched for the most part, and that made me feel a little uncomfortable in the beginning because I was not used to it, but I quite started to like the place after the while – the rustic feeling is something that everyone should experience !

This post is how I went about doing my trip – it wasn’t perfect and I will give you tips on how to plan and do things better. Once again (like from my Maui post) – this is all based on what I did, what I feel I should have done and what majority of the people do !

Read the rest of this entry »

It is way too late in the night and I am still awake and so frustrated that I am actually writing this blog entry. I am playing the Challenges in God Of War : Chains of Olympus (don’t ask me why but I am) and it is absolutely stupid ! I think there was a lack of QA support for this part of the game ! I have restarted the challenge about 300 times and I am not exaggerating one bit ! These Challenges are so bad that I don’t know where to start. Here is an attemp. I hope someone from Sony and/or Ready at Dawn reads this blog entry of mine and does something about it.

1. To start of with – Why do I have to kill 20 bad-ass enemies without getting hit even ONCE ???
2. The enemies just swing their swords at one place and even though I am far from them I get hit and of course I die cause the challenge is to kill all of them without getting hit even once.
3. There are 5 of these guys coming at me at one time
4. The shield I have is LAME !!
   1. It has to be activated at the exact time. A fraction too soon and a fraction too late and thats it – you’re dead !
   2. Some times the shield doesn’t even activate !!
   3. You can’t keep the shield up for a long time. It works only for a second after you activate it
5. If you press a key to use a combo to kill an enemy then you are a 100% sure to die ’cause you can’t press any other key at that time to block your self
6. It seems that when 5 guys are hitting you at one time all you are expected to do is block, ’cause the moment you try to run, jump or hit back, you’re probably dead !
7. You cannot jump to escape the enemies, so even though the enemies are swinging the swords on the ground and you are in the air – you get hit and die !
8. Sometimes you can’t even see the enemy attacking you because of the camera angle

And the worst part is – this is only the second challenge !! I barely crossed the first one after like 20 retries !!
Don’t get me wrong – I love the entire God Of War series and I have finished them all, but I really hate it when developers go super-crazy and do shit like this. I wonder if the developers ever played the Challenges themselves and finished it !!

My sincere question is – What is the point of making the game so difficult?

Update 1 : I have seen some videos of Challenge 2 on Youtube and I am impressed with the skills and patience some players have. I guess I am old now and don’t have that kind of patience anymore ! I still don’t understand why the developers are so anal about these things. Why don’t have these Challenges on different difficulty levels? I am surely sick of this and if I owned this game (I am playing a borrowed copy) I would take this shit and trade it in for peanuts !

[youtube Dc7PgMML_ds]

Update 2 : I have given up on the challenges and will be returning the game back to the original owner !

I just came back from the movie (Taare Zameen Par) and this is one hindi movie I didn’t want to miss, and let me tell you that I am not BIG on hindi movies, so when I say that I don’t want to miss a hindi movie it translates to “You shouldn’t miss this hindi movie !”. I saw the movie from the corner seat of the 3rd row and didn’t complain one bit – now thats a shocker !

This movie is awesome ! A 5 star for me no doubt – a simple story with no BIG actors dancing and trying to be cool ! This movie doesn’t try to be cool or prove that we are hip in India too ! Instead it has emotion, spirit and character written all over it and for me that is much more cool than sexy actress just prancing around in a skimpy dress swinging to a sexy tune ! Aamir – good job directing this one mate ! As usual its the small things that I like. For example, at one point everyone has enough hints to figure out that Aamir’s character is also dyslexic but there is nothing said about it. At the end of the class, the way he breaks it to “Ishaan” (the dyslexic kid around who the story revolves) is something that stuck on to my mind ! Anyways- won’t give away more spoilers ! Go see the movie !

Some other things that struck me in this movie were the sketches and the animation – It was very well incorporated into the movie, not just for the heck of it !

Oh – and by the way, the soundtrack to Taare Zameen Par is awesome. I must confess I had not heard it before I saw the movie, but I did download the entire album right after I got back from the movie (and just before this post). I am listening to it right now and I like most of the songs. My favourite song is “Kholo Kholo” – I have already heard it some 5-8 times !

A few posts back I wrote how the Bollywood industry was going down the drain, but there are still people like Aamir who will keep up my hopes and expectations ! On my way back I realised there are a select few in Bollywood whose movies I like. Some of them include Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Ashutosh Gowarikar and a couple more.

Just came to know that one of my panorama of Snoqualmie Falls (close to Seattle) was chosen to be featured in the “Schmap Seattle Guide” which is an online guide to all the attractions in and around Seattle. This is quite a big deal for me. There are a gazillion good photos of Snoqualmie on Flickr and mine was selected from all of them !! I am quite proud of this and want to share it with all of you !!

Here is the link to the Fourth Schmap online guide to attractions in and around Seattle.

I finally got a Motorola Q9h and I like it. I am getting used to it and there are some things really nice about it. I love the fact that it is a 3G phone – I can do so many things with it. There are a couple of things that I don’t like about it (as usual) but I can live with those things. For one, the GPS doesnt really work that well and when it does, it drains the power ! Another thing I don’t like, and I know that AT&T is doing this, is that there is a size limit on the ringtone. The ringtone can be only 299Kb. I understand that the ringtones shouldn’t be that large but I do have some ringtones that are just barely over that size. Luckily, there is a way to overcome this problem and here’s how…

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_CurrentUser –> ControlPanel –> Sounds. Click on “Values” which is the left soft key. This will bring up another screen with 3 list items:

• AllSounds
• Ringtones
• FileSizeLimit

Highlight FileSizeLimit and click on “Menus” which is the right soft key. From the menu select “Delete” to delete that key. Thats it ! You’re done. You can quit the PHM Registry editor. Now, you can set a ringtone of any size !

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 !

I have recently had some real bad experiences and this has made me realize how the consumer is – pardon my language – Screwed again and again by Big Corporations ! I had a really bad experiences with Dell, Dish Network (and other companies) that left me wondering – “Whatever happened to the proverb – ‘the customer is ALWAYS right’” or is that just something that lesser established / upcoming companies believe in?

In this country, the big corporations are encouraged and they become so big that the customer is forgotten. If one (or few) customers have complaints – they are just shooed away. The big companies don’t care one bit about them. They are so big that you don’t make an iota of difference to them. Your satisfaction is of least concern to them. How will one drop in an ocean make any difference in their next Quarterly result? That is the attitude of all of these companies and it makes me hate them even more !

Companies like Cingular / AT&T ; all insurance companies; Comcast; Dish Network; Dell; Starbucks; Quiznos, All Airlines etc. etc. all fall under the same category. All produce on a large scale basis and quality (of goods and/or services) goes down the drain – but of course if you call to complain, be prepared to be shoved around from one operator to another until you get frustrated, shout at some poor soul who is not at fault at all and then end the frustration by banging the phone down !! Yes – that has happened to me, and it has provoked me to write a blog entry about it !!

My insurance company has charged me an exorbitant amount of money for an emergency visit, which they claimed was not emergency. Every year the first visit to the doc costs me a bomb – cause that is the minimum I need to shell out in a year – and that pinches me a lot since I probably go to the doctor once a year !! I still haven’t seen Michael Moore’s Sicko, but I’m sure I’ll feel even more SICK after seeing it ! I hate the medical system in this place – I wonder how can such things so basic, like medicine, be so un-affordable !! This is probably my pet peeve and the big insurance companies don’t help at all when every year they bump up my co-pay or my premiums, even when my annual health report shows that nothing is critically wrong with me ! I don’t even use my health insurance as much (which is not something that I am complaining about ). I actually skip going to a doctor at times just because I worry about how much I will have to shell out to go see one !!

I had to get my Dish Antenna changed so that instead of being fixed n the railing it had to be fixed on a tripod (some apartment issue – the apartment complex is no less than a big corporation – but that is yet another story). So when I called up Dish Network and they were charging me $100 to do this – to move my dish antenna 2 feet inside !! They were charging me this despite of me paying them $5 every month towards a “protection plan”. They claimed it was an “installation” and not part of the protection plan !! I tried to explain them but my words did not reach anyone’s ear – every one was “playing by the book”. In India I would have got this done for free !! The good part of this story is that I also played it “by the book” and got the better of the company by doing so ! I removed the dish antenna myself, put it on the tripod and then called them and lodged a complaint that the dish antenna had moved and that I needed a “service call” – and stupidly enough this fell under the “protection plan” and they sent out someone to fix it – Dumb bast**** !!! (Again – pardon my frustration which is causing all the foul language). Blame it on those big corporations

I have noticed a stark difference between the business model here and in another country (say India). I see this problem there as well, but in a much much lower scale – the reason being that the competition is healthier there. There are so many companies there that compete with each other and in doing so YOU become important – as a customer. Earning your business is important, but keeping you happy so that you are loyal to them is even more important. That is the difference – the difference in attitude. The western world is trying to influence them to change their ways too – It is happening, but I hope it doesn’t go to this extent ! The service there is much better, because the people who work in those companies are paid on a commission basis at times. This is an amazing way of getting better service. The simple rule of thumb is – if you serve better, the more the chance of the customer sticking to you and/or getting you more customers which means – more business earned by you for your company, which also means more commission for you !! You win, the Company wins and the Customer wins – Its a WIN-WIN situation !! Above all though, people are much warmer there and they are more sincere where work is concerned – Our culture teaches us that “Work is God” and “Keeping the Customer happy is our primary concern” which makes the us give more to our work there than here.

Well so what went wrong here – why isn’t that the case here? Corporations here became so HUGE and powerful that they don’t think they need all of these customers ! I hate that approach and I hope that something can be done – Maybe making the market a little more open and free will help. E.g. don’t have cell phones locked to Providers – Let the providers sell what they are meant to do – sell the service !!! If they are bound to do only that, then they will be bound to provide better service !!

All this makes me feel that if I were ever to get a chance to screw the big companies over once in a while then I won’t shy away from that chance – It feels evil but at times they need a dose of their own medicine ! There are always loop-holes – you just need to figure them out !

This is probably going to be my shortest HOW-TO. Go to the following DMV website and fill in your details. This comes really handy during Tax-Time when you can’t find that damn registration letter that DMV had sent you

https://mv.dmv.ca.gov/FeeCalculatorWeb/vlfForm.do