November 29, 2004

NEC e616v built in web browser supports XHTML and javascript!

Ive discovered that the web browser built into the NEC e616v supports xhtml and also javascript! :) which means you could write applications for it using javascript. The browser is called "NetFront 3" and its by a japanese company called Access.

It seems the only way to get the javascript/html files onto the phone is to email them to your 3mail account though, and then you need to goto your 3mail account via the phones browser, i.e click the triangle button, then goto the services page and then to the mail page. The reason for this is if you try reading your mail from the phone's built in mail client, which you can access by selecting the "msg" option then 3mail, it wont let you read any .htm or .html file attachments, but if you read your 3mail via the phones "web" browser, you can view html attachments :D

Anyone got any ideas for some useful javascript applications that would come in handy and that dont need to access the internet outside of 3's walled garden?

UPDATE I forgot to mention the browser also supports animated gifs :)
Someone should do a page of all the things it supports, or if someone could get a technical document outlining the browsers capabilities that would be v.cool too :) If anyone knows any more info on other cool things the browser supports, let me know. I have tried mailing a .jar and a .jad file and also a .swf file to my 3mail account, but it seems to block you from opening these types of files.

Further Update Ive written a javascript application for this phone, that lets you browse the web outside 3's walled garden. You can read all about it here

Yet Another Update Ive written another application that lets you interface your 3 phone with GenieTexter the free SMS sending application. Which means its possible to send free SMS from your phone. You can read all about it here

November 25, 2004

Breaking out of 3's walled garden - how to surf the web on your 3 mobile phone?

The 3 mobile network in the UK have for reasons best known to themselves, only given access to their own website content on their customers 3G phones. Im sure you would all agree that this is pretty lame.

Well i just thought up a way around it. Its not perfect but it does work, basically it involves sending your requests for webpages via email to a service that grabs that page and then emails it back to you.

This article at Evolt, lists a couple of services of the type I am talking about.

A major selling point of getting a 3 phone at the moment is that it offers free email sending and receiving at present, though this is going to end on 1st December 2004 according to the latest price guide posted on the three website. So till then, I guess this is the only way that 3 phone users can access the multi splendoured delights that the internet offers (well text content only anyway hehe).

Im going to carry on testing out this idea, and will post back the results here. If you have any ideas or experience of doing this already, please let me know, cheers.

Steeev

UPDATE I tried out the web2email service offered by agora@dna.affrc.go.jp as mentioned in the Evolt article and it worked extremely well! The only downside is of course the delay between sending the request and getting the email back, and the other being that theres no automatic notification when an email arrives. Anyway useful for doing google searches! And grabbing news headlines from a website? maybe grabbing an RSS feed? any more useful ideas?

FURTHER UPDATE I tried emailing a html web page as an attachment to my 3mail account and found that although you cannot read it in the MSG -> 3mail section, (when you try and read the html attachment, you get an error message saying X Attention Unable to open file. This type of file cannot be read on your handset. Though if you open the phones browser then goto Services and then to Mail, opent the mail and you can view the html attachments ok. Once youve selected the mail with the attachment, you need to click "Attachments" and then click on the file and then download it to view it. Nice :)

I wonder if the e616v's browser can also view web archive files, that would be handy, cos then you could mail a web archive of a site to your phone and browse the site that way. hmmmm need to do some further testing i guess :)

November 24, 2004

Accessing your 3mail - email and 3's "walled garden" content on your PC via your NEC e616v

I just figured out how to connect my PC to my my NEC e616v mobile phone so that i can send and receive my 3mail directly on my PC.

Firstly in order to actually check your 3mail account on your PC you need to connect your PC to your phone, i believe you can do this via Bluetooth as well as USB, though im not 100% sure, as i dont have a bluetooth adaptor for my PC, in my case I connected it via USB. To do this you need to just put the cd that came with your phone into your PCs drive and then plug your phone into the usb socket. Then just go through the hardware wizard, you need to install 4 drivers, so just follow the wizard, and it should install them all for you.

Once youve installed the drivers, heres the instructions on setting up a connection to your phone for Windows 2000 users, it should be similar for other windows operating systems too.

1) Go to Start/Settings/Network and Dialup Connections
2) Make New Connection
3) Click Next
4) Dial up to the Internet
5) I want to setup my internet connection manually
6) I connect through a phone line and modem
7) In the drop down box, select "NEC 616 USB Modem"
8) Click Next
9) Untick the "use area code and dialling rules" box
10) Enter *99# as the telephone number
11) Click Next
12) Enter your 3 mobile number as the username and leave the password blank
13) Click Next
14) you will be warned that you havent entered a password, ignore the warning and continue
15) Give your new connection a name, something like "NEC e616v" should do
16) Click Finish And thats the connection to your phone setup.

17)Make sure your USB cable is plugged into your phone
18) Go back to the "Network and Dialup Connections" window and double click your new connection.
19) After a few seconds you should now be connected to your phone.

20) Follow the instructions which ive quoted below, originally posted by Dimitri Sampson in the 3gnewsroom forum on how to setup your 3mail in outlook/express or whatever IMAP compatible mail client you have on your PC.

-------------------------------------------


Once you are connected, you can startup Outlook or your mail program and put in the following settings :-

IMAP Server - imap.three.co.uk
SMTP Server- smtp.three.co.uk
Username - your email name (e.g. dmitris)
Password - your password (the one you setup when you first started 3mail on your phone, usually a 4 digit pin password)

with this you can pull in your emails and any voicemails down to your PC.


-------------------------------------------------

21) you can also browse the walled garden content in your web browser, though i seem to be having a problem getting this working, i can see the pages, but i cant seem to click the links, if anyone can figure out whats wrong please let me know. Anyway to get to the walled garden content enter the following URL http://mobile.three.co.uk/hb/vtb/HutchKey/ into your PCs web browser while you still have a connection to your NEC e616v phone or try this one http://mobile.three.co.uk//hb/3g/uk/vtb/grid/live which shows you the services page.

Enjoy exploring :) And if you find out how to get the webpages to work, please let me know... Cheers,

Steeev

Had Problems installing the USB drivers for the NEC e616v

I tried installing the drivers for my NEC e616v phone on my pc, whenever i tried to install it, it wanted to install the swedish version of the drivers for some reason, so i copied the english version of the drivers to a directory on my hard disk and then pointed the new hardware wizard to look there for the drivers, which worked ok, youve got to remember it needs to install 4 different drivers, so you have to go through the wizard 4 times.

The reason i was installing the drivers in the first place, is due to the fact i would like to be able to transfer files to and from my phone and i dont have BlueTooth yet, though ive heard you cant transfer files via bluetooth to this phone anyway, as its only got bluetooth modem and bluetooth headset profiles available.

Posted by steeev to NEC e616v Mobile Phone at 03:31 PM | Permanent Link | | Comments (2)

November 22, 2004

TomsHardware have a great guide to building your own video projector

TomsHardware have published a brilliant, clear, easy to follow guide to building your own video projector. THe main components are an overhead projector and an old 15inch flatscreen monitor.

November 19, 2004

Which is better - Nokia 7600 or NEC e616v ?

I recently purchased a Nokia 7600 and an NEC e616v, both phones are on the 3 network and have quite similar specifications. I have been comparing them, and i must say I havent used the 7600 much, as i only really switched it on to unlock it. The phone is too weird looking for my liking and the keypad isnt conducive to txting, anyway heres a few comparison points i have noticed:

7600 has a full bluetooth implementation, so can connect to any bluetooth device
e616v can only connect to bluetooth headset devices, though it can also act as a modem over bluetooth.

Both phones come with a USB cable, for transferring files such as video, ringtones, and mp3s to and from your pc. You cant transfer java games to the NEC phone, but apparently you can do this with the Nokia.

7600 has a full XHTML web browser, though you cant browse the internet, just 3's website.
e616v has a full xhtml browser too, but you cant make full use of it because you can only browse the content on the 3 website, you cant access the internet at all.

7600 has got a very intuitive user interface - great usability! (talking about the menu system etc, not the fiddly keypad)
e616v user interface is a little bit confusing, but not too bad, doesnt take too long to get used to it.

e616v can do video phone calls, and you can also record short video clips.
7600 cannot do video phone calls, though you can record short video clips.

e616v has 2 cameras! one on the front and one on the back
7600 has just one camera on the back.

7600 has got 32Meg in built ram.
e616v has got just 19Meg in built ram.

7600 has no memory card expansion port
e616v has a memory stick duo memory card expansion port which means you could fit more mp3s, photos and videos on it.

e616v comes with 2 batteries (1 heavy duty and 1 slim one) though i guess this is due to the poor battery performance, the heavy duty battery sticks out a bit and makes the phone look ugly, and the slim battery doesnt last very long at all.
7600 comes with 1 battery, i have heard that the battery lasts longer than the NEC one.

7600 keypad is really fiddly, absolutely rubbish for entering text messages or emails, practically impossible to use with a single hand.
e616v has a standard mobile phone keypad, so easy to enter texts with a single hand, and better for people with big hands, the nokias buttons are a bit on the small side, and really close together.

7600 has an infra red port
e616v doesnt have infra red port

7600 has a full java MIDP implementation, which means you can freely download java applications and games.
e616v has a closed off Java implementation, which means you cant download java apps and games freely, and have to pay to download them.

7600 comes with 2 games built in
e616v doesnt come with any games

e616v has a light on the front for the camera, great for taking pictures in the dark, the light can also be used as a torch, if you hold down one of the volume buttons on the side of the phone for a couple of seconds, the light comes on!
7600 doesnt have a light for the camera, though it is supposed to have a low light camera setting.

7600 has much better sounding ringtones, and uses standard midi files, i believe you can also even use mp3s as ringtones!
e616v you can use midi files as ringtones, there is a limit of 20k on the size of the midi files you can use, you cant use mp3s as ringtones.

7600 is easy to unlock to allow u to use different network's sim cards (you can unlock your 7600 and a whole load of other phones here: http://www.trycktill.com/eng/
e616v isnt so easy to unlock to allow u to use different network's sim cards

7600 comes with some cool stereo earphones, which look quite similar to ipod ones and also double as a handsfree kit
e616v comes with a crappy mono earphone hands free kit.

e616v the quality of video recorded with the camera seems quite good
7600 the quality of video recorded with the camera seems a bit "blocky"

e616v can download a video and save it for playback at a later date, or it can stream the video file in "real time"
7600 can only stream video files, it cannot download and save video files

e616v comes with GPS
7600 doesnt have GPS

7600 flat and open design doesnt give any protection from scratching or damage, or from dialling people when the phones in your pocket,
e616v is a clamshell design (which means you cant accidentally dial people by mistake, when something rubs against the phone), and the phones screen is also protected from damage

anyone else got anything to add?

as to which one is better i cant really decide, i am thinking of selling one of them, but cant make my mind up. really i would like to keep both, as they both have features that i really like, ideally i would like to create a frankenstein machine with the best features from both phones... now where did i put my hacksaw LOL


steeev

*UPDATE* I recently took my trusty NEC e616v on holiday with me to Japan, and was pleased to find out that the phones charger works fine on the japanese power supply, even though its completely different to the UK's. All i needed was a plug adapter which i picked up in the airport for around £3.50.

Whilst on holiday I also noticed one majorly disappointing feature of the phone, and that is that you can only store 100 photos no matter how much memory the phone has remaining, this was extremely annoying. At first i thought i would be able to remedy the problem by buying a memory card for the phone, but alas after installing it I found I still couldnt take any photos as the 100 images limit had been reached on the phone. Talk about crap! I believe there is also a limit on storing only 100 video clips on the phone too. How lame is that? Luckily I havent reached the limit on storing videos yet. It wouldnt have been a problem if I had taken the cdrom with the drivers and transfer program along with me, as i would have been able to transfer all the images onto a pc, and then deleted all the photos off the phone, allowing me to take photos again, but unfortunately i forgot to take it with me, and i had no luck in finding the transfer software online. Oh well, for anyone else looking for the transfer software and drivers for this phone, see my recent blog entry on the subject.

Further Update Someone on the 3g forum has posted a way to get round the 100 image limit on the e616v phone. More info can be found here.

November 15, 2004

How to pay less for items on EBay and still win the auctions - Auction Sniper

I just discovered Auction Sniping, what is auction sniping, its setting a computer to automatically bid at the very last few seconds of auction on an item, in order to win the item without having to bid too much for it. I used the auction sniping site called AuctionSniper.com and the very first time I used it I won the auction i wanted to bid on, and got it really cheap too, you should give it a try, and if you use EBay a lot, you will save lots of money! They give you 3 free tries to start with, but you can get more credits by referring your friends to the site, or you can pay for extra credits, its up to you.

Posted by steeev to EBay at 01:14 AM | Permanent Link | | Comments (0)

November 12, 2004

New GenieTexter Script - Cellebrum - Send International SMS from your PC!

Ive written a new script for GenieTexter, this one is for the Cellebrum site, which allows you to send SMS interationally, i think its an Indian site, because sending SMS to India from that site seems very cheap :)

As usual see the GenieTexter site for more details.

Info: GenieTexter is a small (130k) application for Windows PCs, that lets you send free SMS from your desktop, it also interfaces with some paid SMS services for extra reliability.