Gadgets Update

Its been a few weeks since I posted an update on my 5800 and Windows 7 so here goes...

5800 - It seems I am not the only one who finds Nokia's Download App broken. Of course, this being Symbian, I can just download and install apps without requiring jailbreaking or app store like approval, so its not a mjor issue - just an annoyance. Nokia has released a major firmware update (v20) to the 5800 - unfortunately, for some reason, the update is region locked - for some reason, its available in Europe and other regions but not available in India and some other parts of Asia. Unlike Apple, Nokia has literally dozens of product codes for the phone across different regions. This region code is how they control the accessibility of the update. There are methods to change the product code, unfortunately, they will all void your warranty. Still, the update doesnt add much - except Geotagging - so I am not too upset.

I have been finding websites and quite a few apps for the 5800, some of them really cool - especially the handwriting calculator. Unfortunately, they shut down wifi access for handheld devices at my office recently (due to security concerns) - so I have been thinking of sneaky ways of getting it back. One way seems to be using internet over bluetooth for the 5800. Unfortunately, this requires Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing enabled and that doesnt seem to work on either my laptop or my desktop - I already tried that when I attempted to set up my Nintendo Wifi USB Adapter as a SoftAP. The other interesting thing is the inbuilt IM app which is present in most newer Nintendo phones - it seems it actually works after all (I havent yet gottent around to trying it though - I dislike trusting my Yahoo credentials to a third party website)

Windows 7 - I just upgraded the RAM on my home machine to 4GB. I can now confirm that Windows 7 x64 successfully shows the RAM as 4GB :) (a friend and I were discussing if Windows 7 x32 would show 4GB - alas I have no intention of installing the 32-bit version of Windows 7 just to test this out) Windows XP of course, shows 3.5 GB - which means that considering the 1GB ReadyBoost drive I have connected, Windows 7 has now, strangely, got more memory to play with than XP.

I have yet to get my TV Tuner working with Windows 7 - the process is a bit involved and requires a bit of research. Basically you end up enabling test signing mode in Windows 7 (which places a annoying message on all four corners of your screen). After that you add a certificate to your system's root certificates and then install a driver signed using that certificate. I am hesitant to do this - adding a publicly available certificate to my system's root certificates leaves it wide open to attack. Anyone can grab this certificate, sign an infected file with it or even execute a MiTM or phishing attack (although I dont actually use IE often enough to be really at risk)

So I have to download the unsigned driver, create and install my own root certificate, and then sign the driver with it - just to play my PS2 (thats all I do with my TV Tuner - use it as an upscaler for my PS2). Maybe I would do it if I had no other option, but with my XP installation fully functional, I doubt I will take the time to do this... BTW, did you know that Win 7 adds a lot of shortcuts to the Win key

iPod Touch - I already blogged about my iPod this week, but I just wanted to briefly mention more about using a mic with the iPod Touch. This is needed if you want to use the iPod Touch for VoIP (Fring etc). Apple sells some exorbitantly priced In-Ear headphones, although you can find cheaper, regular Apple Earphones with mic on Amazon. There are alternatives - the cheapest being Philips' Mic Adapter (Target, in-store only - no online orders) and Smarttalk from Griffin. None are available in India though :(

There's no update on redsn0w. I wish it would get released soon so I can finally try out all the cool jailbroken apps (although this will mostly void my warranty)

Ubuntu - Lastly, something interesting as I sign off: a friend recently brought a 320GB external hard disk (Seagate - yikes! bad decision) We decided to install Ubuntu 8.10 onto it. The process was surprisingly simple (the 8.04 instructions still work for 8.10) The only deivation from the process was how we partitioned the hard disk. Its generally better to have a separate 100 MB or so boot partition. I have installed Ubuntu onto a pen drive in the past - but seeing it install and run off a USB HDD so easily is really cool. Ubuntu is my favorite Linux dsitribution and it seems to be getting better and better.

Sadly, Kubuntu is drowning though - I cant tolerate KDE 4, and like many people, I am thinking of switching to Gnome rather than have it forced down my throat. Every single person in my office who uses KDE as his primary work environment (I use Windows XP) is planning to switch to Gnome rather than KDE 4, so if that is any indicator, the future looks really bleak for KDE in general.

The Other App Store

Apple's App Store is an amazing success - the thousands of free and paid apps add lots of utility and entertainment value to the iPod Touch and iPhone. In the middle of all this, its easy to forget that the first iPhone shipped without any custom app capability at all - all your apps had to be webapps accessed via Safari. With the launch of the App Store and iPhone 3G, the earlier option of installing webapps has been largely forgotten, however, the capability and the webapp directory still exist. Upon installation, webapps look surprisingly similar to normal apps

However, a webapp is essentially a bookmark - clicking it opens Safari and takes you to the relevant webpage. This works fine for certain types of apps - such as Google Talk and Remember The Milk which run perfectly well in a browser in the first place. What is interesting is when someone creates an entire game (with graphics and effects) entirely as a webapp - Gravity Swarm is a good example. The amount of interactivity this app achieves using only JavaScript is really impressive, also while essentially built on an old concept, the game has been customized to make the controls intuitive with a touch interface.

Apple certainly still seems to be supporting webapps - they even have a separate section for them in the Apple Design Awards. With the iPhone/iPod Tocuch browser supporting HTML 5, this is certainly a viable option for developers - as demonstrated by Google recently.

In other news, Apple is actively pushing the iPhone/iPod Touch as a gaming platform. Some of the paid apps are amazing - I recently bought Enigmo (only $0.99!) and am really impressed with the quality of the app. Traditional gaming sites are also taking notice of the device - I guess because a lot of their writers own the device and actively play games on it! I certainly use my iPod Touch a lot more than my DS - the iPod with its multiple capabilities rarely leaves my side, while the DS rarely leaves home... Whats missing on the App Store though is deeper games that require 20-30 hours to finish, let alone stuff like the Final Fantasy games which can give more than 50 hours of gameplay each. Apple needs to launch a App Store section with "premium" games by established publishers, with a minimum quality level, if they want to really unseat Nintendo from their handheld throne.

Launch Dead - SoundExchange Most Likely Cause

Launchcast is officially dead - well, not dead exactly, but effectively useless with the plus option gone. A lot of people on the official Yahoo Launchcast group are pretty upset about it - and understandably. Launch has shutdown taking people's years of ratings without giving them any way of getting them out.

Some comments by Yahoo staff on this group clearly point to SoundExchange being the root cause of the decision.

See this message:
"We considered just about every alternative, including raising the price of a subscription and making it a subscription-only service. The numbers just didn't add up. "

and this one:
"However, with royalty rates on the rise, we really couldn't afford to keep the service as-is"

So what options does someone wanting to discover new music have? Well first, I would suggest getting all your ratings out of Launch. Either using the LaunchScrobbler or using this tool to grab the data in CSV format. Then its off to Last.fm or maybe Rhapsody. Pandora is region locked of course so no use in India :) If you have a lot of music in your iTunes library, you could always use this tool. Or maybe, if you just wont to kill some time, you could watch a movie or read a book :)

Onion Reports New Sony Device

The Onion ... Straight out of the left field... and listen for the 800GB reference at the end!

(Warning - Extreme use of Foul Language)

Update - Embedded video does not seem to work. Here's a direct link...

Windows 7 - Installation and Configuration Notes

Well here's my detailed report on Windows 7 (And yes, its very long).

1. First off, you need to repartition your hard disk. The Windows 7 install will clean out your partition. So you need to empty out a partition, or use GParted (Ubuntu)/QTParted (Kubuntu) to create one from the empty space in your hard disk.
   
2. This must a primary partition, Windows 7 will use 8 GB + 2xMemory Size initially. I recommend creating at least a 20GB partition (I ended up creating a 37 GB partition - equivalent to a 40 GB HDD.)
   
3. Do NOT let the installer create the partiton for you (say from a new HDD or unpartitioned space). Otherwise, in typical M$ fashion, the installer will create a proprietary format 200 MB recovery partition. If a 3rd party tool deletes this partition, you may corrupt the partition table, so format the partition before passing it to the installer
4. On a side note, if you format with "Enable Compression" on the drive, Windows 7 installer will still disable compression; I dont know the reason for this but obviously, if you want to reenable compression, do it from inside Windows 7 not from your previous version.
5. Windows 7 will mount its own partition as C:. One of the first things you should do on the first boot is map your partitions as you want them, I suggest mapping your old C: (if different from the Windows 7 boot partition) to what the Windows 7 partition maps to in the old windows version, to minimize confusion :)
6. By default the Boot drive (normally C:) will be unmapped - since Windows 7 has "stolen" its mapping. Now you will get ONE CHANCE to map it to a new drive letter using the UI. So make sure you get it right, else you will have to muck around in the registry. Do not use this to remap your Windows 7 C:, you willl destroy your installation. Windows 7 also hides empty CD drives, you can force it to show them using Folder options/
   
7. There is a nasty bug in Windows 7 that will corrupt your MP3 files. Install this update before you do anything else.
8. The OS will mostly recognize your hardware on its own. Looking for drivers in Windows Update is turned off be default so turn it on. Also if your driver installer disk refuses to recognize the OS, you can just get into device manager, right click any non-functional devices and update driver by giving the CD drive as the search path.
   
9. You can run an Administrator version of the command prompt (aka sudo in Ubuntu) this way. It is needed for many things - bcdedit, installing TFTPD32 as a service etc...
   
10. If you want to recover some HDD space from Windows and you dont use the Hibernate feature :) you can recover space equal to Memory Size from Windows by executing "powercfg -h off" in an Administrative command Window.
11. You can use bcdedit to rename your "Earlier Version of Windows" to "Windows XP" (or something else)
12. Windows 7 comes with Windows Media Player 12. Unfortunately. this has the equalizer hidden.
    
13. If (like me) you are using the 64-bit version of Windows 7, you need iTunes 64-bit not the normal version.
14. You can remove the "Send Feedback" link if you want. (I personally like it)
15. Also I would suggest getting a ReadyBoost capable flash drive and leaving it permanently attached to your machine to get a nice performance boost. They are even selling them in India now. BTW, it should be possible to use just about any flash drive with this feature, not just one of the newer ones :)
16. Driver Signing: Sigh... Where to start? While many have claimed $ony's hand behind this, the fact remains that 64-bit Vista and Windows 7 (I have no idea of the behavior in 32-bit Windows 7) require all drivers to be signed. This is an annoyance - it prevents you from installing many devices and also certain software (mostly stuff like Daemon Tools, although newer versions supposedly have managed to get a signature). How to fix this?
    • Here's what doesn't work. Use GPEdit - Run gpedit.msc. Navigate to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Driver Installation. Seemingly you can use this to set "Code Signing for device drivers" However, on closer inspection, this is not valid for Windows versions after 2003. Also, even the documentation (in the left pane) is out of date - the System properties no longer look and behave as described.
    • Use bcdedit to set DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS. This only works for the next boot, so you have to set it in a logoff script. Alternately, you can do this by using F8 and selecting "Disable driver signing" at boot time. However, if you install an unsigned driver and forget to do this even once, the system may crash.
      
    • The best option, seems to be to use ReadyDriver Plus, which (for now) seems free. This installs a new boot option on your system, which automatically sets DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS before booting. The program seems free for now.
    I'll try the 3rd option, if I run into an actual unsigned driver. For now, Daemon Tools website says it works with Windows 7 so I should be fine...

All my devices are working properly with the OS, with the exception of my ancient Pinnacle PCTV Vision tuner card. Pinnacle has some drivers, but they don't work - maybe due to driver signing :) However, I only use my tuner to upscale the output from my PS2 for my LCD TV, so I can easily reboot to XP to use it :)

Overall, this seems like a really nice version of Windows. I am in fact, willing to switch to using it as my main OS, I just need Nero installed and I should be good to go :) This is probably not a good idea - M$ specifically states that you will have to reinstall at the end of the beta, hopefully they will give an upgrade path (probably they will - considering the sheer popularity of this beta)

This seems to be M$'s answer to power users/enthusiasts - "Here's an OS for you please think of Vista as dead, use this and stop using us as a punching bag" :) And it works...

Allow me to leave you with some horribly pixellated night photos of Rashtrapati Bhavan (taken on Republic Day) with my Nokia 5800...