Not every device is perfect. Even the Nokia E61i has its faults.
I have a Jabra BT250V Bluetooth headset with my E61i, but the reception is terrible. As long as there's a line of sight between the phone and the headset everything is fine. As soon as I move a bodypart between the two, the reception goes berserk. Even when the Nokia is in my pocket, the reception is terrible. Also, sometimes the Bluetooth connection disappears. Even when the devices lie next to each other. This didn't happen with my older phone (the Nokia 6230i).
Perhaps it's the combination.. Perhaps not, but it's definitely annoying.
There are/were some other annoyances; like not being able to properly configure the Nokia VPN client with a Cisco PIX firewall. I'm able to succesfully connect, but after that no bit (or byte) is transmitted through the VPN tunnel. So far I blame our corporate firewall. Also, the E61i does respond very well to bouncing on concrete pavement :-( .
Or not being able to watch YouTube videos (-> Flash 9) on the phone (which uses Flash 7) .
A couple of day's ago, I tried to play an episode of
Painkiller Jane on my Nokia E61i. The original format was in the DivX format, so I used
VisualHub to convert it on my Mac to the MP4 format (320 pixels wide).
This part was relatively easy. The next step was a bit harder; trying to get the 100MB file from my Mac on the Nokia. Somehow, there's no way of transferring the file from a Mac to the Nokia via USB. The USB connection works file with
iSync, but this has no option of synching files. When connecting, the phone gives you the option of using the 'PC Suite' or 'Data Transfer'. The first is using iSync, and the latter gives you an error that the devices can't be recognized.
Nokia does have an application for the Mac to transfer files to, and from the phone (
Nokia Media Transfer). BUT, the Nokia E61 is NOT supported
This means you're left with Bluetooth, or using a web server and download the file. If you don't own your own webserver you're stuck with Bluetooth (which is terribly slow b.t.w.). Both are a pain in the butt in getting large fils on the phone. I had to resume the download via the web server about 10 times before I had downloaded it, and Bluetooth... well don't get me started on that.
My advice; don't use a Mac to transfer large files to the phone, but use
Nokia PC Suite with the USB cable on a PC to do that.
B.t.w. the Nokia E61i played the episode just fine.
Tried to use my new Nokia E61i for surfing the Internet with my laptop (Windows XP), but this just wouldn't work. Errors were plenty, but no bit made it to the Internet for some reason. Strange, because my older 6230 (or whatever model it was) worked perfectly.
After cursing a couple of times, I needed to make sure that this wasn't a defect in the phone, so I tried it with my Mac Book Pro (which is for sale by the way ;-) ). Obviously, this worked straight away. Just used the same settings / profile from my older phone....
Windows never keeps to amaze me (in a negative way that is).
Oke, the first annoyance about the Nokia E61 is a fact. Well, actually it's about the Nokia PC Suite with which you can connect the phone to your (Windows) PC.
Somehow my Nokia E61i wouldn't connect using bluetooth with the Nokia Software. It could connect to the PC itself, but the Nokia software didn't want to 'see' the phone.
So I tried to remove the pairing between de two devices (which seemed to work). After that I tried to pair the two devices again... That's were the trouble started.
The software did see the phone via bluetooth, but it gave an error when I wanted to connect. The error said 'Cannot Authorize Phone'. Connecting via the USB cable worked fine.
I tried rebooting the PC and the phone several times, but the error persisted. Finally I removed the software from the PC and reinstalled it. Same error occured :mad: .
This was the point when I seriously thought about going back to a Windows Mobile device. There was one more thing I might try, and that was going through the registry of the PC and remove EVERY reference to Nokia. I first uninstalled the software and afterwards I removed everything Nokia-related in the registry.
After a reboot I reinstalled the Nokia PC Suite software, and everything worked fine.
This proves that Nokia software is as buggy as Microsoft software.
How hard is it for a piece of software/developer to remove all references to the software when you remove it? (rhetorical question)
I've been using iTunes for a couple of years now. It took getting used to in the beginning. Recently, iTunes offers the ability to get the album art from the iTunes music store (you do need an account there).
In the old days, I got the covers from Amazon.com, but hey, when it's automated, who am I to complain.... till now
The downloaded ablum art from the iTunes store doesn't show up on the iPod... Why? Now I still have to get the album covers from Amazon (or another source), if I want the pictures to show up on my iPod.
The probabe cause might be that the album art I manual download and attach to songs is actually added to the mp3, while the iTunes automated-album-art-getter is only a reference to a image on the hard drive.
Well, at least I've got something to do tomorrow when it's raining.
Today, the end is near. Mail servers are failing al over the world. The dutch ISP's Planet, and Chello are having sever problems with their mail server.
Chello
having problems is nothing new :-) . They always seem to have a problem of some sort. It's beyond coincidence that even
Planet AND Gmail are having difficulties at the same time.
XS4ALL is still working as expected (otherwise you wouldn't be reading this) :-)
The last couple of days were all about the leaked key for decrypting HD-DVD movies. This made me curious about the technology, so I headed to the
AACS LA website.
There's variety of
white papers available, which explain the AACS concept. The same papers were used by
musilix64 in making his first breakthrough on circumventing the AACS protection.
But there is more to be found on their website... There's even a section which explains the
Consumer Benefits of AACS.
- Support a superior viewing experience delivered by next generation media formats
AACS is added to the content. The content itself will probably 'work' better without AACS.
- Enable greater flexibility to manage distribute, and play entertainment content on a wider range of devices
This is a 'feature' for the publishing companies. Without the restrictive AACS protection, the content can be played on virtually every device. With AACS protection 'they' control on which device you can play the content.
- Enable groundbreaking home entertainment choices and the ability to use content on PCs and a range of CE devices
AACS is added to the content. The content itself will probably 'work' better without AACS.
- Work across a variety of formats and platforms
Five letters: L I N U X. AACS protected movies CANNOT be played on Linux. Only movies without the protection can be player on certain Linux players.
I'm one of those lucky bastards who lives like a gazillion miles from a phone central. This means that the ADSL speed reduces dramatically on high speeds. My older ADSL subscription was an Ultra Fast subscription (20Mbps/1Mbps). Due to the distance I only got about 6Mbps (if the wind was blowing from the right direction).
The cheaper version (Basic, 8Mbps/1Mbps) is slower, but I get relatively more speed (around 5Mbps). So for me, the additional <1Mbps more costed about 20 euro's a month.....
Damn, it's about time that they start using different technologies to bring the Internet into peoples homes. How the hell will they be able to bring phone, Internet, and TV over the Internet? Currently, it would mean that downloads 'stop' if you pick up the phone, or that artifacts appear on the TV signal when browsing the Internet.
I installed
Ultimate Tag Warrior recently, because I liked the tag clouds I saw on other blogs. Unfortunately, the plugin seems to cripple the search capabilities on the website. If the plugin is activated, you can't find any posts with a search query. Disabling the plugin make things work again.
So, I want to humbly apologize to all those people trying to find important stuff on this blog :-)
Apple
announced that the OSX 10.5 (aka Leopard) will be delayed till October 2007....
... We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October.....
Aaaaargh. I was hoping to get it in June.
Well, this gives me more time for saving a little extra money, and buy a new piece of Apple hardware (Mac Mini or perhaps even a Mac Pro) which will have Leopard pre-installed. Or maybe just the iPhone when it arrives in Europe at the end of the year and a separate copy of Leopard.
