Showing posts with label Wireless. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wireless. Show all posts

2007-04-17

Set EXIF data for Motorola Razr and other camera phones

Picture of a Motorola Razr v3t

The Motorola Razr v3t has what turns out to be a very nice 1 megapixel camera (see recent photos taken with mine). This is the 3rd camera phone that I've owned. My Nokia 6600 had a mediocre 640x480 camera (examples). Next my T-Mobile MDA offered more resolution (1mp) but the quality was still quite poor (examples).

However, none of these phones produce any useful EXIF metadata. At least the Nokia 6600 stored the date/time in comments section of the EXIF metadata. While not immediately useable, it was once I wrote a script to extract it and properly write it into the EXIF "CreateDate" field.

The Razr doesn't store the date/time anywhere in the photo itself. However, it does have an option to use the date/time as the file name. So I've written a perl script to parse that date/time out of the file name and and write it into the "CreateDate" EXIF metadata field.

The script also sets a bunch of other EXIF data, such as the make and model of the phone, your name and copyright, name of software used to manage the photos, etc. And you can still use it if you don't have a Razr. It only updates the date/time if it notices that the file name is in the right format. Otherwise it still sets all of the the other stuff.

Here's an example:

Screen shot of an example of running the command

In particular, I like that it also sets the EXIF "MODEL" tag so that Flickr can correctly identify the camera (as well as the date/time) from photos taken with your camera phone, which it cannot without the proper EXIF data.
Screenshot of Camera model info on Flickr
You can download "

" (as a ZIP archive) from my Scripts downloads page.

You'll need perl and also the command line program called exiftool.

If you're unlucky enough to need to run this under Windows, you will also need to get a Korn Shell. I recommend downloading the UWIN toolset from AT&T Research. It installs a complete UNIX-like command line environment under Windows and is a great baseline for a bunch of other open source stuff.

Note: The Motorola Razr V3t is a T-Mobile specific model (hence the t in V3). I haven't tried this with any other Razr V3 models.

2007-04-16

Set EXIF date/time for Nokia 6600 camera phone photos

Image of a Nokia 6600 camera phone

The Nokia 6600 saves the date/time in the comments field of the EXIF metadata, of all strange places.

This is what it looks like (using exiftool):

Screen shot of running the exiftool command line utility on a photo taken by a Nokia 6600 phone
So much for proper use of the standards...

I have written a simple script that extracts this date/time and places it correctly in the EXIF CreateDate metadata field.

You can find my script "

" on my scripts downloads page.

You will also need to obtain the command line program called exiftool and of course, perl. All of these are available for just about any platform.

If you're unlucky enough to need to run this under Windows, you will also need to get a Korn Shell. I recommend downloading the UWIN toolset from AT&T Research. It installs a complete UNIX-like command line environment under Windows and is a great baseline for a bunch of other open source stuff.

2007-01-22

Ring Tone Collection Posted in Downloads

Icon of a phone ringing

Today I posted my fairly large ring tone collection in the downloads section on my web site.

They're all in MP3 format.

There are also some minimal instructions on how to send them to your phone over Bluetooth.

2007-01-15

Motorola Razr v3t and OSX on T-Mobile GPRS

Image of Motorola Razr v3t

A few days ago I picked up a new Motorola Razr V3t from T-Mobile.

I had gotten so tired of the brick that is my T-Mobile MDA (HTC Wizard). That device made a lot more sense when I was using Outlook with Windows. However, now that I'm finally rid of Windows, it didn't make much sense with a Mac (The Missing Sync never completely worked properly for me). Plus it was such a brick, and I hated using it as a phone (dialing is a miserable experience on it).

The V3t is an amazing leap forward in phone usability. First of all, I'm amazed that it actually has speach recognition. And yes, I mean speech, not voice recognition! It also has a MicroSD (a.k.a.TransFlash) memory card and it appears as removable media on my desktop when I connect it via USB to my Mac.

More on the virtues of it as a phone later. However, my first task was to get it to work as a GPRS modem with my MacBook Pro. I found this description of how to accomplish that, complete with Apple Modem scripts. Follow the instructions very carefully, and it works perfectly!

The only two significant down sides that I see thus far are that it does not have an email client (though I can access my Yahoo email via the browser) and it does not support EDGE. The latter is quite disappointing considering the MDA does, and the throughput benefit is substantial.

If you prefer to roll your own, T-Mobile has a support article that explains how to make the connection manually.

Finally, the Razr V3t has Java (J2ME) which the MDA did not. So now I can run Google Maps Mobile!

2006-09-26

T-Mobile MDA

Photo of T-Mobile MDA

Earlier this year I purchased a new T-Mobile MDA. This phone is actually manufactured by HTC and is also known as the HTC Wizard. It runs the Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system.

The key features which compelled me to purcahse this phone were:


Overall I have been very impressed with the synchornization capabilities via ActiveSync. Synchronization is something that didn't work very well on my Nokia 6600 (it did work, just not smoothly), and I missed it since I gave up my Palm Tungsten T. However, one notable drawback is that unlike Palm, ActiveSync doesn't back everything up for you. Basically it backs up what goes into Outlook and any other other ActiveSync applications (Pocket Quicken and SpashID for me), and that's it. You're on your own to back up any other files or data (unless you keep them all in My Documents on the device, which does synchronize to your desktop by default, but I keep most of my stuff on the MiniSD card).

I then bought a 1GB MiniSD card, which has been plenty of space.

I found the user interface to be more awkward and klunky than my Nokia 6600. On the Nokia I could pretty much do everything with one hand. On the T-Mobile MDA, just about everthing requires the use of the stylus, thus requiring two handed operation. This is a real pain. I also found that the device was somewhat slow. The OMAP processor is clocked at just under 200 MHz, qiute a bit slower than many other PocketPC or Windows Mobile 5.0 devices. The sluggishness was noticable. Boot time in particular was terrible, taking nearly two minutes to boot!

However, recently T-Mobile made available a System Upgrade for the ROM which drastically improved performance. In particular, boot time went down to about 30 seconds! Among several new features, the ones that I really appreciate and enjoy is the addition of the A2DP and AVRCP Bluetooth profiles. I purchased the Jabra BT620s Stereo Bluetooth headphones which work quite well with the new ROM. I can now listen to stereo MP3s and WMA files (which I store on the SD card), switch tracks and pause/resume from the headset. Music also pauses when a call is received or placed. An excellent combination!

In an upcomming post, I will review some of my favorite software for Windows Mobile 5.0.
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2005-11-15

My favorite Symbian 60 Software

Nokia 6600 Photo

I've wanted to do this for a long time... to list my favorite software, the stuff I use most often on my Nokia 6600. So here it is.

» Papyrus

A calendar program that adds substantial functionality on top of the basic calendar included with the phone. Most notably, addiitonal views and the ability to edit the notes section of the calendar. Combined with sVCal, this alows me to import .vcs iCal files and actually see (or change) the notes section of the entry.
Developent on this product had been going along nicely earlier this year, but then the developer left. After many months they finally hired another developer. But the new guy doesn't have any experience programming on Symbian 60, so don't expect more new features any time soon. However, the current version (1.0.09) works very well.

» SplashID

An excellent program by SplashData that allows you to manage all of your secret informaiton, such as logins and passwords, URLs, PINs, credit card info, calling card info, etc. encrypted on the phone. It also has a desktop utility that syncs with the phone.
However, beware that v3.12 is the last version that supports syncing. Since then they've removed the ability to sync with the phone. This is really daft in my oppinion, and there's really no reason to use the newer versions, they really don't add anything useful.

» AgileMessenger

This is the best unified IM client I've seen for a mobile device. AgileMessenger supports Yahoo!, AIM, MSN, ICQ, and the newer versions support Jabber, which also means support for Gmail IM. Really cool additional features are that you can take pictures or record voice (via a PTT-like feature) and AgileMessenger will upload it to Agile's web server and send the recippient a URL where they can view the picture (or hear the file). If they're on another mobile device using Agile Messenger, this is transparent and they just get the content.

However, this summer Agile decided to start charging a monthly fee for their service. This is also really daft in my oppinion. So I just keep using the old version and ignore the "New version is available" notification every time I launch it. It works just fine.

» WirelessIRC

This is an IRC client. Works well for the most part, although I do experience occasional application crashes with it, but not enough to be a pain. I licensed v1.82 in June of 2005 and it hasn't changed, even though their web site keeps talking about an upgrade any time now.

» ProfiMail

This is by far the best mail client I've seen for a mobile device. It supports IMAP, POP3, and of course SMTP. I about 5 accounts configured it in, ranging from plain POP3, POP3 with SSL, plain IMAP and IMAP with SSL. It can display in-line HTML, and JPEG images. It also has a built-in file explorer called ProfiExplorer (which is free) and is the best file explorer I've seen. Excellent program, I highly recommend it. I'm currently on v2.32.

» Opera

An excellent web browser. You can view just about any web page with it. It does support JavaScript, but not Java, Flash or Shockwave. The latest version, v8.5 adds a password manager (I wish this where synchronized with SplashID!) and has several other improvements. Very useful.

» PuTTY

A Symbian 60 port of the popular PuTTY program, which is an SSH client. It supports public keys, but not port forwarding or file transfer. Quite useful though.

» Oxygen Phone Manager

The Symbian 60 platform really lacks the kind of synchronization capability that I had with PalmOS. Nokia PC Suite tries to fill in part of that gap, but it's broken and won't sync. And when it does, it wants Outlook (ugh). SyncML could fill more of the gap, but it doesn't work properly on the Nokia 6600 either. So Oxygen is the best thing I've seen to manage your phone from your PC. It supports contacts, calendar, tasks, images, and SMS. My 6600 wouldn't nearly as useful as it is without it.

» TaskSpy

This program allows you to see what programs and threads are running on your phone, monitor CPU and memory utilization, and among other things, restart the device, which is what I use it for most!

» CellTrack

A useful program for monitoring the network and finding out what cell you're in. Psiloc have a more sophisticated cell monitoring program that allows you to perform asks upon entering or leaving a cell, but the cumbersome common licensing software they install on your phone sucks, and so as much as I l ike Psiloc's software, I refuse to install it on my phone. So I use this one instead. Oh, and it's free. :)

» sVcard and sVcal

These are used to import and export vCard and iCal format contact and calendar entires. I find them quite useful for that, though I can't believe that Nokia left out such a basic feature from phone's core functionality! Among many uses, you can export your contacts and calendar in a format to put on your iPod so you can view the data there.

» QuickOffice

Allows you to view Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint and Word formatted files on your phone.
The company's web site would like to charge you somewhere around $50 for the full suite. However, you can download the view-only software for free from Nokia's web site for the 6630 . When installing the software on your 6600 you will be informed that the software is incompatible. However, I ignored this warning and it seems to work just fine on my 6600, albeit slowly.

» XpenseTrack

I really miss not having PocketQuicken. There's nothing for the Symbian 60 platform that will sync with Quicken. However, XpenseTrack does let you enter all of your enxpenses in a fairly rational way and will export them to an Excel spreadsheet for you. It also handles multiple currencies, which was a requirement for me.

» SolvoEd

Excellent dictionary software. I use it for Spanish, English, Dutch, French and German. You install the base software and then add dictionaries. Extreemly handy when traveling.

So there's the basic rundown of my main tool suite. There are many others that I either use occasionally, or have tried in the past. As well as games. I will leave all of that for another blog entry.

2005-01-15

Opera 8.5

Opera logo

Yesterday I upgraded from Opera 6.2 to Opera 8.5 for Symbian 60 on my Nokia 6600. Since I had previously purchased an Opera license key, the upgrade was free. Indeed there are several notable improvements. Key being a password manager, much faster exit (6.2 takes forever to exit), and it appears to render a bit faster. They claim up to 25%. Worth the upgrade.