Monthly Archives: February 2011

There’s a party in my living room

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In between all of the phone hacking that I got up to over the weekend – which is typically quite a stressful experience, let me tell you! – I managed to have a little fun as well. One of my girlfriends came over for the first time since I moved, and after the usual junk food/rom-com session (we watched ‘No Strings Attached‘ – sadly, not as good as we hoped it would be), I hooked up the Kinect to my Xbox 360 and we had a go at Dance Central.

Dance Central for Kinect

It was way more fun than I thought it would be! Basically a dancing version of Singstar, where you have to copy the moves on-screen for points, and you can ‘battle’ against friends to see who gets the most points. Lots of great tunes to dance to as well, including Poker Face by Lady Gaga, Push It by Salt n Pepa, and Rumpshaker by Wreckx n Effect, and you can buy more tracks on Xbox Live. Finally, all those years of practising dance moves in high school (what can I say, I went to school in western Sydney, hehe) paid off, and I was able to emulate all of the moves on-screen, even at the hardest level! Thrashed my friend and partner, too, he he.

Running Android Gingerbread on the HTC HD2

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It goes to show how far ahead of its time the HTC HD2 was that it can run the latest Android and Windows Phone 7 ROMs despite being two years old!

I recently saw that my friend Judie from Gear Diary was using a modified HD2 running Android in my Twitter feed, and this got my little Gadget Monkey mind intrigued. I actually hacked my HD2 to run Android last year, and while it worked, the ROM was too buggy to use full-time – too many weird errors messages and random reboots. The good news is that the latest custom Android ROMs are far more stable than the first ones were, and since my HD2 was already modded to run custom Android builds, trying one of the new ones was as simple as copying over the relevant folder to a microSD card and running the relevant executables. The first ROM I tried, ShiftPDA Gingerbread, was big on the eye candy, but it didn’t support Android Market or any of the Google apps! I quickly replaced this with one of the Vanilla Froyo builds, which worked a lot better.

Being the fiddler that I am (as in, I like to fiddle, I don’t actually play the fiddle), however, I wasn’t content with running Android that way, which was using the old-fashioned ‘boot from SD card’ method. My HD2 was still running a modified version of Windows Mobile 6.5, and whenever the phone rebooted, it would reboot into WM6.5 and I would have to manually boot Android from there. How inconvenient! The clever hackers over at XDA Developers figured out a way to load Android into the NAND memory of the HD2 so that it would boot into Android automatically each time. Perfect!

Three hours later, I was finally booting into the Hyperdroid Gingerbread Xtreme Edition ROM. Yes, it really did take me that long! Having to decipher all the extra little bits that I needed to install, that is, HardSPL 3, MAGLDR 1.3 (I first installed MAGLDR 1.0, realised that it wasn’t the one I wanted, then spent ages trying to figure out how to upgrade it to 1.3!) and Clockwork Mod Recovery 1.3. It was then a matter of flashing all of these things to the HD2 and then flashing the Hyperdroid ROM. This initially only took an hour and a half, but then it got stuck on the Android boot screen, and I had no idea how to fix it! Cue another hour and a half tearing my hair out trying to figure out why it wouldn’t go past the boot screen! Thank God I finally figured it out (switching to the 150MB CWM fixed the problem), otherwise it would have put me off my entire Sunday!

After all that effort, I now have Gingerbread installed natively on my HD2. Yippee! I’ve only been playing with it for the last 10 minutes or so, but from what I can see, it runs FAST! The developer  has also done some trickery with the screen res and has increased the LCD density to 167 – this basically makes the resolution bigger so you can fit more on the screen – perfect for the HD2′s massive 4.3-inch screen size! I can’t remember now why I wanted to get a HTC Desire HD, he he. The hacking community working on the HD2 are so diligent that it’s really the perfect device if you’re the sort that likes to try the latest and greatest ROMs – it seems that custom ROMs for the HD2 come out before any other device!

The increased pixel density doesn't actually let you insert any more widgets or shortcuts than you could with the 800 x 480 native resolution - it just looks roomier

You can fit lots of apps within each screen for the app launcher!

The higher pixel density is heaven for browsing desktop-formatted web pages!

What I’m doing right now: February 2011

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  • I didn’t end up finishing my Camera Craft 3 course. What a waste of $780! I’m not sure what it is – a combination of not being all that impressed with the teacher, not feeling inspiration at the moment, priorities currently shifted elsewhere… whatever it is, I’m really keen to get my mojo back!
  • My Barbie dreamhouse is coming along really well. The new couches are just perfect for the living room, I’ve got Netflix working, we recently upgraded our Xbox 360 to the Elite so we can have a HDMI connection to the TV, have also set up the Kinect and played (or more accurately, watched my partner play) that a few times. Still need to replace the TEGA v2 for a more suitable ‘media centre PC’ to connect to the TV full time so I can stream Hulu and my partner can play Zyna Poker on Facebook from the TV! At the moment, I’ve got the TEGA v2 connected to the TV via VGA, with a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse for using it from the sofa.
  • I haven’t done a lot of reading this month in between moving house and a bunch of other stuff, but still obsessed with Dennis Lehane and currently reading ‘Gone Baby Gone‘ on my Kindle. I’ve seen the movie already, so the ending is spoiled for me, but I love reading his writing so much that it doesn’t really matter!
  • Favourite show of the month: Hmmn, I was into Hawaii Five-0 for a brief period as I think Alex O’Loughlin is awesome, but got bored after a couple of episodes, and now I’m making my way through season 4 of 30 Rock on Netflix. That show never stops being funny!
  • Favourite movie of the month: None yet, but today I’m going to be watching No Strings Attached starring Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman – haven’t seen a good rom-com in awhile, so that may very well be my fave for the month. Also watching Case 39 tonight – a horror movie with Renee Zellweger that’s meant to be really good – how can it not be, when it’s got the same creepy little girl from Silent Hill!
  • Favourite photo of the month: would have to be one of the HDR landscapes that I shot at Tamarama Beach:

Shot at Tamarama Beach

Selling a friend on Android – too easy!

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One of the joys of being a Gadget Monkey is getting a technophobic friend hooked into a new gadget. In this case, my partner’s brother had lost his old phone and wanted recommendations on a new one. His choice came down to the Nokia N8 or an old Android smartphone that I had lying around. He liked the hardware of the N8 – in particular the 12-megapixel camera and the magnesium aluminium body – but he liked the idea of Android after I told him it had ‘pretty much’ as many apps as the iPhone. An oversimplification, yes, but from his point of view, fairly accurate nevertheless.

Naturally, I wanted him to go for the Android phone, so I told him I’d set it up for him with lots of cool apps and games, and he could make his decision from there. From that point, it was simply a matter of installing lots of ‘wow factor’ free apps like Shazam, Google Goggles, Google Translate, Angry Birds, Skype, TuneIn Radio, Urban Spoon, Layar and Zyna Poker (which he’s addicted to on Facebook). I also installed a bunch of other free games like Replica Island, Gem Miner, Bonsai Blast, Abduction, Sketch Online and Barrr, customised his homescreen wallpaper with a picture of him and his girlfriend, and setup a few widgets and shortcuts on the homescreens (including a photo speed dial for his girlfriend, a weather forecast, and links to commonly used apps).

I haven’t actually had a chance to demo it all for him yet, but he and his girlfriend are coming over tonight to play Scattergories, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I sell his girlfriend on Android as well! (She’s just about to buy an iPhone 4.)

Upgrading iPhones, wireless printers and new Kindle features

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The work of a gadget monkey is never finished.

Yesterday, I had my broken HP Photosmart e-All-in-One B110a multi-function printer swapped out for a new one. I originally got this printer following HP’s launch of the new range in Hong Kong last year, and I was excited to try out the wireless printing and web apps. Unfortunately, back when I got it, I didn’t have a wireless network OR an always-on broadband Internet connection, so I pretty much just used it as a regular MFP until it broke down.

The HP B110a - quite cheap at $99!

Now of course, I’m rocking an unlimited broadband Internet connection and a wireless network, which just opens up so many more doors that were closed to me in the past. One of these doors is wireless printing, both over a wireless network and by sending the printer jobs over email (one of the unique features of HP’s e-All-in-One range). Plus, this printer is one of the only ones that natively supports iOS AirPrint for printing directly from an iPhone or iPad (although the first time I tried it with the iOS 4.2 beta, it didn’t work properly), and since I have it working over a wireless connection, I can store the printer anywhere in the house!

AirPrint on the iPhone

While the B110a replacement was en route yesterday, I remembered that my partner’s iPhone 4 only ran iOS 4.0.1, which obviously doesn’t support AirPrint (this feature was released with 4.2). Since it’s a jailbroken and unlocked iPhone (I bought it locked to AT&T when I was in Hong Kong for the HP launch last year – how’s that for serendipity!), I couldn’t just upgrade it to the latest firmware, as a carrier unlock hasn’t been released for 4.2.1 yet. However, with a bit of Internet sleuthing, I discovered a workaround that would let me upgrade the iPhone’s operating system to 4.2.1 without upgrading the baseband. My partner’s iPhone 4 still had the old 1.59 modem firmware, so I could re-use the existing Ultrasn0w unlock after upgrading the operating system (after jailbreaking 4.2.1 with greenpois0n, of course).

I was a little nervous that I would stuff the upgrade up, as the procedure is a little tricky, and my partner would not have been impressed if I screwed it up and ending up locking the phone back to AT&T! He’s become attached at the hip to his iPhone 4 since I gave it to him for Christmas and simply will not put the darn thing down! Needless to say, I’m quite proud of getting him addicted to it, he he. He’s not nearly as techie as I am, but yesterday I could hear him on the phone teaching his older brother (who’s just gotten an iPhone 4 as well) how to move icons from one screen to another. And the student becomes the teacher! :P Given the risks, I was prepared to put my money where my mouth was and replace his 16GB iPhone 4 with my 32GB iPhone 4 if I botched the upgrade process.

Thankfully, it all went off without a hitch, although I did forget to back up his iPhone on my computer, and he lost all his contacts and notes. Whoops! Oh well, small price to pay for having the latest operating system! Now he and I both have the latest operating systems on our iPhones. Now, if that isn’t romantic, I don’t know what is! :P He wasn’t as impressed with his new ability to print directly to the HP printer as I was, but he liked the idea of Game Center and the free ‘Find my iPhone’ feature.

After setting up the HP B110a and doing a test print from my iPhone 4, I was glad to see that the bugs I noticed in the beta version of iOS 4.2 were gone – it printed a webpage exactly as I saw it on the iPhone’s screen. I wasn’t so pleased, however, with the fact that there are still only four web apps available for the printer! Last month, I got a press release saying that there was a new Yahoo!7 Daily Brief app for getting access to Australian news and headlines, but where are the cool Google Maps and Google Docs apps that I got told about at launch last year? The apps that are currently available (including a Dreamworks colouring app and a forms app) are underwhelming at best.

In other news, I got an email this morning that the 3.1 software update for Kindle is now available, with features including ‘real page numbers’, public notes, and a new browsing layout for newspapers and magazines. It said that it would be automatically downloaded to Kindles over Wi-Fi ‘over the next few days’, but rather than wait, I headed to the download page and applied the update manually. Time waits for no man! Thank God updating a Kindle isn’t as difficult as applying iPhone hacks, otherwise I probably would’ve waited a few days before doing this upgrade!

Upgrading the Kindle to 3.1

Need for speed

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I’ve never really been one to check the read and write speeds on memory cards. I realise there’s a difference between the generic cards and the ‘extreme’ high-speed versions, but I always thought that even the basic cards would be ‘good enough’ for shooting photos and the occasional video.

Of course, I realised the error of my ways once I started shooting higher-megapixel photos and high definition video. I took my Canon PowerShot SX30 IS to Big Day Out last month, and while the 35x zoom worked fantastically for capturing the artists on stage, the generic SanDisk SDHC card I was using could only record just over a minute of 720p footage each time. This was despite the specs saying that it could record 20 minutes and 43 seconds at 720p resolution.

I went to a media briefing this morning for SanDisk’s new 32GB Extreme Pro SDHC UHS-1 card, which offers the fastest ever read and write speeds of up to 45MB/s. Using that in my Canon PowerShot SX30 IS, I was able to record 720p video for even longer than the advertised time, at just over 25 minutes. Much better! This card is best suited for cameras that have a fast burst mode/continuous shooting feature, like my Sony NEX-5, which is capable of shooting 7 frames per second at the full 14.2 megapixels, or any camera that supports high definition video recording.

SanDIsk's new Extreme Pro SDHC UHS-1 card

Of course, you’ll have to pay extra for the privilege of additional speed. Compared to the generic 32GB card, which has a street price of around $80, the new 32GB SanDisk Extreme Pro SDHC UHS-1 card retails for a cool $254.95. There are SanDisk cards in between those two, however, if you don’t want to spend that much, such as the Ultra range with a speed of 15MB/s and the Extreme range at 30MB/s. I also got a press release for SanDisk’s new 128GB Extreme Pro CompactFlash card, which offers an insane 100MB/s – and an equally insane pricetag of $1529. Yowsers!

Generic vs performance

Deals and discounts websites

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I’ve really been getting into the local deals and discounts websites of late. I can never resist a bargain, and I’ve been known to buy things that I really, really didn’t need just because it was too good a deal to pass up. In other words, I’m their ideal type of customer!

Groupon has recently launched in Australia, operating under the ‘StarDeals‘ name, with a daily deal every day that requires a certain number of people buy it before the deal is ‘on’. I’m also a big fan of Spreets (which was recently acquired by Yahoo!7 for $40 million), Jump On It, Catch Of The Day, Zazz and Deals Direct. I bought my first ‘bargain’ over the weekend from Catch of The Day, who were advertising a ‘grocery run’ of a bunch of heavily discounted grocery items. Seeing as how I’ve just moved into a new unit, this was ideal for stocking up on items like washing detergent, air freshener, cookies, kitchen tidy bags… all the sorts of things that I don’t immediately think to buy when I go grocery shopping.

Catch of The Day has a big ‘Technothon’ tomorrow, where they’ll be selling 12 gadgets – one per hour. The official start time will be announced this evening, and there are 6 out of 12 gadgets altogether that customers can choose to be included in the sale (Catch of the Day will pick the other 6) – the ones that are ‘liked’ the most are the ones that will be included. The ones I’m most excited about are the Samsung 32-inch HD LCD TV for $299 (perfect for my bedroom!) and the Samsung Galaxy Tab for $399! Yes, I already have the latter, but what a great deal, considering its RRP is $999! You can get it for cheaper from places like Mobicity, who advertise it for $598 (not including delivery), but it’s still a good $200 cheaper than you can get it from anywhere else! My partner’s older brother has been asking me about tablets, and if this deal goes through, I’ll be sure to let him know that he should buy the Galaxy Tab.

The 12 deals available in tomorrow's Catch of the Day technothon

Trying the ideal mobile setup for size part 1: using the Apple iPad

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A few days ago, I was commenting on how much easier it is to use a netbook over a tablet when it comes to writing and blogging. I’m still of that opinion, and will probably be adding a new netbook to my gadget arsenal in the near future for this very purpose. However, I’ve discovered a few apps that definitely make it easier to turn the Apple iPad into a laptop replacement.

BT Stack Mouse (free) and BT Stack Keyboard (US$5) (both jailbreak apps) let you use a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard simultaneously, which is pretty groovy if you’re using the iPad in landscape mode for Word processing. The mouse pointer doesn’t work all the time – and for going back to the homescreen, you have to press the physical homescreen button on the iPad as there’s on on-screen counterpart – but hopefully it will get better with future revisions. (Update: you can actually assign certain functions and shortcuts to the mouse and keyboard in the Activator settings. I’ve now assigned the middle button on the mouse to launch the homescreen and the right button to bring up the task switcher.) You can’t actually select text with the mouse like you would on a desktop – you still have to use the clumsy iOS system of selecting and copying text, but at least you can place the cursor more precisely and move it across to highlight a selection of text with a mouse. Oddly, the Apple Mighty Mouse isn’t supported, so I had to buy an el cheapo Logitech mouse to try this out.

This setup works even better when combined with LogMeIn Ignition. Naturally, it isn’t as fast as using my iMac natively, but it’s a match made in Heaven with the mouse and keyboard if you need access to your desktop remotely. (Update: I’ve tried using Microsoft Word using LogMeIn, but it doesn’t support mouse clicks or keyboard shortcuts properly. While you can select a block of text with the mouse, you can’t do things like press Ctrl + C on the keyboard to copy it to the clipboard. Even clicking the menus in Mac OS X has to be done with your finger rather than the mouse.)

Blogging on my iPad by logging into my iMac with LogMeIn Ignition and using a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard

Begrudging the newer tablets their new-fangled USB ports? I am, but the free iFile app (jailbroken iPads only) lets you use the iPad Camera Connection Kit to open and transfer files from a USB flash drive or SD card (or even microSD card, if you have an SD card adapter) to the iPad. This is fabulous for my line of work, as I usually get USB flash drives in at media events with the press releases and high resolution images loaded on them. Using iFile, I’ll be able to open the PDFs and images, and even email them to editors or upload them to this blog. It also works for music and movies – tapping on the file name will let you choose the app you want to use for opening the file. There’s a bit of a delay for opening movies, but otherwise it works just fine, and will make sharing movies and TV shows with friends so much easier! Unfortunately, changes to the latest version of iOS mean powered external USB hard drives no longer work, but you could use a 128GB USB flash drive or SD card, or even just have a bunch of cheaper cards and drives with stuff stored on them.

Using iFile with the iPad Camera Connection Kit

I’ve also discovered an app called Pastebot that basically works as an enhanced clipboard manager for copied text and images. The reason I like it is that it gives you a word count on copied text, and this basically solves my original problem of iPad word processors not offering a selective word count on a paragraph of text (all of the word processors I’ve tested only let you do a word count on the entire document). As a journalist, I’m commissioned and paid for a particular number of words per article, so this feature is vital! Alas, there isn’t an iPad-specific version of Pastebot, and while it works in pixel-doubled mode, it doesn’t display in landscape, so I kinda have to tilt my head to read the word count while using the iPad in a landscape setup.

If you haven’t jailbroken your iPad yet, I’d definitely recommend it, particularly since it’s so easy with the latest greenpois0n hack.

In my next article, I’m going to compare this setup with using the TEGA v2 for word processing – so stay tuned! :)

Does (bigger) size really matter?

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Much of the talk coming out of Mobile World Congress has revolved around bigger screens. With the exception of the HTC Flyer, all of the tablets announced at MWC (and previously at CES) were rocking the 10-inch or 9-inch screen. Similarly, all of the high-end smartphones had 4-inch or larger screen sizes, with the ‘smaller’ 3.7-inch relegated to the entry-level and mid-range handsets.

HTC bucked the trend by introducing a new 7-inch tablet called the Flyer

It’s purely a matter of preference, but I’ve surprised myself in the past few months by preferring the smaller screen sizes. Whenever I leave the house, I always reach for the 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab, and the iPad stays at home. I’ve been using the HTC Desire since the start of this month after upgrading it to Gingerbread, and I haven’t missed using my Samsung Galaxy S at all – largely because I like the compact form factor of the Desire. Even though the Galaxy S is the superior phone in pretty much every regard (internal storage, speed, screen, etc), the Desire has continued to be my primary phone for the last three weeks. Of course, the Desire’s superior build quality plays a part as well – I like the rubberised back and the way the edges are curved and hug my hand nicely; the Galaxy S’s plasticky build was never a big attraction for me, even with a case on.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab: much easier to use one-handed compared to the iPad

But it’s interesting how I’ve come to prefer the smaller screen sizes overall, despite having access to devices with larger displays. It’s not like I can’t carry the latter – one of the perks of being female is that I’m used to carrying a handbag with me and I usually load it up to the brim with all manner of gadgets! But it’s the experience of holding the devices that makes all the difference. A 10-inch tablet requires two hands to hold, while a 7-inch tablet can be held with one hand reasonably comfortably. Likewise, a 4-inch smartphone sits rather wide in the palm of my hand, whereas a 3.7-inch smartphone feels just right.

This preference is probably going to affect my upgrade choices this year. I’m naturally drawn to the high-end power user devices like the Motorola XOOM, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Motorola Atrix and Samsung Galaxy S II, but all of these have the larger displays! Knowing myself as I do, I will most likely succumb to the urge of owning the latest and greatest rather than going with any ‘ergonomic’ concerns (what can I say, it’s the ‘Gadget Monkey’ inside me that’s making me do it! :P ), but wouldn’t it be nice if the mobile manufacturers offered flagship devices with a smaller screen size option for a slightly cheaper price?

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