iSync and NovaMedia plugin: custom icon

I’ve been asked how to change the novamedia plugin icon with the one I made for my E61.

For non-programmers it might look a bit tricky, but I’ll try to make it as simple as I can.

First get an icon. Here’s the ones for E60 and E61

Now you need to get your hands a bit dirty.

On your system hard disk (usually Macintosh HD) spot the “Library” folder.
I suggest you select the column view option. It makes it easier to see things.
Now enter the following folders in order

Library > PhonePlugins

you’ll see one file: novamedia.phoneplugin
if you’re in column view you’ll be able to see the content of the bundle

keep your exploration going and select

Contents > Resources > MetaClasses.plist

this is the file you need to edit with a text editor.

the only thing you have to do is find the text “E61″ if you have E60 of course you’ll find “E60″.
your search will return this


<key>com.nokia.E61</key>
<dict>
<key>Identification</key>
<dict>
<key>com.apple.cgmi+cgmm</key>
<string>Nokia+Nokia E61</string>
<key>com.apple.gmi+gmm</key>
<string>Nokia+Nokia E61</string>
</dict>
<key>InheritsFrom</key>
<array>
<string>family.com.nokia.serie60v2.3nm2</string>
</array>
<key>Services</key>
<array>
<dict>
<key>ServiceName</key>
<string>com.apple.model</string>
<key>ServiceProperties</key>
<dict>
<key>ModelIcon</key>
<string>novamedia.tiff</string>
<key>ModelName</key>
<string>E61</string>
</dict>
</dict>
</array>
</dict>


the only thing you need to do for now is replace “novamedia.tiff” with the name of your tiff icon (NOKe61.tiff).

save the file.

now copy the downloaded icon in the same location as MetaClasses.plist (where you can see the novamedia.tiff icon too).

start iSync.
done!

hope this is explanatory enough (considering it’s 1.10 am and I still have a long way to go to finish my work).

cheers.ubi

Popularity: 1% [?]

iSync and new Nokia devices: hack or NovaMedia?

As soon as I got my E61 (3 weeks ago), I immediately started happy hacking iSync’s MetaClasses.plist file.
I copied the definition for N90 and changed the name.
Then I created an icon from a web image.
Then I synched my calendar and contacts.

I spent a few hours enjoying this easy almost out-of-the-box compatibility (but come on… out of the box is not satisfying for all the hackers around) between my mac and my new device.

A few hours later (almost 2 after I had attended a meeting) an alarm went on, telling me I had a meeting (the one I had just left).

I thought my head was just playing tricks on me, and I’m just getting too old to manage scheduling the right time for my appointments.
The only thing that got me thinking was that I usually create events on iCal, and choose the option “20 minutes before”.
I had to start testing thoroughly.

I created a new event at 4.00 PM, set the alarm to go on 15 minutes before, and synched.
On my phone the appointment time was all right, but the alarm was 2 hours later than it was supposed to be.
After trying to activate TimeZone support in iCal, and tried the various Time Zone options (amsterdam/europe, UTC/GMT, Floating and other…) I was about to give up.
Then I realized that amsterdam is GMT+2 on summer, which was exactly the amount of hours the alarm was postponed.
It was time to try with a different time setting on the device.
I chose different time zones and every time the alarm time got shifted exactly the amount of hours difference from GMT.

There’s 3 things you blame for this kind of issues.
In order:

• iCal
• iSync
• Nokia’s software

Needless to say none of them was responsible (at least not directly), and I had to put the blame on myself first.

I started looking around on the web, but as you may know this device (the whole E series) is not very diffused.

One day Michael Hale pointed me to the NovaMedia plugin. I pointed to the website and felt pretty annoyed by the fact you have to buy the plugin on a trust basis.
They say the plugin works with E61, but you cannot try it.
There’s a reason why you can’t try it.
This reason is that it’s very easy to hack it.

Essentially what the guys did was study and analize the syncML specs, then make a plugin that aligns the sync data properly in order to be transferred to the device.

I’m not here telling you how to hack it, but if you check the content of the plugin (once you’ve bought it) /Library/PhonePlugins/novamedia.phoneplugin/Contents/Resources you’ll see a few configuration files, which are just extended versions of the before mentioned MetaClasses.plist.
In these files you can see the phone definition and if you check the inheritsFrom node, you can see that it reads information from another portion of the file.

What I can tell you is that I edited this file in order to show my E61 icon instead of the NovaMedia one (no offense, guys, but that icon is ugly. Plus I want to see the E61 in iSync).

After all the waste of time trying to hack iSync properly (as novamedia did), I can honestly tell you that these 10 dollars are really well spent (as you can read on the website).

Install the software, the device works.
Can it be any easier?
Of course we’ll all be annoyed when Apple will supporte these devices, but be sure it won’t happen anytime soon.

BUY THE PLUGIN AND HAVE FUN

u.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Mac Os X: a developer OS.

Sometimes you spend years doing things, and these become part of everyday’s routine.
You never notice things that are part of it… they’re just there.
Sometimes you don’t even spend time getting to see things better.

I’ve been a Mac Os X user for more than 3 years, and this has been my Os of choice for development of Flash, Director, Perl, PHP, HTML, JavaScript and others I’m trying to learn.
Os X is to me a great OS for developing, but how much do I know about the things it can offer me?

I’m fully J2ME and Java at the moment, as I’d love to learn these languages, and I’m forced to do J2ME for an installation we’re working on now.
The time is too short to learn C++ and Symbian programming, that’s it.

Not having ever programmed C or other similar languages, I had no idea what a SHORT (int) was, so I called Saver and he told me that it’s a 4 bit number, and that cleared everything.

0×0 to 0xF (0 to 15)

WOW!
was it that easy?

Childhood memories of when I tried to learn assembly on c64 came back.
At the time I had fun trying to convert numbers from DEC to BIN to HEX and back, just to see if I was doing it right.
That was way more fun than school.

Not wanting to get paper as I needed to quickly convert a few numbers, I decided to run Os X’s own calculator application and see the options I had to convert number.
I was amazed when I clicked the “View” menu and found 3 main options:

• Basic
• Scientific
• Programmer

Obviously I selected option 3 and found myself looking at exactly what I needed

then I was able to easily write numbers in DEC and convert back to HEX, but the most amazing feature is the bit shifting (more than useful to extract color values from ARGB numbers)

last thing I notice is the binary area, where you can just click on bits to set them HIGH or LOW to see the result number on the display in whatever format you need.

I’ve probably just invented the wheel, and others may have been using this tool for years, but I’m just excited I can have something like this in the standard Os.
If you’re not comfortable converting numbers in your mind this is a great tool.
It’ll definitely be a useful tool in my everyday developer experience.

Popularity: 1% [?]

videogame inspired oil paintings

Cory Doctorow (one of my favorite editors) from BoingBoing posted this news item about an artist painting videogame scenes.

In 1998 our friend Miltos Manetas (a genius in is own genre) was painting playstation 1 inspired scenes.
It was his first attempt to painting and the result was great.
Since then he’s been extending his fields of interest and expanding his creative genius.

more on manetas.com

Popularity: 1% [?]

deliBar: integrate your del.icio.us into Os X

Matteo Rattotti’s little useful app is available as Universal Binary too.
give it a shot, I think it’s quite useful

rknet

Popularity: unranked [?]

MacBook hands on

just my first thoughts on typing
great keys

it’s a bummer I have all the stupid security bar preventing me from using the spacebar
dammmm it

update: I had to stop testing because of a bitch who was bitching me because I wasn’t trying the laptop but was “…posting to somebody”.
I really hope one of the few failing magsafe will shock her.
today I’m complaining a lot, but the weather is shitty, people are bitching, I have much to do.
plus today it seems to be a day against Dutch people.
related: It’s Not Possible

Popularity: 1% [?]

earned “FUCK OFF” of the day

this is deserved, really.

scenario:
- watching (dutch) TV on the couch while working on my laptop.
- dutch rap (sorry… I didn’t mean to call it that)
- dutch Queens’ Gangstaz (I know there’s no such thing).

the guy who earned the first prize is an unnamed dude singing rap on stage
he wears a camouflage hat, camouflage pants and a camouflage…

BULLETPROOF JACKET

seen enough for the day.
I just hope that jacket will be of some use to him, and he gets shot.

FUCK OFF DUTCH WANNABEES

Popularity: 1% [?]

Nokia E60 icon for iSync

anybody interested in this icon, thank to AX for asking about this in a previous post comment.
here’s the E60 iSync icon and device definition


<key>com.nokia.E60</key>
<dict>
<key>Identification</key>
<dict>
<key>com.apple.cgmi+cgmm</key>
<string>Nokia+Nokia E60</string>
<key>com.apple.gmi+gmm</key>
<string>Nokia+Nokia E60</string>
</dict>
<key>InheritsFrom</key>
<array>
<string>family.com.nokia.serie60v2.3</string>
</array>
<key>Services</key>
<array>
<dict>
<key>ServiceName</key>
<string>com.apple.model</string>
<key>ServiceProperties</key>
<dict>
<key>ModelIcon</key>
<string>NOKe60.tiff</string>
<key>ModelName</key>
<string>E60</string>
</dict>
</dict>
</array>
</dict>


Popularity: 1% [?]

Os X and unusual file upload issues

Did you ever experience impossibility to upload a file using a File Upload form on whatever Mac Os web browser?I did, and quite a lot.

We’re just finishing a photography website and many uploads just failed.

Safari was standind still, firefox tried to carry out the upload, camino returned an error (what actually lend me to solve/overcome the issue).

If it happens again, try shortening your file’s name.

It looks like mac cannot support very long filenames (no idea how many chars) in file upload forms.

Popularity: 1% [?]

MIDP2 on Os X (Xcode). It was about time!

It took me months to succeed this.
I’ve been going throuh Mobile Processing, Eclipse, NetBeans, Xcode, MpowerPlayer, preverify, Linux installs to end up relying always on the same Windows Box.
I’m fed up with that.
Today I gave it the final stab!

I managed to have a successful build on windows for some camera capture application I’m writing in J2ME, and then I (more stubborn than ever) decided it was about time to figure this thing out.

I wanted to use Xcode (Eclipse on mac is pretty bad, in my opinion).
I wanted to preverify correctly.
I wanted to obtain a build which was not failing on my 6680.

all of the objectives have been achieved.
you can test the result installing this .jar on your Nokia MIDP2 device.

j2me built on mac Xcode

it requires a device with camera.

I’ll soon write a quick tutorial on how to make this work.

comments appreciated.

Popularity: 1% [?]

more on e61

it’s been 3 days with this device, now.
I can’t say I’ve been any happier than this.

after 2 days of intensive (and I mean it) use with fulltime BlueTooth and WiFi on,

• emailing
• surfing
• syncing (and re-syncing)
• updating weather cast (please make sure you check EpocWare Handy Weather)
• transfering files (mainly screenshots taken through Screenshot for Symbian OS)
• playing golf

the only glitch I could find so far is an annoying time-shift when transfering an alarm from iCal to the E61.

I explain myself better

create an event on iCal
assign it an alarm
sync to the E61

all the times for the event are aligned, the alarm time is not.
it’s shifted exactly the amount your time-zone is.

no matter if you have time-zone support active or not.
it just does that.
I think it’s something to be fixed in the phone software support for some syncML field, as I tried on 3 macs.
the N90 (same phone series) works fine (at least seems to).
same goes for previous s60 devices such as 6680.

I’d love to find a solution to this, but really don’t know where to start from.

someone wants to jump into this?

Popularity: 1% [?]

15 hours with Nokia E61

It’s been a long day as the others, but this time it might look like a joke, but I feel soooo damn good.
I’ve been doing things I do everyday like making phone calls, sending/reading emails, taking/moving/canceling appointments.

These things today were faster on the move, cause I had a great companion for the tasks.
I’ve been doing email on E61 regularly and used wireless connections around amsterdam.
I have it syncing with my powerbook as I’ve said before.

Many mac users already know or figured out how to add a phone to the supported list in iSync, but for others, I’m here to confirm that this is the model definition


<key>com.nokia.E61</key>
<dict>
<key>Identification</key>
<dict>
<key>com.apple.cgmi+cgmm</key>
<string>Nokia+Nokia E61</string>
<key>com.apple.gmi+gmm</key>
<string>Nokia+Nokia E61</string>
</dict>
<key>InheritsFrom</key>
<array>
<string>family.com.nokia.serie60v2.3</string>
</array>
<key>Services</key>
<array>
<dict>
<key>ServiceName</key>
<string>com.apple.model</string>
<key>ServiceProperties</key>
<dict>
<key>ModelIcon</key>
<string>NOKe61.tiff</string>
<key>ModelName</key>
<string>E61</string>
</dict>
</dict>
</array>
</dict>


pay attention at family.com.nokia.series60v2.3.
differently from series60v2.2 which requires an iSync agent, this family makes use of Nokia’s native syncML application as shown in this picture

picture taken with Screenshot for Symbianby Antony Pranata

I also created an icon to use in iSync. here it is (it’s a tiff)

To know more about how to add the definition and the icon, refer this article on MacOsXHints

I’ll keep posting about it, as I’m really excited about it.

Popularity: 3% [?]

quick one about Nokia e61

probably somebody will want to know that

1) I can review the e61 as long as I just “say the thruth”
2) I received mine less than 20 minutes ago
3) with the usual trick of duplicating a definition I have it working on iSync on Mac and my calendar and contacts have been perfectly copied with pictures too.
4) it has Flash player Lite installed (no idea which version yet)

here is 3 shots just to show off

I’ll review it tomorrow morning at last

Popularity: 1% [?]

Flash Player frame rate [Tinic Uro]

an interesting article (as everyone posted by this evil genius) about how Flash Player handles frame rate and rendering depending on platform, browsers etc.

check it out on Kourantin.net

Popularity: 1% [?]

create mediacasts with WebPasties

For a while I was thinking about creating an online service to allow people to create their mediacasts (I quite hate the word podcast, don’t ask why).

I started with an utomated PHP script that retrieves images from a folder, creates thumbnails if they’re not there yet, pulls out an RSS2 compatible feed.
Then I analized the enclousures and other details, including the itunes namespace to have an itunes compatible feed.

Last night I was researching the web to see if there was something like that, as when I first thought about it there wasn’t :)
I found WebPasties, and it looks pretty simple to use.
It’s free to try for 14 days, so give it a go.

I’ll create my mediacast builder for my personal use anyway, but for non-geek people needing a service like this, I strongly advice to use it.

Popularity: 1% [?]