Wisetechie Blog : Ctrl your Tech Life

Microsoft unveiled the Deepfish mobile browser for smartphones. The browser is based on the Seadragon technology, which was a company acquired by Microsoft. The software displays the webpages like they would be displayed on your desktop. The beauty lies in the zooming and panning features of the software.It also optimises bandwidth ,i believe that this must be like the bandwidth optimisation of Opera Mini.
Currently the browser is in testing mode and is available by invitation only. Lets hope this great software is released to the public soon.

The Windows Live Team working on deepfish was quoted as

“With the Deepfish technology, we capture the full layout of the page and deliver it to the mobile device, resulting in an experience similar to that on the desktop. Deepfish provides users with a full ‘as-designed’ view of virtually any Web site on their mobile device and looks as you would expect it to on your desktop, allowing much more of the Web to be easily viewed on a mobile device than is possible today. The interface lets users zoom in and out on the parts of a Web page that interest them in an intuitive way, making it easy to use these large-screen formatted pages on a mobile device. On current mobile browsers, it can typically take up to a minute or more for a Web page to render, however the Deepfish architecture only loads the user-specified portion of the page, providing much quicker page-load times, as detailed information is only retrieved as needed or in the background.”

� System Requirements of Deepfish

• Device: Windows Mobile Smart Phone or Pocket PC.

• Operating System: Windows Mobile 5.0+

• Internet connection: Required.

• For Desktop setup: NET Framework 2.0, ActiveSync 4.0+ or Windows Mobile Device Center(WMDC) for Vista.

• Minimum Device Memory: 64MB Program Memory. Deepfish supports external storage when available.

Game : Sky Force 1.1

Platform : Symbian

Rating:

An awesome game where you can choose between three crafts and three difficulty levels, you must kill different kinds of planes, boats , destroy lighthouses, rescue humans, collect medals, upgrade weapons systems to complete this thriller of a game.

The only shortcoming for this game is that it finishes pretty fast, but it has an average replayability.

Screenshots

Characters/Graphics/Names/Concepts are trademarks/copyrights of respective owners

Name Of Game : Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2

Platform : Symbian

Rating:

This the first game we tested(fancy name for played), Game Reviews are really tough to write as Games are pretty darn expensive, but thankfully one of my friends had a licensed copy (i hope) . Anyway GRAW 2 is a game by Gameloft.

Its an action game which features weapons like Guns and Grenades and automatic rifles. The game has a handy continue feature so that you dont have to do everything from the extreme start, you can continue from the last checkpoint.

You are Captain Mitchell of the US military and must defeat the terrorists and assist your fellow soldiers. The game has similarities to real life combat also, you can hide behind sand bags , walk in shadows and kill people with stealth by getting close to them. All in all, one awesome action filled package.

Screenshots

All characters, games and logos are copyrights/trademarks of their owners

Software : Opera Mini

URL : http://www.operamini.com

Platform : PALM OS

Rating:

Absolute Rubbish !

Opera Mini happens to be my favourite software across all mobile applications. So when i found out they finally had the PALM version i was excited. The earlier MIDP 2 version always used to crash in the IBM virtual java thingy of my Palm Treo 650.

I logged onto operamini.com using my phone, Opera didnt recogonise my phone as a phone and displayed the HTML page instead. I clicked on download, and selected my phone. I downloaded the ‘free’ .prc version of Opera Mini. It got downloaded fairly quickly and got installed. I open it and it asked for random strings just like it always does to secure my connection.

Then i entered a URL and kept the phone on my desk, one minute later i found Opera Mini had crashed. I tried again , only this time i watched the crashing in action, it tried to open the license agreement and crashed again.

I uninstalled opera mini, blazer is fine for me !

My Verdict - Opera Mini is uncompatible with Palm Treo 650, no matter what they claim.

Software : Fring VOIP

URL : http://www.fring.com

Platform : Symbian

Rating:

Everyone who uses the internet knows about the benefits of Skype. It allows you to make free PC to PC calls and paid PC to phone ones. But its always a nuisance to switch on your computer , connect the Mic and the Speakers/Headphones and talk like you are the Radio Communicator of some 1950s war movie.

So i searched for a Symbian utility that would help me make calls over GPRS and pretty soon i landed my hands on this nifty utility. ITs called Fring and is by an Israel based company (i think). It allows you to make free Skype, MSN and Gtalk calls from your GPRS enabled symbian handset.

The method  to install Fring is a little bit weird, you must first register your telephone number on Fring and they will send you an SMS with the URL to the download location. On clicking the link Fring will be downloaded and installed to your phone.

So what is Fring and how does it work, Fring enables the usage of VoIP over mobile phones and hence make life a little bit easier for us. It means like i call people from Skype,Google Talk and MSN using my computer , the same can be done by a mobile phone. I talk on my cellphone like its a regular call and it doesn’t cost a thing.

My Experience

My experience has been a mixed one. I am using the 2.0 version which does not have SIP.

Its  a nice software. Enabled me to make calls with my Airtel Mobile Office GPRS account. But there was a 1-3 second lag probably due to Airtel’s slow connection. And another thing is that the Application is somewhat unstable. The application crashed often on my Symbian phone leaving its backend UA clent working. But free lunch is always good. I enjoy using it, the convienience is unmatched and the voice quality is pretty good when my internet is working nicely. All in all a great software and highly reccomended.

Screenshots

Caution

We reccomend you create special accounts for usage with Fring, as you have to disclose your login and password to their utility.

Well expect lots of Symbian and PALM OS mobile application reviews, my new Nokia N series handset is great and can run most of the popular Symbian as well as J2ME applications.

Software : Gmail Application For Mobile

URL : http://www.gmail.com/app (Open with mobile phone only)

Platforms : J2ME and Symbian

Rating:

The GMAIL Mobile Application enables you to check your GMAIL account using your phone and a GPRS (or EDGE) connection. Your mobile phone must have a proper security certificate to communicate with the GMAIL server. For Airtel India users, the mobile office plan will do the trick, it costs 500 rupees a month(or was it 499, big psychological edge any management student will tell you).
Logging Into GMAIL

When you open the application, you will be prompted to select a connection, choose your GPRS connection which allows ou to access all sites.Then enter your username(BTW we don’t own wisetechie username on gmail) and password, the GMAIL application will log you in pretty quickly. The Application will then display your Inbox. At this stage Google by default starts pre-fetching your emails, so opening them is almost instantaneous.

Continue reading »

We might just turn this site into a full time Symbian and PALM OS Application Reviewer, my new Nokia N Series phone becomes my guinea pig as i try out new symbian software and tell you its features, post screenshots, and basically if its worth it. But busy in exams these days, but expect some Symbian and PALM OS application reviews real soon.

This post goes out to all those who have limited bandwidth Internet accounts, and would like to save their limited bandwidths. Even though i dont have a limited bandwidth account, sometimes when i want to check my email fast, i still use Gmail for mobiles or Yahoo WAP to save time.

With some tips and tricks, this is possible on your Personal Computer. Here is a step by step guide telling how to access Yahoo Mail and Gmail through WAP through your computer , in the process saving some very hard earned bandwidth=money and time (also=money).

1. Get Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Firefox will help us open the WML pages.

2. Install the WML Browser Addon (Extension). WML stands for Wireless Markup Language, for your understanding, think of it as HTML for WAP(Mobile) devices.

For Yahoo Mail

Log onto wap.yahoo.co.in (Almost all nationalities’s people will be able to use this, except Japan i think because they have a different username system), Click on mail, and login !!!!

For Gmail Email

Log onto http://m.gmail.com

Enter username and password and you are through !!!

How this would save bandwidth and time

This is very elementary, most cell phone WAP connections these days are low speed and expensive and billed by usage. Hence it makes sense to have only stripped down pages as WAP or WML pages. While a normal page may require a data transfer of 200 kbs, a WAP page would be about 4-5 kbs. a saving of approx 195 kbs. It you visit that page very frequently, it makes even more sense as the savings in bandwidth would be larger.

On a 56 kbps connection, it took me >10 seconds to load yahoo mail beta, Yahoo Mail WAP loaded almost instantly, hence time is saved.

So whats the catch ?

Like all good things in life, this one too has some weakpoints. Most sites wont use SSL for their mobile application pages(but Gmail for mobile does mind you). Also the display is anything but appealing. The website is basically a skeleton but most functionality is still retained.

 I cant tell you how frustrated i felt sometimes, when i lost the pics i had uploaded on Blogger on deleting a particular post. Google seems to have done its homework with this latest feature though, Picasa Web which can be visited on picasaweb.google.com will now show your blogger uploaded photos as albums. There will be a separate album for each blog with the name of the blog as the Album name.

However the bad news is that only the newer photos which were uploaded after Picasa Web was introduced will be available, but atleast its a start. The photos are linked via the Google account you use on Blogger.

But a word of caution, as i learnt the hard way, you cant save space by deleting these photos off of Picasa, turns out its deleted from your blog as well, so dont even try

Here is the official word from Picasa (or Google !) , pretty much everything has already been covered above, but its OFFICIAL

When you create a blog that contains photos using Blogger, a web album will be created in Picasa Web Albums. Any photos you upload using Blogger automatically appear in an unlisted album under “My Photos” with a small Blogger icon in the corner of the album cover.

The title of your Blogger web album will match the title of that blog and contain those photos. If you re-title your blog, the web album title will not change.

Once a photo is posted to Blogger from Picasa Web Albums, future comments or captions made on either site will not be synched with each other. We recommend that you add captions and comments in Picasa Web Albums before posting a photo to Blogger.

If you delete a photo from Blogger it will also be deleted from Picasa Web Albums. Likewise, if you delete a photo from your Blogger album on Picasa Web Albums, the photo will also be deleted from your blog.

Please note that you cannot upload photos directly to a Blogger web album using the Picasa Web Albums site at this time.

A word of caution for anyone using WordPress version 2.1.1 , upgrade it to 2.1.1 immediately. It appears that some crackers gained access to WordPress servers and changed a part of the WordPress 2.1.1 download code.They changed the code in two WordPress download files (“theme.php” and “feed.php”) that would allow someone to execute remote PHP code on your blogs. Thankfully the guys at WordPress detected this in time and averted a catastophe (hopefully).

Anyway i am safe now and hope your version is safe too !

Got Questions about this ?

You can email them to 21securityfaq@wordpress.org , which has been specially setup to deal with this particular problem.