WeatherBug Mobile

Now.. a little review of a nice weather forecast program for Windows Mobile. You can get it from Marketplace directly from your phone if you're running WM6.5. From the marketplace, this program is stated as free but it's ad-supported weather app.

There is also an overview of the weather condition based on colour coding.

One of the nice feature is that it actually has pictures of the location of the weather tower.

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Scan2PDF Mobile for Windows Mobile

Here's a short review of an app which I think it's quite useful in daily tasks. It's goes by the name as stated in the title. What it does is that it uses the camera of your mobile phone, make a photo capture (scanning) and then convert it directly to PDF. You will not have to have the trouble of using a scanner to do that. You can do it all directly from your mobile phone and it works like charm!

This program works on both WM6.1 and WM6.5

Some guided actions:

After installation, run the program. The icon is quite obvious!

Upon pressing the "Scan page...", you'll be guided by some instructions.

Press OK and start "scanning". It'll automatically switched you to camera mode for scanning purposes. Press "Make PDF..." and it's done.

Pressing the menu will bring several options. Pressing "PDFs..." will show you your previous scanned items.

You can find the link to the official downloads here.

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How to upgrade/install custom ROM (HTC Touch HD/Blackstone)

It seemed that lots of people are actually interested in custom ROMs or more known to be "cooked" ROM. There are 2 types of ROM, namely Official ROM and Custom/Cooked ROM.

The official ROM is the ROM you get when you first purchase your device. The cooked ROM is actually ROMs which are made (cooked) by other developers which enhances, upgrades and tweaks the official ROM. This in turn make the cooked ROM more efficient and most importantly fast!

Before we proceed, this are the several preparations required:

• battery level >70%
• Windows XP systems
• USB cable
• USPL 2.5 version bootloader
• cooked ROM
• remove both SIM card and memory card

In the steps below, I will show the flashing of custom/cooked ROM to the HTC Touch HD aka Blackstone.

1. Firstly, you will need to grab the cooked ROM from the xda-forum. There are plenty of ROMs to choose from. The best I've known is Dutty, Miri, Energy and Topix. The filesize are usually around 150MB and it's usually zipped.
2. This is the most important part in order to be possible for installation of cooked ROM. You will need Blackstone USPL V2.5 bootloader. You can get it here in the 2nd post of xda-forum. Please read through the 1st post to understand further what you should be aware of.
3. Now, the preparations are all done. Make sure you had backed up all your important information from the phone as flashing the ROM will be equivalent to hard reset All information formerly on the phone will be totally wiped out.
4. To begin, switch Off your phone.
5. Once the phone is off, press and hold Volume Down rocker (left side of the phone) and On button (top of the phone) simultaneously.
6. You will next see a SPL screen which consists of Red, Green, Blue and White. Notice that there is SPL-1.14.0000 (or in some cases SPL-1.54) on the red tab. This is called the SPL bootloader screen.
7. Now, connect your USB cable from the pc to your Blackstone. You will notice "USB" on the white tab at the bottom. Make sure that the "USB" is written on the white tab as this is crucial for the next step.
8. Next, execute the USPL 2.5 (blac_uspl.exe) which you had downloaded earlier. It is an execute file from windows. Once the execution is completed, y0u will see the word USPL at the back of the SPL-1.54 which you saw earlier in the red tab. It should look something like this now:
9. Note: This image is taken from XDA-forum.
10. Now, the most important part, flashing! Execute the cooked ROM file which you had downloaded earlier from either Dutty, Miri or others. This is the ROM installation file.
11. Follow the on-screen instruction and you will then see the installation progressing bar on both your phone and also the pc. It will take approx. 10mins to complete the entire installation. Once done, your phone will restart and you can unplug the USB cable from your phone while it's restarting.
12. It is recommended that you hard reset your device once before actually using it. To do this, press and hold Volume Up and Volume Down rocker while briefly press the On button. Hold Volume Up and Down until an instruction screen appear. Follow the on-screen instruction and you are done!
13. Congrats on your first attempt to have a cooked ROM on your Blackstone!

*Disclaimer: This customization of ROMs are all made possible thanks to the guys from XDA-forum.

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HTC Touch HD Silicon Case (Capdase)

Just got myself a Silicon Case from Capdase. Looks pretty slicky and definitely way better than the pocket type casing which comes bundled with the HD when you first bought the mobile phone.

I still think the pocket type casings are for the ladies. Additional advantage is that you do not need to slide it out from the pocket type casing each time you need to use the phone. Which could be a pain when you need to use the phone quickly at times..

Pictures are definitely the trend nowadays. Here goes..

Now here's the silicon with the phone in it..

Conclusion:

Overall, I'm very satisfied with the product and Capdase is quite a known brand in Hong Kong. One downside would be because it is a silicon. As silicon tends to get sticky with dust. Since the colour is black, it would be more obvious but a little wipe with a damp cloth should do the trick. If you notice, the HD has an LED indicator on the ON/OFF button. With the silicon case, the LED would be totally blocked therefore no light visible. I believe that's the design error in the silicon case.

One most important info to share, I got it for a price of RM30.

There aren't many silicon casing available for HD unlike the iPhone. So, I guess this is the best option. I haven't seen any other such casing for the HD. Unless you rather opt for the bulky leather casing.

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Mobile Phones Chronology

Personally, I've tried quite a number of mobile phones before.. Probably the chronology are as below:

Mobile phones from:

• minimum GUI to a full OS Window Mobile 6.1
• T9 keypad -> qwerty keyboard -> touch screen
• screen size from less than 2" to a staggering 3.8"
• 2G -> 2.5G -> 3G -> 3.5G

Mobile phone industries had evolved from normal communication tool to a full featured multimedia must-have communication device in such century.

In the year 2005, the world mobile user was 2.1 billion and in Malaysia alone, it was quoted to be 19.5 million.

Source: CIA World Factbook 2007

That was in 2005. Imagine what would the number be in such year of 2009 and of course with the hype of the iPhone which shakes the mobile phone industries since last year.

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