TECHMUNDO 2.0

Before I lost my internet connection, I got a brand new theme. The Blue-Orange Light theme is probably one of my favorites right now. Its small footprint makes navigating through the menus of the E61 zippy. The theme is available specifically for the E61, which is a rarity. The Blue Orange Light Theme can be downloaded here.

Tommi (from S60) promised a couple of weeks back that they might be coming out with a new theme. Although I haven’t had a chance to download it, it looks really neat. And anything in green gets my vote. Download the Turquoise theme at S60.

E-series also reports of new Warcraft inspired themes.

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Electricity was out. Dial tones were non-existent and my mobile phone signal was spotty. My broadband access was down. Metro Manila was hit by the strongest typhoon in the last decade.

Normally where there’s typhoon, I pay no attention. Another day when classes get suspended; certain roads get flooded and I just stay home doing nothing but stare at my computer monitor. This time, however, it was different. Trees were uprooted. 40 foot container trucks toppled down by the strength of typhoon Millenio (Cheesy name, but. . . ). EDSA (the main highway in Metro Manila) looked like a scene from one of my favoritie pre-vis sci-fi movies as most of the giant billboards got stripped away and what was left was the metal trusses and scaffolding.

I was stuck at home with nothing but my E61. Thankfully I had it fully charged wednesday evening. I had nothing else to do but listen to music on OggPlay, finish Darkest Fear: Grim Oak which I got an F for my efforts (they have a ranking system at the end of the game, probably based on the length of time it took to finish the game and the number of putrid muffins collected), laughing at the absurdity of PornManager and fiddling with the tiny joystick playing S-tris 2 (a freeware tetris clone sans the perky russian theme). On a side note, I’m finding myself stripping the pivot silicone case off the phone when I intend to play a game for a lengthy time.

At night, all I had was my E61 with S60SponOn on my pitch black bathroom as I take quick showers and brush my teeth. By friday afternoon, my E61 was running low on juice. Thankfully before phone died power was restored. Still no telephone line, still no dsl.

I’m at a friend’s house today updating my blog. Happily I saw 42 comments, frustratingly most of them were spam. I’ll go through most of your emails and comments when internet is restored at my place, but it’s weirdly comforting that I can post entries once again.

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Check out S60’s feature on the upcoming Nokia Web Browser. They have flash demonstrations of the new features of the browser.

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Darkest Fear: Grim Oak - My current favorite game on the E61. Normally I don’t go for adventure games on my mobile, but this java based game runs full screen on the E61 and features one of the most immersive gameplay I’ve ever experienced on a mobile phone game.

I’ll update this post later with more meat and screenshots.

Check out Midlet-Reviews take on Darkest Fear: Grim Oak.

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The black N73 looks awesome!   These are the new music improved N series from Nokia.  If I wasn’t so enamored with the E61, the black N73 is a stunner.

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Engadget has nice big pictures of the upcoming N95. Any geek worth his mettle would agree with me that Nokia dumped everything into this nice shiny slider of a phone. 5 whopping megapixels of Carl Zeiss optics, 150mb internal memory plus a micro sd slot thats accessible without popping out the battery cover, a 3.5 audio jack, a mini-usb port, Wi-Fi, HSDPA, the newer Symbian 9.2 with an updated browser … yumm …

Don’t call the N95 a smartphone though. It’s a Multimedia Computer, whatever that means.

(Read the article)

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OggPlay took the place of Nokia’s built in Music Player in one of the 7 slots in my Standby Applications Bar. I have very few issues with the built in Music Player but after fiddling with the options in OggPlay, I was convinced that this audio player app. is more suited for my use.

OggPlay is available in two versions, the Non-MMF version which can solely play Ogg Vorbis files and the MMF version which can also handle AAC, MP3, WMA, and other common audio file formats. I have the MMF version installed because most of my music is in AAC.

One of the things that annoy me with the built in Music Player of Nokia is that after playing an audio track, before playing the succeeding file, I get this weird little sound (sounds a bit like a tsk, if you want to get more technical, it sounds like a glottal stop) that is clearly audible when using headphones and I really find it annoying. OggPlay also has a tiny sound inbetween tracks but it’s less pronounced.

I went Oggplay’s website and downloaded the s60v3 version for my E61. I also found a mcNuOggPlayQVLS.SIS file in there that’s supposed to be a skin for phones with 320X240 resultion (which the E61 has). Installation of Oggplay went without a hitch, but when I tried to install the skin, the installation was halted. I got some error messages and I decided to just forget the skin and start OggPlay. Even without installing the skin, OggPlay seemed to work well.

I went back to the OggPlay website and found another skin which is for QVGA devices, and a lightbulb flared in my head. Hmmm… E61 is QVGA so this just might work (even if the QVGA file is for 240X320). I stubbornly installed it and it got through. I scratched my head and wondered why a file that shouldn’t work with my phone got installed with no glitches, but the one thats supposed to be for the E61 gets error messages. I clicked OggPlay once more and . .gaaah!!! . . . Oggplay occupied just two thirds of my screen. I tried to uninstall OggPlay and I couldn’t. Once more some error messages. I then uninstalled the skin and OggPlay reverted back to its original state.

OggPlay is skinnable. There are some interesting skins available out there but sadly none for the E61.

Digging through the options in OggPlay, I found probably the singular feature that made me switch music players. OggPlay has a volume boost feature. This can be accessed by Options > Options … > Settings > Volume Boost (and make sure no music file is playing, the options menu won’t show up if the player is active).

If you’re like me, you’ll find that the built in audio player sounds tiny especially when you’re walking in noisy streets or riding a subway train thats more crowded than Times Square on New Years Eve. The 12 db Volume Gain enabled me to totally tune out everything on my ordinary Audio Technica earbuds. I would assume that those with in-ear headphones wouldn’t have problems with the volume, but for the rest of us that can’t afford $100 canalphones, the volume boost is a welcome feature.

Also, don’t forget to assign hotkeys to everything. The default hotkeys (shortcuts) will have 2 and 8 functioning as PageUp and PageDown when scrolling through your music collection; 4 and 6 as Rewind and FastForward. All 12 hotkeyscan be customized and assigned to a specific number key (0 to 9, * and #).

One thing though that I miss with the built in Audio Player is its ability to minimize to the Standby Screen. Oh well . . .

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Convergence has probably been the big word for the past couple of years in mobile telephony — Cellphones that act like PDAs, Nokia being ranked as the number 4 manufacturer of digital cameras (on the basis of their camera enabled phones), massive on-board storage for mp3s and videos on certain phone models;  It’s no surprise that Nokia recently unveiled products specifically to enhance the experience of listening music on their mobile handsets.

Check out CNet for the complete list of music accessories for Nokia mobile phones.

Is it just me or the new fashion headset (BH-302) really looks hideous?  I like the new 40mm headphones though

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A while back I read an article touting Nokia as a company that listens well to their customers’ feedback.  Nokia just unrolled 3 new interesting phones for release in the first quarter of 2007 and I can’t help but notice that some of the features are indeed features that Nokia users have been clamoring for.

Some interesting bits about these new phones are the 10 gig internal storage with built in 3.5 earphone jack of the N81, and the Symbian 9.2 OS of the N95 which will feature the updated Nokia browser and an internal GPS receiver.

Hmm . . . interesting times ahead for Nokia.  Also, Nokia Open Studio will be in Manila today.  I wonder if I can crash the event and score some pictures. hehehe.

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DivX on the E61!!! Woohoo!!! No more reconverting divx to mp4.

Get it here.

I haven’t had much time to play with it, but one thing I learned is that its default full screen mode is Landscape which doesn’t really suit the E61.

Dig through the menu and change the fullscreen mode to portrait.

More of my thoughts later. :)

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