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I recently got a HTC Tattoo and had problems scanning QR and bar codes on my monitor. If you have a Tattoo then you probably know how crappy the camera is. It has no autofocus which makes close-ups really blurry and small codes near impossible to scan.

Try it out with these examples:

I cannot scan the small one on my 21″ 1920×1080 screen, the bigger one scans great. Luckily they resize very well.

I’m using Firefox with the Image Zoom extension installed. When you come across a QR code that won’t scan, right-click it and hold the button, then zoom in using mouse wheel. Scan again, and bingo.

I was in town earlier and popped in to Vodafone to check out the Blackberry Storm. First impressions: what a beautiful phone!

It’s a great size and weight, the display is brilliant and crystal clear. The touch screen is excellent – move your finger over a button or a key of the on-screen keyboard and it glows blue. Press a bit harder and it activates – you can even feel it! I found scrolling the screen up/down a bit awkward, but am sure that I could get the hang of it within a couple of hours of using it. The sound quality of the built-in speaker is very decent (it also has a normal headphone jack), and the video quality is excellent. I couldn’t try out the web browser as there was no SIM inserted. Rotate the phone by 90 degress to the left or right and the screen flips into landscape mode. That didn’t always work first time though and often took several attempts. There’s 2 different layouts for the on-screen keyboard. Keep it in portrait and you get a smaller layout with 2 characters per key, switch to landscape and you get s QWERTY layout that lets you comfortable type with your thumbs.

One drawback is that it hasn’t got any wifi capabilities. You could maybe forgive them for that, but then I checked out the contracts they come with. Internet access is included in all the plans, but when I asked about the bandwidth limits I was told that all the plans include a ‘whopping’ 500MB/month. Wow, that’s lousy! I would have expected to get several GB. I asked if there was some kind of Internet add-on that you could purchase separately but that’s a no-go as well. Once you go over the 500MB limit they start charging you for any additional MB at extortionate prices. That’s just ridiculous.

Looks like I won’t be getting a Storm once the current plan for my N95 runs out in a few months. Unfortunately RIM went with Vodafone for the exclusive deal in the UK instead of a more decent carrier like 3 or O2. And I certainly can’t afford to shell out £400 or so quid for a Storm without contract. I’ll have to see if I can find a G1 phone to try out, it certainly looks like a better deal.

Until not too long ago I still had a Windows XP partition on my laptop. The only reason I still had it was to use Nokia’s PC Suite so i could back up/update my phone, I never booted into Windows for anything else. Then a bad Windows update in combination with the ext2 driver trashed my home partition and I could not log back into my Ubuntu user account. I was pissed. I just happened to have a GParted disk lying on my desk, popped it into the drive and removed Windows and made more room for my main Ubuntu install.

Since then I managed to find ways of syncing my N95 with Ubuntu – multisync works great to sync contacts with Evolution via Bluetooth, ScheduleWorld lets you sync your phone’s calendar with gCal through their Firefox extension via Bluetooth (only seems to work half the time), I can transfer files using Bluetooth and USB, and I can manage my music through Amarok.

Unfortunately all the above are far from ideal as you need different applications for each task. Not to mention that it is impossible for me to upgrade my phone’s firmware without Windows!

Yesterday I sent an email to Nokia to see what their plans were to support other operating systems, considering the amount of people who switch to Linux and Mac OS. Here’s the reply:

Dear Laurent,

Thank you for contacting Nokia Care.

I hope all is well with you. We do understand your current predicament on using the Linux operating system. However at this present time we are unable to confirm if there will be future changes to include Linux as Nokia’s supported operating system. However, I will definitely forward this as a feedback to the relevant department for further review.

We do thank you for highlighting this to us because we appreciate such as constructive feedback from our customers, Laurent.

Out of luck for the time being then.

I tried to get the PC Suite working by running Windows XP in Virtualbox (yeah, I know, but at least it’s not taking up a full partition now or mess with my Ubuntu install ), but USB refuses flat out to connect my phone and Bluetooth connected only once and now keeps giving me an error message each time I try to activate it.

What do you use to sync your phone with Ubuntu/Linux? Do you know of any Symbian applications that help with syncing gCal reliably?

I was looking for a Symbian app to scrobble the tracks I play on my Nokia N95. After a quick search I found ASPY Player, written by Douglas. As you might have already guessed by the name it needs Python (PyS60) installed. Currently it’s still in beta (b4 released on April 9) and it only scrobbles tracks stored on your phone, streaming will hopefully come later. It’s hasn’t got the prettiest interface, but it gets the job done.

Another Python app is blastfm. This one lets you listen to your last.fm streams, complete with love, ban and skip functions. Or at least I think that’s what it does – after entering my username and password it kept crashing and never started up once. I’ll be keeping an eye out for future versions though.

The next one does not require Python. mobbler is similar to the official last.fm desktop client in that it runs in the background scrobbling the tracks you play with the S60 Music Player. It works great, once it finds an Internet connection it sends the tracks to your profile and then keeps on scrobbling ‘live’.

I’ve also found a great mashup using the flickr & last.fm webservices and GPS data running on Python. Check out the video presentation. It’s not really all that useful, but fun. There is no download available, it is a prototype developed by 4 international students at The Technical University of Denmark. But it gives an idea of the great possibilities webservices offer for mobiles.

I’m really surprised that last.fm doesn’t offer mobile clients yet. There are now so many people who exclusively use their phones/mobile devices to play music on the go. They could even make free tracks available to download and provide links so you can purchase tracks straight from your phone.

Do you know of any other last.fm apps/mashups for mobile devices? Add them in the comments.

I love 7dayshop.com. They always have got great offers on batteries, flash memory, recordable CDs/DVDs, etc… And currently they have a Samsung 4GB USB flash drive on offer for £17.99. There’s also a 2GB version for £10.99 available.

I was going to order new batteries for my camera from them next week, looks like there’s gonna be at least one more item on my shopping list now.

I’ve been toying with the idea of building myself a proper multimedia box which runs Linux for some time now. The problem with Windows Media Centre is that, although more compatible with available hardware, it is too expensive and you have to play by Microsoft’s rules.

Enter the Hannibal Deuce +:

Nice. It comes with the following specs:

Intel Celeron 2.66 Ghz Processor
Geforce 6200 256 MB 8X AGP video accelerator
256 MB DDR 400 Ram
7.1 Digital Optical Audio
Micro ATX Socket 775 Motherboard with 3 PCI slots and SATA connections
Linksys 802.11 B/G 54 MBPS PCI wireless adapter
Hauppauge 500 PCI Dual tuner
18X DVD burner
9 in 1 card reader
500 GB 7200 RPM hard drive

It’s built on Ubuntu and is ready to use out of the box. Check the product page for some of the features.

There’s also the Hannibal Wicked Edition which comes with a second 500 GB drive.

Santa, if you’re reading this, it would be nice to find one of these under the tree on Christmas morning!