Another 15 minutes

I Read about Google Latitude today and decided to check it out. Google Latitude is a free product featured in Google Maps that you can install on your GPS mobile phone which will then let your friends (which you choose who should be able to see your location) see exactly where you are, in real-time.

You will use Google Maps as usual in your phone, but you will see a flag indicating your friend’s’ location in the map also, which is very cool. Now I just have to try this out with some friends who also have GPS in their mobiles. Installing it was very easy, I just browsed to “mobile.google.com” on my phone and selected to download the binary file for Google Maps (I have a Windows Mobile phone) and then install the cab-file. It will automatically upgrade the existing version, and then you just follow the configuration of the latitude-feature on your phone, simple.

You can also use your computer to keep track of people, but unfortunantely this doesn’t seem to be available in Sweden yet. (Update: It is available in Sweden, you just have to edit your iGoogle settings and change location). I’m looking forward to a feature like this available as a blog plugin/widget, so I can show my location on a Google map on my blog all the time, just for fun =). It will probably be available soon.

I previously wrote a post about my problems with playlists and music with the TouchFLO3D music player, and today I found a solution/workaround for this problem and decided to publish it as a new post.

This problem applies more to people using non-English versions of Windows Media Player or have music of a non-English language that have special characters in its name.

I have a Swedish Windows Media Player on my computer which I use to sync my music to the HTC Touch HD mobile phone. The problem occurs when the album name contains Scandinavian characters (“åäö”) or the “album name” ID3-tag of the mp3-file is empty and you use a Scandinavian WMP, then the default folder name on the computer and the playlist will be “Okänt album” (eng. Unknown album), but the actual folder name on the device will be “Oknt album”, so the file is simply not found from the path given in the playlist. This will make the entire TouchFLO player to crash and display an empty playlist, instead of just that song being missing.

The solution is to check and edit the ID-tag of all mp3 songs and putting “Unknown” in the album title for example, this way the path in the playlist and the actual path will be the same and everything will work with your playlist.

Note that the path will not be renamed if you just edit the file and re-sync, you have to delete the folder on the device and force a new sync so WMP will create the path again, now with no Scandinavian characters.

This works for me, but the bug with not being able to scroll through a playlist containing several hundreds of files remains and must be fixed by HTC. I hope they release a fix for these kinds of special character problems too.

The HTC Touch HD (Blackstone) mobile phone is probably one of the most advanced out there right now, and many users have alot of questions, thoughts and there are also a few bugs. So here is a list of hints, tips, tricks and solutions for your HTC Touch HD. Among my previous posts you can also find descriptions of current problems with the phone as well as some links to free software for your Windows Mobile device that can certainly come in handy.

So here is a list of some hints, tips and tricks I’ve found most useful so far…

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A few months ago I posted a page about HTC Touch Diamond vs IPhone 3G but I think that comparing IPhone 3G with HTC Touch Diamond was not as appropriate as comparing it with the newer HTC Touch HD, which is really the “IPhone killer” right now. So here I will post the info about these two phones.

IPhone 3G: Nice design, touch screen and good interface. Overrated phone that doesn’t even have basic functionality like MMS (it has now/soon though) or radio. Also buggy with 3G in Sweden (fixed?). I don’t see what the hype with IPhone is all about. The screen is only 480×320. Dimensions are 115.5×62.1×12.3 mm and it weighs 133 grams. Only a 2 megapixel camera. It has a multitouch screen, which is nice. Keywords that apply: new (?), fresh design, overrated, no radio, expensive to own, appstore.

HTC Touch HD: Nice design, touch screen and good interface. The phone has all functions one would want from a phone these days; MMS, GPS, 3.5mm headphone plug, memory card capability (32 Gb I’ve heard, it comes with 8 Gb), high resolution screen (800×480), radio and more. It is pretty much the same size as the IPhone, but a millimeter shorter, narrower and thinner  (115×62.8×12 mm), but it weighs abit more (147g). It has a 5 megapixel camera, but no flash. It gives very good battery time, I only charge mine once a week at most with normal use. I think it’s probably the most complete phone yet, allthough the touchscreen is better on IPhone with its multitouch etc, but this still is good enough for sure. The interface does not feel slow either, like it was reported to be on the Diamond. If you’re an advanced user you can tweak and customize this Windows Mobile 6.1 based phone alot. The screen on this phone really gives a crystal clear display and watching movies on it is very nice. I think the sound on it is very nice, much better than my previous Nokia N95. Keywords that apply: new, fresh design, has all functionality one want.

I think both of these are nice phones, but there are some things that gives the HTC an edge I think, like the display, memory, radio, battery time, design and that you are not forced to use iTunes and a specific network operator out of the box. One thing I would like for Windows Mobile though is an AppStore. But for me the winner is HTC Touch HD, and I got one that I’m really happy with.

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I read an article today about cameras in mobile phones becoming more and more advanced and noticed a paragraph about taking panorama pictures directly in the phone and thought it was pretty cool. I looked around in the menues of my HTC Touch HD for this function and sure enough, there is one. Just click the camera icon when in the camera application and you’ll get a menu of some different camera modes; “photo”, “video”, “panorama”, “MMS-video”, “contact photo” and “themes”. Themes are when you put your photo in some humorous clipart frame, like the old ”most wanted”-poster for example.

I tried the panorama option and it allows you to take three photos from left to right to create one large panorama photo. When taking picture number two and three you will see abit of the previous image overlapping to the left so you can match them perfectly to eachother. However panorama pictures are best suited for distant objects since objects close to the camera will be bent, so taking a panorama photo over your desk for example will display the desk as curved, you’ve probably seen this before. I took the picture below of my livingroom and it came out pretty good despite of the poor lighting and close objects.

The vertical crossovers from each picture are through the lamp in the window and through the TV, those areas are abit fuzzy mostly because I took the pictures free-hand. I will take some more outdoors panorama pictures with my phone and post them of they turn out nice.

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I’m happy with my HTC Touch HD, but one particularly annoying problem has come up for me, and many others I presume, with the built-in audio player in TouchFLO 3D, playlists and audio manager crashing. There are alot of forum posts out there about these problems, but no one I’ve found so far describes my problems exactly, yet alone how to solve them. So I decided to post a list of my problems, what I’ve discovered so far and some fixes/workarounds, feel free to try them out and discuss on how we can solve this!

Here are my problems, scenarios and comments…

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I’m using Telia as network provider for my mobile phone, but on their website they don’t have any automatic settings available for download for my new HTC Touch HD, nor any other HTC mobiles for that matter. So one have to enter the information manually to enable MMS and Internet connection, and here’s how…

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