Tools

In one of my earlier post, I mentioned a couple of popular keyboard applications for smartphone/pocket PC running Windows Mobile operating system. One of the reader of that post, Idan pointed me to another cool virtual keyboard application from PocketCM.

The keyboard does look a lot like the iPhone keyboard and works a lot better compared to the default keyboard application. Check the official video below to see PocketCM keyboard at work.

...

Live photo gallery was one of the recent applications which got added to my favorite application list. In my previous post on Live Photo Gallery I had wished that the application provided integration with Flickr.

The Photo gallery team headed by Michael Palermiti has heard to this wish and the latest update of Live photo gallery now supports a powerful Flickr Integration.

Rather than going into the details of the feature, I will just embed the video created by Michael.

...

When I bought the HTC Touch Smartphone I was never told by the reseller that it was locked onto Airtel Network in India. Only after seeing some of the comments left on my earlier post, I realized that it was a SIM locked phone.

Recently when I traveled to Beijing, I felt the pain of having a SIM Locked phone. I had all my contacts and other details on this phone and yet it wasn't useful when I needed it the most.

When I inserted the China Mobile SIM onto the phone, I was prompted to enter the "Unlock Code". A search

...

SPB Mobile shell is an extension for the boring default user interface of a Windows Mobile powered Pocket PC phone. Key feature include:

Phone style menu Weather forecasts  Photo speed dial World time Launcher Big dynamic tabs on Today Color based themes Smart contact search

The SPM Menu based navigation loads faster and you can quickly launch application of your choice.

Even the Now Screen is pretty detailed and gives a quick overview of

Messages - Email/SMS Missed calls Volume level Weather Date and time Appointments/Meetings.

More

...

Contrary to what most people think, deletion of file on windows does not mean permanent loss of the data.

When the file is deleted, its not "shredded" Instead, the table of contents that points out the location of the file is erased. To put in more simpler words, the attribute of the space used by the deleted file is changed from "occupied" to "available".

Eventually, the hard drive will write new data over the area where the old file is located.

File Recovery utilities take advantage of the fact that the deletion of file in windows is reversible.

ZAR (Zero Assumption Recovery) is a Windows software to recover data from FAT and NTFS volumes after accidental format

...

Along with Windows Live Writer Beta 3 there were a bunch of other tools released as part of the Windows Live Suite. It included

Windows Messenger Mail Photo Gallery Toolbar OneCare

I have been using the Photo Gallery application from the past one week and looks like I have fallen for one more product from Microsoft.

Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta is a photo organizer that you can use to view, manage, and edit digital photos and videos. By default, all the photos in the Pictures folder on your hard disk appear in Photo Gallery. Additionally you can also add other folders on your hard disk to Photo

...

Windows Live Writer Beta 3 was released a few days back and this is one tool from Microsoft that deserves a lot of praise. It definitely simplifies the task of writing posts for your blog.

Beta 3 has the following new features:

 

 

Insert videos using new 'Insert Video' dialog

Upload images to Picasaweb when publishing to your Blogger blog

Publish XHTML-style markup

Use Writer in 28 additional languages

Print your posts

Justify-align post text

Better image handling (fewer blurry images)

Resolved installation issues from last release

Many other bug fixes and enhancements

More on

...

The default calculator that comes bundled with Windows Mobile 6 isn't made for touch phones. Also the application hasn't received an upgrade from a long time. Even my 5 year old Casio Pocket PC is running the same calculator application !

gCalc

gCalc is a simple calculator application which works great on a touch based phone and  is also good for one-hand use. The operator dial pad saves you the trouble of searching operators while doing the calculations.

The user interface looks so much better compared to the dull interface of the default

...

The other day one of the application server wouldn't start up because of a required port being used by another application. This, I am sure is of the common problem faced by many developers :)

The task manager in Windows shows only the active processes and gives no detail on the ports opened by these processes. One of the ways to find the process using a port of your interest is to use the netstat command.

The netstat command on windows can be used to list the TCP connections, ports on which the computer is listening, Ethernet statistics, the IP routing table etc.

The netsat -b option can be used to list the process name that is using a

...

If you are used to a tabbed browser or a tabbed text editor you would also love a tabbed Windows console. As we all know the windows console isn't the prettiest of the applications nor its usable when it comes to selecting text or pasting text. (I am not sure if the console application has been improved on Windows Vista) The Console project on SourceForge.net is one handy application if you use the windows console a lot. Features include Multiple Tabs Text Editor like Text Selection Customizable console - You can configure the background color, image and transparency levels Keyboard shortcuts - If you are keyboard junkie, you would appreciate this feature too :) One of ...