techiehenry

Finally I got the guts to post pictures taken from my K800i mobile phone to a blog. This is not just an ordinary take-the-picture-transfer-it-to-the-PC-then-upload-to-a-blog kind of affair, but one that was done automatically from the phone itself.

I did it simply by hitting the softkey labeled “Send”, and then selecting the option “To blog”. After connecting to the internet (my phone used its 3G capabilities at that time) and sending the picture, a message was sent to my phone informing me of the name of the blog that was automatically created and the claim token associated with it. It turned out that the reminder message is being sent to the phone everytime a post is made,until the owner enters the claim code in the main Blogger website.

This is how the blog looked like after I claimed it and did some customization from the themes:

The blogging service is free. However, for every 30 minutes that I connect to the internet, a Php10 charge is deducted from my phone credit (I’m using SMART as my phone’s service provider). I find it quite cheap, considering that you can take several pictures and then upload them within the 30-minute span. Each picture takes at most 15 seconds to send.

The moblog can be found here.

Last night I promised my son that I won’t be watching any anime until he wakes up. So this morning, while he was sleeping I did a little bit of snooping around some mobile phone forums. I chanced upon this utility which lets me edit (or even create) themes for my K800i.

Good! There’s one that works under Linux! It’s Java-based, so you need a JRE to be able to use this application on your machine. Its very user-friendly, you just need to point-and-click your way to how you want your theme to be. Everything is laid out well on the screen — I was able to edit one of my phone’s existing themes right away, without reading any instructions. Creating a theme would take a little more time for me though. Even though the tools are readily available, I don’t have the creative inclination to create one from scratch.

If you want to try it out, you can download it from myforum.lasyk.net in one of three versions — one for Windows, one for the Mac, and one for Unix/Linux. You need to register first to be able to access the files.

Just like what I’ve experienced with the PSP’s earbud-type earphones, I’m not really satisfied with the handsfree unit that’s included with the K800i. though the sound quality is quite acceptable, how it fits in my ears are a different story. They tend to fall off while I’m walking, and my ears hurt after a half hour’s use.

So it’s a really good thing I found this:

It lets me use regular headphones in place of the handsfree unit! I got this for Php150 in a phone shop in SM San Lazaro while looking around to see what’s new being sold in gadget stores. Now I could use the in-ear phones I bought for the PSP!

I can’t use it to answer phone calls, but for the purpose of listening to music on long trips, this would be a welcome addition.

The K800i phones sold here in the Philippines generally don’t have a Memory Stick Micro (M2) included in the box. I’m not really sure as to why Sony Ericsson decided not to, considering that the phone takes pictures approaching 1Mb in size, and not everyone has their own computer to transfer the photos once the 60Mb or so internal memory is all used up.

I wanted one so that I could take advantage of the capabilities of the phone, which is taking great pictures and playing audio. I wanted some of the pictures to be stored on the phone to show it to relatives and friends, and at the same time I’d want to listen to music and podcasts while traveling.

Sony M2 modules aren’t cheap though, which discouraged me a bit. Luckily, SanDisk sells its own M2 modules, at a price that is almost a third of how much Sony sells theirs. So I went ahead and bought a 512Mb M2 module for Php1,650 from a local retailer. (more…)

While looking for something to kill the boredom from my daily commute, I got the curiosity to tinker with MusicDJ, an application included with the K800i.

What you can do with MusicDJ is to create a unique sequence that you can then listen to or use as a ringtone.

MusicDJ is a pretty basic application. It can hold four tracks, one for drums, basses, chords, and accents. Each track has 32 samples, which are split into four groups labeled intro, verse, chrous, and break.

As of now, I’ve created one sequence (Mix-2) that sounds pleasing to me. Maybe there’s a community somewhere across the internet where I could share what I have done and listen to what others had in store in their phones.