Inside View from Ireland

Nokia E71 Exchange Services

ONE OF OUR UPGRADE options is the Nokia E71 and we may get one if we believe we can hook it into a tightly-controlled Exchange email account. With Nokia's Mail for Exchange software, the E71 becomes a true push email experience. You need to download free business software to get the official Mail For Exchange support page by Nokia. I think there will be issues with Microsoft Server ActiveSync because the network administrator must have granted access to the IP block used to access the server from our home. It will probably mean the IT admin should revise some of the settings under IIS > YOURSERVER >WEB SITES > Default Web Site >Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync. The Microsoft Technet site also has some very detailed advice. Although the upgrade plans in our lives normally allow us to slip into the best new technology, the E71 is priced below the €100 mark. Its E72 brother has some features we'd like, including a 5-megapixel camera with an LED flash, easy geotagging, real Bluetooth 2.0, memory expandable to 16 GB via a MicroSD slot, and a standard headphone jack.

SMS DOS

According to the mobile communications expert Tobias Engel, a number of Nokia phones (Nokia E90 Communicator, Nokia E61, Nokia E71, Nokia N73, Nokia 6120 classic), including my Nokia E90 Communicator, are vulnerable to Denial of Service (DoS) attacks via SMS. Interestingly, no special software is required to exploit this vulnerability. If an attacker knows the text that exploits the vulnerability, she can cause serious damage to your phone. After the attack, the phone does not accept SMS/MMS anymore and the only solution is a hard-reset or in the worst case rewriting the firmware.

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Secunia -- "Nokia Phones SMS Denial of Service Vulnerability"
Bonus Link: "S60 codes"

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A Month with iReader

I HAVE USED THE GOOGLE iREADER, the version of Google Reader programmed for the iPhone. It's also very tasty when running on my Nokia E90 as the shot shows at left. Like many things from Google, this is a beta version of the full-fledged Goodle Reader. You can bookmark it easily at http://www.google.com/reader/i/ and I started using it on my phones, I noticed that it offered many of the same features as the desktop, while making it quick and easy to act on items. If you've used list view, then it should be familiar to you. I walk around town using open wifi or O2-Ireland 3G and use the joystick on the E90 to scroll quickly through interesting items. By driving the arrow to the bold print and tapping the center of the joystick on the outside or inside of the E90, I get the full item in its expanded view. Starring, sharing, and keeping unread are done in place, so I never have to leave the list view or refresh the page. I think it might be faster to use the iReader on the E90 than it is on the iPhone since my finger can always remain on the joystick to navigate quickly.

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Sent mail2blog using O2-Ireland GPRS Typepad service.

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Of MARS and MARSA

SOME PEOPLE SAY life runs in cycles and if that is true then I am back where my communications ran through MARS and my daily vector is governed by MARSA. Both of these acronyms are a foreign language where I work today but in the 80s they represented a special connection to home and family.

Reformat Nokia N95

JUST OFF THE PHONE with a friend who has consistently moaned about his Nokia N95. He got the phone months before it ever appeared in the Irish sales channels and that means it's an older model. Because he depends on not getting lost, he keeps updating his maps on the phone, most of the time over the air. The first edition N95 cannot operate with memory paging, which means the phone bogs down a lot when downloading and installing maps while underway in Ireland. He knew he had issues because he would see a flashing back screen every five or six seconds. On several occasions, he has reformatted his N95. It's pretty simple. You switch off the N95. Then you hold down these three keys: 3 * and Green while switching the phone back on. Reformatting the Nokia N95 means losing everything on the phone, so if you're a heavy user and you take your updates while moving through different cells, you should routinely back up your data.

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We back up with ZYB.

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More than a Mobile

WE PLAY WITH mobile phones during the multimedia degree programme in Tipperary Institute so we can use them more efficiently. Today, it's Twitter (group text in picture) on the Nokia N70. Twitter is one of those applications that could push mobile phone usage beyond the simple text, voice and alarm modes. More than two billion people around the world have mobile phones. We know some of those people listen to podcasts from Ireland on their phones. Nearly half of the multimedia students who contribute to this blog confess they take their mobiles to bed (no alarm clocks in the bedsits) and no body shares their mobile with their girlfriend or bf.

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Image by Katie Conway.

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SIP Mobile Ireland

ON MY WATCHLIST: VoIP mobile solutions. So far only Vodafone has licensed a SIP stack for their network but it's not available to users.

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via Voylent and The Register.

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Best App for Blackberry

BLACKBERRY OWNERS should check out FreeNews, one of the smartest applications I've used on my mobile phones. In fact, you don't need a Blackberry -- smartphones run FreeNews. If you like to read your news sources while on the move, FreeNews can deliver full feeds to you through a one-button sync. This is less effort than required to launch a river of news browser. Once you sync--something I do in less than two minutes for more than 80 newsfeeds--you carry your entire river of news with you. In my experience, I can stay updated with the flow of information on Irish websites, specialised keyword alerts, new bookmarks in my del.icio.us network and inside information related to public works projects. Because the newsfeeds download onto your Blackberry (or smart phone), you can peruse what you need while on the subway or flying. I read my newsfeeds aboard Irish Rail and Aircoach (or Air Couch, as one visitor called it). This idea appeals to readers of Tailrank and that news aggregator carved out a little space to hold a cluster of related content.

Old as Crystals

WHEN I HELD my radio crystal in my hand during a visit to the family home, I realised that I have never heard anyone in Ireland talking about listening to a crystal-powered radio. Those were early radio days for me as a 12-year-old and they involved wrapping copper wire around a spent toilet roll, stringing a long line of cable to the top of the attic and hunching over in a corner to hear a scratchy radio signal. Early days--and age-revealing as well.

Encrypt your mobile phone calls

NOKIA PHONE owners can sign up for a beta test of Voylent, a program that runs on your S60 phone and encrypts your conversation before sending it out over the wireless data-channel in the GSM network. Normal GSM conversations are only weakly encrypted and can be easily sniffed. Technology available to law enforcement agencies in Ireland cannot break Voylent's encryption algorithm. From the developers:

Voylent is a client for GSM cellphones that encrypts voice conversations (IP support not available in this version). We have just released our first public beta and are looking for testers, feature requests and feedback. The client has been tested only a few models, mainly Nokia S60 with Symbian OS.