Mobile Technology raj

Mobile Technology

Quebecor Guns for Entry into Wireless Sector

Last month, Quebecor ran a series of full-page ads in 24 Hours (and possibly other Sunmedia / Quebecor publications) that asked some pointed questions about the state of wireless telecommunications in Canada.

You can click on the image to view the PDF of the ADs.

55%
That’s how much more Canadians pay for wireless
than comparable American consumers.
In our view, that’s because a lack of competition in our protected market
allows the Big Three mobile phone companies to keep prices above the average prices elsewhere.
Wireless competition would give consumers a break.
Isn’t it time the government made that happen?

[read more…]

aside 7 Jun

Installing a Root CA on Moto Q

*sigh* what a pain.. the Moto Q and Windows Mobile devices for that matter can’t install CA certificates without some form of assistance from an administrator.

Thankfully the Moto Q in question was on Telus and they haven’t taken the time out to cripple the phones like Verizon and Sprint have. I seriously pity the owners of phones from those carriers.

Without going into a rant, here’s the quick and dirty which is probably more applicable than Microsoft’s KB article 841060 titled “How to add root certificates to Windows Mobile 2003 Smartphone and to Windows Mobile 2002 Smartphone.”

So you’ll need ActiveSync installed on a computer as well as a cable to connect the phone (or Moto Q) to that particular computer. After that, cancel any ActiveSync settings… you won’t need them,

Explore the phone, see if there is a folder called ‘STORAGE’ at the root of the phone. If not, create it.
Grab the CA Cert (I’ve included Starfield’ CA Certificate (in a zip file) since that’s the CA we use to issue certs), HERE.
Drop the (unzipped) file in the ‘STORAGE’ directory
Download SmartPhoneAddCert.exe from Microsoft HERE or from HERE.
Unzip or extract the SPAddCert.exe program from the archive (or self-extracting archive if you got it from Microsoft) and drop it into the ‘STORAGE’ directory you may have created earlier
Open up file manager on the handheld and launch SPAddCert
Choose the CA Cert that you initially intended to install and reboot the device after installation

Voila! You can now resume doing whatever you needed to do in the first place.

PS – no need to install intermediate certificates – just root certificates for the Moto Q.

aside 19 Mar

Telephone number portability (finally)

Canada finally joins the ranks of Western Civilization with the advent of being able to retain and switch your telephone number to another service provider.

A little note from Anita that I received last week (March 14th, 2007):

Starting today, if you live in a Canadian Metropolitan area, you can finally switch cellular providers and keep your current number! This isn’t something that the cell phone companies are going to announce because it’s kind of their worst nightmare. The bad news is that there are still only three carriers in Canada so competition is less than fierce. At least we now have the freedom to switch to the carrier that we hate the least and still keep the same number.

More details at Wireless Week and on the CRTC website. It’s about time and I can hear the mobile companies scrambling with people moving their forwarded mobile phone numbers to VOIP providers and other mobile providers.

Any experiences out there, yet?

aside 30 Dec

E61 and Vonage

The Nokia E61 is probably the most sophisticated smart phone on the market. It’s packed full of features including the ability to connect to Microsoft Exchange and Blackberry Enterprise servers.

One of the features which have been promised (but never really worked) since the release of the phone was the ability to connect to SIP servers or in more lay-terms, VOIP.

Well, with the latest Firmware update from Nokia, they’ve done it! I’ve now successfully registered my phone to both Vonage (using the Vonage softphone service) as well as Sipphones.

I can’t reccomend Sipphones, their service doesn’t seem to work with calling PSTN phones in North America (trouble ticket currently open) but Vonage works like a gem. Finally, I can do away with all the expensive long distance when I’m travelling and use Vonage, so long as there’s a WiFi access point nearby.

So what does all this mean? Cheap long distance while on the road! BTW – the phone itself is behind the NAT so a normal home connection with no tweaks to the firewall is okay to use.

[read more…]

aside 12 Jul

MP4 files from my P910

Okay, so I uninstalled QuickTime and now I want to play the MP4 files produced by my Sony Ericsson P910 phone… what a pain!

After scouring the Internet, I found a solution.

Use the MPEGAble DS Decoder. Okay, well not so easy – MPEGAble seems to have discontinued distribution of their products so you’ll have to rely on Google or some other source to get a download of the software.

Actually, it works out pretty good – Windows Media Player seems to show the MP4s better than Quicktime ever did.

Background: I couldn’t dis-associate iTunes with MP3 files so I gave up and removed all of Apple’s software from my computer. To hell with it. iTunes was installed with Quicktime so I killed the messenger too.

aside 19 Jan

Timewarp

It seems that I’ve been remiss in blogging but then again, according to Google, 119,000 other people have also been remiss in blogging, so where to start? I guess to start where I left off and see where it goes.

[read more…]

aside 9 Oct