For those who need Privacy

Often we feel to have a little privacy when we browse the web. The trackers, meters etc are peeping into our web habits. Do you ever feel to deceive them ? There are tools and technology available in the Internet that help to achieve your requirement. The website by Steve Gibson grc.com analyzes the merits and demerits of these techniques.

Though the technique bypasses the restricting proxies, I would rather advise the users not to break any restrictions enforced by your ISPs.

This post is targeting the users of  Free and Unrestricted Internet only.

Stream your Video/MP3 to your Phone

We don’t have enough space in our Phone memory to watch a movie, that too an Indian movie which runs over 2 hours. And when I am fortunate enough to have a WiFi hotspot in a public park, why can’t I try to watch the movie from open air ? If I copy the movies to my miniSD and try to watch ‘em , I might lose access to some of my favorite applications which run on the Card Memory.

So, to get the best of both the worlds, I tried to stream Video from my Home PC. Got the opensource Darwin Streaming Server, followed the instructions, “hinted” the movie using MP4Box, and “served” ! Oh yeah, then I’m using DynDNS to get a fixed public address for my Dynamic IP. My router is capable to doing this job.

From the Gallery of the phone, a new streaming link was added pointing to the media server. Yes, it worked instantly ! The movie played thru the Real Player. But alas! then my battery was drained before the movie finished. I had to attend some support calls in between !

If you are not interested in fiddling with DSS, try Orb. They are very good folks ! You can even tune your remote television over the Internet using your Phone. I couldn’t test it yet.

Now what you’ll need to stream your MP3 files to your phone. Darwin will help you here also. And Nokia also provides an Internet Radio client for N80 as an optional download from their OpenSource site. You can run your own TV station and Radio station using Darwin and using your phone you can view these channels !

WLAN Errors

When we search for access points we are able to see “Open” networks. But when we try to connect to Internet we often get errors.

1. No Gateway Error : This is the most common one. There are many reasons for this. One of them being poor signal strength. But the main reason is the “poorly” configured router . If the router doesn’t provide DHCP, we’ll surely get this error. We have to manually configure the IP address, gateway, DNS, proxy (if any) to establish a proper connection to the Internet. Another reason, being there is NO internet connection in the network (it may be a corporate LAN).

2.Cannot find WLAN network: If you get this error when you try to establish a connection with an access point having a good signal strength, you can assume it is a MAC filtered network. No need to waste time around it !

N80 as a Workgroup Computer

Nokia described N80 as a Multimedia Computer, not a Phone ! So when I got mine, I tried to add it to my network.

I tried Bluetooth and WLAN. It was nowhere near matching the description. I could access some drives of the phone through Bluetooth , but not vice versa.

Using UPnP + WLAN I could access the media files in my PC . This was better experience. But it required a HomeServer in my PC. I was able to stream the music in my phone to the PC and was able to control the playlist of my PC through my phone. This was better. I am also able to watch streaming movies and music on my phone, whether the server is my PC or anyother one in the Internet , thanks to the Orb Service.

All these were possible without adding any other third party software in the Phone. But I was not happy. I wanted more. I wanted to share my files and read the files from other computers , just like we do in Windows Peer to Peer networking.

Now I heard about SymSmb from Telexy and installed their Ver.1.1. This version allows me to share the drives on my phone to anyone in the network. So without any cable and bluetooth, and UPnP, I was able to share my drives to my PC. And I hear the new version is around the corner, which will allow me to view the shares on my PC in my phone. So I can watch the movie stored in my PC from my backyard using WLAN. Simply great it would be. The developers are kind enough to give away the new version free as upgrade ! And for just $6 it’s a bargain !

VoIP is here

Many of us are fortunate to have a WLAN broadband connection at our home and office. And we use some desktop softphones to communicate with our buddies and pals. Though we might feel great initially, later we feel like working in a Call Center and the enthusiasm dies.

But yes, there are “hardware” USB “phones” that saves us from this. We can feel like talking from a real telephone and enjoy talking.

What if we can get the same functionality from our Mobile Phones ? It’ll be simply the best. We can have both the worlds together in this tiny device. Yes, now it is possible to use VoIP from many phones with no lag, no echo etc.

The one phone I use is Nokia N80 Internet Edition. Together with an excellent service from Truphone, now I can call my friends and relatives at USA and UK for no cost. Also I can reach my Gmail buddies very easily. There are lot of other great SIP providers too, namely SipPhone aka Gizmo, Sipgate, VoIPUser, VoIPCheap etc.

The settings are pretty straight forward. And calling a contact cannot be more realistic. Just dial their sip number or telephone number ! That’s all.

Now I can’t think about a phone without WLAN and SIP.

Perhaps I won’t need a PDA either.

A blog to share some technics

Yet another blog, just to share some techniques. Some posts may be written in Malayalam too.