Category: Gadgets

Local Report

local report: home
For those of you wondering what I have been up to for the past month or so, here is your answer: Called, Whitman Local Report, this is a performance piece utilizing mobile phones to create a montage of video “reports” and phone “reports” all in real time (live).
I created some custom software that runs on the phones (Nokia 6710’s) to shoot and automatically upload video from the participant’s phones (30 of them) and more software to playback the videos as they come in (with some controls for play, pause, stop, next and previous).
Hans, my technical collaborator, took care of setting up an Asterisk server and queue to receive the phone in reports and play those out as they came in.
We have one performance to go, please tune into the live stream, come to the live event or check it out afterwards. The previous 4 are available now if you would like a taste.

Here is some press that I just came across: Art and Innovation Collide

Nokia J2Me Issues *big issues*


Russell Beattie Notebook – Nokia 7650 J2ME Sockets Fun
Russell, thank you. You just saved me hours of trying to figure out why available() wasn’t ever returning anything other than 0.

I also want to point out that Nokia’s Java support while seemingly great from the outside is dismal once you get into it.

For instance, on my 7610, not only is the function you describe broken but so is the the vibra function in the Nokia UI (their own classes!) as well as the backlight functions.

I have been working on a project for weeks and still have mysterious *poofing* (the app just goes away, no exceptions, no nothing, just poof, gone, kaput) issues with no hope for resolution.

On top of that, I know I am using an older version of the firmware. Ok, how do I get that upgraded? If I was in Europe it seems everyone does it but in the US, nada.

Sad..

Finally, iSync with my Nokia 7610

Litux Wiki : HowToAddDevicesToTigerIsync
The above URL, while somewhat opaque was the key.
Essentially, iSync wasn’t working with my Nokia 7610 which it is supposed to. I recently upgraded to Mac OS Tiger which is purported to add support for this phone (and many others) but had no luck. iSync was saying that the device is unsupported.

After searching around and finding many blog entries which showed dismay over this vary subject I came upon the above Wiki entry.

Following it’s instructions, I realized the problem, Nokia is identifying the phone as “Nokia 7610b” instead of “Nokia 7610” which is what iSync is expecting.

In order to find this out, I had to download ZTermZTerm (which I haven’t used since 1996). Unfortunately, Z-Term was my last thought, after going through Fink and realizing that minicom just wouldn’t work (actually, wouldn’t install). And after pairing with the phone through the Bluetooth Setup Assistant I was able to connect to it as a modem and run the AT command “AT+CGMM” which returned “Nokia 7610b”.

I then edited the MetaClasses.plist file and changed the identifier for the Nokia 7610 to “Nokia+Nokia 7610b” and viola, everything was peachy.

Finally…! I can carry around my contacts, something I haven’t been able to do since my Palm died 2 years ago. Who would have guessed something so trivial would be so hard. I almost resorted to paper ;-)