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Smartphones – a good or a bad thing? http://www.businessweek.com/technology/the-smartphone-as-our-new-cigarette-08052011.html
I have to own up and say I find the smart phone I have addictive and sometimes a concerted effort is required to leave it turned off. Fortunately it can be programmed to turn itself off and on automatically so I make use of that function.
Its such an excellent gadget though - mobile access to websites can be an excellent way to kill waiting times. How many of you use a mobile to access social networking sites?
:bounce_fl12
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Four Things You Probably Don’t Know About Your Mobile Phone There are a few things that can be done in times of grave emergencies. Your mobile phone can actually be a life saver or an emergency tool for survival. Check out the things that you can do with it:
1. Emergencies:
The Emergency Number worldwide for Mobile is 112. If you find yourself out of the coverage area of your mobile; network and there is an emergency, dial 112 and the mobile will search any existing network to establish the emergency number for you, and interestingly this number 112 can be dialed even if the keypad is locked. Try it out.
2. Have you locked your keys in the car?
Does your car have remote keyless entry? This may come in handy someday. Good reason to own a cell phone: If you lock your keys in the car and the spare keys are at home, call someone at home on their mobile phone from your cell phone.
Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the mobile phone on their end. Your car will unlock. Saves someone from having to
drive your keys to you. Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles away, and if you can reach someone who has the other 'remote' for your car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk).
Editor's Note:
'It works fine! We tried it out and it unlocked our car over a mobile phone!'
3. Hidden Battery Power:
Imagine your mobile battery is very low. To activate, press the keys *3370# your mobile will restart with this reserve and the instrument will show a 50% increase in battery. This reserve will get charged when you charge your mobile next time.
4. How to disable a STOLEN mobile phone:
To check your Mobile phone's serial number, key in the following digits on your phone: * # 0 6 #
A 15 digit code will appear on the screen. This number is unique to your handset. Write it down and keep it somewhere safe. If your phone gets stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code. They will then be able to block your handset so even if the thief changes the SIM card, your phone will be totally useless. You probably won't get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever stole it can't use/sell it either. If everybody does this, there would be no point in people stealing mobile phones.12
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Phone Unlocking I'm trying to unlock (not unblock, it's all legal!) a Sony Ericsson k608i which is currently on T-Mobile, I have searched for a free method, but can't really find anything. Does anybody know of any sites that aren't going to scam me? There's loads offering their unlocking service, but apparently you need to be wary.
Or if anyone knows how to do it for free, that'd be even better.
UK : East : EE (BT) have deployed IPv6 on their LTE (4G) network this seems to be recent, last time I checked they were still on IPv4.
When I checked on RIPE.net a big IPv6 address appears rather than V4 and the hotspot I've created to connect my laptop to is all IPv6!
Wonder if its something to do with the plans to put all UK blue light services on EE instead of Airwave in a few years? I think IPv6 allows them to lock down every device on the network if they wish to its individual IP address as there would be so many NAT would no longer be required...
UK : East : Mobile phone from 1979 From BBC tech show "tomorrows world". The device is basically a cordless extension to a PABX (private phone system) using a modified VHF or UHF radio. It would then have been analogue and vulnerable to interception with radio scanners. Unfortunately it didn't take off because the govt didn't have any spare frequency allocations (the blue light services had whole chunks of VHF / UHF and what was left over was still NATO allocations due to the Cold War).
The research is being carried out at Marconi (then a promiment manufacture of civillian and defence comms equipment) under strict monitoring by Home Office/DTELS. The old style tape recorder is being used for evidence the transmissions were authorised, it is a Nagra 4 portable which will still set you back €600 today for a second hand model.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vix6TMnj9vY
Fixed my Nokia 930 :) It had locked up solid earlier in the year with a scary looking warning icon (see below) and all usual combinations of reset button presses didn't work for shit.
The volume up/down buttons were behaving strange as well - I feared it had landed on the deck at work one too many times and was kaputt (this is an occupational hazard with any mobile I get as I have to make test phone calls whilst checking phone circuits in the bowels of comms rooms and take pictures of equipment that regularly ends up installed in unusual and awkward locations)
I had a backup phone so I pulled the SIM and put the 930 aside but this was annoying as the camera on the other phone (a cheaper Windows phone) isn't half as good and it is slower - the Nokia 930 was also one of the last decent Nokia/Windows phones before MS decided to screw things up even more.
I find Android phones to be laggy (both the phone and the camera) as well as a privacy/security nightmare and can't afford an Iphone (they are also less physically robust)- a few years previously I've already managed to knacker a supposedly "indestructible" Android device!
I managed though to pop the back off the 930 to check if the plastic bit of the volume/up down buttons was not fouled by anything and correctly pressing on the miniature microswitches and then replace the cover (not so easy compared to other such devices as its not made to be easily removable) - plugged it into the charger (as the accu would of course be stone dead after 3 months not in use); this time round there was no lightning flash but an odd flashing pattern of the "home" icon at the bottom (perhaps signifying a hard reset) and then a message that it had no SIM but 112 calls would work; cancelling this came up with my normal set of icons..
So I put the SIM back in and everything seems to be working again raaa (was impressed that all my Microsoft Office 365 accounts for work just resynced automaticallly once I corrected the device time and date)
this is the error symbol I had on the phone before (not the actual phone, got this off a web search)
[IMG]https://www.partyvibe.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=155422&d=1470774493[/IMG]
haven't had the chance to properly test the camera with "prettier" pictures as it is already dark and I this was the first thing I could find to photograph but it seems to be working well :)
Caller ID signalling on Nokia GSM terminal This time I've got the adapter connected to both a 1988 BT Tribune analogue telephone set and a Tempo test set (the same ones that BT Openreach have. These test sets can monitor the line without seizing it (or anyone being aware you are doing so!)
Listen between the first and second ring; the noise that sounds like an old modem (it is indeed the same signalling) contains the caller ID info in ETSI format. A phone with CLID display (or other suitable equipment) can decode the incoming number from this and process it as required.
BTW the particular number I has already been shown online I've even put it up in full clear text on more than one site and its surprising how little spam I get to it - that does make me think the spammers have lists of what are higher value customers and only bother with those...
TBH if anyone actually manages to decode it from the FSK in the recording and send me a text I'd be quite impressed...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsArTlhziAs
Testing an "old" Nokia GSM terminal adapter with external power I plan to eventually run this from a protected power supply (with some sort of accu) so it would still work in a power failure (provided of course the GSM network stays running). I recovered it from an old installation a couple of years ago and managed to reprogram it to work with the rest of my phone system but as supplied it has this bizzare 6,7 volt PSU which I've never seen elsewhere and the official way of supplying it with ext power requires a special header cable and software which are no longer available as its 15 years old and Microsoft have simply abandoned support of it.
it connects to a normal analogue phone (I am playing oompah music down the analogue phone so there is some audio traffic being transmitted)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPZ2O9p5-cc
Iphones, other IOS devices crashed by text message bug Although this only affects users who are not just multicultural but understand enough of a text in Chinese or Arabic characters to want to read it; that is a large part of the world and its a worrying enough bug...
iPhone text crash bug hits Twitter and Snapchat | Technology | The Guardian
Pager/semafoon-test (en het Dunglish) :D For those who are younger than about 30, a pager is a small portable mobile device (smaller than many smartphones but bulkier) that (at least these days) has a display capable of displaying either just numbers or a text message. They are usually receive only; the message often contains a telephone number to call or instructs the recipient to take some action or be aware of something important. They started being used in Europe around 1970s (originally they just made a noise like a bleep) -in December 1975 the British Post Office boffins who had just moved to Adastral Park near Ipswich (not too far away from me) perfected a standard protocol for sending pager messages over radio that engineers at Koninklijke Philips Telecommunicatie in NL were also working on. (until 1990s Philips made a lot of equipment for the Post Office and later British Telecom).
This protocol is often still called POCSAG (Post Office Standards Coding Advisory Group) and works well when there is a lot of other radio interference.
Pagers are still widely used in ICT and healthcare; staff are often forbidden from carrying their personal GSM phones in some areas and much IT and telecoms equipment is often in places below ground level where the mobile signal can be non existent. There are national networks on VHF frequencies, it is also possible to install your own site system on a UHF frequency provided you get a Communications Ministry license. Messages are not private; anyone with a radio scanner or USB receiver can download software to decode them (although for a site system they would need to be in range of the transmitter) - but the system is way more reliable than SMS or anything else (its often used to alert engineers of system problems or hackers with big corporate computer servers).
I am currently setting up an onsite system for a site at work (it worked out cheaper and less hassle than trying to get the DECT phones to display messges as we use a mixture of analogue and digital base stations as well as different types of handset). The transmitter is British made (just outside London; coincidentally not too far away from the pirate station I was on!) It was even delivered ahead of schedule; even the Ofcom license arrived by email as soon as I had paid the £75 (although they did send the first email to a different site where the finances are handled and filling in their app form took 3 tries as I had to check the exact grid reference with a GPS (the signal isn't always strong and by the time I'd got the grid ref the form had timed out and I had to start all over again).
At some random time on Thursday evening I tested the transmitter. The license comes with a strong warning not to use the system to send "misleading messages" which is fair enough; I was running the full 2 watts allowed by the license to an antenna which is facing open countryside - the signal could easily go 5 km or more, and these frequencies are shared with other users. If I sent messages like "Pls call Ahmed on Ext 222" there might even be a dude called Ahmed with a similar pager (whose job it is to fix any telecoms/networking kit that is playing up) who gets this message which wouldn't be fair on him.
I therefore sent something so random that no one else could get it mixed up with their own comms (even if it might confuse them) and references POCSAG being perfected by both UK and NL. The messages do have some relevance to where I was in the building, and each "miauw" tests what other characters can be sent. To connect remotely to the serial link on another PC I had to use an old netbook on a WLAN which doesn't work well in less than ideal signal areas, and cheap ISP-supplied routers in neighbouring buildings were increasing the interference (which is why organisations are going back to using pagers in the first place...).
I wouldn't be surprised if NSA would try and contact Agentschap Telecom and BNetzA first to get it "translated" and try to send them on a wild goose chase around Sizewell, in spite of this TX being 30km the other side of there and me telling Ofcom exactly where it is situated :D
(QRT means that I am switching off the TX until next time it is required; it will eventually be sending more sensible messages at the lowest power that works well...)
UK : strange SIM behaviour As my dual SIM Android phone is playing up (the screen lock/power button is not working; I suspect this is repairable but its a really fiddly thing to deal with) I put the giffgaff SIM into an old Sony Ericsson K800i (which TBH is more usable and reliable than many new smartphones).
And this happened I wouldn't usually set my phone menus into German (it is more difficult than Dutch); and it is clearly picking up the default language from the SIM card :crazy_diz.
Not a disaster as I can still understand it and I wanted to improve my German anyway (the phone still has a UK dialplan, call rates etc) but a strange thing for the mobile company to do! Furthermore, this SIM had already been activated and used in other devices and not shown German menus. Maybe the marketing bosses genuinely think "anyone who would keeps putting those SIMS into such obsolete kit (that everyone else would have put into the WEEE container or sent off to be sold in some African countries) has to be some sort of "German" :laugh_at:
Got serial comms on the Nokia terminal adapter working :) I had to solder a fully wired RS232 cable (all 9 pins connected) with flow control, not done that since 1990s
then had a false start as my USB to RS232 adapter was playing upHad to I knew it made some sense recovering the 1990s era laptop from work -(amazingly the main accu still holds charge). I still get a stray ü on the link but have sent text with is:)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4VKpWgdRl0
Save ya bloody money I was unfortunate enough to own a Sony Xperia J. Its the worst phone on sale in the UK, Sony themselves have admitted it was faulty when they released it, refused to refund or repair handsets, then decided to stop ALL updates and firmware support.
I have had enough of mobile phones, they're all shite and a waste of money.
SONY CAN GO FUCK THEMSELVES.
