My worst camera.... ever

Nikon S210. This is my worst camera... ever. Bought for the last family Christmas holidays in HK and China, and subsequently the Chinese Lunar New Year holidays. What image  stabilization? More like purpose built to shake your picture taking. Incredibly lousy pictures. It is now in the house.. next to the kid's barbie camera where it belongs. Even my N95 8g took much much better pictures than this camera. Deciding to get another camera now, absolutely never ever going to get a Nikon again. 

HTC Cruise 2009 - Footprints > I found the photos!!

The HTC Cruise 2009 Footprints geo-tagging function/software is really cool. But with one downside, you cannot readily download the photos. They allow you to export the to a single *.fdb file which is impossible to open. After much searching, found the jpgs all hidden in your device storage \application data\HTC\HTC Footprint\thumbnails. One problem though, the footprints camera seems to be of low quality and there are no options to adjust the camera settings.. I can foresee this software slowly taking a backseat in my usage.

Nokia Messaging

Finally, after wondering why they ditched blackberry on the E series phones, Nokia has launched the Nokia Messaging service. After 1 month of testing, its good!! I am definitely liking it a lot. It is very usable and customizable. Only ONE BIG PROBLEM. When you compose, reply emails, the font suddenly becomes super duper small. I just cannot understand this. Other than this, I think its a great software. But meanwhile, I will stick with my new HTC for a while. The ability to manipulate font size on the front dial buttons means a lot to a guy whose eyesight is approaching middle age.

Spring in Shanghai

Amidst the smog and pollution, spring has arrived in Shanghai. Nice flowers and green leaves all around. But the traffic is still so bad.

China Mobile Data

Sigh! Can't read Chinese but I found out you can subcribe for 120mb data per month for RMB 5 by sending an SMS gprs5 to 10086. But its only for CMWAP and via a WAP proxy server. If you want to use the full fledged CMNET service, you still gotta pay as per use. However if you subcribe to the RMB 5 per month CMWAP package, when you use CMNET, you will only get charged RMB 1 per 1 mb per day. If you don't subscribe to the CMWAP package, then its a minimum of RMB 2 per day each time you connect to the internet.

The problem is the GMAIL applet works on CMWAP, but the new Nokia Messaging and the phone email client doesnt work on CMWAP. Only works on CMNET. Operamini works on CMWAP. Gotta to do some serious Baidu searching and translation to find out more!

Update - Finally send sms blgprs to 10086, and they returned with this -

1）CMWAP月使用流量在30MB内建议使用5元月套餐，办理回复GPRS5；

2）CMWAP月使用流量在150MB内建议使用20元月套餐，办理回复 GPRS20；

3）CMWAP月使用流量在500MB内建议使用50元月套餐，办理回复GPRS50；

4）CMNET/CMWAP月使用流量在1G内建议 使用100元月套餐，办理回复GPRS100；

5）CMNET/CMWAP月使用流量在2G内建议使用200元月套餐，办理回复GPRS200。如需了解 GPRS套餐内容，请回复CXGPRS

Basically it means that CMNET is only available for package deals RMB 100 and above. And this applies only for Guangdong China Mobile, which means I have to pay separately if I am using in another province. Gonna try it out and see how it goes.

Ditched my Nokia 5800

Although I was the early adopter/buyer of this phone. Kept it for only 2-3 months. Used for less than a week. Somehow it doesnt really attract me. The functionality remains largely the same as my E71 and N95 8g. Software support seems to be slowly trickling out. Didnt like the touchscreen and the software plus usability was not good enough to offset the lack of a keypad. Traded in the phone for my spanking new HTC Cruise 2009. After weaning myself of Winmob for 2 years, I am beginning to like it again. Maybe the Touch Pro 2?..... The only thing I liked about the 5800 is the phone stand, which I kept..

Belgium - March 2009

Yahoo!! Managed to get a company trip to Belgium!! The flight was a killer though. HK to Frankfurt and then Brussels. Nice cold weather. Quaint houses and nice scenery. Unfortunately my companions have no stomach for western food, so we had to have crappy Chinese food (as in crappy in Europe) every day.

My new HTC Cruise 2009

Was looking at the HTC Touch HD, liked the big screen. But at the shop, ended up with a brand new HTC Cruise 2009. Needed the winmob OS to run some language software. Winmob has progresses significantly from the last time I used it, like 2 years ago. You had to install all the software into it. Basically I can use this phone straight from the box. And the best thing is I can hook up with Goosync and Google Sync for my calendar and contacts. Everythings nice at the moment.

Was searching to swap the hot buttons, finally found a nice software AEBplus to do it. Had to tweak the registry a bit HKEYLOCALMACHINE\software\app\papagox3\ModuleName (deleted this). Then reassign the hot button via AEBplus. If you dont delete this file, then pressing the button opens up both original and new program.

Got a nice software NaviOne to replace PapagoX3 for China maps. The Papago maps are extremely limited.