blog @ anarchius.org

If you are like me, capacity constraints have a tendency of sneaking up on you. And when they do, suddenly everything you do is hamstrung by the capacity limit you never even knew existed. Ignorance in this case, seldom is bliss. The same happened with my Nokia 5800, which led to this post.

The Nokia 5800 comes with two storage options - the C drive (Phone memory) and the E drive (Memory card). The Memory card is the bigger storage, and Nokia bundles in an 8GB card with the phone. The problem however is the C drive or the phone memory. A fresh install will give you a tad more than 80MB, but you seldom get that in actual usage. Which is what makes it crucial to maximize the amount of phone memory you have to ensure the device does not let you down when you need it the most. Here are a few things you could do to make sure you have the most memory available on the phone.

• Install new applications on the Memory card: Fairly obvious, but as you get and install new applications on the phone, choose "E: Memory card" during installation. There are of course some applications (mostly from Nokia) that don't play nice and do not let you choose. Nothing much you can do there, other than to see if you can live without them.
• Remove any applications installed on Phone memory: Go to the application manager in the phone settings at Settings > Application mgr. > Installed apps. Applications installed on the Phone do not have SD card icon next to the application. Make sure you have the installable of the application handy before you uninstall it by choosing Options > Uninstall > Yes. Of course, there will always be some applications and components that need to be installed directly on the Phone and cannot be installed on the memory card.
• Delete the emails content from the Messaging client: If you are using the standard messaging client (The one that does both SMS and email) for email, then deleting the emails (and attachments) will free up some memory. Go to any of the email folders setup in the phone and do Options > Delete > Phone Only > OK. This will leave the headers in the phone but delete the email content to free up space.
• Delete unused mailboxes from Messaging: If there are email accounts setup that you do not want to use anymore, delete them by going to the Messaging application and Options > Settings > Email > Mailboxes, select the Mailbox you want to delete and click Options > Delete > Yes.
• Change default Messaging drive: You can also configure the standard messaging client to store data on the memory card instead of the phone memory. To do this go to the Message client and do Options > Settings > Other > Memory In Use, and select "E: Memory card".
• Reconfigure mailboxes on Nokia Messaging: You can reconfigure your mailboxes to manage the amount of data in the phone. Go to email.nokia.com, to choose which folders are synced with the phone. In the section "My email addresses" click on the link "Edit settings". In the section " Mail folders to sync" un-check the folders you do not want to access from your phone. To make sure that the phone is updated, open the Nokia Messaging application (This is different from the regular Messaging application with an icon that looks like the @ sign). Go to Options > Tools > Settings, and click the General Tab > Reset data. This re-loads all data in the email, but without the folders you have un-checked previously. Of course be warned that this make take a while.
• Configure Ovi Store to install on the Memory card: You can configure Ovi Store to install directly to the Memory card. Open the application and go to Options > Account > Settings > Installation Preferences, to set it to the Memory card.
• Clear downloads folder: Your download folders is probably set up on the memory card. Then it is not going to impact your Phone memory, but in the event that is not the case, make it a practice to delete the downloads as soon as you are done using them. Go to the standard File Mgr and go to C: Phone memory > download, select the downloaded files and delete them.
• Delete temporary & cache folders: You will need to download & install an alternate file manager like the Y-browser to do this. Once you have it installed you should be able to see and delete the following folders. C:\System\cache (This is the browser caches), C:\System\dmgr (This is where temporary files are stored by the browser). Both folders will be recreated the next time you start the phone browser. Next drop into the two temporary file locations C:\System\temp & C:\temp and delete any files you see in there.
• Clear Google Maps cache: Google maps downloads and stores a bit of data on your phone, depending on how much you use it. To reset the data cache in Google maps, start the application and go to Options > Tools > Reset, to get back some of that.
• Do a hard reset of the phone: This is a drastic step, probably not something you want to do unless the situation is dire and none of the steps above have helped. The site allaboutsymbian.com has a guide to perform a hard reset - follow it and good luck.

And that hopefully should get you some space back on your Phone memory, as it did mine.

Labels: 5800, gadgets, nokia, tools

There is always a phone, that comes out a little after you buy your own phone that makes you regret your own purchase. It is but a fact of modern life. Looks like this is the phone that is going to do that to me :).

An interesting piece produced by NPR about the change in the portrayal of the NRI (Non-Resident Indian) over the ages in the Indian Cinema. An interview with WNYC Reporter Arun Venugopal.

Love the ability to embed NPR content.

Labels: news, NPR

The third milestone in my love for mobile connectivity, happened shortly after I bought my second phone. It was work that demanded I have no personal time and took steps to get me a Blackberry.

The Blackberry turned out to be a very different being, in comparison with my current phones. Everything about it screamed business - no frills; just a steady solid performer. It had everything I wanted to get work done, nothing that would make me buy one for myself. But it was the company that was paying for it, so my decision making process consisted of little more than asking a colleague which handset he recommended.

Thus I came to be in possession of my new Blackberry Bold. The feature list was pretty impressive, not to mention a paid for, always online 3G connectivity. Completing my enterprise activation was a breeze, and within time I had replicated my email and calendar on the perfectly usable mobile device.

The keyboard took a little getting used to. Realizing the power of being fully connected took a bit longer. But somewhere between checking the location of my next meeting without needing my laptop and being able to reply to quick emails at the extremes of each day, I realized something strange - I was no longer fascinated by the new device. In comparison with the time I spent configuring and personalizing my earlier phones - the customizations to my Blackberry were close to nil.

At the beginning I attributed this to my trivial approach to selecting it. But that wasn't it. What had changed was me and my attitude towards connectivity. Full mobile capability had quickly become a means to an end. With abundance came transparency - the Blackberry bold held little fascination beyond the emails it carried and the meetings it reminded me of.

I was no longer a connectivity virgin.

Labels: communication, mobile, opinion

So, after about 5 years the phone - which was probably pretty advanced at the time of its purchase - was woefully antiquated. Not to mention the rough and tumble of time severely tested the paint, plastic and the buttons on the phone. It was time to get into the market for a new phone - and boy was it a revelation. All the time that I had not really paid attention to phone market, a number of new things happened - including the iPhone. But eventually I settled on my new Nokia 5800.

As I worked through the pros and cons of the phone, what struck me most was the extent to which my wants and needs from a phone had changed in the last five years. WAP an not an acceptable speed to browse. Browsing websites no longer meant struggling through text extracted by a lynx-lookalike; full color depiction of sites was expected. Email on phone completed with regular desktop clients in terms of capabilities and features. And having an always accessible device meant newer and more powerful applications. But instead of being overwhelmed, a missing accelerometer could be the reasons for rejecting a phone.

Beyond the physical capabilities, what struck me most was the ability to stay fully connected all the time. As soon as I acquired my phone, I linked my personal email accounts to the built-in email client, linked it up to my WiFi and was catching up on email with friends. The fact that this phone was able to connect to a wireless network, which about a couple of years ago, I couldn't find enough desktop software to support was mind-blowing. In addition, the phone also came with an in-built Global Positioning chip that spoke directly to satellites tearing across space fourteen thousand kilometers away.

And the thing weighed a tad more than a hundred grams or three and a half ounces.

The first mobile phone weighed in at 28 ounces, not including its antenna and only barely made phone calls.

In my mind this was my second generation of the mobile phone. My first phone showed me how to make phone calls, and use a smattering of other services. This one however was a more mature attempt at connectivity. However, I hadn't signed up for the ultimate of connectivity - an always-on network connection. And that would by the third time charm.

Labels: communication, mobile, opinion

My first phone was bought back in late 2003. It was a Sony Ericsson T610. I remember this clearly, because I was among the last of my friends to purchase a phone. By the time we joined the productive workforce, mobile phones were no longer a luxury. Handset prices had been relentlessly pushed down by the glut of companies in the market, which was almost matched by the competition among the service providers. Before long, pretty much everyone I knew had a phone. And it became not only a connectivity imperative among friends, but became a requirement to keep in touch with team-mates and other business colleagues.

Everybody seemed to be doing it - so I held off - for seemed like eternity at the time, but was only about 9 months. Eventually I caved in. And when I went for a phone, I wanted to take one that had as many features as possible.

The T610 was pretty good for the time - It came with a tiny browser that you could use with WAP to trudge along the information superhighways. It ran JAVA applets - which was absolutely mind-blowing for me (and eventually led to the simple understanding that the phone was nothing more than a different avatar of the computer). And it came with a tiny camera that took 320 by 240 grainy excuses for pictures.

But I was ecstatic. I used every excuse to go online and check movie timings, even if no one else seemed remotely interested in going to a movie. I photographed and cataloged various events of my daily life now that I had a camera always at hand. I used an open source program to connect the phone to my laptop and use it as a mobile router (on WAP). I bought a terminator dongle online to flash the phone to the latest firmware (something that was pretty difficult at the time, requiring special hardware - the aforementioned termninator dongle). I backed up the files, restored them, backed them up again. I built by own ringtone (from the soundtrack of the game Blood)

Looking back, the phone did not do much, but it seemed at the time there was no limits to its capabilities. As it trudged along on WAP, I never stopped being amazed that the phone talked the same networking language as the old world mainframe behemoths - TCP/IP. When it took those tiny, barely recognizable pictures using the built-in camera, it always surprised me that they managed to squeeze a camera in there. I never saw it as the little engine that could, but I was pleasantly surprised that there was an engine in there to begin with.

I ended up using the phone for about 5 years. In the time I traveled across the globe; changed phone numbers at least 5 times; switched SIM cards every few months and generally pushed it beyond its limits. Eventually it's joystick started to give way, a few buttons began developing tantrums and no amount of dis-assembly to clean it helped. It was time for a change.

Labels: communication, mobile, opinion

I normally am not much of a pointing-out-mistakes kind of guy. But I figure, it is not that bad if it includes a bit of humor.

So this other day I was looking up cable companies in Wisconsin. This site helpfully popped up claiming to tell me why cable was better, by pointing out the differences between cable and the dish. Which it did, helpfully pointing out that the cable is quite indiscreet.

I am sure they were thinking discreet, but unfortunately they let the cat out of the bag instead.

Labels: humor, language