Make some money developing for (your) phone.

If you know Java Script (I don’t) and have some experience developing for the web (I don’t) and fancy a bit of fame (I don’t?) and money (I don’t??) then get yourself over to http://developer.palm.com/

Click on Building you first app “Learn more” then “Install the webOS SDK” then go back and follow the Hello World app. The SDK includes an emulator so you don’t need a phone (yet - see below).

To do clever stuff you’ll really need to know the webOS as well as Java Script - you may need to buy a book but you can find a lot of info with google! Basically the Palm runs java script but exposes it’s API so you can make a lot of other calls as well.

Before you invest hours writing the app that will make your fortune though have a look at
http://developer.palm.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1840&Itemid=34
to tell you what is involved in publishing it.

And if you are serious, register as a developer and look through what you need to submit an app. (submit a dummy one and then remove it?). They want company names, tax details, support emails and web sites and the app must be tested on actual hardware so just using the emulator isn’t enough for submission.

Anyway, for now at least, registration as a developer is free (future costs of $99?) and publishing your app is free (was $50 for a chargeable app, free for open source) and money apart how cool would it be to see your app on peoples phones?

I’ve been told that hackers can redirect a tab that has been left open so that although you navigate to a valid page, if you then switch tabs for a while and then go back and enter (say) your bank details the page is no longer the valid one and you’ve been scammed.

Sounds a bit far fetched but I haven’t seen any “it’s a hoax” information either - not on here or on snopes which is my usual first port of call when “I don’t believe it!”

Do your own search or check out http://www.techwatch.co.uk/2010/06/10/tab-napping-the-new-kind-of-phishing/

Back at http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/davef/2010/01/08/free-songs/
I was enthusing about capturing streamed audio. Seems I’m not the only one to see this as a good way to “acquire” music.

Roxio have just spammed me with:

“Capture free, high-quality digital music from the Internet
There are millions of great music tracks available to play for free from Internet music sites, Creator 2010 makes it easy to capture1 hi-quality streaming Internet audio, to add to your music library, burn onto CD and DVD, and convert to enjoy on iPod or other music players.”

I’ll stick with free Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ but Roxio are here http://www.roxio.com/ if you want to spend money.

As an avid reader and an addictive collector running out of shelf space (again) I was attracted to

http://www.readitswapit.co.uk/Questions.aspx?Section=Swappingbooks

Anyone tried it?

You know me - or maybe you don’t, that is the nature of a blog - but anyone who does would know I’m fond of free stuff, love music and quite like gadgets. So,
http://software.aziraphal.com/Metronome.php is a site that make me very happy. A free metronome for any Java phone. A metronome is really useful tool for practising and should be to hand for professional musicians / serious students.

I have an old wind up proper soothing tick-tock job but modern ones run can be set for different tones on different beats and anyway my phone is more likely to be to hand than the metronome is - and weirdly enough the phone is smaller and easier to carry.

If you do any music and have a Java phone you should go get a copy. The guy who wrote it seems a nice chap too - he did say it should work everywhere (in theory) but unfortunately in most cases it’s not very reliable (especially on newer phones where J2ME is almost obsolete and not implemented very well) but I have had no problems just playing system sounds or beeps - midi and wav’s did cause a crash that meant a battery removal reset but I just avoid them now.

The author did give me some more feedback:
It works decent enough on older Nokia’s (most people who let me use their phones for testing had Nokias) that have built-in J2ME MIDP2 java support (as opposed to a client inside Symbian or some other “modern” OS) and was actually usable at slower BPM’s. Judging by some online reviews it was most disappointing to Blackberry owners.

Finally, although it is free it is described as albumware - if you like the tool the author asks you to listen to (and I guess potentially buy) some of his music. A whole new marketing ploy to me and although I probably won’t buy any as it’s not my cup of tea I enjoyed a listen!

I’ve just bought a new mobile, I’ve never really got into mobile phones - they cost too much to do anything useful with apart from make calls. However, Tesco have an offer of 1000 club card points on every Tesco mobile phone. As 1000 points can net you £40 worth of tokens spending £15 on a phone seems a good idea. In fact I splashed out on a Samsung m150 at an enormous £25 (with 20p PAYG credit on it). I figured the extra tenner was worth paying for the camera, MP3 player, bluetooth and other goodies.

However, I can’t get the bluetooth to sync with Samsung’s PC Studio - it says try a new version but the update always fails to find the site

The bluetooth works as I’ve copied (using XP) some MP3’s on. I say “some”, with 20M memory and no support for an extra card you’re quite a lot short of a full album!

And now I can’t collect my emails. I created and tested (with OutlookExpress) an account on my server and on the phone I’ve set up a profile:

APN prepay.tescomobile.com (I thought it should be tesco-mobile but that gave DNS errors) tescowap / password 4.2.2.1 and 8.8.8.8 as DNS’s

and an account:

pop3 to my server though I can’t decide if it should be pop3.myserver.co.uk or just myserver.co.uk (OE just wants myserver.co.uk) The other thing I dither on is whether the account is mymobile@myserver.co.uk or just mymobile (OE wants mymobile@myserver.co.uk)

Anyway all I get is Email network fail.

If anyone has any hints feel free to comment. NB “buy an iphone” isn’t an acceptable comment unless you have on a low tariff PAYG for less than £25 - considering the M150 was effectively -£15 I’m not sure I want to pay £25!

I can update this, I changed the APN  to tescomobile222 and I get the same message - looks like my logon to tesco’s net is wrong…

I had a free month on Sky Songs ( http://songs.sky.com/ ) which was cool as basic membership allows download of an album a month as much streaming as you want.

With something like audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) you can record all streamed audio. I used to use Total Recorder ( http://www.highcriteria.com/) for that kind of thing but since I trashed and re-installed my PC I thought I try something new. My Total Record subscription was so old it was only valid for an ancient version (which never had a good MP3 output, I used to output to WAV and then convert later). Total Recorder was good as it lifted the commands from the sound card, audacity seems to record from the output of the sound card with a loss of quality and the added burden of having to set the sound levels right.

I used audacity to record a couple of old Christmas LP’s from vinyl. Using the latest beta I was able to use plug-ins to find silences and split albums into tracks, the labels can be exported to a text file and simply edited to correct names via cut and paste. The only short coming here was I used my laptop which doesn’t appear to have a line in socket - I used the mic which is (unsurprisingly) mono.

Of course I am not condoning stealing of copyrighted music - I think I am entitled to take a copy of my own LP’s! Recording from sky songs (or WE 7 which is free if you can tolerate the adverts) would I guess be illegal. However, it is a similar procedure to recording “pick of the pops” onto cassette (or reel to reel tape in my youth) - with the great advantage of being able to request what is played, not just waiting for Alan Freeman to get round to playing it. I doubt recording streaming audio would appeal to today’s youth as it is a bit fiddley, takes too much time and the results are less than a digitally perfect copy. You have to record in real time after you have tried a few levels and then mark out tracks and export to MP3, maybe an hour an half for a CD. Hardly the easy download - although for a single track it would be easier.

Although it is the best time to sell things, Christmas is an irritating time to be an Amazon Marketplace Seller. I like amazon market place because you don’t have to take pictures and write long descriptions, if you have a book / CD / DVD / … to sell just look if Amazon list it and then just click “sell yours” and put in a one line description of the condition. Easy.

However, at this time of year, just as you breathe sigh that you’ll won’t see the inside of a post office until next year the usual “oo nice” reaction to the “You’ve sold something on Amazon” e-mail becomes a “oo ****”. Ungrateful? Indeed. If you really can’t face the PO again just click on your “holiday settings” and say you’re away. I, obviously, am too mean to turn down the odd £2 from a sale.

I’d be interested to hear from other Amazon sellers as in the last two weeks I have sold four items, unfortunately three of them were sold earlier in the year. For the first item I wasted hours looking for it before finally checking email history and finding it already sold. After that I was a bit quicker to check mails. I don’t know if I inadvertently listed them twice or if Amazon messed up (I suspect the latter!).  Anyway, I’ve had to send grovelling mails and cancel the sales - a pain for the buyer if they are ordering stuff to be delivered for Christmas. I know that because stuff I have ordered from amazon sellers came back with a “no inventory, order cancelled” and that was for something I need in time to deliver for Christmas.