Windows Phone 8, Sky Drive and getting your photos back !

I've a nice new Windows Phone 8 Nokia 920. Another family member has a Windows Phone 7.5 Nokia 800.

In both cases the most convenient way of interacting with files on the phone on a day to day basis is Sky Drive. The Windows Phone 8 device will mount like a USB drive, the Windows Phone 7.5 device needs "Zune". The last thing I wanted to install was another iTunes like program on my Windows 7 desktop.

So... from a quick Google it appeared possible to map Sky Drive as a drive under Windows 7 but not massively easy.

I tried the "recommended method" which (summarised from the Microsoft website) is:

1. Right-click Computer.
2. Select Map Network Drive from the resulting menu.
3. Use the Drive dropdown to select the desired Drive letter.
4. In the Folder textbox, input
\\docs.live.net@SSL\your_skydrive_id_number\^2Documents
 Where your_skydrive_id_number is the ID number you copied back in step 2. This will map the drive to your My Documents folder on SkyDrive.
To map the drive to your Public folder, use
\\docs.live.net@SSL\your_skydrive_number\^2Public
5. Click the Finish button.
6. After a few seconds, Windows will ask you for your credentials, input your SkyDrive username and password, click the Remember my credentials checkbox and click the OK button.

The skydrive ID is a long random number like 0009FEEE3C3DF71D

This didn't work for me.

What did work was the following (lifted from a comment on the Microsoft Website):

Go into your SkyDrive online.  If needed create a dummy Excel document on the PC and upload it to SkyDrive. Select the Excel document you have uploaded and click the "Open in Excel" Link to the left. 

Once it's open in Excel, click on the Windows button on the top right and put your mouse on the most recent document opened.  It will show a web address, like https://d.docs.live.net/yourIDhere/^.Documents - write this down. 

(the yourIDhere is replaced by the long random number as above)

Go to the Windows button on the bottom left of your computer, right click "My Computer" and click "map network drive".  Then click the link that says "Connect to a website where you can store your documents and pictures" then click "next", then select a Custom Network, and "next".  At the next screen type in the address you wrote down. 

You're done, it shows up as a folder under My Computer!! 

It's much faster than Mapping an actual drive!

Bluetooth tethering an iPad to a Sony Phone (k530)

I'm getting older and so I fancied moving up from an iPod touch to an iPad Mini.

Most use will be at home but occasionally I'll take it away from home. Then I'll need some sort of Internet connection.

The cheapest version of the iPad mini is WiFi only but it will tether (via WiFi or Bluetooth to an iPhone - if your carrier supports it), however the carriers and Apple saw a way of getting more money from the customer and so this tends to be a "premium" feature at extra cost.

However, in the darker corners of the Internet, there have been suggestions that you can tether to other devices, I tried this with my Sony Ericsson k530i (a "featurephone" which is about 5 years old).

It works !

How I did it is as follows.

1) I turned on Bluetooth on the Sony phone.
2) I turned off WiFi on the iPad.
3) I paired the iPad and the phone (from the iPad).
4) Once this seems set up I needed to put the iPad to sleep (I suspect to clear the network from looking at the WiFi).
5) I woke up the iPad and opened Safari.
6) I set the iPad as "authorised" to connect to the Internet on the Sony phone (this avoids frequent connection messages).
7) It all seems to work.

Hope this helps. If you do find this of use then please leave a comment.

Yahoo settings for yahoo.co.uk e-mail addresses

To get my Yahoo (yahoo.co.uk) mail to work on k9 mail on the Android it didn't have the right settings.

It took a bit of Googling and experiment to find


smtp.mail.yahoo.com
SSL Port 465

imap.mail.yahoo.com
SSL Port 993

These also worked with my Windows 8 laptop when the default settings didn't.

k-9 Mail and Windows Live Mail

It's not used a great deal, but I have a Windows Live mail account and a slightly aging Android 2.1 phone (the Orange San Francisco).

While the Orange San Francisco is not my primary device it is useful for some purposes and reading e-mail is one I use it for.

Getting the Windows Live mail settings right in k-9 mail were a bit of a challenge.

I have a live.co.uk address but after a bit of experiment I found the following.

1) Windows Live mail doesn't seem to support IMAP
2) Windows Live mail doesn't seem to support the version of WebDav that k-9 does

so.....

it's POP3 then.

The settings that worked were

Fetching mail

Incoming server settings

e.mail.address@live.co.uk
password
pop3.live.com
SSL (if available)
PLAIN
995

Sending mail

Outgoing server settings

smtp.live.com
TLS(always)
587
(require sign in - ticked)
AUTOMATIC
e.mail.address@live.co.uk
password

Trouble adding an album in iTunes - No artwork and brackets ( ) in the album name

This nearly drove me mad !

I wanted to add a previously ripped to MP3 album to iTunes.

I keep a copy of MP3s for iTunes apart from my main MP3 collection so I checked the tags were fine (using ID3 Tag edit) and copied the files into the appropriate folder.

Added the files to the iTunes library and no sign of them.

I looked down the bottom of the list and after the "z" artist, there they were with no metadata.

I corrected this using the iTunes editor and added the artwork. This took a couple of goes but seemed to work.

I synced with my iPhone and..... NO ARTWORK !

So, what was odd about the MP3s ?

I found a different cover JPEG, that didn't help.

Deleted and re-imported the MP3s, that didn't help.

After a day I started to wonder if the fact that the album title had brackets could be a problem.

I changed the album title removing the brackets in ID3 Tag edit and imported again.

No good.

Then I looked at the file names in Windows, that still had brackets in the "advance data" so I deleted that and imported again.

SUCCESS !

Correctly imported, recognised the tags and the album artwork takes and transfers to the iPhone.

It seems that iTunes has a problem with album titles with brackets (Parenthesis)  in them.

The Dell 1250c Printer in a domestic network

I couldn't find anything about this so I had to figure it out myself.

Hopefully it will help someone else.

We have a couple of Buffalo NAS drives which can support printers.

I used to have an HP Inkjet printer attached to one of them but someone else needed that and I got a Dell 1250c Colour Laser Printer from Tesco for £50.

It seemed to me that if I got 3 times as long from it as we had from the HP before it needed new supplies I would be ahead.

However there was the matter of getting it to work over USB from a networked NAS drive.

This was much easier than I feared. It came with a disk of stuff (drivers etc) which I installed on my XP  Laptop.

That didn't do much other than install various bits of monitoring software which couldn't find a printer.

I then tried a manual printer add (using "have disk"picking the Dell inf file at the critical moment from the CD) and using a new port (local IP port created using the IP address of the printer and the print queue \lp for the Buffalo).

To my amazement it worked fine.

I followed the same manual add for the Windows 7 Desktop.

To my further amazement Dell have a driver DMG for Mac OSX which worked with my 10.4 Macbook.

I installed that then added a Network printer in "Print and Fax" as with the XP machine. Once again it "just worked".

I'm not sure who deserves prizes although one to Dell for doing a Mac driver when they make PCs is due.

If there are more detailed questions I'll do a follow up.

Best of luck !

The Draytek 2820n

After being a bit disatisfied with the facilities offered by my Netgear DG834G I was looking to find a broadband modem/router that did more.

I wanted multiple WiFi networks so that one would access the Internet only and the other would have access to devices and compluters wired to the router directly, ideally I wanted the ability to use 3G as a backup if the ADSL failed and I wanted the ability to directly connect a USB printer so we could print from a laptop without turning a desktop machine on.

The Draytek 2820n was a fairly good fit and while around £150 for a new one seemed a bit steep as against a £30 - £50 Netgear I thought I would give it a go as the alternative was a pile of seperate boxes.

There was a bit of a learning curve with it, not helped by the support documentation and firmware being out of step with VLAN creation. The multiple WiFi networks was easy to set up. A "legacy" WEP network for things that don't support WPA, the rest on multiple WPA networks with access to internal resources (PC, NAS) as needed created through VLANS on a tick box basis.

Very good.

There was a bit of paper wasted before I got the printer on USB working well (following the instructions for Windows, it "just works" with the IP address for Mac OSX).

All in all very pleased.

There have been a few connection drops but this may be the "training period" with the BT ADSL. I also sometimes got them with the Netgear.

If I could change the Draytek what would I add ?

1) More USB ports so I could have a small USB key for some Internet accessible storage as well as the printer.

2) More USB ports so I could have a USB broadband modem on it as well.

3) More Ethernet ports, 8 would be good, as I've used all 4 and would like to avoid a small extra hub.

All in all, the Draytek 2820n is a worthy upgrade from the Netgear.