Things you probably didn't know about the Kindle

As an outsider I had no idea that the kindle has a wide open linux root. You can install not only a port of FBreader to read epubs and other files, but there is also a port of mplayer to listen to music including internet radio via wifi, font patches, ssh, different screen savers and other things. I just wanted to test it for two weeks as you can in Europe with pretty much any mail ordered thing. But now I'll keep it!

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Fixing - at least some - Skypephone S2 Battery Issues

My 3 Skypephone S2 at some point started to run out of battery after being on for about 20 hours or less. And this is not because a Java program crashed, which can be a reason, too. It was after a full charge over night and switching it off and on. Eventually it turned out the problem was that I had still activated the USB Modem setting in Connections. Once I turned it back to blue tooth mode and turned off bluetooth after that the problem was gone and the battery lasted a *lot* longer again. Anyways, the battery delivered with the phone seems to be not very good in any case, so you might want to get a new one. The big question is just: where?

Update: It works! The only problem is you need to leave out the battery at least over night afterwards.

If you like this, why not order a Three UK Sim with my agent link (or send the link to friends). You get an extra 5 quid or so AFAIK.

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Increase Speed and Save Traffic with Opera Turbo

If you have a traffic limitation I have some great advice: Install Opera.
Starting with Opera 10, there is the integrated "Opera Turbo". With the
help of that proxy you not only speed up the loading of websites by 4x and
more, but you also decrease the amount of data transfered, which makes
your volume last much longer.

After a whole day of 3G web surfing, Opera Turbo had saved me 2 GB of
traffic! (Only about 100 MB were left, that 20x less!) So the first thing
after setting up 3G should be setting up Opera with Opera Turbo!

Oh and you'll probably also want to put this list into your Opera urlfilter.ini. This stops Opera from loading ads, saving you even more traffic. But you can't use save as, you must use copy & paste to get rid of the html elements in the file.

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Mobile Internet with the Skypephone S2 in Ubuntu

It does not (yet) work out of the box. There is a little trick you need. You need to manually load the usbserial module supplying the vendor and product ID. You can find those IDs via the lsusb command. Just add an 0x at the beginning and then load the module:

sudo modprobe usbserial vendor=0x1614 product=0x0407

The support should be automatic in one the next upcoming Linux kernels, though. You can of course automate the module load with an entry in /etc/modules:
usbserial vendor=0x1614 product=0x0407

Then the module is always loaded in the right way at boot time and you just need to plug in the mobile phone for it to pop up in Network Manager (with the help of Mobile Manager). Once that's the case in Gnome with nm-util you can use an easy wizard that should already include your settings. In Kubuntu 9.10 the KDE support for connecting was broken, though. But it's fixed now in Kubuntu 10.04. Too sad many of these changes are never backported...

And now: Enjoy mobile Internet! (And don't miss my next entry on how to save traffic and speed up your new mobile internet.)

If you're in the UK, order your next Three SIM via my agent link, please.

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Memory Cards for the Skypephone S2

After having a lot of insecurity with acquiring and inserting a memory card for the 3 Skypephone S2, let me give you some hints:

• a Sandisk 4 GB microSDHC card works perfectly for me.
• When you try to insert the card into your phone, you need to pull the card holder towards the SIM slot to unlock it. Then you can pull it up, insert the card and close and lock it again.
• You find the manual here: http://mymobile.three.co.uk:8080/mymobile/3/SkypephoneS2/img/S2UserGuide_UK.pdf

If you like this post, consider ordering a SIM via my three agent link.

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