How to Hack Kindle Android App to work in Indonesia (or any other countries outside of the USA)

(PS: For my fellow Indonesians: Perlu post ini dalam Bahasa Indonesia? Aku bisa buatkan kalau ada yg mau. Tolong tinggalkan comment ya)

I love ebooks. I have been reading them in all kinds of devices for years (including tiny Blackberry, more post on how to do that in the future). And my favorite reader in Kindle (and Kindle's app for Android). Of course Kinde "should" only work in the USA. Kindle Android App should only work on Android in the USA. Luckily for us the 6 billion other people, there is a back door.

Android can install app from other sources than "Google Play". And the site www.androiddrawer.com has kindly enough kept an installation file for Kindle Android App for anyone to install regardless what country they're from.

Here is my Kindle App link, shortened for easy typing in mobile browser: bit.ly/kindledw. Just go there in your Android's mobile browser and install, or follow the step-by-step instruction below.

NOTE: AndroidDrawer maintains many versions of Kindle Android App. I use version 4.0.2.54 because this version allows me access to my non-amazon-purchased .mobi files that I upload myself. I believe the later versions remove this (material for future post?).

STEP 1: Enable your Android to install from outside of "Google Play"
- Follow this article from CNET for instruction on how to do that.

STEP 2: Open the Kindle App page of AndroidDrawer
- Use your mobile browser in your Android
- Type in (or click) my shortcut link to get there: bit.ly/kindledw

STEP 3: Download and Install a version of Kindle App that fits your need:
- Click the "Download This Version" link
- When the download completes, open in and OK to install it on your Android.
- You're done.

BBM 6.0 and 7.0 OTA list for OS 5, OS 6, and OS 7.

This post is dedicated to those who have to upgrade or downgrade his or her (or his or her mom's, girlfriend's, wife's, or that cute girl in the office). YOU ROCK! Really!

Also check out my post on how to move from Blackberry to Android BBM, (and back... as it is in my case).

BBM 6.0 OTA LIST: (from ota.santo.asia)

for OS 5 - BBM 6.1.0.71

for OS 6 - BBM 6.1.0.71

for OS 7 - BBM 6.1.0.71

for OS 7.1 - BBM 6.1.0.49


BBM 7.0 OTA LIST (from sb-sahil.blogspot.com)

for OS 5 - BBM 7.0.1.23

for OS 6 - BBM 7.0.1.126

for OS 7 - BBM 7.0.1.126

for OS 7.1 - BBM 7.0.1.126

How to migrate / move your Blackberry Messenger 6.0 or 5.0 to BBM for Android without reinviting all your friends and groups.

I'm sure you BBM die-hard users have seen it tons of time recently. Your friends asked you to re-add them on a new BB PIN as they moved from their Blackberry to a BBM App in iPhone and Android. Its annoying, it clutters up the BBM contact list with old, now dead, PINs, and, for those of you with a "Geeky" reputation to protect (like me), its just not cool.

I'm sure you've also seen half of your friends who smoothly migrate their old BBM to the BBM app, without any need for those "re-add" requests. And you'd probably know how its done. If your COntact List and Blackberry Groups have been saved to your Blackberry ID by your BBM (7.0 or above), You simply login to your Blackberry ID in your new BBM App, and your BBM contacts and groups are recoverd correctly.

Now, if you, like me, are one of those unlucky fellow to have an old BB with an old BBM 5.0 or 6.0... This path is not so smooth. and filled with tons of pitfalls, and dead ends. That is why I am writing this blog entry.

Now, I have a:
 - Blackberry 9700 (from Orange, but used in Telkomsel's network)
 - BB OS 5.0 (App version 5.0.0.446 (726)
 - Blackberry Messenger 5.0
 - 4000+ Phone book contacts
 - 240 groups contacts
 - 10 bbm groups
The last 3 may be the reason why it takes a lot of waiting for me to complete the tasks.

A. The steps are quite simple, but TIME CONSUMING, and PRONE TO FATAL ERROR. So proceed with caution!

1. Backup your Blackberry using Blackberry Desktop Manager!
2. Upgrade your BBM to BBM 7.0 using a site that archive old BBM apk.
3. Create your Blackberry ID in BBM 7.0
4. Wait a few hours, to make sure your BBM contact lists AND GROUPS are all there, then turn off your Blackberry for the last time.
5. Load BBM for Android (or IPhone) in your other device
6. Login to the BBM for Android with your Blackberry ID
7. Lastly, wait a few more hours to make sure all is synchronized.

Yes, there are a lot of waitings.

for detail of Step A1-A7

B. Now, if somewhere along the line you screwed up (as I did). I will also show you how to recover by:
1a. Factory Reset using BBSAK to unstuck you from any "hang" condition
1b. Or, in less dire scenario. simply delete the current BBM app from your Blackberry
2. Reload OS 5.0 with BBM 5.0 into your hardware
3. Recover your data from the backup made in step A1 above
4. Optionaly (maybe) upgrade your BBM to BBM 6.0
5. Follow step A2-A7 as listed above.

for detail of Step B1-B5

I hope this will be useful to people. I welcome comments and corrections. As I certainly have not tried every possible scenario.

Regards

Donald

How to hack Scansnap Organizer to use any PDF documents

To avoid clutter, I scan everything: bank statements, business cards, brochures, receipts, anything. Then I OCR them (convert the image into text), store them in the cloud, share them in all my computing devices, and, in my laptop, heavily index them so I can find anything I ever touch, or so the idea. (hmm... what was the phone number of that car rental company I got a brochure last trip to bali... just run search! done)

Thus, one of my pride and joy, (and nearly single most expensive device acquisition outside of a laptop or a smart phone) is my Fujitsu Scansnap S1500. This work horse scanner can scan double-sided up to 50 page per minute. And for someone who scan just about everything, this is a must. And at $500, the Scansnap is a necessary evil. (Don't try it unless you can afford to fall in love with it, its dangerously convenient).

Sadly, the ABBYY Finereader that comes with it (that OCR docs better than Adobe PDF Pro)  only works for documents I scan on the Scansnap. Same with the Scansnap Organizer and Viewer (that can rearrange PDF documents since my Adobe PDF Pro stops working). 

And since I convince a lot of people to send documents to me already in PDF from various scanners, camera, etc. This is annoying. So here is the hack that I found on the web (see http://www.jsilence.org/blog/2011/01/25/edit-pdf-metadata/ ) to allow me to trick MOST pdf documents to be usable.

The trick is to add/edit the "CREATOR" tag of the PDF document to say "ScanSnap Manager #S1500M".

Step 1. Get and install a free software called PDFTk.

The software installation should install the software in 

C:\Program Files (x86)\PDF Labs\PDFtk Server\bin

Step 2. Create a directory in Window. Mine is called FixPDF.

Step 3. In the above directory, Create a text file: scansnap_meta.txt containing:

InfoBegin
InfoKey: Creator
InfoValue: ScanSnap Manager #S1500M

This file contains the meta data of the PDF, and will be used by PDFtk to inject into the pdf file to be fixed.
 
Step 4. Then create also a script text file: FixPDF.bat containing:

for %%a in (*.pdf) do (
"C:\Program Files (x86)\PDF Labs\PDFtk Server\bin\pdftk.exe" "%%a" update_info scansnap_meta.txt output "..\%%a"
)
This script will run the PDFtk software on all '*.pdf ' files in the directory and replace the original copy as the output.

Step 5. Put all PDF files to fix in the directory.

Step 6. Run the FixPDF.bat script.

Done.

Personal Computing - 2013 edition - Jakarta in the Cloud

Back to bloggin after all this time...

Well, i'm here to update the world how I configure my computer to face 2013 and onward.

Same setting, but now more cloud integrated.Now, Jakarta is much more Internet enabled, and it is finally possible to shift massive quantity of my personal data in the cloud to survive crashes, obsolescence, and just plain simple I forgot my computer at home, issue.

First, my personal computers revolves around a Dell Studio 14 (old) laptop, a Blackberry Onyx, and a Samsung Galaxy Tab, (and various mp3 players, TV and DVD Recorder with DivX player, my wife's iPad and my daughters' kindle, android, netbook, laptop, etc etc.)

A 3Mbps cable modem (12Mbps this month only, due to a promo by Firstmedia) connects my house to the world, sadly with only 100Kbps upload capability.This connection is shared via 300m+ of UTP cables and no less than 4 wifi access points accross my house and my inlaw's. I must have the most networking hardware in my entire apartment complex.

In my offices I have 5Mbps leased lines but shared among heavy gaming and torrent users. Needless to say, I get better bandwidth personally at home.

Now, as 2013 rolls around. I want to upgrade my systems and those of my family to allow us to share more data in the cloud (like 400MB of just about every documents that my family comes accross, bills, bank statements, passport, house deeds, brochure for car rentals, etc.), watch movie (Samsung Allshare?), and backup the ever-crashing kid's computers.

Anyways, in various other posts I will be discussing various aspect of my computing platform. 

Anyone interested? Care to share yours?

Clearing ALL Contacts in Blackberry

Well, after many attempt of trying to sync contact wirelessly between my Laptop, Blackberry, Galaxy Tab, (and google and yahoo), I end up with double my contact entry (each about 4500 contacts), one from yahoo and one from google. (long story, not relevant right now)

I have decided that Google is "it". so I am going to synch all my clean-ed up contact in outlook, to Blackberry and Google, then let that sync to my Android.

Now its time to wipe them out. and end up with only 1 entry per contact.

1. Connect your device to your computer
2. Open the Blackberry Desktop Manager software
3. Click on Device menu on top
4. Click on Delete data...
5 Choose Selected Data
6 Choose "Address Book" and Address Book - All"
7. For safety, choose also (optionally)
8. Now with “Address Book” highlighted hit the Clear button

This will clear all the contact from the device.

Cheers,

D

How to Lock Screen Orientation in Samsung Galaxy Tab

A month ago, I discovered how to lock the screen orientation on my Samsung Galaxy Tab. I then locked my screen on potrait mode... and forgot how to do this... :(

After various searches on the web, I finally rediscovered how to undo this. So I'll post it here so I won't forget.

I think this is somewhat device dependent.

In a Galaxy Tab, from just about any screen, you "pull down" the notification screen, and up there on the top right you'll see, "orientation lock" (either in color (On), or gray-ed out (Off)). Tap it. and you're locked.

See this URL for a Youtube demo http://bit.ly/oAC16U

But in another Youtube http://bit.ly/oExwOi, it shows that on an O2, its different, maybe an older Android OS. It is in SETTING -> Display -> Orientation. I'd say this is a more sensible place.

(This is part of my answer to this androidforum article.

How to backup your Blackberry's Contact

This is for all my friends

You've heard your friend's Blackberry crashed, and he/she has begged you to resend your contact details. You pray it will never happen to you. Well, guess what. Most likely, it will, and it will happened in the most unfortunate time.

If you're lucky enough (like all of you PMG guys :) and you use BES (and pay an arm an a leg every month for it) oh well, you're covered. just call helpdesk and tell them to reactivate your bb.

If not, then you better backup your blackberry. and yes, do it now. RIGHT NOW. please!

You got two options.

If you still have your original blackberry CD, that cd contains the Blackberry Desktop Manager. Use that. it will backup everything. Contacts, Applications, the works.

And Its easy enought to use, So... I won't be covering that today.

For a quick alternative, use Google Synch.

This will only backup your contacts. But well, for a free solution, its not bad.

Step 1

Get a Gmail account: http://www.gmail.com

Step 2

Install Google Mobile App: http://www.google.com/mobile/synch

PS. you should do this while you're on the fastest internet connection possible: 3G or even WIFI if possible. I won't cover how to connect to WIFI on your BB, but if you need to know, just ask me.

1. Open your Internet Browser on your BB

2. goto http://www.google.com/mobile/synch

3. Choose "SYNC" in one of the list shown (bukan Google Mobile App)

4. Choose "Install This"

5. Choose "Download" and wait for your application to download

6. Once downloaded, choose "Run"

7. Enter your gmail Email and Password and click "Sign In"

8. Read the Welcome screen, and Click "Configure Synch".

9. Configure these options:
- When to Synch: Automatic
- [X] Sync Contacts
- [ ] Synch Calendar (unless you do want to save your calendar)

10. Click the [BB] (menu) button and choose "Save"

11. it will show when was the last successful sync

12. Now find a quiet spot with good internet connection where you can be there for hours. Maybe you should wait till you're at home at night with your BB plugged in

13. Click the [BB] (menu) button and choose "Sync Now"

14. and wait.

This will backup your entire contact to your Gmail account. and keep them synchronized.

If and when your BB crashed. you just reset it (or even buy a new BB), and then install the Google Sync again. following these same steps will recover you all your contacts.

Donald