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iSync and the Sony Ericsson K810i

09Jun07

Update 9th April 2009: Fantastic news from Royd in the comments. Sony Ericsson has seen the light and is now offering an iSync plugin for their phones. You can go to the site and download it from here, authorised, free and supported.

I bought a new phone to replace my godawful Nokia N80. It’s a Sony Ericsson K810i and it’s all very shiny and nice. The only problem is that it isn’t yet supported in iSync on the Mac. Last time I had this problem was with the N80 and I fixed it by downloading a piece of XML and plonking it in the right directory. It’s good to share these solutions and, since it’s only a bit of text, it can be shared on forums and the like, which is where I found my N80 solution. Looking around the net I was absolutely mortified to see that the only solutions being “shared” to sync up your K810i with your Mac were being charged for. 10 Euros, at that! Knowing that these “plugins” are actually only a piece of text was incentive enough to sort this out without resorting to paying for it.

If you look at the plugins directory for iSync, you can see that the current iSync version has the K800i, the K810i’s predecessor. I went into the plugins folder, copied the K800i folder and renamed it to match the new phone. I dug into the 3 text files inside and replaced the instances of “K800″ with “K810″. For this, these guys want 10 Euros? Bah!

Here’s the “plugin” for free and exactly how you install it.

Extract this zip to your Desktop, it should leave a folder called “SonyEricsson-K810.phoneplugin”
Go to the Applications folder and find the iSync application, right click it and Show Package Contents.
In the resulting folder, drill down to Contents > Plugins > ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice > Contents > Plugins.
Copy the folder from your desktop into here. If iSync was running, restart it and it should recognise your phone, now.

If you want to do it without downloading the files from me, here’s how I created it – you can probably extrapolate the same method for most incremental phone releases, regardless of brand. They really don’t change all that much between small model numbers. It’s probably rather useful to know since Apple aren’t very fast at updating iSync to cover new phone models.

Go to the Applications folder and find the iSync application, right click it and Show Package Contents.
In the resulting folder, drill down to Contents > Plugins > ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice > Contents > Plugins.
Copy the folder named “SonyEricsson-K800.phoneplugin” and rename it “SonyEricsson-K810.phoneplugin”.
Open SonyEricsson-K810.phoneplugin > Contents > Resources.
In here are 4 files. One of them is the tiff file that you see representing your phone. Rename com.sonyericsson.K800.tiff to com.sonyericsson.K810.tiff
For each .plist file, open it in Textpad and do a Find/Replace for the word “K800″ and change each instance to “K810″. Don’t miss any!
Save the files and quit iSync and reopen it, if you had it running. iSync should now recognise your phone.

Disclaimer: I have no idea what I’m doing. If this breaks your phone, nukes your address book or sets fire to your cat, then please understand that what you are doing here is hacking the internals of your iSync application, hooking it up to your phone and letting some stranger’s advice on the internet ruin your day. It works for me is all the warranty I can give you! Back up your Mac’s address book regularly and before you mess with this. If you’ve got any advice for other users for how you fixed your niggles with iSync, feel free to add it in the comments.

Update: Johan points out in comments that as well as some very expensive plugins, mobile.feisar.com sell a plugin for €1.49 that will do USB syncing (see Update 2, below) as well as give you a little TIFF image of the phone for iSync to display. If you want these extra bits, €2 (£1.49) is nowhere near as bad as some of these guys want to charge!

Update 2: Following Johan’s useful comments regarding USB compatibility, I took a hunt through the plugin with a view to adding it. The plugin specifies a Vendor ID and a Model ID of a given phone. Obviously this changes between phone models. If you plug the phone into USB and look at the data in the USB Prober application (part of Apple’s developer tools) you can read them off. In our case, the K810i has a model ID of 0xD0A1 vs the K800′s model ID of 0xD039. I’ve changed the plugin I’ve got on this site, so if you update it you should be able to sync via USB. One weird thing I found was that I had to remove the K810 from iSync, where’d I’d set it up to Sync via Bluetooth. Once I did that and reconnected the phone, everything was fine. Hope this all helps if you are lacking in Bluetooth on your Mac!

Also – surprise! Dennis has kindly furnished me with a K810i image for the iSync plugin so we can all enjoy a picture of our pretty (or ugly, YMMV) phones. Thanks Dennis!

The updated plugin is here. The old one, minus image and USB functionality is here.

Update 3: Leonardo has commented below on another useful addition to Bluetooth functionality that lets you send and receive SMS messages from your Mac using Mac’s Address Book and K810′s Bluetooth connection. I tested it out and it works fantastically – I really had no idea that was something you could do so easily. Thanks, Leonardo

Update 4: A commenter points out that Leonardo’s method only enables SMS via the Mac address book, which is fine if that’s all you would want or use. Leonardo’s method would also, pretty obviously, stop the K700 from working in the unlikely event you have both phones in regular use. See comments 31 and 33.

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Twittervision

05Jun07

I stumbled across a rather neat interface for viewing Twitter posts earlier on. For those not on the ever-so-trendy edge of web2.0 social networking sites, Twitter is an er… hmm. It lets you make short updates to your status. Updates like “I am about to murder my postman, he didn’t ring the doorbell again!” It lets you subscribe to people’s updates with your instant messenger or your mobile phone or syndicate them on your blog. It’s not terribly dissimilar to Facebook’s “I am” status box Anyway, the interface is called Twittervision and lets you view live twitter posts from around the world. It’s like watching people shouting at each other across continents.

On a more local shouty scale, the next person in my office to leave their mobile phone at their desk and go for an extended wander whilst leaving it to ring and ring and ring is going to find it placed in a Jiffy bag and mailed back to them second class.

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London Zoo

01Jun07

London Zoo is a great place for photographing things that aren’t humans or buildings. I went along yesterday and quite a bit has moved around in the 6 months since I last visited. The gorilla enclosure is now open and they’ve got a new rainforest enclosure open called Biome. As usual, you can never get it all done comfortably in one day, not that that stops legions of half-term parents and children from dashing round the place in a red-cheeked frenzy, none of them seeming to enjoy it between catty remarks from parent to parent and chastisements angled at the exhausted kids. Here’s a few pics.

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Fraud Detectors, coming soon to BBC1

30May07

The phone rings in a darkened room. The glowing digits of the bedside clock read 08:50. An arm reaches blindly, searching for the handset to stop the infernal ringtone. The arm’s hand clutches the handset and pops it open with a click.

“Nic Walker,” the owner of the arm says, trying not to sound like he’s asleep at 0850 on a work day.
“Hello Sir. It’s Natwest Fraud Detection department. We have some questions about your account. Are you free to talk?” She says this final sentence in a conspiratorial way that implies he should check for electronic listening devices or spies looking at him through binoculars from afar. He looks around the room and sees nothing likely to betray his security.
“I’m free to talk,” he replies. Still trying to sound like he’s actually been awake for hours.
“Our computer has brought a transaction to our attention and we’d like to be sure that you made the charges in question.”
“Oh, ok, sure.”
“But FIRST, we must go through security with you.” More conspiratorial tones. “Can you tell me the month and year of your birth?” Oh, he thinks, the date of birth of mine that all his friends know? That is a matter of public record? That incredibly secure thing? Sure. He gives her his date of birth.
“Can you tell me the first two letters of your mother’s maiden name?”
“Oh,” he thinks, “you mean the maiden name of my mother that is also a matter of public record and entirely accessible by anybody who cares to check? Of course!” He gives her the letters.
“Sir, we’ve noticed a charge that has been blocked on your account. It was made late last night and the computer decided it was potentially fraudulent. Can you tell me if you made a charge for 79 pence to Linden Labs?”
“Seventy nine pence?” He checks, slightly incredulous.
“Yes sir, to Linden Labs.” she says, as po-faced as one can be in a phone call.
“Yes, I did make that charge.”
“Ok, thank you sir!”

That, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the front line in the fight against credit card fraud! I’m glad to have done my part.

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Death Row Pardon: LIVE!

29May07

The title of this post was a program idea dreamt up by a friend of mine upon hearing that Dutch TV is on the verge of broadcasting “The Donor Show”, a reality TV program where a terminally ill 37 year-old woman gets to choose the recipient of her kidneys after she dies. These apparently insensitive, insane ideas used to be comedic hyperbole in people’s stand-up routines. I’m sure a TV program making people shit in a sieve and be examined by a pseudo-scientific fraud would have been unthinkable when reality TV kicked off. “Whatever next, a TV show to select a presidential candidate?” I hear you cry! Don’t laugh: it’s been mooted. In fact, for 2008 it’s not just reality TV but MySpace that are picking a candidate to stand as an ‘Independent’. It’s fun to think of the next incredible leap that reality TV producers will make to try and convince a risque network that they want to commission it.

This latest show, the kidney one, is being defended by Endemol (you could have guessed Endemol, right?) as being a public service! That great benevolent production outfit aren’t manipulating people’s feelings for cheap ratings, you understand, they’re doing it to highlight the shortage of organ donors in the country. Whilst it’s true, there is a shortage of organ donors, this is largely the result of the legislation covering donorship. If we want lots of spare lungs, kidneys and corneas, governments need to adopt an opt-out approach to organ donorship, rather than the usual opt-in of the “Donor Card”. It would dramatically increase the available pool of donor organs and those who oppose donorship on spurious religious reasons can opt out as they see fit.

Talking of Endemol, this year’s Big Brother marathon is about to begin. 14-or-so weeks of fervent speculation about the mental health of a dozen housemates who may or may not threaten to become witless organ donors themselves. I can’t wait.

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Bigger Red Bulls

27May07

I spotted this pair in the Lower Regent Street branch of Tesco Metro today. I was looking for milk and bought wrapping paper, these two cans of red bull and a can of red wine. It’s hard to say why Tescos are responsible for accepting one in eight of every pound spent in Britain, isn’t it? Why on earth are Red Bull making an even bigger can of Red Bull? It’s already mentally sugared and fairly well caffeinated; who on earth needs 3/4 of a pint of the stuff in an atmosphere where we’re supposed to be putting the lid on refined sugars, not blowing it right off.

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