making conference calls

Found that my Tata Indicom Haier C2030 can't not make conference calls tho' the manual says press Send button after dialling the second number. Probably blocked by Tata. With the Airtel connection on the QTEK 9100, the procedure is

1. Make 1st call
2. Hold
3. Make second call
4. Menu -> Conference.

google maps for mobile

GMaps crashed on the mobile with error message Internal Error: c:\workspaces\gmm-4-0-branch\googlemobile\src\cpp\googlenav\common\resource_loader.cpp:13

This was probably due to me deleting some of the google maps stuff in application data, in order to free up space. There are quite a few people with this problem - ...resource_loader.cpp:13 internal error

Reinstalling gave the same error. Then tried removing old install, then manually deleting files in Program Files and Application Data, then reinstalling. This time it worked. And the new version has voice search enabled!

yet another twist in the tale

The possible solution noted before seemed to work with no problems over the last two weeks. But P noted that earlier, the downloads had the path to D: hard-coded into the asp, so the files in D: were being accessed though IIS pointed to E:. This might have led to the earlier problems, he said. To test this out, we put back the 4 GB of stuff to the playout folder in E: - and the streams continued to work fine. Now we have deleted the stuff in D:, and that drive is pending a Scandisk. But that needs a reboot, so probably we'll keep it pending. Or maybe we can move all the data to E: and do it without a reboot - will think about it.

possible solution to streaming problems

Remembered A telling me that there could be performance issues if too many files are in the same folder. Moved out 600+ files, 4 GB+, to another folder. After that, the streams seem to have stabilized, playing out from E drive. Now I have enabled the Radiosai downloads also, all seems fine. We'll work out some mechanism to avoid this from happening again as we add files. Some sort of directory hierarchy.

ngpay and Java midlets on my phone

My previous post was "under controlled conditions. Finally in a crunch situation, ngpay let me down. Not really ngpay's fault, I should add. This is what happened: At 8 o'clock, had to book a tatkal ticket. The irctc.co.in website was crawling, since thousands of people all over the country would be trying the same thing. Hopped on to ngpay over wifi on my phone. Connected very nicely, got through to the payment page. But.... The HDFC bank password kept getting rejected. Known issue with midlets on this phone, at least I have seen it often with Opera Mini - the shift key or function key appear to get activated on their own. On a normal text field, this can be corrected. But on a password field, can't do much, since only **** is seen. Now I've added my credit card to the ngpay wallet. Maybe with that, I can avoid this issue. Another way out would be to use MyMobiler, like I did last time. MyMobiler can connect over wifi too, so I should test it out.

Edit: April 22 - Did try MyMobiler, did connect over wifi fine. Another solution when without a PC - using the Phone Pad input method.

Then, the passwords etc are visible in clear text before you enter them.

problems with streaming - hard disk usage

Our streams had problems, as noted before. IIS was a possible culprit, with our own download service being the prime suspect. Limiting number of connections per IP address seemed a possible way out. But IIS does not have a mechanism to do that - only global total number of connections can be limited. The disk from which the audio files were being taken seemed highly fragmented - maybe because of all these small files? Anyway, wanted to try defragmenting it. So, copied all to another volume on another drive. Copied using RichCopy to minimize disruptions during the process, with

1. trickle


2. serialize disk access


3. single thread only


4. system buffer disable

turned on so that impact on system performance was minimized. Screenshot:




No problem with the streams while the copy went on. A minor issue when the playout was restarted, the temp audio files could not be overwritten by colinux. Had to manually delete them from Windows.

But after shifting playout to the new volume, again the skipping re-occured in a couple of hours! So, there is some system-wide hard disk usage? The first reaction was to shut down IIS by stopping the websites one by one. That did not solve the problem - at least, it did not reflect in any reduction in the hard disk usage with Performance Monitor as given in my previous post.

Investigating with the tips given on these pages, to identify the process which uses large amount of disk usage by checking out Task Manager, Start -> Run -> taskmgr, looking for processes with rapidly changing values for I/O Read Bytes and I/O Write Bytes and later using Process Monitor to view files accessed by that process. csrss.exe seems to be the process using the filesystem to some extent - Client Server Runtime Subsystem. But it does not display excess CPU utilization as noted here. This forum post notes a similar hard disk issue with csrss. Or maybe there is some process which we did not catch in time. Will keep investigating.

revisiting internet banking from mobile

In my earlier post, I'd described failure of IE mobile and Opera Mini. This time, Skyfire worked with HDFC bank. It still doesn't work with Canara bank and SBI. Of course, it goes through Skyfire's servers, but so does Opera Mini, so hopefully it is as safe as it's privacy policy states. Skyfire drinks bandwidth, so feasible only on an unlimited plan or for emergencies.

ngpay and mchek

Tried out these mobile payment solutions first with the new credit card. mchek has the disadvantage of having only Airtel recharge as the USP. Can't recharge other operators' mobiles if your operator is Airtel! ngpay's USP for me is KSRTC booking. Even when KSRTC's AWATAR system is down, which is often, ngpay works. But ngpay does not have Airtel recharge for AP circle or All India, though the menu item exists. Navigating ngpay is a pain because of the QTEK 9100 mobile's terrible touch screen. Much easier to do it by tethering it to a PC and using MyMobiler.

mchek registration had some hiccups, since the registration is followed by a card number verification which requires a popup. The first time I enabled the popup, had to retry. And on retrying so quickly, I think the card processing back end would have refused the connection, and hence returned "Invalid card". I thought this was because the card was earlier registered with my Tata number. Customer care assured me that the earlier unsubscribe was effected. Anyway, waiting for some time - 15 minutes - and retrying - solved the issue.