Showing posts with label Tips. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tips. Show all posts

Thursday, 24 November 2011

Nokia N8 as FM transmitter

Nokia N8 is touted as multimedia smartphone with multimedia capabilities that is not found even on other higher end smartphone like HDMI connectivity. And I am one of the proud owner of this phone with the sturdy built quality of aluminum casing.

One of the 'must have' features of smartphone is the ability to play audio files such as MP3 that enables its user to listen to the song. Imagine this situation: You are driving and wishing to listen your MP3 collections via your car audio system. But unfortunately, your car's crappy stock standard audio system does not have any auxiliary input nor USB port. So how you are going to channel the audio from your phone to your car's head unit? Fret not, it has built-in FM transmitter. Yes, you read me right, it can be an FM transmitter.
 
I doubt many of us will flip through the phone's manual to discover what this phone can do. Here's how to activate FM transmitter functionality (Nokia calls it 'Play via Radio) for this N8:

1) Access your music player as usual



 2) Play your favourite song found in your collections



3) Select 'Options'

4) From the menu, select 'Play Via Radio'



5) Set your desired transmitting frequency (in my case it would be 101.1 MHz)




6) Switch on the feature by tapping on 'Play Via Radio' and pop-up will appear



7) You will notice the Play Via Radio icon appears on the top-right corner of the phone's screen



8) Tune your radio to the selected frequency (in my case it would be 101.1 MHz)
 
9) Enjoy the song from the radio. Volume control is dependent to the radio, so you can use the steering audio control if your car have it.

If the radio is equipped with RDS, the word 'NOKIA' will appear when it is tuned to the phone's frequency

Tips:

1) Always choose the free frequency so it would not cause interference with the local radio station's frequency (eg. if Sinar FM is 96.7 MHz in the area, do not set the transmitting frequency to 96.7 MHz)

2) Do not choose transmitting frequency that is close to the local radio station's frequency, make sure to have around 3-5 MHz frequency spacing from the closest local radio station's frequency  (eg. if Sinar FM is 96.7 MHz in the area, do not set the transmitting frequency to 96.9 MHz, choose 100.0 MHz if the frequency is not occupied)

3) Using this feature will drain the phone's battery faster, make sure the phone is connected to the car's charger.


p/s: My phone has been updated with official Symbian Anna from Nokia, however the procedure is just the same with N8 that is running on stock Symbian ^6.

Tuesday, 13 September 2011

HDMI display problem

Recently I just bought myself a new Samsung SyncMaster SA350 23" High Definition LED monitor to replace my old Samsung 17" LCD monitor for my PC. The old monitor will go to my hometown in Banting to be paired with unused PC there.

Excited to make full use of High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) on my Sapphire HD 5770 graphic card, I quickly connected my new monitor to the graphic card using HDMI cable. However, I was disappointed when the monitor is not displaying 100% of the screen area of the 1080p monitor as shown in the picture below:

BEFORE (click on image to enlarge)


A quick googling on the net directed me to the solution. The HD monitor is not displaying full screen problem can be solved by adjusting overscan and underscan option within your ATI Catalyst Control Center.

Here I would like to share the step-by-step procedure of adjusting overscan and underscan option in ATI Catalyst Control Center installed on Windows 7 OS:

1) On the taskbar, right-click on the ATI Catalyst Control Center icon (shown in red circle).

2) On the menu, select Catalyst Control Center ...


3) Catalyst Control Center will appear, select My Digital Flat Panel, a drop down menu will appear.

4) From the drop down menu, select Scaling Options (Digital Flat-Panel)
5) Adjust the Scaling Options by moving the slider towards Underscan or Overscan until the whole display is filling up the entire screen area.

6) Voila! The display is filling up the entire screen area of your new HD monitor connected via HDMI cable.

AFTER (click to enlarge)


For older version of ATI Catalyst, you may refer here. I have adapted his guide to match with the new interface in the latest ATI Catalyst driver I am using.

Enjoy your new HD monitor!!! ^_^

Sunday, 9 November 2008

Winamp Short Cut Keys



Maybe some of us do not realize that we can maximize the use of our PC/laptop/nettop using short cut keys. We can work more efficiently (read: working with various softwares at once) using short cut keys as we don't have to hover around the screen using mouse especially if the work is intensive on using the keyboard (typing, chatting, AutoCADing for example). I bet most of us working while listening to our MP3s collection using Winamp. Here I would like to share with you the 'global' hot keys to control your Winamp. Using Ctrl+Alt keys combination, we can control the playback of songs in Winamp. I said global because we don't have to switch to Winamp first to use the hot keys. It will work on any active windows, let say you are surfing the net using Google Chrome, just hit the Ctrl+Alt+specified keys to change track or even control the volume level without switching to Winamp first. Here is the list of short cut keys and the functions or you can refer to the diagram below (do not forget the Ctrl+Alt combinations!) :

  • Ctrl+Alt+Insert (Play the song)
  • Ctrl+Alt+Home (Pause)
  • Ctrl+Alt+PageUp (Change to previous song in the playlist)
  • Ctrl+Alt+PageDown (Change to the next song in the playlist)
  • Ctrl+Alt+End (Stop)
  • Ctrl+Alt+UpArrow (increase volume level)
  • Ctrl+Alt+DownArrow (decrease volume level)
  • Ctrl+Alt+LeftArrow (Rewind the currently played song)
  • Ctrl+Alt+RightArrow (Fast forward the currently played song)

Have fun trying! :)

p/s: Why Delete key is not used? Because Ctrl+Alt+Delete is reserved exclusively to load Task Manager in Windows OS. Huhuhuh~ :)

Friday, 25 January 2008

Changing Letter Case in Microsoft Word

Some of us might encounter typing error related to letter case when using this popular word processor. Normally we would correct the error by pressing delete key and type the new letter case. What if we have typed a paragraph all in capital letter or upper case? Or what if you want only the first letter of the word in upper case while the rest in lower case? Changing one by one is inevitably a disaster to us. That is where the combination of Shift+F3 key work its charm.

  1. Highlight the phrase that you want to change (e.g from lower case to UPPER CASE).
  2. While keeping the phrase highlighted, press Shift+F3 until the phrase change to the letter case you want.
  3. The cycle should be "muhammad afiq -> Muhammad Afiq -> MUHAMMAD AFIQ" .
I hope this tip will assist you to work more efficiently especially when typing your assignment.



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Now playing: Andra & The BackBone - Sempurna
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