Samsung | Technology Blog

Microsoft Phone Data Manager

September 12th, 2008

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Microsoft published a beta of their newest product Microsoft Phone Data Manager which is tool to synchronize and backup data from a supported mobile phone. The contacts data can be synchronized with Windows Live Contacts while the media, the music, videos and pictures, can be saved in a local folder.

Microsoft Phone Data Manager is not a full blown backup solution like the software that comes from the mobile phone company directly which can backup data like sms, games or protocols. It is a beta product on the other hand that could see those features implemented in later versions.

The major advantage of using the Phone Data Manager is that it works with phones from different mobile phone manufacturers. That is handy for a family that possesses different phones but only one computer and basically everyone else who is using phones from different cell phone manufacturers.

Skype releases mobile client

April 30th, 2008

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Skype for your mobile [via Shodan] beta was released by Skype. This is basically Skype that can be installed on a mobile phone. The mobile phones that are currently supported are from Nokia, Samsung, Motorola and Sony Ericsson. Not all mobile phones from those manufacturers are supported though but the download page is providing images of the supported mobile phones so it’s pretty easy to find out if your phone is currently supported.

Two download options are available. You can either download the Skype for your mobile client directly by using your mobile phone or by downloading it to your computer first and transferring it afterwards to the phone. My Nokia N73 is not currently supported but shown as coming soon which means I cannot try the application yet.

You do get access to your Skype contacts which means you see when a contact is online. Chat is supported as well as calling contacts and other phone numbers. This is in the beta limited to the following countries: Brazil, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Poland, Sweden and UK. Anyone can receive calls however which makes this client useful even if you cannot use it to call others yet.

Hard Disk Low Level Format

February 3rd, 2008

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There are two types of hard disk formatting possibilities, low and high level formating. High level formatting is the widely known formatting that erases data on the disks while low level formatting nowadays refers to the reinitialization to the factory settings. One of the major differences between both types is that data can successfully be restored after performing a high level formatting of a hard drive.

This is why experts suggest to either overwrite the hard drive with random data before formatting it or running tools like Eraser to erase all data on the hard drive.

The HDD Low Level Format Tool will low level format a hard drive erasing the whole disk surface in the process which has the result, that it is impossible to restore data afterwards. It supports SATA, IDE, SCSI, USB, FIREWIRE and Big drives (LBA-48) and the most popular manufacturers Maxtor, Hitachi, Seagate, Samsung, Toshiba, Fujitsu, IBM, Quantum and Western Digital.

Send Text Messages to the Future

October 2nd, 2007

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Textmemos is a service that lets the user type in text messages that he wants to have delivered at a certain date and time. All that needs to be done is to enter the cell phone number, the cell phone provider, the date, time and of course the message. As of now 38 different cell phone providers are supported by Textmemos most operating in the United States and Canada with only a handful European ones.

The service itself is completely free and no advertisement will be send in any way to the cell phone number of the recipient. The system behind the service utilized the fact that many cell phone provider accept sms that are send by email which is exactly what Textmemos is doing.

text memos send sms reminder

Reduce Hard Drive Noise

March 14th, 2007

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Many modern hard drives support a function called AAM - Automatic Acoustic Management. The feature is currently supported by most hard drives from Samsung, Maxtor and Hitachi. Most hard drives have the feature disabled by default which decreases access time but increases the noise level of the hard drive. If you prefer silence over performance you might want to enable AAM to decrease the noise level of your hard drive and slightly increase the access time.

Access time has nothing to do with data transfer rates which means it is probably a good idea to activate AAM if you think that your hard drive makes to much noises. All you need is the freeware Hitachi Feature Tool. This tool makes it possible to enable, disable or choose a custom value for the Automatic Accustic Management feature.