After playing a bit with Funambol for synchronising email, contacts and calendars I checked which other services are available which allow you to synchronise contactlists and calendar data across different services and devices.

For me the disadvantages of Funambol are that the iPhone version of Funambol currently only supports the synchronisation of contacts data.  Support for calendar data is currently not avaiable yet.  Also, the synchronisation has to be performed manually, meaning that whenever you want to synchronise your contacts you have to run the application and press the ’synchronise’ button.

Nuevasync is a service that allows over the air synchronisation of contacts, calendar, email and task lists. It works transparantly, meaning that it doesn’t require the installation of software and runs completely in the background and over the air.

After registering an account on their website, you can configure the different services.

Calendar: synchronisation with Google Calendar

Contacts:  synchronisation with Plaxo or your Google contacts

On the iphone you configure the Nuevasync service as a Microsoft Exchange server connection.  Using this type of connection it will automatically perform the synchronisation in the background and over the air with the Nuevasync server.

Having configured Nuevasync to configure my iphone calendar with Google Calendar, I am now also able to synchronise my Lotus Notes calendar with my iphone.  I use Companionlink for Google on my computer to synchronise Lotus Notes with Google Calendar, and my iphone transparantly synchronises my Google Calendar to my phone using the Nuevasync service.

Another advantage would be if you change phone (for example to a Windows Mobile device) you can easily synchronise this device with your Nuevasync account to transfer all your contacts and calendar data.

After succeeding in synchronising my iPhone contacts with my Plaxo contacts, I also added the Plaxo addon on some other client software such as Thunderbird to have access to my contacts. Plaxo offers software for Mozilla Thunderbird, PocketPC, Outlook, Outlook Express, and MacOS to keep your Plaxo address book in sync with each of these applications.  On the Plaxo site itself, you have the possibility to synchronise your Plaxo address book with Gmail, Windows Live, Yahoo, Outlook, Thunderbird. The disadvantage is that it only syncs on 1 direction, being towards Plaxo.

Dashwire is an application which you can use to control your Windows Mobile device from your computer. This includes managing and sending text messages, contatcts, media, ringtones, speed dials and bookmarks.

http://dashwire.com/

This week Backtrack 3 final was released. The first thing I wanted to do after downloading and running the Backtrack 3 vmware image, was installing Nessus. About a year ago at security4all a post was written to explain how to install Nessus on Backtrack 3 beta. While this did not work out for me on the final release, I did find some info on the remote-exploit forms which helped me out:

• Download the Nessus and NessusClient Fedora Core 8 RPM’s from the Nessus website (note: I tried it first with the Fedora Core 9 RPM’s and this did not work out for me)

• Convert them to TGZ :

rpm2tgz Nessus-3.2.x-fc8.i386.rpm

rpm2tgz NessusClient-3.2.x-fc8.i386.rpm

• Use the Slackware Package Tool to extract and install the packages from the current directory:

pkgtool

• Configure the application:

cd /opt/
export PATH=$PATH:/opt/nessus/sbin:/opt/nessus/bin:
cp /usr/lib/libssl.so /lib
cp /usr/lib/libcrypto.so /lib
cp /opt/nessus/lib/libnessus.so.3 /lib
cp /opt/nessus/lib/libnessusrx.so.0 /lib
cp /opt/nessus/lib/libpcap-nessus.so.3 /lib
cd /lib
ln libssl.so libssl.so.6
ln libcrypto.so libcrypto.so.6

nano /etc/ld.so.conf
/opt/nessus/lib #add this line to the config file

ldconfig
/opt/nessus/sbin/nessus-mkcert
/opt/nessus/sbin/nessus-adduser

• Next update your plugins. Make use you registered at the Nessus website. Use the code they emailed to you below.

cd /opt/nessus/etc/nessus
nessus-fetch –register XXX-YYY-ZZZ-VVV

• Run the Nessus Server:

/opt/nessus/sbin/nessusd

• Launch the Client

/opt/nessus/bin/NessusClient

All credits to williamc for providing this guide.

Source: forums.remote-exploit.org

Some other changes I made to my backtrack installation to improve usability:

Automatically boot the GUI instead of the CLI interface:

• Change initlevel 3 to 4 in inittab

Automatically launch yakuake, the Quake like console application

Add a bash script in /home/.kde/Autostart

Applications included in v4.1:

HTC Home v2_0_720719_0
HTC Audio manager v1.02
SIM Manager v6.25
MMS 4.2.8.1
HTC X-button v1.51 ( Build 30470 )
Camera 4.03 ( GPS Photo)
Streaming Media v2.20h (not in lite version)
Pocket CM 0.11
Bio Touch Settings v1.22
Black Bar
TFSettings v1.0
Bluetooth Explorer v_1_2_30234_2
Windows Live 10.6.0026.1400 (not in lite version)
TC Phone Pad v1.0 + ; -

Note: There are some other cooked ROM’s available for the P3300 in meanwhile:

- Artemis Touch 1.0 WWE

- O2 WM6 Premium 1.0

The Black&Blue ROM still does get the best feedback from users.

This cooked ROM includes the TouchFLO software from the HTC Touch!

First do the USPL Trick, then install the ROM

For those interested in how you can use your PocketPC with GPS for navigating with topographic maps, here’s my little guide.

Software

The best application for reading maps, adding routes, waypoints and tracks on a computer is Oziexplorer. For PDA’s OziexplorerCE exists. All data can be transfered between the 2. So on the road you can use your PDA, and the PC version can be used to plan and manage routes.

Oziexplorer

OziexplorerCE

Topographic maps

For Belgium, there are 2 possibilities: NGI sells topographic maps on DVD. The disadvantage of this method is that, to be able to use these maps in Oziexplorer, they need to be ‘calibrated’ manually. This can be quite time consuming and difficult. The second possibility is to download precalibrated maps for Oziexplorer. They can be found somewhere on the web when looking for “kabouterkaarten” or “kabouterbond”.

- After downloading and burning the ISO file, the maps can be opened with Oziexplorer. To be able to use the maps in OziexplorerCE, you have to convert them to a different format. This is done with the “img2ozf” tool.

- After converting all the maps, copy the new OZF mapfiles to your PocketPC.

- Copy all the *.MAP files from the cd to your PocketPC as well.

Now you are able to use the topographic maps both on your PC as well as on your PocketPC!

hint: If you want to find guides describing how Oziexplorer and OziexplorerCE work, the Geocaching websites are a good resource. Here’s a good guide for the Dutch speaking people.

Here’s my howto for installing this nice ROM:

- Download this file: TOM_Artemis_Black_Blue_v3.7.exe

- Extract the archive with Winrar in a new folder

- Replace the *.nbh file with this file: ANDY_TOM_WM6_14072007_002.nbh

- Run RUU.exe

- After the upgrade is finished, download and reinstall TomTom Navigator from here

- Install the BatteryStatus plugin to automatically overclock your device from here

- Install ContactManager from here

- Install SIPChange from here

- Install the HappyTapping keyboard from here

This is my unofficial guide describing how to upgrade your HTC P3300 from Windows Mobile 2005 to Windows Mobile 2006. The official ROM will only be released by HTC in July, so for those wanting to experiment with WM6 before the official ROM gets released can use the method described below. This method is confirmed to be working on CID Locked HTC P3300 devices. Use at your own risk offcouse.

Flashing to WM6

• Download Bepe’s WM6 English ROM
• Download the ARTE file.
• Extract the ARTE zipfile to a new folder
• Extract the WM6 English ROM to that directory and rename the file to windows.nb
• Make an ActiveSync connection
• Change the value from 03900000 to 03500000 in the upgrade_rom.bat file so pdocwrite will finish properly
• Run UpgradeRom_Artemis.bat
• After around 25-30 mins hard reset your device (the installer looks to be hanging if you skipped the step of changing the 03900000 value)
• Welcome to WM6

Restoring a bad flashed P3300 device:

• Download the HTC P3300 WWE factory ROM here.
• Hold down the voice speed dial button and soft reset – you should then enter bootloader mode ‘multicolored’ screen’
• Attach your device to your pc with a usb cable.
• Flash the factory rom by running the executable (You do not need to have an activesync connection to do this)

You might have noticed that you don’t have the full ROM visible/available. Well, that’s because HTC protects some parts of the ROM to store the bonus software there you get installed automatically after a hardreset.
However, not the complete ROM space is used there and you might want to use it to store other installation files there also.
Also this gives you the opportunity to cancel the initial installation progress of all bonus software after a hardreset and allows you to decide which applications you want to get installed later just by selecting the cab files by yourself.

In fact it’s just a registry key you have to change but here is a more convenient way to do it by installing this small tool called “PPCW.Net Extended_ROM_viewer” on your Himalaya which changes the Registry settings for you.

http://www.theunwired.net/?itemid=1638&catid=80