NaviMapper - Offline Maps for Windows Mobile

Free GPS mapping software are not that common, those which come with maps are even harder to find. NaviMapper breaks this trend by offering users the ability to download maps from online sources like OpenStreetMap.

The bundled NaviMapper software runs on your PC and offers an easy way to download maps to your mobile device. Downloaded maps can be easily copied to your phone for navigation without a wireless connection.

To define a region to download map data for, simply click and drag. The right button allows you to pan around the map. A search box allows you to instantly jump to a particular area. In the screenshot, a search for New York centered the map there.

Download times can vary, at the highest zoom levels, it may take a while. The good thing is that NaviMapper does not clutter your device with thousands of map files - it creates a single database file - very neat indeed.

The mobile client was fast to pick up my location using GPS. Panning around the map was a smooth experience, showing the advantage of offline maps compared to online ones.

A separate feature allows you to track your movement. Information such as distance travelled and speed can be recorded and saved.

More information and download:

NaviMapper on xda-developers.com

Free to use, donations encouraged.

Opera Mobile 10 Beta Released!

The beta version of Opera Mobile 10 has just been made available for download. This follows the earlier release of Opera Mini 5 Beta.

Speed and Responsiveness:

I've tested this latest version briefly, and my informal tests support Opera's claims that this new version has better performance in terms of rendering speed and responsiveness. Loading up Neowin's homepage took a full 10 seconds less on this beta release. Strangely, enabling the Turbo mode resulted in slower load times on my wi-fi connection. I didn't face any serious slow-downs even with a few websites loading in background tabs. Memory usage hovered around 1 MB plus.

Rendering and standards support:

There's no support for embedded Youtube videos though, you'll instead get a link that opens the video stream in Windows Media Player. Rather than that, images and text are rendered smoothly, and remains easy on my eye despite the 400x240 resolution of my Omnia i900. Opera gets top marks for accurate display of websites. Just for fun, I ran the Acid3 test -you can see the results in the screenshot. Not that bad, huh?

Bookmarks and saved pages

The new speed dial feature offers quick access to your favourite sites. You also have an option to add more bookmarks and create folders to organise them. You can save versions of a webpage for future reference.
The find-in-page works well, allowing you to jump through matches. All matching terms are highlighted.

Conclusion:

Though it may be a beta version, this version of Opera Mobile takes a few steps in the right direction. The interface remains uncluttered and touch-friendly, and general responsiveness has improved. Inclusion of flash support would be a good addition though. (Perhaps flash could be enabled for a few specified websites, while pesky flash ads on others would be blocked?)

More information and download:
Opera Mobile 10 beta

Editing Windows Mobile Registry with CeRegEditor

Some hidden tweaks for Windows Mobile requires one to edit certain registry entries. There's not really a regedit program on Windows Mobile by default, so how does one go about doing this?

CeRegEditor offers an easy way to edit registry entries, offering the ease of doing so on a Windows computer. A warning first though, making the wrong changes to your device can cause problems. However, most of the tweaks on various sites are well tested, so there shouldn't be any issues if you make the changes as stated.

Do note that you may need to run the program with Adminstrative rights, or else you may receive a "Unhandled exception raised! Error message: Failed to set data for..." message. CeRegEditor does its magic through an ActiveSync connection.



The interface of CeRegEditor looks very much like any other registry editor for Windows. A registry tree panel on the left allows you to navigate Windows Mobile's registry with ease. You can define favourite keys which you use often to save time navigating. Handy options allows one to make a cab file out of registry values, and also make a backup. One can also search through registry keys and compare snapshots of registry entries.

CeRegEditor is free for both private and commercial use, a pleasant surprise considering its functionality.


Download:
CeRegEditor

Converting Videos with Badak

The Omnia has awesome support for many file formats. However, it may have trouble playing high-resolution videos without some noticeable lag.

Badak is a free application for Windows that allows you to convert a wide variety of videos to a format supported by the Omnia. I started using it to convert videos for my iriver clix II player, which only supports 320x240 videos. Badak's flexibility allows one to define the exact output format. Conversion speed is among the fastest of the free encoders I've tried.

Badak uses a slightly older version of mencoder. You can easily download a newer version and overwrite the one in Badak's installation folder, set to C:\Badak by default.



Here are some recommended settings:

Video bitrate: 500
Resize : 400 x 240
Encoder: OpenDivx



Download:

Badak (5427KB)