Thursday, 14 November 2013

Samsung Galaxy S3: How to Fix Wrong Display in the Messaging App Icon in the Home Screen

Messaging app is one of pre-installed apps on the Samsung Galaxy SIII which is presented to meet the user needs to send a message, either text or multimedia messages. Usually, when you get a new message you will get a notification in the status bar, and if you see the Messaging app icon in the Home screen, it will be marked with a certain number that indicates the number of unread messages. In

Verizon Wireless, AT&T, T-Mobile rolls out Isis Mobile Wallet



The mobile payments technology just took a big leap forward with Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile announcing Isis Mobile Wallet. This "tap to pay" technology can turn many of your credit cards and loyalty cards into virtual versions that will only require a tap at Isis-compatible merchants.

To get started, you'll need one of the 15 Isis-ready smartphones, including the Samsung Galaxy S4 and several Droid devices, with Near Field Communication, or NFC, and an enhanced SIM card. You'll also need the free Isis Android app from the Google Play Store and have an idea of which cards are participating in the new technology, such as American Express and Chase. You'll also have the option of adding money to your Mobile Wallet by linking a bank account or debit card.

The NFC technology on your smartphone will allow an Isis Mobile Wallet short-range wireless communication feature, known as "SmartTap," between the Isis app and the Isis terminal at the merchant. When out and about, you'll simply look for the Isis SmartTap symbol on payment terminals at retailers such as Toys 'R' Us, Jamba Juice, Coca-Cola vending machines. According to Verizon, there are more than 200,000 retail locations that are equipped with tap-to-pay terminals.

For security, your Isis Mobile Wallet account will be protected by a four-digit PIN, and according to Verizon, a Secure Element chip on your phone will store your payment credentials in an area that's separate from your phone's main operating system and hardware.If your device is lost or stolen, the mobile wallet account can be locked by the carrier.

As for privacy concerns, Verizon says on their website that what you buy is between you and the merchants you patronize; neither Isis nor Verizon Wireless keeps track of your purchases.

The online payment sector will get increasingly crowded going forward, as key players implement mobile banking and entice consumers to pay for merchandise and services with their smartphones. Google has Google Wallet, Mastercard has PayPass Wallet and Visa is pushing their V.me digital wallet service.

Apple Inc. has their Passbook app, which will organize gift cards, coupons, passes, tickets and more, with the idea of making your wallet a lot thinner and lighter, but stops short of actually processing a mobile payment. Apple has also stayed away from the NFC technology, while can be found on just about all the iPhone competitors, but was not included in the recent iPhones 5S and 5C.

As an alternative to NFC, Apple has opted for a fingerprint sensor on the iPhone 5S with Touch ID features. Apple also has iBeacon on the drawing board, which uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology to transmit wireless data between devices. This technology will also allow iOS 7 devices to pinpoint their location. Some believe this will become Apple's answer for NFC and will offer retailer new ways to reach potential customers beyond mobile payments.

PayPal took a different approach in the mobile payments arena with their "PayPal Here" solution, which launched over a year ago. This concept allows small business to accept almost any form of payment by using a free app and a small credit card reader for the iPhone and Android devices.

According to PayPal, they have been experiencing some success with mobile payments in the offline retailers and small business sector.

As the mobile payments continues to evolve, technology companies will be banking on savvy customers embracing a new way to shop and and pay in the years ahead.

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Wednesday, 13 November 2013

HID communication for Windows 8.1 Store applications

     I've started thinking about this post a while ago when Windows 8.1 was still in preview (I actually did some testing at that time because I was really excited abouth this new "cool" scenario store applications) and after seeing this Build 2013 session: Apps for HID Devices
     As I did not had the cool missle launcher to play with I have chosen the XBOX360 Wireless controller connected to my PC using an USB adapter similar to this one. One of the reasons why I did this, apart from proof of concept post, is because I have some bluetooth toys that I like to "drive" using the Xbox360 controller (starting with version 8.1 we have full bluetooth support for the Store applications: SPP, OBEX, GATT/BLE ). The Xbox360 controller gives one of the best gaming experience, way better than any touchscreen, keyboard or motion controllers and also enables multiplayer gaming on the same device/screen. 
    In order to be able to connect to the Xbox controller we will need to find the VID, PID and UsagePage specific for our device. As I did not know these values I've used the HClient Sample application to retrieve them. To run the HClient sample you will need Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 and, more important, Windows Driver Kit (WDK) 8.1. HClient gives you detailed informations on all the HID devices connected to your PC and to easily find out which HID device is the one you are looking for just disconnect the device from the computer, look at the items inside the list, reconnect the device and identify the new device. This way I identified that my XBOX360 controller has VID: 0x045E, PID: 0x02A1, UsagePage: 0x1, Usage: 0x5  (there might be multiple hardware versions of the desktop adapter that might have different PIDs):  


Selecting the HID Caps for the controller we will see that the input report is 15 bytes long and we don't have an output or a feature report available for this device. This is one of the reasons why, in this case, it would be better to use XInput instead of HID because it would give you access to the lights and the motors inside the controller.

Now that we have the needed values we can start to build our Windows Store application. The first thing we need to do is to set the necessary Capabilities that enable communication between our application and the Xbox controller (manually edit the Package.appxmanifest inside your project using the View code option). In want to know more about the options you can set read How to specify device capabilities for HID.

So I've have added:

  <m2:DeviceCapability Name="humaninterfacedevice">  
<m2:Device Id="vidpid:045E 02A1">
<m2:Function Type="usage:0001 *"/>
</m2:Device>
</m2:DeviceCapability>

This way we specify that we only want our application to communicate with devices that have VID 045E and PID 02A1.

Now that we have setup the capabilities we can try to find and connect to and Xbox controller. We will use HidDevice.GetDeviceSelector to generate the query that we will pass to the method DeviceInformation.FindAllAsync that returns an array with all the XBox360 controllers connected to our PC.

   public class Xbox360Controller  
{
public const UInt16 Vid = 0x045E;
public const UInt16 Pid = 0x02a1;
public const UInt16 UsagePage = 0x01;
public const UInt16 UsageId = 0x05;
}

 string selector = HidDevice.GetDeviceSelector(Xbox360Controller.UsagePage,Xbox360Controller.UsageId,Xbox360Controller.Vid,Xbox360Controller.Pid);   
var deviceCollection = await Windows.Devices.Enumeration.DeviceInformation.FindAllAsync(selector);
if (deviceCollection.Count == 0)
return "No Xbox360 controller found!";
for (int i = 0; i < deviceCollection.Count && i < MaxControllers;i++)
{
var _device = await Windows.Devices.HumanInterfaceDevice.HidDevice.FromIdAsync(deviceCollection[i].Id, Windows.Storage.FileAccessMode.ReadWrite);
if (_device == null)
{
try
{
var deviceAccessStatus = DeviceAccessInformation.CreateFromId(deviceCollection[i].Id).CurrentStatus;
switch (deviceAccessStatus)
{
case DeviceAccessStatus.DeniedByUser:
return "User denied the access!";
case DeviceAccessStatus.DeniedBySystem:
return "System denied the access!";
}
}
catch { }
return "Failed to connect to the controller!";
}
Controllers.Add(new Controller(_device));
}

 We can connect to any of the devices in the returned array using HidDevice.FromIdAsync by just passing the Id of the HID device. The first time we connect to a new device the user will be prompted to grant permission to the application to communicate with that specific device. Keep in mind that the user can later change the access permissions to each device using the Settings -> Permisssions flyout so you should always check why the connection failed (_device==null) and if DeniedByUser ask him to reenable access to the device.


If everything went fine we are now connected to at least one Xbox360 Controller and we can subscribe the InputReportReceived event. The input report contain all the 15 bytes that we need and we can manually parse the bytes or, even better, we can use the defined structures. In our case we have 10 BooleanControls which are our buttons :

 /*  
* Buttons Boolean ID's mapped to 0-9 array
* A - 5
* B - 6
* X - 7
* Y - 8
* LB - 9
* RB - 10
* Back - 11
* Start - 12
* LStick - 13
* RStick - 14
*/

and 6 numerical controls :

       _leftStickX = args.Report.GetNumericControl(0x01, 0x30).Value;  
_leftStickY = args.Report.GetNumericControl(0x01, 0x31).Value;
_rightStickX = args.Report.GetNumericControl(0x01, 0x33).Value;
_rightStickY = args.Report.GetNumericControl(0x01, 0x34).Value;
_DPAD = args.Report.GetNumericControl(0x01, 0x39).Value;
_LT = Math.Max(0, args.Report.GetNumericControl(0x01, 0x32).Value - 32768);
_RT = Math.Max(0, (-1) * (args.Report.GetNumericControl(0x01, 0x32).Value - 32768));

The usageId for the GetNumericalControl method are the ones listed under "INPUT VALUE" section in the "Sample HID client" app.

The Left Trigger and Right Trigger are returned as an unique numerical control value equal to LR-RT value. This is the second reason why XInput is a better choice for communicationg with the Xbox controller (using XInput you have distinct values for RT and LT).

Here is a screenshot from the attached sample application.



SOURCE CODE of XBox360_HID.cs

SAMPLE CODE

NAMASTE

Samsung Galaxy S3: How to Display Facebook Albums and Photos in Gallery

Gallery app is one of the stock app available on Samsung Galaxy SIII which will allow you to view photos and play back videos. All of photos and videos with supported file types that you have saved or downloaded inside your phone or SD card will be displayed here, including the picture you have saved from your Facebook account to your phone.

See also: How to Save Pictures from Facebook Account

Tuesday, 12 November 2013

Samsung Galaxy S3: How to Sync with Blackberry Contacts

Before Android smartphones dominate the market, you may have been familiar with the Blackberry smartphone. The ability to send and receive email at that time, as well as the Blackberry Messenger services (BBM) make this smartphone to get their own place. Now, when the smartphone market flooded with Android phones, lot of Blackberry users decide to migrate to Android smartphone, including the

Monday, 11 November 2013

Samsung Galaxy S3: How to Sync with iPhone Contacts

Samsung Galaxy SIII is a great Android-based smartphone which offering modern looks and advanced features for their users. That's why no wonder if so many people end up deciding to choose this phone as their devices. Even, there are some cross-platform smartphone users, such as the iPhone users from Apple whom decided to switch to use the Samsung Galaxy SIII.

Well, if you're one of them, while

Sunday, 10 November 2013

Samsung Galaxy S3: How to Clear Youtube Search History with 2 Easy Ways

As we all know that Youtube is the most popular video-sharing website today which will allow the users to upload, view and share their videos with everyone or with certain person only. In Samsung Galaxy SIII you'll find the Youtube app as one of the stock apps. So, if you already activated your Google account on your phone, then you can directly use this app.

See also: How to Use Youtube App on

Friday, 8 November 2013

Samsung Galaxy S3: How to Switch Between Installed Home Launcher App

One of tweak to speed up the performance of the Samsung Galaxy SIII is by changing the default launcher with others. There are many launcher available in Google Play Store--said Nova launcher app, ADW launcher app, etc-- that you can choose which one best suits your needs. But, better you read the review first to see if the launcher is work well or not.

See also: How to Make Samsung Galaxy S3

Thursday, 7 November 2013

Samsung Galaxy S3: How to Switch Between Installed Keyboard Application

The good thing on Samsung Galaxy SIII is whenever you're not satisfied with the stock one then you can choose and install various another third party app from the Google Play Store. For instance, you could install another third party keyboard app to get the things you want that doesn't exist in the stock keyboard app.

See also: How to Install Third Party Keyboard App on Samsung Galaxy S3

And,

Wednesday, 6 November 2013

Samsung Galaxy S3: How to Install Third Party Keyboard Application

Samsung Galaxy SIII has come with the stock keyboard which is equipped with some features to facilitate your typing activities, such as auto capitalization option which will automatically capitalize the first letter of sentence.

See also: How to Enable or Disable Auto Capitalization on Samsung Galaxy S3

Even so, some users and insiders have said that in certain conditions they were not

Tuesday, 5 November 2013

Samsung Galaxy S3: How to Remove Number from Spam List

On Samsung Galaxy SIII there are several ways that you can do to block certain contacts so they can't send you a message, one of which is by entering the number you want to block into the spam list.

See also: How to Register Number as Spam on Samsung Galaxy S3

Even so, in certain condition you might have several reasons that make you want to remove the number from the spam list and allow the

Monday, 4 November 2013

Samsung Galaxy S3: How to Send a Message to the Recent Call

In the Samsung Galaxy SIII you can see the list of all the recent calls through Logs tab under Phone app. From here, you can do several things, such as redial the recent call or save unsaved number into your phone book.

See also: How to Dial and Save a Recent Call or Number on Samsung Galaxy S3

Aside from dialing or saving the recent calls, you can also send a message to them. Of course this

Sunday, 3 November 2013

Samsung Galaxy S3: How to Turn On or Off the Microphone on Active Call

By using the Samsung Galaxy SIII you can make a call with several methods available. You can choose which one that best suit you. You can also utilizing the existing features to help you more faster and easier when making a call using this phone.

See also: 3 Features on Samsung Galaxy S3 to Make a Call Faster and Easier

While you're on call, you can utilize some option available. One of them

Samsung Galaxy S3: How to Know Total Call Duration

On Samsung Galaxy SIII you can find out all the history calls by using the Logs menu under Phone app. Here you can see the history of incoming calls, outgoing calls and missed calls. Next, you can either delete all the logs to free up your phone's storage or save some new numbers are not listed in your phone book.

See also: How to Save Recent Calls on Samsung Galaxy S3

In addition to provide

Saturday, 2 November 2013

Samsung Galaxy S3: How to Add Photo to Contact

In Samsung Galaxy S3 you can easily add new contact to stay keep in touch with them through My People app or directly trough your Contacts app then saved it to your SIM or phone storage.

See also: How to Add Contact on Samsung Galaxy S3

Here you can also add photo to the required contact to personalize them. But, you should remember that you can do this only with the contact that you've saved

Menu appearing in left side in Windows 8

I recently bought a Windows 8 PC and it had a weird issue (well what did you expect, that it would run flawlessly).

All my menus were being shown on left side to be precise on the bottom-left side, even the context menus.


Continue reading »

Samsung Galaxy S3 : How to Assign Different Message Tone in Different Contact

Some insiders asked me through the comments they leave in a couple of articles on this blog about how to set a different message tone for each contact so they could hearing a different message tone when receiving an incoming message from different contact. Unfortunately the stock messaging app on the Samsung Galaxy SIII does not provide the option to do so, you can only set the same message tone

Thursday, 31 October 2013

Samsung Galaxy S3: How to Zoom In or Zoom Out Webpage

Samsung Galaxy SIII has come with some useful pre-installed apps that you can use directly without you need to install them first. One of them is the Browser app that you can use to browse the web, read online magazine, etc.

See also: How to Use Browser App on Samsung Galaxy S3

To facilitate you while using the Browser app to browse the web, this app allows you to zoom in or zoom out the

Wednesday, 30 October 2013

Samsung Galaxy S3: How to Edit Playlist Name

The best way to facilitate you when listening to music on the Music player app in the Samsung Galaxy SIII is by creating a music playlist according to the category you want. You can specify any music you want to add into the playlist and delete music you don't want to be there.

See also: How to Add or Remove Music in Playlist on Samsung Galaxy S3

In addition to add or removing music from

Samsung Galaxy S3: How to Add or Remove Music Files on Playlist

Listening to music directly on your phone is one of fun things to do. Listening to music can help you killing the times while you're bored to wait for something or accompany you during a long-tiring journey. Therefore, almost all smartphones available today provides music player as one of their pre-install apps, including the Samsung Galaxy SIII. In this application you can categorize some music

Tuesday, 29 October 2013

Samsung Galaxy S3: How to View, Sending a Message and Calling Back a Missed Call from the Lock Screen

Samsung Galaxy SIII provides several methods that you can use to unlock the screen, from the basic swipe method up to using a password or PIN. You can also customize your lock screen by changing its background image or change the default shortcut with the new shortcut to your favourite apps.

See also: How to Change Lock Screen Shortcuts on Samsung Galaxy S3

Another thing that you can do in the

Samsung Galaxy S3 : How to Use Notification Bar

One of the important part of the Samsung Galaxy SIII which will be able to tell you everything happens in your phone is the notification bar. From here you can see the recent notification messages, status bar, alerts, etc. Through the notification bar you can also activate some device function quickly, such as Bluetooth, Sync, Mobile Data, etc.


How to use notification bar?
Below are the steps

Monday, 28 October 2013

Samsung Galaxy S3: How to Dial and Save a Recent Call or Number

You can view the call histories on the Samsung Galaxy SIII through the call log menu in the Phone app. Here you can see a list of incoming calls, outgoing calls and missed calls. You can either redial, save the phone numbers or may remove some or all of the existing call logs.

See also : How to Delete Call Logs on Samsung Galaxy S3

Well, as we have known the way to remove the call logs in the

Sunday, 27 October 2013

Samsung Galaxy S3: How to Search Message on Messaging App

Samsung Galaxy SIII allows you to compose and send a text or multimedia message by utilizing Messaging app. The incoming and sent messages will be displayed as a conversation. However, the easiness and the needs to communicate with others using the messages sometimes end up the Messaging app filled quickly with lot of messages. Fortunately, there is an option that will allow you to set

Samsung Galaxy S3: How to Make an Emergency Call Without or With SIM Card

There are some conditions that make you have to make an emergency calls, such as a fire, car accident, etc. The ability to make this calls is generally owned by all phones, including the Samsung Galaxy SIII. You can do so while your phone is inserted with SIM card or not.

See also: How to Fix No SIM Card Error on Samsung Galaxy S3


How to make an emergency call without a SIM card?
When your

Saturday, 26 October 2013

Samsung Galaxy S3: How to Change Recording Mode

Samsung Galaxy SIII has come with the advanced camera that equipped with some features and capabilities which will allow you to take a better picture. Aside from using the camera to take a picture, you can also use it to record video in HD.

See also: How to Record Video in HD on Samsung Galaxy S3

Next, you can save the video files or send it to another you wish to share with through the

Samsung Galaxy S3: How to Set or Clear Mark as Default on the Certain Contacts

One of the insiders named Sara was asked me how to assign non-default numbers to the speed dialing on her Samsung Galaxy SIII. First of all, you might be wondering why the numbers need to set as default? Well, it'll be useful if you have several phone numbers in a single contact and you want to send a message using easy text features, then the messaging app will automatically use the default

Friday, 25 October 2013

Samsung Galaxy S3: How to Fix No Microphone Button on Keyboard

Because the Samsung Galaxy SIII is not equipped with a physical keyboard, that's why Samsung has included a virtual keyboard inside it that will help your writing activities, such as when you compose a text message or email. By default, this phone use the QWERTY keyboard as you can see in your PC or laptop's keyboard. This keyboard allows you to enter letters, numbers, characters and symbols .

Samsung Galaxy S3: How to View Shared Contents with Nearby Devices

Samsung Galaxy SIII is a DLNA capable devices which will allow you to share media file with another DLNA capable devices which are connected in the same Wi-Fi network. You need to enable file sharing option first to allow another devices accessing your data.

See also: How to Share Media Files with Nearby Devices on Samsung Galaxy S3

Aside from as a host, you can also act your phone to access

Thursday, 24 October 2013

Samsung Galaxy S3 : How to Fix No Notifications Tone when Receiving Incoming Message or Email

One of the insider (how I call the inside-galaxy's visitors) named Mr. Walsh was wrote an email to me and asked why his Samsung Galaxy SIII not play a tone when receiving an incoming message or email, eventhough he had set the message tone and email tone on his phone. Well, if you're also experiencing the same problem with him, then there are a few things that you should check on your phone to