A lot of people seem to be having an issue updating their unbranded LG E900 Optimus 7 to Mango and getting Update error code 8018001E.

Someone seem to work out what the issue was and pointing the finger on the fact that an unbranded LG E900 would not have gotten a firmware update which only get rolled out by the carriers.

A friend pointed out these excellent steps on Microsoft forum on how to update the LG Optimus 7 firmware. But I had trouble understanding it so I thought I’ll copy paste it below and modify it as I see appropriate to make it even easier to follow.

Step 1: Upgrade the phone’s firmware

0. Download the desired firmware from the xda forum. I used  and the LG E900 Europe Open and also download the dll for your phone according to your model. The model number can be find underneath the phone’s battery. Mine says LGE900

1. Download LGDP2 V36 UMTS Setup and extract, go to LGDP2_31_INCLUDE_LGDP1_Setup folder and install the exe (use serial number that is provided inside the zip). By default this will instal to C:\DOWNLOAD. I’m getting an error cannot register one of the dll right before it finished. Click ok and continue.

2. You will also have a DOWNLOAD folder as a part of the LGFP2_V36_UMTS_Setup zip above. Copy the contents of the DOWNLOAD folder to C:\DOWNLOAD). OVERWRITE when asked.

3. Download cable drivers from and Install LGUnitedMobileDriver_S497CA20_WHQL_ML_Ver_1.0. You do not need the rest inside the downloaded folder.

4. On your phone call screen, type ##634# (MFG App)

5. MFG application appears, enter 277634#*# as password and press enter

6. From ther go to 7. Engineering -> 3. Port -> 1. USB Switching Setting and select 2. QC Composite. Press ok to the info message appeared and your phone will auto reboot.

7. shut your phone back down and boot it in Emergency Download Mode by holding the Volume-, the Camera and the Power Button Simultaneously.

8. Connect your phone to your computer and your device will be recognized as a modem. Wait until the devises are installed and go to your device manager (right click on My Computer -> Manage -> Device manager ) and find the new installed modem. Go to it’s properties and find on which Com port it is connected ( under the Modem tab in properties ). Also, in the device manager find one more device installed under Com Ports Category. using the same method see it’s Com port as well. For me it was Com 14 and 15

disconnect your phone and turn the phone off.

9. Go to C: \ DOWNLOAD and run LGDP2_V36_UMTS.exe
IMPORTANT:
For XP users: Run with administrator privileges.
For Windows 7 Users: Run with administrator privileges in Windows XP SP3 compatibility. Some users mentioned problems if not executed in compatibility.
I got an error cannot load dll. Ignore and continue.

10. Under Division Drop down menu choose UMTS (NOT CDMA), then press OK without changing anything else.

11. Select the COM ports that you found in the device manager.

12. Select the dll you downloaded, make sure you downloaded the correct one. Be careful of the ‘H’. The one for the E900 starts with LGE900_ and not LGE900H_.

13. Press RUN DOWNLOAD CONFIGURATION and select the image you are interested (the .dz firmware that you download on item 0)

13. Press OK.

14. It’ll give an error the MONITOR PORT CAN NOT FIND!

15. Press START in the upper left.
 
16. Turn on the phone and usually when you see the Windows Phone logo, connect the phone to the computer using the same USB port as what you used previously.

17. The phone will go into recovery mode by itself, the flash will begin, when the software will reset command and see the LG logo appears press Stop, switch the phone off.

18. At this point, it’s almost like you have a new Windows Phone. Configure your phone and plug it back to the computer on a different USB port. Zune will automatically launch, and finish configuring the phone. You will be asked to update the Windows Phone to Feb 2011 release. Update it.

Step 2: Force an update to Mango

To do this, I found a tip from WPCentral. Feel free to read it yourself, but essentially you need to go to zune, click update, and disconnect the internet as it is checking for new update. For me it seems you need to leave it on for 3 seconds before disconnecting it.

As what it says on the post, You need to do this a few times, so be patient.

I did what I do best… I whine

Read more …

Project management methodology, business model and software engineering practices need to go hand in hand.

for e.g.

A fixed price project needs to be accompanied with a more rigid waterfall Project Management methodology and need to be supported by a clear scope, arc & solution design. Change request control obviously have to be tight and clearly communicated to the people who are paying for it.

A flexible agile methodology has to be supported by time & material billing so that business owners/client understand the implication of each change. it also need to be supported by discipline software engineering practices like automated regression testing, adhering to open closed principle, etc to allow change to happen frequently without sacrificing quality of the product.

Mixing and matching the 2 composition will often give you the worst of both world.

Both rigid & flexible approach can work well with the right "support".

1. Open an elevated command prompt
2. Run ‘pkgmgr.exe /iu:IIS-WindowsAuthentication’
   There won’t be any feedback as you run this.
3. Close IIS manager and re-open it. You should see it now.

I’ve been using Tumblr for a while. I like the simplicity of the platform, the ability to aggregate out posts to social network sites & the fact that I can easily download all the content out via the API. The problem is it doesn’t have a lot of security or access control features.

Now, I don’t want a full blown username/password type of a security. I only wanted for people to prove that they “kinda” know me in real life by asking a private question like what is my daughter’s name. A good enough security measure.

Introducing Boink

Boink is A simple javascript framework that does just that. It’s still at its early stage. Would love to see it used more on other sites, forked, or just to get your feedback if you like/hate it!

See it in action on my personal photo blog: Kucing Nyasar

What it doesn’t do

1. it doesn’t stop hackers (or html/js savvy people) from getting in. It’s just a “good enough” security measure.
2. it doesn’t protect the information of the webpage securely.
3. (right now) it doesn’t even protect the secret answer securely. On the next release, instead of storing the secret answer as plain text, it will require the admin to specify an md5 hash of the secret answer instead. Feel free to help out implementing this.

How to get it

Head over to Boink’s repository at GitHub for a sample page that has Boink applied to it. I’m working on a simple web app that host the core javascript & generates the required tag to be copy pasted to any webpages.

You can also find the road map.

Originally I had something like the following:

string data = client.DownloadString("[some url]");
var reader = new StringReader(data);

Pretty straight forward right? But the thing is, it doesn’t work. So I found out the hard way, client.DownloadString doesn’t encode the characters using UTF-8.

To do that, I had to change the code to the following:

var data = client.DownloadData("[some url]");
var strungData = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(data);
var reader = new StringReader(strungData);

A friend of mine, Zeddy Iskandar pointed out an article on Wired (below) about the story of Stuxnet. I just realized that I watched about it on Ted Talks.

Long story short, if you’re a geek & or at least remotely interested in technology, these 2 links is a much watch/read. Watch the video above first, and if you still want to know more, read the Wired article below-written almost in the style of a detective novel.

Wired: How Digital Detectives Deciphered Stuxnet

After seeing the Boneheadsoftware guys with their awesome DiceBox, I thought I try my own hooking BepuPhysics with the WP accelerometer. Very crude, but (kinda) works

There are a few things that I’m used to on Chrome and straight away became a constant annoyance, here are a few tips on resolving those:

Group my tabs on taskbar

IE by default shows previews for individual tabs in the taskbar. Even though some people might find it useful, I am nowhere near used to it. With Chrome, I like the fact that I can tell I have 2 windows open (each window might have 10+ tabs open).

Also, the fact that I constantly have 15+ tabs open, the preview in the taskbar just become such a noise.

So you could change the behavior by:

1. go to tools (gear icon on right hand side) > internet options > general tab > tabs > click on settings.
2. untick ‘show previews for individual tabs in the taskbar’.

Tabs on a separate row

IE9 provides a fresh design having the Url box and Tabs on a single row. The problem for someone like me who has 10+ tabs open, it doesn’t leave me with a lot of space.

This is how you change the behavior: right click anywhere near the Url box and choose Show tabs on a separate row.

Bookmarklets

I love Google Chrome extensions, especially because of the fact that it’s situated in a strategic position right next to the Url box. The second best thing I find for me to have the same functionality is to use bookmarklets. I manage to create shortcuts for Read It Later and Delicious.

To do this simply:

1. Find the bookmarkets that you want to use (for e.g. Read It Later bookmarkets, Delicious bookmarklets)
2. Add to Favorites\Favorites Bar
3. Show Favorites Bar so that you have easy access to them and simply delete the other default bookmarks.

Zubair and I had the chance to present at the Microsoft Web Camps last April 16. We covered two topics: I did Responsive Design, and Zubair focused on WebMatrix and Visual Studio 2010. If you miss it, feel free to watch the video!

The process of creating a website now always start with a question on figuring out the devices you want to support for; PCs, mobile phones and/or slate devices. Each of these devices may have different screen sizes, capabilities etc. For simplicity, designer/developer often chooses to build dedicated websites for each one of the platform which often leads to maintenance nightmare.

This talk showed how to design and develop a dynamic website for the various platforms using Responsive Design techniques. We’re starting up the process with WebMatrix and transitioning to Visual Studio 2010 as we progress. We touched on Html5, CSS3, Razor, Entity Framework 4 and C#.

Here’s the slides that I use on the day:

Here’s the sample website that we build/explained on the demo. And of course just right click and ‘view source’ (or use F12 tools/Firebug) if you want to explore the source code: