Converting mobilephone into webcam

Camera in a mobilephone is getting better day by day and reached upto 5MP with good clarity and cool features. Until now we have used mobile camera for just taking pictures and recording video's. But now we can even use it as a webcam for chatting online on any popular messenger service available.

Let us check out some of the cool softwares that converts a camera phone into a webcam.

Mobiola
It converts your phone into a webcam via Bluetooth or through USB cable.It consists of two parts - a PC application with virtual camera driver and Symbian sis application for smartphone.Features:

• Transforms your mobile phone into high-quality PC webcam.
• Connects through USB or Bluetooth.
• Screen Capture functionality.
• Works with Skype, Yahoo, YouTube, MSN, AOL IM, ICQ and many others as standard USB webcam.

List of compatible devices (Check out the home site for updated list)
RIM Blackberry - Any Blackberry devices equipped with camera
Windows Mobile - Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices equipped with camera including Smartphones
Nokia 6600, 6620, 7610, 6630, 6670, 6260,6680, 6681, 6682, 3230, N70,N90, 3250, 5500, E50, E51, E65, E70, E90, N71, N73, N76, N80, N81, N82, N91,N92, N93, N93i, N95, N96
Sony-Ericsson P1i, P990, M600, W950, W960, P800, P900, P910, P990, G700, G900
Motorola Z8, Z10

If you don't have a webcam, or want a more versatile solution to your current cam, then Mobiola WebCam is an essential download.

Limitations:
30 day Trial Period Limited to 5 minutes connection.

Actual Link: http://www.warelex.com/

WWigo
This is an alternative for Mobiola since it is free to use. It has got all most all the features supported by Mobiola.

Actual Link: http://www.motvik.com/

OpD2d - Direct to disk audio recorder

It all began long back .... Long Long ago ....

It was the period when Online Music Sharing was ruling the Internet ... major companies from Music industry started using DRM Codenamed: Digital Rights Management or Digital Restrictions Management in their albums to Copy-Protect (It is what a Mu$ic company says) or to kill Online Music Sharing.

Later DRM controlled and prevented copying or conversion of music by end users to other formats. Which made Music Companies $RICH$ as every user has to buy his own copy of a song inorder to listen it.

Then came the GEEK's (or HACKER's according to Music Industry and government's) with a temporary solution until they are able to crack the DRM. It can be called as "Get it when it enters the cave".

Whenever a Audio file is played in a PC the digital data in the Audio file is converted into Analog stuff in the sound card. Sound cards usually have digital-to-analog converters, that converts data in digital format to an analog signal which is sent to a speaker or headphone. This is how we can hear the MUSIC dude ....

Geek's did a trick by simply recording the output Analog signal from the sound card with a simple software program like OpD2d.

OpD2d (Direct to disk audio recorder) is a simple audio recording application with an odd old interface. It can be used to easily record anything that gets into your sound card and save it directly onto your hard disk.

It was originally written to make use of the Yamaha SW1000 XG soundcard's ability to record the digital audio it is playing. This is a really useful feature since I can simply record streaming audio from the Internet directly onto my hard disk, then burn it onto CD. This app supports all Windows based operating system's from Window98 to XP.

The present version 1.3 of OpD2d, even supports to save the recorded content directly into an MP3 file. And this software comes with a "FREE USAGE" tag. So why to waste time start using it

http://www.opcode.co.uk/opd2d/default.asp

Better do a Google search with OpD2d as the download link may be a broken one ...

How to Enable USB device

Today a desktop computer equipped with a CD writer or a DVD burner is very rare in most of the companies. But a much larger security threat is posed by the open USB ports where mischievous office workers can just plugin the Flash Pen Drive, External Hard Disk or their iPod music player and transfer corporate data or even copy licensed software to their memory sticks in seconds. Sometimes even used for delivering trojans or spyware into the companies networks.

So called SMART ADMINISTRATORS disabled USB Drive access by changing the BIOS settings and then locking it up with a "PASSWORD". Even though they are a step ahead as we don't know the password for BIOS but it is not a fool proof way. As BIOS password can be broken in a simple way.

While some ADMINS simply remove the USB port option to the PC. While some for temporary restriction simply disable "Write Access" to USB port so that no one can copy data files from PC into a USB. Let us see how to disable WRITE PROTECTION option.

NOTE: It is the time to make hands dirty so backup the Registry.

Open the Windows Registry by giving "regedit" command in command prompt. If regedit is not disabled then you can see the registry editor. Now on the Left side of the editor open the following registry key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\ Control\StorageDevicePolicies

If your sysadmin has enabled WRITE protection then you can see a DWORD called WriteProtect with its value as 1 in the Right side of the editor. Set the value of WriteProtect as 0 to disable the write protection.

Note: Remember that the above trick works only with Windows XP SP2.

If you like to go a step further and enable connecting USB storage devices to their computers, Open registry and navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\UsbStor

Now in the Right pane of the registry editor you can see a DWORD called Start with its value as 4 (Hexadecimal). Change the value to 3 to enable the USB storage devices.