It’s been a long time again… Just like the last time and the time before and before and before… How am I ever going to get loyal readers if I don’t post any more often? I guess that the only way to get loyal readers is by writing stuff that they might like which brings me to today’s topic: the N5 which is a Micro SD card reader for the Nintendo DS which is made by some Chinese company. It’s homepage can be found by clicking here.
The N5 enables you to use ROMS of DS games that you download somewhere. These games van be official games which would be illegal or homebrew. The device comes packaged with a USB Micro SD card reader and a software cd. On the software CD you’ll find Moonshell which is required to be on the Micro SD card if you want the DS to boot when the card is inserted. Besides the ability to play ROMS the N5 supports MP3 playback, movie playback in some formats, textfile reading and a calculator through moonshell.
I allready had a 1GB Micro SD card, but if you don’t have one yet, you’ll have to get one seperatly or find a store that sells a bundle. I primarily use the N5 to be able to play games that I can’t get around here. It’s really annoying when a game is released, but then the only way to get it is through import, because not a single store here sells them. I think that I’m also going to use it to check a game out before I’ll actually buy it. Buying games always comes with the risk that you don’t like them. Because there are hardly any demos and if there are any demos they’re pretty much impossible to get then downloading a ROM to try the game and then buy it if you like it is quite a good way to be sure you get your money’s worth.
But for some people the most important reason to get a flash card reader for the DS would be homebrew. There are some really interesting homebrew titles available for the DS like this Quake and Quake 2 port and this OpenTTD port. And this is one that I find very interesting, Warcraf Tower Defense, but I have yet to try it.
A lot of homebrew software for the DS (and also for the PSP) can be found on homebrewwelt, but unfortunatly for those who don’t speak German, this site is in German.
Yes, exactly, what the title says and all that without a hack. All you need for this is the Nintendo DS Browser I mentoined in my previous post. The people over at ebuddy understood that there was a need for a web based messenger solution for some of the most popular instant messengers that would work on handheld devices like cell phones, PDAs, Blackberry devices and ofcourse the NDS.
When you enter the url http://www.ebuddy.com on your NDS it will automatically bring you to the mobile page where you can choose from the 3 before mentioned IM systems. When you have picked one it’ll bring you to a login page where you enter your user name and password and off you go.
I only tried the MSN one, because I’m not on the others, but I expect them to work pretty much the same way.
The mobile messenger doesn’t work as convenient as it’s desktop counterpart, but it works quite nicely, here’s a list of the major differences it has for MSN and this probably also goes for Yahoo! and AIM;
- only one ‘window’: you must do everything within one ‘window’ so switching from one conversation to another isn’t as quick as on the big version.
- No custom smileys
- No buzzers, winks, soundclips and all that jazz
- No voice/video chat
- Even the contact list and configuration options are in the same ONE ‘window’
- No contact groups, only online and offline are seperated
- Typing isn’t as convenient as on the big version
That’s about it, well, there are a lot more differences ofcourse, but these are the most noticable ones and probably the most important.
The best thing is that it works great on SSR mode, so you only have vertical scrolling instead of both horizontal and vertical.
Sometime soon I’ll post a couple of pics of this web based messenger, but I’ll need my camera for that and I can’t post those from my NDS from which I’m posting this.
I’m pretty sure that this ebuddy stuff works on other handheld devices, like a PDA or a Blackberry, as well.
Written on the NDS
I don’t know whether any of my readers are art lovers, but I thought I’d inform you of the fact that I’m at the world’s largest art fair as a crew member. Together with two classmates and a student from another group I’m doing the IT support at the Tefaf fair in Maastricht (the Netherlands). Rich people from all over the world come to Maastricht for this event and most of the exibitors, who also come all this way from all over the world, want to have a wireles connection to the internet. And that’s where we come in.
For some more info on the Tefaf fair you can click here.
It’s been pretty busy, but I was able to squeeze this post between all the calls we get.
So, what else is new? Well, I got a little accesory for my Nintendo DS. I purchased the Nintendo DS Browser by Opera Software and I must say that it’s really nice.
The NDS Browser is based on Opera 8.5, which is reflected in some minor webpage incompatibility, but even then most pages are displayed correctly in the overview mode. The SSR mode (Small Screen Rendering) only very few pages are displayed correctly. SSR mode is especially useful for webpages that were specially designed for mobile devices like cell phones.
The only drabacks I have encountered are it’s disability to save password and to the same thing to store cookies.This forces you to reenter your user name and password for sites you visit regularly over and over again.
But even writing e-mails and posting blog entries can be done really well with this program, I’m even writing this post using my NDS with the Browser.
Written on the NDS
The maintainance is completed and so I can get back to normal posting again and I hope that all of the images are back and working again. So if any of you people come by any pictures that don’t work or that are obviously wrong, please inform me by leaving a comment right here.
So, in the meantime I purchased Need for Speed Carbon: Own the City for my Nintendo DS Lite and by now I have almost finished it’s single player career mode and I must say that this game by far exceeds my expectations.
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