How-To
Hack/ReSkin Callwave.

By \vhite \volf

NOTE: I love the PNG image format so expect to see it when ever possible on all my pages.
I make alot of assumtions here. So, if you don't understand then you need to go get a How-To Hack tutorial.
Also my spelling/grammar sucks, deal with it.

Synopsis

In case you don't know, CallWave is a service that allows your computer to recieve telephone messages while you are online. You can get more information at http://www.callwave.com.

Anyway, this tutorial will show you how I reskined the CallWave: Internet Answering Machine version 3.00.1 (Which still worked as of 7/31/2002.)

To change This:

fig. 2

To This:

fig. 2

As you can see the hacked version takes up far less screen real estate, thus allowing you to work/play without the distractions. This version without any further modification dose have it's problems though. Selecting the next message is prectically imposible without further hacking or adding a helper application. The volume can't be adjusted from CallWave anymore and the message text can no longer be displayed. Finally, The ads still display but only the top part that can cover the callwave program, see fig 3. Work is in progress to complete my hack to fix these bugs but for now lets focus on reskinning the program.

fig. 3

Start The Hack

First thing I attemped was to open the iam.exe (Callwave program) with ResHack to do a little resource exploring. Hmm, ResHack couldn't open the file. ResHack reported that is could not open the file because iam.exe was not in a standard resource layout and that the program might be a compressed exe. Drats, this alone implies that a standard Hex editor would also fail becouse the strings would be garbaged. (I wondered how they got the program and install in such a small file). I tried performing a Hex edit in hopes that the compression program might have left a clue.

What luck! On offset 345 (fig. 4) I found a short copyright notice within the Hex stating what exe compressor was used and it even displays the URL to download it! I tried the URL but it was a dead link, bummer. I did a search with Google and found it in 25 seconds. The new url is http://upx.sourceforge.net. Hmm, seams that CallWave is using an open source compression program, cool.

fig. 4

Wow, I guess I did this the hard way! I just noticed that CallWave gave credit to the upx creators in the about box. Oh well, it was more fun discovering it using the Hex editor.

Well, once I downloaded upx I decompressed iam.exe and tried to open it with ResHack. Success, now I wasable to freely explore the files images/strings/ect!
I found that recource "RCData/113/1033" was in fact a single GIF image with multiple animation frames to denote the different button states. (Fig. 5 is the original GIF)

fig. 5

So you will need a good graphic editing program that can handle animated GIFs. I used "The Gimp" (An free alternative to Adobe Photoshop ) to create my new skin. (Actually I just modified the original GIF, but feel free to be creative).

Here is my new skin:

fig. 6
(right click to save)

Thats it, if you feel creative you can also modify the ads as thay are downloaded to display something more useful. Maybe writing a program to modify the images dynamically would be cool.

Have fun.

Questions/Comments: Try the message board.

Downloads (All files are zipped)
Original CallWave "iam.exe" - compressed w/ UPX	470 KB
Original CallWave "iam.exe" - uncompressed	694 KB
Modified CallWave "iam.exe" - compressed w/ UPX	476 KB

CallWave and all their stuff is their stuff, trademark blah blah copyright blah blah.
June 31, 2002

How-To Hack/ReSkin Callwave.

Synopsis

Start The Hack

Downloads

How-To
Hack/ReSkin Callwave.