A portable scanner in my pocket! (or faxing from a mobile device)

I’ve been exploring creative ways to use the camera on my Windows Mobile device to boost my productivity.  Qipit provides a way to copy and email or fax documents to anyone at any time from any web enabled mobile device. 

Qipit works from any mobile device that has a web browser and is not limited to windows mobile handhelds, iphones or any other mobile device.  Qipit is almost like having a scanner in my pocket.

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HTC Touch Pro 2 Surprise Mini Unboxing

I was caught off guard today. The DHL tracking showed that the Touch Pro 2 that I ordered from Clove Technology just arrived in the US early this morning. I totally expected it to arrive Monday. Well, surprise SURPRISE, it showed up a few minutes ago. I don’t have access to my camera or video cam right now, so I snapped some unboxing pics with the HTC Touch Diamond 2. Not bad pics either!

More photos of this hood top, mini unboxing after the break…

Expect more soon! I will see what I can do this weekend. Sim card is in and it’s charging up right now, so I should have juice to get some play time today.

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Is Android A Failure?

Frank posted about 1 million T-Mobile G1s being sold, but Sascha Segan at PC Magazine is beginning to worry whether Android is already a failure.  He bases his claims on a couple of points. 

First, there are only two Android phones available — the T-Mobile G1 and the HTC Magic (which is similar to the G1 without a keyboard).  That’s not a great variety for a platform touted as being so flexible.  Sure, various hardware OEMs (like Motorola) have said they’d be dev eloping Android phones, but nobody has any to show yet.

Second, the software development environment isn’t very good.  He claims people said the initial Software Development Kit (SDK) wasn’t great, and that the new SDK doesn’t really have any game-changing features.

Also, if you look at sales, T-Mobile has sold 1 million Android phones, but the iPhone sold almost 3.7 million units in its first six months.  That’s a huge difference.

Granted, the iPhone may be a special case, but Android hasn’t seemed to have gotten a lot of play at Mobile World Congress or CTIA.  Maybe I’m too focused on Windows Mobile, but have I missed much?

Personally, I think that it’s too early to write Android off.  Google has deep pockets and great talent, so I’m sure they can make a great product.  However, there’s also a lot of competition out there from a newly revitalized Windows Mobile, the Palm Pre, BlackBerry and, of course, the iPhone.  What do you think?

           

Review: iHarmonix Platinum i-Series Headphones

2 Words… Inexpensive and Awesome! Seriously. For the price, these headphones deliver. Enough of the infomercial voice now, let’s take a look at the iHarmonix Platinum i-Series Headphones.

I first got a chance to hear these new headphones using my own Zune at the Digital Focus event during CES in January. I normally don’t stop at booths for accessories, but there was such a nice sized crowd there, I wanted to see what was up. I waited around a few minutes and then they popped some fresh ends and let me throw in some Metallica using my own Zune. I also allowed a couple others at the booth to hear these through my own media library. I was pretty impressed as were those around me. It was really the overall sound quality that impressed me, it was knowing that the sound I was hearing was coming out of a set of $39.99 earbuds. I was testing using the Pro Series.

Now I have a set of iHarmonix Platnium i-Series earbuds to try out. I have been using them on and off for a couple weeks now. Recently, with the nice weather, I was able to give them some real good yardwork testing. Now that the grass is short, it’s time for my impressions.

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Comparing the IPAQ hw6900 Mobile Messenger and the IPAQ 900 Business Messenger

I’ve enjoyed using my IPAQ hw6925 for a couple of years but a few months ago the hw6925 went for a swim for a brief 2 seconds.  Even though I removed the battery, storage card and SIM card immediately and left it under a hot lamp for 24 hours to dry, the hw6925 has been quirky ever since.  Lately, I’ve been using an IPAQ 910c and thought you might like a comparative review of the two devices. In this article I discuss the hardware similarities and differences between the two devices as well as the pre-installed software differences.  I also summarize the WM6.1 enhancements.

With a sleek new body and running WM6.1, the IPAQ 900 Business Messenger is the true successor to the IPAQ hw6900 Mobile Messenger.  Notable hardware differences between the two IPAQs include:

• The IPAQ 900 is 3G enabled
• The IPAQ 900 has double the amount of System ROM and System RAM as the hw6900
• The IPAQ 900 has a 320 x 240 pixel screen, with a default landscape orientation.  There is no known way to change the orientation to a more standard portrait orientation.
• Even though the IPAQ 900 screen is a larger pixel size than that of the hw6900, the viewable image size of 2.46 inches is noticeably smaller that that of the hw6900 image size of 3.0 inches.  These screenshots are an accurate representation of the viewable screen sizes of the IPAQ 910c and the IPAQ hw6925.

IPAQ 910c	IPAQ hw6925

 

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MyPhone 1st Impressions - So Far, So Good

I am beta testing the newly announced MyPhone application. I haven’t been using it too long, but here are my initial thoughts and experience.

The 1st thing was the CAB to install. I could have taken an over there air download or download to PC and transfer it. I chose to download to my laptop and install the CAB from there. The file size was only 557kb. Pretty small. I moved the CAB to my Fuze and it installed flawlessly.

When I 1st run the program, it warned me to disable activesync or terminate the calendar, contacts, and task relationships with my exchange server. I did that, no problem. Then it had me log in for the 1st time. Over an EDGE connection, syncing 68 photos and all the contacts, tasks, etc took a nice chunk of time initially.

At the bottom right of the programs menu, you will see the Microsoft MyPhone Icon. The middle screenshot details the sync progress. On the right is a screen that is similar to Activesync and tells when the last sync occurred. The linked “Show Details” brings up info on what was changed on the last sync.

This is a pop up menu that allows you to configure some things about MyPhone. What you see in the middle and right screenshots is the “options”. This is where you choose what you will sync. The middle screen shows the contacts, calendar, and Tasks greyed out. This is because I sync those with Exchange server.  To trick MyPhone, I had to delete my phone’s relationship between activesync and my exchange server. Once that was done, it deleted all my contacts, tasks, etc. Then I had to sync with my pc to restore this info. I was then able to sync those contacts, tasks, and Calendar events with MyPhone.

From the Menu in the earlier screenshot, you have the choice of Account Menu (left), the Scheduling Info (middle), and on the right is the about screen.

Read on for more, including the web interface…

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Is Touch Evil?

About a month ago, Zack Whittaker at ZD Net blogs wrote an interesting piece called Touch: the most evil technology in modern computing.  He claims that touch technology is evil for two main (and related) reasons — screens smudged with fingerprints can get glitchy and spread germs.

While both may be true, he undermines his argument by pointing out that one of the most germ-laden pieces of equipment in many homes is the computer keyboard.  Also, a study of office hygiene found that the telephone had the most germs, followed by the keyboard.  So it seems to me that phones with keyboards and keypads are already likely to be infested.

He also claims that touch computing has taken off too quickly and that multi-touch isn’t a mature technology.  While the latter is probably true, touchscreen phones have been around for years, although many (like Palm and Pocket PC phones) used a stylus.  I assume he’s referring to the Apple model of touch using capacitive screens, which is newer, but so what?  Just because something is new doesn’t mean it’s bad.  That philosophy leads to stagnation.

So what do you think?  Does Zack get two thumbs up or is he a bit touched himself?

           

Best Selling Windows Mobile Devices

When it was announced that Windows Mobile sold 20 million devices last year, it was also mentioned that 11 devices had sales of one million or more.  Curious about what those devices were, Mike Temporale of Mobile Jaw asked Greg Sullivan what those top sellers were.  Here’s the list (grouped by manufacturer):

• Samsung Omnia (SGH-i900/908/SCH-i910/M490)
• Samsung Blackjack II (SGH-i617)
• Samsung Blackjack (SGH-i607/600)
• Motorola Q
• Audiovox SMT 5600 (HTC)
• HTC Touch Diamond (Diamond/Diamond-C)
• HTC Dash (Excalibur)
• HTC xv6800  (Titan)
• HTC TyTN II (Tilt/Kaiser)
• HTC Touch (Elf/Vogue)
• HTC P800W (Artemis)

Mike noticed that 5 of the 11 devices didn’t have touch screens and that 7 of 11 had QWERTY keyboards.  That led him to wonder if the preoccupation over developing an iPhone competitor was the best use of resources.

Personally, I say why not develop great touch screen devices — and keep developing other form factors, too.  That flexibility is one of the strengths of Windows Mobile.  What do you guys think?

           

Cooking in the Mobile Cloud

I’m a pretty good cook and, even though I don’t cook a lot, I enjoy trying out new recipes.  I’ve clipped recipes, searched for recipes on the web, and amassed quite a collection of cookbooks over the years.  Recently I decided to organize my recipes into an electronic cookbook.  My requirements for an electronic cookbook included menu planning, automatic creation of a shopping list, and easy integration of recipes and shopping lists with my Pocket PC.  After trying out a few applications I settled on Big Oven. 

BigOven.com

Big Oven is more than just a recipe application.  It it also a comprehensive website that encompasses an extensive, searchable recipe database of over 160,000 recipes and an online social network that you can join to swap recipes, trade tips and chat with other cooking enthusiasts.

When you join Big Oven, you get your own web page that you can personalize and share with your family and friends. 

Information that you can put on your web page includes links to:

• Try Soon Queue: an ordered list of recipes that you might want to try sometime within the next 30 days. When you browse the Big Oven recipe database, you can add recipes to your Try Soon Queue.  Your friends can also add recipes to your Try Soon Queue by “suggesting recipes to you from any recipe page. Recipes in your Try Soon Queue are automatically removed from the queue after 30 days.
• Recipes you’ve posted to Big Oven.  You can publish recipes to Big Oven’s website from Big Oven’s desktop application (if you have installed it to your computer) or you can input recipes directly to Big Oven’s website.
• Recipes you’ve rated
• Favorite Recipes
• Photos you’ve posted to Big Oven
• Menu plans
• Social groups (or BigOven Discussion Groups) you belong to
• Videos you’ve posted to Big Oven

Your web page and all of the links included on the web page, such as posted recipes and menu plans, are all posted in Big Oven’s public web space and are viewable by all registered members.  You can view and retrieve information from your chef page from any computer or from your mobile device.

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Skyfire - Get it Today. View Mobilitysite the Right Way!

iPhone people, ignore this post. I don’t wanna hear it. :)

So, yeah… Can your browser do this? No? Skyfire can help you! Mobilitysite and Skyfire have teamed up and spread the word about this innovative browser. Jack and others have shared info about Skyfire already, but look at the rendering below… It deserves another post.

Skyfire is the only way you can watch all the videos I post here on your phone.  In fact, all of the multimedia here is viewable on your phone – and it will appear exactly like it does on the desktop. Unlike any other browser, Skyfire delivers speedy page loads, full audio, images and videos. 

Check out Skyfire, a free downloadable browser available for Windows Mobile phones and Nokia N or E-Series (3^rd Edition) phones in the US.  Just go to skyfire.com to get the download.  Read on for some FAQs about Skyfire…

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The Incomplete Guide to D-Pads

The latest handsets by ASUS and VelocityMobile may indicate a new trend in Windows Mobile devices: So long old D-PAD, here comes the trackball!

Trackball? With Windows Mobile? You must be kidding me…

I decided to take action and review some of the D-PAD types that I’ve encountered during the years. As I did in my blog, with the Incomplete Guide to Mobile Forms Factors – this is obviously a non-official review but only my personal point of view. So, I give you now - the Incomplete Guide to Directional Pads!

Let’s get wiki’ed with it:

D-Pad: (from Wikipedia) a flat, usually thumb-operated directional control found on nearly all modern video game console gamepads, with one button on each point.

Amazing stuff isn’t it… [Read more]

           

Exploring WIFI and IE on the IPAQ 910c

Setting up my wireless network on the IPAQ 910c was very easy.  When I turned the WIFI radio on, the IPAQ 910c detected my network and prompted me for my WEP encryption code.  As soon as I entered the encryption code, the device was connected.  I had hoped that I could copy and paste the code from a note I have stored on my computer (I can do this on my windows mobile 2003 device), but copying and pasting the encryption code didn’t work on the 910c.

The WIFI connection settings options and input screens are fairly similar to those on my IPAQ hw6925, which runs WM5.0, but there are some notable differences.  WM6.1 allows you to connect to a network that uses WPA2 or WPA2-PSK authentication and AES data encryption.

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Exploring Bluetooth on the IPAQ 910c

The Bluetooth settings under WM6.1 are quite a bit different than earlier Windows Mobile operating systems.  Setting up partnerships is much simpler, requiring a minimum of screen taps, but it is a bit disorienting.  So far I’ve set up the following partnerships on the IPAQ 910c:

• Two different Bluetooth headsets – one is a very basic Motorola earpiece and the other is a Sony A2DP headset.
• Bluetooth ActiveSync partnership with my laptop (using a Bluetooth dongle)
• With my IPAQ hw6925 to exchange information between the two devices

To access Bluetooth Settings, you’ll tap Start > Settings > Connection tab > Bluetooth.  With Bluetooth Settings, you find six tabs called Devices, Mode, COM Ports, Printer, File transfer, Security, and Image transfer.

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Put a Dragon in your wagon

The Callpod Dragon Bluetooth wireless headset is a truly unique device, but then so are most of the peripherals produced by this company. Yes, the Dragon could be considered just another headset, but it’s so much more, and that’s what makes it unique. Before I get into its other attributes, let me tell you about its headset functions.

One of the first things I test with any Bluetooth device is its ease of connectivity. The Dragon was no problem and connected instantly. That got things off to a good start.

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Comparing PDF Readers

If you want to read PDF files on your Pocket PC, you have a couple of choices in PDF Readers. In this article I will evaluate and compare the three most popular PDF Readers for Pocket PC: Foxit Reader for Pocket PC; PocketXpdf; and Adobe Reader for Pocket PC 2.0.

Foxit Reader for Pocket PC (Version 1.1, Build 1230)

PLEASE NOTE: Before writing this review, I had checked Foxit’s website to make sure I was working with its latest version of Foxit Reader for Pocket PC. The review took a few days to write and during that time, Foxit released a beta version 1.2 that resolves many of the points I raised in this review. This is a significant update to this software. I was unaware that a software update had been released until some users here brought it to my attention in their comments to this review. I appreciate their comments and I have installed this beta version to my pocket pc and will be updating this review within in the next 24 hours, but my quick evaluation of the beta version agrees with the comments that others have posted here…..The beta version now reflows PDF documents, provides better zoom capability, and remembers your place in the document - when you exit the document and reopen it later, the Foxit Reader opens to the place where you left off.

Please look for an update to this article within the next 24 hours.
Foxit Reader is the lightest PDF reader - it does not consume near the resources as Adobe Reader. But I don’t think it is a very useful PDF reader.
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