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…

[Read more]

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.

[Read more]

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.

[Read more]

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.

[Read more]

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.
[Read more]

Review: HTC Shift

Product: HTC Shift CDMA version
Vendor: Sprint
Price:  $1499 from Amazon
Reviewer: Stephen Borders (badersk)
Rating: 8.5 of 10

I know What you are thinking; ‘Not another review of the Shift, everybody has done this thing to death’. Well I hadn’t got to review it and I had a special reason to test this device.

I am by trade and Automotive Technician who now is an instructor. However I still love, and probably always will, working on and especially diagnosing automobiles. As many of you may know, the automobile has become increasingly more advanced in technology. I fact the average automobile today has an average of 42 processors on board, multiple communication networks with speeds up to 1mbps, and some even have satellite and or cellular connections. On many of the cars and trucks we drive even the windows and seats are operated by computer. Well, you may say, all that’s fine but what does that have to do with another review of the SHIFT?

[Read more]

Finally! A way to block spam text messages on my AT&T cell phone.

Last time I checked, I could not find a way to block spam text messages through my AT&T account. Today, I received another spam text message, so I decided to look around again, and I was delighted to discover that AT&T now provides a way to selectively block text messages. I have no idea when AT&T started providing this option - I never received any kind of announcement of it and I haven’t seen anyone blogging about it, so I think it is a little known, probably recently released, option.

[Read more]

Stranger in a Strange Land - Blackberry Pearl 8110

I am taking Tim’s title for his iPhone post and using it for my experience with the Blackberry Pearl 8110. This was announced last week on AT&T’s network and I thought it would be a good time to give it a spin. This will be my 1st experience with a Blackberry device. I am going to document my experiences as I use this phone for a week. Unfortunately, it’s not starting out good for email for me. Of course, I am new to RIM, but I am trying. So, let’s get started.

I received the Pearl 8110 in the mail yesterday, did a video unboxing, comparison, etc, but I wanted to wait to complete the video until I had time to play around with the UI so I could get familiar with it. Since I don’t know this OS, I didn’t want to take anything from it by not at least familiarizing myself with it. So far, so good. It’s a really easy to manuever UI. The “main” screen has 4 default layouts to pick from too. I like the BB Dimension Zen layout personally.

 
Image from blackberrycool.com. Reverse the icons from right to left, and that is what I am using.

[Read more]

How to make your Windows Mobile touch screen finger-friendly

Clearly, one of the innovations that iPhone offers is the slick, finger-friendly touch screen interface. It has been heralded and embraced by a public of enthusiastic nose miners. Well, if you want to join the crowd of finger frolickers, and you have a WM touch screen device, don’t despair. There are several ways you can turn your little pocket pal into a finger-friendly navigator.

While a finger-friendly screen is not part of the Windows Mobile operating system per se, several developers have seized the opportunity to offer programs that feature finger flicking screen changing.

What if you wanted to turn on finger scrolling for almost all of your applications that involve multiple pages such as contacts and Websites? What if you could pan a Webpage scrolling up and down and from side to side? This is now completely possible with the installation of a single program that contains this feature.

[Read more]

30 Reasons Windows Mobile is Superior to iPhone

Last week I published an article about my initial experience with my brother’s pride and joy, his iPhone. I found the iPhone to be lacking in several areas compared to my Windows Mobile Professional device. Since then I have been delving deeper into the virtues of iPhones and found even more astonishing lacks that I hadn’t noticed or had taken for granted would naturally be there. The inability to highlight, copy, cut, and paste is one example.

In this article, I have included my initial observations and added some new ones for a condensed list of 30 features lacking in the iPhone. I say condensed because I have subsumed some items into a single point. For example, rather than list all the peripherals the iPhone does not support, I merely say that it doesn’t support peripherals. At the end of the article, I try to be fair by pointing out what I like about the iPhone in its current stage of evolution.

I suppose you could call this a wish list, but it is still an inventory of what I found lacking in an iPhone. There may be more, but I grow weary of the process. Here is my condensed list:

[Read more]

A Stranger in a Strange Land: a Windows Mobile guy meets iPhone

My brother, the cinematographer, is a MAC kinda guy. So, naturally he packs an iPhone of which he is very proud. While visiting me last week he was showing off the virtues of his iPhone with a bit of a smug air and a tinge of superiority.

He quickly established that the iPhone makes phone calls, surfs the Web, does email and SMS, takes pictures (but has no flash), and it does it all on a really cool, high-resolution, finger-friendly touch screen.

Perhaps a little reluctantly, he let me try it. The first thing I had to check out was the finger-friendly interface. Sure enough, you just touch any icon on the home screen, and the tapped application appears. I suppose this would seem cool to a cellphone user, but not too impressive to an old Pocket PC packer.

Within the application, you can use your finger to scroll around, but you can’t use the keyboard or a joystick 5-way button because they don’t exist. You can even zoom in or out on a screen or photo by pinching your fingers together or spreading them apart—very cool.

This is all well and good until you get to a Web page that has many hyperlinks such as the results of a Google search. Try to expand, contract, or scroll the screen, and the slightest touch invokes the hyperlink and drives you nuts.

[Read more]

HanDBase 4.0

I must admit that I have been aware of HanDBase for some time, but have largely ignored it because my databases are in the millions of records and would swamp the memory of a PDA.

However, upon the prompting of a friend, I took another look at the new version 4.0 recently and was more than a little impressed with what I found.

HandDBase is a sophisticated relational database that will work on almost all PDA platforms. It allows data entry, record searching, sorting, filtering, printing, and syncing with desktop and handheld devices. It will import/export Microsoft Access or other ODBC compliant databases.

You can construct your own custom-designed database using fifteen different kinds of fields from text to numerical to date to calculating and more. It also lets you create forms for data input with a nifty drag and drop designer. The form designer is impressive. You can select colors for text, background, buttons, as well as button functions and button shape. There are drop down boxes, radio buttons, and free text fields that can contain up to 2000 characters. You can even insert graphics in the forms.

HanDBase comes with a desktop form designer application as well. You can also sync data with a desktop computer if you wish.

There are unlimited ways to use HanDBase. For example, in the personal arena, you may wish to make shopping lists, packing lists, to do lists, guest, and gift lists. You can construct a database to handle recipes, car and travel information, bible study, workouts, and weight loss.

[Read more]

SplashMoney

Compared to the money transaction program I’ve been using, SplashMoney is the ultimate supreme being, the granddaddy of the universe. Instead of a black and white ho hum presentation, SplashMoney opens in full Technicolor with spiffy icons and lives up to its name from the first impression.

Delving deeper into SplashMoney, I found it to be a transaction recording program that probably has no equal. For instance, to my knowledge no other similar application allows you to access your bank accoun ts live online and sync data.

SplashMoney will allow you to create accounts for credit cards, loans, bank accounts and many other kinds of accounts. You can enter transactions, keep a running balance, create and print reports, pay bills, and synchronize data from handheld to desktop and vice versa. It will also import transactions into accounts. Of course, it will help you to keep your accounts accurately balanced as well.

[Read more]

A Visit to OtterBox Headquarters

A couple of months ago, you may have seen the MobilitySite.com posting by gasusan2005 titled “OtterBox Launches Stylish Protective Case for New BlackBerry Pearl Smartphones.”  I had heard of OtterBox and their products before seeing that posting, but until then I did not realize that their offices in Fort Collins, Colorado were only a few short miles away from my home.  At the time, I was brand new to MobilitySite.com and looking for article ideas so I asked myself, “Why not visit their office and write about the Company?”  I recently made that visit and here is my report.

[Read more]