Bejeweled for mariage proposal?

Caught this funny story at Engadget, about how a man modified the famous Astraware game: Bejeweled and made it to show an engagement ring when his girlfriend finished a certain score while playing with it. I know it's an electronic & crazy world out there now, but I guess some people just don't feels the traditional bended on one knee mariage proposal is no longer needed...
(blogged with my Treo 750v)

Howard web forum in danger

A quite shocking news came from jkOnTheRun, there has been a tragedy befall on Howard web forum; one of the most resourceful mobile phone forums out there. mobiTV is currently asking the web host of Howard web forum to shut it down, because one of the post by it's member reveals a way to download mobiTV paid contents freely. Howard Chui, the web forum founder, have declined to erase that particular post because it's impossible for him to watch every posts made by the web forum members. A really interesting argument also mentioned in the article as well, read on here to find out more.
(blogged with my Treo 750v)

The long & slow plan for iPhone

It's not going to be a simple fight no more between iPhone & BlackBerry, with the release of "special by invitation" tester users for iPhone Enterprise Beta Program; iPhone firmware v2.0 is going to rock the BlackBerry's comfortable position for enterprise favourite device. Although still planned to be release on June this year, the firmware v2.0 is definetely Apple's first step to broaden iPhone users to corporate level.
Even by the announcement of iPhone SDK kit, Steve Jobs still wishes that iPhone to be sold exclusively through mobile carriers contract; no sign of unlocked iPhone in the horizon yet. I still hadn't understand what exactly Steve wants to achieve by limiting iPhone sales, until I read on the news announcement of Apple's new App Store; a little shed of light has been revealed. If you haven't know what is that, please read on Paul Biba's summary of iPhone SDK kit release here.

Some say this App Store is going to hinder the innovation progress of iPhone applications, but others say good things about it. Basically apps developers are suppose to report every products they made to Apple, get e-sertificate for those apps, and only allowed to publish them through Apple too. On the customers point of view, this is a great idea! Now, we can have a peace of mind every time we download an app & install it into our iPhone; there'll be no such incompatible issue that often the main source why we have to reset our device. And we could buy apps directly from iTunes to the iPhone, which it's a built-in native app in it so no more hassle to find new apps on the web.

All of those I've just mentioned above can't be done if you own a bricked iPhone, the Apple shareholders would love to have more income with the sales of unlocked iPhone. So that's why Steve is so determined not to quickly boost iPhone sales just by releasing unlocked iPhones, but the revenue could come from iTunes / App Store as Apple's second biggest income apart from the sales of their devices (Mac, iPod, iPhone, etc). The iTunes / App Store can charge fees directly to mobile carriers of the iPhone in the future, this way Apple won't have to deal with fraud & delayed payments. Those above reasons are probably his long plan for iPhone & iTunes to dominate the mobile market.

Sure, like many of you, I also have doubts if this news from Apple is good thing or bad? But it have been many times that every of those doubts had turned out to great ideas instead, time will tell my friend...

(blogged with my Treo 750v)

Meizu should be ashamed

As I've mentioned on my previous blog about iPhone look alike device, the Meizu M8. There's this news from Engadget: the Meizu booth at CeBIT is closed by German police, due to patent infringement of Apple's iPhone. Seems like the German patent law believes that Meizu is copying iPhone design, both on exterior & the OS design, as the opposite of what Meizu statement before. This act will be a warning for other Chinese vendors to be aware that no tolerance towards copying patented designs, they may can get away in China, but these vendors should think twice to market their copy-cat products in Europe. It's about time I'll say.
(blogged with my Treo 750v)

Straight things about iPhone

Let's get this straight; iPhone is not meant for business users yet it ranks better than BlackBerry in customers satisfactory, according to market researcher ChangeWave. This result is another sign on how big it is iPhone impact on mobile phone market, seems like business users are fond of iPhone & much prefer to have it than BlackBerry. While it’s only 10% of the correspondence who answered they’re satisfied with Palm devices. [read the whole story at PC World here]
If just Apple have launched the SDK kit, that enables 3rd party softwares to run on iPhone, the numbers of iPhone users will grow significantly in business & corporate environment. It's undeniable, that iPhone is walking one straight path to the most successful & most wanted mobile phone. What really holds back Steve Jobs (Apple CEO) to release that SDK kit as soon as possible has been a mystery for all of us. Because with wider options for 3rd party apps will increase people's interest to purchase iPhone.
That's not all, Apple also have declined the possibility to release iPhone at China. Although China Mobile (one of the largest in China) have expressed their clear intention to bring iPhone to the mainland, if Apple is to open up to China's market; this will take them straight to become the biggest mobile phone manufacturer in the world. With the iPhone look alike: Meizu M8, which manufactured by a Chinese company, it’s a clear indication that iPhone is popular too in the mainland.
So what's stopping you Steve?
(blogged with my Treo 750v)

MS Silverlight vs. Adobe

Microsoft (MS) has been trying to get into Nokia's phone lineups lately, when MS failed to push Windows Mobile to be used as Nokia's phones OS; Nokia finally agreed to support MS Silverlight web platform. Nokia phones are widely available around the world & in almost every countries, this agreement will propel MS Silverlight into better position against it's main rival: Adobe. For a background story as why Adobe should worry about Silverlight is because they both share the same market; web platform. We are already familiar with Adobe's Flash, those moving animation with attractive sound are all thanks to the Flash engine. So far, before MS launched Silverlight, Adobe has been the sole main player here, the giant software sees an opening of oportunity where no other big players noticeable around. But Silverlight moves haven't been smooth, as web industries have too well attached & accustomed to Adobe's products; MS needs to penetrate the market with a significant move. [read on the article from PC World here]
With MS Silverlight wins over Nokia for web contents support, we'll be seeing little differences when we're using the Symbian's (S60) web browser. Nokia plans to add Silverlight support too later for their S40 phones, these mean mobile content providers are softly-forced to adopt MS Silverlight platform. But the real fights are for Adobe & others, who have to compete for web contents platform in general. As the saying goes; the herds will follow the largest stampede, so does the market of web platform. Like BlueRay who've won over HD DVD, MS & Adobe will fight for web platform supremacy in years to come.
(blogged with my Treo 750v)

ASUS launched two new distinguish mobile phones

Just read this news from Engadget about the new mobile phone from ASUS that designated for business users: M536, it's the bigger brother from old M530w which supposed to arrived first. They both are easily distinguished by the QWERTY keyboard, the buttons seem large enough so they'll probably easier to use with. Here are the quick rundown as Engadget mentioned: HSDPA, 320x320 display, WiFi, GPS, 256MB flash & WinMob 6.1

What's more interesting for me is ASUS customize the WinMob 6.1 with their own unique UI in "Lamborghini" (aka. ZX1), that looks like HTC Touch Flo UI. Check this out on the video at Engadget here.

(blogged with my Treo 750v)

Passion for 802.11n

Ever since our small business company adopted the standard wireless types (802.11b/g), I’ve fallen for wireless technology. I’ve never knew before how easy & convenient it is to replace wired LAN with the wireless, because I never have to prep the LAN wires anymore when a computer needed access to the server. If you don’t know yet what’s the difference between wireless LAN (known as WiFi) with wireless mobile phone, check it out at Wikipedia here.
Among the best is the 11n type, it offers better than the rest of the bunch. Although the drawback is that this 11n type hasn’t been ratified yet by the WiFi Alliance (it’s been years already!), so far it’s only at Draft 2.0 stage. That’s what has kept consumers & vendors to hold, and wait till a ratified version released.
I rejoice to hear that Lund, a city in Sweden, has just adopted this 11n type to power their hotspots all over the whole city. This will speed up the 11n ratification, and push forward the vendor’s specification to be globally accepted as standard: Cisco. There have been several vendors fighting for their specs as standard such as: Linksys, D-Link, Netgear, etc. All of the vendors have promised for 11n compability with the ratified version, all they need is upgrade the driver. [read the story in full at PC World]
What’s this all got to do with Palm? When I first knew that my Treo 750v doesn’t have WiFi, it almost broke my heart… So I really-really hope that Palm will adopt this 11n type into their next generation Treo, yes you should Palm! Because it’ll only a matter of short time, until this 11n type becomes the new standard in every smartphones out there. Oooh, I already drool to imagine what I can do with WiFi in my Treo ;-D
(blogged with my Treo 750v)

A geeky blog from an IT geek with his Treo

As part of my job as an IT Manager who doesn't have any assistants yet, I must take care of every broken PoS machines in our small business company. Just few days ago, one of the machines got broken and I had to opened it up. When I was about to untangled the wires on the motherboard, I took a quick photo with my Treo 750v. You see, the wires have been modified so not all of the universal colours are supposed in their places anymore. And I also used Notes to write down which coloured wires that goes to +/- pins. After fixing what's broken, but before I re-installed the WEPOS OS; I fired up the Pocket IE to search whether there's new BIOS update. Found out that there is & a newer SATA driver has been issued as well, I immediately downloaded both of them with Treo. But I had to transferred them into PC so I could copy to floppy disks; yup, we still need this ancient item. If just there's such tool that compatible with Treo, I wouldn't needed a PC at all! And those above are reasons why Treo never left my pocket (doesn't have a holster yet) from time to time, you'll never know when you need it.
(blogged with my Treo 750v)

The ugly truths behind “Windows Vista Capable” sticker

When you’re about to purchased a new computer or a laptop at the time when Microsoft was about to launched Windows Vista back then, you must’ve seen two kinds of stickers: “Windows Vista Premium Ready” & “Windows Vista Capable”. Like any others, we all are confused on what was the difference?

It seemed that Intel old chip, the 915 chipset, didn’t have enough capability to support Windows Vista’s Aero interface. The 945 chipset was the more preferable choice because it supports Aero, but at that time this 945 chipset was still new and low in quantity; while the 915 chipset was already flooded the market in every computers and laptops. Of course Intel was afraid that if Windows users were going to upgrade into Vista, especially to get that Aero user interface (UI), then the 915 chipset will become “old junk” nobody want.

Above story is true, backed up with emails evidence from Microsoft to Intel intern management. Those evidences are compiled after a class action law suit slapped to Microsoft, by the customers who purchased computers and laptops with the particular “Windows Vista Capable” sticker.

Here’s the worst truth: Microsoft’s internal management already knew that making a dual standard (two kinds of stickers) will only lead into confusion like this; resulting to hurt customers who bought the wrong machine but hoped to get he best experience with Aero UI. Some of the staffs have showed disagreement and spoken about this wrong executive decision, at the end of the day those brave people were re-located…

Now Microsoft must face an ugly class action law suit for this “confusing sticker”, and backed with solid evidences like those; they should be preparing a large sum of money to settle it down. Read parts of the stories at Engadget here & the whole story at PC World here, great articles. Let’s just hope when the Windows Mobile 7 finally released (with it’s high-end UI & iPhone’s UI look alike), there wouldn’t be such “confusing stickers” pasted on mobile phones that run it.

LingvoSoft’s products compability issue?

I always wanted to learn foreign languages, with LingvoSoft Talking Dictionary & Phrasebook 2008 I could do that and even on the go. Ever since I reviewed it back then, I had those apps installed in my Treo 750v and used it whenever I got the chance. But at the end of December 2007, I’ve realized an issue made by those LingvoSoft’s apps where they changed Treo screen resolution. What I meant is for an instance: if we’re about to save a Word Mobile document the Save and Cancel buttons were located way below the visible screen, thus making it impossible to tap on those buttons. I’m surprised to found out that the whole system was affected by this incident, and there’s nothing I can do to revert it back to the original state again unless I do a hard-reset.

At first I doubted that those apps are the cause of the issue, when the Treo 750v is still fresh from the hard-reset; I installed those apps first before installing another apps. When I soft-reset the Treo to check, this issue happened again! I knew something is wrong with those apps, because after a heavy use of my Treo, those apps can’t be used as they should. The user interface translation window doesn’t displayed properly, sometimes it disappeared and can only be returned again with a soft-reset.

I already contacted LingvoSoft support through email that time, and I’ll quote exactly what the support team told me: “We’re aware of the compability problem with Windows Mobile platform, specially the additional foreign keyboard package, we’re working to resolve this issue…” Just few days back, Paul Feofanov from Ectaco-LingvoSoft Customer Support Manager have responded my email regarding this issue. But unfortunately he believes there shouldn’t be problems at all with LingvoSoft’s products since Palm Treo 750 is in the supported list, so he said it’s probably only my device that has trouble with… Many of you who have bought LingvoSoft’s products probably are as satisfied as me with the vast and extensive library of each apps have, but what all of these compared to the stability of daily use?

I hope this post can give a heads up to you who have the same issue, but still wondering what caused it; try to check if you have LingvoSoft’s products installed. If so then you need to backup your WinMob mobile device right away, just for precautions. If you have experienced the same issue as what I’ve described above, please share your thought & story in PalmAddict’s forum here.

(blogged with my Treo 750v)

The first handsfree mobile phone model

I couldn't help but to giggle & laugh when I saw the picture here, please forgive the grainy & blurry pic; I took it with my Treo 750v camera while I was reading a local mobile phones magazine. Judging from the phone model (with long antenna) this probably one of those first mobile phones by Ericsson. My guess is the man was trying to make this mobile phone as a handsfree model or maybe tried to innovate something new and easy to make, well it's kinda understandable considered there were no such thing as handsfree cable cord or even Bluetooth at that time... But you got to give this man a credit, he thought of what has become a standard thing for every mobile phone nowadays: handsfree. Either way, he might looked pretty cool to his office coworkers when a mobile phone was still scarce thing to have (LOL).

(blogged with my Treo 750v)