Digital Dad®

Apple iPhone Baby Shaker

This is ridiculous. Clearly the Apple marketplace system is broken if this app is allowed to get onto the Apple Store.

“A company called Sikalosoft is currently selling a $0.99 iPhone application called Baby Shaker, as of Monday. The object of Baby Shaker is to stop the incessant crying of an infant pictured on screen by violently shaking the iPhone, at which point two red "x" marks appear over the baby's eyes. "See how long you can endure his or her adorable cries before you just have to find a way to quiet the baby down!" reads the sales pitch for Baby Shaker.”

More at CNET. Pathetic.

The New Sidekick

I typically don’t spend much time on this blog talking about my Microsoft work, but it’s now on Engadget so now I guess I can talk about it. We’re starting to get the word out about our latest project, the Sidekick LX 2009.

Yes, it’s 3G and has location. Yes, it has the cool swivel with chrome accents. Yes, it comes with integrated MySpace, Facebook, Twitter. Heck, it even comes with Live Search with real-time traffic!

My favorite part is that it’s the highest resolution display of any phone on sale by a carrier in the US. Period. Hats off to a ton of people that worked their butts off to ship this thing.

Yes, I am using one. :)

Everything’s Amazing, Nobody’s Happy

Very funny video clip from Conan featuring Louis CK. We do live in an amazing time, and it’s truly funny/sad how we take so much for granted, how impatient we are. As he says, maybe we do need to get back to a simpler time to appreciate what we have.

“It’s going to SPACE, will you give it a SECOND!?”

Whew.

Well it's been a busy few weeks - apologies for missing my posts.

First, our small team at Microsoft, now getting larger, moved into some new digs. Next, I spent a week at Mobile World Congress, soaking up the phone world. Then, the previously small team I've been working announced that we were acquiring Danger. Before I returned from Spain the team was re-orged into the Mobile Communication Business. Whew!

MWC, as it's now known (it used to be 3GSM but 3G is old news, right?) was hot. Something like 50,000 people, tons of companies just putting the pedal to the metal as the handsets get thinner, cooler and the pipes get bigger and better. Still, I think software is generally lacking, and frankly the demos I saw were still pretty primitive.

Nokia kicked it pretty hard, and their new phone with a compass in it was just smart. Samsung and LG shifted to "smart" D-Pads, but the touch/haptic combo was still a bit disconcerting to me. I dug the Sony Ericsson watches - can;t wait to pick one of those up.

It was great to see everyone, though, from the major players to the 10x10 start ups, carving out space and trying to innovate in such a industry. No shortage of gadgets and services in the pipeline.

On a personal note, I lost my darn Zune - not just any Zune but my Citron 16Gb version. Doh! On a flight back I realized it was likely lost in a very deep pocket in the seat of a BA business class seat on a 777. Lesson learned.

I am sitting here in my chair watching American Idol and thinking "dang I need to swap out that dimmer with an IR-controlled dimmer." Next project. 

Blackjack II

I'm not very good at Blackjack. I know there are some hard and fast rules to help you "win" but in the heat of the moment I always forget them and lose anyway (unless it's just dumb luck).

None of this has anything to do with the new Samsung Blackjack II that I started using last week.

I switched to AT&T a few months ago to get 3G but I didn't really find any 3G phones that suited me. The Blackjack2 is a 3G phone so I figured I would take it for a whirl.

First impression is that this is a good upgrade from the original. Just in the design I see more tapering of the device at the bottom, a slight curve of the bezel up top, and more slimness. I also like the extra high gloss finish and the pair of chrome rails down the side. This thing looks quite polished.

There are two ports on this thing - one is for the microSD card (good) and the other is for the proprietary IO cable that used for syncing, powering and headphones (not good). The little doors snap on there well.

The QWERTY keypad has an extensive set of firm buttons including a dedicated camera, email, and "silent" buttons (good) and dedicated "at&t logo" and "cellular video" button (huh?). It would be good to re-program that at&t button to the home page of my choosing rather than their MEdia Net page. I hit the silent key but the mode stays in "normal" - not sure what it is silencing exactly.

There's a 2MP camera on the back in a bit of a bulge along with a mono speaker. No connectors on the bottom so this isn't docking with anything.

This runs Windows Mobile 6.0 and with all of these phones I do a few things:

• Set up my Exchange server connection - just add my mail server address login name and password. This gets my contacts, email and calendar populated and synced immediately.
• Load up my fav apps -
  • NewsBreak for RSS feeds
  • Live Search for . . . searching
  • Shozu for auto-upload of my photos and videos to their proper place
  • WIndows Live Mobile, which didn't come pre-installed (darn). This app syncs Hotmail and my Live contacts onto my phone, including merging them with duplicates on my phone from Exchange - nice.

The apps that come with the phone are a mixed bag. Under "Applications" there's Camera (doh), Download Agent (?), File Explorer, Get TeleNav (promo), Java (??), MobiTV, PDF Viewer, RSS Reader, Smart Search, Speed Dial, Task Manager, and Office Mobile. Whew! Some of these just run when you open a PDF file or a Word doc or a Java app, some need to be run. A bit confusing. There are also a  bunch of apps not in "Applications" including "My Stuff" which is like a File Explorer that doesn't show all of your files. The browser works well but i suggest selecting View and shifting it into Full Screen mode. Interestingly AT&T music takes me a folder with eight other different apps in it. Oy!

I heard it has GPS but I can't figure out how to turn it on or do something with it. Any clues, folks?

I was pleasantly surprised when I landed in Tokyo on Monday and the phone worked. I set the sync to "manual" so I could limit the data charges but otherwise I was good to go unchanged. Windows Mobile warns you of data charges when you try to sync when roaming - handy.

In general the battery life is pretty good. I am definitely getting more than a day of use out of it. The call quality is eh - the audio sounds a bit compressed without much high end. I wonder if anyone runs these things through a "golden ears" test like they do headphones. Speaking of headphones this works with Bluetooth headsets if you are into looking like a geek.

So where do I end up with the Samsung Blackjack2? Well, it looks cool, and aside from the extra app goo, the eh call quality and the funky power connector this phone is a good step forward, especially if you are connecting to Exchange.

Newsbreak gets an upgrade

I was pleasantly surprised when I received a heads up this week that NewsBreak 2.0 has been released. It was not long ago when I posted about Windows Mobile 6, RSS feeds, and my very positive impressions of NewsBreak has the "uber-RSS reader" for Windows Mobile phones.

In addition to ageneral visual/functional clean-up, NewsBreak now has a bunch of new features that I was asking for, like:

• Podcast support - you can save those podcasts (video and audio) to your storage card automatically and partition your card for podcasts. You can also manually download podcast attachments. Awesome.
• Search for feeds on Live Search in addition to Syndic8. I find Live Search to be a reliable source of clean feed results.
• Adjust update times per feed. For example I can have Yahoo! Top Stories update every hour but update Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed once a day. Smart.

In addition it still has support for password protected feeds, home screen notifications, keyword alerts, imports OPML files and other cool stuff. Now all they need to do is add Digital Dad to their default channel list! There's a more detailed review at Clinton Fitch.

Frankly, I use this app more than any other on my phone except email. Only $7.95 - bargain.

Windows Mobile icon in Vista

A neat feature of Vista is how it can shows your Windows Mobile phone in the Windows Mobile Device Center, rather than a generic phone icon. It does this by pulling an sync.ico file off of the phone itself, so assuming the phone manufacturer provided a suitable sync.ico file on their phone, all is well.

If you don't have a new Windows Mobile phone that has this updated sync.ico file you can still hack it to work. Michael Railing has a rather detailed write-up on how to do this at PDAPHONEHOME. Caveat emptor, but it worked for me.

Bluetooth connections at 3GSM 2007

There are some interesting trends here at 3GSM but one area that keeps catching my eye is Bluetooth. What is Bluetooth? An awfully named technology standard (or set of standards) that enables you to wirelessly move information around.

Bluetooth is often used to connect those Star Trek-like earpieces to mobile phones, but that is only the beginning. This year there is a real proliferation of "BT" enabled stuff like:

• Stereo headphones, now with much better fidelity and less clunky. Listen to music from your phone and then take a call as the music mutes. Once you hang up (using controls on the headphones) the music comes back on. Standard capability on all new Windows Mobile phones and newer lightweight headphones from Motorola, Jabra and others.
• Stereo adapters enable you to play music from your phone over your stereo. Sony Ericsson had a simple AUX/IN cable with a bubble on the end of it. Plug that into your stereo and you can walk around the room using your phone as a music source and handy remote. Very cool.
• Skip the stereo and just send the music to powered speakers. Parrot showed a self-powered set of speakers and also a great sounding boom-box.
• You can also send photos through Bluetooth, either to another phone user, to printer, and even a photo frame. Again, Parrot showed off a 7" photo frame that received pictures from a  Bluetooth enabled phone. It seems like that should be standard issue for all photo frames in addition to supporting memory cards and USB dongles.
• Seagate introduced DAVE, a very small hard drive (20Gb) that acts as mass storage for your Bluetooth enabled phone. Not sure I want to charge and carry another little box but it's an interesting idea.
• Stream video from your phone to a Bluetooth eqipped display. Really.
• Bluetooth Rear View mirrors; I saw a few of these that act as a speaker phone and displayed CallerID on the mirror. Most snap over your old mirror, like the one from Qool.
• Bluetooth car kits; very common for speakerphone operations but now they will pipe into your head unit to get music streaming from your phone through your car system. Makes sense now that 1Gb, 2Gb and even 4Gb storage cards for your phone are becoming more common and affordable.
• Speakerphones; use your mobile phone and one of these desktop things and you can have a listenable conference call experience with your mobile phone (although why not just plug it into the phone line in the conference room?)

It's good see these innovations beyond the plain old "looks like he is talking to himself" headset. If they keep it simple and reasonably priced they may sell more than a few units.

Feeds and Windows Mobile 6

I am at Barcelona for 3GSM, the mongo mobile phone show. Although I was uncomfortably squished into coach, at least I have my Bose headphones, my Toshiba Gigabeat, and some yummy Valentine's cookies from my kids - thanks guys!

Microsoft announced WIndows Mobile 6 today(disclosure - I run the Device Planning Group at Microsoft) and I expect a great crop of phones to be unveiled at the show - Microsoft-based and otherwise. I am also keen to get my hands on the Nokia N95 and check out the cool new industrials from Sony-Ericsson.

I am a big fan of NewsBreak - you might say I am a fanatical user. NewsBreak runs on Windows Mobile 5 and above and supports reading RSS feeds, importing an OPML file, inline images, notification based on keywords in the post, password protection, homescreen plug-in - you name it. One thing it lack os support for automatically downloading podcasts to my phone's memory card but hey you have to save something for the next version I guess. :)

One of the cool things about Windows Mobile 6 is how it handles RSS feeds. I'll still loyally use NewsBreak but in WM6 you can sync your RSS feed list on Vista onto your phone. The way it works is that Outlook 2007 reads your Vista feed list and the Exchange 2007 server syncs that list with your Windows Mobile phone over the air. This means you get all the feeds on your desktop gadgets and Outlook (including Sharepoint 2007 feeds) right on your phone - nothing required by the user, Sweet!

Yes, I know - you need a bunch of Microosft products to make that scenario work - Office 2007, Exchange 2007, Windows Mobile 6 (and Sharepoint 2007 for Sharepoint feeds). I'm not sure how many companies have that combo outside of Redmond right now but it paves the way to get a consistent list of feeds on your desktop and phone.

I am all set up with Shozu here so stay tuned for pix and prose from Barcelona, Digital Dad style.

More Shozu fun

Shozu now supports "zero-click" uploading of videos from your Windows Mobile phone to YouTube.

It's still free. Just register here and you'll get an SMS message to download the app. You can set multiple destinations in your Shozu account - Flickr, YouTube, even an email address.

Cool!