- In iPhone Safari enter the URL http://m.google.com from the phone.
- Look for the link that does setup for Google Apps. It's easy to miss, I think its towards the bottom of the screen you see.
- Do the Google Apps setup. NOW when you enter http://m.google.com you see a new Google Apps section. Look for "Sync" and click it.
- Now you get to see all your Google calendar subscriptions and you can add all of them.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
iPhone Google Sync - Mail and Google Apps
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Configure AT&T BlackBerry Pearl for T-Mobile PayGo
- Options:Security options: General Settings:context menu -> wipe handheld
- Options-Advanced:Applications: delete apps that are no longer useful (no data plan)
- Insert T-Mobile SIM, restart when replace battery.
- Options:mobile network: data services off
Actually I didn’t do things precisely in this order, which might be why the phone didn’t “know” its own number (though it did ring when dialed).
The fix was:
- Options-Advanced:SIM Card:context menu –> Edit SIM Phone Number. Type in T-Mobile number.
After this set of changes it seems to work. I’ve disabled voice mail on this service, so I didn’t try to configure a forwarding number.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
How to unlock the BlackBerry Pearl (AT&T)
- Call 611 (AT&T support) from the BB Pearl to request an unlock code. If you're nearing th end of a contract and say you're getting a new phone/contract this is routine. It takes about 10 minutes to walk through the procedure and get an unlock code. You may be asked for the PIN number of your AT&T account.
- Go to Settings (folder with gears) then options (wrench) then Advanced Options.
- Select SIM card. (shows phone number and the unique phone ID)
- Hold down alt key, type MEPD (nothing displays)
- Hold down alt key, type MEP2 (nothing displays)
- You will then see a prompt allowing entry of the unlock code.
- Enter the long unlock code.
- Hit the enter key. If you take a while to do this the unlock code will clear and you have to reenter it.
- A "code accepted" message will flash and the SIM screen will show "Security disabled"
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Changing practice: GV message rather than BB email
Until she gets her iPhone though, we have to live with the Pearl. Today we came up with a significant improvement.
She used to try to use the BB to send me email messages, but it was a painful process. I gave it some thought, and realized that there was no longer any need to use the BB to message me.
Instead we assigned my Google Voice number to quick dial. She leaves a quick voice message, GV transcribes it, and it shows up in my email. Voice apps love her voice; the transcriptions are nearly perfect. Faster, better, cheaper. We'll probably keep doing it even when she's on an iPhone.
For good measure I setup an Gmail filter rule so my GV transcribed messages now get forwarded to work email as well -- so I get them very quickly.
I love Google Voice. It's saving me about $1000 a year in calls to Canada (money taken from AT&T's pocket) and I'm constantly finding new ways to use it to make our lives better.
No wonder Apple's fear of Google has turned them to the Dark Side.
Monday, February 09, 2009
Google saves my iPhone
Still, I'm grateful for Google's Exchange ActiveSync service service. With MobileMe hopeless and near worthless, and my iPhone love broken-hearted, things were looking pretty damned bleak -- until today.
Perhaps in honor of this launch, Google has an iPhone device page with lots of Google related topics in one place. The Sync set is towards the bottom of the page ...
... Sync
No doubt about it. Google loves me. I ain't crawling back to Apple no more.
Update: Google licensed ActiveSync from Microsoft for this. I assumed they'd cloned it. I wonder what a ten million user license of ActiveSync costs? I don't imagine Microsoft gave Google much of a discount. It's an amazing testimony to the power of Microsoft's Exchange monopoly, and a marker for how serious Google is about making this work.
Update: It worked on our iPhone touch -- Calendar and contacts alike. I then wiped everything from the iTouch and proved I could sync just the calendar, and leave the contacts alone. That worked. Then I chose my sync calendars (config site is http://m.google.com/sync, you must visit it from an iPhone). I actually ran up against the 5 calendar limit (my work, emily calendar, my personal, MN Special Hockey and US Holidays), but that's good for now. The 5 calendar limit appers to be related to an iPhone bug.
So next I will sync and backup my iPhone and create special backups of my OS X Address Book and Calendar. Then, for now, I will turn off Spanning Sync while I do my testing -- so OS X iCal will no longer be connected to my true calendar (no loss).
Update: After backing up as above I'm on to my iPhone. It was already setup to do IMAP sync with my Gmail account; I added the Exchange server connection. I got the "invalid certificate" warning during Exchange setup -- that's a known bug. I turned Exchange Mail OFF, Contacts OFF (for now) and Calendars ON. I received the warning that existing calendars would be removed from my iphone.
After setup my Mail, Contacts, Calendar settings showed two accounts: one for Mail and one for Calendars. Although NuevaSync recommends turning Time Zone support OFF for Calendars Google didn't make any recommendations, so I left it ON.
I checked Calendar, and saw one calendar was synchronized. That was curious, since I'd configured the iTouch I'd specified 5 calendars.
Here's where things get interesting. When I visited the setup page I found configurations for two devices.
So you can sync multiple devices to a single set of Calendars, and you can configure separately which calendars each one syncs to. [or maybe not - see update]
Interesting ...
Anyway, so far it works.
Update: This is so cool. I play around with an item time on my iPhone, and moments later it's switched on my wife's BB Pearl (yech) and her Google Apps Calendar (yay). I'm holding off on Contacts for now; the Google contact model is pretty sparse. I want to give that migration a bit of thought. With Google for Calendaring and soon for Contacts I can live with Todo.App, Notebook.app and Evernote for a while longer.
Google has Gmail Tasks now. How long before they, or someone else, provides an iPhone Task app that will sync with Google Tasks? If they build out the data model I'd love to see Appigo selected for the iPhone app.
Update 2/10/09: Ok, maybe it wasn't a good idea to sync two iPhones to one account. When I go to http://m.google.com/sync I can't change which five calendars I sync to.
Update 2/14/09: It may be coincidental, but a day or two after I discontinued sync with the 2nd iPhone I was again able to edit my subscription limit (still only 5 calendars pending bug fixes). Incidentally, now that I'm getting Push Calendar updates I see why people complain about the iPhone's battery life. OS X wasn't built to be a power miser.
Update 5/22/09: Every few months the calendar seems to stop updating. I turn off "calendars" in the iPhone Exchange ActiveSync screen; that removes all calendars from the phone. Then I turn it on again. They then update normally.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Fixing a demented Blackberry Pearl
Now I'm less kind.
For example, tonight I spent 2-3 hours debugging my wife's BB Pearl -- and Missing Sync for the BlackBerry.
I'll simplify by splitting out the problems into two parts:
Missing Sync for BlackBerry problems
- When I connected my wife's BB it didn't mount as a USB drive and it gave the "insufficient power to charge warming" (meaning it's getting USB 1 100mA power, and it needs USB 2 500 mA power). This means that Missing Sync's device driver wasn't working.
- Missing Sync gave some absurd error message basically saying something was wrong.
The BlackBerry Pearl was demented due to memory problems
Emily's BB was slow, erratic and increasingly crashy. Removing the battery to reset it (no reset button or software command on this baby!) helped but only transiently. Today she couldn't even make calls.
I'd removed apps to free up memory before, but it was down to only @2MB free.
This time I backed up the contacts via Missing Sync then did used the obscure security setting option to 'wipe the phone'. That left all the apps (there doesn't seem to be ANY way to return the phone to factory condition) but suddenly I had 24MB free. (Yeah, the BB OS is ancient -- makes Palm look modern.)
The phone came to life.
So where was all the memory going? I'm not sure, but here's my guess:
- Eons ago I'd setup Missing Sync to put iTunes non-DRMd AAC music on the Pearl. I'd accepted the default "leave 5MB free". Unfortunately this puts the music on the system memory, not the useless 1GB memory card I've added to the phone.
- Since I did a sync so rarely that 5MB free buffer was being eaten away by installing other apps and by ePocrates growth. Missing Sync was never getting a chance to beat back the music install.
I probably could have fixed things by simply removing all the music, but I only figured that out after I'd done a wipe.
I reentered Emily's Google Apps data, restarted her BB push email, restored the address book via Missing Sync and changed Missing Sync so that there's no longer any music on the wimpy phone.
If all of this works I can put off replacing her BB until Apple introduces a non-worthless version of MobileMe and/or suddenly remembers customers are not supposed to be abused and hands a Calendar API over to Google.
PS. I installed the BB Desktop software on my XP box, but it really adds very little. Basically just backup, and I didn't want that since it would have restored my problems!
See also
- Google App services for the BB (this works quite well now)
- ePocrates: I'm very suspicious of this one, but giving it another try.
- Missing Sync for Blackberry: I think it's languishing - since the iPhone came out BB sales to OS X users have probably dropped to near zero. I feel sorry for 'em though - synchronization is hell.
- iTunes, Missing Sync and the Pearl: I think this was the cause of my downfall.
- BB Pearl usage tips - keyboard mostly
- Our Google Apps/iPhone/BlackBerry Pearl calendar setup. We still do this.
- Our phone migration - AT&T is the Devil
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Google and time zones: Calendar oddities on the iPhone
Gordon's Tech: gSyncit for Outlook 2007 to Google Calendar and Contacts SyncFirst, some background. Our family Google Calendar repository is being updated from four streams (no over-the-air iPhone sync, damnit): (see also)
... Not yet characterized, but there are time zone problems. I think Google Calendar tries to be 'smart' about the time zone one is currently in. Big mistake. Correction -- this isn't a gSyncit/Outlook problem. I think this is a Google Calendar quirk depending on the time zone settings on the web client host machine....
- XP Outlook/exchange to Google Calendar via gSyncit
- OS X iCal to Google Calendar via Spanning Sync (and iPhone to iCal via Apple's damned sync cable. [2])
- Blackberry Pearl to Google Calendar via the BB Google author calendar sync app
- Direct data entry via Google's various web interfaces including the little appreciated and under-marketed Google Apps iPhone mobile interface.
I am shocked that this setup actually works, but it does. It's held together by duct tape and bailing wire of course, but so was my father's Valiant and it drove us around for years. Blood will tell.
Or does it work? I was seeing events appearing at different times depending on how I viewed the data:
- Google Calendar via desktop Firefox
- Google Calendar via iPhone Safari connection Google's semi-secret high powered Google Apps web calendar view.
- Google Appls iPhone optimized web view
Google ought to make this more explicit in the UI; Google Calendar should at least display the active time zone with the ability to change it from the calendar. Still, it's impressive that this works at all.
The trick will be remembering to change my Google Calendar settings time zone back to central time when I get home ...
[1] I could write a book on the state and evolution of family/work calendar integration/ synchronization and all the lessons it holds for health care IT, system integration, the semantic web, the future of publicly traded companies, interconnected complex adaptive systems, and the implications for human progress. Andrew accuses me of making the simple complex, but my take is that reality is recursive and all simplicity is an illusion over the supremely complex. I don't have time to write the book, but I'm due to put some hints into Gordon's Notes. Now back to the topic ...
[2] Damned because of the side-effects of Apple's Digital Rights Management lockdown of the cable interface and failure to provide a vendor-useable API / sync framework.
Update 11/10/08: Ok, this is creepy. Now I'm seeing new time zone related options in the Calendar settings. They don't seem to be doing anything to the Calendar I see, but I didn't notice them yesterday ....
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Let loose the geeks of tech war: Google on Android vs. Google on iPhone
I'd love to use MobileMe -- I'm not deterred by the cost. The problem is that MobileMe sucks. No public APIs. No calendar sharing. Exactly the same Notes and Tasks functionality as Google Apps (none).
Google Apps are simply vastly better than the MobileMe alternatives.
So my iPhone Mail.app syncs with Gmail. iPhone Calendar.app syncs, via my iCal/Spanning Sync desktop, with Google Calendar. My Notes and Tasks (Appigo Notebook and Tasks.app sync with Toodledo). Of course Maps.app works with Google Maps, Google Reader Mobile works with Google Reader, and Google.app search works with ...
You get the picture, as my son Ben would say.
Apple either doesn't get the picture, or they can't execute on the server.
Problem is, the picture's not complete. I can't, say, sync iPhone Calendar.app directly with Google Calendar. My wife's Blackberry Pearl can do that, thanks to Google software, but my iPhone can't. This is a big problem, and it's a problem owned by ... Apple.
Not good.
On the other hand, that won't be a problem for the Android ... (emphases mine):
Official Google Mobile Blog: Google on AndroidDepeche Mode? Shades of my ancient Quebecer (eng) past.At Google, we develop products that we love to use ourselves. For example, we're avid users of Search, Gmail, Maps, and many others. But for those of us in mobile, it's tough. Not all products work the same on all devices, and although we try and optimize for each device, we often run into challenges specific to certain mobile phone platforms. I, for one, used to carry three devices with me all day. I love my iPhone for its powerful browser and music player. I use my BlackBerry for Gmail and Calendar (and occasionally Brick Breaker), and I carry a Nokia N-series phone because of its camera and YouTube application.
The first Android-powered phone, announced today by T-Mobile, comes 'with Google'. The following Google applications are preloaded on the device: Search, Maps, Gmail with Contacts, Calendar, Google Talk, and YouTube. There are a few things I'm particularly excited about:
- Easy to use. It's never been easier to use Google on your phone. With single sign-in, you can log in to your Google account and have instant access to all your favorite Google products. No messing around with settings, your login never expires, and everything just works. If you don't have a Google account yet, you can set one up on your phone and be up and running in seconds.
- Fully synchronized. Your emails, contacts, calendar entries, Google Talk chats are fully synchronized with Gmail and Calendar on the web. New events are pushed in real-time to your phone and any changes you make on-the-go are immediately available on the web. If you ever lose or break your phone, all your data is safe and secure in the cloud.
- Designed to work together. Search is now available as a feature in many applications, including non-Google ones, such as the music player. While you're listening to a song -- like something from Depeche Mode -- just 'long-press' the artist's name. You'll see a menu pop up that let's you search Google for the Depeche Mode Wikipedia entry, or search YouTube for the music video. The contact application lets you see your friend's IM status, view his address on a map, and communicate with him using Gmail or Google Talk. And, of course, you can call or text him as well.
Emily's Blackberry isn't the greatest. I'd like to get something better. It has to work well with our family Google Apps. Could be she'll be getting an Android.
Apple needs to get their *** in sync. They need to either match Google on the server side (impossible) or fully support Google Apps as competitors to Mobile Me.
Or my next phone, won't be an iPhone. I may not be the only one ...
Thanks Google. I love these bloodless tech wars.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Calendar unification: more than half way there
So there's a solution, but for now it's strictly an Apple/Microsoft solution. You pay or you don't play, and you do it their way. There are a number of interesting features to this solution:I wrote a few weeks ago that the iPhone was unlikely to support work/home calendar integration. I previously wrote that you can't sync via the USB cable to two different machines.
[I was] Wrong on both counts...
... David Pogue's iPhone Tips and Tricks tells us that Apple has a supported framework for work/home synchronization and an approved method for synchronizing at multiple machines....... To get work/home integration you must abandon the old world of physical connections for calendar and contacts synchronization. Yes, Apple has a vision, and it doesn't involve the USB cable.
The iPhone has a concept of wireless calendar (and contact) providers. So you can have one provider that's MobileMe (personal data) and one that's Exchange server. Both can coexist....
- No cables. Apple would like to reserve the physical cable strictly for transfer of DRMd media - and probably they want to get rid of it all together. Steve Jobs doesn't run everything at Apple, but his dislike of cables is legendary. The future doesn't involve a cable.
- It's very much sync to the Cloud, where the Cloud belongs to Apple. Apple isn't ready to cede the Cloud to Google.
- The approach seems like it might be extensible to multiple providers, but currently there's one conduit for MobileMe transactions and one for the Exchange ActiveSync wireless transaction [1].
Monday, September 08, 2008
Nerdvana now: Our family calendar is working – and how Gmail parses Outlook invites
Now the end is almost in sight.
Emily’s Blackberry Pearl syncs reliably and near instantly to her calendar in our family domain Google Apps suite. My iPhone syncs reliably but only once daily, via Spanning Sync and iCal to my family domain calendar. Our shared Google Calendars allow both of us to see a joint calendar.
Meanwhile, work/home calendar integration may be possible – someday, at some price. For now, however, some appointments need double entry.
I’m pleased to say there’s an easy way to do that – it works far better than expected.
When I create an Outlook appointment that I want on my personal calendar, I invite my family domain email address. Gmail processes the structured message and creates a meeting invite that moves with one click to my Google Calendar.
From my gCal, the next time I sync with iTunes, the appointment will move to my iPhone. It will immediately be visible on my wife’s Pearl.
Wow. We’re making progress … slowly, but it will happen.
Now when iPhone 2.1 comes out and Emily inherits my iPhone 2.0 ...
Update 1/6/10: We did reach Nerdvana, though Emily got the 3GS and I stuck with the old 3G. All of the family calendars are on Google (mixture of Google Apps and personal for historic reasons); we use CalDAV to sync to our iPhones. My iPhone has push sync wiht my work calendar by connecting to my corporate (Microsoft ActiveSync) server and through my iPhone I can integrate all family and my work calendar. I also do a one way reflection of my work calendar to Google using Google's calendar sync -- that's read only.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
ePocrates on the iPhone
The med images are particularly impressive.
The only downside is I think it's getting more obnoxious about insisting I glance at the marketing material that pays for the service. I hope they're not running into funding problems -- that's usually what makes ad-funded vendors push the marketing.
My iPhone 2.0 impressions so far is that synchronization with Outlook or MobileMe is a disaster, Outlook sync is a regression from iPhone 1.0, and basic PIM (calendar, etc) functionality scores a D-. Everything else is pretty good.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Epocrates Rx is out for the iPhone (and iTouch)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhYJkIXhU9B34bmR5Ebyv0jqPoimONHPy2-FqA8PCgKjHLtqsiMtKzpYUHg0fTSq1_ctPxSoE7T_LK60bc34Odmhjm5f-lRl2wfNzJB0wVdyRuvJc4cqOvlGtxWrAO8U-6tvue/s320/iPhone_drug_interactions_screenshot.jpg)
Epocrates Rx is available for the iPhone.
Not the web version -- the true iPhone client.
Free medical PDA software: Epocrates Rx for iPhone / iPod touch:
- Apple iPhone/iPod touch with OS 2.0
- Minimum available memory 8 MB
- 20K per free health plan formulary selected
It's a big deal for physicians, my wife couldn't switch from her Palm to her Blackberry Pearl until Epocrates was available for the Pearl. My friend Andrew keeps his Palm for the same reason.
The iPhone is going to be really big in healthcare; this is one important landmark. As soon as the line dies down and I can get my phone, I'll give it a try. It's distributed by the Apple Store (free), but you need an Epocrates account to use it.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Why Blackberry deserves to die
So I'm not saying that the Blackberry will die, just that it doesn't deserve to live.
It's not just the inexcusable memory capacity limitations. It's not even the astounding lack of imagination in the software environment. No, the ultimate offense is this:
Passwords are masked on entry. Even on the Blackberry Pearl -- with its predictive text matching.I realize very few products are as smart as OS X, which allows users to optionally unmask passwords. I could forgive Blackberry for omitting this feature if the Pearl had a conventional keyboard. It doesn't of course, and, speaking only for myself, text prediction does not work on my passwords.
The brief single character display (not available for numeric entry) is not enough.
This is one of the stupidest things I've come across. I've had plenty of time to investigate my wife's Pearl while traveling cross-country flat on my back, and my relatively positive initial impressions have dissolved. It really deserves to perish. If the iPhone 2.0 is half-decent I'll be selling a Pearl cheap as soon as ePocrates will run on the iPhone.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Devilish Dealings: How to get a corporate discount on an AT&T iPhone
Several months back I switched our family plan from Sprint to AT&T. My wife needed a new smart phone, and since I wanted iPhone 2.0 w/ SDK we decided to change rather than pay full price for a new phone.
I detailed the transition a few months back: Gordon's Tech: A deal with the Devil: We move from Sprint to AT&T and towards an iPhone.
It wasn't, in retrospect, a good business move. Our phone bill has gone up by about $40 a month because AT&T charges much more to call Canada (mother!) than our (legacy) Sprint Canada calling plan. Our phone usage is also awkwardly between AT&T call plans, so we end up with unwanted extra minutes.
Oh, and don't get me started about AT&T's vile rebate strategy.
Ah well, more adventures in phone pricing. And people think only physicians prefer to avoid transparency ...
Now, we do benefit from a 15% discount available through my employer, but iPhones don't qualify for these discounts. So I was figuring we'd lose the discount.
Except ... there's a small loophole. We may not lose it completely.
AT&T's current billing system associates the discount with the primary number on a family plan. So if the primary number isn't an iPhone, the discount should be retained.
Emily is staying with her BlackBerry Pearl for the moment. So today the very friendly staff at my local AT&T shop swapped her number to the primary position, and made mine secondary. They had to manually tweak the rollover minutes so we didn't lose those, though so far they're pointless.
In theory, all I need to do now is pickup an iPhone 2.0 sometime after June 9th and activate it via iTunes. The discount should continue ...
I'll update this post with what really happens. Satan usually comes out ahead in these games ...
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Blackberry Pearl voice memo hack
Happily, there's a workaround. Create an SMS, but save it as draft. Access it via the messages application. Click the link for more details.
Monday, February 04, 2008
Nokia 6555 plays iTunes AAC. Does everything do this now?
When I learned I could mass storage mount and charge my Nokia 6555b with a mini-USB cable and a (well made) Motorola mini-USB to micro-USB adapter the next test was to drop a podcast, an MP3 song and an AAC song into the mounted music folder. I then opened the music player, selected artists, and from the options menu chose "update library".
The All Songs list showed all three files [1] and they all played.
What's with music players and AAC? I don't remember anyone mentioning that players that were once entirely MP3 now all support AAC as well.
Unfortunately our HOSA headset adapters work only slightly better on this phone than on Emily's BlackBerry. If I don't press the 3.5mm terminal entirely in I get good stereo sound on my Bose QC IIs, but unbalanced stereo sound on a pair of Apple earbuds. If I do entirely engage the 3.5 mm connector I get mono sound. I'm tempted to try the Bose mobile communications kit.
The sad news is that the fairly crude music player doesn't support bookmarks, so it's not an adequate podcast player.
Even so, this is interesting enough to make me go ahead and buy another Sandisk 2GB media card, especially because I'm able to get my headphones to mostly work.
--
[1] It also showed the "." (dot) prefixed files that OS X creates on FAT formatted media, an annoying quirk of OS X that cannot be readily managed. There are ways to remove these, but I ignored them for this experiment.
Friday, February 01, 2008
Google BlackBerry calendar sync, the family calendar, and BlackBerry comments
- The predictive keyboard text entry is slow for writing, but might improve with time. It's very tedious when entering usernames and URLs. I need to learn a shortcut to switch out of predictive mode into the standard multi-stroke letter selection.
- A Graffiti One (original Palm Pilot) text entry solution with predictive word selection would really be much better than this keyboard and would use space far more effectively. Sniff.
- The original Palm had hundreds of fine touches that mde working in the small 160x160 display efficient and even enjoyable. It's early, but I don't see anything like this on the BlackBerry.
- The AT&T personal BB service includes what I think is their "push" email. We use this instead of AT&T's costly instant messaging. We use Google's BB Gmail client for work with traditional email. We haven't tried Google Talk on the BB ... yet
- When I enabled the BB email I was directed to "att.blackberry.net" for a web interface. Ooops! Turns out that's not enabled for personal accounts. I've run into a few of these glitches. [1 - see update]
Get calendar alerts - Using your BlackBerry� smartphone's native calendar, you can now access your Google calendar even when you don't have network coverage and be alerted for upcoming appointments with sound or vibration.I was indeed able to configure a connection between our family Google Apps domain calendar and the BB. It's very slow to sync however, even with only a few test posts on the calendar. I wonder if this will turn out be a toy. If it works I might make another try to sync Outlook with Google Calendar, though I don't think there's been much improvement on that front.
Always in sync - Your Google Calendar stays synchronized whether you access it from your computer or your phone. You can add or edit entries right on your BlackBerry� smartphone or on your Google Calendar on the web...
We've not tried Google Talk yet.
Update 12/30/08: In the midst of a Blackberry debacle I finally figured some of the odd story with http://www.att.com/
Anyway, if you navigate to the BB Pearl app for "Blackberry Setup", then "Personal Email Setup", you will be taken to an AT&T web page for configuring your email account. Here you set up a password for your account. In the midst of these screens, as of 12/08, there's an option to "create a username". If you do that you will be asked for a password. Be sure to have the password for your email setup already, because you'll be asked for that too as part of this setup.
Once you do this you can go to http://www.att.com/
I suggest you ignore this "feature", it's not worth the bother. Still, it's good to know what that absurd web page was supposed be for.
Monday, January 28, 2008
BlackBerry Pearl, iTunes and Missing Sync play well together
I discovered tonight that Emily's BlackBerry Pearl will play AAC encoded music (not FairPlay, just AAC). Who knew?
So I re-enabled disk mass storage support in the BB advanced options, reviewed the warnings from Mark/Space about USB mounting and told Missing sync for Blackberry to sync my new "BlackBerry" iTunes Playlist. [1]
Worked like a charm.
I absolutely did not turn The Beatles "Any Time at All" into a ringtone for her Pearl. I know that would bring Homeland Security to my doorstep.
Now I'm ordering a 2GB Micro-SD card and a 2.5mm to 3.5mm stereo out converter cable. Emily will be able to play the kids audio books on demand from her phone. Using the speaker phone if necessary.
[1] Ok, one more complication. Our iTunes music library lives in my Public folder on the iMac server. Emily has to sync the Pearl with her account. The solution is easy. I configured her iTunes to reference tunes in place, not to copy them. Then I dragged my entire music library on to her iTunes Window. Ten minutes later she had her own access list suitable for sync to the BB. Of course it won't stay in sync, but I've done this before. I just need to periodically delete all. (Actually I've done much more complex things before ...)
Update 12/30/08: Be very careful. Missing Sync stores the iTunes on your phone's main memory area -- which is pretty damned limited. If you sync infrequently, the "leave at least 5MB" default setting can start to become small, with very bad consequences ...
BlackBerry Pearl - usage tips
The codecs include AAC! I just tested it and they work very well.
Some of my favorite shortcuts (mostly from the Tong list but I've since added a few of my own):
- To move to the top of a screen (web page esp), press 1.
- To move to the bottom of a screen, press 7.
- To change text input methods when in a text field: Press the Menu key and then Click Enable Multitap or Enable SureType. (SureType is very unsure when entering URLs and usernames.)
- To switch applications, hold the Alt key and press the Escape (back) key. Continue holding the Alt key and roll the Pearl to select an application. Release the Alt key.
- To return to the Home screen, press the End (hang up) key.
- To lock the keyboard, from the Home screen, hold the asterisk (*) key. To unlock the keyboard, hold the asterisk (*) key and press the Send key
- To switch between the Default and Vibrate notification profiles, from the Home screen, hold the pound (#) key.
- To assign a speed dial number to a key, from the Home screen or in the Phone application, hold the key you want to assign. Type the phone number.
- To insert a period, press the Space key twice. The next letter is capitalized.
- To insert a period (.) in the Go To dialog box, press the Space key. To insert a forward slash (/) in the Go To dialog box, hold the Shift key and press the Space key.
- To open the bookmark list from a web page, press 5.
- To add a bookmark from a web page, press the question mark (?) key.
- To view a thumbnail version of a web page, press X. To return to the normal view, press any key. You can navigate a long web page by scrolling the thumbnail.
- To toggle the banner on a web page, press the exclamation point (!
) key again.
Now that I've shown the BB really can play AAC I'll get a 2.5mm to 3.5 mm stereo out adapter and a 2GB SD card.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Nokia 6555b: the pleasant surprise, and its iSync Plug-in
Ahh the RAZR. A pretty thing, but beneath the smooth face a twisted psychopath with a borderline personality disorder. Mercifully the memories are fading.
The Nokia isn't angular and slim. It's a bit lumpy in the pocket frankly. And yet ...
It's warm. Comforting. Smart. Most everything has been well thought out. (Note to Nokia: The quick dial UI fails when two numbers for the same user are entered. You're missing an iconic indicator to distinguish the user-number relationship.)
And, rather to my surprise, I was able to easily sync the Address Book with my OS X Address book using the free Nokia 6555 iSync Plugin by Code Crazy (see [3] to obtain).
Even the Blackberry won't sync to the Mac using Bluetooth, though it DOES have a nice, standard, USB cable. I have to buy one of those $5 Motorola Micro-Mini USB adapters for the Nokia so I can travel without the charger.
You know, maybe I'll wait a bit on the iPhone. We've turned Emily's Blackberry Pearl into a proto-Android, and it works pretty well that way. So we have a data phone with Google Maps, Google Talk, Google Mail and some other odd Google things.
And ... EDGE on the BB, it turns out, is damned slow. The iPhone deserves better. I'll have to keep carrying my Tungsten E2 for a while anyway -- the iPhone doesn't do tasks or much of anything without a data connection.
The 6555b doesn't need an expensive data plan to be happy.
This could last until iPhone 2.0.
Or beyond. After all, GSM does facilitate polygamy ... [but see the March 2009 update! Evil.]
Update 2/4/08:
- The phone continues to work well, but at times the battery has drained faster than expected. I'm going to turn off bluetooth and see what effect that has.
- I installed an old 64MB memory card (2GB is $25, this was lying around) which enables mounting as a mass storage device via USB (below) on a Mac [1] (On a PC it's supposed to enable sync with Windows Media Player and to work with Nokia's desktop apps.).
- I ordered the Motorola micro USB (EMU) to mini USB adapter ($3.50 + $6 shipping from an Amazon affiliate). I found with this cable that while the phone does not display a charging icon, it does indeed appear to charge when connected to a Mac. [2] This cable also supported USB mounting [1]. It did NOT, however, support iSync connection via a USB cable. So my iSync connection is Bluetooth only.
- More on music and AAC support on this phone.
Update 3/5/2008: From the comments: "To disable the startup jamboree, go to menu/settings/phone settings/startup tones and turn it off. easy!". A great tip. There's a similar setting on the same menu to disable the shutdown song. Now I don't have to smother the phone between my hands when I'm flying.
Update 4/24/2008: Contrary to my initial impressions, it doesn't charge via the USB port, at least when I use the Motorola adapter. I'm also finding more holes in the UI. Muting is pretty awkward, for example. It's also easy to end up in a UI state where you want to exit out to the primary phone screen, but there's no way to do that without closing the call (there's no universal "escape" button.) I continue to be annoyed by the hard-coded buttons designed for services I don't want, a sign that Sprint was too involved in the phone design.
Update 3/24/2009: There's a dirty little secret to all Nokia phones. They have a particularly evil approach to unlocking. I'm not buying Nokia again.
Update 4/15/09: I've made my copy of the Code Crazy iSync Nokia plug-in available. See [3], below.
[1] Settings:Connectivity:USB data cable:Date storage.
[2] In the past I've found that a Mac or PC won't power a USB device unless it has some device driver integration. It might be that installing a memory card, and then mounting via USB, is required to provide USB power. I have not yet tested with a USB charger.
[3] The Code Crazy domain is gone and the associated iSync Plug-In seems to have vanished. I've made my copy available, though of course if the author asks I'll remove it. A couple of people have tried this and it didn't work for them. I used it with a G5 iMac and 10.4, I no longer use it. It is probably not compatible with Intel machines and/or 10.5.