I'm jealous...

Looks like T-Mobile Germany is getting the HTC Universal, which means T-Mobile US may get it instead of Cingular (my carrier).

Phones

WWAN to WLAN

Engadget posted about D-Link's latest wireless router with 3G capability. After a storm like Katrina, I could see a unit like this as beneficial for downed telephone lines.

Wireless

Cruzer Titanium

No, this is not a post about me in a suit of armor... It's about my latest gadget and the excellent software it includes. At the end of July, I posted about a new Microsoft Power Toy for syncing files. Then, I decided that I needed to backup files on my new tablet more frequently. I always liked the Sandisk Cruzer Titanium for its ability to hide the USB connector (and the great name), as I broke the USB connector on a thumb drive in my pocket once. I found a good price for the Cruzer Titanium 512 at newegg.com with a rebate making the price lower, so I splurged.

Little did I know, the Titanium comes with its own software applications, including a syncing software called CruzerSync, which is excellent. Now, I have all my e-mail, contacts, calendar items, Favorites, and files in My Documents synced onto my Cruzer so I can "Cruz".

Backup

Design your own LEGO kit

Engadget has a post about designing your own Lego kit. This cool Lego tool, in conjunction with the Lego Enzo Ferrari I saw at a Discovery Channel Store on Saturday night will make for some cool Christmas presents (for me).

Toys

YACFMNCP

Yet Another Contender For My Next Cell Phone -- The HTC Universal. It's quite powerful, has all the features I want, and in black, matches my TC 4200 Tablet PC. Read more at Engadget.

Media to go, please

Recently, I have been thinking about getting an iPod. They are expensive, and in my opinion, a little flawed (battery life). What to do?

I had read about Orb and their service, but I didn’t want to pay for any kind of service like that. Next thing I know, Orb is giving away their service for free. I figured I might as well try it.

My initial reaction is Wow! Orb has lessened my “need” to have an iPod in the immediate future. Now, so long as I have access to the Internet, I have not only all my music, but pictures, videos, and TiVo programs too.

Check it out.

Pucker up...

Being a trumpet player since high school, here is one of those toys that are neat to look at, but I’ll never own. My old Getzen is still great. Thanks to Engadget for finding all the cool stuff.

AARRRRRRRGGGHHH!!!!!

My total frustration with my Pocket PC Phone came to a head this morning. Maybe it was the traffic or the heat – my car has no A/C right now – but I couldn’t send e-mails out using my BellSouth.net account. I had a similar problem yesterday, but thought it was a lousy signal. Either way, I triple checked the settings on my phone to no avail.

Back at the office, I started Googling for an answer, also with no success. What gives!?!

Finally, I checked Cingular’s Customer Service site. They have device tutorials and for my Siemens SX66, I found I had an incorrect setting. All outgoing mail needs to go through cwmx.com. I had my outgoing mail server set to mail.bellsouth.net.

After two days of frustration, my SX66 is finally sending email normally.

Lookout! Here comes "The Boss."

Remember when DOS games had “Boss” keys? You pressed Esc when your boss appeared and the game screen changed to a Lotus 123 spreadsheet.

Now, it appears you can perform a job search using a spreadsheet so it looks like you’re working while you’re searching for a job.

Blogger Word Plug-in

Blogger Word Plug-in

After reading about Blogger for Word on several blogs (Life of a one-man IT department & Blogger Buzz), I had to try it. I use Word everyday; it only makes sense to use Word for offline blogging. What took so long?

Does a "soul" fit in your pocket?

Yesterday, I was playing with Knoppix, a CD-ROM bootable Linux install. While I'm not a huge Linux fan, I was impressed with how quick the OS seemed. I've been using an "Ultimate Boot CD for Windows" bootable CD to troubleshoot and repair failing XP computers, and loading XP from a CD is somewhat slow. Aside from having the ability to play with alternate operating systems, which you can do with products like Virtual Machine, or use and repair systems with malfunctioning operating systems and hard drives, I didn't see much use for these bootable CD-ROM operating systems.

Along comes IBM Research with "SoulPad" technology. They use an iPod to boot into Knoppix and store a user's computer environment. Brilliant! The OS can now be taken with you without carrying your PC.

Read more and watch a video demonstrating the technology at New Scientist Breaking News - Pocket-sized computer 'soul' developed

A contender for my next Pocket PC Phone

Although my Siemens SX66 is still not even a year old, I'm already looking for its replacement. I'm a big HP fan, so this would make an excellent choice.
New HP iPAQ hw6710 and hw6715 Mobile Messengers have WiFi and WinMo 5 - Engadget - www.engadget.com

What's on the horizon...?

I just got through watching this excellent video on Windows Mobile 5.0 (Ford Davidson - The latest in cell phones), and all I can say is, "Wow!"

There are lots of advances coming down the pipe. Making the Pocket PC phones more user friendly is going to make them even more popular. Watch the video and visit http://www.windowsmobile.com for more information.

It's raining Microsoft Technology!

Look at these Download details: SyncToy v1 Beta. Syncing files between computers is supposed to be very easy now, thanks to this Power Toy.

Tags: Technology

Microsoft is giving this away?!?

Scoble has a Channel9 video titled Eric Horvitz - Managing your email better with Outlook Mobile Manager, wherein an in-house Microsoft product is released for free to users. The software looks awesome. I'm going to test it out over the next few days to see how well it works.

Tags: Technology

The Goldfish Hearing Aid : Gizmodo

This obviously comes from some sort of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fan. Now, if only it could do universal translation...
The Goldfish Hearing Aid : Gizmodo

Come to think of it, this might be useful for my parents...

Tags: Technology

A book cannot be judged...

JK offers a page of The worst prose on the planet? Some of the writing is hilarious. All the winners are available here: 2005 Results.

If you haven't visited my Writings page, have a look see. It may or may not share that dubious honor with the lousy prose above.

Tags: Writing, Funny

Technorati Tags & del.icio.us

I'm now toying with tags in my posts. Not sure if this will work as I've planned, but it seems like it should.

Categories: new

Edit: Rather than add too much to the mix for now, I'm simply tagging to Techonorati, which I have verified works.

ActiveSync 3.8 Install Hang

I searched Google and Technorati for this information, and the link below was the only information to offer an inkling of light on a dark subject: Ipaq HQ Forums - Unable to Install ActiveSync 3.8.

Look for the information from Geoff_from_Glenside. His steps are fairly simple, yet they did not work for me. Finally, I tried ending all the tasks including is_setup.exe. Then, I opened the Temp folder by clicking Start --> Run and typing %temp% and pressing enter. Finally, I double-clicked setup.exe, and VOILA! -- The installation succeded.

All that work and about 2 hours of research to install a simple program. Microsoft: 1) you need to document this problem as it seems that many people have it as per my Internet perusing, and 2) making it this difficult to install to a brand-new pc without having had any activesync software installed previously is a real problem; you won't have many adopters if it requires this much trouble to install the most basic of software.