Archive for December, 2007:
So Long 2007 …
Posted by: PatrickJ on Dec 31 2007 - 261 viewsWhen I first thought about bidding farewell to another year, I thought that this one really was not my favorite year. I’ve never really had any health troubles in my whole life, and I had a few this year, which were hard for me and my family - so my knee-jerk reaction was to think along the lines of Good Riddance to 2007.
After just a short think about it though, I know that’s a wrong reaction. I think the outstanding thing about 2007 for me is that it taught me a whole lot. It’s been a while since I probably had my eyes / mind open enough to let myself learn anything major - but sometimes a bit of a kick in the arse will open your mind real quick. That’s how this year was for me. Here’s some stuff I learned:
– That saying about how you find out who your true friends are when times are not so good, is true - and I found that I’m very, very lucky and have some great friends. I also found that some ‘virtual friends’ or web friends or whatever the right term is, can also be great and true friends. I’d never really considered web friendships to be much a
bove casual acquaintance level, but Brandon, Doug, Charlie, and others have shown me that was a serious underestimation. That was a very cool thing to learn, and I owe all of them, and a lot of my not virtual friends a ton of gratitude for just tons of help and support this year.
– Learned that my wife is the strongest person on the planet, by a long margin. Don’t know where I’d be without her, don’t know how I got along before I met her, and haven’t the slightest clue how she does what she does every single day.
– Some downtime also made me realize that no job is worth doing 80 hours a week, in manic, pressured situations - my work arrangements and commitment level has changed a great deal, and I’m very glad of it.
– Not so much a brand new thing this one, but found a new level of appreciation for lots of small things - like being able to pick my daughter up from school, and taking long afternoon walks with her and my dopey dog, that I never previously had time for, never even got home from work in time for! And like how beautiful Austin and all of Texas are. Big skies and big -hearted people. I’ve only been in Austin 7 years, and have lived a bunch of different places, but have never felt more at home than I do now in Texas.
– That working on this site, talking about and learning about mobile stuff, is still big, big fun to me. I’ve been involved in tech jobs and network roles for many years, but by now mobile tech is my real favorite area to learn about, play with, and write about.
– That Football Manager 2008 is *much* tougher than previous editions! A little more downtime this year gave me a lot of time to play my favorite game. I’ve never been big on Shoot “Em Ups or console games - just give me a Premiership club, or a Primera Liga team, and bit of transfer budget - and lookout, I’m obsessed for hours on end with winning the league, winning the Champions League, and all the rest of it. Great to see the game is that much more challenging this year.
So … those are really basic, simple things, nothing really clever. It just took them a while to get into my thick skull. And sorry - I’m not usually one for soppy messages - but that’s a few of the things that 2007 taught me. I’m looking forward to 2008 and learning some more. I hope all of you learned something good in 2007, and that 2008 is great for all of us. Happy New Year ….
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Subscribe to the comments for this postBlackBerry 9000 series?
Posted by: Peter Murphy on Dec 31 2007 - 1,234 views
Well we’ve stepped into the BlackBerry world recently here at JAMM, so let’s not stop now! Popping up at a website near you the Blackberry 9000, which a self-proclaimed semi-insider posted, on the BlackBerry forums. Looks good eh? Well if you look closely the second B in BlackBerry is upside down. Oops! In a summary of the blackberry thread by Cooper,CrunchGear has.posted
It appears the rumoured touchscreen BB is just a myth if you believe what first time poster Cooper over at BB Forums has to say. This photo was purportedly taken in Waterloo at the RIM campus. The 9xxx line won’t see a touchscreen for a long time and it seems as though it’s a myth internally, too according to Coops. I have a hard time swallowing this one.
Incredibly, the photo is pulled from Ebay, “Curiouser and Curiouser!” This is the stuff conspiracy theories are made of, and am I proliferating the cloak and dagger stuff by posting this? I’d like to think so!
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Blackberry Empower HTML Mail Viewer Pro Version
Posted by: dcwalton on Dec 31 2007 - 1,658 viewsI had never realised quite how annoying it was not being able to read HTML emails on the Blackberry until I found out there was a piece of software that would allow you to do it - Empower HTML Email Viewer. Ah ha! I thought to myself, that is just what I need. I have about 4 email accounts coming through my Blackberry and a couple of them are web ones like Hotmail. At the moment, these web mails are generally unreadable unless they are a simple conversational exchange between myself and a friend/colleague. I just ignore them and go check them out once online again. Then I found out about Empower HTML viewer and this review said it was great and just what I needed. So I got it.
It does display the emails in a way that is clearer to read. Any text, instead of being shown as a series of links now shows as text. That is definitely a step forward. I thought at first that the images weren’t displayed - but realised it just takes a while to load them. So now, in my "Amazon Recommends" text, I can see what Amazon recommends by title and 
see the mini pictures too. It costs $29.99 at full price. I know the exchange rate is great for the UK at the moment (sorry peeps!) but even at £15 that is pretty steep in my books for something that just makes your emails look a little different.
Empower HTML Email Viewer Pro also has this feature that allows you to set the background theme of your email based on which account it comes from. I thought this is a pretty neat idea - as I said, I have 4 email accounts coming in and it would be nice to easily distinguish between them. The thing is, I don’t think it works because of one of the fundamental design features of the Blackberry (in the UK anyway). All email that you receive comes through a redirector that is set up based on your network - in my case O2. So all emails effectively come from an o2email.co.uk address no matter where they start. I think this means that I always end up with the same theme! I need to test it more to validate my theory, but going through the mails from the different sources in my Inbox, this seems to be the case so far.
I do believe that this is a feature that Blackberry’s should carry as standard - and who knows, maybe in the next generation of devices it will be built in. Meanwhile, for those of us with an existing device it provides a good solution to a frustrating problem - albeit a very expensive solution.
Empower HTML Email Viewer Pro is available at www.getempower.com/ - and at the JAMM Store at $29.99.
Technorati Tags: Empower HTML Mail Viewer, html email, Empower, html email on Blackberry
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Celebrate Hogmanay with Astraware!
Posted by: breley on Dec 30 2007 - 341 views
Our friends at Astraware would like to invite you to their Annual Hogmanay (pronounced hog-muh-NAY) Party sale which starts December 31, 2007 and runs through midnight PST on January 11, 2008. For those unfamiliar, Hogmanay is the Scottish word for the last day of the year, hence the tartan, bagpiper and Scottish Highland cow sneaking into the logo.
During this New Year celebration, one or more games will be offered with deep discounts. Astraware has plenty of game choices to choose from, so there should be something for everyone! Keep in mind though that each offer lasts for a mere 24 hours, turning into a pumpkin at midnight…okay, it just changes to a new game offer at midnight, so be sure to check each day!
The first game in the Annual Hogmanay Party on Monday 31st December is the puzzle game Glyph, on sale at $9.95, for a sweet savings of $10 off the original price! To take advantage of this or other Hogmanay offers, point your browser here to join in the fun!
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If It Ain’t Broke …
Posted by: PatrickJ on Dec 30 2007 - 966 views
While we’re on the subject of Windows Mobile and whether it’s ‘broken’ and in need of revitalizing, there’s another new ‘user interface’ program that revamps the Windows Mobile UI coming along and already getting some praise.
Pointui is due to be released soon, and is described as:
Pointui has been built from the ground up so we can deliver a total user experience never before achieved on a Windows Mobile device.
We aim to provide a consistent enjoyable experience across all products we develop without compromising on performance. Home is the first of many products we aim to release to make your device simpler to use and more functionally rich.
It’s a free add-on for Windows Mobile, and there are some good demo videos up on YouTube that walk you through navigating the Pointui interface, and using some of its key components. I watched a couple of the videos just now and here’s some quick notes:
- Applications Bar at the bottom of the screen gives quick access to ‘Create New’ (note, message, task), or listing of all apps on the device, or view currently running apps (not sure if you could close running apps from there; if not, that’s a big miss)
- Cog symbol top right takes you to Settings
- The use of BIG, button bars that extend just about the full width of the screen throughout the UI is a very good idea I think - so much of the WM interface is hurt by small buttons or icons, or text etc.
- I like the Applet Ribbon middle of the home screen - to sideways scroll through Calendar, Tasks, Appointments
- I really like the Return Arrow that sits almost top right of the screen to quickly jump back to the previous screen
The other couple things that occur to me when seeing this are:
– We keep trying to say ‘no comparisons with iPhone’ - but you can’t help but notice the emphasis on scrolling and tapping and sliding etc. with a finger - file under imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?
– Also, if Windows Mobile isn’t ‘broken’ - user interface wise - howcome so many folks seem to want to be re-doing its UI? I think the popularity of apps like Spb Mobile Shell proves that WM users are looking for it to be redone too.
In any case, Pointui looks well worth a look when it comes out. I know I want to play with it. In the meantime, have a look at the demo videos at:
Via: Mobility Site and Geekzone
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PDAdb.net Now Has Specs for 1,000 Devices
Posted by: PatrickJ on Dec 29 2007 - 389 views
PDAdb.net is a fantastic resource for getting technical specs for a huge range of smartphones and PDA type devices. It’s well laid out, easy to navigate, and lets you browse and compare device specs down to very detailed levels. A great starting point if you’re about to get serious on acquiring a new mobile device.
This week they have hit a pretty cool milestone - they now have the specs for 1,000 devices! That’s a lot - almost as many as Charlie has in his ‘Accidentally Ordered’ stash in the basement 
When you need device specs, you can find them at:
Via: Mr. Mobile
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