Smartphone Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

"Smartphone & Pocket PC users throughout the world can now bring their "virtual secretary" along while they are on the move. HandStep is launching an intuitive program that enables mobile co-workers to schedule meetings on the spot via their PDA or SmartPhone. ... TeamCalendar gives you a complete overview of your colleagues� schedules directly from your PDA or Smartphone for any given day or week. What�s more, you can book meetings on the spot � so no more phone calls or emails trying to set up that all-important meeting."



If you are always away from your desktop and want to schedule meetings on the go, then TeamCalendar is the application to check out. It is currently in BETA, and expected to be released sometime in July. The price seems to be a bit steep for a feature that I would like my Windows Mobile device to provide out of the box. But sadly even the upcoming Windows Mobile 6 will not have support for this. Windows Mobile 6 will enable you to see the attendees and invite new ones, but you will not be able to see if they are available or not.

HTC has been having successful quarter after quarter. So it comes as no surprise that they are putting the $$$ to use. No they are not increasing their R&D budget, but they are planning to buy back 5 million common shares at the price of NT$601 to NT$800 per share. Nurhisham Hussein over at our sister site Pocket PC Thoughts has a nice commentary on HTC's plans, worth reading. The thing that intrigues me is that a few months ago they were planning on floating some shares in the foreign markets which was cancelled recently and now the company has made a total about turn and decided to buy back shares instead of floating more. :? Hopefully we will hear more about this in the future. Meanwhile HTC is flying high and might even be partnering with the other high flying company in the world right now, Google.

"In an interesting alliance, Nokia, the government of Finland and Red Herring have come together (it�s gotta be the herring) to offer a competition to who can put together the most compelling mobile Web business plan. This is excellent timing in my opinion (read this story at GigaOm if you don�t believe me), as the only space on a par with the excitement of Internet video is mobile technology and mobile lifestyle (with the combination of the two being at the peak of JT�s fictitious hot-meter). The Web-2-Mobile Business Plan Competition is open to any �qualified� entrepreneur, which is an interesting choice of words - who exactly is an unqualified entrepreneur anyway? It�s probably just to deter people like that crazy Omarosa woman from the Apprentice."

If you're mobile platform agnostic (hey, it's Nokia after all) and have some great ideas about mobility, here's your opportunity to shine! Just remember to tell Nokia you were inspired by this Web site. :mrgreen:

When I started Pocket PC Thoughts in October 2000, it was a hobby blog born out of my passion to have a place to discuss everything about Pocket PCs. The first version was advertising-free, and paid for out of my pocket. I never would have envisioned that, six years later, I'd have four Web sites, a wonderful team of volunteer editors, moderators, and review team members just as passionate about their respective topics as I am, and be blessed with the ability to do this as my full-time job. Six years is a long time to amass experiences along the way, and to learn from them to make things better for the future.

Here's the short version if you're in a rush: by the end of the year, the Smartphone Thoughts forums will be merged into a new centralized set of vBulletin forums shared with other Thoughts Media sites. Go to the new "shell" our forums will be placed in and register using the same username and password you have here on this site (that's really important).

Here's the long version if you want to understand why the above decision was made: it's always been frustrating for me that the Thoughts Media Network has four different set of forums, requiring users to have four separate sets of username/password credentials. That's just plain stupid, and not something I ever intentionally set out to do. When we started the first set of forums on Pocket PC Thoughts, I knew nothing about online forum software. The helpful tech guy helping me out recommended phpBB, and at the time it seemed like a good idea so I didn't research any alternatives. The software was free, updated often, and would work with the custom front-page news system we created. When I launched Smartphone Thoughts, I realized having two sets of forums wasn't ideal, but with phpBB being unable to properly support sub-forums, it seemed like an even worse idea to try and combine everything together into one huge list of forums. Lastly, my content management system was designed to work with phpBB, so switching would require a complete re-design.
When Digital Media Thoughts was launched later on, the problem was only getting worse, and there was the added concern of privacy issues involving data replication of the user database across three sites (which was one solution to not forcing users to have three separate logins). All in all, it was a mess. To make matters worse, the phpBB release schedule slowed to a crawl - bug fixes were all they were putting out. The often-promised phpBB content management system was nowhere to be found, one of the main developers left the project, and as a free product there was no tech support or even anyone to turn to when spammers flooded our board. Because our CMS was essentially a phpBB hack, every time a new version of phpBB came out, upgrading the software was painful and slow.

See where this is going? Late last year, in discussions with all team members and my lead developer/designer Fabrizio Fiandanese, I decided to move away from phpBB. I investigated several forum solutions, and decided upon vBulletin for several reasons: some of the biggest sites out there were using it, and all seemed quite snappy and responsive despite their huge size. vBulletin is a commercial product with a yearly fee, which means I'd have access to real support. They update the product regularly, adding new features and security measures. The forum software itself wasn't quite as simple to use as phpBB, but much of that is because their default template isn't terribly good.

Picking the forum software was only half the solution though: we had an entire content management system to re-write from scratch, and in order to not get trapped by this problem again, our CMS would have to be written in such a way that it was completely separate from the forum software. It would have to "float" above the forum layer, injecting the post into the forum at the right time. By keeping it separate, it would also allow us to avoid the snares of problematic software updates. So over the past year, Fabrizio and I (well, ok, Fabrizio did all the coding :-D) have been working on this new CMS. We have five years of built-up functionality to replicate and improve upon, so to say that it's a big project is a huge understatement.

There are many advantages to the forum merger: with a single login to the Thoughts Media Network, community members will be able to comment on any story, on any site, without having to log in again. This will have the net result of increasing community posts across the network. It also allows editors to easily post a single story to multiple sites, and centralizes community commentary on those posts. Another advantage: subscriber services (once ported over to the new CMS) will be network-wide, meaning you'll pay once and have access to special services and offers on all four sites. It will take us a while to get implemented, but it's definitely a goal.

It's important for me to stress that this move is about combining the forums and not the communities themselves. Each site has it's own distinct community, and I don't want to take that away. vBulletin makes it simple for someone to not even have to see the other forums. For instance, on the Zune Thoughts home page (yes, we soft-launched today), when you click on the FORUMS link, you are taken right into the Zune Thoughts Forum which is skinned to match the site. There's no need to even see the other forum sections. We'll have a centralized Off Topic forum for all the sites, which saves me from having to post the same thing four times. ;-)

There's one disadvantage that I haven't figured out a way around yet: when a user clicks "View New Posts" in the forums, it will show them all of the new posts in the forums, not just the sub-forum they are in. So someone that only reads Pocket PC Thoughts will see new posts from the Smartphone Thoughts forums as well. One possible solution here is to find a way to colour-code or filter the results window, making it easy to quickly scan for the forum posts that interest you. When weighed against all of the advantages, I believe this issue is relatively minor, but I am aware of it.

This is a big change, and while I expect some grumbling (few people endorse change) I hope this post explains how and why this decision was made. I value each and every member of this community very highly, and my goal is always to deliver the best possible community experience possible. I believe this move will, in the end, position Thoughts Media and all its communities for future growth and success. I will follow this post up with a short FAQ that will hopefully answer most questions you may have, but feel free to ask about anything I didn't cover.

"Last month, 40,000 air travelers coughed up a daily fee of $6.95 for the right to access the Internet at O'Hare and Midway airports. But what good is wireless Internet access if passengers have no place to recharge their dying BlackBerries, PDAs and laptop computers? Newly appointed Chicago Aviation Commissioner Nuria Fernandez has been asking herself that question after strolling through passenger terminals, only to find desperate travelers sitting on the floor hogging electrical outlets reserved for maintenance equipment. "People are recharging in the various sockets available through the janitorial services. . . . We have maintenance outlets throughout the airport used mainly for vacuuming and cleaning. But those are the only outlets available. So we have travelers sitting on the floor, plugging in and recharging," Fernandez said."

During my last travels, I was one of those people hanging around the electrical outlets. Luckily, I was able to sit on a nearby seat and not the floor. Anyway, it's nice to see that people are paying attention to these details, and what's better is that the re-charge stations are going to be free. I was concerned that it would be a terminal where you have to swipe your credit card before the outlet is "activated". Thankfully, that's not the case. :D

"T-Mobile have been somewhat blazing-the-trail for Windows Mobile users of late, with their adoption of just about every HTC device under the sun (the Tornado being the unfortunate and notable omission), coupled with their impressive 'web-n-walk' and innovative 'FlexT' tariffs. ...With T-Mobile's current drive to recruit new customers, it looks like THEY aren't going to be April Fools, and a reworking of Web-n-Walk and FlexT is on the cards, to integrate the tariffs. All good I hear you say, but how does this shake up the UK Mobile Data market? Well, if our sources are to be believed, T-Mobile will announce - with some fanfare - a �7.50 per month flat rate data usage plan! Likely subject to a fairly relaxed 'acceptable usage plan' (1GB seems likely), the deal looks set to have Smart device users on other networks migrating in droves."

This is some good news if you're a T-Mo UK subscriber, or if you're able to switch your provider to be T-Mo. The 1GB limit is a pretty nice plus, I must say. The launch of flat rate data plans in the UK has been sorely missing for a while now.

"Cingular will launch two new data plans next month for subscribers who often find themselves outside the US. The GlobalConnect plans provide unlimited EDGE and 3G data on Cingular's network and include 100 MB of data roaming per month. The plan is available in two different flavors, a $110 version that includes roaming in Canada and Mexico, and a $140 plan that includes access in most major countries."

Even though a bit pricey it's a logical step for Cingular to make. After all they do operate on GSM which is most of the world now.

"We can�t confirm this independently, but according to an �exclusive� report on MobileRead, Sony Ericsson is working on a new cellphone display that will automatically create new themes based on your surroundings. The �auto-adaptive� phone will apparently snap pictures periodically, and then build a theme based on what it sees."



Just when you think you have seen it all. Don't these folks have anything else they could be working on to make these devices work better for us???? Sony Sony Sony, first the Memory Stick, now this! :roll: