MobileViews Blog

I sometimes use my iPod video’s Sleep Timer. One nice side effect I found is that the Logitech speakers I use also turn off it is on battery power (vs. plugged into a wall socket) after the iPod shuts down. One oddity, though, is what happens the next time I turn the iPod on, it immediately turns off again. This only happens once though. However, I remember being surprised the first time I noticed this.

I’m not quite sure what the cause of the other iPod sleep problem I’ve noticed. That is, every once in a while (perhaps a couple times per week), the iPod won’t turn off the usual way. I found that locking and then unlocking the iPod (it starts out unlocked) restores the ability to turn off the iPod.

I’ve never used the iPod touch’s sleep feature since doesn’t work with the dock on the Logitech speakers I have.

Google announced…

Google News now available on your iPhone and iPod Touch

The site’s URL is the usual http://news.google.com one. It auto-detects the iPhone/iPod touch. One interesting wrinkle described in the announcement is and, where available, relevant YouTube videos embedded with news stories. Nice.

What happens when a bunch of Windows Mobile enthusiasts (my fellow Windows Mobile MVPs) get together? Well, there’s a lot of talk about mobile devices (no surprise). And, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Windows Mobile calendar gets a lot of discussion time since it is probably one of the most used applications on a Smartphone (eithre more or less than Contacts depending on who you talk to). One common complaint is the near uselessness of the Calendar’s week view. I tend to mostly use the Agenda (list of appointments) and Month views myself. The Week view is just, well, weak. Apple must feel the same way since their iPhone/iPod touch calendar doesn’t even have a week view. The week view would be more useful to me if it didn’t assume that a week is defined as starting either on Sunday or Monday and ending on Friday or Saturday. I’d prefer a rolling-week view myself where the view starts on the current day and pushes out a week in advance. Why? Because by Wednesday or Thursday, I’d like to see Saturday and Sunday at the same time without advancing an entire week just to see the Sunday after the coming Saturday. For me, the weekend is a unified pair. It is not two days split across two weeks.

I think AgendaOne and Pocket Informant (as well as other add-on products) let you see a calendar week view in this relative fashion. But, it would be nice if the built-in Windows Mobile Calendar just let us see a week either in the traditional paper fashion or in a relative fashion.

Fellow MVP Sven Johannsen pointed me to the Callpod Chargepod (Amazon affiliate page) multi-device charger (manufacturer page). I’m traveling to Seattle to attend the Microsoft MVP Global Summit and wish I had known about this thing earlier. The sad thing, though, is that charging six devices at once is not quite enough But, it sure would help!

The funny thing about the iPod touch is that I use it for everything except listening to music and podcasts. Why? Touch devices like the iPod touch and Pocket PC are two-handed devices. Both require you to cradle it one hand and manipulate it with the other. Non-touch iPods, like non-touch Windows Mobile smartphones, are designed from the ground up to be one-handed devices. I can adjust the volume, go backwards and forwards through a song list, pause or play on a non-touch iPod without looking at the navigation wheel. This is pretty much impossible for me on the iPod touch.

I’m heading to Seattle to attend the Microsoft Global MVP Summit next week. And, I was just debating whether to take an iPod video or iPod touch with me. Yeah, it would be more P.C. to take a Zune, but as I’ve mentioned here before, it takes forever to get video podcasts and other video files on the 1st generation Zune. And, I’m planning to catch up on a bunch of video podcasts on the flights to and from SeaTac. I’ll probably take the iPod touch to get a better video viewing experience. But, I really wish Apple had an iPod touch with a navigation wheel to provide tactile feedback.

According to CNET… A new exploit will either lock up your iPhone or iPod Touch or crash your Safari browser on your PC or Mac OS desktop if you simply visit a maliciously coded Web site.

Web code locks up iPhones and iPod Touch

The current workaround is to disable Javascript in the Safari brower. Yuck. CNET’s article provides the 4-step process to disable JavaScript.

Apple announced that they licensed ActiveSync from Microsoft to let the iPhone directly sync with Microsoft Exchange. I could make some snide remarks about ActiveSync here (all well deserved). But, the thing to remember is this: They are NOT talking about syncing an iPhone to a PC using ActiveSync. This is purely an over-the-air sync directly to the Exchange Server. I hope the iPhone experience with Exchange Server is a good one. Nothing is worse than the desktop ActiveSync/WDMC experience that has been emotionally maiming Windows Mobile users for years.

Here’s an interview with Microsoft’s corporate VP for Exchange to provide the details on this Microsoft-Apple licensing.

Q&A: Microsoft Helps Connect Apple iPhone Users to Microsoft’s Exchange Server

Linkedin is the latest big social network site to mobile enable itself. You can find the mobile friendly site at…

mobile.linkedin.com

It would have been nice if they adopted the “m.” prefix to reduce the amount of tapping on a small keyboard or screen. But, oh well…

The real story here though is that once again the barebones display designed for WAP-ish devices like Windows Mobile that can’t deal with a rich web site design looks horrible compared to the much richer iPhone/iPod touch version. You can probably figure out which is which in the photo above. One is an iPod touch. The other is a T-Mobile Dash Windows Mobile 6 smartphone (amateur edition).

I bought this little Vibez speaker from iFrogz on a whim during their post-holiday sale period. It listed for $34.99. I bought it for $19.99. And, it currently lists on their site for $24.95. This thing is not going to give your high-end or even decent portable speakers any competition. However, despite its relatively low-fidelity, it sounds ok for what it is: A tiny speaker that works with anything that has a mini-plug headphone jack. I often use it to listen to podcasts when I am roaming around a room (I hate wearing headphones or earphones). The USB plug is used to charge the integrated rechargeable batteries. The charge seems to last darn near forever. I think the last time I charged it was sometime in mid-January. You can squeeze it down in size for carrying around. But, I don’t want to stress that plastic pleated mid-area. And, it is small enough to easily carry around even in the expanded state you see in the photo. Personally, I think music sounds ok on it too. It obviously has no bass range to speak of. But, it is fine for un-nuanced music. A mobile thumbs up for this little speaker.

Saw a reference to this on the AppleInsider site and followed the link to…

Google homes in on revenue to phones

…The key quote from the article that AppleInsider pointed out is: Google on Wednesday said it had seen 50 times more searches on Apple‘s iPhone than any other mobile handset, adding weight to the group’s confidence at being able to generate significant revenues from the mobile internet. I guess this means we’ll see even more cool web services and sites designed specifically for the iPhone (and as a side effect the iPod touch) while Windows Mobile and other smartphone platforms will have to be happy with WAP text sites and CSS-ed reformatted pages.

You know, I think it was around 11 years ago that Charles Fitzgerald told Bill Gates that Microsoft needed to focus on the web (I was a contractor for MSN at the time, btw). I hope there is someone like that over at Microsoft now pointing out that they need to focus on the mobile web now.

I don’t know anything about the OEDb (Online Education Database) site. But, someone associated with them pointed out this useful looking iPod resource…

100 Ways to Use Your iPod to Learn and Study Better

I thought it looked useful enough to spread the word. The resources are categorized as study guides, podcasts, tutorials, applications, tools ad sites, iTunes U, and other groupings that make it easy to hunt around the long list.

Just read an MSNBC article that Apple increased the iPhone to 16GB ($499) and the iPod touch to 32GB (also $499). I wonder: (1) Why didn’t they announce this during Macworld? It might have prevented some of their dramatic stock price drop since then. (and) (2) Shouldn’t the iPod touch price be down around $449 or $399 to offset its lack of a phone radio, Bluetooth radio, microphone, and camera (despite the increased RAM)?