Year: 2007

I have to admit that with the release of Opera Mini 4 Beta 2 last week, this browser is growing on me. The image above is the BBC News’ main web page in Opera Mini’s full page thumbnail view. I’m testing it on a HTC Vox (Windows Mobile 6 smarthone), btw. If you look carefully, you can see a small rectangle with a cursor arrow. Pressing the select button zooms in to that area. Then, it is easy to use the 2 4 6 8 (up, left, right, down) keys to navigate around the page without going back to the thumbnail view. The zooming and scrolling is lightning fast and makes for a good browser experience on a small smartphone screen.

There are a couple of interesting issues, however.

First, there appears to be at least one major web page that just doesn’t like the browser. In this case it is CNN. I tend to use the cnn.com web page for browser testing because it is one of the most mobile-unfriendly major websites I know of. In the case of Opera, it just times out. And, no the site was not down when I tried to access it.

Second, if a site is too mobile friendly (I know this seems like an odd idea), it defeats the great Opera Mini thumbnail and quick navigation features by defaulting to the mobile friendly site which tends to less rich than the full site intended for viewing on a desktop. I tested it with msnbc.com which detects your platform and sends you to a mobile friendly version of the site if it detects you are using a mobile device.

Third, and this is kind of ironic, Opera Mini works better (from a keyboard navigation point of view) on a simple numeric dialpad layout than it does with a full QWERTY thumb keyboard. I found myself sliding the Vox’s keyboard back under the device and switched to the simpler numeric dialpad to speed up navigating around Opera’s screen. I haven’t tested it with the Dash which only has a QWERTY keyboard. I suspect it will not be as nice as using Opera Mini with a device like the Vox which gives you a choice. Another irony? The problem is that I prefer the Dash’s QWERTY keyboard to the Vox’s QWERTY keyboard.

Finally, the odd (probably related to the Java platform) procedures for functions like typing a web site’s URL and accepting (many more keystrokes than with Internet Explorer) is kind of annoying.

That said, I like what I see in Beta 2 and am looking forward to what comes next from Opera for smartphones.

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but here is a bit more detail about looking for free Windows Mobile software available in the Microsoft Windows Marketplace site. Here are two sample links…

Free Pocket PC  Software in Windows Marketplace

Free Smartphone Sofware in Windows Marketplace

If you take a look at the way the URLs for each one is constructed, you can figure out how to search for other free software using different keywords. Just replace the search string after the text= part of the URL string. I don’t include a link to search for the words Windows Mobile. But you can figure that out by looking at the URL in your browser’s address bar.

I rarely mention product reviews on other sites. But, it’s so unusual to see a head-to-head comparison review on a mainstream tech site (CNET’s The Daily Download) that I figured I mention it just because of that. One other aspect of the article is that it compares an app that I’ve been using for around a decade now, Ilium Software’s eWallet.

Code Wallet and eWallet duke it out for your phone

And, don’t forget the other major info encryption app that was not mentioned in the comparison article: Spb Wallet.

If you would like to IM with friends using Google Talk from a Windows Mobile Pocket PC or Smartphone, you might want to take a look at…

OctroTalk

It is currently in beta-release and free for testing (the current release expires in October if I recall correctly). I tested on a TyTn Pocket PC Phone Edition running Windows Mobile 6. It worked fine IMing to Google Talk. Since Google Talk is based on the protocol developed for Jabber, it should work fine with Jabber as well as its transport gateway.

According to Wikipedia, USB 1.0 emerged in 1995 and 2.0 in 2000. You would think after all these years, its operation should be dirt simple and flawless (although I guess you would think ActiveSync/WMDC would have its act together after 11 years too). So, USB’s finickyness always amazes. Take the two cables pictured above. You would think they would be pretty similar. And, in fact, for the most part they are. The exception is when I try to use the white cable with an HTC Vox smartphone and try to sync it to WMDC on Windows Vista. Windows reports that it sees a USB device but can’t identify. Switching to the black cable solves the problem. And, yet, the white cable works for other functions and devices.

And there’s more USB-wise. Most of us know by now that there is a difference between powered and unpowered USB hubs. Windows Mobile users also generally know not to use any hub at all when upgrading firmware (plug in directly to the PC’s native USB port). But, did you know that the front ports sometimes deliver less power than the rear ports? This makes a difference to devices that draw a lot of power (e.g., USB hard drives powered through the port).

So, if you run into sync or other USB related issues, be sure to check all the variables you can: Cable, port position, unpowered vs. powered hub, front port vs. rear port, and whatever other USB variable you can manipulate.