MobileViews Blog

Author: todd

  • MSN Direct Outlook Plugin A Pile of Fail

    MSN Direct Outlook Plugin Failure
    MSN Direct Outlook Plugin Failure

    One of Microsoft’s unfortunate mobile strategy failures was MSN Direct and SPOT (Smart Personal Objects Technology). I say “unfortunate” because I have two Suunto SPOT watches and an annual paid subscription for MSN Direct Plus that gave me the ability to sync my Outlook calendar over the air with the watch.

    Unfortunately, the…

    MSN Direct Calendar Add-in 1.2.27824

    …does not install at all in Microsoft Vista. And, I just found that it fails at the end of its installation process in Microsoft Virtual PC (beta) Windows XP Mode (a virtual machine under Windows 7). You can see the failure message in the screenshot above.

    And, since the MSN Direct project has been dormant for a couple of years now, there’s no chance of a plugin update. To make matters more annoying, Microsoft doesn’t even provide contact information on…

    http://direct.msn.com/

    …to let me cancel my $69.96 annual subscription. I’ll start making calls to figure out how to do this the hard way over the next few days.

    I still think SPOT was a good idea that just never lived up to its potential.

  • Podcast 31: Bytemarks Cafe Radio Program – Gadget Panel Discussion

    This podcast is a rebroadcast of a radio program on Hawaii Public Radio named Bytemarks Cafe. Its hosts are Burt Lum and Ryan Ozawa. Paul Lawler and I were guests on this gadget oriented episode originally broadcast on July 22, 2009. This podcast version is reproduced with the permission of Bytemarks Cafe.

    This podcast is 38 minutes 31 seconds long.

    – You can listen to the podcast right now from your web browser by using the embedded player above.
    – You can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or this RSS feed.
    – You can also point your smartphone’s browser at mobiletoday.podbean.com to listen to or download the MP3 file over the air to your phone.

  • Expansys Offering Unlocked iPhone 3G in US

    unlockediphone_expansys

    Hmm. Just took a look at Expansys‘ weekly specials email message and noticed a “Factory unlocked iPhone 3G” (8GB model) for $674.99. I think this is the first time I’ve seen an iPhone offered as “factory unlocked”.

  • Apple (AAPL) Market Cap Larger Than Google (GOOG) – A Back & Forth Battle

    Just noticed that Apple’s (AAPL) market cap is now larger than Google’s (GOOG):

    AAPL: $141.73 billion
    GOOG: $139.92 billion

    I should note that the AAPL and GOOG have been very close in market cap for several years now and have been trading places one upping each other for over two years now.

    Next in AAPL’s sites? Maybe Microsoft (MSFT) whose share price dropped 9% so far today and who yesterday reported large double digit percentage losses in all kinds of metrics. MSFT’s current market cap is $206.83 billion.

  • Nokia N96 30.033 Firmware Restabilized My Phone

    I’ve noticed small quirky annoying problems with the Nokia N96 since I updated its firmware around May (if memory serves me correctly). The N96 couldn’t “remember” my voice mail number (123) after repeatedly entering it and seeing a message saying it was stored. Camera would not attach GPS geotags to photos even though I repeatedly set it to on in the camera app’s settings. The N96 also seemed to lose its Bluetooth connection to devices that had worked spectacularly well with it for months.

    On a whim I checked to see if a new firmware release was available for it today and installed version 30.033 dated June 18, 2009. So far it looks like the voicemail number setting is sticking. I thought the camera’s GPS setting was too. But, a quick just a moment ago showed it had reverted back to off in the past hour. I didn’t notice any Bluetooth drop to a BT car speaker. But, that problem only showed up a couple of times a week (not daily).

  • Podcast 30: iFixit iPhone 3G S Tear Down Discussion with Luke Soules

    iFixit’s Kyle Wiens flew to London to be one of the first people in the world to buy an iPhone 3G S and then take it apart. iFixit co-founder Luke Soules and I discussed what Kyle found. You can find a step-by-step description with photos of the tear down process here:

    iFixit iPhone 3G S Teardown

    This podcast is 19 minutes 10 seconds long.

    – You can listen to the podcast right now from your web browser by using the embedded player above.
    – You can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or this RSS feed.
    – You can also point your smartphone’s browser at mobiletoday.podbean.com to listen to or download the MP3 file over the air to your phone.