Author: todd

I’ve been office-less since my old day job ended on June 30. I just work wherever I have a decent data connection for my new job as Editor of MobileAppsToday.com. I carry around an assortment of mobile gadgets depending on what I am doing while wandering around. But, the three items that are always with me for sure these are my Windows Mobile Dash smartphone (love its thumb keyboard), iPod, and a silver version of the Contigo mug pictured above (I photographed the red one because it looks better in a photo :-). It has three great features: (1) It fits in the car’s cupholder. (2) It does not spill. I held it upside down and shook it while full of water and it remained water tight. (3) It keeps things cold for a long time (hours). The trick I’ve learned is to fill up mostly with ice before leaving home and then fill it up with water or soft drinks while wandering around. Easier to find water or beverages to fill it with than ice.

David: Yes, U.S. sites have a long way to go in terms of creating mobile friendly sites. However, I think that if mobile platform designers provided better mobile browsers, we’d have an easier time to “meet in the middle”. The Apple iPhone Safari browser demonstrated that people in the US will browse the web from their phone in large numbers with a decent browser. That, in turn, inspired many website to fit the sites better specifically to the iPhone. Browsers have been running on Windows Mobile, Palm OS, and Symbian S60 (Nokia) for many years now. But, the user experience provided by them were so disconnected (one might say broken) from their desktop experience that most people chose not to use them. I think it is important for people like you and me to let site owners know if we would like to get a better mobile browsing experience. And, if they already do so, to let them know we appreciate their effort. And, yes, I’ve asked MediaBistro about a mobile browser friendly experience too

Originally posted as a comment by Todd Ogasawara on mediabistro.com: MobileAppsToday using Disqus.

Well, I finally learned why I could not see a T-Mobile SSID and connect to T-Mobile hotspots in local Starbucks locations. See my MobileAppsToday blog for the details. The short answer: Although T-Mobile hotspot tech support says their SSIDs are visible, they are, in fact, invisible. So, I had to manually create WiFi profiles for it on each of my devices. The tmobile SSID was visible as of last month (July).

I from home now. And, I’m too cheap (poor) to buy EVDO or HSDPA service for my notebooks since I can get WiFi service at most of the places I go to when running around. Or, so I thought… One of the places I depend on for broadband connectivity is Starbucks. It is air conditioned in the summer, dry (enclosed) in the winter, and I’m hooked on the blended lemonade and Vivanno there. However, I’ve been noticing more and more problems getting WiFi connectivity at Starbucks over the past few weeks. And, this week, the three Starbucks near my home all completely lost their WiFi as far as I can tell. I don’t see any SSID for either AT&T Wireless or T-Mobile. I spoke to employees at all three locations. Employees at two locations had not heard of any problems although they were aware of the changeover of equipment and management from T-Mobile to AT&T Wireless. The person at the third Starbucks had heard complaints from other customers about not getting WiFi there. I called T-Mobile Hotspot customer support after checking two Starbucks locations this afternoon. I carried two devices, an Acer Aspire One netbook and a T-Mobile Dash Windows Mobile smartphone, to test at both locations. Both devices saw SSIDs for various WiFi Access Points (WAPs). But, neither saw a T-Mobile or AT&T Wireless SSID. The T-Mobile HotSpot phone tech support person told me that the network status indicator he was looking at said all three hotspots were up. He suggested that I call the support number from the Starbucks location with the problem the next time I run into it. The T-Mobile US HotSpot support number is: 877.822.7768.

James Kendrick, of JkOnTheRun.com, note similar issues earlier this month in his blog item: Is Starbucks WiFi having problems? So, I know (a) I’m not the only one seeing this problem and (b) the problem is not localized to where I live.