MobileViews Blog

Author: todd

  • PayPal Security Key

    PayPal Security Key

    I heard about the PayPal security key on the Security Now podcast last year. I don’t actually use PayPal but I was curious about the key so I bought one for $5. It arrived today and I went through what looked like the simple activation process. But, guess what. The process didn’t work (at least for this key and me).I called PayPal and was routed to someone there who had apparently never heard of this product. He put me on hold. About 20 minutes later, I heard my speakerphone click off to indicate they had dropped my call. Gee, thanks. I called back and, fortunately, spoke with someone a bit more knowledgeable. This key was deactivated. Guess, I get to try the activation process again someday. Too bad. Seems like a good idea.

  • iPod touch January Upgrade Problems

    iPod touch January Upgrade

    I’ve never had an iTunes/iPod sync issue… Until this evening. I ran into problems related to the iPod touch January Upgrade released today and announced on Macworld 2008 this morning. You can read the gory details in the blog item I wrote for the O’Reilly Mac Center.

    I discovered one item in favor of the Windows Mobile platform after performing the iPod touch upgrade. The iPod touch mail client (and presumably the iPhone’s mail client) does not support SSL encryption for IMAP4/SMTP mail configurations. CORRECTION:  The SSL option is in the Advanced tab.

  • Microsoft Press Release: Survey Shows Increasing Worldwide Reliance on To-Do Lists

    I saw this title in Microsoft’s press release list…

    Survey Shows Increasing Worldwide Reliance on To-Do Lists

    …then saw the subtitle…

    Results shed light on organizational habits and differences between men and women… and thought it might be some kind of early April Fool’s joke since it didn’t seem to mention any product or project. Then, looking further down the release, I found that the study was commissioned by the Windows Mobile product group. There is also a Get Organized sweepstakes (U.S. only) sponsored by the group. The To-Do list data has data comparing different countries as well as genders. It is definitely worthwhile reading through the findings regardless of what kind of mobile device you use.

  • Google Optimized for the iPhone

    Google optimized for the iPhone

    Google is at it again. They optimized a bunch of their web services for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch. You don’t need a special web URL to find it. Just head over to google.com with your iPhone or iPod touch and your device will be routed to the right place. Clicking the link to your personalized home page opens a second web page (see the 2 in the lower right corner?). Google Calendar has been modified too. The month view looks very good now. The number of sites and pace of development to support a less than one-year old platform astonishes me constantly. Where are the good looking and easy to use web pages for Windows Mobile?

  • Qipit Good! Scan Cameraphone Photos to PDF

    Original Cameraphone Photo vs. Qipit PDF

    Qipit good!… With apologies to Devo… I signed up for the free Qipit online cameraphone to PDF scanning service today. Although I’m focusing on the cameraphone aspect today, you can upload a digital photo taken with any kind of digital camera and upload it from the desktop too. For this test, I used a T-Mobile Dash (Windows Mobile 6 smartphone) to take a photo of a price sign in a local store. You can see the resized by otherwise unretouched photo on the left and a resized version of the PDF Qipit emailed to me. It also stored the image on their server for access through the web. As you can see, it seemed to do a pretty good job of focusing on the text area and cropping off the unnecessary area (I cropped it a bit more for this posting). The resulting PDF text was reasonably clear and readable.

  • Amazing Flash Prices

    SanDisk Ultra II SD twin pack

    I gave my spare 2GB SD card to my daughter last night to put into her OLPC XO. The SD card showed up right away and was usable from applications such as the word processor. I’m not sure how Fedora generated the card name (model number?). But, it was definitely not user friendly (e.g., /media/flash). In any case, I wanted to get another spare SD card in case one failed in my Pocket PC or an older camera (that doesn’t use SDHC cards). So, with coupon in hand, I head over to Costco this evening and picked up an empty card to take to the cashier. The coupon dropped the price $10 to $30. This was an ok price, but not great for a 2GB card. Then, when I received the real package from the Costco runner, I noticed it was a twin-pack. $15 for each 2GB SanDisk Ultra II SD card. Now, that was pretty good and I didn’t have to wait for it to be delivered.

    It has been amazing to watch prices drop while capacities increased over just the past few years. It wasn’t too long ago when 128MB SD cards were considered large and with relatively large prices too. The huge demand and success of the Eee PC (and to a lesser extend the OLPC) shows that  inexpensive computers with small flash based storage devices (compared to hard disk) can be a hit. I’m still waiting for for the Asus Eee PC 8G (1GB system RAM, 8GB storage flash RAM) to become available before buying one for myself. And, I am definitely interested to learn what Apple announces at Macworld next week. Fingers crossed that the rumored subnotebook flash-based device is reasonably priced (under $1500).