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  • kwiry: Text or Email a Topic to it and Retrieve Search Results on the Desktop

    I usually don’t mention a service I haven’t tried yet. But, I’m almost ready to hit the sack and don’t want to start playing with anything just now. And, yet, this service seemed interesting enough to blog it as a kind of reminder to myself to try it out tomorrow.

    kwiry (which I suppose is pronounced “query”)

    …is a free service that helps you jot something down from a phone and lets you retrieve the results from a desktop web browser. They push the idea of text messaging queries to the service. This caused me to lose interest at first. However, reading on I noticed it also lets you send the query via email too. My phone plan only includes a handful of free text messages. But, my email is free (unlimited data). So, that is a much better fit for me.

    It apparently somehow ties in to Twitter (another favorite of mine) and other social network services. So, I’m definitely going sign up and take a closer look at it tomorrow.

    Good night, all!

  • iPod Sleep Issues?

    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.

  • Information Week says: Most Companies Don’t Have A Mobile Device Management Plan

    I went on a rant a few months ago chiding Microsoft for their assumption that most of their Windows Mobile customers live in an IT Utopia where mobile devices are managed by dedicated highly trained IT mobile device support staff with exactly the right management tools. Well, according to this Information Week article…
    Trouble Ahead: Most Companies Don’t Have A Mobile Device Management Plan

    Not only have most organizations in InformationWeek’s recent survey of 307 business technology managers not adopted mobile device management strategies, most of them–52%–don’t even have plans to buy or implement tools that would help them corral proliferating wireless devices.

    The article goes on to report: Those who haven’t adopted such products and don’t plan to cite three reasons: lack of need, cost, and complexity.

    So, it looks like most of us, whether inside or outside the enterprise, are on our own when it comes to mobile devices.

  • Why I Switched from a Pocket PC Phone to a Smartphone

    I’ve spent the last few days using either a K-JAM or TyTn Pocket PC Professional Edition (Phone Edition) device. If you scroll down to the last couple of blog entries, you will know why: My T-Mobile Dash smartphone (Standard Edition) went bonky, froze on my this past Sunday, and went into a repeating boot cycle after putting the battery back in it.

    After two days of using a Pocket PC Phone Edition, I remember why I switched from the more powerful touch-screen based device to the non-touch Smartphone. Both Pocket PCs are not huge compared to other touch-screen devices like the Universal or Advantage (great data devices). But, even the relatively small K-JAM and TyTn are huge and heavy compared to the Dash or many other non-touch smartphones. The need for two hands and stylus also became kind of annoying after having used a number of smartphones over the past couple of years (the SDA preceded the Dash I use now). One handed operation is the way to go when on the move.

    That said, I hope we always have some kind of touch screen Pocket PC type device to carry around as an additional device. I use mine a lot as a sit-down data device and would hate to give it up for that kind of work.

  • Hard Reset My T-Mobile Dash


    My T-Mobile Dash (HTC 620) couldn’t break out of its endless boot loop. So, despite my dislike of hard resets, I went ahead and reset the Dash. Here’s how you perform a hard reset on one of these things, btw.

    1. Press the left and right soft keys simultaneously
    2. While pressing the soft keys, press and hold the On button for a couple of seconds and then release it
    3. You will see a screen that tells you to press Send to reset the device. You can sort of see a blurry picture of this screen above (sorry ’bout that). The Send button is the green Call button

    I just deleted the former partnership with ActiveSync and then re-partnered the Dash with my PC. Everything looks ok so far. The problem might be related to one of the beta apps I tried recently on the unit. But, I’m not assigning blame until I can find more information.

    The bad news is that I lost the OneNote Mobile notes after re-partnering. Everything on the PC side was deleted. I think I backed it up a week or so ago. So, I should be able to recover most of my notes though.

    The good news is that the phone looks like it is working. I will use my TyTn as my main phone for another day or two until I get a better feel for how the Dash is behaving after its hard reset.

  • Sigh… My Dash Looks Very Sick

    My T-Mobile Dash (Windows Mobile 6 smartphone) started acting oddly about 6 weeks ago. I turn it off each night and it started taking a while to cold start in the morning. It started cycling through the boot process repeatedly every now and then about a month ago. It locked up last night (WiMo screen visible but unresponsive to any button presses. I had to pull the battery to shut it down. Placing the battery back in and starting it up (pressing the power button works), it started cycling through the boot process but never completed. After pulling the battery and repeating this process a few times, I pulled the SIM out and tried it with two other phones. The SIM works with both phones. And, the Dash shows the same power cycling power without the SIM it. So, the SIM is not the problem.

    The odd thing, though, is that both phones show me as roaming even after verifying that I’m on the T-Mobile network. Not sure what is going on there yet since I’ve never seen this happen when switching to unlocked phones before.