Travis Pettijohn: Blog

It's more popular than ever to be green. GE today unveiled a new compact fluorescent light bulb that is the size and shape of a traditional incandescent light bulb. Click through for a picture.

If you ever have trouble sending messages on your IMAP or POP3 account on your Windows Mobile 6.1 device, check out this patch from Microsoft.

I just picked up an HTC Diamond from Sprint. It's by far the best mobile phone I've owned. The display is just jaw-dropping. It's pretty speedy, and the TouchFlo 3D interface is a nice step forward. It's not as good as the iPhone, and every now and then Windows Mobile 6.1 rears its ugly stylus-head, but most things tick along with just my thumb.

A few tweaks I've made:

• Remove the Sprint Music link from the music player. Frees up more screen space for album art. Also while you're editing that XML file, delete the Sprint TV. There's no need for that in the quick-launch.
• A few registry tweaks. Turn on a geo-tagging camera (though I've only had it report 0,0 in flickr...wonder if they turned it off for a reason?).
• Of course I installed S2U2 to lock the screen. Also remapped (#31) the "Manila" (internal name for TouchFlo 3D) home key to have a "Lock" softkey.

Rumor has it that the HTC Touch Diamond is coming to Sprint this month. I've had my eye on this phone for a while now...fingers crossed!

I just upgraded my HTC Sprint Mogul/PPC6800 to Windows Mobile 6.1. Before I upgraded, I took down a list of the key software that I needed to reinstall. In no particular order, I present my key Windows Mobile utilities:

• S2U2 - an iPhone screen locker clone. Search to find the latest version in the XDA developers forums.
• gpsVP - Open source/Garmin Research project for GPS. Works with most (all?) Garmin GPS maps, and best of all, it can be used offline (no active cell/data connection required). Save trails, import & export waypoints, etc. Very cool.
• Live Search - Good for turn-by-turn driving directions and location-based services (like, show me bars near where I am right now).
• OneNote Mobile - Take your favorite notebook on the road. You do use OneNote, don't you? Install from OneNote on the desktop: Tools / Options / OneNote Mobile.
• SKTools - Utility for cleaning up the Notifications Queue on Windows Mobile. If you have ever experienced the "phantom alarm," this utility can clean that up.
• Google Maps - Good for driving directions and "where am I right now." Not as feature-rich as Live Search, but more user-friendly. Depends on what I'm after.
• VisualGPSce - Another GPS utility. Just gives raw data from the satellites.
• TouchPal - The best on-screen keyboard I've found. I have stopped using the hardware keyboard on the Mogul in deference to this.
• Streaming Media - For playing streaming media, especially from m.youtube.com.
• Remote Desktop - Sprint removes Remote Desktop from their firmware. Why? I add it back in.
• Total Commander - Replacement for Explorer, and also a registry editor.

The minimalist design of the iPhone headset appeals to me, and I wanted to try using it for VoIP applications on my PC. The iPhone uses a 4-connector 3.5mm headphone jack, but my laptop has two separate female jacks: one for the microphone and one for the headphones. So, I ordered a connector and busted out my soldering iron. The finished product is below—click through to see the pinout diagrams for reference. I cannibalized the male connectors from a previous headset (which was clunky and bulky, by comparison to the iPhone headset) and exercised quite a bit of trial-and-error to get it right (tested by holding the wires, soldered, realized my mistake, unsoldered, retested, soldered, tested). The jack in the pictures was purchased online, part 30-705.

I'm a few days late with this one, but Microsoft has released a Sideshow application for Windows Mobile. Download link for the Developer Preview.

Bluetooth headsets are tools, not fashion accessories. Wear it when you are actually using it, and take it off when you are done.

That is all.

Last week I picked up a Cardo S-800 bluetooth headset. There are plenty of reviews on it floating around on the Internet, so I won't get into detail. I will say that it does one thing particularly well: it supports pairing and easily switching between two devices. Double-click the wheel and it's switched. I have it paired with my cell phone and my laptop, making it blindingly easy to use one headset for cell and VoIP calls. It also charges off of USB (Micro-USB, unfortunately, not Mini-USB, but at least all I have to carry is a cable and not a power brick). Highly recommended if you find yourself with a similar need.

This is the one we've been waiting for: an upgrade to the radio for EVDO Rev A and GPS. Downloading now! http://www.america.htc.com/mogulupdate. (Edit: Fixed the link.)

I just discovered TouchPal, an on-screen keyboard for Windows Mobile optimized for fat-fingering. I'm pretty happy with my Mogul, but one of my biggest gripes is the delay when I slide out the hardware keyboard (and it switches from portrait to landscape mode), and the on-screen keyboard requires a stylus (or the corner of a fingernail). This little freeware utility has nice finger-sized buttons, predictive input and an easy way to be precise (tap on the big QW key and then slide right to pick W, or left to pick Q). If you share my gripes, check out this utility.

As you may have guessed from my earlier post, I have been dissatisfied with T-Mobile's data offering. So I switched to Sprint and got an HTC Mogul. It's a pretty sweet phone...a little bigger than I really want (the Dash was pretty sexy), but you get a touch screen and a slider keyboard. The EV-DO is awesome, although I'm having an issue where when I connect the Internet Sharing application it drops. Oh, and Sprint's DNS was taking 30-45 seconds to resolve names. I fixed it with this OpenDNS hack. So there are a few quirks that I'm sure I'll get ironed out, but all in all, I'm confident that the move was a good one.

I got a new phone number, too. If you have my old 217 number, it won't work anymore; drop me a line for my new 773 number.

A friend sent me this link: Microsoft adds Slingbox-like capability to its Media Center PCs. I spent the better part of this evening playing with it and I have to say: this is hot. I can log into my media center box and stream any recorded TV program or music in real time. The content is transcoded into a lower bitrate/resolution on the fly. I can almost stream recorded TV over T-Mobile's EDGE network (but not quite...too much stuttering while buffering). It's not as nice as watching the actual program on my actual TV, but if I'm, say, staffed out of town and I want to catch a show I recorded, it will get the job done.

Edit: Here's a photo of M*A*S*H streaming to my phone over Wifi. 15 frames/sec, 160x120, 100kbps.

I'm on I-90/39 in Wisconsin in between corn fields, using my carpool friend Mark's Sprint phone to connect to the Internet. I'm getting over 1.1 MBit/sec down and 90 KBit/sec up. In a car. In the middle of nowhere. I can't believe how good this is, especially compared to my T-Mobile Dash with dial-up quality EDGE. And his data plan is $15/month, compared to my $30/month. Weak, T-Mobile, weak.

I recently discovered how to get a "free" home phone line.

• Sign up for GrandCentral. This will get you a free real phone number in the area code of your choice that you can forward wherever you want. Right now my GrandCentral phone number forwards to my cell phone, my office line and my Gizmo account (see the next bullet); when someone calls it, all the phones ring, and I can answer at whichever line makes the most sense. (GrandCentral has a bunch of other cool features, like per-incoming-caller routing, call screening, unified voicemail...check it out.)
• Sign up for Gizmo, a SIP-based IP telephony service. Gizmo lets you make PC-to-PC calls for free, like so many other instant messaging clients (Messenger, Google Talk, etc). You can also make PC-to-phone calls for $0.019/minute, and you can also buy an incoming phone number from Gizmo...but GrandCentral gave us that for free!
• Configure your GrandCentral number to forward to your Gizmo account. At this point, incoming phone calls to your GrandCentral number will ring the Gizmo softphone on your PC.
• Since Gizmo is based on SIP, an open standard, the options for where to go next are wide open. I don't want to be tied to a computer (I want a "home phone"), so I ordered a SIP-based IP phone, the GrandStream BudgeTone 200. If you have an existing analog phone investment (I gave/threw all mine away over the past few years), you could configure an Analong Telephone Adapter (ATA) and plug in your phone or fax. Other devices: Zoom 5801, Linksys PAP2, and many, many more. You could install Asterisk, a free PBX system, or Exchange Unified Messaging. Relying on an open standard makes me feel better than being tied to a proprietary provider, like Skype.

The IP phone I ordered should arrive on Monday. I've been using this setup with a headset plugged into my PC, and I've been happy with the call quality, as have the people I've talked to (especially compared to the crappy cell phone reception I get at home). What I'm not happy about is being dependent on a PC; I'd much rather have a standalone device...you know, a telephone!

Nothing's really "free," either. If you want to make outgoing calls, you have to pay. Well, maybe not...during the GrandCentral beta period, "click2call" is free. You initiate a call on the web site and it rings your phone; when you pick up, it rings the other party's phone. So—for now—you can even make outgoing calls for free if you're willing to jump through a few hoops!

I called AT&T recently to get a quote on a land line. The cheapest I could find was around $8 or $9/month, plus taxes and fees (like 911 service), bringing the bottom line to around $15/month. Compare that to 500 minutes of usage on Gizmo for $10 with no maintenance fees.

I'll have more to report when I get the phone up and running on Monday. For now, I'm excited about a workaround for the crappy cell phone coverage at home for a bare minimum cost (oh, right, the hardware investment...but that's a "gadget," so it's fun and justifiable).

After upgrading to WM6 on my Dash, I noticed that every time I rebooted, the home screen reset to the T-Mobile Home screen (I prefer the Windows Mobile Default). To fix it, open File Explorer, navigate to \Windows\StartUp, cut MyMsgCenter.lnk, and paste it into \Temp. (You can't delete it directly.) Reboot. Source.

I repaired my Office 2007 installation, rebooted, deleted the partnership on the PC, plugged in my device and it was an option from the get-go. Yay! I can type a shopping list on my PC and take it to the store with me again :)

See the original problem post.

Ever since installing Vista, I haven't had any luck syncing OneNote Mobile 2007 on my WM6 Dash with my Vista x64 installation. Any ideas, anyone? I've tried the usual steps of recreating the partnership and un- and re-installing OneNote Mobile on the Dash. OneNote Mobile works on the device just fine, it just isn't an option to sync.

Edit:Solved!

I upgraded my Dash to Windows Mobile 6 earlier in the week. It's prettier, sounds better, and they've fixed a lot of little things to streamline messaging and calendaring, etc, reducing some nuisance. But by far the biggest "WOW factor" is the Voice Command application. I can ask my phone, "What is my calendar today?" and it will read it back to me. It will announce the name of incoming calls (over the speakerphone or bluetooth headset, configurable), read the header of an incoming message, I can ask it to dial a phone number, call a contact, play an artist or album in Media Player, read me the list of available artists, read me my missed calls, my battery level, my signal strength, start any program...to name a few features. All of this with no voice training; the speech to text is solid. It successfully knows that when I say (phonetically), "yahn why-check" that it should load "Jan Wasiek." Now, I admit this won't be a huge deal in my daily routine, but next time I'm driving and an email or text comes in, I won't take my eyes off the road to see what it is; my phone will whisper it into my ear.

Rumor has it the final version of the Windows Mobile 6 upgrade for the T-Mobile Dash has been leaked, and is to be officially released this Friday, May 4th. I'm so stoked! Story.

Voicemail is so inefficient. I hope the visual voicemail feature of the iPhone makes its way into the marketplace-at-large.

Time Zone Update for Windows Mobile

US T-Mobile Dash users to get a free upgrade to WM6. This makes me so happy :)

A photo tour of Windows Mobile 6 Standard Edition (Standard is the new name for Smartphone). What intrigues me most is that this is installed on an HTC S620/Excalibur, the OEM version of the T-Mobile Dash (evidenced by the Windows Update screenshot and the JOGGR settings). I wonder if I can upgrade my device!

Here's how to set up push email for GMail on the T-Mobile Dash:

• Log into https://my.t-mobile.com and click "Set up my email". Set up your GMail account there and enable alerts for new mail.
• On your Dash, open Messaging and add a new account. Use "Other (pop3/imap)" for the provider.
• Follow the wizard. Use POP3, name the account GMail.
• The pop3 server should be myemail.t-mobile.com; require SSL. Use the username specified on the my-tmobile email page (under settings / mailbox / pop settings) (probably [yourphonenumber]:1) and your gmail password.
• Use smtp.gmail.com for the outgoing mail server. Require authentication, require SSL; specify alternate credentials as [username]@gmail.com and your gmail password.
• On the Dash, Start / Set Up My E-Mail / Configure my E-Mail Triggers / Enable Automatic E-Mail Updates should be checked for the GMail account.

That should do it. There are two tricks: first is to use T-Mobile as the intermediary for incoming messages. They send a "silent SMS" which triggers the GMail account to send and receive. The second is to use GMail's own SMTP server so that outgoing messages get saved in your GMail account (T-Mobile's SMTP server doesn't push it back to GMail). No more polling through POP3, no more crappy Java applet, no more mobile web-based interface. Enjoy the bliss!

Edit: I should mention that there's an up to fifteen minute delay on the push. It looks like T-Mobile polls GMail over POP at about that interval and pushes updates to the Dash when they occur.

I'm really excited about the SideShow Remote Control space. There are a few debuting at CES right now. I like the idea of being able to browse my music library on a remote and not having to turn on the TV. And over Bluetooth, no less, so that there are no line of sight issues like with IR. So cool. Stay tuned!

To switch between xt9 and abc input modes on the Dash, hit [alt], [space].

xt9 is an completion-assist engine for text input. If you start typing "da" it will suggest da, day, damn, dan etc. This can be helpful, except that its behavior can be erratic. In some programs, space selects. And in some programs, the currently selected word is the first suggestion, not the letters you've just typed. This means that you'll hit space on "da" because you mean to insert a space, but instead, since the first selected word is day, day gets inserted, and no space gets inserted since it was used to select. You then end up backspacing, or always glancing at the screen to see what's selected before hitting space, or hitting space space to select and then insert a space. If you switch to abc mode, you can just type, and the letters you push are the letters that show up. Nice and simple.

The T-Mobile Dash has an obnoxious startup and shutdown sound. To disable it, browse to the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\HTC\Shutdown and Startup and delete the value WAV. You'll still have the T-Mobile animation, but at least it won't make any noise.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

Step-by-step photos of my little project to make a headphone adapter for my new phone (it has a custom headphone plug).

Ok, this is cool. Really, really cool. Long story short: I can automatically synchronize TV shows recorded on my Media Center box to my Windows Mobile smartphone. Read on.

Friday I picked up a T-Mobile Dash. If you're not familiar with this device, it is the Windows Mobile device to have right now. It's slim, sleek, usable and downright sexy to hold in your hand.

The first thing I did was hack the registry to restore the JOGGR functionality that T-Mo deprecated. Then I plugged it into my PC and synced up an album through Media Player 11. It worked as expected, copied album art and everything. Cool.

Then I tried syncing up a TV show I had recorded. It worked, except the resolution of the transcoded file was 160x120, which dumbfounded me because the device has a 320x240 display. After some searching, I finally found a newsgroup post linking to this answer. In summary, the device reports is capabilities to Media Center through a protocol called MTP. These capabilities are stored on the device in an easily-edited XML document (\Windows\WMSyncCaps.xml). Once I changed that, deleted and recreated the partnership in Media Player, everything started working great. The right resolution, good bitrate. Bonita! A half-hour show ends up being about 30 MB.

Back in Media Player, I created an auto playlist that holds the two most recent episodes of The Daily Show. When I plug in my Dash, the file gets transcoded and transferred to the phone's media library. (I have a 1GB micro-SD card, which might not suffice now that I see how capable of a media player this is.)

If I continue doing this, I'll plug my phone in at night, it will sync that night's Daily Show automatically while I sleep. Then on the train ride to the office, I'll be able to (have the option to) watch last night's Daily Show on my commute. How cool is that? Now I just need to pick up the headphone adapter...but it's out of stock right now.

Last week I went on vacation to Angel Fire, NM (a ski valley outside of Taos) with my family. I went on a lot of hikes and brought along my GPS unit. Check out what a little code to transform the log file into KML brought out. Install Google Earth, and then open the KML of my trip. Make sure you have 3D terrain enabled. You can see some of the pictures I took (sorry—cameraphone only) in the exact location where I took them. I'll make the code available to transform from Mapopolis to KML upon request (or when I polish it up a little first).

Edit: By request, here's a screenshot. So now if you're Mike and you don't want to install Google Earth, you can still get a feel for the end result.

I got a Bluetooth GPS device today. The memory card for my Smartphone hasn't arrived yet, so I can't use it for real. Curious to see how it works though, I paired it with my Windows box and fired up HyperTerminal (remember that program?) direct to its COM port. The thing just spits out its NMEA data once per second. Awesome. NMEA is so easy to parse—it's just a comma delimited line of text. I think I have a project to work on this weekend!

I have an unlimited data plan with T-Mobile. I've installed the modem driver so that I can use my Audiovox SMT5600 phone as a modem. If you create a dialup connection to *99# the phone connects directly to GPRS and streams that Internet connection to your computer. How cool is that? It supports a max connection speed of 230 Kpbs, although at my current location it's no better than modem speeds. Still...in a pinch, it gets me online. Cool!

The cell phone is up and running. Syching against an Exchange server for work email, contacts and my calendar is working, as is POPing Gmail for my personal email. I can get out to the Internet with Pocket IE. This device shouldn't make me so happy.

I'm in the middle switching my cell phone provider from Cingular to my company's T-Mobile plan. I'm porting my number, too. Yesterday I noticed that I had zero bars of reception. That's not that unusual at this house, so I moved to the window where it's usually acceptable. No change. I switched the SIM from the new phone to my previous phone. I got a more informative message: "Unregistered SIM." Was it possible that the service had already been switched? I put in the request on Thursday, and this was Tuesday. I was expecting this to take a few weeks!

From a land line, I called my cell phone number and got a different voicemail prompt than expected (which is to say, different than what I was used to with Cingular). I went to T-Mobile's web site and found out how to get into voicemail, the default password, etc. I was then able to change the greeting to direct callers to a different number.

I checked in with the representative from our company to see if I could get a tracking number on the SIM. I was informed that it had been sent to the corporate headquarters in Seattle. She would overnight it to me. But it got shipped to my Champaign address (despite the fact that I had given my Chicago address). That's no biggie, really. After a delivery attempt is made today, I'll call UPS and have them redirect the package to me in Chicago. I should get it on Thursday. One week to port a number? Two days of downtime (could have been zero if the SIM was shipped to me instead of HQ)? Not too bad.

I got a new cell phone today, the Audiovox SMT 5600. So far, I've been really impressed. It runs the Windows Mobile 2003 SE operating system, so it syncs with Outlook beautifully and effortlessly. I did have trouble getting my laptop to recognize the device when plugged in via a USB cable. A trip to Best Buy to pick up a Bluetooth USB adapter fixed that problem. I can sync wirelessly and get pass-through Internet access via ActiveSync.

Transferring contacts has been a huge highlight: I had all of my contacts stored on the SIM card, so putting that into this phone brought it all over. But I'm switching providers to get in on the corporate cell phone plan (from Cingular to T-Mobile; I bought an unlocked unit). On the phone, I launched the SIM Manager application, selected all contacts, selected Add to Contacts. Sync with the Exchange server, and instantly my Outlook and cell phone contacts were unified. Beautiful. When I get the new SIM, I won't lose a thing. And if you've ever transferred contacts by typing them on the new phone while reading them from the old phone, you know why this is so nice.

A few other niceties: to find a contact from the home screen, just type as if you had predictive input. The phone will filter all possible matches from your contacts. I can use POP3 to check my Gmail account as well as my Exchange account. I'm getting an unlimited data plan with the T-Mobile service, which will be fun, but it's not all that useful now (I have to be within 10 meters or so of my computer with Bluetooth). The camera is average for a phone--as expected--but it takes videos with sound, which might be fun. I also didn't have to download any contraband software in order to transfer pictures, movies and files between the computer and the phone: ActiveSync makes it easy. (I always resented providers for locking out features like that and forcing you to pay to use their network.)

So far, I'm impressed with my Windows Smartphone! I'm starting to think about getting a Bluetooth GPS unit with mapping software. (Developers, check out this open source GPS API for Smartphone and .NET...I'm picturing grabbing live data from Google maps instead of pre-downloading maps to the device.) Gadgets are fun!