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Sling Media Ships Slingbox Pro HD along with an Updated Player
If you’re a Sling fan like I am, then you’ll be excited to hear that Sling has started to ship the Slingbox Pro HD. The Pro HD hardware allows you to stream high def content in HD. While the regular Slingbox will stream your HD channels, it doesn’t offer HD quality. So the Pro HD is a welcome addition for HD fans. If you’re confused over the different versions of Slingbox and what each one offers over the other, you should check out this comparison guide on Sling’s website.
Along with the new hardware, there is a new version of the SlingPlayer Windows software available. Version 2 adds support for the new Pro HD hardware along with an updated interface, live video buffer, and the new SlingPlayer Guide. The new software doesn’t require the Pro HD hardware, so feel free to download it and run it against your existing Sling hardware. You can see more details about this release, along with screenshots over at Sling’s website.
Would You Purchase a Group of Applications?
Paul from MoDaCo, is asking for input from readers on your level of interest in purchasing a group of applications bundled together. The expected retail cost of the bundle would be around $200, but the bundle price would be about $50. Assuming there’s 10 applications in this bundle, some quick math would give us an approximate price of $20 per app. So if there’s more than 3 (2.5 to be exact) applications that you would have purchased in the bundle, then the rest of the apps are essentially free.
This could be really good for new Windows Mobile users who don’t already have any of the applications in the bundle. Or for anyone looking at picking up a couple new applications at a discounted price. The down-side is that the developer is getting a new customer but at a fraction of the revenue that they normally would have had. So if even a tenth of these new customers contact the company for support, the newly found revenue is gone. Of course, the increased customer base is always beneficial.
I’m certainly interested in a good deal. I just hope the companies that signup for Bundle.One @ MoDaCo are offering worth-while applications. I’ll be watching what happens.
Update #4 On The No Reboot Challenge - Crisis Adverted
It’s been a little while since I’ve posted on my status in the No Reboot Challenge. First off, I want to welcome another site - Mobi - gas - mic, to the challenge. As I’ve said before, it’s great to see such a wide reception for the challenge within the community. 
I had a close call on rebooting last week, the worst part is, it wasn’t intentional. I was slipping the phone into my pocket and I wasn’t paying too much attention to what I was doing. I ended up missing my pocket and the phone fell towards the ceramic tile floor. Luckily, it bounced off my shoe and came to rest gently, or somewhat gently, on the floor. When I picked it up, the battery door had slipped pen, but not enough to fall off and allow the battery to escape. Needless to say, I have been much more careful about the handling of my device since this event.
My recent trip to New York also presented a little problem (besides the thumb issue). Typically I would swap SIMs from my Canadian Fido SIM to my US AT&T SIM. For obvious reasons, this just wasn’t an option. So instead, I just dropped my AT&T SIM into a spare phone and used that instead. I put my regular phone into flight mode and locked the keypad until I returned to Canada. Disaster adverted.
I started this challenge over a month ago (August 19th) and to-date I haven’t had a single issue with the memory management of my Windows Mobile 6.1 device. No reboots, no crashes, no odd behaviour. It’s pretty clear to me that Windows Mobile is and can be a stable OS. 1 Month down, and many more to go.
Motorola Accuses RIM of Poaching Employees
It seems like Motorola is having a pretty hard time as of late. Not only are the feeling the pressure of increased competition in the mobile phone space, but now they are also having to deal with Research In Motion poaching key employees. Motorola claims that RIM has targeted 40 employees who can’t work for a competitor without revealing corporate / trade secrets. It’s expected that these employees are working on a new touch screen mobile device for RIM, code-named Thunder.
When it comes to mobile devices, Motorola has 2 lines, consumer and industrial. The consumer line tends to be non-touch screen based. But the industrial line, better known as Symbol, is a full blown ruggedized device running Windows Mobile/CE and is touch screen enabled. So, if RIM is poaching employees for use on their touch screen device, does that mean we can expect a RIM based Windows Mobile-based device?
[Source]
CntrStg - Changing the Face of CES
One of the projects that I have been working on outside of my day job and this site, is something called CntrStg - pronounced “CenterStage”. CntrStg is a concept that a group of us came up with while attending CES last year. In the past, every Community Leader, Blogger, and Podcaster would be racing up and down the Las Vegas strip to meet with various companies and listen to them talk one-on-one about their plans for the coming year. More often than not, we found ourselves crossing paths with one another as we entered and exited these meetings. Wouldn’t it make more sense for us to stay in one location and have the companies come and talk to all of us in one shot? CntrStg does just that. We have already signed up companies to present, as well as community leaders from some of the top tech and gadget sites around the Internet to attend. CntrStg will be the place to be during CES 2009!
You can read all about CntrStg, including our press release that should be going live on the wire as you read this post, over at the CntrStg website - http://www.cntrstg.com
Blogging Through Hurricane Ike @ jkOnTheRun
James Kendrick posted some very interesting articles about taking mobility to the limit during a hurricane. Out of all of his posts, I found this post particularly interesting as he outlines the different cellular reception he noticed on various carriers as the storm made its way past. Not many people have the ability to do this type of test, but if you ever found yourself looking straight towards a hurricane, you’ll be glad you spent some extra time making the right choice when it comes to carriers.
You can read all of James’ Ike posts here. And remember that you can keep track of these storms on your mobile using this page, and on your laptop using this page.
New Simplier Approach to Disable Read-Only Network Settings on BlackJack II
A couple months ago I published an article that details the steps required to remove the network settings lock that has been turned on by AT&T with their Windows Mobile 6.1 ROM update for the BlackJack II (and PanTech Dual - if it’s ever released). The steps require you to application unlock the phone and install a registry editor so you can modify a couple values in the registry. While it’s not very difficult, I can imagine that some people are nervous about editing the registry or even application unlocking the phone. Now there’s a quick, easy, and downright simple solution to removing the read only lock placed on the network settings. Follow the steps below and you will have that locked removed in no time!
- Open the File Explorer (found under Start \ All Programs \ Applications \ File Explorer) and browse to the Windows folder. Once in the Windows folder you are looking for an application called “UAMgr”. The quickest way to get to this file is to push the letter U on the keyboard and the phone will jump down to the files that start with U.
- Run UAMgr by highlighting the file and pressing down on the action button. When the application opens you will see a screen that says “UAPMgr/Streaming” in the top title bar and “UA/Streaming Manager 2008″ in the center of the screen.
- Press the Menu \ Tool \ Unlock ReadOnly. The phone will then present you with a confirmation screen indicating that Read Only has been unlocked. Press OK and then Close and you’re done.
Special thanks to encece for helping locate this tool. I’ve tested it on a couple of my phones and it works great.
Microsoft & RIM Announce Live Search for BlackBerry Devices
Today Microsoft and RIM announced that they are working together to integrate Live Search into RIM’s popular BlackBerry devices. Research in Motion still has the dominate share of the mobile market, despite the success of Apple’s iPhone which comes pre-loaded with Google’s search functionality on the device. Google has already displayed it’s Android mobile OS with their search functionality built in. Once the OS is released, Google will have a small but significant corner of the mobile eco-system etched out. If Microsoft can leverage their existing Windows Mobile market share and add RIM’s BlackBerry share, they will have a solid lead in mobile search.
Live Search is already available for BlackBerry devices (in beta) and Windows Mobile devices. You can download it directly to your smartphone by visiting http://wls.live.com using your phones mobile browser. The BlackBerry version will be released before the end of the year and is expected to offer better integration with the OS and browser.
The full press release is available at the Microsoft Press Pass website.
Outlook Mobile Does Not Like Changes to Server Name
I recently made some server changes to one of my email accounts. Basically, the mail server changed from mail.ServerA.com to mail.ServerB.com. A completely new server name and new DNS entry, but everything else stayed the same. It’s the same email address, same account name, same password, etc… So it should have been a really simple change to make on my various email clients. I changed the server names on my desktop Outlook client without any problems. Simple / easy are not terms that I can use for the switch when it comes to Outlook Mobile.
The required DNS changes were made at approximately 2pm on Saturday. I went into the Send/Receive settings in Outlook Mobile for the account in question and changed the server names. Then I attempted to do a send/receive. Unfortunately, it just sat at the “Connecting…” prompt for a long time and eventually came back and said it was unable to communicate with the server and that I should check that I have an active data connection. Normally, I would just restart the phone and that would force Outlook Mobile to re-read the server settings and all would be good. As you may already know, that’s not currently an option for me. So I needed to find a way to have the device pick up the changes without killing Outlook Mobile or restarting the phone. Read more
How To Unlock GPRS Settings on BlackJack II with Windows Mobile 6.1
Now that Samsung has made the Windows Mobile 6.1 ROM upgrade official for the BlackJack II, I should take a minute and remind everyone about the post I made a while back that helps you to unlock the carrier networks settings. This is a new feature that was added to Windows Mobile 6.1 by special request of the carriers who are looking for ways to reduce support calls from people that toy around with the network settings and don’t know what they are doing.
Of course, anyone with a unlocked BlackJack II that is looking to use the phone on a different network will need to unlock these settings and modify them to match the settings for their carriers network.
You can read the original post with full details on how to remove the lock over here. And to everyone that’s upgrading, enjoy the new ROM and while you’re flashing your device, why not take on the No Reboot Challenge. What better time then right after a fresh and clean install of the OS. 