Touring MyPhone - Microsoft’s Online Backup for Smartphones

In February of this year, Microsoft announced the beta for a new product called MyPhone. With MyPhone, Microsoft is looking to provide simple and easy backup of your device to the cloud, where you can safely manage and restore the data to a new device or to your existing device in the off chance that some horrible event has caused you to lose your phone or the data it contains. The private beta has recently been lifted and the service is now available for everyone to test and enjoy.

The MyPhone service will not backup your entire device.  It will only consider certain items when backing up. MyPhone provides 200MB of space to backup your Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, Text Messages, Photos, Video’s, Music, and Documents. On a side note, if you are already sync’ing your email, contacts, and calendar with Exchange, MyPhone will not back those up. When it comes to documents, MyPhone won’t just backup anything in your My Documents folder. It looks for specific file types that it will backup. 

To get started with MyPhone, head over to MyPhone.Microsoft.com and create an account. Then grab your smartphone and browse to MyPhone.Microsoft.com/Install to download and install the device client. When you first run this client, you will be prompted to accept Microsoft’s legal terms and then sign-in using your Live ID. This will connect your phone with the account you just setup at the MyPhone website. The last thing that you need to do is select if you want to synchronize automatically or manually. The default when you select Automatically is to sync once a day in the middle of the night. This can be changed by selecting Menu / Schedule from the MyPhone app on the device. Here you can pick between Daily and Weekly and change the actual time of day that the backup runs. Read more

Ba-da-Bing - Microsoft’s New Search - Part 2

In my earlier write up about Bing, I just used what was presented to me when I launched Bing. What I didn’t notice was that it automatically determined that I was in Canada and displayed the Canadian version of Bing. I didn’t expect that the US version would be any different – but I was wrong.  After changing my location to US – English, I saw a similar, yet different Bing. 

On the home page, Bing shows Travel and Shopping, which are not displayed on the Canadian version.  When I search in the shopping section, you are presented with options down the left hand side – much the same way as images or video’s works.  These allow you to filter your search even further. For Shopping, the options are Show, Category, Brand, and Price.

 

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Ba-da-Bing - Microsoft’s New Search Prepares for Launch

One of the big news stories this week was Microsoft’s big Bing announcement. Bing is a “Decision Engine” providing customers with a first step in moving beyond search to help make faster, more informed decisions. This new Decision Engine idea is designed to empower people to gain insight and knowledge from the Web, moving more quickly to important decisions. Initially this will be focused on four key vertical areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business.

Bing is currently in private beta and is expected to launch on June 3rd. I was invited to test out the new Bing, so I thought I would post some pictures and thoughts about it.

If you’ve used Live search in the US, then you’re familiar with the vibrant picture that is displayed behind the search window. The new Bing engine brings this forward and extends it to those outside of the US, like here in Canada. As you’re typing in your search terms, a list of suggestions is populated below allowing you to navigate more quickly to the results you are looking for.

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Mini Review: Spb Mobile Shell 3.0

Well, this isn’t really a review, more of an opinion piece.

After seeing the initial information about Spb’s Mobile Shell 3.0 I was very impressed and wanted to take a closer look. I started by taking a look at an in depth review from Remo at MobilityMinded.com. Take a look at his review when you get a chance.

In the past I have actually tried a lot of shell type applications and have just not been overly impressed. I like the idea of putting a new face on the today screen, and that has been pretty much been all that most shells are capable of. I generally just play around with a trial version and then get rid of it within short order. I am slightly manic (is that possible?) about keeping my gear running as quickly as possible and have mostly seen these kinds of applications as wasteful resource hogs.

Spb’s Mobile Shell 3.0 has been a wonderful exception! It doesn’t seem to affect system performance at all and is so fluid. It is certainly finger friendly and it is quite obvious that a lot of time and effort was put into its design.

Mobile Shell 3.0 actually goes fairly deep. It doesn’t make UI changes, simply includes a lot of functionality for commonly used actions. It really covers off some of the things you do with your smartphone everyday, such as looking at your schedule, looking up contacts, seeing mail, text and phone messages on one screen and a lot more.

Spb has really made Mobile Shell 3.0 VERY customizable. You can change the colour (theme) and select contacts for a quick view screen. Most impressively, there is a “today” screen for both professional and personal set up. The default is the professional one, but with the personal one it is kind of 3 screens together. You can place widgets on any of the 3 screens and change the background image. I am actually using this screen all the time and you can have it show all the info on the professional screen, but with the added benefit of being able to add to the 2 other screens. If none of that made sense, look at Remo’s review again. J

One of the things I really wanted to see was how this shell would run on my HTC Touch. The Touch is a slower processor than the latest WinMo devices and if it was laggy at all I would probably not be using it. I am happy to say and am impressed with how fluidly Mobile Shell 3.0 runs on my hardware. It is finger friendly and scrolls very well. It really made my Touch seem like an all new device!

The only negative I would say is that there is a noticeable delay in switching to Landscape and back. SPB knows all about this and is probably working on it. I think in their latest beta build it is better, but I haven’t tried that.

The price of Spb Mobile Shell 3.0 is $29.95, which I think is a little bit high for a mobile app, but they had done so much with this that I don’t blame them! As long as you aren’t digging change out of your sofa to buy diapers for your triplets you can probably afford the price and will feel good about it. Mobile Shell 3.0 is worth it.

Mobile Twitter - The PockeTwit Way

PockeTwit is one of the more popular Twitter clients for Windows Mobile devices.  I’ve written about this app a couple times in the past and the developers keep making it better and better and adding more and more features.  So it’s worth a re-visit.

PockeTwit works on both touch and non-touch screen devices.  When looking at a tweet, pressing left will bring up a menu showing you all the global options you can select.  And pressing right will bring up a menu with all the options you have in relation to the tweet you have selected. Over time, these menus have grown to include more and more options. Beyond the normal twitter client features, with PockeTwit, you can easily:

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Twikini - Taking a Look at a New Twitter Client

Do you tweet? Are you looking to tweet from your Windows Mobile device? You can always go direct and use Twitters mobile site – http://m.twitter.com, but today’s crop of applications offer a lot more than the basic web experience that Twitter offers. Over the next couple days I’m going to take an look at a couple of the major players for Windows Mobile. Today we’re going to take a look at Twikini from Trinket Software.

Twikini splashed down on Windows Mobile users around the middle of April. Twikini is currently in beta and is a free download. It has a super small footprint of around 100KB and it has to be one of the fastest Twitter clients available for Windows Mobile. The navigation is simple, pressing left of right on a message will automatically create a reply or direct message to that person. This feature gives Twikini the shortest number of key press’s or taps to reply to a tweet. And, of course, up and down will scroll through messages.

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Enter the Matrix Pro from Pantech

When looking for a new cell phone, one of the first things you need to decide is between the more traditional 12 key number pad that makes dialling a number so easy, or a full QWERTY keyboard for fast and easy messaging. If you want the traditional 12 key number pad, then you’ll enjoy a more narrow phone that fits nicely into your pocket and provides the ability to quickly place a call.  However, you are pretty limited in the selection of smartphones to pick from. On the other hand, if you pick the QWERTY keyboard, then you have a significantly improved experience in terms of messaging and a much wider selection of phones to pick from.  The trade off is a bigger, wider phone that’s not as easy to dial numbers on. With advantages on both sides, it can be difficult to pick, so don’t.  Enter Pantech’s Matrix Pro – this device offers the best of both worlds by combining a full QWERTY keyboard with a 12 key number pad and a powerful Smartphone operating system.

The Matrix Pro offers a full QWERTY keyboard with a 12 key number pad in a unique dual slider format. Slide the phone up to expose the number pad, or slide it to the right to expose the QWERTY keyboard. And when closed, the Matrix Pro is an attractive and easily pocketable smartphone.

The Matrix Pro is the follow-up to last years Pantech Duo smartphone that featured the same unique design.  This updated version has a much improved sliding mechanism – both sliders are spring loaded and easily pop open or close. The Matric Pro also boasts UMTS/HSDPA Tri-band (850, 1900, 2100 MHz), Quad-band GPRS/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900MHz), 256MBROM, 128 MB RAM, support for MicroSD expansion card, 2.4 inch QVGA non-touch screen, 1300 mAh battery, 2 Megapixel camera, Bluetooth, and aGPS.  All of which is packed into a 4.17 x 2 x 0.85 inch (L x W x D) footprint.

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Taking a Look at BlueAnt’s Z9i Bluetooth Headset

From wired to wireless, I’ve used a number of different headsets over the years. The wired headsets are loaded with nothing but problems, the cord gets tangled up, or there is a break in the cable causing the sound to short out. So it’s no surprise to see Bluetooth headsets become so successful, as they don’t have that nasty cable problem. They also have more power and smarts than your typical headset.  In recent years we’ve seen noise reduction become a big factor on Bluetooth headsets.  And noise reduction is one place this BlueAnt has focused on with regards to their Z9i headset.

I was very impressed with the packaging when I unboxed my BlueAnt.  It’s clean and clearly shows you the complete product without having to open the box. You can clearly see that this headset is an in-ear with a hoop to that goes over your ear to hold it in place. Some pictures that I’ve seen online had removed the hoop, so it wasn’t clear how the headset would work.

Opening the package proved a little more difficult than I had expected.  You actually open the product from the bottom, but the metal cap was taped and glued in place. If it wasn’t for the sticker telling you to open it from the bottom, I would have thought that I was going to break it. Read more

Taking a Closer Look at Microsoft Tag

Microsoft recently took the wraps off a new barcoding standard. The new system is called Tags and uses triangles arranged in a 5 x 10 grid with 4 different colors to produce a high capacity color barcode. What makes this new system better, or worse, than regular barcodes, QR Codes, or any of the other scanning systems already being used?

There are a couple significant advantages to this new system.  Whether or not this is enough for the world to switch and start using Microsoft’s Tags has yet to be seen.

The fist big difference that you will notice is the use of color on this code. There are 4 colors – Black, Pink, Blue, and Yellow.  The use of color means that the camera can pick out the image in poor conditions and still correctly determine the code. It doesn’t matter if it’s poor lighting or a blurry image, the camera can still decipher the code. As well, the use of color means that storing 1 byte (or 8 bits) requires just 4 symbols. By comparison, QR Code requires 8 symbols to store the same amount of data.

Typical barcodes and QR codes are black with a white background providing easy contrast for scanning. With the Tag solution, the black background followed by a thin 2 pixel wide contrasting boarder is required for the camera to successfully pickup the image and process it. I tested this with a white, yellow, and black boarder.  The black border would not allow the camera to correctly frame the tag and thus not process it. Both yellow and white worked without any problems. Read more

Microsoft’s New Recite For Windows Mobile Reviewed

Microsoft has just released a new application for Windows Mobile users called Recite. Recite uses search technology along with voice pattern matching to help locate an audio note and play it back.  Simply put, record yourself talking and then search through previous recordings to find the one you’re looking for. Think of it like this, a voice reminder application with search!

Recite requires Windows Mobile 6.0 or newer and can be downloaded for free from Microsoft’s website at http://recite.microsoft.com or directly on your phone by visiting http://recite.microsoft.com/download. Currently the application is a “technology preview”, basically a beta state.  Microsoft is encouraging customers to download it and give it a try.  So I did! The download is about 800KB and the install is straight forward.

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