Archive for June, 2007
Weather Channel Alerts
The Weather Channel is now offering free Text or email weather alerts for your zip code.
You have a choice of alerts ( you can sign up for any or all of the below alerts:
Severe weather ( National Weather Service Warnings )
Rain
Extreme heat
Extreme cold
Pollen
Ice
Snow
Daily Weather
Daily Marine
Daily Forecast
Joey from Mozilla labs
Using the internet on some smart phones is a breeze. On others it’s a bit of a challenge. If your phone is one where you need information from the web but it’s a pain to access sites on the web you’ll want to take a look at this project from Mozilla Labs.
While using Firefox you can flag content, directions, information from websites you’ll want at work, cool pictures to show your friends and then you send it to your phone.
From your phone you can use a browser or download Joey’s phone application and access the information.
I have not tried this out, getting to the web is easy on the Treo. I have friends whose phones have net access but it is difficult to bookmark, type in urls etc and those smart phones are the ones likely to find this application most useful.
If your smart phone isn’t a Treo but you still want easy net access
Then check out GetFrog.com
This is just a simple portal but it’s a bit easier to use for those of you who don’t have a full keyboard.
You visit GetFrog on your PC and choose 4 icons to go with the 5 default icons {weather, Google, Orbitz flight information, restaurant information and Fandango}.
There are many icons to choose from. GetFrog sends you a link to your homepage with them. You click on the link from your cell phone email. I couldn’t get the link to work and ended up typing it in. But either way once you have loaded your home page and bookmarked it you’re set. So the worst case is you only have to type it in one time. Also new mobile web users may not have email set up on the phone. You could cut and paste it from your email and text it to yourself also I suppose.
You just click on the button and off you go. It is much easier than typing in urls, or trying to click on links on a small screened smart phone.
If you are new to using the web on your phone it is a good place to start.
Trouble with your Google Maps?
Some people are reporting Google Maps failing to work after working fine for months. Horror of horrors how can we live with out Google Maps?
To fix this go into Google Maps and hit the menu key; Select Options -> Erase All and perform a soft reset on your phone. This seems to fix most people’s problems.
You should also set Blazer to clean out the cache on exit Menu; Options -> Preferences -> Advanced and check the ‘Clear cache on exit’
Letting caches especially those related to internet usage get large seems to be the root of many Treo online problems.
Google Maps for Palm is now at version 1.1.1 update if you are having trouble and not up to the newest version.
Getting email on smart phones or just cell phones
The NY Times had an article a few days back on how to get email on phones other than Blackberries and Treos.
Most of you know about the Gmail application and Yahoo2Go. And also about the mobile mail websites for Yahoo and Gmail. But the article mentioned one service I hadn’t yet tried, Teleflip
Teleflip is free. It polls your email account every 15 minutes, then sends converts your email to text messages and forwards the text messages to you. Now if Aunt Martha sends you a 20 times forwarded joke this might get painfully expensive. But telefip lets you decide who to forward email from. It will also let you cap how many text messages to send you per email.
You can send replies from your phone which teleflip will send as a regular email.
In the not distant future teleflip will be paid for by text ads placed at the bottom of the email. But that seems a fair price to pay for this service.
More Information:
How to Make Your Cellphone Act like a BlackBerry
Bluesnarfing aka Bluejacking
This has been a European and Asian problem, not so much a U.S. problem, but I expect that will change in time.
Nearby thugs try to push malicious data ( worms, viruses etc ) to your phone via bluetooth and then collect data from your phone.
Keep your visibility hidden on your bluetooth and do not accept incoming connections unless you know exactly where those connections are coming from.
