TimesToCome Mobile

One of the fun things we first did when GPS hit our WM phones was to Geocache. Geocaching is a game in which people leave small items semi hidden with gps coordinates for you to find. An excellent starting place is Geocaching.com.

I signed up for an account and found at least 50 caches with in a bike ride of my home. I spent much of last summer locating and tagging the caches I located. It’s a nice way to break up a bike ride or walk.

The TUAW has an article on how you can use your 3G iPhone to join the WM mobile users in Geocaching.

If you have an iPhone it’s just as easy.  Open Google Maps and type the lat and long into the search box [ N 30.234 W 90.234 ] and it’ll bring up your cache location.

Try changing the file extension to .3gp ( 3rd generation mobile video ).

Mp4 s copied from cell phones to OSX often give ‘An invalid sample description was found in the movie. ‘ Changing from .mp4 to .3gp allows OSX to play the movie.

This supposedly works on Windows as well but several people were unable to successfully change the file extension in Windows. If that doesn’t work try changing the extension to .3g2.

3gp is a stripped down version of mp4. In addition it contains information about the size ( height and width) of your video and the bandwidth speed of your phone. Supposedly QuickTime and RealPlayer play them, but good luck getting that to work.

See discussion:
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Shopping with a smart cell phone makes it much easier to see what you need and purchase something at a fair price. We’ve been able to check to verify the correct memory for computers while out shopping, check other car dealers prices while out car shopping and find alternate store locations.

Now you can be shopping at a big box store, especially those known to have several prices on things, text a product name, bar code or upc number to Amazon and receive back their product listing and price. From there you can purchase it from Amazon or continue your purchase at the local store.

“With today’s launch of TextBuyIt, any Amazon.com customer can now use any mobile device to shop and buy from Amazon.com, at anytime, anywhere they are,” said Howard Gefen, Director of Amazon Mobile Payments. “With TextBuyIt, if you’re walking out of a concert and want to buy a CD from the artist you just saw, or if you’re at dinner and a friend tells you about a great book you should read, all you have to do is get out your mobile device, send a text message to Amazon, reply to the response, confirm your order, and your item will be on its way. It’s incredibly simple and convenient.”

In less than a minute and using only text messages, Amazon.com customers can find the product they are looking for and complete a purchase using TextBuyIt. Simply send a text message to “AMAZON” (262966) with the name of the product, search term or a UPC or ISBN code, and, within seconds, Amazon replies with the product or products that match the search, along with prices. To buy an item, customers simply reply to the text message by entering the unique single digit number next to the item they want. Customers will then receive a short phone call from Amazon with the final details of their order and asking them to confirm or cancel the purchase.

When customers choose to purchase something for the first time using TextBuyIt, they will be asked for their e-mail address and shipping ZIP code they use for their Amazon.com account. With this information, Amazon uses customers’ default settings for payment method, shipping address and shipping speed, including 2-Day shipping for Amazon Prime members. [read more Amazon TextBuyIt ]

Just be careful not to announce such bargains to fellow shoppers or Best Buy might have you arrested.

Best Buy called the cops on Alex because he told another shopper that the Jawbone headset he was considering was poor quality and marked up $30 from the manufacturer’s price. [ read more Best Buy calls cops on your for telling fellow customer jawbone headset is overpriced ]

One of the first things you do with an iPhone is locate all the local free wifi spots. Edge just doesn’t cut it after using Sprints high speed network.

Starbucks and ATT are going to be offering 2 hours free wifi a day to registered holders of Starbucks cards this spring. No startup date yet.

JiWire Wifi finder is easy to use from your phone and will locate many but not all of the free wifi spots near you. Just type in a zip code or city.

Free wifi lists more locations than JiWire but is best used from your home computer. You can use it on your phone but it’s not the more phone friendly site.

Free Wi-Fi also lists free wifi by company which is sometimes an easier way to find free wifi as it becomes more common.

Mashable has a lengthly list of web resources for finding wifi many are for wifi outside the US.

Now that the airlines no longer let you take extra batteries in your checked or carry on luggage it’s even more important to get that extra time out of your cell phone battery.

1) Turn off anything you are not using, especially the IR port and bluetooth.

2) Turn down the screen brightness.

3) Turn off IM clients when not in use, they are serious drags on your juice. Texting is more efficient on your phone.

4) Turn off error reporting and customer feedback if it is on your phone.

5) Remove your phone from the charger when the battery is 100% do not leave it sit on the charger over night.  (* This came from a reasonable source, I have not tested it to see how much, if any, difference it makes. )

6) WM phones adjust power saver settings in your registry. (See Battery Hacks for more information about what you are doing. ) You can use PHM Registry Editor to make the edits to the registry.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Comm\AsyncMac1\Parms]
Default value type and value are
“DisablePowerManagement”=dword:1
Change to
“DisablePowerManagement”=dword:0

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Comm\Irsir1\Parms]
Default value type and value are
“DisablePowerManagement”=dword:1
Change to
“DisablePowerManagement”=dword:0

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Comm\PPTP1\Parms]
Default value type and value are
“DisablePowerManagement”=dword:1
Change to
“DisablePowerManagement”=dword:0

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Comm\L2TP1\Parms]
Default value type and value are
“DisablePowerManagement”=dword:1
Change to
“DisablePowerManagement”=dword:0

Do you have a website you like to read but that isn’t mobile friendly?

Create a link to a rss version of the website like so.

Get the rss feed ->  Just control click the rss link and copy the link address.  For this site you should see: http://timestocomemobile.com/feed

Now create a Google reader link

http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/feed/http://timestocomemobile.com/feed

Take

http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/feed/

and add the feed address to the end

http://timestocomemobile.com/feed

to get:

http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/feed/http://timestocomemobile.com/feed

( yes you want the http:// in there at the beginning of the url and the beginning of the feed )

Now bookmark that page and you’ll have a mobile version of your favorite website.

I put some backgrounds up here on the site you can download and use, but what if you want a full theme change? Themes exist for free all over the internet.

You download the tsk file and it MUST be installed in your \Windows\ directory. Once there go to Menu->Preferences->Today Settings and you’ll see a list of installed themes you can use.

You will find some excellent and unique themes here ( ppc geeks Themes ). Take some time to wander through the threads.

Tons of themes are here as well.

Several of the online theme sites will let you create and download themes yourself as well.

Until recently you accessed your Gmail account from your phone using POP. So either you were deleting mail off the server you weren’t ready to delete or you had to delete all your emails on the server then again on your phone. IMAP changes that. IMAP keeps your phone and Gmail account in sync.

First switch your Gmail account from POP to IMAP

1) log onto your Gmail account

2) go to settings -> forward and POP/IMAP

3) at the bottom select ‘Enable IMAP

Then Delete the current Gmail setup on your phone and re-set it up:

1) Open the Start menu and select Programs — Messaging — New E-mail Account.

2) Enter your Gmail username (including ‘@gmail.com’) in the E-mail Address field.

3) Uncheck the box to get settings automatically from the Internet and select Next.

4) Select Internet e-mail as your email provider in the drop-down menu.

5) Enter your name as you want it to appear in sent emails.

6) Enter a descriptive name for the email account and select Next.

7) Enter imap.gmail.com in the Incoming Mail Server field.

8 ) Select IMAP4 as the Account type from the drop-down menu and select Next.

9) Enter your Gmail username (including ‘@gmail.com’) and password.

10) Select Next.

11) Enter smtp.gmail.com in the Outgoing (SMTP) Mail Server field.

12) Make sure that the Outgoing server requires authentication box is checked.

13) Select the Advanced Server Settings link.

14) Make sure that the Require SSL box is checked for both incoming and outgoing emails.

15) Select The Internet as the network connection from the drop-down menu.

16) Select Done and then select Next.

17) Select how often you want your phone to send/receive emails from the drop-down menu.

18 )For more download options, select the Review all download settings link.

19 )Select Finish.