Blog entries about Tip or how-to

Compared to the capabilities of desktop multimedia players (see for example the excellent WMP vs Winamp vs iTunes vs MediaMonkey for more info on their capabilities), the mobile ones certainly lack when it comes to fetching, searching for, editing, storing and, in several cases, even accessing / displaying different kinds (album art and/or other images; textual genre / composer / title etc. info; lyrics etc.) of information in audio files.

The built-in Windows Media Player has always suffered from a major flaw: it didn’t support resuming the song from the last position after restarting the player. XDA-Devs forum member Wolfman-XP (the same guy that has also developed AVRCP support for GSPlayer) has fixed this: he has released a plug-in that remembers the last position where you press(ed) the Pause button.

Following is an update to my previous article on the CPU usage of the audio player applications. Please consult the old article on how the data should be interpreted.

GSPlayer is a well-known, excellent, free (!!!!), constantly updated audio player application I’ve very frequently elaborated on (search my blog for my related articles).

Have you ever wished you could be notified automatically on your phone what’s happening on your Facebook site? Better yet, what if you could see what’s transpiring and be able to interact with Facebook on your phone just as you would on your desktop? A free application from Macrospecs, Inc. called FriendMobilizer makes this possible. It only works on Windows Mobile 6 and higher phones. But if you don’t have one, you should not consider anything less.

As has been explained in the Remote Desktop Control Bible, in the pre-WM6.1 days, Windows Mobile was clearly worse than WindowsCE .NET running on clamshell devices in that the Remote Desktop Mobile client couldn’t make any file transfer in the former, while it could do in the latter (for years).

Not all notebooks or desktop computers have a built-in web camera. With desktop PC’s, this isn’t that big an issue: as you don’t carry them around, you can just buy an inexpensive, clip-on USB camera and you’re set. Not so with notebooks, UMPC’s or Tablet PC’s – with them, purchasing (and carrying!) a cabled solution might be overly suboptimal. Then, just using your camera-equipped smartphone may turn out to be the best solution; preferably over a wireless connection like Bluetooth.

In my latest Misc News collection, I’ve already recommended Towers Trap, a brand new game on two mobile (Windows Mobile and Symbian S60) and desktop Windows platforms. GameZoneProject’s official page is HERE. No matter what platform you have, I really-REALLY recommend giving the trial a try and play through the (initial) tutorial. (Again, you’ll have text rendering problems on VGA Windows Mobile devices).

Alerts.com looks like a useful new service, so this week we’ll take a quick look at that as well as note other online tips and help, including tips from Microsoft and the relaunch of our forums.

So far, the biggest problem with running Opera Mini (or any MIDlet that uses characters to display anything; for example, the Gmail MIDlet) on high-resolution (W)VGA Windows Mobile devices was the far too small character size all contemporary, recommended (most importantly, Jbed) MIDlet managers used.

Now that I’ve become a proud owner of a super-mobile HP TC1100 Tablet PC, using mobile devices (smart phones) as external modems have became essential for me. Up until now, I’ve done most of my Web browsing, YouTube watching outdoors with some of my mobile devices.

Time Management. In a busy world, we hear about time management quite often. We hear business people saying they need to do it better. We hear experts telling us they will teach it to us. We hear it from the boss, and we hear it from out employees. It's everywhere, yet so few really do it well. How can something so important to peoples heavy laden schedules, seem to be so elusive? Where can I get more time, and what do I do with it when I do get it? What the heck does time management mean?

My well-known Theme Bible is, now, three years old and, therefore, a bit outdated when it comes to comparing the third-party theme creator tools.

Yes, it was quite a long ago that I've published my last Misc news. The reason for this is my having been really busy:

I’ve just been asked in the Smartphone & PPC Mag VIP section (where I’m the lead helper) of how you can easily change your upper / lower / scrollbar colors on WM5+ (WM5, WM6, WM6.1 etc.) Windows Mobile devices with touchscreens (NOT models without them!), also often referred to as the “base hue”.

Due to some unfortunate circumstances, I was unable to post any new blogs in May and June. I really missed out on some great topics, so I thought I might play as though I am being fashionably late and contribute anyway. Better late than never.

Although I try to keep my Pocket PCs or Smartphones “clean,” I sometimes find that I let old files and system junk build up. In the business world they say that around 85% of all paperwork is not needed. The same is true with our computer storage. Most of us tend to keep many files that no longer serve any purpose.

After having downloaded the latest Shadow of Legend beta, I’ve realized it has 9422 files and 424 directories. If you’ve followed my articles for more than a year, you may already know that this means really slow transfer rates to even the fastest cards. (For example, to a (cheap) 1 GByte Kingston SD card, formatted with the most storage-saving FAT32/512 format (and not using a backup FAT table to speed up operation), it took exactly 2:28 (h:mm) to transfer all these files.

 Microsoft Downloads — Keep in mind Microsoft’s Cool Stuff Web page, with ring tones, themes, wallpapers, games, and the mobile applications Live Search, Zumobi, and Viigo. You can download directly to your device by going to windowsmobile.com/coolstuff.