March 2006 - Posts
I saw that Sprint PCS posted the AKU2 ROM upgrade for their 6700. This would allow for the Microsoft version of push email to work with Exchange 2003, SP2. Anyway, I noticed this morning that the link no longer works with a page not found error. It’s not anywhere on the site now that I can find. No notices, no comments from Sprint PCS. Were there problems found? What about those that downloaded it yesterday and may have already installed it?
As some know, I have the new Windows Mobile 5 device from Cingular, the 8125 (I’ve also been testing the T-Mobile version, the MDA). More on that later. I’m having trouble getting some of the apps I use regularly to run with Windows Mobile 5, so I was pleasantly surprised when I came across a Mobile Instant Messenger made specifically for Windows Mobile 5 devices. The product is called WebMessenger. They make an instant messenger client for most mobile devices that allows you to log in to all messenger clients at the same time, similar to products like Trillian.
As I mentioned, I was pleasantly surprised, until I clicked the “buy” link. They want $29.95 for it, for one year. Why would I do that? Why would anyone do that? If you would do this, please let me know why. Most mobile devices have IM clients pre-installed, or you can add them to the device off of the installation ROM. They’re offered FREE. Sure, there’s the convenience of only using one program, but is it worth $29.95? For one year? For instance, the T-Mobile MDA has an “instant messenger” icon. You click on the icon, it takes you to a Mobile Instant Messenger screen that will allow you to log in to AOL, ICQ, or Yahoo Messenger. Of course, there’s a standard Windows Messenger icon to click on so you can do that as well. I can click the links and log in for free.
Verichat is another product that does the same thing. They want $24.95 PER YEAR for the standard version, and $39.95 PER YEAR for the Premium version that gives you access to bots. Per year? For a program that will allow you to log in to instant messengers?
Obviously it’s going to take some getting used to, but I think I like it!
Just found the GMail privacy policies related to deleted items. The section is quoted below.
Your choices
- You may change your Gmail account settings through the Gmail "settings" section.
- You may organize or delete your messages through your Gmail account or terminate your account through the Google Account section of Gmail settings. Such deletions or terminations will take immediate effect in your account view. Residual copies of deleted messages and accounts may take up to 60 days to be deleted from our active servers and may remain in our offline backup systems.
- You may choose to use additional Gmail features, such as Google Talk. The Google Talk service has its own privacy notice available here.
The question is, what is Google’s backup policy? How long do they retain mail I delete? May be time to stop using GMail.
Have you read closely GMail’s privacy policy? Check this out. I will add however that I’ve looked through GMail’s Privacy policy and can’t find any references to what is recorded below.
From the Police Blotter:
What happened, according to the court: In November 2003, the Federal Trade Commission sued AmeriDebt and founder Andris Pukke on charges that the company deceived customers about credit counseling and failed to use customers' money to actually pay their creditors. AmeriDebt settled, but the courts are still trying to uncover the location of Pukke's apparently sizeable assets. A Washington Post article in September said the IRS is seeking $300 million from Pukke. His attorney at the venerable firm of Jones Day charges a hefty $575 an hour.)
Pukke's missing money has been linked to a Belize developer called Dolphin Development, which counts a fellow named Peter Baker as a shareholder. The court-appointed receiver in the FTC case, Robb Evans & Associates, sent a subpoena to Google on Nov. 1 asking for the complete contents of Baker's Gmail account. Baker objected to the subpoena, saying it could disclose confidential information, including attorney-client conversations. The subpoena asks for not only current e-mail but also deleted e-mail: "All documents concerning all Gmail accounts of Baker...for the period from Jan. 1, 2003, to present, including but not limited to all e-mails and messages stored in all mailboxes, folders, in-boxes, sent items and deleted items, and all links to related Web pages contained in such e-mail messages."
Google's privacy policy says deleted e-mail messages "may remain in our offline backup systems" in perpetuity. It does not guarantee that backups are ever deleted. Baker estimated he may have tens of thousands of e-mail messages in his Gmail account.
In a Jan. 31 ruling, Laporte rejected Baker's request. She said his attorney could withhold "truly protected" information but must "err on the side" of disclosure.
Baker asked the judge to reconsider. On Monday, Laporte reiterated her decision, saying the argument about confidentiality "is baseless" because her earlier order creates an exception for such e-mail messages.
Google Inc.'s mysterious methods for ranking Web sites came under attack Friday in a lawsuit accusing the online search engine leader of ruining scores of Internet businesses that have been wrongfully banished from its index.
The civil complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose by KinderStart.com, seeks to be certified as a class action representing the owners of all Web sites blacklisted by Google's Internet-leading search engine since January 2001.
KinderStart, a Norwalk-based Web site devoted to information about children, says it was dropped from Google's index a year ago without warning.
That’s right, the “p”, not the “w”. Apparently, engadget is reporting that a release date for the 700p was leaked (how can you put p and leaked in the same sentence?).
Rumors are that Sprint PCS will release the 700p on May 28th.
A popular software that retailers use to control debit-card transactions may inadvertently store sensitive customer information, including PIN codes, says Visa.
Two versions of cash-register software made by Fujitsu Transaction Solutions are under scrutiny, according to a warning Visa issued to the companies that process card transactions for some of the nation's largest retailers. A Visa representative confirmed that the warning was sent.
Some of Fujitsu's retail customers include Best Buy, Staples and OfficeMax, but it is not known which companies use the software Visa claims is flawed…
Bank of America, Washington Mutual and Citibank are among the financial institutions that have replaced more than 200,000 debit cards in the past two months and have told customers that thieves obtained vital debit-card information as a result of a security breach at a large merchant.
Read an article this morning that airlines are starting to offer wi-fi access for a fee, $30. Would you pay it? There’s a paragraph that got me thinking.
“For example, it took one minute and 45 seconds to download eight e-mails into Outlook. Most Web pages took about 30 seconds to fully load. I was able to post updates to my travel blog (latimes.com/dailytraveler) and in about 2 1/2 minutes uploaded a picture taken of me by a flight attendant. It was a bit faster to e-mail the same picture via AOL — about 40 seconds.”
$30 for what appears to be old fashioned dial-up? Not me. I’ll catch up on my email and the web when I land. I can’t imagine many doing this (like using the phone on the plane), but there will always be one or two.
Did you catch this? France has filed a draft law that will attempt to sever the connection between the iPod and iTunes. The law would force Apple to let French iPod users buy their music from download sites other than iTunes.
Stay tuned. I’m sure more will join the fray. Why the French?
Attention all bloggers. You’ve probably seen the warnings before if you blog. From the workplace blog, Laina Dawes and Elaine Liner are pretty sure they were fired for blogging. It's not 100 percent certain, of course, because no one ever told them so officially, but the evidence seems solid. Dawes and Liner were the poster children on display for what can go wrong, even when bloggers attempt to discuss issues in their lives and related to their jobs under the cover of anonymity, as both had done.
One lesson: people can figure out who you are, even if you think you're being clever and writing under a pseudonym. That's what happened to Dawes and Liner, as both said their bosses somehow discovered their identities as they wrote about race issues and criticisms of SMU, respectively.
The conclusion? Employees would be wise to know that if they are critical about their jobs, their bosses, their former employers or anyone, or write about aspects of their personal lives that they wouldn't want their employers to know about, then maybe they shouldn't hit that "submit" button. Because word gets around. Like it or not.
FlexMail is a full fledged email client for your Pocket PC. It supports reading and replying to ActiveSynched email for basic operations or through its infinitely more powerful POP3/IMAP4 services to your email server. With support for industry standard SSL and SOCKS proxies, you can connect to almost any email provider including GMail!
With FlexMail's many options you can customize your email usage much more than any the Pocket PC Inbox allows. Receive your email via ActiveSync and respond via your POP3/IMAP4 SMTP account. Have FlexMail only hold the last 5 days of your IMAP folders. Create local folders and server folders. Synchronize by age, size, and synchronizations status.
The downside? Pocket Informant wants $19.95 for it.
How can Fujitsu Siemens do it, yet the 8125 not be able to? The biggest disappointment for me with the 8125 is the slow processor (only 200 MHz). I’ve been using the Siemens sx66 for over a year and it has a 400 MHz processor. I can certainly tell. My other disappointment is that it only has a mini-SD slot rather than the full SD slot. And why doesn’t Fujitsu Siemens market in the US?
Fujitsu Siemens has unveiled its Pocket LOOX T800 series comprised of the T810 and T830 models at the ongoing 3GSM World Congress 2006 fair in Barcelona. Launched as the most capable Windows Mobile 5.0 devices to date, the two integrate antenna-less GPS reception, UMTS based 3G, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth 2.0, USB 1.1 with host capabilities and a SDIO capable SD/MMC card expansion slot for an unparalleled connectivity setup.
Setting the two devices apart is the omission of a 2.0 Megapixel camera with autofocus in the T810, while both support video calls courtesy of their front-mounted 0.3 Megapixel camera. A touch-sensitive 2.4-inch, 262K color screen with a resolution of 240 x 240 pixels provides a window to the Pocket PC Edition of Windows Mobile 5.0, propelled by a 416 MHz Intel processor, 64 MB of RAM and 128 MB of non-volatile memory. Lastly, Fujitsu Siemens' trademark jog dial also remains present in the T800 series.
A former college teammate of Pat Tillman is following in his footsteps, leaving a career in professional football to join the military. Pfc. Jeremy Staat, a former defensive lineman who played for the Pittsburgh Steelers and the St. Louis Rams, graduated from the San Diego Marine Corps Recruit Depot on Friday.
Enlisting "is probably one of the best decisions I've made in my life," Staat, 29, told The Associated Press after the ceremony. Staat said he was felt compelled to join the military after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks but Tillman, who was his roommate at Arizona State, advised him to stay with professional football until he qualified for retirement benefits.
Samsung Electronics unveiled a much-hyped new handheld computer only a half size of copier paper at the CeBIT information technology fair here on Thursday.
The new gadget, called an Ultra Mobile PC Q1, weighs only 779 grams, about one third of traditional laptops, and can be easily held with two hands with users still able to type with their thumbs on a virtual on-screen keyboard. Despite its size, the Q1 features fully functional PC performances on its 7-inch touch-control screen.
It is co-developed by Samsung, Intel and Microsoft. The debut of the Ultra Mobile PC follows Microsoft chairman Bill Gates' call in 2005 for the computer industry to develop a new category for PCs that are less expensive, lighter and more functional.
The W900i is essentially a new 3G version of the W800i, Sony Ericsson's first Walkman-branded mobile phone. Because 3G encourages the downloading of content such as music and games, Sony Ericsson has upped the internal memory to 470MB and has included an additional 512MB in the form of a Sony Memory Stick PRO Duo. The screen has also been upsized to take advantage of viewing 3G content. Sony Ericsson has opted for a swivel design for the W900i.
Buyers of Microsoft's UMPC will be able to download Movielink content directly to the device instead of having to access the site through a Web browser first. Movielink, an online movie rental service, said Thursday it would be the premier brand for downloading films in the program launcher of Microsoft Corp.'s Ultra-Mobile PC.
Microsoft unveiled the UMPC, code-named the "Origami Project," on Thursday at the CeBIT fair in Hanover, Germany. The computer, which has a 7-inch touch-sensitive screen and wireless connectivity, runs Windows XP and has all the functionality of a laptop, but without the keyboard.
RIM announced Friday that it has bought Ascendent Systems, a San Jose, Calif., company that makes software for connecting cell phones to a corporate phone switch, or PBX.
Ascendent's software will be merged into RIM's later this year, enabling office-phone functions like simultaneous ringing at several locations, call transfer and spontaneous teleconferencing, Balsillie said.
The two companies have been partners, but Ascendent's software was sold separately. Balsillie said it will work with any type of PBX.
"So many of our customers were asking for the functionality of Ascendent, it really made it natural to start to integrate it into the core offering," Balsillie said.
Quite honestly, this is what happens when a company that has been successful for so long as a private company doesn’t manage the public well. You can’t keep secrets, unfortunately.
Google Inc.'s shares fell to their lowest levels in 4-1/2 months on Friday as analysts bemoaned recent communication miscues and its refusal to be more open about its finances.
Though analysts say they are confident of the growth outlook for Google's search advertising business and its place in the industry, they fear that public perception is turning negative for the company, which once seemingly could do no wrong.
The company has made a series of stumbles that have confused investors over whether the company is suffering from slowing growth.
Google's stock touched an intraday low of $331.55 on Friday, a new low since its upward momentum was broken in January. It closed down $5.50, or 1.6 percent, at $337.50.
Love weather like I do? SBSH has released version 1.3 of their PocketWeather program.
- NEW! - A feature rich WeatherConsole tool to monitor weather forecast details in unlimited locations
- NEW! - Introducing new professional weather icons and layout
- NEW! - Support unlimited maps and radar images for each forecast location
- A today screen plugin to display weather forecast with professional graphics on your Today screen
- Automatically monitor the weather in unlimited different locations world wide and switch between them on the Today screen
- View current temperature, air pressure, wind speed, up to 9 day forecast and much more!
- Fully support VGA devices and WM5 devices, including special HighDPI weather icons for VGA devices
- Fully user-configurable forecast display options
- Use additional icon sets to change PocketWeather's icons look and feel
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Download a trial version of the program and try it out. $9.95 if you decide to keep it.
Microsoft announced the first Free Xbox Live
® Gold Weekend, presented courtesy of Verizon. From March 31 through April 2, Xbox 360™ gamers are invited to connect to Xbox Live and enjoy an action-packed weekend of multiplayer gaming in a community of 2 million players, free of charge.
Cingular Wireless and T-Mobile USA have temporarily stopped selling the Razr, Motorola's flagship cell phone, due to a technical glitch that causes the phone to drop calls or shut down, the companies said Friday. Motorola said only a limited number of phones were affected and the problem would have no impact on its financial results. The Razr, lauded for its thin design, was first sold in late 2004 and is still a key product for Motorola.
Interesting Police Blotter over at CNet. What happened? An employee quits the company he works for to go to work for someone else. The problem? When he returned his laptop, he had deleted all of his files on his laptop, permanently, securely, so that the files can’t be recoverable. The company sued, and won. The employee was charged with a federal hacking law.
From the blotter…
The 7th Circuit made two remarkable leaps. First, the judges said that deleting files from a laptop counts as "damage." Second, they ruled that Citrin's implicit "authorization" evaporated when he (again, allegedly) chose to go into business for himself and violate his employment contract.
The implications of this decision are broad. It effectively says that employees better not use OS X's Secure Empty Trash feature, or any similar utility, because they could face civil and criminal charges after they leave their job. (During oral argument last October, one judge wondered aloud: "Destroying a person's data--that's as bad as you can do to a computer.")
Citrin pointed out that his employment contract permitted him to "destroy" data in the laptop when he left the company. But the 7th Circuit didn't buy it, and reinstated the suit against him brought by IAC.
An error in McAfee's virus definition file released Friday morning caused the company's consumer and enterprise antivirus products to flag Microsoft's Excel, as well as other applications on users' PCs, as a virus called W95/CTX, Joe Telafici, director of operations at McAfee's Avert labs, told CNET News.com.
"At about 1 p.m. PST we started getting reports that people were seeing an unusual number of W95/CTX infections in their environment," Telafici said. "Files that we did identify would probably be deleted or quarantined, depending on your settings."
There’s still hope! There should be no surprise who heads the top of Forbes magazine’s annual list of the world’s billionaires in 2006--it’s still Bill Gates. The Microsoft chairman is the richest man for the 12th year in a row and grew his fortune to US$50 billion from last year’s US$46.5 billion. But lower down the list are some new additions from the world of technology including the cofounder and chairman of Indian software giant Infosys, Narayana Murthy, and the heads of Taiwan’s High-Tech Computer and Via Technologies, Cher Wang and Wenchi Chen. Oracle’s Larry Ellison is no longer in the top 10, with his net worth falling to US$16 billion to give him 15th place. What a shame. Only $16 billion.
Two large shareholders have sued HP claiming that Carly Fiorina’s US$21.4 million severance package violated the company’s executive compensation policy. Fiorina was forced out of HP in February 2005. HP’s only comment was this week’s lawsuit had no merit.
Nucleus Research did their own independent study. We’ve probably all heard the hype. Companies that run SAP are 32% more profitable. Nucleus Research found that,
contrary to SAP’s advertising claim that its customers are 32 percent more profitable than their peers, SAP customers were in fact
20 percent less profitable than their peers.
SAP customers had an average ROE of 12.6 percent versus an industry average of 15.7 percent.
Google™ Talk* for BlackBerry® devices is an exciting, efficient and easy-to-use new instant messaging application that allows BlackBerry device users with a Gmail™ username and password to send and receive instant messages with friends, family and colleagues in the Google Talk community while on the go.
Now you can enjoy the benefits of Google Talk while you're away from your computer. Google Talk for BlackBerry devices allows you to:
- Access your existing Google Talk Friends list on your BlackBerry device and add additional contacts from the Google Talk community and federated communities
- See which Friends are online and available and participate in several conversations at once
- Send and receive messages in real time
- Continue to communicate with other Google Talk users even while using other applications on your BlackBerry device
- Access open conversations and new Google Talk messages from within the BlackBerry Messages application
- Set up custom notifications for new Google Talk messages
Go here.
A couple who claim they were bitten by bedbugs while staying at a Catskills resort in July returned for another stay later that month, according to the hotel's lawyer. But Leslie Fox says she went back to the Nevele Hotel because her husband, Stephen Cohen, was under contract to give a lecture and she wanted to go with him.
"I was absolutely loath to have to go back there, and I went back with great apprehension," Fox said Wednesday. Joseph O'Connor, a lawyer for the resort, didn't buy the explanation. "I think he probably could have done it without her," he told the Daily News.
Fox and Cohen sued the resort for $20 million on Tuesday, saying her body and mind were scarred after she suffered some 500 bedbug bites at the 700-room hotel. Fox's lawyer, Alan J. Schnurman, said Tuesday that when the couple reported to hotel officials that their room was infested, the officials offered two free nights but Fox and Cohen declined because they just wanted to leave.
I’ve been using the Cingular 8125 for the last couple of weeks. I had to hard reset the phone for the first time (some applications just WON’T uninstall correctly). So, I tried to use the standard hard reset but couldn’t get it to work. I had to actually resort to the MANUAL. I HATE manuals. Anyway, I found the diagram for the hard reset. There are two buttons on each side of the phone at the top. One button launches the Comm Manager button, the other launches the Voice command button.
Get this now. You have to press BOTH buttons in at the same time. BUT, that’s not all. While holding down those TWO buttons, you then have to press the reset button with the stylus of the phone, again, AT THE SAME TIME. Three buttons at the same time to hard reset? Who in the world designed THAT? Check out the photo and you’ll see what I mean, then try to actually do it. Geez.
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