With all the buzz lately about Google Plus over the past few weeks, (feel free to test my Plus button on the right) you don’t hear much anymore about Google Contacts, but it’s pretty useful, and I sure hope they don’t kill it off.

Don’t get me wrong, Google Plus is going to be great but for text messaging contacts it will likely never do the job I want, because my contacts would all have to agree to use it, and I think that’s unlikely, anymore than they might ALL agree to use Facebook.

I used to manage all of my contacts in Microsoft Outlook putting in name, email, phone numbers, etc. and I can enter anyone I want.  While I can still do that with Google Plus, I can’t text message their phones, which is what I need.

As the coach, over the course of the season, between practices, games, rainouts, reschedulings, and last minute field / location changes, every text I send to them goes out to 19 different cell phones, so I probably send over a thousand messages.

With my Blackberry, I was able to create a group, and send text messages to that group all season long.

When I first got my Android phone, I came home and used Google Apps Sync for Microsoft® Outlook .

Then, (also from my computer), I went into Google Contacts, and I created a group for the baseball team parents – Rockwood 2011.

Within minutes I could see that group on my phone, and I assumed I would be able to text the whole group, but I was wrong.

Aside from going into the group, then actually checking each member one by one, there was no way to simply choose to send a text message to everyone in the group!

I was actually forced to go into the group, and select members. I wasn’t even given an option to “select all”. How ridiculous!

I won’t bore you with my many attempted apps and failed solutions over two days, although there were plenty, so I’ll cut right to the chase…

The Solution?

Handcent for Android

HandCent SMS for Android immediately solved my problem by doing exactly what someone was apparently too lazy to do in the integrated messaging in my Verizon Samsung Charge phone.

You can get it Handcent at the Android Market, and  I made a donation to them here.

Now that baseball season is over, I made a quick video showing  how I used Google contacts just now to create my fall baseball team group, and yes, it WAS working on my phone already by the time I finished the video…

Verizon Wireless just missed a golden opportunity to speak to a group of 25+ computer consultants about why their network, and why their handheld devices were the best choice for clients.

They also managed to tick off and alienate that same influential group, by completely blowing them off after giving them the runaround for the bast few weeks, and finally leaving them hanging.

I’m on the board of directors for the Oregon Computer Consultants Association, and each month we have speakers give presentations, in an area that we think the members would be interested.

This month,  we had scheduled the “battle of the handhelds” in an effort to get experts from AT&T and Verizon Wireless to not only show their wares and try to sell us on their service,  but to talk about their network, and bring data specialists to explain the advantages and disadvantages of each type of smart phone, from Droids and Blackberries, to Windows Mobile and iPhones.

It took me no less than eight e-mails and text messages, and four separate phone calls with my rep at Verizon to get them to agree to show up.  I should have seen that as a red flag, because AT&T  was more than willing from the very beginning, and they agreed immediately.

Last week, out of nowhere, Verizon threw a monkey wrench into the gears, by telling me that they weren’t going to be able to speak unless I could get AT&T to agree to leave the room while they gave their presentation.  Seriously.

I thought it was ridiculous, but I acquiesced, and I called AT&T, who also thought it was ridiculous,  but they did agree to leave the room while Verizon gave their presentation, and then both of them were going to come back in for the Q&A.

It promised to be an informative session, filled with lots of technical questions and answers that only data specialists could answer, and not some crappy sales pitch.

We had a pretty good RSVP count, we put out press releases that included biographies of the speakers, and we were looking forward to an informative meeting.

I coach my kid’s Little League team, and was unfortunately not able to attend , but at exactly 5 minutes before the start of the meeting, I received a text message from one of the other board members that “your Verizon rep hasn’t shown up – can you call him”?  Luckily, I had his number in my Blackberry, so I did.

It turned out that he had “forgotten” to get back to me after he found out just last night that the data specialist wasn’t going to be able to make it!   Somehow this ALSO turned into him not being able to come either, and so basically, Verizon just blew us off, and left an entire room of consultants stranded.

Jeremy from Verizon DID offer to come speak to us next month – which was right before I said “Are you kidding me?” and hung up in disgust,

Remember this wasn’t just 25 customers they screwed over, which I’m sure would be a drop in the bucket. It was 25 computer consultants that all provide recommendations to their clients on a regular basis about what technology to use in their offices, ranging from small mom and pops, to some of Portland’s largest businesses.

Way to go Verizon…  Nice  job alienating not only me, but 25+ other local consultants.  How many of them do you think are likely to recommend Verizon to their clients going forward after this?

Unfortunately I own some stock in Verizon too, and I’m off to dump it, then I’m going to research some other phone options. What a massive #FAIL.?

This week marks our release of the SEO Review Iphone version of SEO Automatic, and it provided unlimited access to run as many urls as you wish.

If you’ve never used my instant SEO review before, then you should probably check that out first. It gives you a detailed analysis and my personal opinion of exactly what I think is right and wrong about the on-page SEO factors of any URL, and it works 24 x 7, whether I’m there or not.

Now, the newly released Iphone app gives all of the same information, but in a slightly less verbose manner, so it will work more easily on the handheld. The Iphone App doesn’t have all the navigational links to my educational content either, but it’s still packed with page after page of good data.

Admittedly, the app does have a few small glitches, as pointed out in some early reviews at Apple and elsewhere, but overall, I’m really proud of it, and I do believe it has a lot of value packed into it.

For the next version, there are a few changed I would personally like to see, and I figured I may as well add them here before someone else does…

• Better segmentation of the different sections of information, perhaps with color blocks different size font.
• Landscape view does not work, where you tilt the handheld and see the screen flips sideways.
• The ability to zoom in and out with a pinch on the text is also something that I’d like to see in the next version.
• There are links to jump to different sections of the report, but no links to get back to the top, which means an awful lot of scrolling.
• Older handheld devices get no on-screen icon, and just show a white box.

Overall, I think the application is pretty remarkable, and if you’ve got an Iphone or an Ipod Touch, AND you have iTunes installed already, you can follow this link to get the app which will open your Itunes immediately.

When I first got my Blackberry, I was stunned and appalled that it would not sync with my email on the server. How ridiculous!

This meant that if I did not manually delete my mail from my phone, (choices were one at a time, or “entire day”) then over time it would fill up with hundreds, even thousands of emails.

This was completely stupid, and that’s why I wrote about it.

However, they seem to have come up with a solution, but it doesn’t work unless YOU make a change. Recently, I had a reason to log into the Blackberry mail server, and I happened to notice a new checkbox that was never there before…

By selecting that check box, I no longer have to manually delete mail on my phone.

If I check mail on my PC, it aurtomatically removes it from my mail server,  so it now will disappear from my phone – (It’s magic -  like every other phone on the market!)

About time!

Nearly a year and a half ago I mentioned the Google phone was coming, and to everyone’s surprise, it has taken incredibly long.

There’s been a lot of speculation in the industry over the past few weeks that it’s coming any time now, and it looks like the day is almost here. I’ve been putting off buying a new phone for quite awhile now. I’m relatively happy with my Blackberry, but when the iPhone came out, I was pretty floored by some of the capabilities. Zooming in on Google maps is highly cool, but its lack of a tactile keyboard kept me from taking the plunge.

About two hours ago Google posted this video online at YouTube, that gives a clearer explanation of what it is, what it’s going to do, what to expect, and how they hope it will change our lives. To be perfectly clear, it’s not a phone, it’s an operating system, that is going to be available for multiple handsets, on multiple carriers, and the open source aspect should be an incredible opportunity – iPhone better watch out.

As they put it in the video, it’s going to be the “catalyst for innovation…”

*update 11/2007 – Google removed the video, so I’ve removed it from here… sorry ;(

I picked a great day to drop my Blackberry in downtown Portland… One of the best phones I’ve ever had, (8703e) bounced once then landed in a 3 inch deep puddle.

It worked for about a minute, then the screen started flickering, then it made a little fizzing sound, and that’s the end. I KNOW I should have dried it out in a bag of rice for three days, or something, but c’mon, i had to try it, right?

Anyway, I’ll had a $50 insurance replacement here tomorrow, and it stinks going without a phone, but I didn’t stop and get another one because I just don’t know too much about what’s available.

I really do like my Blackberry, but there are a ton of amazing options coming out from Verizon, and at this time I have no reason to leave the. coverage is good, and the customer service is great, but i have to do some research before I drop a bundle on a new toy.

Not to mention that Google phone is probably coming soon, and if the Iphone were to start coming with a slide out keyboard, I’d probably want to check that out too. So many choices…

Most important for me in a new phone will be a Qwerty keyboard at least as large as my Blackberry, and now that our web hosting server supports Exchange, it might be nice to try a Windows mobile device again.

There are so many options right now I barely know where to start, so I figured I would do without my phone for a day while I investigate some of the options, and wait for my replacement to arrive.

My time wouldn’t stay set on my Blackberry, which was driving me crazy. Apparently nobody has told Verizon and Blackberry that daylight savings time came early this year.

In the options – 8 times section, of my Blackberry settings, in addition to changing the time to be correct, I had to choose the date/time source to be set to “off”.

Leaving date/time source set to either Blackberry or, to “network” (I’m on Verizon) continues to revert the time back an hour.

Not just one, but THREE people I’ve met in the last few days have asked me about this, so I figured I would post.

*update 3/08 – issue resolved – Blackberry syncs with POP mail

Yesterday was the first full day with my Blackberry 8703e. Yes after nearly 6 full months with my old phone, (the ever so fragile and sluggish VX6700), I decided to get a new one. When it arrives, I’m listing my latest insurance replacement phone on Ebay to sell to someone with more time (and sticky stuff) on their hands.

I bought the 8703e at about 3pm and by 6pm, I had eaten dinner and sat down to watch the Bears / Cardinals game. While sitting there, I auto-configured the BB for email and instantly got an email saying. “Congratulations! mail will start arriving in about 20 minutes!” . Cool! I then waited a full hour before getting no email and phoning tech support.

It seems that a glitch in their system had detected my email account as an IMAP instead of POP3, and after a quick hour and a half on the phone with them, my email was flowing freely.

Time wasted was about 2 hours, but I got to see the worst choking of any football team in history, so it wasn’t a total loss for me, like it was for Arizona.

The next morning, my BB was filled with 140 emails, but I instead sat down at my PC and worked through them there. I then realized that I needed to install the software CD to sync my Outlook, so gave that a try about noon. What a disaster!

After three failed synch attempts with runtime errors, I deleted the software, purged my BB device, and downloaded the latest version of software from BB. It seems the CD that shipped had bad software from April 2006, because the new stuff worked fine. Time wasted – 90 minutes

Okay, so now my Outlook syncs, and all is well, right? Well, not exactly. To make a long story short, after talking with three different support levels at Verizon, it seems that the new version of BB software (2.0) does not allow your handheld device to “reconcile” with your mail server, automatically deleting your messages from your handheld after they’re no longer on your mail server.

This means that you have to manually delete the emails from your handheld each day, or it will completely fill up with every message you ever receive for the rest of your life.

How stupid is that? Every other phone I’ve had with email has always reconciled with the mail server. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?

The last representative at Verizon level 4 tech support actually said “Yes, I know. The OLD version of Blackbery’s software worked fine, but this one won’t do it. I don’t know why they removed that feature”.

Oh well, at least she finally knew what I was talking about and knew it was impossible! Everyone else at Verizon during my three hour support call was as perplexed as me, and they kept having me hard boot the device, download new “services”, delete and recreate my email accounts etc. which was all a complete waste of time.

Now, for corporate users, there’s something called Blackberry Enterprise Server, that works with Microsoft Exchange server, and with Exchange email archiving systems, so this ridiculous problem is not an issue.

They have something else called “Desktop Redirector” that now requires the Enterprise Server as well, according to the last support rep. For the plain old POP3 email account holder like me, there’s no solution that I can find.

Being the conspiracy theorist I am, I can only conclude that this is an attempt by BB to get away from having to support the average non technical user. Anyone with a Microsoft Exchange server likely has an Admin that will be setting this up for them, and they’ll shell out the $2500 to $4000 that it costs for BB Enterprise server..

However, if that’s really the case, then why support POP3 at all? Why not just say that MS Exchange Server and BB Enterprise Server are both required for you to check email?

All in all, I REALLY like the BB device. The reception is good, and the volume actually gets loud enough for me to hear, unlike my old Treo. It easily pairs with my Bluetooth headsets, and the plastic holster belt clip wisely faces the screen towards your body while carrying, unlike the Samsung I730 I had.

The belt clip even automatically puts the phone in “sleep” mode, which conserves battery life and instantly awakens upon removal. Compared to my latest monster, the XV6700, this thing is lightning fast too, like using a Pentium 3 computer compared to using an old 486.

I like the scroll wheel, and the feel of the buttons, and the light weight of the phone too, which means that it will hit the ground with much less force than my others did when I drop it.

Right now, the only way to bulk delete things is for to check email on my desktop, then immediately go to the handheld, highlight the date, and use the scroll wheel to “delete prior”. This deletes everything at once, prior to that date, saving nothing. Otherwise, every message must be individually deleted! Can this be for real? Apparently it is.

After two days, I have nearly 6 hours of my time invested in this device. If I include this blog post, it’s probably even longer, but I had to share this experience.

I have 13 more days in my “15 day trial” to find a solution before I’m stuck with the device, so any ideas would be appreciated.

It was reported today on Good Morning America (or some morning show) that there is a new ringtone for cellular phones that are inaudible to adults.

The ramifications for this during school classes and elsewhere will likely be pretty widespread.

While I find the technology fascinating, there are some things that are just wrong. In my opinion, this is one of them.

Still, you can be that if there had been something like this available when I was a kid, I would have jumped onboard … - Ringtones that only kids can hear 

I just went to make a phone call, and the screen of my XV6700 says this… 

“Internal Use Spy”

hwnd: 7c078c50 style:

10008004 ex:4

Title: Phone – Class: dialog  Window [0,26]-[240,294]

Client 240 x 268

hwnd owner: 000000

Do you want to dump the parent?

Yes / No ?

Ummm… I’m answering yes…wouldn’t you?

 Okay, worked – now I can make my call normally  - odd

 Well, at least it’s nothing bad, i’ve found out… http://www.codeneffect.com/archives/000003.html

I just bought a “new” version of Voice Command (July 2005!) and I incorrectly assumed that Voice Command would work via Bluetooth by now, and frankly, I’m shocked that it doesn’t.

Although the software is great, and will announce upcoming appointments, and react to spoken commands quite well, it’s amazing that you still have to physically pick up the phone and push buttons to initiate the program, even though you’re connected wirelessly via a BT headset.  Come ON, Microsoft, get it together already!

Here’s a great article From Microsoft explaining WHY Bluetooth doesn’t work with Microsoft Voice Command, and here’s the registry hack that *might* make it work  for you -

DO THIS ONLY AT YOUR OWN RISK! ( I did not try yet, but lots of people sem to have made it function. Howeverm, they all have other complaints now, so i’m leaving it alone)

Open up a registry entry program such as Resco Registry that comes with Resco Explorer 2005. Then go to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\OEM\VoiceCommand\Path”.

Change the default value from “\Windows\SDDialer.exe” to “\Program Files\Voice Command\VoiceCMD.exe”. Now you should be able to activate Micrsoft Voice Command by pressing the connect button on your bluetooth headset.

 

I finally did the unthinkable. I upgraded my phone before I was eligible, and that cost me an extra $250. Why?

To recap, In July 2005, I did an upgrade from my 2 year old Kyocera 7135 clamshell PDA/phone to the brand new Samsung i730, which had a full keyboard, broadband internet access, and the Windows Mobile OS.

After my 15 day trial was full of too many problems, I tried to switch back to my Kyocera, which I loved, but was told that my Kyocera had no “GPS” and it was a “federal law” that they couldn’t activate it again.

My only in stock option was a Palm Treo 650, so I took it. I likely could have argued, but frankly, I liked the thumb keyboard, and had become pretty accustomed to replying to emails on the Samsung.

Since last July the Treo 650 has been fine, but the lack of broadband was frustrating. 2 weeks of using EVDO in Las Vegas with the buggy Samsung was still on my mind. Now Verizin wireless broadband is here in Portland.

Also, with the Palm 650, my actual cell number was used to access the web, and I couldn’t make or receive calls while using it. That has really become necessary, as I invariably have to check voicemail after a short email session.

Sinmce I just got a brand new warranty replacement Treo, I took the opportunity Friday to sell it for $270 on Ebay, and spent $520 on the XV6700. Why did I get the XV7600 instead of the brand new Treo 700?

I had read all the reviews and comparisons lately, and had decided that the reception, voice/call quality and the strength of operation as a PDA was better with the XV6700.

The Treo seemed to be liked a little better as a phone, but the XV6700 was rated stronger as a PDA. Since I’m ultimately looking for a laptop replacement, with word processing, voice recording, Mobile Windows etc., the XV7600 was the choice for me.

My final decision was made after reading this blog post, where search engine pundit Danny Sullivan pointed out a ZDnet review calling the Treo 700 marred by flaws. I hadn’t seen that, but this post from Chris Pirillo was definitely the best roundup of the XV6700 that I found.

So, I plunked down the cash Saturday, and after snowboarding with the kids and dinner out, I just installed the Microsoft Active Sync software last night.

Day 1, yesterday: Active Sync installed fine, my contacts appointments and everything else I needed were there just fine.

Easy email setup, and I’m on my way. Where? To look on the floor for the stylus, that’s where.  It seems the stylus is too narrow for the slot, and comes out easily. So easily, in fact that now, (Day 2), I found it in a parking lot on the way back to my car. 

Coincidentally, it was the same parking lot as the Verizon store, so I walked up to the demo XV6700, and tried my stylus in that one. Guess what? It fit better! Their stylus (yes, not stolen) also  So, my stylus slot is bored out too large?  Are you kidding me?

The line was really too long to deal with, since I was on my way elsewhere, so maybe I’ll just wrap it in scotch tape…

Besides the stylus issue, I think I’ll like it. I’m clumsy with the buttons, but I’ll get used to them. Reception is better than with my Treo 650, and the web and email are much faster too.

The reviews on the camera are great, and with a built in flash and two lens settings, I may use it a lot.

The larger keyboard is nice, but I’ll still have to find a folding keyboard, assuming I keep it after my trial. Then again, one of these would sure be neat…

Once again, as I did with the Samsung, I’ll be attempting to do battle with voice recognition, which will really make this whole pda/phone tool complete.

This time though Verizon knew better than to give away something free that won’t work, and I’ll have to pay for Microsoft Voice Command. I think that should be standard issue from Microsoft and Verizon, but I guess at $520 there just wasn’t enough profit in it…