“The HTC HD2 is the world’s first Windows Mobile-toting phone with a capacitive screen, and also packs the world’s largest mobile phone display too. It’s also the first WinMo phone to use HTC’s Sense UI, previously used on the company’s Android handsets, bringing with it Facebook integration and direct Twitter access, as well as masking well the operating system beneath it.”

In an extensive review of the HD2 TechRadar compares it to the iPhone (What else is new?) and while a complete review in it’s own right, it does make me wonder: Is it fair to compare a business-oriented OS to a consumer-oriented? Or is it just that Windows Mobile doesn’t fit nicely into purely business or purely consumer spaces?

This was originally posted at Pocket PC Thoughts, check out the the source for discussion.

Product Category: Utility Software

Manufacturer: Morose Media

Where to Buy: Company Website

Price: $29.99

System Requirements: Windows Mobile 5 AKU 3.3 or newer or Windows Mobile 6, Both a WiFi and a cellular data connection, an installed and working version of Internet Sharing, 15 MB of free device memory

Pros:

• Easy to use;
• Exceptional setup wizard;
• Multiple connection options.

Cons:

• A bit pricey;
• Would love it to actively try to restore dropped data connection.

Summary: Tethering your handheld to your computer has come a long way from the days of strange connection strings, special cables, and slower than turtle speeds. WMWifiRouter provides a 1-click method for getting connected, but is it worth the price? Read on to find out!

What it Does

Simply put, it turns your Windows Mobile device into a broadband wireless router, the same kind you could buy for quite a lot of $$$. It does this by routing your cellular data connection (e.g. 3G or EDGE or even GPRS) through the device and out to the WiFi interface. Just like Internet Connection Sharing on a Windows machine, WMWifiRouter includes all the necessary components to assign addresses (DHCP) and route them (NAT) through the device. Windows Mobile does not have a simplistic networking design by a long shot. It features a fairly robust TCP/IP stack and thus supports things like non-traditional routing setups. The problem has always been exploiting that in a way that is easy for the end-user (you or I) to use. WMWifiRouter packages all of the bits and pieces up, and lets you quickly configure your network and start it easily. Assuming that your carrier or data plan allows tethering, you then have a running WiFi router to your cellular data connection.

Figure 1: The connected screen, showing status of the router.

Connection Setup

I discovered WMWifiRouter while on a train. Literally while wondering if such a polished product existed, I ran a quick search and downloaded the CAB file from their website. Upon running it, I was presented with an extremely nice setup wizard that walked me through the entire process of setting up the connection. I could choose the SSID or wireless router name, set a WEP encryption key to keep others out (or at least make it harder for them to get in), and configure other options. Each option had a nice description of what it did, which I thought was nice for individuals who aren’t quite sure what each item may mean to their networking setup. After Setup, I clicked on the Cellular to WiFi icon on the homescreen, and got the screen shown in Figure 1. After about 30 seconds of it updating the status (telling me what it was doing), it was ready to go. I fired up my iPod Touch and found my new network, plugged in my WEP key, and was off and running
This was originally posted at Pocket PC Thoughts, check out the the source for discussion.

About a year ago, I switched from Direcway Broadband Satellite internet to a Sprint EVDO Rev A card for my home internet service. The choice was easy – the Sprint card was cheaper and had better speeds overall than the satellite. For awhile, I put my broadband card into a spare computer and had it share the connection via Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) in Windows XP. Then I found a router online (The WRT54G3G-ST) that would let me pop the card right into my router and avoid the ICS hassle. The best part about using a broadband card for your internet service is that when you leave, you can simply take the internet with you when you go. However unless you want to install the broadband card drivers on every laptop in the family, there is no easy way to share (Unless you think setting up an adhoc network in Vista and sharing the internet – reliably – is easy!). My Solution? A cheap and easy rig that will let you pack “The Internet” with you when you go!

Step 1 – Parts

You’ll probably want the following (At least my rig is set up like this). My rig allows for the internet to be powered through AC or DC, depending on if you’re in a car or hotel room. Here are the parts:

• Broadband card (Duh…)
• Broadband Router (The WRT45G3G-ST in my case)
• Short power strip (Optional, I suppose)
• Some sort of Power Inverter (DC to AC). Mine is 400W, however you may be able to get away with less!
• Box (Either an actual project box from somewhere like Radio Snack, or in my case, two Avon box lids)

Step 2 – Construction

You’ll probably want to plan out your rig before actually constructing it. I did mine visually, however for the sake of easy explaining, I’ll do up a small diagram (Click on it to see it a bit clearer!):

Next you’ll probably want to cut holes for vents, ports for cords, the hole for the antenna to stick out, and the power strip access. I used a simple swiss army knife as it cuts through cardboard quite nicely (What doesn’t…) and used masking tape to secure each item to the base of the box (I do want to disassemble this when I get home to put everything back where it normally goes). Feel free to improvise here – you may want to add more power ports, etc..

My design was specifically made to allow for AC or DC powering, and it works like this. When using AC, the power strip’s cord runs straight out the port to the right of it, and into a wall outlet. When on DC, it loops around the inverter (and plugs into the outlets at the bottom of the inverter. The Inverter’s cord then comes out the port to the right of the power strip, and into a car cigarette lighter. I’m planning on bringing an extension cord for the DC cord, as it is shorter than the power strip’s.

Step 3 – Complete & Accessorize

Here are some pictures of my completed rig. Note the snazzy title I gave mine (The Internet, complete edition, in color!). Accessorize to your heart’s content, just don’t block the vents!

(Edited to remove SSID – I’m paranoid…)

That’s all folks. Feel free to register and post your comments or suggestions!

Jon Westfall is a research psychologist and confirmed techno-geek. He’s a contributing editor for Pocket PC Thoughts, as well as a Microsoft MVP for Windows Mobile. This blog is where most of his longer articles reside, however jonwestfall.com also has other goodies and more than you want to know about him.

E-mail is a nasty little thing when you really think about it. It enables us to communicate information faster than any other media available today, is flexible enough to allow us to use it both professionally (e.g. sending documents for review) and privately (e.g. sending pictures of our kids and pets), and is reckless enough to give birth to the most heinous annoyance of the 21st century thus far: SPAM. E-mail, love it or hate it, is here to stay – which prompts me to question how we use it. Last summer we had an interesting discussion about E-mail organization strategies, which revealed that there seem to be two types of E-mailers, those with clean inboxes and those with multiple pieces of E-mail keeping the inbox nicely stocked. Today I’d like to address a different yet related question: How often do you check E-mail?

Checking E-mail used to be a quaint little thing back in the days of dial-up. You dialed in, hit “Send/Receive” and waited as E-mail goodness flowed in. Perhaps you did a bit of replying, archiving, or ignoring, hit “Send/Receive” one more time and logged off. Then broadband hit us, and many of us (I suspect) started keeping Outlook running, so that we could get email more or less as it came in (e.g. having it automatically send/receive every 5 minutes). Then Exchange Servers came around and we had Outlook in Connected mode, hearing a little ding every so often that called us over to it. Somewhere around this time, I think some of us became slaves to E-Mail: Hear the ding, check it out, go back to work until… DING… check E-mail, go back to work…. DING… etc…

About 2 years ago, I read an article by Henry Roediger, in which he suggested that academics try to avoid E-mail maddness by setting up various times throughout the day to check E-Mail, and leaving Outlook closed the rest of the time. I thought that was nuts: I’ve got a Windows Mobile device – why shouldn’t I continuously check my mail all day? After all, I can stay on top of things and keep my inbox nice and clean. I didn’t think much about his article until late last year when I thought “Gee, maybe I should try it”…

So I opened up Outlook and I de-selected any instant notification options for E-Mail. No Desktop alert, no ding, no change in the icon. Outlook could now run minimized and I had no idea how many E-Mails were flowing in. I also put my Pocket PC or Smartphone aside and refused to look at it (I even turned it over so I wouldn’t glance at it out of the corner of my eye). Guess what happened? I had some of the most productive afternoons on record. Flying through lecture notes, papers to grade, forums to check, students to meet with, papers to revise, etc… Sometime around the end of the day I’d bring up Outlook and find, usually, that nothing important had been missed. I’d do some quick replying, a bit of filing, and close up and go home. It seemed that I’d gotten to a happy place E-mail wise. I made the Outlook notification changes on my other PCs and prepared for a life of productivity.

But it wasn’t that simple. Some afternoons that I tried this, I did miss pretty important and urgent E-mails, which prompted people to call me, which was more of a distraction than E-mail had been in the first place. Other times I’d spend an afternoon working on a project that was delayed – a delay I didn’t hear about until after the work was done because the organizers had E-mailed me about the delay. Still other times I’d miss personal E-mails which I would have liked to reply to quickly. It seemed that turning off notifications to E-mail wasn’t a global godsend as much as a “works 50% of the time” measure. Now I could set up elaborate filters to let me know when certain E-mails come in while ignoring others, however that’s pretty time consuming given the fact that the vast majority of my contacts have no idea that you can set E-mails to higher or lower importance, and the fact that I work with E-mail from a variety of sources (e.g. academics, students, computer technicians, geeks, journalists, software vendors, friends, etc…). Thus far a perfect solution has eluded me.

Are you a continuously connected E-Mailer? Do you know the second an E-mail comes in? Or do you take an approach similar to Roediger’s, and have pre-set E-checking times? And what works best for you?

title="Read the full story on the Jon from PPCT site."

href="http://feeds.pocketpcthoughts.com/~r/pocketpcthoughts/~3/280764420/check-it-continuously-or-wait-the-e-mail-debate.html" >Read More at Original Site
(continue reading…)

• TrendMicro’s Online Virus Scanner (Housecall)
  • http://housecall.trendmicro.com
• John Savill’s FAQ For Windows
  • http://www.windowsitpro.com/windowsnt20002003faq/
• SpyBot Search & Destroy
  • http://spybot.safer-networking.de/en/index.html
• LavaSoft (Makers of Ad-aware)     http://www.lavasoft.de/
• Sites Good For Hardware Purchasing
  • http://www.nextag.com (Comparison Shopping)
  • http://www.froogle.com (Comparison Shopping)
  • http://www.pricewatch.com (Comparison Shopping)
  • http://www.tigerdirect.com (Fairly Good Deals, Nice Selection)
  • http://www.cdw.com (Selection Great, Prices Not – but if you need it…)
  • http://www.amazon.com (Fairly Good Selection)
  • http://www.slickdeals.net (Some great deals!)
    
• Adware, Spyware, and other unwanted “malware” – and how to remove them
  • http://www.cexx.org/adware.htm
• Download.com – Find Interesting Software     http://www.download.com
• Bootdisk.com – Will Make bootable floppys / CDs you can use for troubleshooting or new operating system installations    http://www.bootdisk.com
• Experts-Exchange.com    http://www.experts-exchange.com/
• SourceForge.net (Open Source (i.e. Free) Software for a variety of tasks)
  • http://www.sourceforge.net
• MCSE World by Daniel Petri   http://www.petri.co.il/
  • Forget A Windows Administrator Password? http://www.petri.co.il/forgot_administrator_password.htm
  • How To Install Windows XP: http://www.petri.co.il/install_windows_xp_pro.htm
• Emergency Boot CD’s (These can be used to boot into diagnostic and recovery tools)
  • http://ebcd.pcministry.com/
• Burn It & Boot It Linux Distributions (Can be fun to play with, and useful)
  • http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=102087&redir=1
• Broadband Forums – Troubleshooting & Overall Internet Support
  • http://www.broadbandreports.com/forums/all
• Linux Resources (If you’re interested in playing with it)
  • www.linuxiso.org
  • www.webmin.com
• Windows NT / 2000 / 2003 / XP Admin Knowledge Base
  • http://www.windowsnetworking.com/kbase/WindowsTips/
• Microsoft Support   http://support.microsoft.com/search/?adv=1
• Google (Use Direct Quotes and Advanced Search to get best results)
  • http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en
• LogMeIn.com – Remote System Administration for Free or Reasonable Prices
  • http://www.logmein.com
• Sites for Fun & Relaxation
  • http://www.snopes.com (Also a good virus hoax info site)
  • http://www.bash.org (Humorous IRC / IM Quotes)
  • http://www.fark.com (Humorous News Items From Around the Web)
  • http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com (Interested in mobile devices?)
  • http://www.imdb.com (Internet Movie Database – Great Time Waster)
  • http://www.hackaday.com (Various hacks & mods, great time wasting here as well!)
  • http://www.techcomedy.com (Comic Relief for those of us in IT)

  http://www.trillian.cc (The Best Instant Messenger Client on the Web – Nix the ads, bulk, and junk of AOL Instant Messenger or Yahoo!)

• The Hipster PDA (For those of you who don't need any more)

Ultimate Link Listing Compiled by Jon Westfall (jon@jonwestfall.com) Distribute as you like, yet please keep this note on here so that people may send me more great links!

(continue reading…)

• TrendMicro’s Online Virus Scanner (Housecall)
  • http://housecall.trendmicro.com
• John Savill’s FAQ For Windows
  • http://www.windowsitpro.com/windowsnt20002003faq/
• SpyBot Search & Destroy
  • http://spybot.safer-networking.de/en/index.html
• LavaSoft (Makers of Ad-aware)     http://www.lavasoft.de/
• Sites Good For Hardware Purchasing
  • http://www.nextag.com (Comparison Shopping)
  • http://www.froogle.com (Comparison Shopping)
  • http://www.pricewatch.com (Comparison Shopping)
  • http://www.tigerdirect.com (Fairly Good Deals, Nice Selection)
  • http://www.cdw.com (Selection Great, Prices Not – but if you need it…)
  • http://www.amazon.com (Fairly Good Selection)
  • http://www.slickdeals.net (Some great deals!)
    
• Adware, Spyware, and other unwanted “malware” – and how to remove them
  • http://www.cexx.org/adware.htm
• Download.com – Find Interesting Software     http://www.download.com
• Bootdisk.com – Will Make bootable floppys / CDs you can use for troubleshooting or new operating system installations    http://www.bootdisk.com
• Experts-Exchange.com    http://www.experts-exchange.com/
• SourceForge.net (Open Source (i.e. Free) Software for a variety of tasks)
  • http://www.sourceforge.net
• MCSE World by Daniel Petri   http://www.petri.co.il/
  • Forget A Windows Administrator Password? http://www.petri.co.il/forgot_administrator_password.htm
  • How To Install Windows XP: http://www.petri.co.il/install_windows_xp_pro.htm
• Emergency Boot CD’s (These can be used to boot into diagnostic and recovery tools)
  • http://ebcd.pcministry.com/
• Burn It & Boot It Linux Distributions (Can be fun to play with, and useful)
  • http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=102087&redir=1
• Broadband Forums – Troubleshooting & Overall Internet Support
  • http://www.broadbandreports.com/forums/all
• Linux Resources (If you’re interested in playing with it)
  • www.linuxiso.org
  • www.webmin.com
• Windows NT / 2000 / 2003 / XP Admin Knowledge Base
  • http://www.windowsnetworking.com/kbase/WindowsTips/
• Microsoft Support   http://support.microsoft.com/search/?adv=1
• Google (Use Direct Quotes and Advanced Search to get best results)
  • http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en
• LogMeIn.com – Remote System Administration for Free or Reasonable Prices
  • http://www.logmein.com
• Sites for Fun & Relaxation
  • http://www.snopes.com (Also a good virus hoax info site)
  • http://www.bash.org (Humorous IRC / IM Quotes)
  • http://www.fark.com (Humorous News Items From Around the Web)
  • http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com (Interested in mobile devices?)
  • http://www.imdb.com (Internet Movie Database – Great Time Waster)
  • http://www.hackaday.com (Various hacks & mods, great time wasting here as well!)
  • http://www.techcomedy.com (Comic Relief for those of us in IT)

  http://www.trillian.cc (The Best Instant Messenger Client on the Web – Nix the ads, bulk, and junk of AOL Instant Messenger or Yahoo!)

• The Hipster PDA (For those of you who don't need any more)

Ultimate Link Listing Compiled by Jon Westfall (jon@jonwestfall.com) Distribute as you like, yet please keep this note on here so that people may send me more great links!

(continue reading…)

Well, its official now, I’m a hardcore geek. I just had DirecWay installed at my lake house so I will be plugged in no matter what dwelling I am at. It works pretty good so far… and I’ll report more later on it as I use it.
My mom left me a voicemail telling me that she was heading up here around 9:30, so she should get here before T, H, and K leave with me at 2.