Preparing for CES 2009

In preparation for CES, I am setting up for live blogging. As long as I have WiFi or a 3g signal, tbis should work nicely.

Sent from my HTC FUZE™, a Windows Mobile® smartphone from AT&T

All Your Worlds Are Belong to Us

In the wake of Psion’s stated intention to start a campaign to take back the term netbook even though they had apparently forgotten about their trademark for a year or so, more “day late, dollar short” tech lawsuits are cropping up.

Worlds.com, a company that produces stand alone virtual worlds primarily for corporations and celebrities is suing NCsoft, maker of several big-time MMOs such as City of Heroes, City of Villains and Guild Wars for patent infringement, even though those games are now all several years old.

To be specific, the patent…

relates to computer architecture for a three-dimensional graphical multi-user interactive virtual world system… which provide a graphical representation of the player’s character (avatar) wherein movement of the character in virtual space alters what the character views.

Just in that snippet, and being no lawyer, I could think of dozens if not hundreds of companies and games that could be sued over that patent. This is similar to Microsoft trying to patent Hotkeys.

Lest you think Worlds.com’s own legal department is handling this, the company handed the matter over to Patent Infringement headhunters General Patent Corporation who seem to specialize in “David vs. Goliath” lawsuits such as this one, or put another way, they try to use broad and poorly worded patents to fleece companies who are actually doing something with the technology on behalf of those companies who simply know how to game patent law.

Of course, how they missed such Virtual World giants as Worlds of Warcraft and Second Life I am not really sure. Perhaps the exact ‘architecture” they are referring to differ in some indescribable, elegant way…or they didn’t think they had a hope in hell of taking on Blizzard or Linden Labs in court. One of those.

Z-Day: The Morning After (More or Less)

OK, now we all know that the problem was connected to the leap year, and that almost all of the Zune 30s are now indeed debricked. The world did NOT end, no black holes were suddenly formed at the Earth’s core….oh no, wait…that’s the Hadron Collider Thingie, the busted one. Well, umm…nothing REALLY TRULY AWFUL happened due to a day without Zune 30s…did it?

So what EXACTLY went wrong?

Well, thankfully Yahoo Tech News is here to explain it all to us, with an impressive assist from AeroXperience’s Bryant Zadegan.

Apparently the code that did the dirty deed was…..

#define ORIGINYEAR 1980 BOOL ConvertDays(UINT32 days, SYSTEMTIME* lpTime){ int dayofweek, month, year; UINT8 *month_tab;

//Calculate current day of the week dayofweek = GetDayOfWeek(days);

year = ORIGINYEAR;

while (days > 365) { if (IsLeapYear(year)) { if (days > 366) { days -= 366; year += 1; } } else { days -= 365; year += 1; } }

Clear?

All Greek to you (like it is to me)?

After the jump, see the explanation Yahoo Tech News offered we laymen (and laywomen).

CES 2009 - Connecting with Us

CES is a massive consumer electronics show. It’s an important show, but unless you plan to cover all facets of the show, it’s not a must attend for what’s on the massive show floor. What does make CES a must attend are the shows within the show. Digital Experience, a press only event held the night before the CES show floor opens, is a must attend for me. I have been going to and loving the Pepcom events along side CES and CTIA for 5+ years. Recently, another event at CES that has become a must attend is Showstoppers. These and seeing fellow site owners, MVPs, and Mobius members is the main reason I go to CES. The social aspect is one that stays with you for months. Of course the show is great too, but it’s the side shows, the social aspect, and the parties that make it worth all the hassle. When I say hassle, I mean hassle.

Anyhow, Jack Cook and I will both be out in Vegas this week. If you would like to connect with us, I will provide a mini schedule. Please contact me via email asap to let me know to look for you as well. I chose to skip a bunch of individual company meetings this year to have more time for the show floor and for meetings with friends. Read on for the schedule.

The Skinny on Jobs

Everyone’s been wondering if Steve Jobs, the head honcho at Apple, is sick again.  He previously had pancreatic cancer.  The rumors ran rampant again recently, when Apple decided to cancel their appearance at Macworld.  People were wondering why Apple/Jobs didn’t address his situation, feeding the rumor mill even more.  But finally, as reported by Yahoo!, Mr. Jobs has discussed his health:

Jobs, 53, said in a public letter that his thinness had been a mystery even to him and his doctors until a few weeks ago, when “sophisticated blood tests” confirmed that he has “a hormone imbalance that has been `robbing’ me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy.”

Jobs said he will undergo a “relatively simple” treatment and will remain in charge of Apple.

Why is his health so important to everyone?  Simply put, the stock price of Apple depends alot on the confidence consumers have in the company.  With Jobs at the helm the company has done very well.  But fears of his possible departure due to illness would likely cut the stock price severely.  But with the news of his treatable illness Apple stock rose from $3.92, 4.3 percent, to $94.67 in midday trading.

Glad he’s ok.

T-Mobile Shadow 2009

It’s not the T-Mobile Shadow II as you would expect, it’s going to be called the Shadow 2009. When the original T-Mobile Shadow came out, it was kind of ground breaking. It was one of the 1st Windows Mobile phones to radically change the default UI. It took some criticism, but it also took in a good deal of praise. Well, BGR has some info about the Shadow 2009, but a big problem is looming for it, no 3G support? I realize T-Mobile’s 3G network is young and not widespread, but they are doing themselves no favors if they leave 3G out alltogether.

Anyhow, here are some specs from BGR…

Not-so-fresh Meat

Just letting everybody know that the “Bubba” is now going to give this a shot. I’ve been developing software for 30+ years and using PPC’s for almost 10, so hopefully I can contribute to the best site on the web! Stay tuned …

The Ultimate iPod Accessory

I’ve been thinking about my drive to work.  It’s one to one and a half hours each way.  My factory car stereo, as most, is mediocre at best, so to make my drive more palatable I upgraded the speakers.  It was pretty easy to do so, and not very expensive.  I also installed a $30 Scosche FM modulator so I can listen to my iPod.

To install this I had to remove the receiver, plug the car’s antenna into the modulator, then plug the modulator’s antenna into the back of the receiver.  I then tapped into the power cord of my cigarette lighter for a power source.  It took about 1 hour and was fairly simple.  The FM modulator, like wireless FM modulators, converts the sound of the iPod into an FM signal.  There is a plug that connects into the iPod’s headphone jack to provide music.  This was fine for a few months, but the problem is that the FM sound band is far less broad than a cd player’s sound.  According to Crutchfield,

Answering this question relies upon two technical specifications: signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and frequency response (FR). SNR is a measure of signal strength compared to background noise in the signal or equipment. A higher number, in decibels, is better. FR is a measure of how much of the audio spectrum, from bass to treble, gets reproduced. It’s measured as a range in Hertz, and the wider the range, the better.

Top 15 Posts of 2008

As requested by staff and a few readers, our top posts of 2008 based on traffic. I don’t harp on traffic numbers much, so I don’t have many resources to share, but I did put Google Analytics in place for our advertiser back in January 2008.

1. AT&T Tilt (8925) Review - Mobilitysite - This post was actually made in 2007, but it received the most hits for 2008 according to Google Analytics.
2. Review : HTC FUZE from AT&T - This one was late 2008 and got tons of traffic too.
3. Finally! A way to block spam text messages on my AT&T cell phone. - I didn’t realize spam was such an issue…
4. Blackberry Kickstart? A Clamshell Blackberry. Huh? - Blackberries are hot…
5. HTC Diamond Keyboard Hacked and Available…
6. Remove Toshiba Bluetooth Drivers and Install Microsoft Bluetooth Stack
7. 30 Reasons Windows Mobile is Superior to iPhone - Most of them have been fixed since this article, but some still ring true.
8. Import Lyrics to iTunes…Fast!
9. HTC Diamond Tweaks
10. A Stranger in a Strange Land: a Windows Mobile guy meets iPhone
11. Review : HP iPAQ 310 Travel Companion
12. Blackberry Storm Reviews Everywhere… - refer to #4
13. How to make your Windows Mobile touch screen finger-friendly
14. Sprint MP6950? HTC Touch Pro? Maybe…
15. Z-Day Hits Zune 30s - This was wild. One of the last posts in 2008 got a ton of traffic. TONS OF TRAFFIC, and a lot of comments too.

Fresh Meat

I’ve just joined the Mobility Site team as a news editor.  I’ll probably be focusing on Windows Mobile devices here.  I’ve been around Windows Mobile since it was Windows CE back in the late 90s, and have posted here and elsewhere as Pony99CA.  If you want to read more about me than you really should know, you can check out my History page at my personal site.

We now return to our regularly scheduled posts.

Fail-words

Over at What’s My Pass, an excellent blog concerning passwords and security, I recently discovered a list of the 500 most overused and therefore, WORST passwords in the world.

From the moment people started using passwords, it didn’t take long to realize how many people picked the very same passwords over and over. Even the way people misspell words is consistent. In fact, people are so predictable that most hackers make use of lists of common passwords just like these. To give you some insight into how predictable humans are, the following is a list of the 500 most common passwords. If you see your password on this list, please change it immediately. Keep in mind that every password listed here has been used by at least hundreds if not thousands of other people.

So what do we think of when we think of passwords? Well, it seems we think mainly of simplicity, leisure time, and SEX!

Some of my favorites on the list include the number one most common password in the world, 123456, followed closely by the so stupid it is almost smart, password. I was also very fond of Eagle1 at 314 (more Space:1999 fans out there?) letmein at 11 (a bit plaintive and small sounding) and Jenny’s classic number in a bit of 80s retro, 8675309 at 371. Of the sex terms, I enjoyed the sheer hyperactive desperation of 696969 at number 9. Of course there are a lot of even more obscene or sexual terms (we geeks are a randy bunch) along with first names, car models and sports teams. All in all, the list is fascinating as a snapshot into the lives and fantasies of computer users.

The big surprises for me? Default or admin didn’t make the list. Perhaps there is hope yet.

For a good laugh, a little insight, and some practical advice on what password NOT to use, check out the full list HERE.

Thanks to David Spark for the tip.

Palm’s new Smartphone “iPhone like”

Crunchgear is circulated a report from “a trusted source” concerning the new Nova-powered smartphone Palm which will be launched Thursday at CES. The description of the new device is pretty much as expected, with the dreaded and heavily over-used term “iPhone-like” being mentioned by the source. The source says the smartphone is being made by HTC and has a large portrait touchscreen (larger then that found on the Treos) with a slide out QWERTY keyboard. In fact the description is much like the “iPhone Pro” concept art that has been making the rounds of late, except that rather then sliding out landscape-style as the dream iPhone’s keyboard does, this one is expected to slide out portrait style.

The source calls the Nova operating system “amazing” and says it will feature media functions along with standard PIM apps. I have to assume that Palm will throw every possible feature and the kitchen sink into this phone as it is clearly intended to showcase Nova as a worthy descendant of the Palm legacy, now a bit old fashioned and shopworn. Now is not the time for a G1 style incremental release, with many features pushed back to make sure the device itself was launched on schedule. If Palm’s new smartphone gets hit with the general disappointment that the G1 suffered at release, then I fear it will quickly go the way of the Foleo…in other words, nowhere fast.

However, if this device really does have an iPhone like user experience, coupled with a dynamic new OS, slide out keyboard and Palm’s rep in the enterprise community, this phone could replace the new crop of Nokia and HTC products as the business smartphone of choice. Personally I could live in a mobile world where Palm and WinMo take on RIM for the business users, leaving Apple to feast on the consumer market. I definitely have my fingers crossed for Thursday.