Enable Service Books on Blackberry for IM (Yahoo!, Google Talk, Live, etc.)

I couldn’t get Yahoo messenger to install on my AT&T Blackberry 8800, so I went off looking for a solution.  One of the guys at work came up with this workaround, so I thought I would share it.

1. Install Yahoo! IM from: http://www.blackberry.com/devicesoftware/entry.do?code=yahoo
2. Turn off the wireless.
3. Go to Options, Advanced Options, Service Book. Delete every service book on your Blackberry.
4. Connect the handheld to your PC. Open Blackberry Desktop Manager. Click Backup/Restore. Restore the backup file
5. Reboot the handheld.
6. Perform an Enterprise Activation to re-synch your service books (if necessary).

 

*Not all IM apps work for all Blackberry models or carriers. For example, Live Messenger does not work on an AT&T 8300 series.

 

References:

 

http://forums.wireless.att.com/cng/board/message?board.id=rim&message.id=15795

 

http://www.blackberryforums.com/blackberry-network/49131-using-rim-s-yahoo-messenger-client-cingular-wireless-blackberry-handsets.html

 

Interesting rant about application developers who design databases

A friend at work sent me this link to a SQL blog that has a pretty interesting rant about companies that feel it is OK for developers to design SQL databases when they wouldn’t want the DBA doing application development.

http://sqlblog.com/blogs/andrew_kelly/archive/2007/09/27/double-standard.aspx

Fix for network performance problems in MS Vista

I have been having problems with my Outlook 2007 performing very poorly on Vista as opposed to the same version of Outlook in XP.  The messages are slow to arrive whether in cahced mode or not.  Also the folders take forever to synch with the exchange server when starting up.  The following information came to me via a friend and has a link to another blog about the same problem.

If you are running vista, please follow these instructions:

 

- Run a command prompt (cmd.exe) as an Administrator (right-click cmd prompt icon and click Run As Administrator
- Type: netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

 

If you want the details as to why, please read the following blog post. It talks about how the problem affects remote desktop, but it is a network tuning issue that could affect other applications as well.

 

http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/microsoft/remote-desktop-slow-problem-solved.asp

 

A great MP3 listening experience

 

One of the things I truly enjoy is phenomenal personal audio.  I am very picky about it.  Only the best in sound quality will do.  I have a variety of tastes in music, but one thing remains true throughout; lousy sound quality ruins the music.  I have searched for a while for a good sounding MP3 player and good headphones.  I have found what I believe to be the ultimate combination for portable audio.  I have a set of Grado SR-80s that I listen to at work and at home.  These are awesome, but they are not very convenient to wear on the beach or on a plane.  Plus, they look like they are from 1976 for those who don’t know what they are.  My solution is the Sennheiser PX-100s. These cans fold up smartly into a plastic clamshell case that has a cord wrap that keeps the kinks out of the cables while protecting the headphones from dirt and debris.  The sound is more bassy than the Grados with not quite as much clarity, but you have to listen to them side by side to pick that up.  The punch from the lower end is phenomenal.  They are open air design and very light.  Like the Grado’s, others will be able to hear what you are listening to if you crank it up since the cans are not sealed.  I like the sound of the open air designs as my personal preference since it gives you much more presence.  Like the Grado’s the price tag was unbeatable.  They can be found online for about $40 new.  Plug them up to any MP3 player for an immediate improvement in sound quality of the crappy phones that come with them.  However, my match for them is the incredible sounding Cowon iAudio U3.   I have the white model in 1GB form.  It has a flash memory and a rechargeable battery.  It recharges by being connected to the PC via USB.  It supports playforsure DRM purchased music as well as a huge variety of formats.  Here is a quote from their site: iAUDIO U3 supports for not only MP3, but also WMA, ASF, WAV(Up to 48KHz Stereo), OGG and FLAC formats with brilliant reproduction.  FLAC is the Free Lossless Audio Codec that is available free as open source ripping software.  If you want the ultimate in sound, use FLAC to rip your CDs and transfer them here to listen.  The iAudio is not for the average iPod owner.  This is a fairly technical device that has been cleaned up regularly with firmware upgrades.  It requires some technical knowledge to get it to work with all of your formats.  For instance, if you have DRM music that must be transferred with Windows Media Player then you have to put the device in MTP mode and turn it off and back on for WMP to recognize it.  While it is in this mode, WMP will not see the music transferred to it while it is in UMS mode, or USB Media System file device.  If you don’t want to use WMP (i.e. you want to use OGG or FLAC codecs) then leave the device in UMS mode and it looks like another drive to your computer that you can drag and drop files to.

It also supports videos and pictures, but the screen is small, but bright.  The movies are nice, but I rarely use it for that.  To transfer movies, you have to use the included JetShell software to convert them to the proper format and resolution.  It has FM and voice recording as well as inline recording.  This means that you can play a song from another source (MP3, CD player etc) and record it to the iAudio directly.  It supports lyrics and my favorite is album art.  If the ID3 tag of the music has an album art it will save it with the song and display it when the song is played.  The best thing about it is the sound.  I have listened to a lot of MP3 players from others here in the family as well as other friends and coworkers.  This unit blows them away.  It has 60mW of power (30mW + 30mW) and several audio tuning enhancements.    This is from their website.

If you get a chance to pick one up, you won’t regret it.  This is the best combination I have found and every time I use it, I end up grinning.

Solution to MS Passport login problems under Vista

One of the problems I have been having with my installation at work has been the fact that I couldn’t sign in to any Microsoft Passport supported services or sites including Hotmail and MSN Messenger.  I had blamed this on Vista or the new IE 7.06 that is installed in Vista.  It turns out through our troubleshooting with MS that it has to do with the Trend Micro IWSS content filter and the way it appends data on the tail end of URL requests.  The fix is to delete a key from the Registry.  Remember to back up your registry before deleting anything.  The key is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\User Agent\Post Platform

Delete the entire Post Platform key.  That has it fixed for now.

Cool site for website color schemes

I found this site which has lots of content pertaining to proper CSS usage and tricks.  It also has a pretty cool tool for generating color schemes for websites.  It is particularly helpful to people like me that know very little about the proper contrasting and complementing colors.  I am working on some other themes for the website and blog and allow you to set your own preference and store it in a cookie so that our site looks the way you want when you come back.  That is one of the beauties of CSS.

A fix for running Trillian under MS Vista and keeping glass mode

One of the great things about the new MS Vista OS is the glass or Aero mode.  It makes the title bars of application windows semi-opaque as well as adding a lot of animations and graphical elements to the UI.  Without this functionality there aren’t a lot of reasons to upgrade since I am still finding things that don’t work with Vista.  One of these things that don’t work is MSN Messenger 8.1.  It won’t sign in.  As a work around for this, I loaded Trillian messenger client that does work with Vista.  The downside to using Trillian is that it put Vista into a non-glass mode.  That kind of defeats the purpose for running Vista.  I have found a fix for this now:

1. Open Apple QuickTime
2. Go to Edit/Preferences/QuickTime Preferences
3. Click on Video Settings on the drop down box
4. Check Safe Mode (GDI Only) on the radio box

Urge loads a never ending job on your system

 

While trying out online subscription music services, I noticed that the music service added a job on the Windows Task Manager that never seemed to end.  The job was MTVMediaScanner.  It was constantly using disk I/O and processor time.  I let the job run for days, but it never quit grinding away.  I assume that this job is realated to the auto playlist generator and scans your music files looking for trends.  I killed the job with no noticeable effect on the Urge player or Windows Media Player.  However, everytime I rebooted it started back up.  I found the registry entry to disable permanently:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\MTV Networks\Urge\Scanner
Set the enabled value to 0

This seems to have no effect on the player and the job no longer appears in the task manager.  I haven’t been able to find online what the job does or why it never stops.

Another MP3 player replaced

The Napster free MP3 player didn’t last long.  It was washed in the washing machine and will no longer hold a charge.  I have replaced my son’s dead MP3 with a new one from SanDisk.  We have had good luck with SanDisk MP3s and both the girls have one that have lasted a long time.  They are not rechargeable and use a single AAA battery.  I got James one of the newer models a Sansa M230 (sdmx3-512)

The sound is pretty good but the included earphones are not that great. 

My only dislike about the unit so far is the thickness.  The model that the girls have, the SDMX1-256 for Rachel and the SDMX1-512 for Lauren are much thinner. 

Online subscription music

Another service that I have been trying is Napster.  Napster is also WMP compliant as well as supports Plays for Sure devices.  It is a very similar service to Urge so I won’t repeat some of the information here.  It only streams at 128kbs and downloads 192kbs WMA files.  The downsides to Napster are the lack of album covers in WMP and I haven’t found any videos on the service.  They have the same artist restrictions on the same artists (i.e. The Eagles).  Napster requires a credit card to begin its’ seven day trial and I didn’t cancel in time so the automatically billed me the $14.95 for the following month.  The service is the same monthly price for Napster to go and I haven’t seen the price for a prepaid year.  They did have a sweet deal on a 3-month prepaid subscription that gives you a 512MB mp3 player.  Since my oldest son had just washed his in the washing machine this was a free $50 player for a 3-month subscription.  The player arrived about 2 weeks later and sounds pretty good.  It doesn’t have FM or recording capabilities, but it suits a 10 year old just fine.  Napster also has the sync capabilities, but the interface isn’t as nice and it will double up songs on your hard drive if you already had it.  This is a bummer since the Urge sync didn’t do this.  If you need an MP3 player this is a pretty good offer, but other than that, Urge seems to be my choice so far for services.  Also, the Napster tracks on my MP3 player did stop playing after the trial even though my subscription automatically renewed.  This required a resync of the player to turn them back on. 

The fat client version of Napster (the non WMP plugin) is an 11Mb download, but it is a little better interface than the plugin.  It has album covers, but it doesn’t do as good a job of organizing your other music that didn’t come from Napster as WMP does.  It does add a burn component, but this is in WMP as well.  You have to import other tracks into the library to get them in the fat client.  The ripping component of Napster caps at 128kbps and only offers WMA as a file type.  I prefer WMA variable at the 192kbps setting.