First off - never make a fucking phone dialing app that is incapable of accepted a paste of a phone number!!! You'd think that'd be a no brainer but way too many phone dialers do not allow paste. So you find a number in a web page or an email or you put it in a file - whatever. You select the phone number and you go to the phone app and want to paste it in. There's no paste. Stupid phone!

Secondly you would think that a phone application would be, oh, I don't know.... RESPONSIVE PERHAPS. Many play back those button tones we all know and love. But most phones can't keep up with even the slowest of typists. How hard is this to sense the button was pushed and immediately (I mean right away, with out hesitation - IMMEDITATELY!!! - did I say immediately?) play the fucking tone and be ready for the next button push. Come on folks, this is not rocket science nor is this a lot of work that the phone needs to do in order to accomplish this minor fucking miracle - yet on both Windows Mobile based phones and now my Android based phone this constantly happens. Is it hardware related? Again, how much hardware is needed?!? My old land line never seemed to have an issue accomplishing this task - why can't my $$$ phone do it?!? Write the damn phone app in assembler and make it (and the tones for that matter) memory resident so you have no excuses WRT speed! Really is this too much to ask?!?

And another thing about phones - why is it that the most common things I do require push and hold in order to work. Not just phones, sometimes accessories. For example, my Bluetooth headset of choice (Sony Ericson HBH-980) has a recessed power button and you must hold for a few seconds to turn on. Now I understand the concept of requiring such a delay to distinguish between a real turn on/off event and an inadvertent one but trust me you would not be inadvertently hitting this power button.

And why is it that I must always wrestle with Bluetooth to get it to work right. My BT headset can handle both "Media audio" (from the media player) and "Phone audio" from say and incoming all. Why the distinction? I don't care. Just call it audio. You don't know how many time I try to connect my BT headset and only the phone audio gets connected. No media audio. So I try to connect again. No go. Try powering off the BT headset and back on. Nope. Try turning off BT on the phone and back on No go. Then the phone hangs. Bluetooth is the only thing that seems to have the power to hang my phone, requiring me to open the case and yank the battery in order to reboot!

And then when listening to Bluetooth often I'll get gaps of silence, especially when starting a new song or podcast, as if it needs to buffer stuff or whatever. It's real annoying. Why is Bluetooth so hard, flunky and trouble ridden?!?

So I go to activate one of them and they ask for my 17 gillion digit card number then the last 4 numbers of my business checking account number. Well I don't know that so I need to go to the Wells Fargo bank site to get that. While I'm doing that it keeps saying "Sorry I didn't get that" and eventually I exceed my limit of retries. Hey I was just trying to get to your slow web site!!!.

Of course I'm dumped into the tech support queue where some ditzy blonde answers the phone. She tells me that she'll need to have my full business account number. I tell her I don't have that. I only have the last 4 because that's all your web page gives me. Normally I have to open up statement to get the full account number but I can't do that because this account is too new and doesn't have any statements. "Well you could just look at your checks..." to which I quickly interject "Listen sweetheart I haven't used checks in 18 years!". Then she tells me that she could help me but I'd need to give not one, nor two, nor even three but four forms of identification in order for her to help me! I told her that in no way would I be comfortable with that because everybody knows you don't achieve real security until after 20 forms of ID are presented and hung up!

OK stop and think here for a second... Why can the automated phone system validate me with just the mere last four digits of my account number, which is probably pretty damn easy to obtain, but the human needs the whole account number and/or 4 forms of ID?!?

Bottom line: Since I'm now at the web site I hang up on the dtiz and simply go back around and punch in my 4 digits and I'm validated. Stupid is as stupid does - and I ain't stupid - but I do see it all the time!

And then processes spawned from the original process go in the normal queue, so even if you put the first process in the low queue, the next process pops out in the normal queue. The correct way to do this is to have the original process, the parent process, in the low queue and have it insure any children created are also in the low queue!

Now I used to be that you could verify that with DNS, in particular you could use nslookup to find each of the names and see they have the same IP address. But more and more, Corporate IT DNS stuff is screwed up, perhaps in the name of security, such that they don't always resolve:

So we can look that one up but we can't lookup the other:

However ping works! And verifies that this is the same machine. So why doesn't DNS know about this?

Another pet peave of mine is people using either IP addresses instead of names (Do you refer to your friends by their cell phone numbers?) or using fully qualified machine names all the time when you don't need to...

Now before you say "Well they didn't know and they were trying to be helpful providing you with all the information" consider this: What the hell was the zip file for? There was only 1 file in it. Why zip it? "Well Andy, you hard ass, at least they are saving space because the zip file will compress it". Well then, riddle me this batman, why then capture the entire damn screen probably in the wasteful bmp format! And if you just wished to send me a bunch of screen captures why didn't you put only those in a zip file instead of having to call Word - and all it's inefficiencies - into play?

The end result is that they do it in the most inefficient and complicated way they can find!

So the conversation goes as follows:

Aside from the atrocious English spelling and grammar of this supposed College educated support tech... First off, why's he explaining my problem back to me? I know my problem - I'm not stupid.

Secondly, maybe ya should come to the party prepared! I mean the problem here is simple - a user simply wants to set his password. Have you read the trouble ticket? Do you understand the issues involve? Great then contact the user. But here clearly he state "please give me one minute" - Then clearly takes several! Shouldn't he have the solution in hand?

Note: "^M" included to indicate where the line wrap occurs as this blog software will wrap it differently

Email clients then linkify the first part (http://gisclarifyweb.somewhere.com/eSupport/eSupportjsp/MenuSystem/CaseViewMS.j) but fail to include the second part (sp?casenum=G03519757) resulting in the link not working and making the recipient have to do the work of piecing the URL back together. And with some humongous URLs (and you've seen them) this can be quite an effort. Move this to your small cell phone in a bumping bus ride and this is next to impossible!

So this has spawned an entire industry most notably tinyurl.com and friends. But why? Why not instead simple think up a meaning few words to describe the link and make a proper anchor href. For example, the above is talking about a Clarity case number of G03519757. So that should be the link text. Viola you have G03519757. This magic is achieved in Thunderbird - my mailer of choice - simply by highlighting the link text, typing Ctrl-L for link and pasting in the proper URL (In Outlock you select Insert: Hyperlink). There! You're done. Was that that hard? You've not only made it much easier on the receiver of your email by providing a simple - and attractive - link that will not break by being wrapped by any email client capable of rendering HTML (i.e. most of them) and for any incapable, they'll see the link in all its ugly glory and improper and broken wrapping they they must be accustomed to by now anyway!

So why don't people do this regularly? I'm not sure but my guesses run neck and neck between lazy and ignorant. What's your guess?

Why is it that organizations use Outlook at all? And then when they do they have their address books set up for <lastname>, <firstname>? That's not how I think of people - by their last name first! And to add injury to insult, often looking up people as <firstname> <lastname> fails!

I use Thunderbird and one of the first things I set up is an LDAP directory in the address book for the organization. Often this involves getting the secret LDAP info like server name and most importantly baseDN. Surprisingly I have been successful in getting this information most of the time! Once connected I have access to that elusive Outlook Global Address Book because essentially it's just and LDAP implementation. And my <firstname> <lastname> searches automagically start working directly in Thunderbird. Yippie!

Still there are broken search tools like SameTime's Add New Contact dialog which fails if you <firstname <lastname> search. Coupled with organizations propensity to use <lastname>, <firstname> is "Jessie Scott" "Jessie Scott" or "Scott Jessie"?

I don't know about you but I'm getting really tired of other people "protecting" me and treating me like a person who cannot protect nor fend for myself. I enter into relationships of my own choosing - of my own volition. But my government doesn't trust that I can make the right decision for myself and must force me to do what they think is right at the point of a gun. Didn't we used to overthrow such tyrants? Perhaps it's time to do so again!

If I wish to perform contract work for a client for years and at pretty handsome rate and I must then get my own benefits, to pick and choose those that I want and not get those which I determine I don't want, if I am happy with such a relationship then isn't it I who have voluntarily chosen to engage in such a relationship?!? If the government still wishes to steal my hard earned earnings in the form of taxation and they don't believe I'm paying my "fair share" then that is an issue between my government and me - not an issue between my government and my customers/clients. Take me to tax court if you must and I will show you I am complying with your silly rules for membership in the Socialist States of America.

What happened to the thought that we should limit the abuse of forceful power that the government wields against our lives in the forms of such laws? Unlike the government, private business does not hold a gun to my head to force me to work for them. If they did, then that, and that alone, is the proper place for government to step in and protect my rights which are being violated against my will in a non-voluntary fashion. Now government implements this abuse of power indirectly by forcing private business to comply with legislation designed to protect me, even against my protestations to the contrary.

We see this in spades by private businesses asking all of these security questions that provide no real security, and collecting even more personal information, thus making identity theft even more likely, all in the name of 9/11 and the Patriot Act and "for my protection" as they say. But what if I don't want such protection or if I feel such protection is actually counter-intuitive or that it provide less security because now the identity thieves have a much more convenient target - your cell phone company's computer systems (and don't tell me you haven't heard of such theft of that information).

Lord please stop my government from forcing me to protect myself from that which I've voluntarily decided I do not wish to be protected from? IOW if you need me to sign a release I will gladly do it but stop forcing me to live my life as you see fit! It used to be that such an ideal was esteemed in this country but not it seems to be reviled! Why?!?

So the tech closes my ticket. I reopen it stating "I still can't log in so this issue has not been resolved". He closes it stating that "Well you need the netgroup - go here to request that. There's nothing for us to do so I'll close this ticket again". I reopen it stating "Until and unless I can log into Unix machines and access Unix shares this ticket is not resolved". Again he closes it.

So I give him an analogy - I tell him if I go to the car dealership to have my brakes done and I get a call from the service manager saying my request is completed only to come to the dealership and be presented with a piece of paper telling me how I can request brake pads I'd be fucking pissed! It's not my job to pick the store where you'll purchase brake pads for my brake job! It's the responsibility of the auto mechanic or the dealership to resolved that!!! IOW it's part of the job and you should not involve nor expect the customer (i.e. me) to have to deal with this issue.

He states he understands but he's just following SOP. I tell him "Well then the process is broken and should be fixed".

You see I'm struggling to understand why the support process is so horrible at such corporations. We would not accept such "service" from our auto mechanic, plumber, etc. - why do we tolerate it from our helpdesk team?

OK so I'm signing up for access to the Unix shares and machines so I can use Clearcase. I need to use Clearcase! I mean I'm the Clearcase admin right?. So first off there's a process, and process documentation to go through - a 4 Meg 70 page process! And the step by step guide is, of course, old and wrong. Muddling trough I submit a ticket to some support group...

Gripe 1: Why do I need to provide all kinds of information for this simple request? IOW Why isn't a simple one "I need Clearcase access to X" sufficient! Oh well. Rule - keep things simple.

So I get an email with yet another 8 step procedure that I must complete to get this access. Plus the way they describe it - Go here, click there, put your username here, search for this, select that - for most users (what if I'm not most users? How would I know if I'm an exception)? Etc. Then submit to start the process!

Ah I see a problem here, they tell me to go to this page and search for that then I'm presented another page. Why not give me the link to that other page? Well because the web programmer didn't program it such that it has a unique URL. Bad design!

Gripe 2 : Why must I follow various individualized steps? If I must fill in certain fields certain ways, why not give me a link that fills them in for me? Reduce the steps! Never tell the user to go to a web page then start clicking to go to yet other web sites - just point them to their final destination!

Gripe 3: What do you mean start the process?!? I started the process last step. Aren't we in process?!?

Gripe 4: Waiting. Where possible eliminate user wait time! This is the 21st century! Wait times of over a few nanoseconds shouldn't be there. Now I know sometimes you need to get "approval" of the boss or whatever but make it quick.

Gripe 5: After we complete this we get more instructions?!? You're kidding right?

Gripe 6: Never send email that does not have a proper reply to address. Doing so assumes your communication is perfect. It's not!

With Linux there's always one more resource, google the problem and you'll find a forum somewhere with the answer, even if it means you'll have to recompile something. It's better to recompile than to fall back to reformat and reinstall...

You just got through saying you don't have to google forums for answers and now you do!

All that said, I've been using Unix (then Linux, etc) both professionally and personally since ~92. I run a Linux based web server, mail server, etc. out of my house and have done so since around '99 and I just switched to Ubuntu 9.04 for my everyday desktop. Here's some real world experience for you from the last few weeks.

No need for drivers? Well the relatively recent ATI Radeon 3200HD card that came with my new system that I just bought doesn't work with Jaunty. There are "open source" drivers but they don't do accelerated 3D graphics. The proprietary drivers do 3D accelerated graphics but don't work with dual monitors and cause X server crashes because 9.04 decided to use the latest X server. With no solution in sight I just dropped ~$100 on an Nvidia 9500 GT card. Got it home and it does more but I still can't run compiz (says Composite extension not installed). Speaking with people on the forums and they're telling me I have to add stuff to /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Tried that, even rebooted, didn't work. Some say use "Composite: 1" others say no, no it's "Composite: Enabled". Uppercase, lowercase? Who knows, no error messages are generated - it just doesn't work. Running regedit is easier compared to this!

Wanted to run Boxee. Sorry, no 64 bit version of Boxee is available. Search the forums. Pointed to a post that describes how to build Boxee from scratch given patch files, etc. Download them and the source. Attempt to compile. Oops, need to install gcc - was gonna do that anyway... Compiling... Oops missing package X. Install that. Recompile... Missing package Y.. Install that... recompiling... Looks like it's getting somewhere. Oops linker died - missing libraries. Gee why wasn't this in the build instructions? Oh yeah, right, because I'm doing bleeding edge building now... Finally after a few hours of this I get a 64 bit version of Boxee!!!

Try to run it. Buzzt! Sorry, won't run on the ATI card - needs accelerated 3D graphics!

Last night install new Nvidia card and try to configure it. Get the 3D graphics going. Start Boxee. Play an MP3 file... Segv! Wonderful! Try a video. Wow, plays OK. Try an online video from Comedy Central? Hangs. No way to get out of this full screen application. Can't reboot, can't get to a terminal! Have to power cycle machine! OK run Boxee windowed from now on. Try again. Video plays at double speed, no sound at all! Crap. Try another one. This one plays, for about a minute and then goes to double time/no sound. Wonderful. Let's try Music again. Oops! Hang again. Kill the window. Restart. Try again. Segv.

Don't let anybody kid you that Linux is without it's problems, trials, tribulation and frustration. On the plus side you can compile and configure things to your liking. On the negative side, except for us pinhead, geek, jerks (of which I count myself) your on your own!

• You really need to describe what the various functionality is supposed to do. We could guess but that'd be just a guess. You need to explain what things like "Refresh Feed" is supposed to do so we can test it and tell you if it is doing what it's advertised to do!
• You should establish a direct communication mechanism between the beta testers and the developers such that the developer can describe the new functionality added for this beta, how it is intended to work, etc. such that the beta tester can test it and give feedback directly to the developer about what he developed.
  
• Podcast episodes need a meaningful pop up menu that include such entries as:
• Queue
  
• Download (this episode)
• Mark episode read (This will remove the episode from the queue WRT this podcast feed and remove any downloaded files that represent this episode.
• Information about this episode
• Podcast episodes should allow the user to select them and after selected they should scroll to the left/right much like they already do when they are added to the Now Playing list. Having 10 episodes that say "(May not play) Money Markets &..." for my Money, Markets and More podcast does not tell me what episodes these are because the identifying data - i.e. the date of this episode - has been truncated.
• You need to explain if it PP or the podcast feed that is adding the "(May not play)" text and what exactly does that text mean!
• What does "Refresh Feed" do?
• What does "Unsubscribe/Subscribe" do?
• What does the eight note icon in the podcast listing mean? Does it mean that this episode is downloaded?
• What does the little "emblems" mean that sometimes appear on the blue podcast icon that resemble a check mark and/or a ying/yang like upload/download symbol much like the ActiveSync icon itself.
• What are the CD icon things listed at the podcasts menu? I used to think that they represented podcasts that were downloaded but they don't seem to be anymore. I have one, for example, that says "Playlists (Internal Storage)" that when selected shows a world type icon with an orange RSS feed like emblem that says "New Podcasts". Now "New Podcasts" is a playlist of mine but what is it doing here?
• I still am not able to achieve my main goal WRT listening to podcasts and that is to quickly and easily identify new podcasts only. I would like an auto playlist which has just those new podcasts episodes since the last time I listened to podcasts. As I listen to a podcast it ages off my auto playlist and off my phone (if downloaded).
• When I go to a podcast episode listing, I don't want to see any episodes that I've listened too before.
  
• Describe what "Bandwidth saver" is.
• If I toggle Sort by Newest off then go to a podcast and select it, it never finishes displaying that podcasts. IOW Sort by Newest is broken!
• I still can't seem to get podcasts to download when I want them to, which is why I want the power to dictate that I want to download this podcast now. That said, I don't see the "When new episodes are available: Download the most recent one" working at all. It's been a few days. New podcast episodes have been released. My Linux system (rhythmbox) senses and download these new podcast episodes without a hitch - Pocket player, however, fails to.

1. Security Now http://www.leoville.tv/podcasts/sn.xml
2. The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe http://www.theskepticsguide.org/feed/rss.aspx?feed=SGU
3. The Skeptics' Guide 5x5 http://www.theskepticsguide.org/feed/rss.aspx?feed=5x5
4. Windows Weekly http://www.leoville.tv/podcasts/ww.xml
5. Floss Weekly http://www.leoville.tv/podcasts/floss.xml
   
6. Skeptoid http://skeptoid.com/podcast.xml
7. Bill Maher's Realtime http://www.hbo.com/podcasts/billmaher/podcast.xml
   
8. Perlcast http://www.perlcast.com/rss/current.xml
9. Money, Markets and more http://feeds.marketwatch.com/marketwatch/podcasts/moneymarketsmore
10. Take on Tech http://feeds.marketwatch.com/marketwatch/podcasts/takeontech
11. Stand Up Comedy http://www.hbo.com/podcasts/standup/podcast.xml
12. Legal Lad's Quick and Dirty Tips for a More Lawful Life http://www.qdnow.com/legal.xml
13. Litigation Podcast http://www.abanet.org/litigation/podcast/podcast.xml
14. NOVA scienceNOW Podcast http://feeds.pbs.org/pbs/wgbh/nova/nsn-audio
15. The Atheist Experience http://www.atheist-experience.com/podcast.php
16. Atheist Talk - Audio http://www.mnatheists.org/atheist_talk/audio.xml

It is true that knowing about technology in this technological age can be both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand since you know about technology you understand that it's really not that difficult to do it yourself and thus have more control over your environment. Plus you can save a lot of money not getting taken, etc. On the other hand however you have a tendency of wanting the latest and greatest and be on the bleeding edge. This is a story of the later.

As you know I have a PPC-6700 phone which allows me to join the cell phone generation. I, of course, being a tech guy, needed the one with all the bells and whistle. Oddly enough one would think that many of the more mundane but advertised functionality would work out of the box and be fairly reliable. Such is not the case. So it's off to the web to join up the appropriate forum to get more info, patches, tips, tweaks and the like. I chose, for better or worse, PDAPhoneHome. A lot of people go there but there's so much, and so many neophytes with bad information, that it's difficult to get good information.

In any event, and to my surprise, WinCE based phones are not exactly that much different than early versions of Windows, complete with registry with all of it's warts and problems, and tons of similar software, all viaing for your buck, all doing similar things and most doing it badly at best.

The big deal there is called a "ROM" which is another name for the "OS" and, as typical with Microsoft, an OS is not an OS but is an OS with a bunch of things that are not really, or should not be part of the OS. There's adware and bloatware. Add to this the carriers like Sprint, Verison, et. al., all trying to "customize" the "experience" for their "customer" with such great programs like "GetGood" and "The Sprint Store", etc.

In any event, here's what I do in order to reburn my phone which needs to be done as the software seems to develop "habits" over time like not alerting me as to upcoming events, Suddenly not ringing the phone, just being sluggish, hangs or starting to behave differently like taking a call on the BlueTooth headset but not stopping the media player when the call is being answered.

Install ROM

Currently I'm trying a 3.5 based ROM or AKU (not sure what AKU stands for in this context). First one need to download on. I've set up an area under my Software share for PPC stuff, including ROMs, programs I use, ring tones and "Today Screens". I've learned, as I need to reinstall these things over and over, to organize this.

Once you have a ROM you run the installation process. First you need to get your phone in "Bootloader" mode. This means, on my phone, that you hold down the power and voice record buttons at the same time while you perform a soft reset. Now here's the tricky part: The screen appears to be black but if you look really carefully you'll notice it says "Serial". You'll probably have to look at it in the light and move the phone from side to side. Why the secretly displayed with no backlight screen is beyond me.

Now your "run the ROM" and it'll instruct you basically to hit next over and over again until it finishes. There'll be copious warnings about not to interrupt the process. Ominous for sure but what will happen if you do interrupt the process. Answer: Nothing. You'll need to start again. Big deal - it's not like you're that far along at this point anyway!

After the installation it'll tell you to cold boot your phone but it'll probably tell you the wrong way to do it. For example, the "Kirvin AKU 3.5 NoJunk" I'm trying to use right now says to hold down the power button and the reset button at the same time and that'll do a cold boot. The problem is that that doesn't do a cold boot on my phone! I need to hold down both the left and right menu buttons (the ones with "-" on them) and select the reset button (with the stylus).

And cold boot is what you want to do. That'll effectively wipe out the internal card and install all the apps from the ROM. Failure to do that and you may run out of space on the ROM!

After rebooting invariably Sprint gets involved and installs all of it's junk as it customizes your phone. I have a trick of using Total Commander to open the "extended rom" and installing all of the junk a second time but not installing the special package which effectively removes all of the uninstall options for the junk in the Remove Programs area. Then you can just go into Remove Programs and use their uninstall packages!

Reinstalling Apps

Before reinstalling applications check that the phone actually works. One version would make calls but when in a call there was no "Call Status" button and thus you couldn't get to the number pad to say "Hit 1 to continue" or anything! Also check that the Contacts and Calendar programs work. This new 3.5 bare bones ROM seems to work. BTW This ROM has a skin to the phone that I really like. It's a black/greyish background with good green/red highlighting on the Talk and End buttons.

Now it's time to install the apps I use. These include:

• Pocket Player: I like this media player a lot better than WMP. WMP has this annoying habit of skipping when playing over my bluetooth headset which is not acceptable. Installed on the internal card to minimize problems Additionally the DLL gen_wmhost.dll needs to be copied from my Software area -> \Program Files\Conduits\Pocket Player.
• SPB Pocket Plus: Adds nice stuff to the Today screen - to me sorta like TrueLaunchBar. Installed on the internal card to minimize problems
• SPB Backup: One really should backup - I do! You should too. The problem here is that although I backup to the storage card I'd like to automatically sync these backup images over to my backup share. How do you automatically do that?
• SPB Time: Nice clocks - integrates into the Today screen nicely
• Total Commander: Nice utility - already on my storage card - I tend to run it from there..
• FinchSync: Synchronizes Thunderbird Address Books and Sunbird Calendars to your PPC phone!
• Pocket Quicken: Allows me to enter receipts while on the road
• Google Maps: The best mapping software

Add Today Screens and Ring Tones

Additionally I copy the following non-applications directly from my Software share to the Windows folder on the PPC:

• Today Screens -> Windows Folder
• Ring Tones -> Windows\Rings

Configure Ring Tones/Phone

Go to Start: Settings: Phone and set ring tone. Select More tab and set Automatic Pick up to Headset after 3 rings

Set Today Screen

Go to Start: Settings: Today. Select a Today screen. Tap on Items and:

• Uncheck


1. Date


2. Owner Info


3. Wireless


4. Get Biz Conn


5. Action Info


• Order items on Today Screen:


1. Device Lock
2. Spb Time
3. Pocket Plus
4. Calendar
5. Messaging

Now configure Spb Time by tapping and holding and selecting Options. Toggle on Hide Icon and OK.

Configure Spb Plus. Generally I have 3 tabs: Main, System and Games. Main has:

• Pocket Player
• Pocket Quicken
• FinchSync
• File Explorer
• Remote Display

System has:

• Theme Loop
• System Reset
• ActiveSync
• Total Commander (on the storage card)
• Google Maps

Games has:

• Bubble Breaker
• Solitare
• Blackjack
• Tetris

Configure ActiveSync

Configure ActiveSync to synchronize:

• Contacts
• Calendar
• Email
• Tasks
• Notes
• Favorites
• Media
• Pocket Quicken

Configure Email:

• Start Messaging
• Select Menu: Tools: New Account
• Select IMAP as email provider, Next
• Email Address: Andrew@DeFaria.com
• Your Name: Andrew DeFaria
• User Name: andrew
• Password: <Standard Password>
• Toggle on Save Password, Next
• Change to IMAP
• Name: Home, Next
• Incoming mail: defaria.com
• Outgoing mail: defaria.com
• Domain: <blank>
• Opions: Next
• Only display messages from the last 7 days, Next
• Select Get full copy of messages, Finish
• Get messages now? Yes

Set Owner Information

Set up owner information as some apps (Pocket Player) require it to register.

Apps Config

Pocket Player

After setting owner information use the Pocket Player keygen to generate the key. Use the key to register Pocket Player. Next start Pocket Player and select Menu: More: Options. Then:

• Select Playback then set File Caching to 1024
• Toggle on Crossfading to 4 seconds
• Select VIs and set Cycle Colors to Slow
• Select DSP then Multi-DSP with Bass Boost and Stereo Wide
• Select Plugins then Conduits WM Plugin Adapter: Configure: Configure WM plugins to load then Yes and Yes again then OK
• Select Advanced and double click on Save Playlists Location changing it to \StorageCard\Playlists
• Toggle off Show notification icon
• Exit player and restart

Also go to Settings: Buttons and change the IE button to start Pocket Player and the Record button to envoke Voice Command

Cleanup

In order to clean up the junk I do the following:

• Start up File Explorer and go to My Device. Delete the following:


• ConnMgr
• My Documents


• Business
• Calls
• My Sounds (and any other My folders)
• Video
• Various playlists that Pocket Player installed (we use our own)




• Remove crap from Startup Menu. Go into \Windows\Start Menu and Remove


• Calendar (we have buttons for this on the Today Screen
• Contacts (we have buttons for this on the Today Screen
• Phone (we get this by hitting the dial button)
• Messaging
• Windows Media (We use Pocket Player)
  
• Rename:


• Running Programs -> Tasks
• Internet Explorer -> IE

Eliminate Bloatware

Start Total Commander and go to \Extended_ROM. Install various bloatware but do not install the package Disable_RemoreProgram.sa.CAB which removes the uninstalls from remove programs. Then go to Remove Programs and remove stuff like GetGood and the Sprint Store. All of these install on the internal card thus reinstalling them should overwrite the same area but now you can remove them from the Remove Programs!

From Total Commander install:

• AudioSample.sa.CAB
• Fetch.CAB
• GetGL.CAB
• Getmail.ppc2003.ARMV4Rel.sprint.CAB
• sprint_software_store.CAB
• WTLAudiblePlayerPocketPC.arm.CAB

From Settings: System: Remove Programs remove:

• Audible, Inc. AudiblePlayer
• PocketX Sprint Software Store
• Good Technology GetGood
• Action Engine Action Info

Configure Pocket Quicken

Start Pocket Quicken and:

• Enter activation code
• Set up preferred accounts
• Turn off displaying of hidden accounts

Spb Backup

Configure scheduled backups. Start Spb Backup and:

• Select Scheduled Backup, Next
• Toggle on Enable scheduled backups
• Set time for Midnight
• Toggle on Backup only on AC power
• Backup folder is \Storage Card\Backups\, Next
• Toggle on Storage Card then options. Toggle off Backups, FilesToBeDeleted, Music and Video, OK then Next
• Tap Next again then Finish

Registry Tweaks

The following registry tweaks seem to help:

• HKLM\Services\ScreenRotate\ShowIcon -> 0

Need to soft reset