Filed under: Fun, Internet, Text, Features, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm, Productivity, Web services, Google, Commercial, Freeware, Open Source, BlackBerry, Mobile Minute, iPhone, Search, web 2.0
5 things missing from your mobile life in 2008: Google Mobile and more
Life's getting mobile, and it seems that's the way it's always going to be. Humans don't come off as the traveling type, yet we do. From horse carriages to cell phones, we're always looking for ways to do more on the move, so what's missing from your mobile life in 2008 and how can you fix it? The following list may help.
1. Full access to YouTube in Windows Mobile: Everyone's got a solution for playing YouTube Mobile videos on a Windows Mobile phone, but it seems no one's giving Windows Mobile users a way to access YouTube.com's full, flash video library. Oh wait, there is a solution. It only requires users to install a specific version of TCPMP and the Flash Video Bundle, an add-on to TCPMP to give it the ability to play flash video. Use Pocket IE to navigate to YouTube (a few other flash video sites are also supported). Clicking on a video will open TCPMP to play it. Easy, right?
You could also install Orb on your PC and use the Orb mobile client to find YouTube videos on the go, but that solution requires you to leave your home PC on all the time.
2. Google Mobile: If you consider yourself a road warrior and you don't know about Google Mobile, you're really missing out. We've covered Google's mobile services a few times before. If you missed what all the fuss was about, Google Mobile seamlessly integrates itself with your regular Google account, allowing you to easily access Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Reader in a mobile friendly, low-bandwidth way. What makes the service even better is that every change you make through your mobile device will remain when you access Google through a regular computer, giving RSS fiends a way to access the same feed library on multiple devices without using multiple services and/or programs.
3. Whisper: Life isn't all about productivity and efficiency. What about playtime? This is an app for hacked iPhone and iPod Touch units. Use your iPhone's microphone to record a short secret, which is then uploaded to a server full of the secrets of other iPhone users. The program will also let you listen to a random secret from the database, which is continually collecting secrets from around the world. Because there isn't a way to regulate what constitutes a "secret," some of the messages consist of nothing but silence, mumbling, and sometimes pure laughter.
4. Opera Mini: Browsing the web on a mobile device doesn't have to suck, or it doesn't have to suck as bad as usual. Introducing Opera Mini: THE third-party browser of the mobile world. The mobile app takes your lame, mobile browsing experience and makes it acceptable, or, if it's already acceptable, it can make it good, the next official step up from acceptable. The browser, very similar to Safari Mobile on the iPhone, is an obvious addition to every mobile geeks arsenal.
5. Hack your Helio/PDA phone: Not many people know this, but there's a small community of Helio nerds that congregate in the far corners of the web at places like Heliocity. Though this is hardly the biggest site for PDA phone modifications, it is a great place to get started especially beginners (check out the XDA Developers forum for other PDA phone modifications). They hack their Helio devices and post instructions and software at the forums so others may do the same. You can even add Opera Mini 4 to the Helio Ocean with qwerty support. Their methods mainly consists of going to a specific site that hosts the community's custom Helio apps. Clicking on any one of the links through the Helio browser will automatically install the app on your phone. Whoops, don't call it a phone!
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
skinneejoe said 12:21PM on 1-09-2008
Actually guys vtap gives full access to YouTube on Windows mobile. I've tried the flash video bundle + tcmp... blah blah whatever, and it's a pain. Vtap however is install and go, very simple. Hope you enjoy it!
www.vtap.com
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James said 9:44AM on 1-09-2008
The problem with Google Mobile is that Reader Mobile (?) sucks balls. It might be the best you can do with e.g. a non-smartphone, but it's *so* clunky to go through multiple posts quickly -- you can only see a few headlines at a time, and you have to load a new page each time you want to act on one of them. Ick. Reader needs (and has needed for at least a year) a "mini" version for smartphones and internet tablets, like how Opera has Desktop, Mini, and Mobile. It's so bad that somebody even made a readermini.com, only you have to trust them enough to supply them with your Google account password -- he seems like a nice guy, but that's more than I'm willing to do.
I'm not sure this post will accomplish anything, but I'm still holding out hope that some day I'll be able to run a decent version of Reader on my Nokia 770. One possibility: in the middle of last year, they released a Wii version of Reader with little fanfare. I have yet to try it, but you can find it at http://www.google.com/reader/wii.
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