Tech – John Joseph Adams

Tag: Tech

Any Gmail/Windows Mobile users out there?

Does anyone know of a third-party application for Windows Mobile that will allow me to read HTML messages from my Gmail account? I’ve got my Pocket PC phone’s default email manager setup to interface with my Gmail account, and it works, except that it won’t display HTML messages. It receives them, but when you open them, they’re just blank. So it’s still useful as a notifier, but I’d much rather, you know, be able to read messages with it. I’ve looked this problem up online, and it seems it’s a problem with all Gmail/Windows Mobile users, so it’s not just me. I’m thinking there must be some other program I could use, but I haven’t been able to find anything.

Tivo Broke My Tivo!

Thanks to a service update, my Tivo no longer works properly–it’s been sluggish since the update, and now has taken to crashing mid-show. (This has happened to several other Tivo users as a result of the update, according to tech support.) They’re going to send me a new box, but man, what a pain in the ass. And think of all the wonderful programming I’ve been storing that I’m going to lose! Ah, well. Actually, it’s not a huge deal about the saved programs, as the box is still working well enough that I can transfer stuff to my PC. But in the meantime, while I’m waiting for the new box to arrive, I’m going to have to transfer everything manually over to my PC to watch it. Or–gasp!–watch it live. No! I can’t! Anything but that!

Datlow Wins World Fantasy Award AND a Sony Reader

Oh, I forgot to mention in my con report… You know how I was talking about those Sony Readers prior to World Fantasy? Well, at the Orbit Books party, Ellen Datlow won one. And I didn’t even get a raffle ticket somehow, even though I was officially invited (You gotta be in it to win it, and I wasn’t even in it, damn it). Would have been nice to be in the running. If Ellen doesn’t like it though, she might sell it to me, so that way I could get one without having to pay $300 for one.

The Sony Reader

Does anyone going to World Fantasy have one of those Sony Readers? If so, are you planning to bring it, and may I take a look at it?

Verizon: Not so Evil

You may recall me recounting my experience with Verizon’s customer support, which didn’t turn out very well. But yesterday I had a very different result when I had reason to encounter them again. This time, it involved actually going down to a Verizon store to have them look at my phone (a Verizon XV6700 Pocket PC phone) because the USB port wasn’t working, which meant that I couldn’t sync it with my PC or charge it (which was a much bigger problem). Actually, the problem was visible–I could look at the port and see that the chip inside appeared to be damaged, which was hardly surprising as I’d been having trouble syncing and charging for some time (it wouldn’t work unless you plugged it in just right, which was rather hard to do).

I thought they’d charge me an outrageous sum to fix it, or tell me I needed a new phone and I’d have to shell out for it. Luckily, it didn’t come to that, as I don’t know what I would’ve done had that been the only option, since I’m only planning to keep this phone until my contract with Verizon expires so I can get an iPhone. Turns out my phone was still under warranty; it’s been over a year since I got it, so I must have went for the extended service plan when I bought it. And happily, the warranty resulted in me getting a brand new phone. Which was nice, because trying to get the old one to sync/charge was really starting to annoy the crap out of me.

Pretty much no data was lost–only a few photos I had on the phone (which were only shots of recent Scrabble games)–and reloading everything onto the phone was a simple and relatively painless process.

In other (related) tech news, Gmail recently implemented IMAP email into their service (which is sort of like POP, but superior). Got that setup with Outlook without much trouble. (But man, what a miserable program that is. Doing something as simple as marking a lot of messages "read" seems to be too much for it to handle without crashing or locking up the entire system.)

After successfully setting it up on the PC, I tried to set it up on the phone. I’ve always just used Gmail’s mobile interface in Pocket IE to read my mail because I could never get the phone’s Pocket Outlook (or whatever it is) to work correctly for my email. Still can’t get it to work with IMAP. Or rather, it looks like it’s working fine, but almost all of the messages it downloads turn out to be blank when I open them. Strangely, not all of them. A message I received from a Yahoo Mail account was readable on the phone, but nothing else I checked was (including stuff from other Gmail accounts). If anyone can figure that out, I’d appreciate the help! Or if there’s a good Pocket PC email management app I could download, I’d go for that. Frustratingly, Gmail has a mobile app for Gmail, but it’s only good for regular cell phones with mobile web, not for more advanced phones like mine that actually use the Internet.