8525 E-mail Notification Settings

This method enables the e-mail sound notification by text messaging for the cingular/ATT 8525 pocket pc phone and I guess for any pocket pc phone having problems enabling this feature.

After looking in about a dozen websites, reading lots and lots of topics and endless questions without any responses I realize that the only option I had to enable e-mail notifications on my buggy cingular/att 8525 was to find a way to use the text messaging feauture to notify me everytime I received an e-mail. The first option that came to my mind was to forward every e-mail to my mobile phone e-mail address (forward myemail@hotmail.com to 5553339999@wirelessprovider.com), something very easy to do if the e-mail address I am trying to get notified was from gmail (that offers a feauture that allows you to forward your email to any email address), but the email address im trying to get notified is from hotmail and hotmail doesn't have any forwarding options like gmail.

Also, if your using gmail, there's another option where you are able to recieve mail from other email accounts so I could have recieve email from my hotmail account to my gmail account and then forward it to my cellpone number, but again it didn't work because some SMTP settings and other stuff that hotmail doesn't supports. Then I looked at some websites offering forwarding services but some of this websites were charging a monthly fee and some others required you to download a software that I end up installing in my computer to realize later that I had to install another file to make it work and then when I finally thought I had it, the messages were never sent. I spent hours trying different programs, ISP settings, passwords, usernames, "you have to call your provider" to find out this and that, and on top of that everytime I looked for an answer for a question I was given the same instructions to go to "Start" - "Settings" - "Sounds and Notifications" and make sure you have selected the "Play Sound" tab for the "New incoming e-mail notification" crap and after going thru several "support" websites and just when I was about to given up I remembered that msn messenger has an option where you can set up your mobile device to receive text messages from your messenger contacts, I did some search, and finally I was able to get what I was looking for. Now everytime I get an e-mail I receive a text message on my cellphone, I just get a notification with the title of the e-mail but at least it works. If you want to give it a try here is what I did.

Go to your hotmail account, sign in and look for the "Options" tab at the upper right corner of the website, click on it and click again on "more options"

Now look under "Manage your Account" and click on "View and edit your personal information", now click on the "Settings" tab located at the left sidebar, look under "Credentials" and you should see an option to add your mobile phone number; click "Add". Now you will be asked to enter your password to verify your identity; you will have to enter your phone number and you will have to create a PIN number; click SAVE. If you see that something is loading and nothing happens, just click any of the links and then sign out.

Now open your messenger account on your pc and sign in with your email address. Click on your screenname at the top of the messenger window and click on "Personal Settings" and then click on "Phone" and if you don't see the "Mobile Device" settings text and button, just sign out and sign in again; (it should be there, it happened to me the first time that it wasn't there and then it appeared) now click on the "Mobile Settings" button...


...and you will be taken to this screen:




Now choose your wireless provider, there are 2 options for cingular, Cingular Media Net and CingularMmode, I selected Cingular Media Net, now a phone number field entry should appear where you are going to enter your phone number for a second time and click on "Next".

Now read the agreement and select "I have read and agree the pricing and terms of use" (because remember that this a method to use the text messaging feauture from your phone to notify you when you get a new e-mail on your 8525 or any other pocket pc phone phone with windows mobile that is supposed to notify you when you get a new e-mail when you are sign in to your phone msn messenger, but it DOESN't!... and that you are going to be charged for every text message that you receive unless you have and unlimited text messaging plan) and click "Next".

Now you should see a page where you have to enter a confirmation code that is going to be sent to your cellphone, enter the confirmation code in the "Confirmation code" field and click "Next" and wait for the next screen.

Now you should be at the MSN MOBILE Settings page (you should be able to access this page later by signing in to your messenger account, click on your screenname, "Personal Settings", "Phone" and "Mobile Settings", in case you need to change any of the alert settings) if for any reason you can't access this option just go to this link; http://mobile.live.com/Ruhp.aspx it's the same. Look under MSN Hotmail and click on "Recieve Hotmail service message"; (when I clicked on this link nothing happened but I guess there should be a confirmation notice missing, but it does the trick and you should be able to start receiving your e-mail alerts on your cellphone after you complete the following steps).

Now you have to go to your cellpone messenger application and click on the messenger green and blue buddies icon and sign in to messenger. Now you should be at the screen where you see all your messenger contacts, click on "menu" >> "options" and click on the "Hotmail" tab and make sure that the "Email delivery options" are set to "For all new mail", now under "Junk Mail Filter" you should select the "Default" setting and the "Download new e-mail automatically" option should be selected.

Now go to the "SMS" tab right next to the "Messenger" tab and select the "If my data connection is temporarily unavailable use SMS to keep my messages and contacts up-to-date" click OK and you're done!

Send yourself an e-mail to test it; of course all of the related "Sounds and Notification" settings should be already set up, but there's no need to review those steps now that you have read it in every single website that you looked for help on how to enable this feauture.

Hope it works, it worked for me and if it does for you, your search is over.

Free Screen Capture utility for Pocket PC

I was looking for a way to capture screen shots from my pocket pc to my desktop to show you how I manage to enable the e-mail sound notification settings on my "buggy" 8525 cingular/ATT device, and I found this small piece of software called My Mobiler. My Mobiler is an utility that connects to your desktop via active sync and it allows you to view your mobile screen on your pc monitor and control it with your keyboard and mouse, so if you hit the "start" icon on your device it will open up the "start" menu on your device and on your desktop mobile screen, also you can hit any button and perform any functions on your device from your device or from your desktop mobile screen.

To capture the images from your device you just click the "Edit" on your desktop mobile screen and then on "Save Screen to File" to save the current screen you're looking at on your mobile device to your computer desktop. If you click on the picture above you can see how it looks on your desktop and this is how it looks after you take the screenshot from your device... got it?



The best thing about this software is that is really FREE not a FREE... trial that you have to register and pay a fee later. To download this utility click on the next link below.

Download:
http://www.pocketgear.com/software_detail.asp?id=25129

Deep Fish Browser for Pocket PC

Something everyone with a pocket pc should look at if they want to enhance their web browsing experience. This web browser (not yet available to download) resolves the issue of having to scroll sideways to view all the content on a webpage because the size of the screen on a pocket pc is just too small. This new browser fix the width of the website to your device screen size and offers an option to zoom in and out over any area that you want to read. There's a brief demo on the microsoft labs website explaining more of what this device can do but there's not a live video besides some few "not so good" videos that you can find at youtube.

Im getting this for sure as soon as it comes out.

Watch Deep Fish in action! http://youtube.com/watch?v=dGaWQ0Kpc2Q

Free Online File Storage?

I started using a software to convert DVD movies to WMV to play in my ATT 8525 pocket pc phone formerly known as Cingular 8525. The software im using is "Pocket DVD Studio "that you can find and download from this website.

The program is preety simple to use, you just open it look for a video file in your computer, click the record button and that's it. There are some settings that you can change like the screen size, video and audio quality in order to end with a smaller file size. For example a dvd movie (just the movie without special features) will turn out to be about 200 to 300 megabytes depending on the length of the movie and your setting selections. Now, if your using a 1gb storage card for your device you'll be able to store about 2 or 3 movies and some other stuff like pictures, songs and a couple of downloads. I dont intent to have a 20 or 30 movie collection in my pocket pc, just 2 or 3 available at the same time. But the thing is that I will still need some space available to keep all the movies that I have converted in one place, not my laptop, because it's gonna eat up a lot of memory and that's when I started searching for a website that offered free online storage services.

After being searching for a while I found a few interesting details that made me change my mind about storing my files online. First of all most of these so called "free" online storage websites are not free at all, some of them are but with a very limited amount of storage (2gb to 5gb) and there is a size limit for every upload. For example, most of them don't allow uploads of files bigger than 200mb, so as I mention before most of the WMV movie files turned out to be between 200 and 300 mb after converted, so that would not work for me because I wont be able to upload any files that are bigger than 200mb. Another thing is that the files are deleted if you don't access your account or update your files within a certain amount of time, most of this services delete your files in 14 or 30 days. Also, a few of them are "sharing" websites meaning that after you upload your files anyone have access to them, like private family pictures or video that you don't want anyone else to see but you. Another thing that made my head go on a no-no motion was the speed rate that your files are uploaded to this websites, I don't have precise details about this facts but if you use your common sense you already know that uploading an image or an article for a blog with a size of a couple of KB's it could take up a whole of a lot of time depending on web traffic, imagine how much time would take to upload a 150mb size file if your're using a website where everyone is supposed to be doing the exact same thing, uploading. Finally most of these websites are on "starting business" so that means that they could go out of business at any time, leaving your precious files and data gone forever, even if you decide to go for one of those that have been in the business for a couple of years and pay for a subscription you still take the risk to loose all your data if the website is taken down.

So what's the solution? easy; buying an external hard drive. An external hard drive will provide enough storage enough speed and the right hardware for the right price. You can get an external hard drive for about $80 dollars with a 120gb storage capacity, way much more from that 5gb storage offered by box.net (one of the sites that cought my attention because it offers a feauture that allows you to stream your video files from your account to your mobile device) but you will have to pay $7.95 a month or $79.95 a year and you will have to keep paying forever.

Free online services are getting more popular these days and while some of this websites may be a solution for file sharing over the internet when it comes to find a way to keep your personal files at hand and safe most of them fail to deliver the service you expect to get. Now, what would be the best external hard drive for your pc, well that's another whole post.

Went surfing.

For a list of free online storage services go to this post: 100 File Storage Websites

100 File Storage Websites

Free TV for your Pocket PC

I was trying to find a website with tv streamings where I could watch free tv on my laptop and after going thru a couple of links that I found at google I end up at streamick.com. It has a wide selection of channels like animal planet, mtv, sci-fi channel among others. Is very easy to go from one channel to another without having to go to another page or a frame and there's no need to install anything, you just click and watch and if you have a pocket pc you can watch the streamings on your pocket pc by entering the streamick .asx URL (ex. http://www.streamick.com/asx2/fox5.asx) address on your pocket pc browser then the windows media player will open and the video will start playing.

The channel listing is somewhat similar to the one at MobiTV, but for that one you have to install mobiTV to your pocket pc and pay a monthly fee of $9.99. Recently Youtube launched a mobile version of their website that can be access from http://m.youtube.com/ from your cellphone browser but for some reason it doesn't work with my cingular 8525.

So if you were looking for a way to watch live tv on your pocket pc here are some of the channels I already test on my phone, just type the URL on your pocket pc browser and watch.

http://www.streamick.com/asx2/fox5.asx

http://www.streamick.com/asx2/cbcnews.asx

http://www.streamick.com/asx2/mtvbrandnew.asx

http://www.streamick.com/asx2/mlb.asx

http://www.streamick.com/asx2/animalplanet.asx

http://www.streamick.com/asx2/scifichannel.asx

These are pictures from my pocket pc showing how it looks.

iphone is overrated

Here is a short video I made to show how my pocket pc phone (cingular 8525) looks with an iphone theme that I downloaded from this website. The video doesn't looks as good as Id like but it makes the job. The point of this video is to show you that all of the feautures (even thought not all the features are shown in the video) that the iphone is selling to everybody (like if it was something new or never done before) have been going around in a variety of cellphones and handheld devices for a long time already. Is just like what they did with the ipod where most people believed that the ipod was the only option they had if thew wanted to download music from the internet. Who knows, maybe the next big thing from Apple would be the "iWheel".


http://www.youtube.com/nando292007