Jan 31, 2007 | blog
That’s one meeting I spent a few hours in – talking about future messaging plans for my employer. Yeah, we’re on Exchange 2003 just like about 90% of the rest of the world – and it works pretty good.
But you can’t rest on your laurels, and just because Exchange 2003 SP2 has been nice and stable, doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for improvement. Of course the varied interests around the table always brings a spirited debate that brings out great ideas. There were no revelations as there sometimes are in these types of meetings, but it was a great session on getting a game plan together for identifying our next steps.
The most interesting thing in our recent “Future Technology” discussions is that there is more focused discussion on solving and preventing problems than there is of wiz-bang golly-gee tech stuff. That kind of stuff is usually saved for the last 10 minutes or so, just to get it on the (bottom) of the list. Hey, I’m still a tech geek and like to push the envelope as much as possible!
Of course, you’d expect that kind of productivity from this group, we’ve all worked together, oh, coming up on 10 years now.
So what’s on the list? Oh, mostly boring stuff to simply make email work better, redundancy, DR contingencies and so on. Other things like an in-house conferencing server would be more fun down the line a bit, so I’m holding out hope. Got to have a stable foundation to build on as they say.
Ok, enough boring stuff.
Jan 17, 2007 | blog
I’ve had the worst problem with my T-Mobile MDA dropping calls about 4 minutes into a call. While the exact time of the drop varied (sometimes up to 10 minutes into a call) it was consistent to the point that everyone I talked to knew about when it would happen.
I’ve been searching all over the ‘net trying to find the cause of the issue and a fix/workaround for it. I finally found it! Not only are MDA’s having the problem, but many HTC Wizard class devices like the Cingular 8125.
The problem seems to appear after upgrading to the latest firmware from the provider – in my case the v2.26 ROM from T-Mobile (though I did see it as well with the 2.24 ROM for QTek on my device). The issue is that HTC had implemented a “feature” in the latest ROM that would help a data connection re-establish itself when it was unsure if the GPRS/EDGE connection was there. It would simply reboot the radio portion of the phone – whether a voice (GSM) session was in process or not!
The fix is to simply add a registry key that disables this new “feature”. Now that I know what the fix is, I needed to share it with anyone who passes by my blog. If you have this problem and use a HTC Wizard class device listed below, please check out the fix and the link to where I found it.
list
Here is the fix to the problem, and this page at XDA Developers clued me in.
Due to network conditions, signal coverage and some other factors, there is a small chance the data connection can become detached from the network, but the device is not aware of the detachment. This is normal in real world scenarios. Since data packages can be sent without any error being returned, the device may incorrectly think the connection is still valid. To correct this, HTC introduced a mechanism to watch for such conditions. After the device sends out data without receiving any network acknowledgment for a certain period of time, the device will try to detach from the network and re-establish the data connection. Usually this will silently re-establish the data connection without the user noticing it. Due to radio platform limitations, this task cannot be performed during a voice call. When both of these conditions are met (data being sent out for a period of time with no network acknowledgment, and an active voice call), the device will reset the radio to address the problem.
HTC has provided the following registry key setting to disable the auto-correction mechanism:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINEDriversBuiltInRIL]
“GPRSStallWorkaround”=dword:0
I truly hope that this helps you with your HTC Wizard class device – I know I’m much happier now that I’ve found the fix for the problem.
Jan 13, 2007 | blog
Michael Arrington of TechCrunch fame asks: Will the iPhone be a Serious Business Device. In this question, I have to answer simply: No.
It sure will be a convenience to those Apple Mac users that have been longing for a mobile communications device that will seamlessly sync with all the Apple Mac resources for information management, and entertainment. However, the idea that the iPhone will have better penetration to the enterprise market than the Mac did is a pipe dream, if only because of Apple’s inability to understand what the business user needs. Of course, part of this is because of the limitations imposed by the enterprise IT departments – since the Mac is not accommodated like Windows, Unix and Linux are.
Sure, the iPhone is a spectacular demonstration of where our communications devices should be heading – I would expect nothing less from Apple than a stunning device. But suggesting that a non-shipping phone that can’t have it’s memory expanded, has no input method other than your finger, without 3G data services, and does not support any of the popular push-mail services will be taken seriously by businesses is delusional.
Thanks for the chuckle Michael, I needed one this weekend.
Via: TechCrunch – Will the iPhone be a Serious Business Device?
Jan 10, 2007 | blog
I’ve posted a new poll, looking for your thoughts on the new iPhone from Apple. If you have another answer you would like to see, you can add one!
Jan 4, 2007 | blog
We’ll I’m back on IM again. You can find me on the following instant messenger systems:
- Google Talk (preferred)
- Windows Live Messenger
I’m not connected all the time, but you may find me from time to time. I’m currently trying to keep contacts to just friends, family, and coworkers, so you’ll have to email me to find out what accounts I’m using for each.
Personally, I’m still disgusted with the feature overload of Windows Live Messenger – the simplicity of GTalk is much better. My main goal of getting back into IM was to stick to, well, instant messaging and not all the other features.
