January 2, 2012 21:25 by ckincincy
Inspired by @sadukie I am going to list out my applications on my Window’s phone.
I’ve had a Windows phone for over a year now, I’ve actually had 3 different models. I first had the HTC Surround, while it was a good phone I just didn’t see the need for the speaker setup. Then I went to the LG Quantum because it has a physical keyboard. Now, after my move to Verizon I am on the HTC Trophy.
I’ve owned an iPhone for 2 years, and when the commercial says “there is an app for that”… they aren’t kidding. The application list for the iPhone is impressive. Unfortunately the same could not be said for the Windows Phone 7. It had an OK list of applications, but not one that would blow you away.
However, the applications available have seemed to hit a level to where it does everything I need a phone to do.
I love the way the phone works. It just seems to flow so much better than the iPhone. I grew to hate my iPhone by time I got rid of it. I’ve had the Windows Phone for over a year and have no real complaints about the operating system.
Enough of the chatter. Below is my list of applications.
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Utilities
Adobe Reader – Pretty much a must own if you want to view PDF’s.
WinMilk – A nice little to-do list for the phone. Though the upgrades to OneNote in Mango somewhat make this a little less needed. I do prefer the UI on WinMilk though.
BandWidth – Allows you to see how fast your internet connection is.
QR Code Reader – Ever see those crazy blocks with all the lines in them? Yep, this decodes them!
Flashlight-X – Ad supported flashlight application. Uses the camera’s flash for a true flashlight experience.
CardStar – One of my favorite apps. Allows you to get rid of all those pesky reward and membership cards.
ConnectivityShortcuts – One of the new things available with Mango. Allows you to create a shortcut directly to a few settings. Great if you find yourself turning them off or on
Remote Desktop – So I’ve yet to try this, just downloaded tonight… but if it does what it says, it is pretty much the only one available.
SkyDrive – Gives you some access to your SkyDrive. Not a bad application to have, even if much of the functionality of this application is already built into the phone.
VNC Connect – Standard VNC application.
Games
Shuffle Party – A fun game to waste some time. You can bowl, play the classic game, or an obstacle course.
Xbox Companion – This integrates with your XBox and allows you to control the main screen a bit. While a cool thing to try out once, not something I found incredibly useful. Especially since I have the Kinect.
Backgammon Pro – An ad supported version of Backgammon. Fun game to learn!
Flush – I was a little hesitant to put this on the list as I found it an OK game, but some of the levels just don’t seem possible!
Physi Bricks – A fun game that takes gravity and certain dynamics of the different types of balls you have to throw at the bricks.
Blocked In Free – The “classic” boxed in game. Just a fun way to waste some time.
Minesweeper – The classic Minesweeper game with a few twist. Loved earning achievements.
Media/News
Amazon Kindle – Just your basic Kindle application.
ESPN ScoreCenter – An application to allow you to monitor scores and sports news. The navigation can be a little bit hard to grasp, but it does the job.
iHeartRadio – Access to all of the Clear Channel radio stations.
INRIX Traffic – This is a really well thought out application. It combines user reported crashes with crashes reported through official means. Has helped me avoid problems several times.
Last.fm – Your typical Last.fm application. If you use Last.fm, this is what you want.
Spotify – Spotify is the new kid on the block in the USA. It is a nice application to interface with their service.
The Weather Channel – Out of all the weather applications, this is the one I liked the best.
Retail
Amazon Mobile – A nice way to interact with Amazon. Allows on the fly price comparison along with a lot more.
eBay – This application was one of the most surprising for me. Just an all around good application to work with eBay on your mobile phone.
Pizza Hut – This one is relatively new. I used the iPhone version several times and the Windows version appears to be a good port.
Personal
Bible – LifeChurch.tv kind of owns this market and its no difference on the Windows Phone. Top of the line application.
Google Integration
Flux – I’ve tried a lot of Google Reader applications. This one has been the best by a lot.
GoVoice – The best Google Voice application around. It went through a moment where I thought it was going to be abandoned by the developer, but he has started to work on it again recently. It just works!
Social Media
MoTweets Pro – I’ve been giving this a shot. It is a paid application, but overall I like it. It is really for heavy Twitter users as it allows for support of multiple accounts. It also seems to have Facebook integration.
Twitter – The official Twitter application. More than sufficient!
Developer Unlocked
I recently “developer unlocked” my phone using ChevronWP7. Unfortunately the “jailbreak” story in Windows Phone is still very new and not well developed. Once this is a bit more mainstream the ‘black market’ applications available will rock. Since I am unlocked I am able to “side load” some applications onto my phone.
Screen Capturer – One of the things I really missed from the iPhone was the ability to take a screen grab. This fills that gap.
Built In
The podcast setup is really nice. I have subscribed to many technical and personal podcast and they just show up on the phone when new episodes show up.
Missing
Chipotle – Enough said!
Facebook – There is actually a Facebook application, but it is buggy when you scroll down. When I moved to Verizon and my new phone I didn’t bother to install the app. I just went to the mobile version as my primary method. There is, however, extensive integration with Facebook on the main operating system.
July 25, 2011 19:40 by ckincincy
This is not another post about how Google+ works or another post about why Google+ is better than <insert social media platform here>. This is, however, a note that I’m abandoning Twitter for Google+… for now.
I’ve “left” Twitter a few times. Ultimately I don’t get it. 140 characters has always seemed way to small for me. While many, maybe even most, updates are fine for 140. What about the replies and post that aren’t? It becomes some disjointed mess of last reply first reading.
So do me a favor, come follow me on Google+. I’d like to follow you.
June 18, 2011 19:51 by ckincincy
My family moved into our house just over three years ago. It came with a swimming pool.
I happened to know the owner of the house prior to buying it and during a team party for our son’s baseball team he said something in passing that stuck out to me. He mentioned all the struggles he had with keeping the pool clean and that a friend of his had some saltwater system that seemed to work well.
I remembered that conversation but did not act on it.
Summer one with the pool was not to bad. The weather was fair and the pool survived.
Summer two was a bit more of a struggle as it rained a lot.
Summer three was the same.
The problem with tough summers is that chlorine cost add up quickly. So this year we decided we’d install a saltwater pool system.
Due to last year being so bad we had to completely drain our pool and start over. After draining the pool and getting it cleaned out we started the process of filling it back up with water. Being a fairly big pool it takes a few days. We hooked up all the filter equipment and put 4 gallons of chlorine in the pool and let it run.
During this time I went looking for a saltwater system on Amazon and found one at a good price and figured it was worth a shot. The Intex Krystal Clear Saltwater System was the winner.
Here we are 3 weeks later and my initial take is that this system is awesome and anybody who has a pool should convert. During my last three seasons I could only get a positive chlorine test about 2 hours after I put the chlorine in. Now I can get a constant reading… and I’m not adding an ounce.
The install of the system was easy. You literally put it in between the house that goes from your existing filter to the pool. After the water passes through the filter it hits this special system that generates the chlorine.
The setup of the pool was a little more complex. For the size of our pool the amount of salt to be added was not completely clear to me. So I started off with a light amount of 240lbs (FYI, it cost me $50 for 400lbs.. we used 99.8% pure salt meant for water softeners). After the salt had enough time to dissolve I took my water into Eastgate Pools and had it tested. It showed to be light on salt and needing stabilizer. We added 12 pounds of stabilizer and 80 more pounds of salt. Gave it a few days and took the water in to be tested again. This time it all tested OK. Not great but OK.
Our Chlorine tested at 1.1, it is supposed to be between 1.0 and 3.0. Our salt tested at 2600 parts per million. This is on the low end for our system and the documentation was pretty clear that a number this low would generate less than idea results. So we added 40 more pounds of salt. Now the pool is rocking.
After looking at the reviews on Amazon the one negative for this product is that its life expectancy can be short. I look at this two ways.
1. If it breaks within 2 years, it is under warranty.
2. If it breaks after 2 years, I’m still saving a bundle of money.
Take a look at the Intex website to learn more about how it works. I see NOTHING false about what they advertise.
March 12, 2011 22:46 by ckincincy
I have a habit of bookmarking pages as I feel that I need to go back and review the content.
So, I’m a bit too OCD to have that many random links in my book marks and I’ve had it happen more than once where stuff I bookmarked later disappeared from the web. Let me share them with you… and at the same time give ma point of reference!
PC Usability Hacks
Programming Tips
Fun Tips
Hacks
Tech Links
Political/Opinion
November 23, 2010 00:30 by ckincincy
So as I’ve blogged about previously I have a new Windows Phone. Though, I did trade in my model from the HTC Surround to the LG Quantum. I wanted the keyboard.
Today a feature that comes with every Windows Phone 7, saved my butt. It started out with leaving a practice for my son’s 4th grade basketball team that I coach. I put my phone and wallet in a bag that my assistant coach brought to return some items. I was thinking I’d keep the bag for a few days while I got the stuff home. So the assistant walked out and started unloading the bag in my trunk and we went our own ways.
Then I realized I didn’t have my phone. I started back tracking my steps and I was worried that I put my phone on the top of my car before I started driving. So I turned around and drove slowly, looking back the 2 blocks I drove. No luck.
Then I wondered if it was in my assistants bag and I rushed home because I know of the feature in the phone… I got home and logged into WindowsPhone.com and clicked the “Find my Phone” feature. Within 30 seconds a map was displayed showing the phone was in my assistants driveway!
I called him and told him what was up, and I went and got my phone… and my wallet 
. What was his reaction? “Man, you’re like somebody from the future.”
It saved my butt! Here is what it looks like showing the phone at my house:
November 13, 2010 21:54 by ckincincy
So it didn’t take me long, but I found my first bug in the Windows Phone 7 operating system.
It is a simple bug to reproduce. It comes down to programming pauses and such into a contacts phone number. Lets say you work at XYZ LLC. Who’s number is 555-555-1212. You program your coworker, Charlie’s number in as follows: 555-555-1212,2,222. What this number will do is dial the main number pauses, hits “2” for entering an extension, pauses, and then enters the extension.
So now you have those two contacts. Now somebody calls you from the office, which comes through as 555-555-1212. You’d expect for it to display a call coming from XYZ, LLC. However what happens is you are told the call comes from “Charlie” because he comes up first in the list.
I’d hope the caller ID could be fixed to do an exact match search before it does the partial match search.
November 13, 2010 21:43 by ckincincy
So here I am almost a week later with my HTC Surround. Overall my impression of this phone is improving as time goes on. It just works.
In my prior post I mentioned that one of the features I liked was the ability to sync wirelessly. Well, that didn’t pan out to well. The software seemed to hang a bit. So the Zune software needs some work.
I found my first bug in the software, and saw some areas for improvement.
I’ll cover those in specific post because I don’t want it lost in the noise of one long blog post.
However my overall thoughts are positive. I love the speech recognition, it just works well. The responsiveness of the phone is awesome. The applications for the phone is still a bit weak, but its early. It takes time to build out a great eco system.
The one thing I did notice is that WP7 apps cost money. Not many free, high quality, applications out there. A lot of, what appear to be OK quality for pay apps. I think this will also change over time as the eco system builds up. Right now you have a lot of early developers trying to make a few bucks off the early adapters.
I’ll follow up with three post in the near future, one more tonight.
1. The bug I found.
2. Improvements I’d like to see.
3. Applications I miss from my iPhone.
Check back soon.
November 9, 2010 00:01 by ckincincy
So I finally fully representing my license plate, I AM A PC. I am the proud owner of the HTC Surround, a Windows Phone 7 device.
Having spent the last two years on the iPhone 3G I got to know that device very well. It wasn’t all bad, but there were things about Apple and its phone that drove me nuts.
I was eagerly waiting for the WP7 launch, and today was the day.
I looked at the two current devices available at the AT&T store. The Surround and the Samsung Focus. The Focus felt cheap in my hand. Just seemed like it would break rather easily. So I went with the much sturdier phone, the Surround.
After a night of use my first impression is… “Why’d they mimic the iOS 3.0?” This phone has everything my iPhone had… last year. No ability to copy and paste, and no global inbox. Now the good thing is that both of those will be taken care of in updates, copy and paste has been confirmed… and I can only assume the other. My next impression is that the phone is a lot like any Windows PC you buy, a lot of crap loaded on it. Thankfully, it is very easy to remove all of the adware provided by AT&T. Just hold down on it and click ‘uninstall.’ My third impression is that the contact management needs work. The iPhone struggled here as well, but they gave me the ability to just use my Windows contacts and I was able to easily organize that.
Finally, my last reaction is that I will grow to like this phone a lot. It is a newer processor so it is certainly faster than my old iPhone. One feature that I really like is the wireless sync. No longer do I have to connect my phone to my PC to sync. I just have to plug it into a power source and let it sit on my home network and it will sync all of my new songs, pictures, and podcast. As the application choices grow this phone will be much better, it may even take care of the global inbox issue before an official fix is in place. The UI is certainly different than the iPhone. More sliding, less tapping.
I’ll check back in in due time with a follow up, but that is how I feel after a night of use.
September 9, 2010 23:53 by ckincincy
For those that know me, you know that I am no fan of Google. I don't trust them in many ways. I don't trust them with my personal information and I don't trust them to keep features I like or come to rely on. They have a history of launching the next greatest thing, to only kill it within the first two years.
I've been able to stop using Google for most things. With one exception, email. The reason being that Yahoo and Hotmail are each missing one feature. The ability to use my own smtp server.
Both services will allow me to 'send mail as' other accounts, but it is really an email hack. The actual from email would be the Yahoo or Hotmail address of the account. The Reply to would then be changed to my personal email. The problem with this is two fold.
1. Other web servers will sometime see this as spam.
2. Sometimes the "from" that the reciepient see's is, "From user@hotmail.com sent on behalf of user@example.com". I don't want people to see my main service email.
So, Hotmail and Yahoo... do me a favor and give me this one feature. I'm ready to jump ship, I just need your help.
August 15, 2010 14:34 by ckincincy
So I got board on Friday and decided to create my own URL shortening service. Went looking for a domain and found ocdp.us. A spin off of this domain so I went and did a quick search on Google to make sure I didn’t spell something bad. Google wondered if I meant to type octopus:
So I am aware of the sound of the domain :-).
I went looking for an open source solution that existed and found one that best met my desires. One built by jobping.com. It was ASP.NET MVC based, so figured it was a good way to work on MVC while giving me what I wanted.
The pre-baked solution was missing a few things that I wanted.
1. The ability to have a custom short URL.
2. The ability to see a report of short URL’s. Basically how many clicks have happened on that URL.
So I took the jobping.com solution and made my own.
You can see my solution in action two ways.
1. Click ocdp.us/a to basically come back to this page. This was an auto generated url.
2. Click ocdp.us/lwlfb to go to Loving With Luggage’s site on Facebook. This is a custom URL.
At some point in the future I’ll share the code to my site, but need to make sure the unit test are written just for code completeness.