geof’s blog

I added a 4GB MicroSD card to my Blackberry 8820. Wow, what a cool upgrade. You can get an easy tutorial if you need that at Crackberry.com has lots of good information. Using the Blackberry Desktop manager makes it easy to convert videos to the proper format for the phone.

Video quality is excellent and easy to watch. I added a few movies and some stand-up comedians. Now I can sit through boring situations while watching the Bourne Ultimatum on my phone.

Go to Blackberry downloads and look for the link to vendor downloads which takes you to your service provider specific tools. Download the tools there so you can get into the more granular data on your device. Remove all the languages you don’t need, this frees up space and saves you the hassle of accidental language choices you neither want or need.

Download the Opera mini-browser and add it, it runs better than the Blackberry browser and offers a super cool zoom feature for surfing. Set your application permission for all apps so you don’t get a request for each one.

I added a few games from Mobango.com and Blackberry.com as well as some new themes.

I returned my AT&T Tilt and exchanged it for a BlackBerry 8820. The Tilt had some cool features and offered faster 3G transfer rates, a better internet experience and larger screen size.

Overall, the Tilt was bulky for me and when it came to accessing my Exchange server or any of the 4 million secure sites I have to access, the Tilt always needed credentials. Yes, I understand that but once I provide the credentials I don’t expect to keep logging in…

This went on for a few weeks and I never got used to the clunky Windows OS.

The BlackBerry is a better Email, Exchange, Calendar solution for me. It is smaller and the audio is much better for those speakerphone situations under a server when you need good communication.

I am disappointed in the surf-speed-internet aspect but this can be overcome. I setup a mobile web portal at http://m.geofnet.com which provides me quick access to the links I want and quick ability to change or update them from my computer.

I spent 10 minutes of my lunch trying to find something…this inspired the portal solution.

Now I can surf a site in a restaurant like the other night without spending time finding anything. Just set the portal page as the home page and off I go.

Once you master the shortcut keys the BlackBerry is very fast and sites like http://mobango.com offer lots of theme related material. Download the latest BlackBerry Desktop Manager and get the BlackBerry Maps plugin so you can use the GPS for navigation. This is a super cool feature, check it out.

I ordered a Hauppage 1600 Tuner card and an extra mobo/cpu for a home build PVR project. I had one in the early days but now I’m back to start again. This time a veteran.

I’m going with a fairly cheap AMD X2 dual core 64bit 6000 proc and a nice little Abit motherboard, 2GB DDR2 and a 320GBSATA I had from another project. I have a 160GB SATA which I will use for the System and leave the 320 for data and better performance.

One thing that will be different than most builds discussed on-line is that I dual boot all my machines and I use virtual machines more than most. This machine will boot as follows:

• Ubuntu - MythTV
• MS Media Center 2005
• MediaPortal on WinXP Pro

I’ll probably end up back at Media Center or MythTV, after working with Vista and researching all the terrible things Vista does to video streams…that is dead for me. It would be ok as a dual boot option or virtual option on another workstation but not this one. No media PVR function should be attempted with Vista. The video degradation alone is reason enough not to touch it. The DRM borders on Facism.

I’ll report back on how the different video quality and ease of use works out.

First I had to install wordpress, which wasn’t to tough. Then run through the various options and add some themes. Adding themes to a install is easy, just FTP the folder up to the themes folder /wp-content/themes. Then go to the dashboard and the theme should be there. Here are some Wordpress compatible themes…

http://www.wpthemesfree.com/