Clearing the address bar in mobile IE

If you're using a Samsung Blackjack 2 you've no doubt run across this. You want to type an address into the address bar of the browser to visit a specific site. So you press the right soft-key to get to "menu -> address bar" and the bar opens with the cursor there so you can type. But the address of the page you're currently on is also there. You can hold down the delete key (the arrow pointing to the left, just below the button for the letter P.) That will delete one. character. at. a. time. Tedious. Instead, hold down the "back" button (gray icon of a "u-turn" symbol, very top row of keys on the right.) That will clear the entire address, leaving only the "http://" -- so you're ready to type the new address.

Ubuntu Server 8.2 on Virtual Box

Downloaded the ISO file from ubuntu.com. Mounted the ISO file in a new Virtual Box VM. Ran the installer, which completed without any problems. Upon first boot, received a nasty fatal error message: This kernel requires the following features not present on the CPU: 0:6. Could go no further booting the VM. Just had to "power it off." Quick Google search led to a post in the Ubuntu forums. "Apparently in Virtual Box this error is corrected by: General -> Advanced -> check Enable PAE/NX." Yep, that worked. I now am able to boot into Ubuntu server and get to the ~$ prompt. Now if I only I knew what to do with that. Ah well, one step at the time.

Thanks to dcstar at the Ubuntu Virtualization forum for the fix.

More to come.

Mobile Manager for Netflix

As much as I love my Blackjack II Windows Mobile phone, there are some things that you just can't do with it. Now, there's one less. I've always been disappointed with the limited capability of the Netflix mobile site. One recent night at a friend's house I tried without success to view my watch instantly queue. I just couldn't get to it from the Netflix mobile site. 

A few days ago, though, I got an email newsletter from Windows Mobile Total Access that advertised a new, free, Netflix Mobile App for Windows phones. I downloaded and installed it and now I can view both my Netflix queues, add movies to my queue, and even rearrange the movies. The interface is more graphical than the Netflix mobile website, and includes thumbnails of the movie DVD covers. It's a great addition to a growing collection of really useful apps for Windows mobile. 

I had no problems with the download or install, and it's just worked as expected since I installed it, so I don't really have any tips or tricks to add, just if you haven't tried it, go get it here: http://bit.ly/ibAy.

And of course, if what you're really looking for is a Netflix app for the Blackberry, well, there is at least one. I found this one by just doing some googles. You "all-business" Blackberry types can find your Netflix fix here: http://bit.ly/ZyQKw.

Sale: Save 33%

So, today I learned from Twitter about this nifty little site, www.stimator.com, that you can use to estimate the value of a web property. Just plug in the URL and it calculates a dollar value based on some rather unclear criteria. It seems to work pretty well. The website where I work came in at about $75,000. Not bad for a public library website. And my wife's employer, a well-know technology website, came in around $5 million dollars, which seems proportionally appropriate. But then I ran my own blog, this site, and . . . well, hoo boy I can make you a great deal. If you can pay 10% up front and the remainder within 90 days, I'll let this domain name and all content go for just $3.38 million. Act quickly though. I expect it to sell quickly, and you don't want to get caught up in a bidding war.

Finally fixed Internet on Blackjack 2

Ever since I bought my Samsung BlackJack II smartphone it's had a recurring problem losing its Internet connection. It started within a few days of getting it last Spring. Every couple of days I'd open the mobile browser and instead of my home page I'd see an error message that said "403 Forbidden." There would be no Internet access until the phone was powered off and back on. I did some searching and discovered that others had the same problem. I also found a quicker work-around. By going to the "wireless manager" and turning the phone service off and back on, rather than rebooting the whole phone, I was able to restore the connection much more quickly. But even better, there appears to be an actual fix now.

From the Samsung website BlackJack II owners can download an upgrade to Windows Mobile version WM6.1. In addition to fixing the lost connection "403 Forbidden" problem, there are some other nice improvements to the mobile OS. (Not the least of which is actual Java support so you can now watch youtube videos on the mobile IE browser.)

A couple of warnings. The documentation on installing the upgrade isn't as clear as it could have been. At least once I had to power the phone back on when the instructions didn't say to. And maybe more importantly, after the upgrade I continued to have the "403 Forbidden" problem occur regularly until I made an additional settings change on the phone. Open the Internet Explorer browser and then use the right soft key to open the Menu. Scroll down to tools--options--connections. On that page, I changed the "Select Network:" setting from "WAP Network" to "The Internet" and I haven't seen the "403 Forbidden" error since. Fingers are crossed, but that's been at least a week ago.

Hope this helps someone. I already loved the phone, and do so even more now.

Yeah, who doesn't love bears?

I can't take credit for finding this. I swiped it from this gallery at TechRepublic.