Get a new Tilt 2 for $100 (through AT&T)
HTC was running a promotion a while back allowing you to trade in your old smartphone to receive a $100 credit on your purchase of a new AT&T Tilt 2. When the in-contract/after-rebate price was $349, $100 off helped significantly. Shortly after that promotion expired on January 31st, AT&T dropped the in-contract price of the Tilt 2 to $199 (after $50 rebate). Well, HTC has decided to restart the promotion, running it again until April 30th (beginning 2/11). Simply put, they will give you a $100 credit to send them your old smartphone (“To qualify for the promotion you must trade-in a working smartphone made by BlackBerry®, an Apple® iPhone, a Palm device by Palm, a Nokia smartphone or any device running on the Windows Mobile® or AndroidTM operating system.”) The list dates back several generations of phones, so be sure to check out the current promotion by clicking here.
Your Bill Whiz – Bill Splitting Done Right
Your Bill is a great bill splitter that does pretty much anything you would want it to do in a great package. The first screen lets you input the bill, tax (you can change the rate applied) and the gratuity (again variable). Everything is large enough that you won’t have any problems hitting the right keys. From there you can pop up the options and split the bill evenly between people (and of course, toggling the number of people is a since thanks to a kinetic menu) or you can split it by individuals. In that mode you can add each person by name and add their items together to get each persons individual bill. He’s even included a calculator if you need help along the way:) It’s a snap to use. Just check out the video of how the menus work:
This is available a few ways. You can download it for free from Marketplace and if you want to support the project then you can download the paid version for $.99. If you are anti-Marketplace then you can head over to PPCGeeks and download it from there, and of course you can donate directly to the developer as well. It looks like the paid version lets you use a scroll wheel (instead of number pad) for all entries and save preset tax, gratuity and large party splitting settings as well. It’s really well put together, very intuitive and I think anyone who takes the free version for a test drive will be glad to donate $1 for the time it took to put this app together.
RealPlayer SP For Macs Available
I’m not naming names, but I bet some of you are Mac users out there. Well Real released RealPlayer SP for Macs today. This has long been available for PC’s. This lets you download videos from online sites like YouTube and transfer them to your portable devices and even XBox and lets you post them to FaceBook or Twitter as well and it’s free.
The Mac version works slightly differently than the PC software, as there are certain requirements/allowances for Mac OSX. For instance, the infamous “download this” button you may be familiar with in the PC version is not in the Mac version. Instead, whenever you watch a video, the download/converter window of RPSP will open and ask if you’d like to save that video to your Mac and convert it to your device. This is similar to how RP 11 currently works. The only difference is that now you’ll have the option to move the videos elsewhere.
There’s a video tour here if you want to see more. The download is available here.
Another Update for Spb Time
I know it’s only been a few weeks since the last update to Spb Time but It looks like a few issues 
have been resolved.
Here is what has been updated:
Version 3.2.1 (Feb 8, 2010):
- Landscape mode UI fixed
- Paranoid alarm improved
- Skin engine improved
- Database updated
Check out the update here: http://www.spbsoftwarehouse.com/pocketpc-software/time/
Microsoft’s Mobile Hail Mary
In an effort to escape my abyss of obscurity in the mobile software market, if I were Microsoft, to distance myself from my embarrassing mobile past I would commit at least a thousand developers to perfecting the next release (including one or two who are actually on the payroll and not some random ugly website with Paypal donation links), I’d commit a whole lot of marketing geniuses to the project as well to help me come up with better ideas, I’d give it another name, I’d copy everything I could get away with copying from Apple including making it finger friendly and not multitask. That’s right, no more multitasking. I’d get it on different types of devices including phones, music players, mini PCs and tablets. I’d blend such devices into one device and call it Zune something and I’d blend its functionality into Windows 7 particularly with respect to music management like Apple and like Google I would tie in my company’s other services into it like Hotmail, Bing and whatever Microsoft’s now calling their imitation of Google Maps (isn’t it interesting how even MSNBC doesn’t use Microsoft’s Virtual Earth?). To give my reputation a clean slate, I’d prevent all backward-compatibility whether or not it was necessary in my implementations of a beefed up NetCF and Silverlight. I bet about 3% of my customers among the 4% of my share of the market even know what a cab is so who cares — no more backwards compatibility. Like it never happened. Record expunged.
I heard the Xbox has done well so I’d tie it into the Xbox somehow too and its online service if there is one. Makes sense considering all those iPhone advertisements I saw with people playing games with the g-sensor so I’ll support that as well. I’ll go all-out with g-sensor support. I’ll get my guys to discover another axis, we’ve got the money. I’d keep quiet, mostly, about the project in order to build up the hype and because I don’t want to dilute my number one pony’s presence in the media with something that has failed so stunningly in the past, my company’s mobile operations, particularly now that the mobile market share is a decked so heavily stacked against me. Just in case the operating system actually achieved noteworthy success, might as well wrap it up in Silverlight as much as possible as force feeding my answer to Flash and HTML5 to the world with one more little angle is about as, if not more, valuable than making this mobile operating system less of a joke for the sake of becoming a contender in that market. And that is why I won’t even include Flash support. Like both Apple and Google I would put a stop to this community hippy cab free-for-all nonsense and lock the OS into this Microsoft Marketplace thing which while I’m at it I would rename as well because we ought to be able to come up with name that’s more similar sounding to App Store that flies with the legal department.
According to all the rumors I’ve read, my hypothetical plan is more or less on par with Microsoft’s actual strategy. The rumors are consistent with each other, most of them, and come from sources many would regard as reputable. However Microsoft has done a good job remaining mute about this and the closest thing to first hand information that I found was a vague and poorly translated statement by some Italian who didn’t understand the nondisclosure agreement and a tweet, both of which were very positive. Many said Google had no shot of breaking into the mobile market as it was way too late. Most consumers had already had fallen in love with their iPhones, Blackberries and Symbian phones and you can’t just shake that up because you’re Google, but the nay-sayers were wrong. That said, I’m a nay-sayer against Microsoft making a significant presence in this market no matter how hard they recently started trying.
I’ll tell you another thing, on a more personal note: If they take away all my old cabs or my ability to multitask, I don’t care if it has all the eye candy in the world — byebye WinMo and hello Android. 
Doug Simmons
SMS Skinning Gets Updated
Working on the earlier work to enable pretty bubbles in your text messages that we reported here, user Astronaut has come out with two new improved SMS skins. There’s a new look and the pic of your contact remains on top all the time. Remember that this works for the traditional SMS screen only and if you have TF3D enabled to handle your texts then this doesn’t apply to you…but then you already have something you can tolerate looking at anyway:)
via WMPowerUser
Wake Up and Shut Down Your PC From Your Phone
Just saw this little utility that some of you may find useful. It lets you wake up, shut down, reboot or log off from the PC’s on your network via you WM device. Here are the requirements:
# Wifi active on wm and connected on same local network as PC’s
# Wake-On-Lan enabled on PC’s
# allow http traffic on Port 7777
# obtain MAC Address for all PC’s you wish to ‘control’
# Currently only built for WVGA devices
Smartphones Weekly Roundup
Here’s last week’s smartphones roundup, based on some leading mobility sites all around the world!
New HDWobble Shows The Power of WM
There’s a new version of HDWobble out (remember,this is the app that lets you make still images get a little jiggle to them in just the right places:)) But before we get off topic, the real beauty of this release is the ridiculous 3D\gsen image viewer that’s been incorporated into the app. It really shows off what’s possible on WM using OpenGL. Just take a look at it in action:
Really impressive work. That alone is worth the price of admittance. Of course, this is only part of the app. The other part is the wobble part (warning, NTSW: not safe for wives:))
IMDb Mobile v0.45 – Movie Info and Trailers
We just got hooked up by one of our Forum Guru’s jimski and I wanted to share more of his awesome work. Please head over to our forums (and register) to check out our community and more of jimski’s work: CLICK HERE
“I was reading my PocketNow RSS Feed tonight and came across a new app by Blade0rs over at XDA-Developers. It’s called IMDb Mobile, for Internet Movie Database. The link to the thread is here. From what I have read, the app mimics the iPhone app with the same name. It’s still in beta but I found it to be pretty stable (no lockups or freezes but it did kick me out once).”
“NOTE: If you don’t have an Unlimited Data Plan or have access to WiFi, don’t read any further. This app consumes lots or megabytes. Playing with it tonight and trying to get videos to work (more on that below) ate up more than 95MB’s .”
“The app let’s you search for info about: movies, TV shows, actors, directors, etc. You can also view movie trailers . You get started by: entering a search term, viewing the Top 250 or checking out what’s Coming Soon. As you can see in the screen shots below, I entered "Indiana" and was presented with all the Indiana Jones movies, the Young Indiana Jones TV series, a movie names Indiana that was released in; 1916, 1920 and 1966, a TV series called Indiana, an Indiana Jones Video Game, movies and another TV series; The Adventures of Young Indiana, and some other stuff. Quite a thorough selection.”
To Check out more of jimski’s articles and review of IMDb’s new Mobile App, head on over to our forums for the complete write up and a bunch of screen shots. CLICK HERE
Big huge thanks to jimski for writing this up for us!
Thanks also to tipster Nadal!
Anthony.
