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Since Blackberries do not support HTML email, I’ve been using Empower Mail Viewer as a plugin to help format and view HTML links in my emails. Recently I was shown BBSmart Email Viewer which is another plugin to help format and view HTML email. After installing BBSmart, it was very similar to the look and feel of Empower. At first, it was hard to tell a difference between the products. So I uninstalled Empower and used BBSmart exclusively to get a real feel for the product.

After receiving a few emails, it become very clear that BBSmart loaded HTML emails much quicker than Empower. While its loading, BBSmart gives you a progress bar showing how much has been loaded, which is a nice touch. Just like Empower, BBSmart also gives you the option of changing the background color, text color and fonts used when displaying emails. Empower seemed to have a little better font selection but I quickly found a font and size that worked for me. HTML formating was very clean and smart. All html links are marked accordingly, which is a nice addition. Any link will show up with the type after it in parentheses. As an example, web links show up as (link) and PDFs will show up as (pdf). This helps to know what your clicking on when your stuck on a EDGE connection. The one feature that had me hooked and sets itself apart was the ability to convert emails as either to-do’s or calendar entries. Being able to quickly turn any email into a to-do or calendar entry while on the move makes me much more productive. I live off my to-do list and this keeps me out of my Inbox and spending valuable time completing tasks.

The downfall for these features is the price, $24.99 where as Empower is $9.99. If your into GTD or highly productive, the ability to make emails into to-do’s and calendar entries is epic on a Blackberry. The price is easily justified and willmostly likely pay for itself. If your only after HTML support, while BBSmart does a better job of loading and formating HTML, the lower priced Empower will probably be enough. For me, I’m sticking with BBSmart Email Viewer.

Decisions, decisions. Apple revamped their entire line of iPods yesterday and introduced a new model, the iPod Touch. The iTouch, as I call it, is the iPhone, without the phone. To me that translates to “everything I wanted in the iPhone without losing my Blackberry and switching carriers”. And speaking of the iPhone, they officially discontinued the 4GB model in favor of the 8GB model, then lowered the price by $200. iPhone now costs $399 which is very attractive but also at the $399 price point is the new 16GB iPod Touch.

iPod Touch:
I haven’t been this excited for a product in awhile. In a previous post I stated I would pass on the iPhone. My dependance on my Blackberry and switching to AT&T were really my only reasons not to purchase one. Otherwise I thought the iPhone was amazing. Now Apple has all the amazing without any of my worries. Without a doubt, I’ll be picking up the iPod Touch the day its released. I went as far as to pre-order it from Apple.com last night but when I seen they charged me sales tax, I said screw it and I’ll just pick one up at an Apple store when they are available. I’m all about instant gratification. Its just my luck that the only product that wasn’t in stores already was the iPod Touch. Apple’s site says it ships by Sept. 28th. That’s along time to wait when you want something today. That’s around the same time the T-Mobile Blackberry Curve is rumored to be released so I should have some new toys to play with at the end of this month.

iPod Nano:
The Nano’s got a major overhaul with a new design, interface and video support. Unfortunately it seems the Nano is the sleeper product of the day being overshadowed by the Touch and the iPhone price drop. If the Touch wasn’t released, I would have ran to the store to pick up a new Nano without a second thought. $199 gets you a 8GB Nano that plays video. That’s epic.

Afterthoughts:
The 2-3 week wait for the iPod Touch is actually good for me. It will give me time to sell off my G1 Nano and my AppleTV to make room for the new iPod. My decision to sell my AppleTV stems more from my currently living situation than the new iPods. My HDTV has died and only have access to an SDTV so the AppleTV will do nothing more than collect dust for the next few months. With the Xbox 360’s support for SDTV, h264 and the help of Connect360 for my Mac, I don’t lose much from not having my AppleTV. Don’t worry little AppleTV, we may one day meet again.apple

I get a lot of questions about the kinda of hardware I’m running these days. I thought I’d do a few posts about the hardware, software and everything in-between that I am currently using. With the exception of the Router and NAS, most of this I carry with me all the times in my Timbuk2 Blogger.

Hardware:
Macbook 2.0Ghz/2GB RAM/250GB HDD
Western Digital Passport 120GB USB External HDD
Buffalo Linkstation 250GB NAS
Linksys WRT56G running HyperWRT 2.1b1 +tofu13c

In My Bag:
iPod Nano 4GB w/ Nike+iPod Kit
Nintendo DS Lite + games
Sandisk MicroCruzer 1GB Flash Drive
Microsoft Wireless Notebook Laser Mouse 6000
T-Mobile Blackberry Pearl
Garmin Nuvi 360 GPS
FujiFilm V10 Digital Camera

Home Entertainment:
Norcent LT-3222 32″ LCD TV (Slowly dying)
Microsoft Xbox360 Premium
Apple TV 40GB

Beta 2 of Opera Mini 2 was released yesterday with a nice list of enhancements:

• Added encryption
• Added multi search, with shortcut #+9
• Added create search from form field
• Added landscape mode, shortcut #+*
• Added support for small anti-aliased bitmap fonts
• Added content folding
• Simplified setup process
• Improved image quality
• Improved fit to width mode rendering
• Simplified settings page
• Added native BlackBerry menu
• Allow BlackBerry to accept the EULA via the menu.
• Fixed decoding of images that were skipped when partially above the window
• Added clock adjustment setting
• Changing the font size via settings now clears the document cache
• Now saves full screen mode between sessions
• Dialogs are now displayed with round corners and alpha channel overlay windows
• Delayed randomess gathering for secure connections until first real page request

What caught my eye the most was the improvements made to its Blackberry support. I had tried beta 1 and was pretty unimpressed. It was clumsy, slow and hard to use so I deleted. With specific support for Blackberry devices, I decided to load up beta 2 on my BB Pearl and give it another chance.

Blackberry Changes
Right off the bat I was loving the changes. It now behaves like any Blackberry app should. The Menu button actually brings up the menu!! Previously you had to use the QW and OP buttons to access the menus. It was frustrating at best. They did a great job of making use of the Menu, Back and Trackball in the new version.

Landscape mode
As I segway from the changes for Blackberry devices, the 2nd change I was most excited about was the landscape mode. As soon as I loaded up the8thsign.com in Opera, I was hitting #+* every way I could. Nothing I did would get landscape mode to work. I must have spend 15mins using every possible key combination and still nothing. Looked under settings and no Landscape mode listed there either. So it looks like it its not enabled on Blackberry’s for some reason. Disappointing.

Other Features
Some of the nicer new features include using the 2-3-6-8 buttons to navigate around the webpage. This may have been in beta 1 but I don’t remember it being this easy or fun to navigate. When moving side to side, its even smart enough to stop at edges of text and pictures even if its only a few pixels away. Another feature I’ve noticed is that text will be reformatted to fit your screen, even when viewing the full page and zoomed in.

Most transitions are now made with a iPhone like slide effect. In most places its very smooth but gets choppy when zooming out of a page.

Also new to this version is a OS X like hud for shortcuts and info. To see what I’m talking about, hold down the * or # buttons for a few seconds. They also use this new interface for displaying link information.

Conclusion
Beta 2 is a HUGE improvement for Opera Mini 4, especially on Blackberry Devices. Why they didn’t include landscape mode on Blackberries puzzles me but hopefully it will show up in beta 3. Getting around webpages is fast and fun. I just wish there was some way you could set it as your default browser but RIM doesn’t allow that. Hopefully in BB OS 4.3. My only complaint is the full screen view looks very distorted. It maybe due to the small screen size but the iPhones full screen mode looks amazing. If you have a Blackberry, download the beta and check it out. You can get it for free by going to http://mini.opera.com/beta from your phone.

Apple’s long awaited iPhone was released yesterday after much hype. From most of the reviews I’ve been reading, it lives up to the hype too. Even with all the glowing reviews, I’m going to pass on the iPhone, for now atleast. My dependance on my Blackberry is enough to keep me away. I currently have a Blackberry Pearl and I’m still In love with my phone after 9 months. Its coming up on having the phone for a year so I’m itching for a new phone but the iPhone’s lack of Exchange or OWA support makes it a deal breaker to me. I’m definitely jealous of anyone who has an iPhone but I can’t justify paying $600 to lose a feature I depend on so much.

On a side note, its been confirmed that a 2nd gen Blackberry Curve will be coming to T-Mobile in September. I will be getting this phone once its released for sure. New features in the updated Curve include:

• Wi-Fi
• 3.2MP camera
• Stereo Bluetooth
• Improved build quality

As long as I’m at my current job, I’m going to be sticking with a Blackberry but damn do I want a iPhone.

Lack of HTML formated email on your Blackberry got you down? You’re not alone. Due to security concerns, Blackberry’s do not offer HTML support in emails at all. Even in its consumer phones, the Pearl and Curve, HTML email isn’t even an option. Unfortunately, a lot of email sent these days have some sort of HTML in them and the lack of support makes those emails hard to read when using a Blackberry.

Enter the Empower HTML Mail Viewer. This piece of software installs as a plugin to the Blackberry mail client and displays HTML formated email the way it was meant. The product is in beta and its shows.There have been some obvious problems with previous builds. Fortunately the latest beta has fixed most of the bugs that caused me to disable the plugin while I was testing it. The only issue I have left is pictures do not display at all. You just get an outline of a box. The program is yet to be perfected but even in the beta form, its usefulness easily outweighs some minor issues. If you want to enter the world of HTML email, just point your Blackberry to http://www.getempower.com/emv.php and install OTA. I would be sure to bookmark the page and check back for any updates as there has been 2 in the last week that have fixed numerous bugs.

I’ve whipped up a Workflow for encoding videos for the Blackberry Curve. You will need to head over to my post on encoding video for the Blackberry Pearl for instructions but here is an updated Workflow that should format videos to the correct screen size. I do not have a Curve to test this so if anyone has one and would like to give me feedback, I’d appreciate it.

[Download Workflow for Blackberry Curve]