Monthly Archives: January 2009

Finally home after a week in a very cold Orlando, at a great Lotusphere. Picked up my son for the weekend, handed him some of the stuff I got for him on the trip, and turned on the TV and the cable box from AT&T U-verse to watch some shows I had recorded while I was gone.

"No recordings" was the message I got. I tried a few times, but all my recordings were gone. The service worked, I had all my channels, and the internet connection worked as well. Called customer support and finally eneded up at technical support. After a while the girl I talked to came back and said that they pushed out an upgrade and that "something must have gine wrong and erasedthe recordings". I had about 10-12 movies recorded from when I had HBO/Showtime and the other movie channels (I since then cancelled those channels because I was not that interested in paying $50 extra/month to watchone or twomovies each month), as well as several other shows from History Channel, Discovery, Military Channeland other channels. I had several eopisodes of Mythbusters recorded for my son, as well as a bunch of documentaries and movies that I specifically marked as not to delete.

The DVR has a nice feature, it start deleting the oldest recordings to make room for a new one if there is not enough space, but I can protect the shows I want to really save.

I asked the girl what AT&T could do for me, and after talking to her supervisor, they offered to credit my account with 10 dollar. I asked to talk to the supervisor, and he siad that is the most technical support can do. When I indicated that I found that offer unacceptable (just going online and trying to find all those shows and movies would take more that $10 worth of time, even if counting below minimum wage), the supervisor said he would send a message to the billing department and someone would call me back tomorrow. They better have something else to offer, or I will be a very unhappy customer.

I been pretty happy with the service this far. I have four incoming streams, meaning I can recordthree channelsand watch a fourth one, all at teh same time. The internet service (I curently have the Elite plan with 6 Mbit down and 1 Mbit up) is pretty stable. Lately I had to reconnect more frequently with the wireless router, and for a few days prior to leaving for Lotusphere I had more problems that usual. But other than that, I have been happy with them.

The PVR have several USB ports, but they are basically useless, since you can not paly Divx or any files from them, and you can not hook up any external drives to transfer your recordings over to, so you have a backup if AT&T decide to reformat your drive while you are gone…

Well, I will update this entry tomorrow, if AT&T call me back… Stay tuned.

Update: AT&D did call me back this morning (Saturday), I had told them I would be home/available between 9am and 3pm (have a friends b-day party in the afternoon), and they called shortly after 9. They upgraded me from U200 (200 channels)to the U300 plan (300 channels, mainly getting a bunch of movie channels) for free forsix months, and upgraded my Internet from Elite (6/1 Mbit) to Max (10/1.5 Mbit) for free for six months. I think that was a good offer and a nice gesture of them. I might also go for the VoIP phone service, that will save me about $15 in taxes each month, they say. 

The other day I joined the video sharing site/service Qik and downloaded their (free) application for Blackberry. What it does is similar to YouTube, but you record directly for the site and the video get uploaded at once. As they describe it:

Join Qik to share live video with anyone and everyone?r only share with the people you choose. Use Qik and start showing your audience of choice what´s going on anywhere and everywhere you go.

I thought it could be fun to create a group for Lotusphere 2009, so I did. The URL is http://qik.com/groups/3003. It is an open group, anyone can join for now. Why not use this to upload your clips from Lotusphere? You can setup your account to automatically post a tweet when you upload a clip, and to send it to YouTube as well.

A fairly large number of phones are supported, including Blackberry och iPhone.

Update: I am still trying to figure out how to add a video you created to a group. Stay tuned.

This weekend I went to the local AT&T and got myself a Blackberry Bold. I initially wanted the Storm, but after reading all the reviews, I decided I should go with a Bold. My AT&T account was eligible for an upgrade now in January (actually January 19, but as I will be in Orlando then, I wanted to upgrade early). It was no hassle, compared with earlier times I been getting cell phones. In and out in about 10 minutes. I did not bother having them transfer my contacts or contents. All my pictures were already on my memory card (which I could use in the Blackberry), and I had already synced all my contacts to my computer at home. So when I came home, I could just re-sync all my contacts back to the new phone, and I was set.

It took me about a day and a half to get used to the phone, find all the settings, find some nice layouts for the screen and download some useful programs (e.g. Lotusphere´09 Session Database, Yahoo Go!, Facebook, twibble and Goggle Mobile/Maps/Sync/Gmail). I also made myself a couple of background images, just to try it out. I had one on my old Samsyn Sync phone I was happy with, but the resolution/size was totally wrong, so I ended up recreating it, and it actually turned out much better this time.

So after about two and a half days, what is my opinion? Well, I have to say I really like it. This is my first Blackberry, but I have been playing with some older models, about 2 years ago. This one is very nice compared with them. The screen is absolutely gorgeous, crisp, clear and easy to read. The programs, both built-in and most downloaded, are easy to use. I love the GPS functionality, and the camera is creating pretty good pictures, in good light conditions.

What are the things I don´t like? Well, there are a few. Some may be due to my inexperience with the device, but some are legit issues. Nothing that really take away too much from the Bold, though. My biggest issue, and probably just due to not being used to the device, is the keyboard. The numeric part have the numbers in white, just like the qwerty keyaboard. That makes the left-most keys hard to read, and creating some temporary brain overload when trying to type. I also am missing more specialized characters, like the Scandinavian UGand ?characters. My old Samsung had those.

The background light level is going up and down, and I have not figured out why or how it works. I am sure it has to do with the light conditions around the device, though.

As I said, I synced up my contacts with my computer at home, and when I got to work I synced it up with my Notes address book there. I also synched the calendar both with Google Calendar (using Google Sync) and with my Notes Calendar. Here I got some conflicts, the same item was sent to Google Calendar, then sent to Notes, and suddenly I had two conflicting items for the same event in the Blackberry calendar.

I then talked to our network admin and he set me up on the BES, and (without making any changes in the device), I suddenly had two copies of every contact. I am not sure if this is due to synchronizing with Notes through the Blackberry Desktop Manager and Google Sync, or the connection to BES. But that is pretty annoying.

So there are little issues like that, which I am sure I will get under control eventually.

In the mean time I am happily playing with my new toy. Well, I am not sure I should call it toy, I have some female friends who got a strange look on their faces when I told them I bought a new toy this weekend. I don´t know why, but I have a feeling they were thinking about something else, until I told them what I got”…”