Let’s face it, web browsing on a Pocket PC has been one huge disappointment after another. Not to just fault Microsoft, all other contenders have not come even close to a desktop browser in your pocket. Not Opera. Not Minimo. Not Deepfish.

Then enter iPhone with Safari with full AJAX and suddenly the Windows Mobile enthusiast is reduced from a human being to the gorilla banging the bones in front of the monolith during the 21st century odyssey.

But if you really want to browse the web on your PocketPC there is a glimer of hope, Skyfire:

It sounds ok, until you come to the part explaining that in order to get these cool features you also must run a server-side component in order to browse the web on your phone. If thats not a dealbreaker for you, here is the Youtube video.

Not very elegant, but a small price to pay for a useful web in your pocket.

Well, well, well. The Windows Mobile 6 that Cingular has been promising since this device shipped, and almost a year after devices start popping up with WM6 on the market, Samsung & AT&T deliver… yawn.

To boot, there are some interesting gotchas according to Chris..

Frankly, EAS on iPhone would be a little more exciting.

Is what you see below Windows Mobile 7? More pictures here.

Get your rom flashed, from AT&T:

http://www.palm.com/us/support/downloads/treo750update/att.html

After the millionth time of watching my mobile phone choking on loading quarter meg of Javascript of Shockey Monkey’s new mobile rich interface I finally remembered the pain while searching for my lost Blackjack earlier this afternoon. Not only did Katie find it (love yooou honey!) but I also sat down to finally put the pesky Javascript static-code reloads to a grave.

Here is an article on how to use Apache’s mod_expires to enforce selective caching of javascript files.

http://www.vladville.com/using-apache-mod_expires-for-faster-ajax-sites

That sounded like a mouthfull. Here is what it means: I telll your browser how long it needs to cache my Javascript code. One day? One month? One year? My call. By telling it which Javascript libraries do not change often I can force it to cache them and not have to download them every single time. Faster load times, less bandwidth, more efficient experience. And hopefully less need for a phone warranty as you watch that GPRS ghettonet connection struggling with the last few K worse than a fat man with the 26th mile of the marathon.

P.S. Yes, of course I am still working on Shockey Monkey! Lack of hype does not translate into lack of development, there are over 4,000 people using, you didn’t think I’d just let that slide did you? Geez.

Looks like The Boy Genius Report got his hands on Windows Mobile 6.1.

Take a look at the gallery. Too bad Deepfish isn’t ready yet with all the hype heading to the iPhone. Go figure, people want “real” web browsing on their mobile phones.

Earlier today I went to the Apple store to try and make myself like the iPhone enough so I could ask my wife to get it for me for Xmas. I failed… the keyboard sucks, the phone sucks, the mail app sucks (15 minute mail check intervals were ok.. five years ago) the configuration sucks and it really boils down to a midgetized, albeit beautiful, tablet without actual applications. So I need a new Christmas present idea for the wife…

This post, however, is  about something else – customer disservice. I spent close to 30 minutes playing with the iPhone, really doing everything I could to see myself dropping the Samsung Blackjack for. In that time I was harrassed by no less than 10 separate “Geniuses” – I suppose they don’t often see people using their devices as the name of the game is “let’s make idiots gawk at pretty pictures and run to the register” – so I paid them no attention. Read the swag bitch, you may be an Apple Genius but you’re not qualified to delete SPAM from my Junk Items.

So as I was trying to will myself into thinking iPhone would be for me, I got to listen to the “Geniuses” blast their arrogance on their customer base. All of whom left without purchasing anything. All of whom, as a result of this experience, will likely never return to an apple store.

The key argument: Unlocking. Can you unlock the device? Can I use it in another country? Can it be unlocked. The answers were not “no” but were far more threatening and egoistical. It was as if you were committing an act against the humanity by trying to be on a carrier other than the one Apple chose to abuse its monopoly with.

“It’s possible but its difficult and I would not recommend it. You are likely going to destroy the phone and we will not take it back.”

“We cannot unlock the phone, it can’t be done.”

“If you try to unlock it you void the warranty and we will just lock it back the next time you connect it to your computer”

What cracked me up was the shere ignorance of these walking Apple infomercials – they are a smug little bunch, for being a bunch of retail retards making I venture to guess $12 an hour tops? I wonder if there is a huge gap in the Apple staff training that needs to go a long way to explaining to these geniuses that they are not actually “geniuses” in the IT space that can showcase ego but rather just retail sales people, you know, like the kind you find at Macy’s. Without this check, Apple seems to be antagonizing a fair amount of sales through their customer disservice.

As usual, time to grab the mirror and make sure we aren’t doing the same.

I have been feeling a little under the weather so I decided to take a plunge and upgrade to Windows Mobile 6 on my Blackjack. This is an underground, unofficial build (cooked rom) so please don’t email and ask, I will just delete the message.

All in all, Windows Mobile 6 upgrade for BlackJack is pretty cool, its the only Windows Mobile 6 Standard phone I have and the experience is quite less impressive than Windows Mobile 6 Professional happens to be. It is however much, much faster than WM5 and the setup was a breeze. Internet Explorer still crashes on some sites but overall its a worthwhile update.

It’s a great phone, very speedy and pretty good for firing off a quick email or checking a football score. Beyond that, or rather, in spite of it all I am quite unexcited about the platform in general. It seems to me that not only has Microsoft lost every bit of edge and innovation with the platform, not only have they killed every outlet for developers and enthusiasts to hack their devices but relatively little has been happening on this side of mobility since maybe April. Some of us, or perhaps most of us, enjoy playing with these gadgets and thats how we learn the key features to solve business problems… with that spark gone though, I think there will be an iPhone in the house as soon as ActiveSync is fully supported.

This has been on my mind for a little while now and sometimes the fanboy eyeglaze needs to wear off before you evaluate things for what they are.

I will never buy another Windows Mobile phone until Microsoft stands behind its platform and here is why you shouldn’t either: It’s not Microsoft.

Microsoft has made its significant wealth by producing business tools that grew, scaled and upgraded. I have never owned a computer that I couldn’t upgrade to the next version of Windows. Our servers have scaled from Windows Server standard, to SBS, to Enterprise with clustering. We (and I) could afford to keep up with the technology and with Microsoft and realize the business and productivity benefits because we did not face a significant hardware charge every time we wanted to implement something new. The idea of Software Assurance further delivers on this promise.

But take that same strategy to Windows Mobile platform. Can you do the same? For a very large population of devices the answer is yes – albeit, illegally.

Want a legal way to upgrade your phone? $499 please. Wait, $499 is $400 more than you advertise a brand new phone for, how can an upgrade cost four times more? Oh! You’re not really upgrading my phone, which is perfectly capable of running the said software, you’re just replacing it with the brand new phone. Oh, and you want at least a two year contract on it too?

This is where the Microsoft – OEM – Telco menage a  trois infuriates the customer and makes them abandon Windows Mobile and crumbles the Exchange, Unified Communications, Windows Platform and the “connected” dream evaporates: They look elsewhere.

I cannot and will not recommend a Windows Mobile phone anymore until Microsoft starts offering upgrades for them, directly from Microsoft’s site. Please do not buy into the lie that only the OEM can write the drivers and only the carrier can publish it because thats a total copout. For literally everyone in my audience that has seen a Windows Mobile demo or a new release preview, just what do you think that demo ran on? Boiling pot of water? Of course not. Microsoft develops and tests this software on the Windows Mobile devices you own and use. Every developer that compiles of a piece of Windows Mobile code already has the architecture cabs as a part of their Visual Studio SDK for mobility so if we can roll out the new OS, if we can compile software for it – what are we waiting for the OEM and the carrier to do? Compile their garbage IM software and design a new theme?

OEMs and carriers have the least incentive to implement any software upgrades because it means more support and more documentation work for them. They usually never relase them and you’re stuck buying a new phone. And in business, being forced to buy something new and abandon something functional is equivalent to theft.

Blackjack is my last Windows Mobile phone, even if I get a free one I will give it away.

If you are a business, avoid Windows Mobile until Microsoft chooses to stand behind its platform a little more than just releasing Haloween backgrounds and ringtones.

For those of you that don’t understand what I mean without using crude street language (all complaints should be sent to my PR firms: Tim Barrett & Co in USA and Susanne Dansey, LTD worldwide):

If I wanted to be fucked by a telco carrier and mislead into a product purchase of a toy that will be obsolete the moment I opened the box I would have bought an iPhone.

If you know where the quote is from and it’s relevance to the subject at hand, you my friend are very cool.

There is a strong stench of silicone vapor in the air over at Palm HQ as they kill off the potential category differentiator that Palm Foleo was expected to be. As you recall, I was fairly excited about the concept of a companion to the mobile device that Palm offered but it appears that 1.0 is no more. The convergence is certainly an interesting thing, in the world of Web 2.0, SaaS and more.

Nearly everything being developed is going mobile. Even my small shop has all it’s backends mobile – Off my Samsung Blackjack I can respond, create and update support tickets for ownwebnow.com via Shockey Monkey. I can monitor the uptime, performance, queue size and processing power of ExchangeDefender nodes. I can power cycle or shut down any server on the network,  provision new service, with the obvious idea being that all OWN information can be mobile, secure and available on demand.

What I am about to say may shock you. Then again, would you expect any less from me?

I am a fan of Apple for the twisted way they have virtually pwn3d the mobile industry. I know you’re probably thinking that the mobile industry consists of players like Microsoft, HTC, Blackberry and so on but the only true players are O2, AT&T, T-Mobile, Orange and other carriers. They dictate which features do and most importantly, which features do not make it to the devices running on their network. Ever wondered why its so difficult to stick an MP3 as a ringtone on your Windows Mobile device?

I feel that Windows Mobile really did not deliver on its promise. What justification do I have for that? Over the past month Own Web Now Corp sold more Microsoft Exchange 2003 with Blackberry CALs than Exchange 2007 CALs. People are demanding the Crackberry, which for all intents and purposes is an inferior product. But they want it because its more reliable. I too have dumped the Windows Mobile 6 Professional, which had far more features, for a Windows Mobile 5 (equivalent of WM6 Standard) device in Samsung Blackjack because I got sick and tired of really crappy performance. I just wanted a reliable device <check> which wasn’t made by HTC <check> that required me to wait to get to the essentials like contacts, email, web pages etc if I had more than one thing open <check>.

I, as a techie, settled for less that was fully functional, over the more that didn’t quite live up to the promise. Now, Melinda Mount, VP of Microsoft’s digital entertainment division says Mobility has the brightest future of all their devices. I think she is right. You can’t call yourself a Windows Mobile fan until you’ve seen the magic show that Jason Langridge puts on with WM6 devices (still waiting on that shipment from HK btw Jason)  but let me share something that I believe is the new development in the world of Windows Mobile fans, straight from one of my guys:

Rich Walkup: I finally got rid of my slave device and got a real phone.

Are we techies trending more towards the development platform where all our apps are mobile, or at least mobile accessible, or is the customer trending towards being more mobility “IT Basic” in their approach. I feel both are true, which is why Palm’s CEO gets the props on sinking $10 million into vapor and moving on to the next generation that is not going to patronize IT Basic folks but actually empower the folks that have a strategic approach to the mobility in the enterprise.