I recently upgraded my mobile phone (Friday) and after much deliberation between the Samsung, LG or Moto RAZR, I went with my second LG phone. Even though multimedia features were not desired, of course you have to try them out. I was unpleasantly surprised to find that none of the marketable features worked. The problem-solver that I am, I couldn’t let that go. I scoured the web to find out all the tips/tricks to “hack” my mobile phone into compliance. I even purchased a 1GB mini sd card from Best Buy this afternoon and now I am going to store songs and movies on my phone (just in case).. Below is what I learned:

My software version: T81VZ06
- to find: Menu > Settings & Tools > 4 (system) > 3 (device info) > 2 (sw version)
- version xxxxx04 and later allow mp3 player

I have a 1GB SanDisc miniSD card

My PC: MacBook Pro (new mac notebook w/ intel duo core processor)

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Simplest Way to Enable Multimedia Features:
- buy a miniSD card 128MB or more (256 was $30 at BestBuy)
- buy a USB card reader (to attach to your computer - this way mac or pc) - I bought MobileMate SD+ ($22+ at Best Buy)

Enabling MP3

Menu
0
000000 (when the ?????? is displayed)
11 (Music Settings)
MP3 Enable

Formatting mini-SD (do this before placing card in any other devices)

Settings and Tools
4 (System)
4 (Manage Memory)
3 (Card Memory)
Options (lower right corner)
1 (Format Card) - your password is last 4 digits of your phone number

Enabling PLAY Shortcut Key (front panel)

Settings and Tools
1 (Tools)
3 (Shortcut Key)
2 (Play Key)
My MP3s

Ok. That is it. Now remove your mini-SD card, insert into your favoriate card reader and PC. Copy the MP3 files to the MY_MP3 folder on the mini-SD card. Insert mini-SD card back in to your VX8100 and enjoy all of your songs. To play them, hold down the play button on the front of your phone for 2+ seconds. You will see a song list and while playing a nice little equalizer display appears. You can also open your phone and the same display and controls are available.

I hope this helps you all out and good luck.

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While I was in college at The University of Montana, I helped teach others about web design and development. One of my indendent studies was to create a tutorial that could teach students the basics of web application design/development, and provided them source code so they could run the demo on their PC.

As I no longer host my personal site in a Windows environment, I had kind of let my resource section of my site “die”. I just found that the University of Montana Business School is still hosting this tutorial so I though I would furnish a link:

ASP / VB Script Tutorial

Enjoy!

Norton/Symantec Ghost has long been a network administrator’s friend/foe. I have always been supported by sysadmins or technical architecture teams so I had never a need to set up workstations and create images of drives to rapidly deploy a configuration to all machines in the lab or network. Well I had a crash course this week and finally got it all to work - I thought I would share how with others so they don’t feel the same agony.

I used Norton Ghost 8.2 Corporate Edition. It is similar to Ghost 2003. I hear Ghost 9 and current version, Ghost 10, have some easier handling of my situation but again, I had to make due with what was available - IT mantra, I reckon.

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Provisional application for patent. A low-cost option to allow you to later make a claim to a specific invention or technology before incurring the thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars in non-provisional patent filing.

During my research, I stumbled across this option for businesses to protect their intellectual property while they explore the commercial viability of their invention. I have been polling other software companies about software licensing and protecting software. During our discussions, several asked me about patents and had thought about patenting some of their technologies. I know Tim O’ Reilly doesn’t endorse it, but sometimes you have to protect yourself and your inventions even if only to make sure you can secure the resources to actually provide a service or utility that can benefit others. As such, here is the information I dug up and my experience with provisional application for patents.

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“Success comes from you, not to you.”

I really liked this phrase and it pretty much sums what what a lot of people advise students, young entrepreneurs and all sorts of folks. Earlier this year I was asked to speak to a group of top students from schools around the state at Hugh O’Brien Youth Leadership Seminars (HOBY). The topic was success and I sat on a panel with some impressive businesspeople. We all shared our stories and some tidbits of advice with the students.

In hindsight, I could’ve likely recited this phrase that I saw recently while driving down Reserve Street in Missoula, Montana. Many businesses, chiropractors and churches put catchy little slogans on their boards to promote thought - it must’ve worked. Enjoy!

http://www.montanalife.com/darin/my_insight/archives/000035.html

My buddy Darin posted an article with his thoughts about the intentions of Google’s Wi-Fi. I have a theory, and it doesn’t have anything to do with leveraging their site as a launch page for Internet users, or to gain more intelligence about their search algorithm, it is to lay the infrastructure for a software revolution and beat companies like Microsoft at their own game.

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You know when you consider buying a certain model of car, you begin to see that model everywhere? I recently experienced that same phenomenon, yet with a recent Internet buzz word, Ajax. A business associate of mine asked me to speak to emerging trends, specifically Ajax, and it had me stumped at first. Ajax stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML.

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Web services are a standardized way for two computer systems to communicate leveraging XML (Extensible Markup Language) and Internet communications protocols. Web services allow systems to send and receive formatted messages despite their location, software platform or even programming language.

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