This Mobile Life

Sometimes the emails I get in the TML inbox are strange and I know that it is probably even more strange for the Public Relations people who mass send these emails out. So far, in the year I have been running TML is the weirdest thing I have come across though.

The internet brought with it a lot of faster, easier ways of doing things. Getting news, keeping in touch with friends and family, shopping, and having an affair. AshleyMadison.com has announced their new iPhone and Blackberry applications that let you stay connected to “your lovers throughout the day…on the train coming into work, waiting at the airport, or even late at night while your spouse is more focused on the TV than you,” says Noel Biderman, Ashley Madison founder.

Very rarely do I get the chance to go hands on with some of the items that I read about daily but this time I was pleasantly surprised to be allowed the chance to review a great accessory to any mobile device from Digipower — JumpStart, the end-all to your mobile charging needs.

The Skinny
I was contacted by a representative of JumpStart and asked to do a review of the product a few weeks ago and after agreeing to it I was sent my own JumpStart. The first thing I noticed, after pulling it out of the box, was that it was in a clamshell package. I HATE clamshell packages and I nearly cut myself trying to get the product out more than I cut the package itself.

I finally got the product out of its package and was surprised at how lightweight it was, the packaging claimed it was 2 ounces and I can believe it. The size of the JumpStart reminded me of a lighter and could easily be slipped into a pocket or purse and barely noticed. There is a button on the side of the casing that is marked “TEST” and pressing it lit up 3 green lights on the top. Below the test button is a USB Mini and USB A port (marked IN and OUT, respectively). I plugged the JumpStart into the wall to charge and 4 lights came on, I’m not sure why but I left it that way for a while and they never changed.

The company claims that the JumpStart will hold a charge for 1 year and can recharge a “typical” cell phone 3 times before it needs recharging (more on that later).

Seven adapters came with JumpStart, a few I knew right away (Mini USB, 5-pin micro USB, Nokia, Samsung) but the others I couldn’t figure out. There was no iPhone charging adapter but as long as you carry your iPhone cable you will be able to use the JuumpStart. Also, the charger came with a retractable USB cable with a proprietary end for the adapters and an AC adapter with a USB A plug to plug in the USB cable.

My Impressions
I had the chance to really use this charger the other night when I lost power at my house for about 9 hours. I needed my phone fully charged the next morning, since I use it as my alarm clock, and my wife needed hers charged as well. As far as I know the JumpStart was fully charged when my wife plugged up her phone (an HTC Titan). She charged it to 80% and then I checked the battery status on the JumpStart, it had two lights so I plugged my phone up to it (an HTC Touch) and let it charge until the JumpStart was all out of power — I had about 50% charge.

Now, neither of our phones are “typical” and we both had data turned on, so take the statement that it will charge a typical phone 3 times with a grain of salt.

I plugged the JumpStart back into the AC adapter and it charged again in about 2 hours. (As charged as it can get, I figure. Once again it had 4 green lights and they didn’t do anything after that, so I’m not sure if it was complete or not.)

According to Digipower, the device will be available this month (June) from select retailers and will sell for $49.99. If you drain your phone’s battery while on the go then this product should definitely be your next purchase.

Today I received an email from my friends over at Kinoma, they have released a new version of their mobile media browser — Kinoma Play — that I reviewed last year and this update is smoking!

Toshiba TG01 (docomo PRO series T-01A) + Kinoma Play walkthrough from KinomaTV on Vimeo.

This video is a 20 minute walkthrough that shows off all the new updates to Kinoma Play, it’s a bit long but it shows all the new stuff that you can do with the newest version of this great mobile app.

Skyfire, the BEST mobile browser available (IMHO), has finally relinquished that dreaded Beta tag and has gone to version 1.0. Unfortunately there is no way to directly update Skyfire if you already have it installed on your phone, visit get.skyfire.com to download the latest release directly to your phone.

Alex Albrecht has released his first iPhone app — iLick! It’s a simple app and, although $0.99, I find it worth the download. It’s a funny app for a buck and brought a smile to my face on a dreary Friday evening. You can buy the app on the iTunes App Store.

[Image from cleanmyphone.com]

The search for THE BEST keyboard for Windows Mobile is one that everyone who actually wants to do work on their PDA engages in every so often. I’ve tried a few of the keyboards out there (not even scratching the surface, I’m sure), but I think I’ve finally found one that’s worthy of being on my phone … at least until a better one comes out — FingerKeyboard v2.1.

I was just stumbling around the forums at PPCGeeks.com the other day and found this treasure of an app. So I grabbed the QVGA version, plugged my phone into my MacBook, and installed the CAB. It took a while and eventually seemed like it had gotten stuck (I left it sitting for about 20 minutes) so I pressed the END button and checked the program list. Lo and behold, it was installed. The keyboard itself is a great keyboard, with copy/paste/undo/redo, vibration feedback, click sounds, customizable emoticon shortcuts, and customizable shortcuts + much more, you can’t beat it. And the price, well, nothing is better than free. That’s right, this keyboard is FREE.

The only problems that I ran into were that on a QVGA device the keyboard with the arrow buttons was too big and only left a small space to see what I was typing, also the landscape orientation wasn’t correct. Whether this was because the application didn’t fully complete installing or not I don’t know.

FingerKeyboard v2.1 is freeware from the guys at PPCGeeks.com. They have versions for QVGA, VGA, and WVGA phones so no one is left out.

Kotaku picked up on a mod for the Blackberry that turns your boring device into a Pip-Boy 3000 from Fallout 3. The mod looks pretty good and actually works!

Pip-Berry 3000 [via Kotaku]

Over at The Consumerist today they have a great article about a nice iPhone app by Verisign (only iPhone for now, doesn’t support iPod Touch) that lets you secure your transactions on Paypal, eBay, and a few other sites. There’s also a step-by-step guide on how to set up your PayPal account to work with the iPhone app.

Note: In the comments, tvmitch pointed out that you can also have PayPal send you a six-digit code every time you want to login in case you don’t have an iPhone, just click the option that Chris Walters marked with “not this one!”.

The Mobile Manager for Netflix allows you to add, remove, move and watch trailers for movies in your Netflix Queue. I just did a little bit of testing on the app and it worked just like you think it would. I was able to remove a few movies, move a movie around in my queue, and add a new movie to my queue easily and all in about 5 minutes time.

The preview trailers are surprisingly clear and even while I was in a low signal area I still was able to buffer enough to watch the trailer well enough.

This is a free app from Microsoft but you have to have Microsoft Livean account with to download it. I also had to fill out a small form before I could download the app (I didn’t see any way to skip that even though I had a Live account). For all the prerequisites you have to do you’ll be ready to add and remove movies from Netflix at a moment’s notice!

In about 2 and a half hours MobileCrunch is going to start giving away iPhone app promo codes. They say that there will be promo codes for “dozens of applications, each worth anywhere from 99 cents up to $30 bucks.”

Basically it’s going to go down like a Woot-off: the promo code will stay up on the site until they give away all they have for that app, then the next one will show up. If you want to grab a few free apps make sure that you keep refreshing this page from 9 AM EST until they are done, because once the codes are gone they are gone forever.