Agile Animal Inc.

webOS 1.3.1 Released

Today Palm released webOS 1.3.1. If you hit their support pages you will see a list of the release notes.

What was fixed.

I had personally reported several issues when if came to the sync of emails and calendars. With one exception (see the what is not list below) I think they have fixed it all. Not a moment too soon - I was ready to give up on the platform due to the email related issues.

In summary:

• Email messages still push even when your account hits 50 messages (FINALLY!)
• Calendars now still sync even with special characters and notes.
• Exchange related issues seem to be resolved.
  
  

I have noticed that the platform is a bit more responsive in certain situations, but generally speaking the speed increases are not as dramatic as previously suggested. Applications still take too long to launch.

What was not.

I hear that iTunes support is still broken. I don’t use it myself so I can’t confirm this.

More importantly Google Calendars (for Google Apps accounts) only sync over EvDO. So if you want your calendar to update you will need to turn off WiFi and then sync. If forcing update doesn’t work try editing your account settings and simply type in your password again - this got things syncing again for me.

The Punchline

If your calendar won’t sync, turn off WiFi and try again. And don’t hold your breath for iTunes support.

Everything else with the platform should be fixed.

Bell’s HSPA+ Covers Almost Everywhere

With the launch of Bell’s HSPA+ network I suspect that there are going to be a bunch on converts from Rogers to Bell. Rogers is only taking care of 5 canadian cites (at the time I wrote this blog) with their HSPA+. Bell pretty much covers everywhere that I have ever been in Canada. And I have travelled coast to coast.

It is hard to argue with a network that offers HSPA+ everywhere.

The only question that remains - what do you do with your Rogers Internet Stick? Bring it with you!

Disclaimer

If you are stopping to read this disclaimer, chances are this is not for you. You might wreck something. You are better off just selling your old stick on Kijiji or Craig’s List.

Unlock the Stick

Unlocking a Internet Stick is actually much more painless than unlocking a phone. I went to [DC Unlocker]:http://www.dc-unlocker.com/ and paid about $15 for 10 unlocking credits. I then had to find a computer running Windows (in my case I grabbed the other laptop and launched VMWare.) All I had to do was run the unlocking software with a Bell SIM card inside the Rogers Stick.

Pro Tip: either buy the SIM card without a plan or borrow a SIM card for this. If for some reason the Unlock fails you don’t want to be signed up to a plan.

Get a SIM Card

This is actually the most painful part. The entirety of the current Bell staff don’t get the whole “just give me then damn SIM card” thing. Usually it takes about 30 minutes by the time they talk to their manager, etc. Likely they will make you sign up for a plan before you leave - like I said, they don’t get SIM cards yet.

I’d suggest going with a 30 day plan. The next time you need a new laptop you can then cancel the plan and SIgn up for a new one at Best Buy - they will give you a $150 discount on a new laptop.

Pro Tip: Don’t sign up for a 3 year contract unless you are getting something worth about $200 for free. That contract is going to cost money if you want to break it and Bell owes you something for signing it. Large companies like Best Buy will make sure that when you sign up for a deal like this you get something sweet for free.

The Settings

Yeah this is the simple part. Once you have an activated SIM you just need to change some settings from my previous article on the Rogers Internet Stick.

Go into System Preferences and then select Network. You will need to change the dialup account created for your Internet Stick.

For Bell, there is no Telephone Number, Account Name or Password. Leave them blank. Then you just need to change the APN in Advanced Settings:

APN: inet.bell.ca

Once this is done clicking connect should be it.

The Punchline

During peak hours things might be a bit slower but I am consistently seeing around 7.0Mbps down and 2.5 MBps up.

Which is pretty amazing if you ask me.

Way to go Bell.

Zero-Install Plug and Play Software Doesn’t Mean What You Think…

Okay so before I get to the punchline I am going to rant. Sorry.

I am used to using Novatel Wireless devices and they have great Mac support. Many have drivers bundled with the OS so you just plug them in and type in the settings. Then you are on the web.

Clearly a Microsoft Windows user wrote this statement because on a Mac this means that the driver is bundled with the OS (and not on a hidden read-only flash drive on the device). Really, doesn’t Zero-Install mean you don’t have to install drivers. So when I plugged the Rocket Internet Stick into my MacBook and it didn’t appear in my network settings I was disappointed to say the least.

Making matters worse for some reason the Rocket Stick (ZTE MF668) didn’t even work once I installed the drivers. I had the following symptoms on Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard):

• The bundled Rogers App does pretty much nothing. It tries to connect but always fails.
• Once the devices is unplugged it is uninstalled along with any network settings preventing manual configuration.

The Game Plan

Having setup several different Rocket Sticks and similar devices I figured that the best option would be to manually configure the modem. That means we need to accomplish two things - first we need to disable whatever is removing the device from the network settings and then we need to create a manual profile.

To do this we need to get everything installed first then clean it up. First we will install the package that comes on the Stick. Then we will delete the LaunchDaemon that clears the settings and remove the Rogers App. Finally we will add a Modem profile for the Rocket Stick (ZTE MF668) and enter the Rogers network settings.

Installation

The first step is to install the provided drivers. They will mount (showing up as a CD on the desktop) when you first plug the device in.

Once this is done you need to remove the Rogers App (Connection Manager.app) and uninstall the LaunchDaemon that will keep trying to remove any created profiles.

cd /Library/LaunchDaemons/
sudo launchctl unload cn.com.zte.PPPMonitor.plist
sudo rm -rf ./cn.com.zte.PPPMonitor.plist

cd /Applications/
sudo rm -rf ./Connection\ Manager.app

Eventually you should see a popup where you can launch Network Preferences to configure the device.

Configuration

Now you are staring a the Network Preferences Panel. We need to do a couple things here to get things running. You need to setup the newly added ZTEUSBModem (you can safely delete the ZTEUSBATPort if you want - it is just needed for the Rogers Connection Manager).

First we need to type in basic settings:

• Telephone Number: *99#
• Account Name: wapuser1
• Password: wap

The click the “Show modem status in menu bar” so you can easily connect.

The you need to go to Advanced Settings (button in bottom left) and click Advanced. Make sure you are on the Modem tab. Select Generic as the vendor, GPRS (GSM/3G) as the Model and type in internet.com as the APN.

If you want you can rename the USB Modem to something like “Rocket Stick” and you can reorder the service so that when plugged in this takes preference over other connections.

Using the Modem

At this point all you need to do is click connect from the Rocket Stick tab in the Network Preferences.

If you have enabled it you can also do this from the menu bar by clicking connect directly form there.

Final Thoughts.

Well, that might have been a little tricky or hard but, trust me, it will be worth it in the end. Rogers has done a great job of expanding their existing 3G coverage and I am looking forward to HSPA+ in Edmonton.

WebOS

Let’s face it, as cool as it is, the WebOS is really a beta. It has been out for 6 months and has not been thoroughly tested. So things are breaking.

For me there were two major issues that were killing me:

• My hosted Google Apps GMail would just stop working.
• Calendars would just stop syncing.

After searching and hacking and playing I found the following four things fixed just about everything.

Four (plus One) Tips to Keep Your Pre Happy

Until the WebOS is fixed here are four tips that will keep things going with as few issues as possible:

• Setup your GMail account in Calendar, not Email.
• Don’t use ActiveSync - Use IMAP - where possible.
• Archive messages out of your Inbox - keep the total count well below 50.
• Only use LETTERS and NUMBERS in your calendar appointments.
• *bonus:* If sync is not working disable WiFi and reboot.

Google suggests the first tip and they are right. The Pre will fill in the settings for Email when you add the account in Calendar.

While you may be tempted to use Exchange support there are some email bugs with it. I’d steer clear and use IMAP if you can. Hopefully this will be fixed soon - Palm knows about this.

If you hit 50 messages in your Inbox you are dead. No more messages will come. Keep your Inbox clean.

Calendar syncing WILL stop if you add things like a comma or even a question mark. Sad as it is only numbers and letters. This has been reported in Palm’s forums and I know that a bug has been filed as well.

I had trouble again with sync tonight and I found that in addition to all the other steps what really did the trick was a couple reboots with WiFi disabled. Not sure why this worked.

I Don’t Like Magic Fixes…

As annoying as these workarounds are I still like the Pre. It is the best iPhone alternative on the Market right now. I think the competition will be good for Apple.

That is not to say I am ditching my iPhone. But I do like the Pre.

You may or may not have had issues with attempting to Tether your freshly installed iPhone 3.0 OS device to your Apple Laptop.

I did. My MacBook Air did not like Bluetooth tethering one bit.

I am happy to report that this has been addressed with the Bluetooth Firmware Update 2.0.

I should note that the update did not run on my late 2007 17” MacBook Pro - but it did not have any issues tethering to begin with. So if the update doesn’t run on your system you were probably fine to begin with.