The good news for me is that now it is a ton easier to post to my blog using my Samsung Blackjack. Wordpress 2.5 has redesigned the blog entry screen so that it is much easier to get to typing posts. Before Wordpress 2.5, I had to scroll past an extremely long list of Categories to get to the part of the page where you type your entry. Normally, when I log into my site I am on a full-sized computer that displays webpages correctly. On a big computer, my extraordinarily long list of Categories are hidden in a pull down menu. My phone’s browser isn’t powerful enough to display my dashboard correctly and just stacks each Category one on top of the other.

“What’s a Category?” Great question. If you look just under the title of each blog entry you will see some blue words that categorize that story. Wordpress doesn’t limit how many categories I use and obediently remembers every one I have ever used. The list is crazy long.

Now, I don’t have to deal with that list when posting from my phone. Upgrade!

Now if I could just figure out how to type faster on this tiny keyboard…

– Update–

I am on my laptop now so I am kind of cheating, but I had to give a quick update about completing my entry.  After I typed up my blog entry, I clicked done which launched me back to my dashboard window.  I still had to scroll past the some 150+ categories except now it is not as bad because I am now seeing all these categories after I typed the entry.  With the blog article still fresh on my mind, I can categorize it more effectively.  So, I still have to scroll a lot, only now it is more profitable.

What what?? I am posting this using my cell phone as a modem. I finally got it to work! I tried for over an hour unsuccessfully to get my computer to see the Internet through my phone. It wasn’t until I went into the settings of the phone and change the USB’s default settings to ‘Modem’ instead of ‘ActiveSync’. Here is how I did it.

Before You Do Anything…
In order to use you AT&T 3G phone as a modem, you have to download AT&Ts Communication Manager. Normally, I try not to use third-party connection management programs because they are usually poorly written. In this case, you need it because it installs the correct drivers and creates the needed dial-up setting.

I have done some testing, once I installed the AT&T Communication Manager, I connected to the Internet without it, and my Samsung Blackjack kept dropping the connection. Once I turned the Communication Manager back on and used it to connect to the net, all was fine.

After you have the AT&T CM installed, you need to make these changes to your phone:

1. Click the ‘Start’ Button on the phone.
2. Click on ‘Settings”
3. Click on ‘Connections’
4. Click on ‘USB’
5. Set the ‘USB Connection setting:’ to ‘Modem’*
6. Open the AT&T Communication Manager Program on your computer
7. BEFORE you connect you phone, click on ‘Device Wizard’ in the ‘Tools’ Menu
8. Follow the instructions in the wizard.
9. Once connected to you phone, click the ‘Connect’ button in the AT&T Communication Manager and then…Boom, you should be up and running!!!!

* If you use ActiveSync, your phone will warn you that ActiveSync will no longer work. Just remember to change your USB back to ‘ActiveSync’ before you try to sync again.

I also went into the task manager and turned off the ActiveSync program just for good measure.

After I did these things, the AT&T Connection Manager saw the phone as a Modem and voila… here I am blogging using the phone as my connection to the tubes!!!

What a deal…

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I just tested the speed, and they are comparable to what I was seeing the other night when I tested the speed using the browser on the phone itself. I am getting around 750kbps down and 120 kbps up. Plenty fast for blogging and email and light browsing. I am ecstatic!

Now that I have all the 3G goodness, I am going to use it with my lappy (laptop computer). I figured out how to do it and I blogged about it in a previous post.

Now that AT&T rolled out 3G in Northwest Arkansas, I tried to link up with those instructions and was unable to get it to work. I just did some investigation on the AT&T site and found these instructions.

I don’t have my USB cable here at the house so I can’t give it a try, but rest assured that in the coming days I will blog about my experience. It will be awesome to spread this high speed bandwidth goodness wherever I go with my aging HP lappy.

This is yet another test of writing a blog entry in an easier way on my cell phone. If I can get this to work then my phone with its new fancy schmancy high speed connection will be just that much more handy.

The high speed connection has already sped up my blog reading on the phone, a task that was laborious at best with the slower connection. Now, I can blast through my RSS feeds and comment on them anywhere if I can only get this posting thing sorted.

The problem is the Wordpress interface is extremely clunky when I try to post from the phone. If I can make this new trick work, then I will be completely free from having to be at a computer to post.

I hope it works… So far I havn’t been successful. Here’s to hoping…

———–

It didn’t work, but since I went to the trouble of writing the post, I thought I would post it anyway. Still working out the kinks…

Hooking a laptop up to a Samsung HD television

Right now I have my laptop connected to my new Samsung HD television via an SVGA cable. You may ask me “Why would you want to do that?” Well, … ummm…. I know there has to be a good reason for this… Hey, I know I could watch those videos that I downloaded but won’t stream through the XBOX.

It works pretty good, but I did have a few problems out of the box. Here is how I fixed them.

First of all, you must be using the right resolution. If you don’t, the TV may show an image but something will be off. In my case, the right screen resolution is 800×600. I don’t have one of those new schmancy 1080P screens, but it looks pretty good!

When I had the resolution set to 1026×768 I got some strange strobing and the entire screen wasn’t displayed.

The second step I had to do was to go into the menu of the television and have it sync up to the signal. When I first plugged the computer into the tv, I got a signal, but it wasn’t aligned right on the screen. I did the sync step and the image was aligned, but I was getting the strobe…thus the whole resolution thing.

I have one remaining problem and that is how to get the image into native 16×9. If I use the 16×9 setting on the TV, it stretches and distorts the image. (My laptop is sending a 4×3 image.)

I went online to look to see if the drivers for the video card in this laptop have been updated, but alas the latest drivers were from 2004, before the crush of 16×9 monitors on the market. My video card assumes that the only monitor it would ever be hooked up to is a standard 4×3…drats!!!

That means if I want to watch a movie from my laptop on my schmancy HDTV, I will have both letterboxing and pillars. If you don’t know what that means, do a Google search…well let me save you the trouble. Simply put, it means that I have a big black square surrounding my video content….again drats!!!

With a quick upgrade of my laptop, I should be in business. And since I am swimming in an ocean of money, that shouldn’t be a problem….wait…..DRATS!!!

Oh well, at least I have a schnazzy new monitor to look at www.murdog.com.

By the way, even I am getting sick of the ’sch…’ thing. I believe I will stop that now!