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!

If you have any interest in smart phones, especially Palm-based ones, then you need to read this incredibly thoughtful post from engadget. It was posted way back on August 21st, and a lot of you who actually keep up with your RSS feeds have already read or at least heard about this post, but it is incredible.

Peter Rojas, Ryan Block, and Joshua Topolsky have done an exceedingly good job at calling Palm to the mat on their lack of innovation, and ridiculous grip on past successes.

I have a lot of friends who have Treos, and all of them have MAJOR complaints about their phone, and the scary thing is Palm doesn’t seem to know that they are quickly becoming irrelevant.

I remember 4 years ago when Treos were all the rage. They were an exceptional answer to the lack of choice in the email phone market. Blackberries were great if all you did was email. I knew a number of people who carried Blackberries and a separate phone. Treo answered that problem. The issue is Palm hasn’t done very much since then, and all their competitors have.

There are a ton of sexy, thin smartphones out there, and people would have to be stupid to invest in a Treo now. Palm has to do something, and Engadget is calling them on it, and I applaud them.

Sorry this post is so late compared to the original article. I have been incredibly busy…too busy to blog.

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.