notification

UPnP prayers answered

The Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) protocol is an improvement over the earlier "plug-and-pray" standard, which is a different technology. Devices that use UPnP announce their presence when they're attached to a network, which makes them easier to install and integrate, especially in a large environment. UPnP is a work in progress, however, and there are unresolved issues, particularly with authentication. Noel Danjou's Universal Plug and Play Tester is a free utility that lists all UPnP-compatible network devices, including Internet Gateway Devices.

This utility downloads as a small compressed file, even though it includes both 32-bit … Read more

Microsoft denies Windows 7 battery problem

Although some users have been grumbling about a variety of battery issues related to Windows 7, Microsoft says that its testing shows that nothing is amiss.

The software maker initially thought that there might be a problem with the firmware in some PC models causing an error message to appear where one was not warranted. However, Microsoft now says that it believes that the operating system is behaving properly.

In a blog posting on Monday, Windows division President Steven Sinofsky said that the company's follow-up research shows that those seeing a notification that their batteries need replacing are getting … Read more

Turn off camera notifications--David's iPhone tip of the week

It doesn't matter if you are a Mac or PC user; the iPhone and iPod Touch behave similarly when plugged into a computer using the USB sync cable that Apple provides. They both cause iTunes to launch for syncing media and they initiate photo and video syncing by recognizing both devices as a digital camera. This week's tip is is about disabling the digital camera notification in Windows and Mac OS X.

Steps for Windows Vista and Windows 7

1. Connect your iPhone or iPod touch to your computer. 2. Open the Windows Control Panel. 3. Choose Hardware … Read more

Put Task Manager in Windows' notification area

The icons that reside in the Windows notification area (near the clock in the taskbar) convey much useful information at a glance. Is my network link live? How's my notebook's battery? Is there really yet another Windows update ready to be installed?

But one bit of information I often want to know is how much of my CPU is in use at any given time. Now the notification area gives me the lowdown on my processor as well. All I did was add a Task Manager shortcut to Windows' start-up folder and set the shortcut to open minimized.… Read more

Difficult time manager

Easy Tracker Standard provides the tools for tracking time and managing projects. Unfortunately, the program doesn't flow smoothly, even with all its attempts at being helpful.

This program opened with a seemingly simple five-step Wizard, which instantly excited us. We were able to jump between the five tasks represented in the Wizard, but we still needed a trip to the Help file and glossary for further instruction. The misnamed Easy Tracker perplexed us. It looks easy, but it constantly confused us. One bright spot were the tools for building databases of Clients and Users, which were simple and reminded … Read more

eBay for iPhone gets notifications, pay-on-phone

A new update to eBay's free iPhone application (App Store link) enables users to better keep an eye on items they're interested in buying.

Users can now opt to receive push notifications for when they've been outbid, or when an auction they're watching is close to ending. As soon as a watched item enters that threshold, the user gets a message that both alerts them and gives them a quick option to jump back to the item to make an increased bid.

The app isn't just about viewing, though; users can now use it to … Read more

Developer: Apple blocking push on unlocked iPhones

Czech developer PoweryBase is claiming that Apple is intentionally blocking push notifications to users of unlocked iPhones.

PoweryBase, makers of several applications that use Apple's push notification service, said 80 percent of its customer support complaints are coming from a very small minority of its customers. All of these customers are using unlocked iPhones.

The developer explains that when a push application requests an ID from the Apple server, the iPhone receives a unique token. Once the token is received, push notifications proceed as you would expect. The process only takes a few seconds to complete.

However, PoweryBase says … Read more

Loving the Sweep

Here is a huge win for the Pre, that bottom notification bar that I mentioned previously? Well not only is it handy to access, but for items that you only need to see pop up, and do not need to "click through" to read, a simple left to right swipe with your finger across the notification itself sends it away.

This is useful for all kinds of things, short text messages, repeated IM conversations, e-mails that I want to ignore. More recently, I figured out that I could set alarms using the clock application. The only downside seemed … Read more

Two Comparisons to the Centro

Another nit pick time. One of the nicer aspects of the Palm Centro were these cursor controls used to move around the screen in addition to the touch screen capability. Particularly, they were very handy for moving around in text messages to clean up typos.

The Pre offers no such functionality that I can find. I am left to continuously tap the area trying to get the cursor into the right place. That is not really the fault of the touch screen sensitivity, human fingers are only so small and the space between letters on screen is much much smaller. … Read more

Apple details the basics of Push Notification in iPhone OS 3.0

Apple released a new support document detailing the basics of Apple's Push Notification Service in iPhone OS 3.0. You can read more about this service in our previous post here.

According to the support document:

If you don't have an option for Notifications in the Settings menu, then you don't have an app installed that supports notifications.

An app needs to be used at least once before it will receive any notifications.

The iPod Touch can receive notifications any time when the screen is on and Wi-Fi is connected. If the screen is asleep, the iPod … Read more