Facebook is being used more and more for social communications. However, how would you know someone replied to something you have posted? Or maybe you want to be directly notified if someone makes a post.

In this article I will walk you to the process of enabling your Facebook notifications by E-mail and/or SMS text messaging. And the best thing of all is that you can respond back to these notifications by just replying in those e-mails and SMS Text messages. The experience with your mobile phone will be enriched by having these Facebook capabilities.

The KIN ONE, TWO and all other Mobile Phones

To enable push notification on all other phones you actually need to go to your Facebook on the computer to set this up.  Data and/or SMS Text messaging will be used on your phone and will charged according to your plan you have with your provider.

1. Login to your facebook page: http://www.facebook.com

2. On the right top of your screen you click on Account -> Account Settings

3. On the “My Account” Page click on “Notifications” in the top bar.

4. Now on this page you can already see that your email is listed and you can check on the list below of all the different notifications you would like to receive by email. If you get your email on your device they will show up accordingly to your email sync schedule of your device. The e-mails coming in will let you know that you can comment back to those notifications by just replying to those e-mails.
(Tip; remove your automatic signature in your email before sending back your reply)

Add these steps below to enable push notification via SMS Text Messages

5. In this next step we will activate your mobile number to receive instant push notification by SMS Text messages. On the in step 3 reached Notification Page you can now click on “Send notifications to my phone via SMS”

6.  A pop up will appear for step 1 out of three steps.

A warning will appear first

“Note:Before you can receive notifications via SMS, you must activate your phone for Facebook Mobile”

Open a new browser and go to http://www.facebook.com/mobile/ ->scroll down and select Mobile “Settings” and choose “Enabled” and save your settings. Some of you probably have it enabled already.

In the pop up screen select “your country” and then your “mobile carrier” and select “Next”

7. Using your mobile phone, send a SMS Text message containing only the letter “f” (without quotes) to 32665 (FBOOK).

8. At this point you will receive a SMS Text message back with a confirmation code. Select Next in the “Step 2″ pop up box from Facebook and enter your code there and check if you want this number listed under your profile for others to see. Now Select “Confirm“.

9. Your Facebook account settings page will now default to the My Account – Mobile page. Here you are able to select which notifications you would like to receive. This page also allows you to enter specific Facebook friends which status updates you would like to receive as well by SMS Text messages. Check out the other settings on this page to suite to your needs. Make sure to select “Save Preferences” on the bottom of this page.

10. When you receive a SMS Text message from your Facebook account you can respond back easily to those status updates by replying that SMS Text message.

iPod Touch and iPhone

If you have the iPod Touch and and the iPone you can actually easy activate your push notification within the Facebook application.

Go to Settings -> Facebook -> Push Notifications and turn all the notification you would like and go back to your home screen.

You might want to use the option above for other phones as well, since you will be able to reply back directly to your notification using the email and/or SMS Text Message.

Final Note

It is a little bit of work, but once you have it set up you will have instant Facebook push notifications by SMS Text message and email on your mobile device.

It has happened to many iPhone users. Suddenly your iPhone is draining very quickly, even without using the iPhone at all.

This has happened to my iPhone now for two times. On many blogs and forums people are complaining about it and many tips are given but not a real good answer to the sudden quick drain of your battery.  Below are these tips to save on battery power but won’t fix the sudden extreme drainage of your battery.

We have changed the title to include Android and Windows Phone devices now as well. We experienced the same battery drain on other mobile platforms. It seems that the exchange sync funtion (possibly calendar) hangs on the devices. In which it means it constantly is asking for data transfer in which your battery drains very fast. The device will feel hot as well. The solution is simple but takes some time.

• You need to delete to exchange account on your device
• After is is finished deleting your synced information you turn off your device and restart it.
• Set up your exchange account as before, the device will sync all your information back to your device.

The tips below will preserve more battery power:

• Turn off 3G (saves battery and is almost a must in area’s where you have Edge coverage)
• Turn off Notifications
• Turn off Push for e-mail
• Turn off  WiFi
• Turn off Bluetooth
• Set your Fetch schedule on all your other emails to manually
• Turn your Brightness down

Again these tips above will not fix your sudden battery drain on your iPhone. And really turning off all these options, kinda makes your iPhone a phone like any other. You really don’t have to do this.

I have discovered that the sudden extreme battery drain has to do with your Exchange Account that has been set up on your iPhone.  For some odd reason it keeps check and checking for new info and it won’t stop. Before trying to do a restore on your iPhone I would first recommend deleting your Exchange Push Account on your iPhone and set it up again as a new account. This will save some time in the fix for the extreme fast battery drainage.

Follow the steps below to fix the extreme battery drainage on your iPhone.

1. Go to your “Settings” on your iPhone.
2. Select “Mail,Contact,Calendars“.
3. Select your account that has been set up with an exchange server.
4. Select “Account Info“.
5. Copy down the information which you will need to set up this account again later on.
6. Select the “Arrow back ” on the top of your screen with the name of your account.
7. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and select “Delete Account“
8. Let the iPhone do its work. It will remove all e-mails, contacts and calendar items from your iPhone associated with your account.
9. When done Turn off your iPhone and Turn it back on.
10. Once your iPhone is turned back on you can go back to Step 1,2
11. Back in the “Mail,Contacts,Calendar” Settings you have to select  “Add Account“
12. Select the “Microsoft Exchange” and enter the credentials you copied down before.
13. The server information is not visible in this field yet, it will appear after you set up your E-mail, Domain, Username and Password are entered and “Next” has been selected.
14. Now your account has been set up again. It will take some time for the iPhone to synchronize everything back. Give it some 5-10 minutes.

Now your Exchange Push account has been set up again and your extreme battery drainage has been stopped. If you think that after these steps you still have this issue, I would recommend using the “Restore” function in iTunes while your iPhone is connected.

The HTC HD2, which features a massive 4.3″ capacitive screen, has been reviewed a few months ago in the article:  “HTC HD2 review – A new era in Windows Phones’ history“.

The new era in Windows Mobile history is reflected in the use of capacitive screen technology and the resulting absense of a stylus which has dominated the mobile market for many years. Those among us who worked with the Palm III, Palm V, Compaq iPAQ 3650 or any later Windows Mobile PocketPC do exactly know what I’m talking about !

Since the launch of the first generation iPhone back in 2007 (which also featured a capacitive screen), the complete mobile market is trending towards this “touch control” with you fingers.

However …. on the DAGi website you can read the following announcement, which includes a lot of recent smartphones:

“Dagi Corporation Ltd. announced the first patent protected transparent capacitive touch panel stylus for Apple all generation iPhone 3GS / 3G / 2G, iPod Touch, HTC Magic, HTC Hero, HTC Google Phone G1 G2, HTC HD2, HTC Droid Eris, RIM Blackberry Storm 1 / Storm2, Android Phones, LG KM900 Arena, LG GC900 Viewty Smart, LG GD900 Crystal, Motorola Droid Verizon, Nokia X6, Samsung i7500 Galaxy, etc.”

Handwritten notes and sketches – A practical engineering example

In order to illustrate why there is still a market for a stylus, despite that the majority of the market seems to be heading towards touch control, I will give you a practical personal example.

You probably know the proverd “A picture is worth a thousand words“, and I personally think that this applies to engineers. With a mechanical engineering background I always use (and used) sketches or models to explain a certain technical problem, and I would suggest that construction drawings are a kind of language for mechanical engineers.

A Windows Mobile PocketPC of Windows Phone can be a powerful tool for that use, especially when you are -for example- working on a construction site for trouble shooting. The massive 4.3″ capacitive screen of the HTC HD2, combined with the DAGI capacitive stylus is perfectly suited for this kind of mobile use on location.

Furthermore it is great to capture ideas, and have them with you in a central place. As you can see in the screenshots above I use Phatware PhatPad 4.7 for a few reasons.

At first Phatware PhatPad provides six different penmodes, and a lot of options to create and edit notes (different pen colors, etc.), which are not present in the standard notes application on the HTC HD2. In other words it is a more complete and specialized solution, where you can even run text recognition, or structure notes over different pages.

Second Phatware PhatPad is feels far more accurate than the standard notes application, both when I write with my finger and with th DAGi capcitive stylus. The main point is that the fine locomotion for handwriting is far more accurate with the DAGi capacitive stylus (remark the red dot). Especially at the points where lines connect, for example in case of the capital A or the sketch of the house. When you try to write or sketch it with your finger, the lines don’t connect but are offset which makes the notes less usable.

Concluding thoughts and wrap-up

While Devicewire reported this week to have the official HTC HD2 capacitive stylus in stock, the DAGi capacitive stylus looks identical. I personally think they even come from the same factory, especially if the capacitive stylus is patent protect as you could read in the introductary announcement.

On the DAGi website you can furthermore see there are a few different  models available. In the review I used the P001-Black model/type of the DAGi capacitive stylus. The clip on the back makes it easy to carry in the front pocket of your blouse (if you like).

In practice there are still a lot of situations in practice where the stylus is a helpful tool. In addition to my personal example outlined above, you can see screenshots of people playing a minesweeper or chess game on their smartphone with help of the “more accurate” DAGi capacitive stylus.

If you want to learn more about capacitive screen technology, I want to recommend the article “Resistive vs Capacitive: the invisible tech war in which both opponents can win?” of Steve Litchfield, Editor on All About Symbian.com, and the article “How do touch-screen monitors know where you’re touching?” on the How Stuff Works website.

To wrap-up I hope that the practical example above gives you an idea of a realistic scenario where the DAGi capacitive stylus is really helpful. I’m using this stylus for a few weeks now, it has earned a default place in my Crumpler BeanCounter L bag, and I must admit I use it frequently.

Are you a curious HTC HD2 owner, please head over to Brando Workshop and order you DAGi Capacitive Stylus !!

In this article I will have a first look at a cool new approach in mobile application development for various mobile operating systems, developed by a company called Steape.

“Steape has developed a unique innovative platform, via which it is pretty easy to build (highly advanced) applications in native language for five of the most common mobile operating systems: OSX (iPhone), Android, Symbian S60, Windows Phone and BlackBerry.”

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR0LuVpvOE8

Each of this mobile operating systems has its own programming language, and every mobile operating system has its distinct set of unique features that makes the operating system the best choice for its end-users.

However Steape limits down the knowledge of each of the different program languages and makes mobile application development even simpler (at least in concept):

“The platform developed by Steape is available through a web-environment and is working with a so called ‘drag and drop’ user interface in the Steape web-portal.”

On the corporate website Steape has a demo video of the ‘drag and drop user interface’ of the web-portal to give you a sneak peak how the application development works in practice.

The more technical oriented application developers or people with a formal IT background would probably like to know more about the technology implications or how the web-portal architecture is build, and therefore you can download a  Technical White Paper directly from the Steape website.

Concluding thoughts and wrap-up

I would like to start my concluding thoughts with the remark that I don’t have a formal IT eduction, and don’t work in the application development domain. Therefore I can’t value this approach from a technical perspective, but I will try to make some remarks from a business (development) perspective.

At first I like the theoretical concept of building an application on one platform, and transform the input of this platform into output code of the native programming language of the five leading mobile operating systems (iPhone, Android, Windows Phones, Symbian & BlackBerry).

With simplifying the development and applying a kind of automatic parrallel-development you can from a developer’s perspective significantly speed-up the time to market which saves costs and you can outperform competition.

Furthermore each of these mobile operating systems is bundled with a native application store, which increases the visibility of the application across the different platforms as well as it increases the number of cash flows via the different channels.

However will the Steape platform also hold for highly complex applications, which require interactions with remote servers or think about enhanced security features which can result into highly complex implementations. Furthermore you could also think if the intital user experience of the basic application idea, will hold and be as good on every mobile operating system.

I would like to conclude that Steape is an interesting platform that certainly has great potential and I truly like it in concept (from a business development perspective). I hope that some developers and people with an IT background can drop some comments and share their thoughts from a technical perspective !

]]> http://www.mobilityminded.com/5157/steape-one-development-platform-for-five-mobile-operating-systems/feed 2 http://www.mobilityminded.com/4202/3g-hsdpa-data-frequencies-answers-for-unlocked-phones-in-the-world http://www.mobilityminded.com/4202/3g-hsdpa-data-frequencies-answers-for-unlocked-phones-in-the-world#comments Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:11:52 +0000 Johan van Mierlo http://www.mobilityminded.com/?p=4202

In the last couple of years many different frequencies have been added to the confusion of the worldwide GSM (2G/Edge) and High Speed Data Networks (3G,HSDPA,UMTS) on cellular phones. Since we all love  to have the newest gadgets we would like to be one of the first. In the Windows Phone forums, where I moderate, many questions arise why my phone bought overseas is not connecting to the high speed data service in a specific country. Hopefully I will be able to guide you below to the answer and give you the specifics before you purchase your next Unlocked Phone to use at home or world wide.

Well, many mobile devices are specially engineered for the different markets around the world. For example the HTC Touch Pro and the HTC Fuze are exactly the same device, however the build in radio’s for the 3G / HSDPA data network are different. When you travel overseas you can loose this high speed data signal and fall back on the Edge/GSM/GPRS/ 2G network.  Many people like to purchase an unlocked phone overseas and bring it back to their home country and then they realize that the 3G / HSDPA radio’s build into the device are not supported.

Why high speed data?  The mobile phones these day are more like small personal computers. They are more and more being used now for streaming media content (Internet radio and TV), Internet browsing, etc. over the high speed data networks. You even see that other non-phone mobile devices will have 3G build in to give the device the opportunity to download information at high speeds when needed. For example the Kindle 2 and DX from Amazon and many Netbooks are sold now through the mobile phone service providers with the High Speed 3G / HSDPA data connection.

Many phones these days are called “World Phones”. These phone most likely will support the High Speed Data Networks (3G,HSDPA,UMTS) world wide. However I would still look at the specifications of these phones before you purchase and balance them to the network frequencies in the area you live.

The GSM (2G/Edge) frequencies are often called Quad Band Phones. Most phones will work worldwide using these 4 frequencies for making calls and limited data connection. These frequencies are:

GSM, 2G, GPRS,Edge network frequencies (Quad Band)

• 850 MHz   (mostly North America)
• 900 MHz   (mostly Europe, Asia, Australia & Brazil)
• 1800MHz  (mostly Europe, Asia, Australia & Brazil)
• 1900 MHz  (mostly North America)

Below is a small table giving you the frequencies in High Speed Data Networks (3G,HSDPA,UMTS) with their known regions that these frequencies will work. Use this to make sure the phone you will purchase will work with the high speed data frequency connections you need. Please note that you need a data subscription with your mobile provider carrier before you can have data on your device.

3G,HSDPA,UMTS high speed network frequencies and their regions.

• 850 MHz      (United States AT&T)
• 900 MHz
• 1700 MHz    (United States T-Mobile)
• 1900 MHz    (United States AT&T)
• 2100 MHz    (Europe)

There are many other resources online to see which frequencies you have in your area. These tools will allow you to make an educated decision which unlocked phone and where you would like to purchase it from and if it will provide the services you want to have in your part of the world.

• GSM Arena – Listings of frequencies per country
• Wikipedia – Listings of frequencies per world region
• AT&T – 3G coverage map
• T-Mobile  USA - 3G coverage map
• GSM World- Different world and world region frequency coverage maps

Earlier this year Google released Google sync. Which allowed you to sync your Contact and Calendar items on your Google account. However you still needed to use the IMAP settings to get your e-mails in on your device. This was on a schedule and not push.

The Google Mobile Blog is telling us that the Google Sync supports the push Google mail accounts (Gmail and Google mail for your own Domain) in conjunction with your contacts and calendar.  Using the exchange server settings on your iPhone, iPod Touch, and Windows Mobile devices and the upcoming Windows Phone devices you can, in one easy set up, connect your device to Google Sync and live sync all your contacts, calendar items and now have your e-mails pushed to your device. No separate IMAP settings are needed anymore.

Most devices still only support one exchange account. So if you are already running an exchange account on your device for work, you can only use the IMAP settings to bring in your Google mail accounts.

Please visit the following sites to get the set up instructions for Google Sync on your device:

• Windows Mobile Google Sync
• iPhone and iPod Touch Google Sync
• BlackBerry Google Sync
• Symbian Google Sync

Please watch this short video below to get a sense of Google Sync as well. Hey it is exchange server for free using your Gmail or Google for your own domain account. (Data charges on your phone do apply)

RIM (Research In Motion) just released a new model the Blackberry Tour. Right now the Blackberry Tour is available online with Verizon and Sprint for $199 with a 2 year contract. Verizon already has the Tour available in the stores.

The key features compared to some other Blackberries are:

• World Phone Capabilities
• Enhanced Multimedia
• 3.2MP Camera
• GPS and Blackberry Maps
• Slimmer 14.2 mm profile
• 256 MB built -in memory
• Voice Input & Output
• more

All in all the device feels good your hands and I love the keyboard with the trackball. But the features and specifications is what you would expect from any other phone these days. 

What I do miss is the Wifi capabilities. A lot of 3G enabled phones these days do come without Wifi. If you would live in a world where 3G is continuously available it would make sense, but that is still not the case. That is why I still prefer to have Wifi on board.

For current Blackberry users this will be an improvement and a good upgrade if you like the non-touch screen and QWERTY keyboard.

 Watch my quick Blackberry Tour video below to get a impression.