AT&T poor signal in bay area

Verizon is believed by most people to have the best quality of wireless signal. I and all of my friends thinks so. AT&T had the largest wireless user base for a period of time. AT&T sometimes also claims that it has the best quality of wireless signal, none of my friends (in New York, Boston, Seattle, Illinois, Dallas, Houston, San Francisco, Los Angeles. etc) believe this.

Because of the flood of iphone users, AT&T wireless network is overwhelmed since 2007, especially in New York and San Fransisco. There are many dropped calls. AT&T even urges iphone users to use less data.

But the poor quality of AT&T is not a new problem because of iphone, at least in the bay area. Even T-mobile has a much better signal than AT&T in the bay area, although T-mobile signal bothered me a lot when I lived in Winchester county, NY and Seattle. T-mobile has a very good signal at my office, my wife's office, and my home while AT&T has a poor signal in all of these places.

For people who do not use phone a lot in bay area, I recommend T-mobile prepaid phone. Using 35% Bing Cashback, you can talk 1000 anytime minutes by spending only $65. It is much more flexible and cost-effective than to sign a two-year contract.

How to make a shortcut of a webpage on Android home screen

I have a friend who bought a Verizon Google Droid phone recently. He is not tech-savvy, but wants to experience smart phone. One day I communicated with him about Android phone usage for more than an hour. He had many good questions and many of them are something like since Windows OS has this functionality, how I can have the similar function on Android. I answered many questions or demoed the solution for him. But one question I could not answer immediately, i.e., how to make a shortcut for his bookmark web page such as nytimes.com on Android desktop.

Today I consulted a friend and he told me the answer.

1) On the desktop, press home screen for a while until a context menu pops up.

2) Select Shortcut menu item. Another menu pops up.

3) Select Bookmark menu item. Your bookmarks pops up.

4) Select your target bookmark webpage and it will show up on the home screen.

Similarly, we can create shortcuts for many stuff on home screen such as applications, direct dial, contact, music playlist, and gmail labels.

On Android market, there are some apps to help users create shortcut on home screen, e.g., AnyCut(free), and BetterCut($1.99). But I think it is a pretty straight forward to create shortcut directly.

Android OS is a pretty powerful OS, making people often compare it with Windows OS on desktop. Probably iphone users has no such thinking given simple, but restrictive UI.

Update on Jan 19, 2010: Add some description about AnyCut and BetterCut.

35% off T-mobile prepaid refill using Bing Cashback

Three weeks ago, a friend recommended I use Bing cashback to refill T-mobile prepaid phone because it has 35% off. I tried. It works. I paid $100 to get 1000 anytime minutes for T-mobile prepaid account. Here is how it works.

1) Apply for a Bing cashback account if you do not have, a very easy step. See Bing cashback FAQ for details.

2) Search "tmobile 35%" on Bing search engine (yes, it will increase search traffic for Bing), you will find an ad (on the right side ad for me), saying something like "Exclusive Online Offers at T-Mobile. Save 35% Instantly With Cashback!"

3) Click that ad, which brings you to t-mobile website. Use your credit card, paypal, or other payment methods to refill the account. For example, spend $100 for 1000 anytime minutes. Because of cookie or other mechanism, Bing knows that you made transaction through Bing Cashback.

4) Check your Bing cashback account several days later. If you find the cashback, everything is good; otherwise, send an email to Bing Cashback, which is the case for me. Bing Cashback customer representative is very responsive. They will ask more information from you. Just reply them with the information they ask for. For me, there are two round communication. The first round I sent them transaction confirmation email, payment method, etc. The second round I called T-mobile customer service to get t-mobile order number and sent it to Bing Cashback customer representative.

5) A day later, you can find cashback on Bing cashback account.

Note:

a)Use Paypal if possible. I used to credit card to refill account. So my cashback is pending and I will get it in 60 days; Using paypal, you can get instant cashback.

b)T-mobile does not provide order number in the confirmation email. You can not find order number on T-mobile website (T-mobile website is poorly designed, at least for prepaid account) either. You have to call T-mobile custom service to get it. T-mobile custom representative seems to be incapable. My phone call got transferred four times before I got the order number.

c)T-mobile prepaid account is highly recommended although its customer service quality is questionable. I paid $10 on Thanksgiving to activate a pre-paid account, get a new SIM card, and 80 minutes. You can spend $65 (35% off $100 using Bing cashback) for $1000 minutes. The $1000 minute will expire in one year. I think it is a much better deal for many people without too many phone calls than a 2-year contract.

d)Do not know why Bing has such a cashback program. Interesting to know whether it is a sustainable business to buy traffic. Bing cashback customer representative is very responsive. So it is worth trying Bing cashback. You do NOT need to make any phone call with Bing to get your cashback.

How many text messages are sent in US?

I watched local news this evening and found that in 2009, there are 1 Trillion text messages sent in US, 10 times of three years ago. There are about 300 Million people in US. So on average, each person sent 3300 message a year, about 10 messages per person per day.

It is illegal to text while driving in California and some other states.

How about WiFi of e-reader Nook and Kindle

I checked some information about WiFi functionality of e-reader Nook and Kindle today and found a little disappointment.

Although Kindle can use Sprint wireless network for free, it does not have WiFi functionality. You could not use WiFi even at your home.

Nook claims to have an WiFi functionality besides AT&T 3G wireless network. It is true that you can use WiFi at Barnes & Noble store for free. However, because it has flaky web browser while most WiFi hotspots such as Starbuck need login, you could not use WiFi at these places because you can not log in! Nook's software needs a big improvement. I do not understand why Nook's software is so flaky since it uses Android operating system and Android have a running browser.

Que proReader, which will debut on January 7, 2010 at CES, also have WiFi and AT&T 3G network. It is not clear about what OS Que will use (maybe developed from scratch) and the software support of WiFi.

There is no great technical challenge to support WiFi for e-reader. I predict that by the end of 2010, Nook, Kindle, and Que will all support WiFi nicely.

What is Que?

Que is an ebook reader by PlasticLogic, a Mountain View, California company. Que will debut on January 7th, 2010 in CES. I paid a lot of attention to this gadget. I have a friend working in PlasticLogic and also I want to buy an ereader in 2010.

Different from Kindle or Nook, its screen is made of plastic. So it is foldable and rollable. Also readers can make annotation on ebooks. My wife loves this feature since she usually makes a lot of notes when she read textbooks. The screen (letter paper size) will be bigger than Nook and Kindle. However, it seems that Que could not make color screen in the short-term either.

Que will be sold in Barnes & Noble store. It will be interesting to see how people pick Nook vs. Que. I am surprised to see the first Que proReader is designed for business professionals, not general consumers (then why it will be sold in Barnes & Noble?) "Designed for business professionals" make me expect that the price will be higher (maybe much higher) than that of Kindle or Nook. It may be just a strategy to differentiate Que from Nook and Kindle to avoid late-entry disadvantage in ereader market. Que may run into the same situation as Palm Pre, which came out after iphone or Android phones.

What is Nook

This past summer, I pre-ordered Amazon Kindle DX. When it arrived, I used Kindle DX a week and returned the product. The main reason I returned Kindle is it could not render many ebooks correctly, which I plan to read. Those ebooks can be rendered correctly using Acrobat reader on PC. Besides that, I am disappointed about the flaky browser and poor Sprint wireless signal. I have other wishes such as touch screen and color screen. Moreover, ebook reader price should be reduced. I know Sony ereader software is bad. So I plan to wait another year when other ereaders come out. For example, It is reported that PlasticLogic will release ereader in 2010.

But on October 20, 2009, Barnes & Noble announced that it is releasing Nook, Barnes & Noble ebook reader. Reviews of nook are mostly positive. I visited Barnes & Noble bookstore on Thanksgiving weekend. There are a shelf and a guy to show off the nook. But I did not see the real nook, instead just some booklets. Later I heard it would not catch this Christmas shopping season.

Overall, I am very happy to see Barnes & Noble to introduce nook. It will make a more competitive ereader market, which will boost the innovation and quality, and reduce the ebook price. The consumer will benefit from the competition. Amazon would also think more before it erased Orwell ebook from Kindle. Also the AT&T wireless network used by Nook have a better signal quality than Sprint, and nook has WiFi functionality while Kindle DX does not.

cell phone unlock car door

I heard a tip that if you accidentally lock your car key in the car when shopping at Walmart and you have a spare key at home and your wife is at home, your wife can use cell phone to help unlock your car remotely. The car key needs to have remote button. It works as follows. You and your wife are talking over cell phone, your wife use put spare key near cell phone and push remote button, you put your cell phone close to the car, the door will be unlocked.

I searched online. There are some articles which doubts this method. I think it can be easily tested. My wife and I had some experiments for our Prius. It works for Prius.

A good friend of mine had the exact problem. He did not know this tip and had to pay for taxi driver twice for the round trip between the shopping center and home.

Note that this is not an app of smart phones like Android, Blackberry or iPhone. This is the functionality of the regular cell phone.

Who is Foxconn

Today it is announced that Foxconn will set up up to 10,000 retail stores in China. Foxconn is not a famous brand like Nokia, LG, Samsung, and RIM (yet). But its manufactured products are very famous, which include iphone, ipod, Kindle, Playstation, and Wii. Foxconn is the largest OEM manufacturer in communication, computer and consumer product. Foxconn was founded in Taiwan in 1974 and currently have most factories in mainland China (Shenzhen, Gudong province).

It is amazing that Foxconn export $55.6 billion of electronics, or 3.9% of China total export in 2008 according to China Daily. However, the profit margin is very low. For example, second-half profits in 2007 declined 4.5 percent to $397.4 million. The profit in 2008 and 2009 is worse because of economic crisis.

It is worth mentioning that there is another Taiwan manufacturer HTC produce both both OEM and own brand, e.g. the first Android smart phone HTC Dream, and later HTC Hero.