Live Search Mobile now available for the Blackberry (Beta)

Hello all,

Today I’ll be reviewing an application for my Blackberry. This is my first application review, specifically a mobile application, so please bear with me.

To begin I’d like to say that I’m not a huge Windows fan, although I do use it quite frequently, Microsoft is not at the top of my list.

What does this have to do with a Blackberry? The nice little application by Microsoft called Live Search Mobile
Back before I was wise and got a Blackberry, I sported a Motorola Q. Despite all the programs I installed and un-installed from my Q, there was always one program permanently glued to the memory of my phone. It was the Live Search. I loved it. It had everything I wanted, and was visually pleasing.

Now it’s available for the Blackberry, and here’s my review:

First, point your Blackberry’s browser to wls.live.com and download the application by following the prompts on the screen.

After installation you’ll get a Terms of Use screen which you’ll probably barely glance at and immediately click on Accept anyway.

And then a nice loading screen followed up by the actual Home screen after a short delay.

Notice the empty space in the icon list on the Home Screen of Live Search. Probably means their is much more to come in future releases. Lets go over what we currently have on our screen:

1. Search Bar
2. Location
3. Categories
4. Map
5. Directions
6. Traffic
7. Movies

But you can obviously see that anyway right? Right. Lets click on Categories.

Now what you see is a list of Search Categories. Notice all the categories have an arrow that point to the right, which is a sign that there’s more to come after making that selection. I clicked on Restaurants:

Hey I was right! Mmm Seafood, lets click on that.

And after a brief delay, it loads a list of Restaurants related to Seafood starting from the center of my zip code, to the farthest away. Now if I click on Red Lobster, it brings up a new page.

Hmm I’m not a 100% certain where Red Lobster is located, so I’ll click on “Directions To Here” (Shouldn’t it be To There?)

I selected my zip code as the starting location (you can also enter in your exact address).

And voila! A Route Summary. But, I’m kind of a visual learner, so I want to see this on the map. I press the Menu button, and click on Map Route and I get this:

If I want to go back to the Route Summary, I simply hit the back (Esc) button. OK, so I know where Red Lobster is now, but I want to first zoom into the Finish area and make sure I don’t miss any landmarks etc. So I first move my trackball to the right so that its covering the red flag. Notice as you move the cross hairs across the map, it will display the new directions closest to the center. Now that your cross hairs are over the red flag, press the trackball once so that the Zoom bar appears to the left. Now roll your trackball forward to zoom in, or backwards to zoom out. Press it again to set that desired zoom level.

Now I’m going to press the menu key and select “Aerial View”

Ahh yes! Now I remember EXACTLY where Red Lobster is! Now press the menu button and click on Home to exit the map and return to the Home Screen.

So we’ve covered three categories already! Categories, Map and Directions. Lets take a look at Traffic. You could always simply pull up the Traffic for major highways by hitting menu, and selecting Show Traffic from the map, however if you select Traffic from the Home Screen, you’ll get a list of major cities. I KNOW that traffic in Los Angeles is bad so lets select it from the list:

After a brief wait while the map loads you get this. It reminds me of my grandmothers Spaghetti.

As of this sentence being written, it is currently 04:22 AM my time. Meaning that it’s 03:22 AM in California. Those red lines on the map mean “Backed up traffic, go around” etc. Yellow means it’s only slightly congested and green means your good to go! I REALLY don’t want to live there. Congestion at 3AM, no thanks.

OK now lets go back to the Home Screen and click on the last icon on the page, Movies! Now since Live Search already knows my location, it doesn’t ask me again where I am, so when I click on Movies, it automatically gives me a list of movies and a list of theaters closest to me (scrolling to the right selects the Theaters tab).

Now the closest theater to my location is Century Rio 24, so I select that.

Now we have a similar screen like we had earlier, however, it’s got a little gem called “Movies Playing”. This is seriously my favorite feature, check it out:

It gives me a list of the movies that are playing at THAT theater! How cool is that? And all the show times.

If available, the selected movie will even display critic review, worth, etc. If I want more information about the movie, I just click the trackball again for more options. The only thing this application doesn’t tell me is what current prices are for popcorn. I’m still forced to sneak candy in with my “man-bag” due to the outrageous extortion happening at our theater concession stands. But that’s another story.

Let’s go back to the Home Screen and press the menu button once.

You have some obvious selections here but lets go to the Options menu.

I see you perking up now. You see the abbreviation GPS. Your Geek juices are flowing and you wonder just how cool this could really be. Well, if your with Verizon, you just don’t have that option. What you CAN do however is hookup a Bluetooth GPS for the cost of two full gas-tanks, which is way cheap considering you now have unlimited access to GPS for the rest of your life for free unless the Air Force and Uncle Sam finds some way to start taxing you for it. If you just got your BT GPS and don’t know what your doing, follow this guide. I already have mine hooked up so lets take a look at the “Configure” option:

Even though I have my Bluetooth GPS turned on, it is not listed in the list of available devices. It’s either None or Blackberry GPS. However when I select Blackberry GPS and hit Save, the system asks me for my Bluetooth password for the device, then a window appears saying it is initializing. Now, some Bluetooth GPS modules (aka Mice) take a bit to warm up, especially since they haven’t been turned on in some time. While I was waiting for mine to warm up, heres the screen that I patiently waited for to change:

Zzzz…

Once the BT GPS has warmed up, we can go back to the map and see where we are.

Luckily I live on the second (of two) floor of my apartment building, so theres only a minimal amount of ceiling to block the signals from the satellites. Remember, when driving through a city with tall buildings, otherwise known as an Urban Canyon, you may lose or have very little GPS signal.

Now that we have our Bluetooth GPS activated, lets test it out. I went back to the Home Screen and typed in “Chinese Restaurant” and hit search. It searched from the default location “87107″ so I want to try this again but this time choose my GPS Location instead, as if I were already driving.

Now the map will track my location, while giving me directions to the Chinese Restaurant:

Of course there are a few other things you can do with Live Search Mobile. My only regret is that it does not feature some things from Google Maps and Blackberry Maps. If I could I would roll all three into one nice program, as they all have great features.

Now last but not least, while I was writing about the popcorn, I realized that there is an icon missing from the Home Screen. Gas Prices. Yep, you read it right, the Motorola Q version of Live Search Mobile, has a Gas prices icon that when clicked, will search for the cheapest location nearest you. But, I must say the Live Search website DOES state that the application for Blackberry is still in Beta, so we could expect to see those other features released in the near future.

Anyway, thanks for reading this review (or was it more of a tutorial?). Please be sure to leave a comment on my writing skills etc. Let me know where I can improve.

-Bull

Update on me

So I haven’t been working for the past almost three weeks now. Been on Short Term Disability and I return to work tomorrow, Saturday. Nice calm day to return.

On December 16th, right before I was supposed to start work, I had some heart attack-like symptoms. I kept having these strange hot flashes and dizziness and I just very strange. Not wanting to take any chances, I had a supervisor call an ambulance for me. Paramedics came pretty quickly, and right on the spot they hooked me up to a field EKG machine. Nothing on the machine showed up anything relevant. They put me on a gurney and pushed to the Ambulance where they began to ask me all sorts of fact-finding questions.

I was a bit miffed by the fact that they had such a hard time poking me in a vain to get some fluid into me. But I came to the conclusion that it really wasn’t their fault. Ever since I began taking my beta blocker medicine, Atenelol, my blood pressure is VERY low. Which also means I barely have any veins to show on my hands or inner arms. So ensued the poking and prodding. The EMT finally poked me in the arm and said “Yep, that looks good” and began the drip. From having worked in a hospital before, I noticed that the liquid wasn’t really moving, and I didn’t dare say anything lest the paramedic started using me as a pincushion again. It was just a saline solution anyway.

When I got to the hospital, I naturally told them about the faulty poke the guy had given me, and after three nurses unsuccessfully poked me, the doctor who would be seeing me did it herself, after a few tries. What I don’t understand, is why they insert the needle, then try to wiggle it around inside trying to find the vein. Insert, miss, pull out. But oh well. I then had to sign a bunch of paperwork, and then a male nurse took a few vials of blood for testing. In the meantime I had calmed down and my side effects were gone. I was rather feeling somewhat normal. They came back later and said that the tests were negative and they would take more blood in a few hours.

As I carry a “man purse”, I always have my camera with me, so I took this poor shot:

So then I took a little snooze and waited, then they drew more blood. A few times through my stay in the ER, I occasionally felt some discomfort, but nothing to worry about. And again the tests were negative. This is then when I asked the doctor what could cause me to have these symptoms, if it was really a false alarm? To which she couldn’t give me an exact answer. I had to rephrase my query three times, but all in all she “didn’t know”.

Around eight o’clock I was released with a paper saying “Nonspecific chest pain.” So once again no real answers. The next day I called into MetLife insurance company and filed for Short Term Disability, and I called the Heart Institute of New Mexico to get the earliest appointment for a cardiologist; which would be on January 9th.

I guess I’ll find out someday whats actually wrong with me.

Bull signing off.

Day Off

Day off? No no no. . . I worked today, however I have the REST of the week off! YAY! Woohoo! Hehe don’t ya love vacation?
Tomorrow I get to hang out with Des and Jarrod. First thing we are gonna go see Saw IV. I’m pretty stoked about that. Then afterwards we’re going to go eat at NYC Pizza in downtown. And after all of that we’re going back to their place to play some video games! Booya! I can hardly wait. Ever since my car took a shit on me I haven’t realy had a chance to hang out with them, and I feel real bad about that, but life happens no?
When I got home not too long ago, I was battling fruit flies. I had cooked my birds some gourmet food this morning, and left the pot on the stove with some remains. I looked into the pot tonight and there were fruit flies crawling all over it. I filled a pitcher full of water and drowned the majority of them, then I attacked the rest with a spray bottle of bleach cleaner. Then I cordoned off the kitchen as a bio hazard/crime scene area. Good times.
I hope the birds are faring OK with the food I gave them earlier…
Patches seems to be doing OK. She is getting skinnier by the day, which I’m glad about.      
Oh well, vacation here I come!

Blogged with Flock

Tags: flock, day, birds, cat, kitchen

Hectic Overtime

Well today has been a nutty day to say the least! It was long, grueling and tiring.

Today was supposed to be some great overtime where I work, at Verizon Wireless. I was supposed to come in at 0900 and work till 1700 for making outbound calls to customers who are out of contract. It’s easy they said, just do equipment upgrades. Sigh.

So I went to bed around 12am this morning with the plan to wake up around 0655. I didn’t go to sleep until 0500. I was pissed. I dragged my feet to the bus stop three blocks away.

Well, had I gotten there on time would have been nice. I stood at the bus stop for over an hour until it finally showed up, making me late by about 20 minutes. Not a huge deal since its overtime basis and I’m the one who chose to come in. But when a bus is supposed to show up at a certain time I expect it to be there ya know?

So I finally get to work and they are already serving up the donuts and cookies… and carbonated beverages. This was a horrible combination especially since I have digestive problems to begin with. So we sit down and I start making outbound calls. Other reps left and right of me are landing contracts and winning prizes for doing so. Not I.

Lunch time rolls around and they bring in stacks of Little Caesar’s Pizza. I almost threw up after a few pieces of this junk. I was tired, cranky and I just couldn’t stand being there anymore. By the time 1700 rolled around I had made 119 outbound calls to customers to upgrade either their phone or price plan. 100 of those calls were either busy or no answer. So yeah, this was not my day at all. Im just glad I’m home and enjoying the rest of my day off.

Tech art

I bent my old laptop keyboard in an S-shape and hung it on the wall.

The Perfect Chicken Bake!

Books Galore!

Cornbread topped Chili I made last night

Statues pondering sculpture

<And you thought Red Bull gave you wiings!>

The iPhone hype is so intense right now, I think people will be buying
this phone based on hype alone. I mean, is the phone really that great?
The more I read about the iPhone, the less I want it.
At a glance, the device looks fantastic, features sound fun, and there’s
no doubt this phone is the “it” phone this year. But realistically,
would you pay $500-$600 for any other phone? Like many of you, I’m still
debating whether to buy an iPhone or not, so I’ve compiled a list of
cons (since the pros are obvious) just to give myself a reality-check.
* Price/Storage: Probably the biggest reason to wait is the price.
The iPhone will retail in stores for $500 (4GB) and $600 (8GB) – AND you
still have to sign a new two-year agreement. Don’t expect this phone to
replace your iPod either. The top-of-the-line $600, 8GB iPhone only
holds 2,000 songs, and only a handful of videos and full-length movies.
I also don’t understand why you have to buy the iPhone at full price,
and still sign a two-year contract. You could easily get a comparable
phone actually running on a 3G network like a Treo 750 for $199 with a
two-year contract, or an 80GB video iPod for almost half the price.
* Plans: What’s really bothering me about this is AT&T is playing
into all this hype too, forgetting about its customers. I called AT&T
today to find out more details about switching carriers, and the rep was
clueless. Come on guys, we needed pricing details about a month before
the phone went on sale so we could estimate costs. Why is the company
being so secretive? At least now we know getting an iPhone isn’t going to be cheap. Chris
Null outlined the cost of each service plan, the cheapest plan being
$60/mo for 450 minutes. He says that in two years, you’ll end up paying
close to $2,000 for service alone. Plus there is that $36 activation
fee, and a two-year contract on top of that. Those who already have an
AT&T account can expect to pay an additional $20-$30 for the “iPhone
plan” which includes Visual Voicemail, 200 SMS text messages, and
unlimited data since there is no voice-only plan. And if you think you
can get the iPhone to use without service, think again. Apple’s web site
says a two-year agreement is required for iPhone activation including
iPod features.
* Network: Surprisingly, the iPhone does not run on a
third-generation (3G) network, instead it runs on the slower EDGE
network. Forbes thinks Apple opted for the slower network because AT&T’s
EDGE coverage spans across 13,000 cities and towns nationwide, compared
with only 165 major U.S metro areas that have 3G coverage. It also
brings up another excellent point. Since 3G devices are interchangeable
between faster and slower networks, why did Apple still choose EDGE?
Other AT&T smartphones like Samsung’s BlackJack and Treo 750 run on 3G,
and for what I understand AT&T is slowing moving away from EDGE. So
perhaps a second- or third-generation iPhone will have 3G capability.
And while the iPhone may have Wi-Fi capabilities, realistically, looking
for a hotspot when you’re out can be a challenge, unless you pay an
extra $10 for T-Mobile access at Starbucks.
* First Generation: A geek’s rule of thumb is to never get a first
generation gadget. Apple is one of the few companies that revamps its
products at such a quick pace, that in this case, they actually make it
quite bearable to wait for the second revision. Look at all the
improvements they’ve made on iPods and MacBooks. It may seem like
waiting for a new iPhone will be an eternity, but I bet it’ll be a
matter of months before we see a better, faster version.
* Long Lines: I love technology as much as the next guy, but no
gadget is worth standing in line days in advance for, not even the
iPhone. People have already started to line up, and some are even
betting real money that someone will get trampled. I would add getting
shot at, beaten, mugged, and possibly being hospitalized to the list.
On top of all the above reasons, there’s still some doubts about the
lack of keyboard, inability to sync with corporate internal email
systems, and battery life. So lets get this straight. We’re expected to
pay for an overpriced phone, an expensive service plan, sign a new
two-year contract, and still wait in line hoping to get one? No thanks.