Windows Phone: Create a Speed Dialer

If you’re like me, you connect with the same people on a very regular basis. Email, Twitter, Facebook, and phone calls seem to circulate around the small group of people you’re commonly in contact with.

With this information, I found a way using GROUPS in Windows Phone 8, that let’s me quickly and easily stay in touch.

Enjoy!

Windows Phone: Create a Speed Dialer

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WordPress ‘Press This’ BookMarklet 404 Solution

As you have heard (if you’re a reader) I’m new to WordPress. In the tools, there is a drag/drop bookmarklet that makes it easy to copy/paste from the site you’re reading, into a new blog post.

When I tried the bookmarklet, my site was returning a 404 not found. After searching for the answer, not only did I find/fix the problem (thanks to qvprof) but I used it to create this post 🙂

It has to do with the URI Encoding getting mixed up with the mod_rewrite…

the part where it says u=’+e(l.href)+’
change it to u=’+e(l.href.replace(/\//g,’\\/’))+’

WordPress › Support » Press This 404 issue.

Need WordPress Help? Ask Greg Taylor.

I have used this platform, and that random CMS over the last xx years to maintain my ScottCate.com blog. Most of them started out strong, and then fizzled because the blog software went under, was home grown to begin with, or was more CMS that Blog software.

So I decided (many years too late) to move all my stuff to WordPress.

At GangPlank Chandler I met a guy named Greg Taylor, so I started talking to him, and he says no problem, he can do it. After some short planning, and a few weeks later, all my old content was migrated into this (as of 2012 Q4) new ScottCate.com site. Greg runs a company named Marketing Press, and to my knowledge focuses exclusively on small word press sites. Melissa with Strong Design Studio’s also did some minor graphics design (the icons), but MOST of the work was transferring all that old content (photos, and videos, and blogs) into this new design. This included 100’s of posts, each with many photos in many places.

Thank you Greg, this project was easy, fast, on time, and I was never left wondering about status updates. You gave constant communications, you were on time and most important, you were on budget. Three very important metrics for success for my small website/blog project.

Facebook on Windows Phone

It’s hard to fault a mobile OS for a client app, unless the client app is the most popular application you use.

I recently brought home a Windows Phone 8, Lumia 920 for my wife. And she was more than willing to give it a try. Her current iPhone 4S was failing her, being slow, and old, and she’s been hearing me brag about how great the Windows Phone is for over a year now.

It’s been maybe 2 weeks, and she has a love/hate relationship with it. It’s new, so she’s really given it a chance, and she’s learned a lot and loves a lot of it. The camera, the camera lenses, etc. At the end of the day, one application, is making her fantasize about the days of when it just worked. Even working slow … is still working.  the Facebook app.

In my head I asked myself. It can’t be that bad can it? So I tried it.

With Facebook open, side-by-side on WinPhone and iOS, there are just huge gaps in the application.

While I’m sure there are others, this is her current frustration, and they are glaring mistakes in the application.

  1. You can only see upcoming events. on the iOS version, you can see PAST events. This means that she can’t see anything about the event she was at last night. #fail
  2. The events, just show up as blank for details. (see this screen shot). And I tried this on both her phone, as well as my phone, on multiple events. They all just show as blank. The wall is active, but the info title/date/location/etc are all just blank.. #fail

So, this isn’t a fail on the part of the OS, but since Microsoft Did write the Facebook application, they should **VERY** quickly be updating this, or they’ll be having higher returns on their devices.

At the very least, with #FB #WP8 app should be on par with the iOS app, and I would actually expect it to be of much higher caliber.

Facebook Failed Event    

As I started this post. You can’t blame the OS for being bad, when really it’s an application that isn’t up to par. BUT (and that’s a big BUT) over all Microsoft is responsible for both the application and the OS here, and Jamie doesn’t care. All she knows is the old way was better. 🙁
I can’t wait to amend this post, with an “I told you so.” Come on Microsoft, do me proud, I need you brother!

Windows 8 Trick: Peek at the Desktop

Use the Windows Key + , to peek at the desktop.

[WIN]=[,]

This is handy for me, because as you’ll see in this video, i have a calendar on my desktop.

The peek doesn’t change what program you’re in, it just let’s you see the desktop temporarily.

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