Arabic iPhone

This is very promising. I have already installed the Arabic font, and Arabic keyboard and now I can read/write Arabic SMS, Email, and open most of Arabic web sites.

The good news, more programs are in in the works right now including prayer program, Quran, and more. For more information visit this website: www.iphoneislam.com.

Also, for more inforation about the full Arabic support watch the following video: http://www.iphoneislam.com/?p=22

Also, I have been experimenting with writing a prayer program myself, and I am planning to post it soon on this blog. The program will play the athan at prayer times, and it will display the prayer times for the current day. More information will follow soon.

I am planning to put it as open source under google code portal

http://code.google.com/p/iprayer/

Native iPhone Applications: the first Quran App

Developed by Zoosware. But first you have to install either AppTap, or AppSnapp.

Reviews to be followed soon. Stay tuned

3D Virtual Desktop

Check it out

This brings back memories about when Central Point, the company behind PC Tools, released Central Point Desktop for Windows and introduced the idea of Virtual Desktops. At that time I got really used to it especially Windows 3.1 at that time did not have a useful desktop (it was called Program Manager)

Anyway, so far I am loving this tool, and will be evaluating for a possible purchase.

Quran (Arabic) for iPhone

This is basically scanned pages of the entire Quran in Arabic. It's very impressive. What we need is a WEB 2.0 version of Pocket Islam

To setup Quran for the iPhone, click on this link for instructions: Link

Can AT&T handle the iPhone?

Going to AT&T is totally a different experience from going to the apple store. Going to AT&T give you the feeling that AT&T is making guesses about how the iPhone is suppose to work and what feature have or not. For example, when I asked about whether the iPhone supports the stereo Bluetooth headset, .i.e. AD2P, their immediate answer was yes of course. So based on their answer I made the purchase from their store to find out that it is not supported yet. Also, when they were asked about their discount policy on the iPhone accessories I got many conflicting answers. One store told me that all iPhone related accessories do not qualify for corporate discount. While others told only products that are packaged with AT&T brand quality for discount.

In my overall experience dealing with AT&T, ,most of their employees are incompetent in handling advance Smart Phones and most of them do not have basic understanding of basic smart phone features. When I told one of the AT&T sales rep that I used my own SIM card instead of the one that came with the device he was very surprised that it worked and he insisted that the iPhone will not with any other SIM card other than the one that came with it. They are not aware that all SIM cards are standards and since the iPhone is locked to AT&T as long as you have an existing AT&T SIM the activation process will work without any problems. No wonder why people were having problems activating their phones.

I think it would have been a good idea for Apple to provide a full training to the AT&T sales rep in using the iPhone. In additions, Apple needs to train AT&T in general how to interact with customers. When I walk into the AT&T I feel like I am walking into a mechanic shop. Where, when I walk into the Apple store I feel I am walking into a high tech Art Museum. Totally different experience.

I love my iPhone, here are my top 5 feature requests

1. Support for MS Exchange Push Technology. including support for Hotmail
2. IM client support for MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, AOL, ...etc
3. Video recording
4. Media transfer via Bluetooth
5. Arabic Support in the Safari Browser.
   
   Thats it :)

I have the iPhone now and I hate it :(

I really miss my 8525 that I sold last week in order to buy this phone.

So far this is my second day with the iPhone and I hate it so far. Here are the reasons:-

1. Why can't I transfer photos, sounds to another phone using the Bluetooth.
2. NO IM. Most phones, even low end phones have IM built in.
3. No support with Exchange Mail, unless it's MAPI? Why?
4. Broweser does not support Arabic text.
5. The Internet browsing via Edge is exermly slow

I am going to give my self another 3 days to see if I change my mind. I hope I will since I have spent $600.

Google: this is how to disable Vista Desktop Search Index

It is totally untrue the only way to turn off Local Desktop search is by disabling the Windows Search Service. Here are the steps:-

1. Start > Control Panel > Indexing Options
2. Modify > Show All Locations
3. Now Uncheck all the locations currently check
4. Uncheck the Offline files and Outlook if selected.

Google claim that Vista does not allow third party Desktop search applications to install / run is misleading.

Why you should buy the XBOX 360

After having my XBOX 360 for over a year, guess what happened to it last week? In the middle of an intense game play the system crashed and we got the Red Ring Of Death. So I called the XBOX support 1800-4MyXBOX and they were very helpful. I had to go through first this automated voice system name Max. To get through directly just say :"Supervisor". When I finally got through, the customer support rep informed me that my warranty has expired and I have to pay $138 to fix and it will automatically give me 2 years of extended warranty. I told him how wrong this is especially even though we have had the system for over a year, we only used it for the last three months and how our PS2 that we have had over 4 years is still running nicely.

After speaking to the supervisor I was granted a one time deal free repair, with an optional $50 2 year extended warranty, which I will get for sure.

Therefore, I highly recommend anyone to buy the XBOX360

Jeff Hawkins (of Palm) idea behind Foleo sounds convincing

http://news.com.com/The+best+idea+Jeff+Hawkins+ever+had/2008-1041_3-6188188.html

iPhone will be released June 29th

Checkout the new iPhone Ads

MbUnit: Comprehensive .Net Unit Test Framework

MbUnit

------ Test started: Assembly: MbUnitTestSamples.dll ------
Info: Test Execution
Info: Exploring Test.Example, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null
Info: MbUnit 1.0.2445.37068 Addin
Info: Found 1 tests
Info: [success] ConfigTest.GetValueFromAppSettings
Info: [reports] generating HTML report
TestResults: ....\Test.Example.Tests.html
1 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 skipped, took 4.07 seconds.

More on Microsoft Surface From Channel 10

Watch this 18 minutes video:-
http://on10.net/Blogs/larry/first-look-microsoft-surfacing-computing/

Scratch the Surface and iPhone

Amazing new technological announcements were made this week. Most interesting the Microsoft Surface. This technology opens the door for endless opportunities in the future, and Microsoft has been working on Surface for over 6 years. Imagine this will be your experience when you get a phone from T-Mobile (watch this)



Scratch is another amazing announcement this week. Its a programming language teaching tool for 8 year old and above.

And last, my name is on the waiting list for the iPhone. BTW, I need to sell my Cingular 8525 and 30 GB iPOD video Gen.5.5, anyone interested let me know! :)

Advance Query Sytnax - AQS Part 2

This is a follow up to the first post Advance Query Sytnax - AQS Part 1

To search for file based on it's kind, you use the kind property. For example:

• 
  kind:Music ... you can also use song, songs
  Kind:email ... you can also use mail, message, messages, emails
  Kind:document ... you can also use documents, doc, docs
  Kind:Meeting ... you can also use calendar, appointment
  Kind:Picture ... you can also use Pic, Pics, Photo, image, images.

The terms can be combined using the OR operator
Kind:Music OR Pic will return all your music and pic files

You can also combine other conditions:
Kind:Music AND Artist:Prince
or
Kind:Music Artist:Prince since AND is implicit

Enabling NQS (Natural Query Syntax) will simplify the syntax

• 
  Music artist Prince
  Music by prince
  Pics taken last month
  email received last week from John about presentation

You can search on all the properties any kind of file can have. For example. you can search for photos based on the Taken property. You can search for document based on it's author. For eample:

Kind:Document Author:David Johnson

or you do an exact match

Kind:Document Author:"David Johnson"

or you can take it further

kind:Document Author:="David Johnson"

The difference here: the first one is searching for author that contains "David Johnson". The second using the equal sign is searching for author with exact match.

I will be covering the Advance Query Sytnax - AQS Part 3 soon

Back in Portland

The Wii Experience

I want to share with you my experience with the "Wii".

I played on the Wii with my nephews and I have to admit, I am impressed. The game play experience is amazing. The bowling is out of this world. I even had a strike on the first shot, can you believe it? Playing these games with my three nephews was an outstanding experience, it was a perfect opportunity to spend time with my nephews and all of us enjoy one common activity. We all had good time

I am going to be hunting one down from this point :)

Two problems with the Apple iPhone

Even though the iPhone is revolutionary I think Steve Jobs is making a huge mistake by not opening up application development for 3rd party. This can be done by providing Apple certification program which ensure the quality of these 3rd party applications. Then its up to the consumer to buy apple certified program or take the risk in running into problems. But to make this a closed system is a huge mistake.

Another limitation that Apple put itself by going through Cingular is not opening the opportunity for Voice Over IP (VOIP) solutions such as the popular service of Skype.

Other than that, I think this is going to be a phenomenal product. Check out this video:

Apple iPhone is revealed

I know which phone to get

This is a perfect phone. Has everything I want:

• Built in GPS
• 5 Megapixel Camera
• 3.5 G support, which is 10 times faster than GPRS
• Big screen
• Light weight
• MP3 player
• Gaming device
• and more ...

Can you guess what phone it is? It is NOT any of the ones I mentioned in my previous post.







Its the Nokia N95.

Check it out: Watch this video