WPCentral News

WMExperts Prize-A-Day, Day 13

WPCentral News

By chris#wp, Saturday, Jan 3, 2009 at 3:22 am

Lucky number 13, eh? Lucky numbers in general, I've decided, are a bad idea, as are unlucky ones: last night I lost a full two hours of my life that I will never, never get back, I felt compelled to go see The Number 23 as 23 is my childhood "favorite number."

So the only numbers I care about anymore are my "secret numbers," Credit card numbers, passwords (ok, these are numbers and letters, but still), and so on. In honor of these numbers that actually matter we're giving away a copy of FlexWallet today, a great and secure way to store all them numbers.

How to Win

Comment on this post: what sort of data do you store on your smartphone? Are you strictly a PIM and email type, or do you put it all on there? As usual, today's contest will be open until noon EST tomorrow, March 2nd (3/2, 23 backwards, OMG!).

Remember: Every entry in a daily contest doubles as an entry for the Grand Prize and the two Second Prizes! Namely: A Smartphone of your choice plus $300 to spend in the WMExperts store and a couple of Slingbox Pros.

(Full contest rules are here)

WMExperts Prize-A-Day, Day 14

WPCentral News

By chris#wp, Saturday, Jan 3, 2009 at 3:22 am

Well if the WMExperts Store is going to sponsor a contest at Engadget in addition to sponsoring our own Prize-A-Day contest, we should give them some love--in the form of helping them out with more Customer Reviews in the store itself.

Today's prize is a screen protector pack of your choice plus a pack of those neat 3M cleaning cloths to help make sure you get your plastic protector on just right.

How to win

As with Day 4, head on over to the WMExperts Store and review any product between now and noon EST on Monday, March 5th. Be sure to enter a full review, including your email address. We'll pick a winner randomly from all the reviews.

Most of you know the drill by now: Every entry in a daily contest doubles as an entry for the Grand Prize and the two Second Prizes! Namely: A Smartphone of your choice plus $300 to spend in the WMExperts store and a couple of Slingbox Pros.

(Full contest rules are here)

WMExperts Prize-A-Day, Day 12

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By chris#wp, Saturday, Jan 3, 2009 at 3:22 am

In honor of my metal-intensive review, let's make it just a little easier to rock out with your WM phone by giving away a copy of CorePlayer - the commercial successor to TCPMP and a great player that supports multiple audio and video formats. It's my favorite media software on WM by far.

How to Win

Do you listen to music on your smartphone, or do you use a different device (or do you not listen to music at all)? I switch back and forth myself - sometimes I can't believe how convenient and awesome it is to have a bunch of music on my phone, other times I just want my iPod. Head on over to the forums and chat a bit about music on the WM5 platform. Any post in this thread between now and noon EST tomorrow, March 1st, qualifies.

..I say this every day - but every day I mean it: Every entry in a daily contest doubles as an entry for the Grand Prize and the two Second Prizes! Namely: A Smartphone of your choice plus $300 to spend in the WMExperts store and a couple of Slingbox Pros.

(Full contest rules are here)

WMExperts Prize-A-Day, Day 11

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By chris#wp, Saturday, Jan 3, 2009 at 3:22 am

A touch late today with the prize contest because I'm rocking out with the Aliph Jawbone - er, I'm actually rocking out to Mastadon while testing the Jawbone, expect a video review up tomorrow morning.

In any case, today's prize is the Smartphone Experts Mini-USB Sync n Charge Retractable Cable (or, for you sad folks without a mini-usb connector on your smartphone, a wall charger).

How to Win

Comment here on this post about battery life on your mobile device. Is it good? Is it terrible? Do you try to keep it topped off all the time, or do you let it run down often?

Today's contest will be open until noon EST tomorrow (Feb 28th). Don't forget - Every entry in a daily contest doubles as an entry for the Grand Prize and the two Second Prizes! Namely: A Smartphone of your choice plus $300 to spend in the WMExperts store and a couple of Slingbox Pros.

(Full contest rules are here)

WME Prize-A-Day, Second Batch-O-Winners

WPCentral News

By chris#wp, Saturday, Jan 3, 2009 at 3:22 am

If you're not in the list below, fret not: your entries still count towards our grand prize and second prize, so keep 'em coming. Yesterday's contest will be running for another few hours (till noon EST today) and I really appreciate the input about what you'd like to see reviewed. Basically you can expect any category of product in that thread to get moved to the top of my queue.

Day 5: Lespaulist wins Pocket Express.
The highlight of Day 5, for me: rezaf_2000 sneaks a dig in about how a smartphone makes one presidential. "Life of a president is not all about work after all, even a president needs some entertainment once in a while - ask Bill Clinton about it!"
Day 6: Curt wins a spare battery of his choice.
That day was about teasing the PalmOS. It was maybe too easy. My favorite entry came from Jimmy, who broke out the industry insider joke, "Your Palm is so useless, it'll be Nokia in less than a year."
Day 7: smthng wins Spb Insight.
smthng hasn't yet "found a decent Smartphone RSS client", here's hoping that Insight is the one!
Day 8: oguime wins the Jabra BT620 bluetooth stereo headset.
oguime asked about SIP options and how to speed the darn selection dialog up on the TyTn. Ravipkumar had a good suggestion there in the thread. There were a ton of hacks posted and I'll try to get to a "hack roundup" later this week.
Day 9: Kathy wins Texas Hold'em.
...and oh my, this Minnesota boy also happened to think her entry about slackers was hilarious: "Randy Moss has admitted to taking plays off. That would be a considered a slacker."

Remember, you can check for the latest Prize-A-Day every day, here, full contest rules are here. I can't wait to give away that Smartphone and those Slingboxes!

WMExperts Prize-A-Day, Day 10

WPCentral News

By chris#wp, Saturday, Jan 3, 2009 at 3:22 am

A large swath of the midwest got smacked with a snowstorm over the weekend. I like snow as much as the next guy, but this one made me want to just hole up in my house and play video games. Being holed-up means that my smartphone didn't need much using, so it just sat in its cradle.

Ah, a cradle! That's what we'll give away, a cradle of your choice! Lock yourself inside, give your phone a rest, and go get yourself some cocoa.

How to Win

The WMExperts store has well over 1000 products in stock and while I sincerely doubt we'll ever be able to review them all here, we do want to get as many as possible up in our Reviews section. So: help us prioritize! Go take a look-see through the store and comment here on this post: which product would you most like to see WMExperts weigh in on? We can test conteston a multitude of WM phones, so if there's some compatibility question be sure to mention that too.

Today's contest will be open until noon EST tomorrow (Feb 27th). Don't forget - Every entry in a daily contest doubles as an entry for the Grand Prize and the two Second Prizes! Namely: A Smartphone of your choice plus $300 to spend in the WMExperts store and a couple of Slingbox Pros. We'll announce last week's winners a little later today.

(Full contest rules are here)

WMExperts Prize-A-Day, Day 9

WPCentral News

By chris#wp, Saturday, Jan 3, 2009 at 3:22 am

Let's do a Casual Friday Edition of the Prize-A-Day contest for the weekend. I'll be wearing this Penguin Suit at a wedding tomorrow, so I want to know that somebody, somewhere, is going to be wearing sweatpants, eating Oreos, and 'wasting' time on a video game.

Also, our Software Store is now open! To celebrate the store and slacking off, we'll give away the piece of software that has been getting the most screen time on my Dash lately: Aces Texas Hold'em. It's a fun little game and the players have just enough "playing personality" to keep me on my toes.

How to win

We're slacking, so let's just forget about Windows Mobile for this contest. Instead, just post a comment on this entry about your favorite slacker of all time. For me, it's a toss up between Socrates (It makes sense to me) and Victor Tugelbend. Bonus points if you know who Victor is without doing a google search. ;)

Today's contest will run until noon EST on Feb 26th. Don't forget - Every entry in a daily contest doubles as an entry for the Grand Prize and the two Second Prizes! Namely: A Smartphone of your choice plus $300 to spend in the WMExperts store and a couple of Slingbox Pros.

(Full contest rules are here)

WMExperts Prize-A-Day, Day 8

WPCentral News

By chris#wp, Saturday, Jan 3, 2009 at 3:22 am

The earlier post about adding A2DP to a Treo 700wx has got me thinking: I start applying hacks to pretty much every Windows Mobile device I try out. WM is surprisingly hackable (and surprising stable after hacks are applied), and most of the little usability quirks that bug me turn out to be fixable via a hack. Just one example is changing the way that the 5-way nav works in Pocket Internet Explorer, as detailed here.

Today's Prize: a set of Jabra BT620 Stereo Bluetooth Headphones. Fitting, since most WM phones support them, and for those that don't there's often a hack to enable it!

How to win

Head on over to the discussions and post your favorite hack in the device-appropriate forum (device-appropriate because often these hacks work on one device but not another). If it works on any device, go ahead and post it in General WM Chat. Don't know any hacks? Then think for a brief bit about something that bugs you about WM and post a question - dollars to donuts there's somebody else annoyed by the same thing that has found a hack to change it.

I'll keep an eye on all the "hacks" posts between now and Noon EST Feb 23rd and choose the winner at random from those posts.

Don't forget - Every entry in a daily contest doubles as an entry for the Grand Prize and the two Second Prizes! Namely: A Smartphone of your choice plus $300 to spend in the WMExperts store and a couple of Slingbox Pros.

(Full contest rules are here)

WMExperts Prize-A-Day, Day 7

WPCentral News

By chris#wp, Saturday, Jan 3, 2009 at 3:22 am

Today I'd like some tips. I may be approaching 1200 sites in my newsreader but I'm still finding new sites every day. So tell us: what's on your daily gadget list? I'm especially curious to hear about the little guy, or a site that's very popular yet just you've just discovered (I just found shiny shiny myself. Susi: Call me).

Today's prize is Spb Insight, a great little RSS reader. Fitting for a contest that's about finding new gadget sites, eh?

How to Win

Between now and noon EST tomrrow (Feb 22), just post a link to a gadget site in the comments here. We'll pick a winner at random, as always. Speaking of "as always" -- Every entry in a daily contest doubles as an entry for the Grand Prize and the two Second Prizes! Namely: A Smartphone of your choice plus $300 to spend in the WMExperts store and a couple of Slingbox Pros.

(Full contest rules are here)

WMExperts Prize-A-Day, Day 6

WPCentral News

By chris#wp, Saturday, Jan 3, 2009 at 3:22 am

Our first full week of prizes is over, but there's three more weeks to come.

...With that little reminder, let's get right to it. Just like last Tuesday, this Tuesday is all about the smack talk. Let's not fight amongst ourselves, though (that'll come later), and instead have a little solidarity. Namely, let's beat up on the PalmOS. Yes, it's as easy as shooting fish in a barrel while checking your calendar (see, that's a knock on PalmOS's inability to multitask), but it's still fun.

How to Win

Beat up on the PalmOS in the comments on this post - today's contest is open until noon EST tomorrow. I personally like the "Your Palm is so blank, it blankety-blank!" format myself, but I can be flexible. Winner will be chosen at random, as always. Don't forget an email address is necessary too.

Today's prize: A spare battery for your WM device valued up to $40. Because, let's face it, multitasking is awesome, but it sure can chew through electricity.

Don't forget: Every entry in a daily contest doubles as an entry for the Grand Prize and the two Second Prizes! Namely: A Smartphone of your choice plus $300 to spend in the WMExperts store and a couple of Slingbox Pros.

(Full contest rules are here)

WME Prize-A-Day, Day 4

WPCentral News

By chris#wp, Saturday, Jan 3, 2009 at 3:22 am

Although WMExperts went "live" this week, did you know we've been posting (albeit sporadically) since November? It's true, you can check out our archives here.

Meanwhile, moving forward, you can expect to see the number of in-depth reviews increase at a steady clip. I'm looking at a pile of WM phones here, plus we have an entire store-full of accessories that need reviewing. But I can only do so much, that's where today's contest comes in.

How to win

Every item in the WMExperts store is reviewable in the store itself! So between now and 9am EST on Monday Feb 19th, just click on a star rating for any item, then click "Write Opinion and Confirm Rating" to enter a brief review. Be sure to enter your email address in there so we can enter you into this weekend's contest. We'll pick a winner at random from all the reviews put in over the weekend.

What's the prize? Easy, any case of your choice valued up to $30.

(Full contest rules are here)

WME Prize-A-Day, Day 3

WPCentral News

By chris#wp, Saturday, Jan 3, 2009 at 3:22 am

There are times and places where it doesn't really seem appropriate to whip out your smartphone. Off the top of my head I can think of several: movies (seriously, why do people answer during a movie), camping (maybe I'm wrong there), Antarctica (pictured - really, all your energy should be focused on keeping warm and eyeing that hole in the ozone layer), during class (as a former TA at a major University, let me tell you this is a growing problem).

For WME Prize-A-Day Day 3, tell us your horror stories about people (obviously you'd never misuse your phone, right?) bungling a social situation with their gadget.

Did some buffoon start check their favorite team's score and yelp during a meeting? Misusing a phone in the car is always good fodder. Maybe some vile parent didn't notice their child wandering out into traffic because they were emailing? Come on, folks, make us lose our faith in humanity.

Today's prize: A 1 Gig Memory Card - SD, MiniSD, or MicroSD. We may not be able to add capacity to people's brains, so I guess adding capacity to people's phones will have to do.

How to win

Simple. Just comment between now and 10 am EST tomorrow morning with your horror stories. We'll pick the winner at random. Don't forget: Every entry in a daily contest doubles as an entry for the Grand Prize and the two Second Prizes! Namely: A Smartphone of your choice plus $300 to spend in the WMExperts store and a couple of Slingbox Pros.

(Full contest rules are here)

Update: Yesterday's Daily Contest is closed, but there's a new one up for this weekend. You can always find the latest Prize-A-Day contest here

MWE Prize-A-Day, Day 2

WPCentral News

By chris#wp, Saturday, Jan 3, 2009 at 3:22 am

It's Valentine's Day, so today's contest has got to be about showing the love. A couple of comments on this Google Maps post asked for more info on how to set up GPS with a WM phone, so later today I'll get up a quick video how-to and screencast. But let's get some community love (get your mind out the gutter) going here too.

How to Win

Just post a comment on this entry (form below, be sure to include your name and email address!) with your favorite Windows Mobile tip or trick. It can be esoteric like the GPS bit I'll post later, or just something neat.

The Prize for today is obvious, given the theme, Bejeweled Valentine's Day Edition for PocketPC or Smartphone.

Show the love!

(Full Contest information here - must use valid email address to register.)

WME Prize-A-Day, Day 5

WPCentral News

By chris#wp, Saturday, Jan 3, 2009 at 3:22 am

President's Day means that the luckier among us get the day off. The rest of us are working like schmucks (then again, maybe there's no other way to work). So what to give away on President's Day? Well, a President has people who take care of stuff for them, so we'll give you the next best thing: people for your WM phone. People who keep track of your sports, news, movie times, and more; so you can focus on more important things.

By people, I mean Handmark. Specifically, we'll send you a CD and a 3-month subscription to Handmark Express.

How to Win

Let's take it back to the forums today. For President's Day, let's be full of ourselves. How does your smartphone make you an effective "executive"? How does it make you seem "important"? Or for the more humble of you, how does a smartphone help the "little guy" in an executive's world? Post a reply in this thread.

Also, I'll announce last week's Prize-A-Day winners a little later today!

(Full contest rules are here)

WME Prize-A-Day, Day 1

WPCentral News

By chris#wp, Saturday, Jan 3, 2009 at 3:22 am

Let's kick off our prizes with a classic, hey? The Plantronics Bluetooth Headset, a great in-ear Bluetooth headset with a nice little portable charger.

How to win:

It's Monday, so we'll keep it simple: Go on and register in our forums (those of your registered at TreoCentral's forums are already registered!) and then head over to this thread: Prize-A-Day, Day 1: iPhone SmackTalk Edition.

Anybody who posts a reply in that thread between 9amEST on Feb 13th and 9amEST on the 14th will qualify for the drawing (and also will receive one entry for the Grand Prize. But we want you to do more than qualify, we want you to talk some smack in honor of the Windows Mobile 6 announcement. The preferred format is:

Your iPhone is so [blank], it [blank]!

Don't be fair. Don't be nice. (Don't be vulgar, though, either). Heck, don't even be truthful. We're talkin' smack here, kids!

(Full Contest information here - must use valid email address to register.)

WMExperts.com: Prize-A-Day Contest!

By chris#wp, Saturday, Jan 3, 2009 at 3:22 am

WMExperts Prize-A-Day!

To celebrate the launch of WMExperts we're going to be giving away a some great prizes... and by "some" I mean "One every weekday for an entire month" and by "great" I mean "really, really great." Here's the short of it:

Every weekday beginning February 13th, 2007, WMExperts will be posting a relatively simple 'challenge,' ranging from "comment on this entry" to "write a limerick making fun of the PalmOS" to "Post in the forums." Simply fulfill the challenge on any given to to be entered in a random drawing for that day's prize. What are we giving away - well it's going to vary from day to day, but take a look below for some examples.

At the end of 4 weeks of prizes, WMExperts will be giving away a Grand Prize and two Second Prizes, drawn randomly from the list of all entrants to each of the daily contests. What are we giving away? The Grand Prize is a WM Smartphone of your choice plus $300 to spend on accessories for it. The Second Prize for two winners: A Slingbox Pro.

...More details and the full rules after the jump.

(Update: We've started. You'll find the latest contest in the righthand sidebar every day.)

Grand Prize (1)

Your choice of any Windows Mobile Smartphone that's currently available in the United States...

...Plus $300 to spend on accessories in the WMExperts store.

(Also: If you happen to chose a GSM phone that's available in an unlocked version, we'll get that version for you)

Second Prizes (2):

Two lucky winners will receive a Slingbox Pro!

The Slingbox PRO is the perfect companion for your home theater. With the ability to watch and control one high definition video source and up to three standard definition video devices, the Slingbox PRO ensures that you can watch all of your favorite home theater entertainment anywhere you go. Using an Internet-connected computer or compatible mobile phone, you can watch and control your home TV, DVR, basic cable, digital cable box, or satellite receiver anywhere around your home or around the globe. With a Slingbox PRO you are never separated from your favorite TV shows, sports broadcasts, breaking news stories, digital video recordings, or video on demand.

Daily Prizes (20)

These will vary from day to day, but will include stuff like Bluetooth Headsets, games and productivity software, cases, and more. Check back every day to see what we're giving away.

Contest Rules and procedures

The Prize-A-Day contest will run from February 13th, 2007 until March 12th, 2007. A Daily contest will be held each weekday during that period. You can find the latest Daily contest here.

For the Daily Contests each entry must have a valid email address associate with it, the method of inclusion will be specified in each day's post. At the end of each day, a winner will be chosen at random from all of that day's entries. Once a person has won three daily prizes, he or she will no longer be eligible for daily prizes, but his or her entries each day will still count towards the Second and Grand prizes. Limit one entry per person per day.

For the Final Drawing, all entries for the Daily Contests will be added up and then drawn from at random on March 19th, 2007. Limit 20 entries per person (one for each day).

Disclaimers

Employees and contractors of Smartphone Experts or its affiliates are not eligible.
We cannot substitute prizes.
US residents only (sorry!)

We're (mostly) live!

By chris#wp, Saturday, Jan 3, 2009 at 3:22 am

Well everybody, here we are! I've been posting quick news stories for awhile now, expect longer pieces in the near future. WMExperts.com looks to be a great source of news and reviews of Windows Mobile Smartphone devices. We're also planning on adding lots of great new features (hmm, see that dead "DeviceDB" link at the top, stay tuned!) in the very near future.

WMExperts.com is sort of a stepchild of TreoCentral, where I also write. But I've converted to Windows Mobile devices and I'm not planning on looking back anytime soon (read: ever?).