I recently inherited a Pantech Duo from the wife. She got it for the keyboard, and found windows mobile more frustrating than hacking out words on a number pad. I’m still on the fence between the iPhone and my dreams of Google Android, so I thought I’d give windows mobile a whack. Honestly, after two days of messing with this thing, I’d rather have the old Razr back. I hated my Razr with a passion but it was a hell of a lot more usable.

Frankly, I don’t know how Microsoft will be able to compete with the next gen of phones. Sure, bullet point for bullet point windows mobile does a hell of a lot more than iPhone and Android. However all of those bullet points are in the least convenient place possible. I can’t put shortcuts on the home screen. I can’t easily re-map the keys on the phone, more on that in a minute. I can’t even send it a sound file and set as a ring tone without hooking up to the computer. Sure, I can hack it to do all of these things but I shouldn’t have to.

At the very least, I should be able to attach the voice memo app to the voice memo button on the side of the phone. Of course that button was dedicated to the voice commands app with no option except to turn off the voice commands app. It took me nearly FOUR HOURS of google searching and registry searching to figure out a workaround. There is no reason why there is not an option to assign apps to the various buttons around a phone. In the hopes that I might save someone else FOUR HOURS in the future, here’s how I did it.

How To Assign The Voice Note Application To The Record Button On A Pantech Duo

• First, turn off hte voice command app by going to Start->Applications->Voice Command and setting the “Voice Button” option to “None”.
• Connect your Duo to a windows computer using the included USB cable
• Find yourself a windows mobile registry editor. CeRegEditor worked fine for me.
• Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Shell\Rai\:MSVOICE
• Find the Key “1″ that is set to “hotvoice.exe”
• Change “hotvoice.exe” to “poutlook.exe notes”
• Restart your phone by turning it off and back on again.

Now if you hold the record button on the side it will start the voice memo app. Hold record again and it will begin recording. Hold record a third time to stop. Not nearly as simple as the Razr’s - hold to record let go to stop - but it gets the job done. I have a feeling I’m going to be complaining a lot with this phone. It does have a qwerty keyboard though, that’s one good thing.

Ever since I got my Palm Pilot back in 98, I’ve always had delusions of doing digital sketches on the go. Now with an amazing home-brew app for the Nintendo DS I finally have my digital sketch book. I came across Colors! from a Lifehacker article not too long ago. They link to a Wired article on how to get it set up. I’m guessing that Colors works with most DS home-brew cards, it loads on my M3 Lite without any special settings (aside from applying the obligatory DLDI patch).

Colors! has three different brush controls: Size, Transparency and of course Color. It may not seem like a lot, but we’re not retouching photos here and I found myself not needing anything else. The painting is very smooth and accurate. The colors mix well using the transparency feature. You can even use pressure sensitivity (a feature I didn’t know the DS had) to control width and/or transparency. The only thing that might be a nice addition is an undo button.

Painting alone is great, but the way Colors! manages your drawings is essential. All of your artwork is done native in png format. If you save a sketch and load your memory card into a computer you’ll have a png sitting right there. This pakes it perfect as the starting point for a drawing that will be later refined in Photoshop. Also, even though you’re painting on a 320×240 screen, your image is saved at 512×384 resolution. As icing on the cake, Colors has a built in email feature that lets you mail your image to yourself. However, I found this feature to be limiting due to the painfully slow data-rates theDS wifi is capable of.

One thing that really hit home while trying this software was that years of computer design and programming have really killed my freehand skills. Most of my drawings were not even close to some of the example’s I’ve seen out there. I did manage to pull off my trademark Green Zeta shown above. That image came directly from Colors!, click to see the full size version.

I’ve been a big fan of Scott Sigler ever since I heard the podcast of his first book Earthcore. Sigler’s style is simple, pure entertainment through ultra violent sci-fi. That alone is enough to interest me, but what makes Sigler unique is his approach in the industry. Sigler releases each of his books as a free podcast audio book. Earthcore, the worlds first podcast-only novel, quickly gained popularity driving over 10,000 subscriptions by the end. Sigler continued to grow his fan base as he released new novels, Ancestor, Infection, The Rookie, and Nocturnal which is still in progress.

The podcast model of releasing a few chapters a week as episodes, leaving the listener on constant cliffhangers. Sigler’s tag line summed it up best: “You can’t peek at the end”. As the Earthcore podcast was well underway fans, began calling it Earthcrack citing their need for more. Sigler responded by referring to his fans as “Junkies”, a term of endearment he uses to this day.

This hard core fan base has been the driving force of Sigler’s popularity. It’s rare today for people to become infatuated with authors. Many people compare Sigler to Stephen King for that reason. But there’s something different amongst Sigler junkies, there’s a community. That’s something you don’t see out of the mass publishing industry.

The best example of this community at work happened just last year, on April first. Sigler requested that all of his fans buy his new book, Ancestor, from Amazon.com on the same day. The idea was to drive Ancestor to the top of the Amazon charts, if only for that day. Not only did it work amazingly well (he was number 1 in sci-fi and horror for days and number 7 overall), but it lead to his first deal with a major publisher.

The power of instant fan feedback has shaped Siglers style, and is shaping the industry as well. Infection, the podcast, was released in 2006 as a complete story. When Sigler signed with Crown Publishing to print Infection he rewrote large portions of the book, working directly from fan feedback. The final work, now named Infected, is in many ways a different story. This kind of living novel I believe is the future of written storytelling.

So I was a good Junkie and I went to the Borders on April first to buy Infected. I’m looking forward to seeing what changes were made. I might even read this time, even though Sigler is releasing the revised story as a podcast as well. I must warn you, this book is not for the squeamish. I won’t ruin it for you, but let’s just say the phrase “Save Perry’s Balls” will haunt me forever. You’ll have to read/listen to see what I’m talking about.

I’m not a fan of creepy goth music, but I’ve been a big fan of the band Johnny Hollow’s web site for years. Band member Vincent Marcone heads up the production crew for My Pet Skeleton Productions, the label under which they produce their flash content. The original Johnny Hollow site debuted in 2003 and is just as visually stunning today as it was then. Recently they have revamped their new site along with the release of their second album, Dirty Hands.

What’s most interesting about this site is a tightly integrated flash game titled “Scuttle Buggary“. The interface is intuitive, and allows you to discover rather than direct. You easily notice the familiar arrow keys meshed into the design. If you click on them you are told to use your keys to control a beetle on the screen. As you navigate to the game entrance, you receive tips on how to play the game. Game play is simple, use your bug to push globs of goo into a drain. But is enough to keep you from getting bored too quick.

What’s so impressive isn’t so much the game as the game’s commitment to the theme of the site. Most adver-games tend to be a rehash of some existing game, themed with the product, and slapped on to the product site with a link; Scuttle Buggary is part of the whole experience. The game uses tracks from the album both as the soundtrack and the timer for the game. Each level is a new song, and you must complete the level before the song is over. Winning a level unlocks the song on the home page, where you can listen to it in full. Throughout all of this you are never for a moment taken away from that grunge goth mood of the Johnny Hollow music.

I love to use Johnny Hollow as an example of solid web marketing. Their original site was one of the first to offer a complete play list when most offered a 30 second sample. Their new site makes my argument even stronger. Creating a full experience on the web is key to success as radio and television and print become less and less relevant; especially if your target audience is under the age of 20. I suspect that this philosophy of “the complete experience” will become mandatory. Those that are successful will have embraced this philosophy whole hearted.