Voice Navigation with Bing Maps

Microsoft has recently announced that they have just added voice navigation to their Bing maps for Windows Mobile 6.x phones. This feature allows for turn-by-turn, voice-enables directions.

The company stated that Bing directions will have a new Navigate button that will calculate routes for users and guide the user through the entirety of the drive. It will also offer users the option of picking the fastest or shortest route, while still taking into consideration traffic issues and toll roads. It will also allow users to see arrows on their phone while also being verbally alerted when an turn is coming up.

There are a whole range of devices that the new voice navigated Bing maps will work on. Some of these include the HTC HD2 and the Motorola Q9c. Any Windows phone on Sprint, T-Mobile, or AT&T can utilize the navigation.

They have also redesigned the home page to give people easier, quicker access to searches like traffic and movies.

These updates for Windows phones are a welcome change and boost these phones closer to the more feature-filled cell phones. I think it’s a great improvement from Microsoft.

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The HTC Snap

The HTC Snap is one of the new phones in Microsoft’s line of business-oriented, low-cost, Windows Mobile smartphones, and although it has a quick and easy performance, it doesn’t really do much to stand out among the multitudes of new smartphones that have been released this year.

For starters, the Snap’s design is not too much to talk about. It’s made out a slab of black plastic that has a somewhat cheap feel, and measures 4.5 x 2.5 x 0.5 inches (HWD). It features a 2.4-inch LCD screen with the usual 320 x 240 resolution and an LED backlight. The QWERTY keyboard isn’t too bad with its curved four rows of raised keys, although they do make a very distinct click when pressed.

Concerning calls and reception, the Snap does pretty well. The quality of calls is good with the well-balanced pitch in the earpiece and wind rejection for the mic. The Snap has great reception with an EV-DO signal, and the speakerphone also does great and has plenty of volume.

When it comes to e-mail on the Snap, the phone can utilize Microsoft’s Direct Push E-mail and syncs with Microsoft Outlook and Exchange Server. A cool feature that can be considered very helpful with searching through e-mails would be HTC’s Inner Circle feature. This allows the user to select a contact from their address book and consolidate all the e-mails from that contact all into one spot. The Snap cannot create Microsoft Word and Excel documents but it can view and edit them, and it cannot edit Powerpoint presentations but can display them.

Internet Explorer Mobile 6 is what the Snap uses for its web browsing. It includes zoom support and a mouse cursors. If users of the Snap purchase Sprint’s Simply Everything plan they are able to access TeleNav-powered Sprint Navigation, live Sprint TV, and Sprint’s NASCAR and NFL Mobile Live portal.

The camera on the Snap is certainly not anything to really talk about. It’s not awful, but it’s definitely not special. It features a common 2-megapixel sensor, which means that most of the pictures you take will be too soft and not have enough contrast. The smartphone has no flash and no autofocus to assist with the blurriness or contrast, so pictures are really just about average.

Sprint is offering the HTC Snap for $149.99 (with a two-year service contract and mail-in rebates.) This phone isn’t bad, but it’s most certainly not a fantastic option when you consider all the other smartphones available for about the same price. If your looking for a great, reliable smartphone that caters to all your business needs, I personally would say that you should look in a different direction.

Spb Pocket Plus 4.0.2

Everybody has a pc these days and one of the most usefull features we have on our pc is the ability to put a shortcut to something on your desktop.Shortcuts make it easy to get to most of the programs we use with one easy click of the mouse. If you have a Windows smartphone and you've always wanted these same features than look no further because the Spb Pocket Plus is here.

You get a Today screen plug-in with the Spb Pocket Plus that displays shortcuts to programs in different tabbed categories like a Connect tab. The Connect tab has shortcuts to the Connection Manager, Internet Explorer, Messaging, and tons of others. An added bonus is the ability to customize your tabs just the way you like them like the location of an icon in the tab or the size of the tab.

What else comes with the Spb Pocket Plus you say? Well how about a battery monitor? With the Spb Pocket Plus you get a small battery monitor that rests at the top of the screen which provides you with a visual guide to the life of your battery. The best part is that the battery monitor does not interfere with your other applications meaning you will always have the information without having to give up priceless screen space. The Pocket Plus also gives you unlimited customization options that gives you the ability to turn features on and off or change your program's appearence to make it just the way you want it.

Probably the feature that users will appreciate the most is a close button that, believe it or not, does exactly what it is supposed to do, close things. If you have an older version of Windows Mobile then you know that when you hit the "x" button your app doesn't close it just minimizes causing you to minimize and back up multiple applications making your smartphone lag and work very slow. But with the Spb Pocket Plus your "x" button actually closes an application. and if you want to see a task manager with a list of running programs and a shortcut to close them then you simply need to tap and hold the close button.

You can get added ZIP support to your Windows Mobile Phone Explorer with the Pocket Plus which lets you view and edit file extensions and attributes and also allows you to check the size of the folder. One more niffty feature is an on-screen navigation button that assists you in navigating one folder up inthe File Explorer.

With the Spb Pocket Plus, Internet Explorer becomes a full-featured browser. Internet Explorer gets support for tabs similar to Internet Explorer 7 on your desktop. With the Pocket Plus you can also easily save web features and quickly view page source information and access the search feature.

And just when you thought I was done I got to tell you that the Pocket Plus comes with over 30 skins for a truley unique look and the newest version comes with quick scrolling for documents and lists. Overall this app looks pretty sweet and If you want take the Spb pocket out for a test drive then go to the Spb website for a free trial download.