Total Commander is a File Manager, FTP, Registry Editor, LAN browser, all-in-one app for your Windows Mobile device. The price is right (free) and it appears to be happy to run off of a expansion card.

As always, use caution when hacking that registry!

Simply place .mp3, .wma (including DRM WMA!), or .midi files in the root folder of your "Storage Card" and they will be available as a ringtone for your phone!

Check all of the "ringtones sites" you want, I think this is the only way to get a Dengue Fever ringtone!

Everyone is on the "bluetooth handsfree wagon", it seems. Motorola, Logitech, Jabra, Fischer Price... But which one to get. So far this looks the best to me, but how can I be certain?

• No additional phone dongle needed to enjoy 10 meters (30 feet) of range. It also works with your Bluetooth-compatible PC. And Bluetooth v1.2 gives you adaptive frequency hopping, quick connect time, and improved audio quality.
• WindStop technology enables clear conversations in adverse conditions by reducing the disruptive effects of wind noise, including automobile air conditioners.
• Rotating clip conveniently fits either ear, and lightweight soft foam ear pad stays comfortable even after long talk sessions.
• Enjoy up to 7 hours of talk time or up to 250 hours of standby time between charges.
• Call/answer button on the headset lets you conduct calls without having to pick up the phone. The Logitech Mobile Freedom Headset also supports several features built into many handsets, such as voice dialing, three-way calling, and m 

[ Amazon.com: Logitech Mobile Freedom Bluetooth Headset: Cell Phones ]

Anyone have any opinions on the subject?

It's no secret that the Windows Mobile today screen is a bit weak. I've tried 1/2 a dozen things before, but never this one. It looks pretty cool:

Your Today screen just became Tomorrow’s screen! You’ve never been able to manage your life from the Today screen before

[ SBSH Mobile Software - Making smaller bigger ]

The better memory/application handling built into this makes it a no-brainer at $9.99:

WisBar Advance 2 expands upon the successful task management features found in the original WisBar Advance. Now more tightly integrated with the PocketPC operating system, WisBar Advance provides greater responsiveness and a richer user experience.

[ Lakeridge Software ]

And it has a light skinning engine to boot! So my Microsoft device can look like an Apple... (or Red Hat if I can find that skin...)

I'm rather certain I've blogged about this gem before:

Athan and recitation before the Athan even when the device is off. Also, This software contains Prayer table, Prayer schedule , Hijri Calendar and Hijri to Georgian conversion, Qibla according to your location and position of the sun. Furthermore, it contains lunar calendar, moon age and Islamic Holidays Added to your calendar. Finally, it support Today Screen plugging display to display the prayer time and date in Hijri and to control the Azan voice.

[ Pocket Islam Smartphone ]

For any gadget geek Muslim with a Windows Mobile device, this one is a must.

It will be interesting to see how much of CRM this client supports.

Microsoft Business Solutions CRM Mobile is a mobile client for Microsoft CRM v1.2. Microsoft CRM Mobile provides salespeople with up-to-date information about their accounts and contacts, and helps them manage sales opportunities and track sales-related activities.

[ Download details: Microsoft CRM Mobile 1.2 ]

I'm most interested in "cases", which I've heard much about, and we may be using to support a trouble ticket like system.

How is this an add on?

With Microsoft Global Contact Access, you can use Pocket Outlook on your Windows Mobile powered Smartphone or Pocket PC Phone Edition to look up contacts in the Global Address List (GAL) on your corporate Exchange server.

[ Microsoft Global Contact Access for Windows Mobile powered Devices ]

Optional I can see, but it's called Pocket Outlook, not Pocket Mail. I guess I should be happy that it exists at all.

Update: This seems to be a big piece of poo. Perhaps I have to punch more holes in the firewall...

Bye bye Sidekick, hello Windows:

The new T-Mobile MDA is a messaging powerhouse, with a full keyboard that slides away plus GSM, GPRS, EDGE, and the extra speed you need to take advantage of the T-Mobile Total Internet network

[ T-Mobile MDA ]

Personalized plates, in seconds, under $10!

www.dmvnow.com

The all-new Official Nintendo Magazine is your one-stop shop for all things Nintendo. As the only magazine team to work directly with Nintendo we'll always be the first on the street with all the latest news, previews and events, as well as insider info and in-depth features that other magazines can only dream of.

[ myfavouritemagazines - Cross Stitcher ]

Not woth the $100 US that it would take for me to get it, but all my peeps in the UK might want to check this out. (It even seems a bit expensive in Ireland at €73 a year). Any-which-way it is good news for Euro-Ninty-Fan-Boys.

I've been loving my PSP browser (included in OS 2.x) but a DS browser? That means a stylus? Hot.

In Opera's agreement with Nintendo, Nintendo DS users will now be able to surf the full Internet from their systems using the Opera browser. The Opera browser for Nintendo DS will be sold as a DS card. Users simply insert the card into the Wi- Fi enabled Nintendo DS, connect to a network, and begin browsing on two screens.

[ Giving gamers two windows to the Web: The Opera Browser for Nintendo DS™ ]

The question is, does Yaty need a 2nd DS to browse websites for Animal Crossing friend codes?

St. Valentine's Day, what to get for "the wife"...

Oh, her own domain!

yatyasir.com

That's not too geeky, is it?

You got to love it when the Straight Dope mocks you:

You know, even in Maine they must have dictionaries.

[ Straight Dope Staff Report: What's the origin of "pumpernickel"? ]

The short answer? German for Goblin Fart or Devil's Fart.

Methylphenidates have the horrible side effect of a roller coaster ride of a day, but apparently that isn't the worst of it.

Concerned about the risk of sudden death or serious injury associated with Ritalin and other stimulants used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, a federal advisory panel says the drugs should carry the most serious type of warning label.

The proposed "black box" warning would inform doctors, patients and parents of the uncertainty regarding the risk the drugs may pose to the cardiovascular system. The warnings could be rescinded if future studies fail to definitely establish any risk, officials said.

[ Feds Recommend Warnings on ADHD Drugs - Yahoo! News ]

Not liking the side effects of Ritalin or Metadate I switched to Strattera a while ago, and except for the fact it hits the stomach hard (bad bad acid), I'm loving it over previous treatments. This article goes on to point out:

The black box warning would not apply to Strattera, manufactured by Eli Lilly and Co. That drug is not a stimulant.

What is your competitive differentiator? This is what the marketing guys are asking all of the time. Sure you provide a users IP address, or even their browser info, but do you provide a chicken?

• www.whatismyip.com doesn't
• www.whatismyipaddress.com doesn't
• www.ipaddressworld.com doesn't
• www.showmyip.com doesn't
• www.whatsmyip.org doesn't
• www.myipaddress.com doesn't

And who is king of the roost? Well I don't know for sure, but my money is on IP Chicken. (Though IPGilaMonster might be catching up fast)

Props to Smitty.

VMware Server is a robust yet easy to use product for users new to server virtualization technology. VMware Server enables companies to partition a physical server into multiple virtual machines, and to start experiencing the benefits of virtualization.

[ VMware Server ]

And it's free! So you install it, you love it, you need it, but the demands on your systems require more stability, better fault tolerance, next thing you know every solution is based on their ESX server and you don't know how you lived without it. Welcome to the future.

Although U.S. copyright law generally makes it illegal to copy a work without permission, the "fair use" doctrine permits some copying. But, what constitutes "fair use" is often misunderstood, and the rules are not always easy to apply. This article explains the fair use doctrine and how it works.

[ GigaLaw.com: What is "Fair Use" in Copyright Law? ]

After reading this, it's clear that no one does, at least no one who doesn't make $400 a hour to tell you how it works, and they may still be wrong.

My short list of places I want to visit has never included Italy, until now:

The Italian passion for espresso could soon be celebrated in the country's first-ever coffee museum, which a die-hard caffeine fan hopes to open here shortly .

[ ANSA.it - News in English - Italy's first coffee museum planned ]

Coverville is a podcast, produced three times a week, that focuses on cover songs - a new rendition of a previously recorded song. The show is produced and hosted by Brian Ibbott, in his home in Arvada, Colorado - about 10 miles West of Denver.

[ Coverville ]

For some reason I wasn't really getting into pod-catching on my Axim, but the shiny new PSP has me checking out a few again. For the most part it still seems like pod casts are just a bunch of lonely people broadcasting to dozens from their basements; Coverville, however, is quite entertaining so far. And who doesn't like a good cover?

Most users just want to quickly put the content of the screen on paper for bookkeeping or use away from the computer. The key here is that all content on the screen is available to the user and that annoying extra white-space is avoided. No one likes to get extra pages with just one or two lines of content on an otherwise completely blank page of paper. IE 7 solves these problems by introducing: Shrink to fit and Orphan Control to minimize white-space.

[ IEBlog : IE7 Printing: An Experience You Won’t Want To Miss ]

Do yourself a favor and check out the whole article. This is seriously well though out, and looks as if printing is no longer just an afterthought. So far with IE7 it's been nice to have better standards compliance, fancier interface, RSS understood, search providers, etc. But this is really an unexpected delight.

Good job IE Team!

Can you google just your initials, in photos, and come up with mostly pictures of yourself?

If you are one of these fine people you can:

• Jennifer Love Hewitt
• Lyndon Baynes Johnson
• George W Bush
• Michael J Fox
• Martin Luther King Jr.
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt
• John F Kennedy
• Robert F Kennedy
• Richard M Stallman

I wonder who else?

Oddly OJ Simpson doesn't make the list. Sure the google for OJ pulls him up, but his initials are OJS, right?

Update: A word of caution, google has indexed many nudie bits, and some of these may (depending on your google settings) involve some. Plus others you may try may involve some too. Apparently sometimes google can't determine if something is of the unclothed variety.

Kangaroo highlights a "Japanese" thing that confuses me, the personification of inanimate objects as young women:

But the accompanying Nihongo doesn't seem to be suggestive in nature, just a discussion of the technical merits of the iPod Shuffle.

Yesterday morning when I finally woke up I had a craving for something out of the ordinary. I dialed up restaurants on the VW GPS Navi computer to look for something new and exciting. I didn't find that, so much as a place I'd been before, but hadn't been to in quite a while: Taqueria Poblano in Del Ray. Yaty and I were both enjoying the Chicken Tacos al Carbon when we spied a shop across the street named Cheesetique.

I have long admired the plethora of cheese shops in Philadelphia's Main Line neighborhoods and West Chester. Why could I never find such lovely shops in DC? Perhaps I just lived in the wrong suburb, or my habits kept me from the good cheese shops. Sure, I could find good cheeses at Whole Foods or Wegmans, but there is something about a shop that is dedicated to cheese , like a bakery is to bread, or a cafe to coffee.

Envious I need no longer be, Cheesetique is simply lovely. Their selection may not be as broad as the super-trendy-super-markets, but they certainly know their cheese well at Cheesetique. They carry some meats too, and I picked up some prosciutto for the first time in forever, duck prosciutto that is. I had heard that some places were trying Italian preservation methods on non-pig critters and now I will get to sample one.

Del Ray has moved upscale, and seems to continue along that trend. Perhaps sad for the residents who can no longer afford to live in a town preserved by a degree of negligence, but it appears that the new inhabitants are quite happy to preserve what makes Del Ray such a lovely place to live or visit.

A number of videogames attempt to converge Hollywood style filmmaking within a videogame framework, Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid series being a prime example of a game successfully applying impressive cinematography techniques within its storyline.

To God of War creator David Jaffe, though, that style of storytelling takes players out of the game too much, and he's approaching plot reveals in a different manner with the PSP game he's working on: there won't be a single cut scene in the entire game.

[ David Jaffe Hates Cut Scenes News Story From 1UP.com ]

I've always disliked the jarring cinematic sequence. From Final Fantasy VII with it's 3 styles that don't look at all alike, to Prince of Persia: Warrior Within and Two Thrones where the game can handle wide-screen but the cinematics are just stretched, to any game that has that awkward pause while loading from disc. I just don't understand. So many Nintendo games (especially ones from Rare) do a great job seamlessly moving in and out of in-engine cut scenes.

I hope more developers take notice and follow in Mr. Jaffe's footsteps.

Internet Explorer 7 contains a number of improvements to cascading style sheet (CSS) parsing and rendering over IE6. These improvements are aimed at improving the consistency of how Internet Explorer interprets cascading style sheets as recommended by the W3C in order that developers have a reliable set of functionality on which to rely.

[ Cascading Style Sheet Compatibility in Internet Explorer 7 (Windows IETechCol) ]

I'm not sure how an attempt to finally support CSS the way it was explained is an "improvement" or building an engine that breaks older sites coded against the previous incorrect model is an "improvement".

That being said, I guess it's good to bite the bullet and do it up right, if in fact that is what IE 7 is doing now. I've already run into some oddities, but at least I have a swell MSDN article to help me pinpoint what they've changed in the engine before it gets popular.

Apparently I didn't fully understand the licensing of MSDE, since Microsoft advises us on how to...

Build dynamic, data-driven Web applications with Microsoft ASP.NET and MSDE 2000 using the Workload Governor to limit the number of concurrent operations that the database engine can perform.

[ Using MSDE 2000 in a Web Application (MSDE 2000 Web Resource Kit) ]

This continues with SQL Server 2005 Express, but the connection pool limit seems to have been increased to 25 simultaneous connections.