Santa Nhut left a SlingBox Pro under the tree this year. It lets me watch HD cable or recorded programs from the Cable DVR, DVD player, or regular cable on my laptop wherever I have an internet connection. Which is good, considering all the traveling to places with cable systems in other languages, or that don’t carry certain channels.
WordPress 2.3.2 was released yesterday, so while I was in update mode after fiddling with the BlackBerry, I applied the new version of WordPress to my blog. It was an urgent security release that fixes a bug in handling draft posts and some error messages. If you’re really interested, you can read on.
I disabled the Yahoo Shortcut plugin, because it caused strange formatting behavior in my posts. Maybe an updated version will address the issue, but for now, it’s off.
I found these two updates today, so I figured I’d share. Both GoogleTalk and Yahoo Messenger for Blackberry have updates to version 2.0.38. You can do an OTA (over the air) install by pointing your BlackBerry browser to http://www.blackberry.com/devicesoftware/entry.do?code=gtalk for GoogleTalk and http://www.blackberry.com/devicesoftware/entry.do?code=yahoo for Yahoo Messenger, or you can install while tethered using the same URL with IE.
As described in this forum posting, AT&T does not currently provision the Y!M service book (“BBFS2[YHO]“) when downloading/installing Y!M, so the Yahoo client would not connect on my Pearl.
After I did the install of the updated version of Yahoo, the client complained that it wasn’t authorized to connect on my device, so I applied the patch provided in the BlackBerry forum.
The two clients are remarkably similar, and have a couple of nice new features. I captured some screen shots:
Capture of main BlackBerry screen with Yahoo Messenger highlighted and active, 2 messages pending
Screenshot capture of new contact list in GoogleTalk
Screenshot capture of new smilies in GoogleTalk
Also useful information was this post from Cingular forums:
Re: Browser and MEdia Net deleted???
Log into the Cingular BIS site here:
http://www.mycingular.blackberry.com/
Create a new account if you haven’t done so already. Once you’re logged in, click Service Books in the left column, and then click the Send Service Books button.
This should give you your WAP Browser, but be aware that it may be called something else like WAP Browser or Cingular Browser – they’re the same as the MEdia Net Browser.
Senate to stay in session to thwart Bush
By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 12 minutes ago
WASHINGTON – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday that he would keep Congress in session over the holiday break solely to block President Bush from making recess appointments. It was an apt ending to one of the most bitterly partisan congressional sessions in memory.
“We’re going to go into pro forma session so the president can’t appoint people that we think objectionable,” Reid said on the Senate floor as the chamber prepared to wrap up business for the year.
The Senate must confirm major presidential appointments and judicial nominations, a constant source of confrontation between the White House and Senate Democrats. But when the Senate is off, as it will be for the rest of the month and much of January, the president can make recess appointments that are not subject to confirmation hearings. These appointees can serve until the end of the congressional session, which at this point would be until Bush leaves office.
Yahoo Shortcuts for WordPress is a plugin that allows you to automatically embed relevant links into your WordPress blog with information about terms on your blog posts. Information for the terms such as company names and tickers, locations, news and product names is determined by Yahoo and in some cases, Yahoo search is used to enhance the content. They have also published a tutorial to tweak the generated content. It has the ability to map a location and the ability to link to Flickr photos.
You can check out the full list of features and download it from here.
