Thursday, December 30, 2010

Games For Windows Live Options Grayed Out

If All of a sudden the following options on Games For Windows Live are Greyed out:

Invite to Private Chat
Invite to Game
Send Message

This means that your settings were probably changed. My LG Quantum Did this to me....

to fix it:

Sign on to Xbox.com
Click on Online Safety Settings
Change "Voice and Text" To Friends only

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Handy Things To Know on the LG Quantum

Quick List of things I wish had been in the manual

Quickly Find A Contact - In the People "Tile" Just tap any of the letters (headings) it will bring up a complete list off all the letters
Anything can be pinned to the Homepage - For most apps you can just click and hold the icon and there will be a pin option, for pictures and internet pages it is under the settings
Shuffling a Song and Repeating in Zune - Start Playing any song, now just tap the album art, don't hold it down, tap it and you can click, favorite, repeat or shuffle.
Accessing the zune while not in the zune - Click the volume controls at any time and It appears at the top
Moving Tiles on homepage- Just press and hold down on a tile and you will be able to move it
Hold down the Windows Key to access the Voice Command Stuff!!!

I Would Highly Recomend visiting:

http://www.wp7forum.com/windows-mobile-store/60-72-tricks-for-windows-phone-7/

Pros and Cons for the LG Quantum

Quick list of things I like and don't Like about the new LG Quantum

Pros:

Zune integrations makes syncing music / pictures a whole lot Easier
Slick Design
3.5 mm Jack for headphones (I Had a Blackjack 2 before this and had to use an adaptor)
X box live / Facebook if you are into that
Easy linking of contacts from multiple sources, I.e. your hotmail and gmail
Nice Camera

Cons:

CANNOT Sync with my Local outlook on my computer....wtf. See my previous post on this.
Cannot Change Picture for the "Tiles"
Cannot Have custom Ringtones
Lots of Cool Features, but they are hidden and it is really a pain to try to find stuff out.
Honestly, it looks cool but kindof slippery when trying to take out the keypad
Horizontal View is not available for all screens
Sometimes unresponsive to orientation, when I hold it vertically it may not immediately recognize this and switch the screen appropriately.
Cannot Sync Birthday Calendar from Hotmail with the phone: http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsphone7/thread/8894aaca-80ed-4dc6-bc30-7ab1f934dfdb
SkyDrive only works with pictures and OneNote Files

Bottom line... honestly, its a cool phone, and if you didn't use outlook before and you have an xbox / facebook you will probably enjoy this.

I, however, am finding many features that are missing and it is really irking me.

LG Quantum Outlook Sync

I just got the new LG Quantum Phone with Windows Mobile 7.

To my up most disappointed there is no option to directly sync your normal Outlook with the phone. For all those interested here is a walk through I found:

And it was waaaaaaaaaaay more complicated than I had hoped to find a solution on google, thats why I have written this post.

I think the confusion comes from both yes and no being an insufficient answer for the question overall. It has to be broken down into parts.

The Short Answer

You don't need to change your e-mail account. You would just have another account used for syncing information. Windows Phone 7 let's you have multiple accounts on the phone
The phone downloads your mail directly. You don't need outlook for this
Your Calendar information can sync from Outlook to the phone via Outlook connector
Your contact information can sync from Outlook to your phone via Outlook connector
There's not a Tasks equivalent on Windows Phone 7
Notes from outlook won't sync, but OneNote documents do

Detailed Answer

Windows Phone 7 is cloud (Internet) oriented. Most of the data transfers you do on it will involve an internet connection. It does not sync to outlook directly. Instead it syncs to an online account. You'll primarily sync media via a tethered connection to the computer. Everything else is over the cloud.

If you put your account settings for your mail account on your phone it will download the e-mail directly. No syncing with the desktop is involved there.

Contact and calendar information can sync from outlook to a live account. You would then use this live account to sync that same information on your phone. Note this doesn't mean that you would need toCHANGE your e-mail account. You could use what ever e-mail account you like for sending mail from the phone.

Notes from outlook won't sync to the phone. Instead you'll want to use Office Live. With Office Live your Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and OneNote documents sync to your phone over the internet. So you could go from editing a document on your desktop to editing it on your phone without the need to manually move files around. OneNote would be the best fit for replacing notes. You can place text, audio clips, and pictures in your notes using OneNote.

There's no direct equivalent for Tasks on the phone. But setting up reminders on the Calendar can take that functionality.

Joel Ivory Johnson | http://www.j2i.net | Device Application Development MVP | Software Engineer