Yesterday, I ran into an interesting blog entry from Glen on LifeDev. In it, he described a creator for "an application that will republish your blog’s articles to your readers’ Facebook profile, giving them a way to easily track and share your blog’s articles among their friends..."

What a neat idea, bringing "my blog to my profile" from RSS-to-notes into a new level. I tested it out this morning. The creator worked as advertised, helping me create an application for my blog (or up to 10 blogs) without doing any coding. So, what does this do?

First, it adds your blogs as an application into your profile. This is not a big deal as the notes already do this.

But next, it provides an application on profiles where your friends can share your articles...

..and spread the application, further adding to the viral effect.

Very simple, but very nice for content publishers and all the "pro bloggers" out there.

You can click the link below to add my application and test the idea out. You will likely see this post as the first one inside the application (nice awkward loop).

This reminded me of some efforts Chris Keating was undertaking on our platform, but we have some ways to go on this front.

As a holiday gift for myself, I recently purchased an AT&T Tilt, which is an operator version of HTC TyTN II also known as HTC Kaiser.

I am overall happy with the device, but I had several moments of --as Mike Torres puts it- "how do non techies do any of this?"

The setup for the device took a long time:

First, I had to call AT&T and activate the SIM card. I was renewing my plan with AT&T and keeping my number. After going through a smooth online purchasing and registration process, I was hoping that I would not spend too much time on activating my SIM card. AT&T somehow managed to "lose" the details of my purchase, so when I called to activate, they were not even aware of what plan I had purchased. I had to locate the name of the plans, as well as the amount of any business discounts, in order to go through purchasing all over again. Half an hour lost just to activate the SIM card to get started, and I do not even know if my first bill next month will double charge me. Nice.

Next, I had to go through a few installs of the Windows Mobile Device Center to get the latest 6.1 version on my Windows Vista and to have it recognize the device. After another hour, I finally had a sync setup with my corporate server to get my email, calendar, contacts, and task list. It took a few power cycles to get IRM working. So far so good. A little over an hour into the setup.

Now that I had a working phone, it took me a few minutes to discover all the annoying bugs. Microsoft requires the device to be password protected. Unfortunately, if the device goes into fast sleep during a call while password protected (and it does this by default to preserve battery and prevent accidental button mashing), it freezes its menus. I spent some time online to understand this issue and look into possible solutions. Finally, at Greg's recommendation, I installed Kaiser Tweak in order to hack the registry and modify the phone just the way I wanted it. Almost two hours into the setup.

This was my first Windows Mobile Professional (formerly known as PocketPC) device with a touch screen, as opposed to a SmartPhone. I soon discovered that dialing was much more difficult than it needed to be, especially one-handed. I discovered that, if I could increase the sensitivity of the TouchFlo in the registry, and install a cocktail of CABs, I could do the following TouchCube-like interface:

With some help from XDA-Developers and some from colleagues at Microsoft. I got this to work. This made the phone "usable," but I decided to add some voice dialing on top. The default voice dialing button was very hard to hit one-handed (or bare handed, as I often dial without a stylus). However, I was getting annoying prompts from the PTT button, which was very easy to hit. I had not signed up for PTT service, so it was constantly giving me prompts to sign up when I was accidentally touching it. I decided to remap this to voice dial. Of course, there was no easy way to do this. How do not techies do this again?

I spent some time on AT&T wireless forums and discovered one could hack the registry to take over PTT button from operator settings. This was great news. I used PHM Registry Editor to remap PTT (hold) to voice dial, and PTT to record audio reminders and notes for myself. Now the phone was getting easy to use one-handed. About three hours into the setup.

The default home screen on the phone was sub-optimal. After some research, I opted for HTC Home Customizer to customize it. Some more research led to good dark backgrounds and themes for the device. About four hours into the setup.

Setting up my Hotmail and Messenger accounts were a breeze, thanks to some express tools from AT&T. They were up and running in a few minutes. Since I did not want to pay for AT&T's GPS service, I opted for a great solution from Live Search, which also solved my voice-enabled mapping and yellow pages needs. For added measure, I included TellMe and Google411 into my dialer. About four and a half hours into the setup.

With all this hard work behind me, I then took my time with basic settings. I disabled sounds when dialing (as everyone should), tweaked notification sounds to my liking, customized the order and icons for various launchers, set my top 20 speed dial numbers. Pairing the Tilt to my Jawbone bluetooth was also pretty painless. Over five hours into the setup.

Testing and tweaking everything took me a little more time, so we can safely say that the setup for a clean AT&T Tilt took six hours! And I have not done anything fancy like ROM flashing. How do non techies do any of this?

My first impressions after using the device for a while are positive.

AT&T Tilt is larger and heavier than I would like my phone to be. That said, the keyboard and the nice screen make up for the size for the moment. I used my SmartPhone a lot for email and calendar management, and the Tilt excels at that. It is great to be able to open IRM mail, look at attached PPT, and type detailed comments back. It is great to be able to manage appointments and see conflicting meetings. It is nice to search my mailbox on the go, or to change my out-of-office message during the holidays.

The battery life is decent so far. I have had a few dropped calls over the last week (and even a single one is too many) but I am suspecting that this is an issue with AT&T rather than my phone, as several friends are observing the same. Hey, AT&T, a 3G network is not worth much if you cannot do voice-calls. Take note.

The final verdict is that AT&T Tilt is not a great phone, but it is a good PDA. For my use, which is very email heavy, it is a keeper based on my few days of experience. My biggest gripe was how counter-intuitive the UI is for certain easy items like, um, dialing a phone number. I am disappointed as a MSFT shareholder. Fortunately, like any Windows product (ahem), one can customize to great extent and tweak registry to force the phone to one's liking. But how do we expect non techies to do any of this?

To quote Mike once again, "as an industry, we need to do better than this."