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If you own a Treo 700w or wx, you know that when you get a voicemail, you see a little pop-up on the screen with the option to ‘Listen’ to or ‘Dismiss’ the new voicemail. If you choose “Listen,” it should dial the number of your phone and call your voicemail. If you got an unlocked or otherwise used Treo, however, it may dial the number of the previous owner’s voicemail. Here’s how to fix that:

1) Go to the Verizon Wireless website and follow the instructions there to delete and recreate your Voicemail speed dial option.

2) It is SUPER important to note that you cannot enter the Voicemail contact as the 10-digit phone number (the link above gives you that option). You MUST use *86 and name the speed dial “Voicemail.” Otherwise, your speed dial will work properly, but your pop-up will still dial the old number. DO NOT tie it to an existing contact.

This will reset the pop-up menu to dial your voicemail number. Enjoy your terribly designed phone as much as possible!

P.S. While on the phone with Verizon for this problem, I confirmed with them that there is no way to actually turn the Treo OFF. It goes into ‘flight mode,’ but as you know if you’ve ever flown, you can’t use that until 10,000ft. The solution is just what I thought: pull your battery.

If you own a Treo 700w or 700wx, you’ve probably noticed an annoying tendency of the phone to drop calls when either another caller rings in or a voicemail notification arrives. Turns out this is a known issue with those models of Treos, and Palm as a patch for it.

It’s actually very simple to apply the patch, and if you’re a Verizon Wireless customer you can download it OTA directly from your phone. URL for the mobile page is http://www.palm.com/us/support/mobile/downloads/audio_patch_vzn.html, and you can also get to the page by choosing ‘Support’ on the Palm homepage on your Treo (assuming you haven’t set it to your own homepage).

I’ve had my phone patched for about 3 days now, and I haven’t lost a call since. I’ve had multiple people ring in while I’ve been on the phone, and although I haven’t seen a voicemail come in simultaneously with a call, that’s probably because having a second caller ring in no longer drops both calls. I still can’t pretend I like my Treo, or that I think it’s well-designed or reliable, but I have to admit this really makes it about 5 times less annoying to deal with on a daily basis.

Mobishark’s SharkModem for the BlackBerry lets you view detailed connection info in a simple format.

Up until 20 minutes ago, I had no internet access from home. How could this be, you ask? Living as I do, in a rural part of the country, however, high speed access is not ubiquitous by any means. In my case, I could get cable, but until two weeks ago, my service provider was Adelphia (soon to be bought by Time Warner Cable), and now is Time Warner Cable (staffed apparently by new and different, yet equally incompetent, call center gnomes). Neither of these moronic corporate behemoths are able to muster the energy to appear at my domicile, even to extract an exorbitant $24.95 a month for ‘mediocre-speed’ 256kbps access on top of a $49.95 ‘installation fee,’ which is where the company’s tech gets paid training in how to set up a cable modem, and I get to pay him or her for it. Dialup is the same price, and therefore a rip-off in its own right. So what’s left?

The Blackberry, dingus! Pay attention.

Now, the fine folks at Mobishark, errr, Software? have created a truly interesting piece of software, not to mention a good way to stick it to the big wireless companies for their strong-arm tactics. Here’s the breakdown of the scam your service provider’s probably trying to pull: (1) An ‘unlimited’ data plan with a provider such as, say, Verizon Wireless grants you ‘unlimited access’ to use your Blackberry handheld to surf the web, no matter how many of those little bits and bytes you steal through the mysterious magic wires in the sky that let us all be ‘IN.’ (2) Your Blackberry can be a modem. Pure and simple. After all, Verizon’s perfectly willing to sell you their NationalAccess or BroadbandAccess plans for another $30 a month, so it must work, right?

Heh, yup. Download the trial of SharkModem from Mobishark’s website, and you’ll find just how freaking easy it can be. Install it on your computer and use the app loader to put it on the Blackberry, and you’ll be up and running almost right away (albeit with a 5MB throughput limit on the demo). I was sold immediately. After all, it doesn’t make a whole heck of a lot of sense to be paying for unlimited data which is being unfairly limited (SharkModem uses the device itself to make HTTP and socket requests, so it’s exactly like surfing the web on the Blackberry, only with a real screen) solely to make free money for your wireless provider. At $34.97, on ‘sale‘ right now, SharkModem is around what I would’ve paid for a month’s service through my wireless provider, and it’s a one-time fee.

The speed is not bad, although it’s nothing like Verizon’s BroadbandAccess in terms of being able to stream media or live content. Not surprisingly, the big delay is on the initial request, while (I assume) the device has to wait its turn to send the request through the tower to a computer, to the content’s host, back through the computer to the tower and back to the Blackberry. It can take up to 5 seconds before there’s a response (which you can see on SharkModem’s simple yet highly informative Connections tab), but once you’re going, download speeds on Verizon’s network average around 10KBps with 2 bars of service, or approximately 2x modem speed. And the price is right.

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