Kinoma Notes

We’ve got a fresh, ready-for-the-weekend update to Kinoma Play (and FreePlay) for everybody today.

You’ll be notified about the update automatically. Or to update immediately, go to Kinoma Play’s Main screen, show the menu pod and select Player > Check for Updates.

Improvements…

• File associations — Kinoma Play now manages file associations instead of depending on Microsoft’s installer. This improves compatibility with the “Set as Ringtone” feature on Windows Mobile phones, helps ensure that content downloaded with web browsers (MP3 and JPEG files, etc.) goes to the correct folders (My Music, My Pictures, etc), and allows the names of special folders to be properly localized.
• Improved handling of DRM’d content — Kinoma Play now checks for the presence of DRM, and will now automatically pass DRM-encrypted content to its default player.
• Spanish language support — ¡Qué bueno!
• SHOUTcast — Kinoma Play now uses a more reliable SHOUTcast directory server.

…and one fix

• Unicode in MP3s — Some MP3 files with 16-bit Unicode text in their ID3 tags could cause Kinoma Play to hang. If you ever run across one of these, it’ll now work great.

Kinoma Play is designed to work on all Windows Mobile phones. You can always find an up-to-date list of all phones known to be compatible with Kinoma Play at http://kinoma.com/support/devices/play/.

Enjoy!

Earlier this week I described how to add Kinoma Play as a Speed Dial entry on smartphones running Windows Mobile Standard as a super-fast way to launch Kinoma Play.

On Windows Mobile Professional (a.k.a. Windows Mobile for Pocket PC), you can use the Buttons application in Settings to create a similar shortcut. Here’s how:

Go to your phone’s Start menu and select Settings, then choose Buttons.

Now choose the button you want to assign to Kinoma Play. I assigned Kinoma Play to the “Hold Side” button, since I rarely used the app assigned to it by default.

Now you can launch Kinoma Play by pressing the button you picked. In my case, I just press the Side button for a couple seconds and and Kinoma Play leaps to attention. (Sweet!)

On September 8, 1966, a new science fiction television series made its debut on NBC. That series was called “Star Trek”.

Today, with Kinoma Play or Kinoma Player 4 EX, you can now watch full-length episodes of that series on a device smaller than a tricorder.

Set phasers to “awesome”.

You can now see these five classic episodes on-demand:

• Charlie X — A powerful teenage boy wreaks havoc aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise
• The Enemy Within — A transporter malfunction creates an evil Kirk.
• The Naked Time — The Enterprise crew catch a virus that removes their inhibitions.
• Where No Man Has Gone Before — Kirk’s friend is transformed into a god-like entity.
• The City on the Edge of Forever — Kirk and Spock go back in time to restore history.

You can find Star Trek: The Original Series in both Providers > CBS, and Entertainment & Comedy.

Want a super-fast way to launch Kinoma Play? Add it as a Speed Dial entry. Here’s how to do that on Windows Mobile Standard:

Go to your phone’s Start menu, then use your 5-way to select (highlight) Kinoma Play. Select Menu > Add Speed Dial.

Now choose your speed dial key. I chose the “5” key, because on my phone it has a raised dot that helps me find it easily just by feel.

Now you can launch Kinoma Play by pressing Home and then holding your speed dial key until Kinoma Play launches. You’ll find it’s much quicker to do that than it is to futz with the Start menu.

Does your phone use Windows Mobile Professional? Stay tuned! I’ll show you how to do the same thing on WinMo Pro next week…

Giving you another way to stay on top of U.S. election news, we’ve added Fox News’ brand-new America’s Election HQ channel to Kinoma Guide.

The channel exclusively on the last 30 days of the presidential election season, and features the latest breaking political news, candidate interviews, polls and in-depth analysis of campaign issues.

You can find this new channel at Providers > Fox News > America’s Election HQ. Or, just search Kinoma Guide for “Election HQ”.