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Frequently Asked Questions

Subjects

Gemini4Smartphone

     
  • Explain to me in simple words, what does it do?
  • OK, its simple really. Lots of websites give away free textual, audio and video content which you can view or play on your computer or Smartphone. Some of them (quite a lot actually) provide a way of letting a computer find out easily when new content has been added to the website. This mechanism is called a "feed". Gemini4Smartphone allows you to "subscribe" to feeds so that the content is automatically downloaded to your Smartphone and you can listen to it, read it or watch it.    

  • Why would I use my phone to listen to stuff?
  • Windows Mobile Smartphones are great for listening to music on the move. For a start you almost always have it with you, so wherever you are you can listen to your latest programmes or music. Secondly, by listening on your phone, you don't have to turn off your MP3 player when you get a call. The phone will do it automatically. Thirdly, because Gemini4Smartphone will download automatically over a Wireless connection, or when your smartphone is being synchronised to a desktop (To get your email and appointments etc...) you will always have the latest available content that you are interested in. No need to manually download to your computer and then copy it over to your MP3 player.    

  • What sort of stuff is available on these "feed" things?
  • The basic answer is, almost any sort of media information. Feeds can contain text, audio programs or video. The information might be News, music, personal stuff from peoples blogs, scientific news, business, product reviews, personal improvement, health or almost any other subject you can think of.

    Personally my favorite content is mostly spoken word audio stuff. I don't get to read very much so I like to listen to news and keep up with the latest scientific advances, as well as the latest software development research and techniques while I'm driving, walking or sitting on the train.

    To help get you started, Gemini4Smartphone comes pre-subscribed to a whole load of feeds of lots of different types, including text feeds (Including BBC News feeds), radio programs (BBC Radio 1 and 4 amongst others) and video feeds.  

News, Blogs & RSS Feeds

     
  • What is RSS?
  • RSS is an abbreviation for "Really Simple Syndication". RSS is a file format (Way of arranging data in a file) which allows websites and other information providers to publish information in a way which makes it easy for other applications to read it and identify new content. Programs known as RSS readers or aggregators can be used to read RSS files and display the contents in a format that looks quite like your e-mail inbox. Gemini4Smartphone is an RSS aggregator.

    RSS is useful because websites which are updated regularly can publish RSS "feeds" which point to their latest articles and other content. By "subscribing" (See below) to the feed, you no longer have to check back to the website on a regular basis, instead the RSS aggregator does the checking for you automatically and tells you when there is new content available.

    For example the BBC News website has large number of feeds on its website. If you are interested in Motorsport, simply subscribe to the Motorsport feed and each time a new article is published about Formula 1 or Moto GP or whatever, you will be notified automatically.

    For a more detail and technical answer look here    

  • What about Atom and RDF?
  • When talking about "RSS" people are often actually referring to a number of different but similar feed formats. These include:

    • RSS 2.0 (Really Simple Syndication)
    • RSS 0.91 and 1.0 (Rich Site Summary)
    • RSS 0.9 (RDF Site Summary)
    • Atom 1.0 (Atom)
    Gemini4Smartphone supports all of these formats and should work equally well with all of them. When you are using Gemini4Smartphone you shouldn't be able to tell the difference.  
     
  • What's a blog?
  • Wikipedia can tell you.  

Podcasting & Podcatching

     
  • What is Podcasting?
  • There is a pretty good description here    

  • Where can I find Podcasts?
  • To get up and running with Gemini4Smartphone, we've put a load of interesting (To us :-) ) podcasts subscriptions in the installed program. You can keep these or delete them.

    Once you want to start looking for your own, you can simply start at Google, with the search term "find podcast" to get a whole load of web pages to help you locate podcasts.  

Downloading,Installation & Registration

     
  • How do I install the software?
  • Assuming that you have already setup your Smartphone to ActiveSync to your PC (See below), its as simple as running a single installer. Just go to our download page and get the installer, then run it on your PC while the phone is connected. Then follow the instructions on the screen. The installer will probably have to "reboot" your telephone when its finished. Once your phone has restarted, you can run the Gemini4Smartphone application from the "Programs" menu.    

  • Its installed. What should I do first?
  • The first thing you should probably do, is have a look through the feeds that are automatically subscribed on the phone. There are quite a lot of them, on very varied subjects. Most people will probably want to delete quite a few of them. If you leave all of the subscriptions, the program will still work, but the sychronisation process will be quite slow and there will be several hundred programs to download (LOTS of megabytes). Probably too many to fit on a single storage card. Gemini4Smartphone will simply download as much as it can, and then wait (as long as necessary) until some stuff gets deleted before it tries to download any more.

    After you run the application for the first time, the phone will be automatically set up so that whenever you have a WiFi connection (If your phone supports it) or an ActiveSync connection, it will automatically run the loader program to update your feeds. To get started now, just disconnect (If connected) and reconnect the device and the update will start automatically. Because there is no data at all on the device, the first one will take quite a while (Several hours usually). Don't worry if you have to interrupt it, it will pickup where it left off the next time you connect. Anything that is already downloaded will be available to you.    

  • Is there anything else I'm going to need apart from my phone?
  • Yes. You will need a storage card of some sort. Any storage card that works with your phone, but the bigger the better really.

    Why is this needed? At the moment there isn't a Windows Smartphone which we think has enough memory to make it sensible to try storing audio and video content directly on the phone. In the future this will change and we will add the ability to support them into a future version of Gemini4Smartphone.    

  • What if I lose my registration code?
  • It depends !

    • If you haven't yet entered your registration key into the phone and registered it, just e-mail us from the e-mail address that you used to buy the product and we will send you a new registration key.
    • If the code has been entered into a Smartphone and registered. No worries. Our license server stores a non-reversable* key to your Smartphone. You should never need the code again, even if you have to reset your phone or reinstall your copy of Gemini4Smartphone.

      * "Non-reversable" means that we store something so that we can work out whether you are sending from a device we already know about and we can tie the device to the person, but there is no way for us to work out what your Smartphone's unique device id is.

     
     
  • What if I lose or change my phone? Can I get another registration code?
  • Yes, if you e-mail us to let us know about the loss of your phone, we will send you a new code which can be used on another phone. The old installation will stop working.    

  • What about videos and audio programs?
  • $$A$$    

  • I used the trial version of an older version of Gemini4Smartphone, can I use the current trial?
  • Not usually. It will look to us as though you are trying to use a trial version for longer than 30 days. Send us an e-mail though, and there's a good chance we will let you try if for another 30 days :-)    

  • What is ActiveSync?
  • ActiveSync is a program from Microsoft which allows your Windows Mobile Smartphone to communicate with a desktop or laptop PC. Using ActiveSync you can synchronise e-mail, contacts files etc between the PC and Smartphone. ActiveSync is also a conduit which can be used by Gemini4Smartphone to get updates of podcasts and RSS feeds from the internet.

    Most Smartphones come with ActiveSync on a CD, to be installed on your PC and instructions on how to use it. If you don't have the CD, you can download ActiveSync from Microsoft at this address. We recommend you use version 4.0 or higher to work with your Windows Smartphone.

    Windows Vista

    Please note that Windows Vista comes with a built-in "Windows Mobile Device Center" which replaces the functionality of ActiveSync.  
     
  • How can I setup my telephone to talk to my computer?
  • The short answer is that you need ActiveSync (See above) and a USB connector designed for your Smartphone. As far as we know, all Smartphones come with a USB cable in the package. The Microsoft page at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/downloads/activesync42.mspx has up to date instructions.  

Privacy Policy

     
  • What do you do with my e-mail address and personal data?
  • We WILL NOT give it to anybody unless the law requires us to do so. We WILL NEVER give it or sell it to any third party organisation to send you spam. If the company ever changes hands, we will ensure that the new company does not sell your e-mail address.

    Unless you ask us not to, we will keep you up to date with news from Intraweb Software and about Gemini4Smartphone using our e-mail newsletter. This will include new version information, product launches and other news that we think might be interesting to you we may also include little hints about getting the most out of your Smartphone. Generally there will be fewer than one of these e-mails per-fortnight. We will also remind you when your support contract is coming to an end.

    If you want us to stop sending you this information, you can simply e-mail us (The address is on every e-mail we send out) and we will remove you from our mailing list.

     
     
  • How safe is my credit card information with Intraweb Software?
  • We don't receive your credit card information. All of those details remain with PayPal and are not sent to us.    

  • Does Gemini4Smartphone "Phone Home" with data?
  • Yes, for two reaons:

    1. it uses a unique but not personally identifiable key based on the unique identifier of your telephone, to check whether the software is registered on the telephone. This has the advantage that once the registration key has been input once, you should not have to worry about it again. Even if your telephone is reset or you re-install the software, when it connects to the internet it will automatically re-register so that you don't have to re-enter the key.
    2. In the event of a serious software failure, the program will generate a "DUMP" of the logs which the application creates while it is running. This will be attached to an e-mail for sending to Intraweb the next time you active sync with your computer. You can remove the e-mail from your Telephone Outbox if you like, and it will not be sent to us. We would rather you did not do this, because the log file will help us to know if something is wrong, and what we can do to fix it.
     

Before You Download

     
  • What sort of telephone do I need to run Gemini4Smarphone?
  • You need a Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone. There are lots of them about. Please note that this is specifically a Smartphone and NOT a Pocket PC Phone edition, which is slightly different. We may support PPC Phone Edition in the future.    

  • Is there anything else I'm going to need apart from my phone?
  • Yes. You will needs a storage card of some sort. Any storage card that works with your phone, but the bigger the better really.

    Why is this needed? At the moment there isn't a Windows Smartphone which we think has enough memory to make it sensible to try storing audio and video content directly on the phone. In the future this will change and we will add the ability to support them into a future version of Gemini4Smartphone.