So, I added auto-submit-star to the markup for it to make the callback, added runat=”server”, and a hidden field with the record id.

<input name="star1" type="radio" class="auto-submit-star" runat="server"/>
<input name="star1" type="radio" class="auto-submit-star" runat="server"/>
<input name="star1" type="radio" class="auto-submit-star" runat="server"/>
<input name="star1" type="radio" class="auto-submit-star" runat="server"/>
<input name="star1" type="radio" class="auto-submit-star" runat="server"/>
<asp:HiddenValue id="hfRatingID" runat="server"> 

After that, added the following script that performs the jQuery Web Method call

$(".auto-submit-star").rating({ callback: function (a, b) {
PageMethods.RateIt( $(this).siblings('input[id*="hfRatingID"]').val(), a)
}})

Then makes web method call to a static class in code behind

[System.Web.Services.WebMethod()]
[System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptMethod()]
public static void RateIt(int id, string value) // Method have to be static {
// Make call to update DB rating value
}

Now you should be able to make an asynchronous call for users to rate an item. Hope this helps.

Windows Phone 7 has been in the market more than a year and has failed to steal the spotlight from Android and iPhone. To most power users, it still does not feel like a smart phone but more like an improvement from a feature phone. I am going to list several things I wish WP7 had but will probably not materialize until WP8 during the 2012 holiday season and very likely will never be on a Lumia 900.

1. Microsoft is pushing the cloud everywhere and WP7 is not the exception. You got 20GB available in your SkyDrive. Therefore, they decided to drop support for memory card slots. If it is up to Microsoft you are pretty much stuck with whatever memory came with your phone. The Samsung Focus came with an option to install one but it required formatting the phone and you would never be able to take it out without having to reformat.  With Micro SD card prices constantly going down and increasing in size, it makes me sad that WP7 does not have this option.
2. This one is probably more for Audiophiles but it is not possible to store music in Lossless formats on a WP7 phone. On my Zune HD, I was able to store WMA Lossless songs. However, WP7 devices will downconvert your music files to a WMA Lossy codec when trying to copy Lossless files to it. Again, this is probably a space concern. Maybe they don’t want you downloading big files from the cloud. iPhones let you use ALAC and Androids and Blackberries will even let you play FLAC files.
3. I have several work and personal email accounts. WP7 does a great job of integrating your social accounts in one place (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter). However, you cannot read all your email accounts in one place. You have to navigate away from an email account to another one and so on. So you end up putting them all nearby in your live tiles and reading separate notifications for how many emails have not been read in each tile. You can only have 8 tiles at a time on the screen so it fills up quickly and there is a lot of scrolling up and down.
4. No Bluetooth API available for developers. There are several features your developers can implement when they have access to Bluetooth on your device. It particularly annoys me that Endomondo is not able to pair my Bluetooth heart rate monitor to a WP7 device for this reason.
5. It would be very nice to have a physical keyboard option. Even though iPhones have not had any issues with their phone taking a big chunk of the marketplace in the US, it would be nice to have another option  with physical keyboards other than Motorola Droids and Blackberries.
6. Not having real multitasking gets annoying very quickly. I used to accidentally hit the back key while playing Angry Birds on my Samsung Focus which meant the app had to start over. You can play your MP3s in the background while doing other things but that’s about it. Messaging apps such as Kik, GroupMe, and WhatsApp suffer a lot from this. They feel buggy due to the lack of having a real process running the background pushing notification messages to the user. You cannot listen to Pandora while checking how far you are into your workout target and tweeting about it. Not only because there is no real multitasking but there is no Pandora for WP7.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Windows Phone 7 has great potential and it is easy to write apps for. But, it is time for that potential to show and move up to the big leagues. They need to bring their A-game to compete in this tough market. Windows Phone 8 needs to add features available in other platforms and more. In this day and age, they cannot release another OS without copy and past like they did with WP7.

Gone are the days when you could go into a store and get an unlimited data plan. Even though it is advertised as unlimited, that is seldom the case anymore. You got cable companies such as AT&T and Comcast that have caps of 150GB and 250GB a month respectively among others. Some companies will charge you a fee but others will deny service after a repeat offense. These caps are probably in place to prevent streaming subscribers to services such as Netflix, Hulu Plus, or Amazon Prime to hog all the bandwidth.
A few years ago it was mostly believed that if a consumer used a lot of bandwidth, he or she was using bittorrent and downloading illegal music and movies. This is not the case anymore, Netflix alone accounts for more traffic than bittorrent. Even Comcast was caught sniffing your data to find out if you were using bittorrent to then throttle and slow down you data.
Some years have passed, and now with smart phones being nearly ubiquitous users hogging the data is still a problem. Verizon will offer you 4GB of unlimited data, AT&T has similar caps and they will charge you extra if you go over. T-Mobile will not charge you extra but they will slow down your data after your allowance. Hours of using Music and Movie apps such as Pandora and YouTube will quickly deplete your data allowances. C-Spire, previously known as Cellular South, will even bill you separately for streaming data. Many of these companies will also charge you extra fees for tethering which is the process of connecting you phone to a computer and use the data you already paid for.
Now, can you imagine if the people in charge of these companies were in charge of the utilities companies? The electric company would charge you a fee for every major appliance in the house. They will maybe bundle your fridge, washer, and drier but you will have to pay extra for the dishwasher and A/C units. Something like three appliances included on your plan. Showering and bathing take too much water, your plan would only include 30 showers a month, and you could have family plan for your family to shower. It will probably become illegal to take showers together then. If you used up your water allowance, you might get no water and have to go to work smelly which might get you fired! You will also need to get unlimited A/C plan and if you go over, your A/C will be 5 degrees cooler or hotter depending on the season. You would have to pay for the amount of electric outlets and water outlets. Hot water showering package will be needed to have a warm shower.

If most of these things sound ridiculous it is because they are. These ISP and cell phone companies have insulted our intelligence long enough. For the country of the free and the land of the brave we sure have no option to pick our utilities or internet providers all the same. Only option is to move to another place and settle for some other monopoly in the area. So much for free market. We do have some options when picking cell phones providers but if you have been paying attention it’s probably not for long.

“Bring this letter with you during the week of 4/16/12 and take 50% off of 50% of your full purchase. That’s half off regular price of half of your purchase. Buy one piece, a room full or a house full and take 50% off of 50% of your total purchase.”

I didn’t make this up, you can click on the image to maximize it. I think this is a coupon for 25% off but they said 50% so many times and half that I am not sure if it is a coupon for 12.5% or 6.25%. I have a feeling that if I go there they will ask me to pay double for the first half and twice the second half. I also find it funny how they start the letter with “Dear Valued Customer”. Not only they think their customers are so valuable they won’t even address the letter to their names, they also insult the poor senior citizens walking in with what they think is a 50% off coupon. Letter attached after the break. Feel free to print it if you want to get this deal, LOL…

The one on the left is correct but the one on the right has the North Pacific Ocean north of Panama and the Caribbean Sea in the middle of the Atlantic. I wrote a letter to point this out to ALTERRAcoffee.com and to tell them to put the Caribbean Sea where they had the North Pacific Ocean. I never heard back from them, but to my surprise a couple of months after my letter they actually fixed their packaging. I thought it was hilarious that they actually corrected it and I was kinda disappointed that they did not even sent me a thank you note or you know… a cup of coffee? :p

Zooming In

             

Nowadays, this is completely irrelevant as most smartphones typically use standard mail protocols such as SMTP over TCP/IP. Meaning, if you have a smartphone, it is very likely you are being charged for something that should be covered by your data plan alone. Of course, I am not familiar with pricing from all cell phone companies; however, if you are on a “bundle” plan and texting is part of it, most likely they are just getting a bundle of money from you. Otherwise, if it is clearly spelled out as a separate fee, you might want to consider just not paying for it and using alternatives that require your data plan alone.

There are several apps out there, each one with its limitations, but with more features than SMS.  So far, Kik is my favorite cross platform messaging app as it is free and it is available for iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and WP7. The makers of Kik are currently being sued by RIM, the maker of BlackBerry Messenger, alleging Kik uses their notifications system for Delivered and Read messages. This feature is not available on SMS. BBM is a superior app as it provides several other features but it is only available for BlackBerries. GroupMe and Whatsapp are good ones too but they use your phone number as your ID and that might be inconvenient if you switch SIM Cards when traveling abroad or for other purposes. GroupMe also requires you to have SMS for activation so make sure you have not canceled SMS before setting it up.

Most platforms have apps for all popular IM clients such as AIM, Facebook Chat, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, Gtalk, etc. However, the obvious disadvantage is that they require you to be logged in to be able to receive messages. But, you will be able to text with people running it on their smartphones or computers. Of course, all of these apps have a couple of issues to overcome even though they provide more features than SMS will ever do. SMS is already installed on your phone and it is the only way to text people with Jitterbugs. So, tell your friends, tell your wife, that they all need to upgrade!

© 2011 Christian Rios

All trademarks and copyrights contained in this document are owned by their
respective trademark and copyright holders.

As you may know if you actually used one, Blackberries are way behind in the App department with their “developer unfriendly” OS, which is the root cause for the lack of Apps, plus their hardware and screen sizes don’t match up to the current Androids, iPhones, or WP7s, but they make up for it with their excellent messaging capabilities. Even then, you still have a great assortment of quality Apps such as KiK, Whatsapp, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Foursquare, Gwabbit, Poynt, Flixster, Google Apps, etc. I still would like a great Blackberry app for WeightWatchers though.

It seems like all the tech sites, from Engadget to CNet and everywhere between, are plastered with iPhone “news” each day and folks have to be jerks and crap on other peoples phones, that’s just the way it is. People calling carnage to RIM CEOs and their unconventional two CEO approach. Fact of the matter is that even basic Blackberries are very good communication devices for most people and let’s face it, unless you are a geek the vast majority of your time with your phone is e-mail/text and calling. They still have a big market share overseas, are making money, and have good chance at coming back with BBX and being able to run Android Apps.

The reason I bring this up is because it has become standard to just bad-mouth BlackBerries, and they’re somewhat shunned, which led to me trying out the “trendy” touch screen phones due to all the online reviews and talk, but in hindsight I would rather have a Bold 9900 because that better suits my needs.

      $(document).ready(function() {
          $("select").change(function() {
             if ($(this).find('option:selected').length > 5) {
               this.options[this.selectedIndex].selected = false;
             }; }); });

pretty sleek huh?