MobileViews Blog

The USA Today article Bluetooth watches to show who’s calling reports that Fossil and Sony-Ericsson teamed up to create a Bluetooth watch that displays Caller-ID information on the watch and lets you send the call to voice mail if you don’t want to pick up the phone to answer it. It looks like the watch only works with Sony-Ericsson phones that it says that support for other Symbian based phones is planned. The watches will be available by the end of October under Fossil’s “Mobile Wear by Abacus” brand, the regular Fossil brand, and a Sony Ericsson-branded version. Prices will range from $200 to $250.

Mel Sampat, a Program Manager in the Microsoft Windows Mobile product group tells us there is nothing to worry about if you plan to use Visual Studio 2005 SP1 and Windows Vista to develop software for Windows Mobile devices. A link to an 8 minute video demonstrating using Visual Studio with Windows can be found at the end of the blog entry…

Developing Windows Mobile apps on Vista

Got a note from Shawn McCollum letting me know about his mobile portal site tuned for web-enabled phones (work on PDA format screens too). Its set up to help you find information and display in a mobile friendly format using the Google mobile transformation service. You can search for specific web formats/services such as websites, news, and flickr. You can find it:

http://wampad.com/

NPR has two overlapping (shares content) streaming audio reports about GPS for Cell Phones…

GPS Is Smartening Up Your Cell Phone

…about GPS being an open resource on Nextel phones but not phones from other US mobile phone companies.

Power of GPS Phones Locked Away from Most Users

…adds a bit more focus about why the phone companies have not opened up the ability to develop services for the GPS in many cell phones.

SoftMaker has a public beta of its PlanMaker spreadsheet for Windows Mobile based Pocket PCs available at its website.SoftMaker PlanMaker 2006 for Pocket PC Beta

The updated Excel Mobile in Windows Mobile 5 has a number of enhancements over previous versions including simple graphs. However, if you need even more functions and feature than Excel Mobile provides, you might want to take a look at PlanMaker 2006 in its Beta release form.

Microsoft made its…

ActiveSync 4.5 Beta 2

…for Windows Mobiled devices available as a public download. However, you may want to think twice about installing it if you are using an older Windows Mobile device (pre-Windows Mobile 5). Some features are lost if you upgrade from ActiveSync 3.8.

• LAN/WiFi synchronization is disabled
• Access database conversion is lost
• Support for Microsoft Outlook 2000 is lost
• Support for devices prior to Pocket PC/Smartphone 2002 is gone

An anonymous blogger posted his/her(?) solution to sync a multitude of software, services, and devices that don’t normally speak to each other (e.g., Outlook and iPod) in a post titled:

The Holy Grail of Synchronization: How to synchronize Microsoft Outlook (multiple locations), Google Calendar, Gmail, iPod, and mobile phone with Funambol / ScheduleWorld

Ilium Software released a free application for Microsoft UMPC (Ultra Mobile Personal Computers) devices. Ilium Software InScribe is a text entry utility that works with the UMPC’s virtual on-screen keyboard to quickly enter text. I don’t know anyone who owns a UMPC. But, if you do, head to Ilium’s website to download their free offering.

You can learn more about the UMPC at Intel and Microsoft’s sites for it found at:

Intel: UMPC.com

Microsoft Ultra Mobile PC

Avocent, probably best known for their KVMs announced two products that allows managing a Windows Server remotely from a Blackberry or Windows Mobile based device.
Avocent Corporation Unveils New Products to Enable Management of Servers from Smartphones

Using SonicAdmin QR software, system administrators can access any server allowed by their Active Directory profile to view server statistics, shutdown and reboot servers, view event logs, view and manage processes, manage Active Directory user accounts, and run Quick Commands such as ping, ipconfig and traceroute.

SonicAdmin Pro software offers additional functionality, adding Windows services management, file explorer, file search, file and folder properties, file editor and a Command line interface. The Exchange Server management extensions include viewing queue properties as well as freeze and unfreeze queues and force connection commands. Active Directory management adds user group management and mailbox properties

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Microsoft announced (but did not release) their Zune audio/video device that will compete with the Apple iPod in the portable multimedia space. I had written it off as an also-ran prior to seeing Apple’s lackluster iPod refresh announcements on Sept. 12. Now, I’m wondering if Zune might have a chance a device generation or two from now. Zune’s larger screen (3 inches) and WiFi sharing feature certainly makes it interesting to me. On the other hand, why is one of the three colors brown? Brown? And, doesn’t it really look like a 1950s speaker with the grill removed? Very retro.

You can find more information at Microsoft’s Zune Virtual Pressroom. And Zune Thoughts’ Jason Dunn took stock Zune video clips and provided a very informative voiceover narrative for those of you interested in seeing Zune in action: Zune Video Overview: See Zune in Action.

Jason Fuller noted that a change in Microsoft Virtual Earth (the engine that powers local.live.com) had a change that broke the find business feature in Virtual Earth Mobile for Windows Mobile devices. Version 1.67 fixes this problem. You can download the CAB installer directly from his blog entry at:

Virtual Mobile Earth 1.67

TravelPost.com has a useful web reference page list WiFi access information for 150 aiports in the US. You can find it linked below.

Airport Wireless Internet Access Guide