MobileViews Blog

I use Microsoft’s Live.com as my default Internet Explorer 7 home page. Its tabbed page interface and hover over text expansion work great on my desktop and notebook PCs. The Mobile Live Beta is interesting but loses everything but the main page. Clicking More… just takes me to the current Windows Live mobile page which is a rehash of the MSN Mobile page. The Mobile Windows Live portal can be a great resource once they get more of the info from the desktop version and navigation that isn’t totally tied to a phone-centric interface (i.e., don’t forget the larger Pocket PC form factor).

SoftMaker is taking pre-orders for their SoftMaker Office for Pocket PCs which bundles TextMaker 2006 (word processor) and PlanMaker 2006 (spreadsheet). Although Microsoft provides Word Mobile and Excel Mobile for Pocket PCs, SoftMaker’s offerings were much more full featured and closer to the desktop Office versions that Microsoft offerings the last time I took a close look a few years ago. If the firmware based Microsoft products lack some of the functions you would like to have on a Pocket PC, take a look at this bundle.

PHM Pocket PC PowerToys have not been updated since April 2004. But, you know what? They still work with Windows Mobile 5 Pocket PCs. The two freeware powertoys I use are the PHM Suspend and PHM Reset PowerToys. Why? Years ago, the power button on my Compaq iPAQ 3650 broke. I decided not to tempt the fates after that and started using Suspend to turn off the remaining Pocket PCs and the other buttons to turn on the Pocket PCs.

When Microsoft changed the name of their keyboardless Windows CE devices from Palm-size PC to Pocket PC, the platform gained the much appreciated Pocket Excel and Pocket Word applications that were subsets of their desktop Office counterparts. However, the applications remained frozen in time as the Windows Mobile Pocket PCs evolved. No new features, no round trip format protection, and file formats unique to the Pocket PC without translators available on the desktop side continued to be the norm for years. The introduction of Windows Mobile 5 not only changed the names from to Excel Mobile and Word Mobile. It also brought some much needed functional changes.

Earlier this year, I wrote an article for Microsoft.com that highlighted some of the changes in Excel Mobile. You can find the article linked below:

What’s New in Excel Mobile?

I’m a huge fan of cameraphones. Most Smartphones and Pocket PCs with an integrated camera can record video as well as still photographs. I recorded some video earlier this year using an i-Mate JasJar Pocket PC Phone Edition and a Canon SD200 digital camera (still camera that can record 640×480 video). You can see the result of this video comparison test here.

The original comments attached to this video were: I wanted to compare the video from a Pocket PC Phone Edition recording at 320×240 10fps to a digital still camera that also records video at 640×480 30fps. I’m using an i-Mate JasJar Pocket PC Phone Edition and Canon Powershot SD200 digital camera to make the recordings. The scenes are from Kahala Mall near Honolulu, Hawaii. The mall experienced a freak flood last week and re-opened a few days ago.

The Official Google Blog noted that the Google Mobile relaunched last week with a new layout and simple access to Google’s mobile products. You can find it at…

http://mobile.google.com/

For some reason, though, Google Mobile thinks my T-Mobile SDA is a MiTAC Mio 8390. The Mio is an older (Windows Mobile 2003) flip-style smartphone while my SDA is a Windows Mobile 5 based non-flip phone. And, it still says that the Java-based Google Maps for Mobile doesn’t work on the SDA.

The LifeHacker article 11 Killer Freebies for Your Pocket PC lists, as the title implies 11 free applications for the Windows Mobile Pocket PC. I have tried just two of the applications from that list (ADB Idea Outliner and Skype for Pocket PC). I didn’t see anything I have a burning urge to try. But, you might find something useful in the list of freebies. And, hey, the price is right

Just noticed a blog post by Microsoft’s Jason Langridge: Business Card Scanner for Windows Mobile. In he asks: Is anyone aware of a solution to allow you to take a picture of a business card and then import the details into your contacts? I’ve seen a solution for Symbian but haven’t been able to track something down for Windows Mobile…. anyone know of such a solution?
The scanR Business Cards web application looks like it fits the bill. I haven’t tried this service. But, I did try their earlier Whiteboard webapp that cleaned up photos of whiteboards, turned them into PDFs and emailed them to you. It worked pretty nicely Their business card web application appears to be able to use a photo taken using a Windows Mobile Pocket PC or Smartphone with an integrated camera, clean it up, translate the bits into text, and then deliver a vCard you can import into Outlook.

Spb Software House has created a lot of amazing software for Windows Mobile Smartphone and Pocket PCs. Spb Insight is their new RSS reader for the Pocket PC with a difference: It is not limited to the summaries usually provided by many RSS feeds. This means that you will get full articles downloaded to your Pocket PC. This differentiation gives a great disconnected experience such as having full articles with images to read when on flights or other times you can’t get to the net. It also means, though, that there is a lot of data that needs to be downloaded. I’ve been using Spb Insight with WiFi on a Pocket PC. It looks like over a megabyte of data comes down when I refresh the five feeds I selected. This takes a reasonably long time over WiFi. A conventional RSS reader that just gets the summary doesn’t require such heavy bandwidth requirement. That said, it is great to get full articles for each feed. My recommendation is to buy and use Spb Insight if you plan to sync over WiFi and to take a look at Ilium Software’s NewsBreak if you want an RSS reader for the Smartphone or Pocket PC Edition and plan to obtain feed data over the relatively slower (and more costly) mobile phone data services.

You can find a detailed review of Spb Insight by Clinton Fitch at:

Clinton Fitch Reviews: Spb Insight 1.0

You can find my review of Ilium Software’s Newsbreak at:

Microsoft.com: A Breaking News Breakthrough

One of the nice things about T-Mobile’s GPRS/EDGE data service compared to others (such as Verizon Wireless) is that it lets you use your phone as a wireless modem. And, it worked fine until this past April. Up until this past April, I used internet2.voicestream.com (NAT) Access Point Name (APN). It stopped working at that time and I switched to internet3.voicestream.com (public IP). However, when using my phone as a wireless modem using a Bluetooth connection to my Pocket PC with a nice big QWERTY keyboard, I had to drop the connection from 115.2Kbps to 38.4Kbps. I had to use my phone as a wireless modem a bit over the past week. I played with the settings and verified that I was limited to 38.4Kbps. Then, I switched the APN back to internet3.voicestream.com. And, yep, I was able to set the Bluetooth serial connection speed back up to 115.2Kbps.

Ever wonder what would happen if you mashed up a LEGO Mindstorms NXT robotics kit and a Windows Mobile Smartphone? Apparently so did Microsoft’s Brian Cross. You can find his source code and other information about his work on…

WiMo: The Windows Mobile Robot

You can find a video demonstration of an early version (May 2006) of this project by Mel Sampat and Brian on MSDN Channel 9 at:

Mel Sampat and Brian Cross - Microsoft Mobile App Compat

Reader OdL asks:

• retrieve projectinformation from our database
• walk through a wizzerd to fill in information
• make a CAD-drawing, saved as WMF
• print report including the drawing “on the spot” (HP Deskjet 450, IRDa)
• transmit information & drawings, so the server can generate certificates for authoriation

• Bachman PrintBoy 7.0
• Westtek JETCET