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).
Monthly Archives: October 2006
SoftMaker Office for Pocket PCs
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 (Freeware)
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.
Excel Mobile on Windows Mobile 5 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:
Comparing Video from a Pocket PC with a Digital Camera
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.
mobile.google.com
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…
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.