MobileViews Blog

Microsoft’s MSDN site has an article titled…

What’s New for Developers in Windows Mobile 6

You might want to take a look at this article even if you are not a developer. You might get an idea of the possibilities for new or upgraded software for Windows Mobile 6 devices.

I find lists very useful. So, I use Ilium ListPro, Excel Mobile, Tasks, and (with some embarrassment admitting this), 3×5 index cards (I buy ‘em in bulk). I also use Wikis a lot to jot down information in a semi-structured way. But, I didn’t really see any web based solution that worked with my phone the way I wanted to work.

Today, however, I learned about gubb.net. Like many things that I find interesting and useful, it does variations on a single theme: Manage lists online. What really impressed me though were the options it gave me from a mobile perspective. You can use SMS like other mobile services do. But, I don’t like to use SMS because my provider charges for each one and I generally do not use SMS enough to justify an add-on service with more SMS units. You can also use email to add to or request a list. Now, this is something that seemed very useful to me. It would let me add to a list even in a disconnected mode (e.g., on a flight somewhere) because I could just add things to a list in email messages and then send them off when connectivity was reestablished. It also has a nice simple mobile formatted site at http://gubb.net/m. This stripped down site looks and works fine on my Smartphone. And, it works from a desktop too. So, you can use it even when in bandwidth challenged situations (e.g., on a notebook connected to the net via an EDGE connection).

I’m looking forward to seeing how this site’s service develops.

Microsoft’s Live Labs has a preview release of an enhanced browser for Windows Mobile 5 (or, presuably, 6) Pocket PCs and Smartphones.

Deepfish Technology Preview: Enhanced Browsing for Windows Mobile

The website says Deepfish is currently only available by invite only to a small number of beta users. However, download versions for both the Pocket PC and Smartphone appears to proceed without any issues. You can see a video demo of it on Microsoft’s On10.net website.
EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: New mobile web browser – Deepfish!

The Windows Mobile Pocket PC (I refuse to refer to it as “Professional Edition”) defaults to displaying on the next upcoming appointment on its Today screen. Did you know you can change this? Here’s how…

• Start
• Settings
• Today
• Items (tab)
• Calendar (from list)
• Options (button)
• (select) Upcoming appointments
• (tap) OK
• (tap) OK

If you head back to the Today screen, you should see a list of appointments for the current day and often spilling over to the next day’s appointments.

One of Windows Mobile 6’s more interesting new features (and it doesn’t have many) is the ability to encrypt data on a storage card. Ah, but pay close attention to some gotchas in these two blog entries from Microsoft Windows Mobile staffers…

Jason Langridge’s WebLog - MR Mobile!: Storage card wipe and encryption - What’s the deal?

Windows Mobile Team Blog (Scott): Windows Mobile 6 Storage Card Encryption FAQ

The scarier info comes from the FAQ above. Why scary? Consider this… If you forget your PIN, the only way to recover is from an escrowed recovery PIN stored on an Exchange Server. But, what if you don’t use Exchange Server? Ah, you see the problem there.

What if the Windows Mobile device is hard reset? Um, basically the response is tough luck.

The moral to this story? If you choose to use storage card encryption, make sure you understand all possible consequences and create manual policies and procedures to make sure you can get access to data on storage cards used in devices under your control.

Every so often I think about starting a podcast or videocast. This lasts about as long as it takes me to remember how much work it takes to put one together on a regular basis :-)  If I create a mobile themed podcast someday, it would seem appropriate to actually record it on a mobile device once it a while. Here’s a freeware tool for Windows Mobile Pocket PCs that might make this task a little easier.
Audacity Personal DVR for Pocket PC

I just read on PocketPCThoughts.com that HP is no longer providing Microsoft Outlook with Windows Mobile devices. You might be thinking that you can simply buy the most inexpensive version of Office 2007 to deal with this issue. But, think again. Head over to the Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 edition page and look at what it includes: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. No Outlook in that package. While only HP has gone down this no-Outlook-with-devices path so far, they do sell a good sized percentage of Windows Mobile devices in the US. One can assume that Dell and other Windows Mobile vendors will not be far behind.
Your next thought may be that it might be good to sync with a bunch of Google web apps. Unfortunately, while Google has a decent calendar, it does not have a contacts solution. Yahoo!, on the other hand, has decent contacts, calendar, and notes web apps. It even provides a free IntelliSync (now owned by Nokia) utility to sync with its apps. Unfortunately, I had such poor experiences with it years ago that I am afraid to try it again. Yahoo! has been aggressively pursuing mobile users recently. So, I hope they take this opportunity to create a good mobile sync scenario.

Microsoft is only focusing on Enterprise users with Exchange Servers. But, that leaves out a lot of consumers as well as double digit percentage enterprise users who do not have Exchange Servers. The importance of the desktop OS has been less and less important over the years as we increasingly find ourselves dependent on web-based applications. Even Microsoft’s own confusing Live brand web services acknowledge this trend. So, why are our mobile devices still often tied to a PC-bound Outlook client? What we need is a good non-Exchange Server web-based sync solution that can sync with any mobile device: Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Linux, Apple iPhone, whatever.

Quick, what is the difference between Windows Mobile Standard and Windows Mobile Professional? Had to think a moment, huh? What? Still need more time. Yeah, that was a great renaming move. But, hey, there’s more to confuse you beside branding changes. There are now 5 possible Pocket PC (oops, “Professional”) screen formats and 3 possible Smartphone (oops, “Amateur”…wait, that’s not right either, “Standard”) screen formats. Microsoft’s Mike Calligaro explains it in all its gory detail in a blog item titled…

320×320 Revisited

The article focuses on the 320×320 format introduced for Windows Mobile 6 (based on Windows CE 5… Got a headache yet?) but has a great table placing all the screen possibilities in perspective.

I took another whack at the LifeCam NX-6000 earlier today. I sort of shoved it on the top of a Dell D600 notebook LCD lid and found that the clip slides out a bit (Did I mention there is no useful printed documentation for this thing?). It sort of sat on the cover at an somewhat odd but mostly workable angle. I had to move the LCD cover around a bit to frame objects (me) correctly.

One other thing became apparent as I played with it for a bit. The NX-6000 becomes pretty hot to the touch after using it for a few minutes. This surprised me. Of course, this is the first webcam I’ve bought in 4 years or so. Do all current generation webcams heat up?

I bought the relatively new Microsoft LifeCam NX-6000 Webcam designed for use with notebook PCs on a whim last week. The 2 megapixel camera and USB microphone components seem to work well. The image is quite a bit better than Intel 0.3 megapixel webcam I bought years ago. There is one little problem with the NX-6000 though. The clip that was presumably designed to clip on top of the LCD lid of a notebook is a fixed size. There isn’t any width adjustment I can see or feel. So, unless your notebook lid is an exact fit for the NX-6000’s clip, the webcam won’t sit on top of your notebook. I can tell you for sure that the clip is way too narrow to use with a Dell Latitude D600 notebook. And, I suspect it will be way too narrow to use with the D620 notebook that will replace it.

And, why is it that the so-called business notebook models have fewer features than the consumer models? No webcam. No Firewire port. No SD card reader, etc.? But,that is for a different blog rant.

Reader Patrick (PHH) says:
WMDC imports all my Word and Excel files (I have over 1200 on my pda) in ppc format (pws and pxl). I thought it was the fault of Office XP vs Vista (I could read those files fine on Office XP installed on an XP pc)and that when I bought Office 2007 I’d be able to read the ppc files on my PC. No such luck.

It will import rtf files directly, so I’ve translated literally hundreds of doc files into rtf format; however I don’t see any workaround for the spreadsheet files. I even tried openoffice on my Vista machine. It won’t read those files either.

I’m running ppc 2003 on an iPAQ 2755. Have been using them FINE for over a year on XP and using various versions of ActiveSync.

I’m close to paying the computer shop that built my machine for me to revert to XP from on my brand new machine unless I can get some answers.

Is there any way to get Microsoft to talk about these problems for brand new software?

Patrick: Welcome to the wonderful world of poor initial design decisions! The original Windows CE Handheld PC designers decided to create unique Word and Excel file formats a decade ago. When Mobile Office components came to the Pocket PC, they kept the same broken design that required a translation before the files could be read on the desktop. This led to all kinds of problems for Windows CE/Mobile users for years. This finally changed in Windows Mobile 5 based Pocket PCs. But, that was too late for your aging Windows Mobile 2003 based iPAQ.

I’m not syncing old 2003 or 2003 2nd Edition Pocket PCs with my Vista box. So, I can’t test your situation at the moment. However, it looks like Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) actually reverts back to ActiveSync 3.8 code when old legacy devices are partnered. This means that there should be an option that becomes visible when you sync an old device that lets you check or uncheck the Office Mobile translation feature (it is turned off by default since Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices use native DOC and XLS [but not DOCX and XLSX] file formats).

You might also want to consider upgrading two or three generations and move up to a WiMo 5 or 6 generation device.

I bought the Philips HN060/37 Noise-Canceling Earbuds for a recent trip. For a relatively low price (US$50+) headphone, it did a pretty good job of delivering sound while reducing the background noise while on a plane. It comes with three sets of buds in different sizes. None really fit my ears well. But, they fit well enough for use. I wouldn’t be able to run or exercise with any of the buds though. They tend to fall out (unlike the Sony earbuds I usually use in non-noisy settings). The neckstrap is handy when stuck in a plane for a long time. But, the cords to the buds tend to get tangled up a lot when taking the headphones out of its pouch or putting them away. The 124 ratings of it on Amazon gives it 3 out of 5 stars. I tend to a agree. It is a relatively decent earbud headphone. It would get a lot better rating for me if the earbud fit well in my ears and if the strap didn’t get so tangled up so often.