Monthly Archives: July 2007

My Mobiler: Control Pocket PC from the Desktop (Freeware)

MyMobilier Remote Control

My Mobiler is a Windows Mobile freeware utility for the Pocket PC (and maybe the Smartphone?). I tried it using a Windows XP desktop PC and a Windows Mobile 6 Pocket PC. You can see the Pocket PC’s screen displayed on my desktop in the image above. It has a unique installation that starts it up on the desktop and then automagically installs the Windows Mobile piece and starts it running. This freeware utility can copy and paste text between the desktop and the Pocket PC as well as drag and drop files (haven’t tried that yet).

Microsoft Live Search for Mobile

Live Search main page

Microsoft released a new version of Microsoft Live Search for Mobile. You can aim your Pocket PC, Smartphone, J2ME enabled phone, or even a Blackberry at…

wls.live.com

…to check on client compatibility. I didn’t expect to like it. But, it is actually pretty good and looks useful (i.e., it will stay on my phone). I installed it on a Dash Windows Mobile 6 smartphone. My home town isn’t covered by the traffic service. So, I selected San Francisco to see what it looks like (see screen cap below).
Live Search traffic page

Truncated Menus on Smartphones with Landscape Screens

Truncated Calendar Menu

When the first Windows Mobile Smartphones came out way back in 2002, they all had Portrait oriented screens (screens that are taller than they are wide). That changed with Smartphones based on Windows Mobile 5 (one generation ago) when Landscape (wider than tall) and Square screens emerged. For those of us who went from a Portrait oriented phone (SDA for me) to a Landscape oriented one (Dash in my case),  this meant that some of the full menus we used to see became truncated. However, it doesn’t mean that you have to scroll down to see those now hidden options. The Calendar menu, for example, only shows the first 6 items (see image above). However, if you know the number of the hidden option, you can still select it without scrolling by pushing the associated button number. Option 7 in calendar is go to today’s date. So, you can just press 7 and it will do the right thing even though you don’t see it on the screen.

TechNet Article on Windows Mobile 6 Security

If you are looking for a concise summary of Windows Mobile 6’s security features/options, take a look at this TechNet article…Improve Security with Windows Mobile 6

The problem is that some of the features requires Exchange Server and an ISA Server. Does anyone know if any of the hosted Exchange Server services offers full WM6 integration to provide features like Remote Kill?

Digg for iPhone Incompatible with Internet Explorer

Digg formatted for iPhoneThe popular Digg.com community news site introduced a special version of its site for Apple iPhone users. No big deal, right? Just another site streamlined for the small screen, right? No, there is something else going on here because the site not only is non-functional when viewed with Windows Mobile’s Mobile Internet Explorer, it is also non-functional when viewed with Internet Explorer 7 on the desktop. Clicking on the links results in… nothing. It works fine with Firefox and Safari though.

I’m guessing that Digg’s iPhone site should also work on new Nokia S60 phones using Webkit based browsers.
It will be interesting to see if more sites start catering to the iPhone to the degree that they are non-functional on Windows Mobile.