Monthly Archives: January 2008

Qipit Good! Scan Cameraphone Photos to PDF

Original Cameraphone Photo vs. Qipit PDF

Qipit good!… With apologies to Devo… I signed up for the free Qipit online cameraphone to PDF scanning service today. Although I’m focusing on the cameraphone aspect today, you can upload a digital photo taken with any kind of digital camera and upload it from the desktop too. For this test, I used a T-Mobile Dash (Windows Mobile 6 smartphone) to take a photo of a price sign in a local store. You can see the resized by otherwise unretouched photo on the left and a resized version of the PDF Qipit emailed to me. It also stored the image on their server for access through the web. As you can see, it seemed to do a pretty good job of focusing on the text area and cropping off the unnecessary area (I cropped it a bit more for this posting). The resulting PDF text was reasonably clear and readable.

Amazing Flash Prices

SanDisk Ultra II SD twin pack

I gave my spare 2GB SD card to my daughter last night to put into her OLPC XO. The SD card showed up right away and was usable from applications such as the word processor. I’m not sure how Fedora generated the card name (model number?). But, it was definitely not user friendly (e.g., /media/flash). In any case, I wanted to get another spare SD card in case one failed in my Pocket PC or an older camera (that doesn’t use SDHC cards). So, with coupon in hand, I head over to Costco this evening and picked up an empty card to take to the cashier. The coupon dropped the price $10 to $30. This was an ok price, but not great for a 2GB card. Then, when I received the real package from the Costco runner, I noticed it was a twin-pack. $15 for each 2GB SanDisk Ultra II SD card. Now, that was pretty good and I didn’t have to wait for it to be delivered.

It has been amazing to watch prices drop while capacities increased over just the past few years. It wasn’t too long ago when 128MB SD cards were considered large and with relatively large prices too. The huge demand and success of the Eee PC (and to a lesser extend the OLPC) shows that  inexpensive computers with small flash based storage devices (compared to hard disk) can be a hit. I’m still waiting for for the Asus Eee PC 8G (1GB system RAM, 8GB storage flash RAM) to become available before buying one for myself. And, I am definitely interested to learn what Apple announces at Macworld next week. Fingers crossed that the rumored subnotebook flash-based device is reasonably priced (under $1500).

Dual Booting Linux/Windows OLPC in the Future?

Computerworld’s article…

OLPC developing dual-boot Windows, Linux OS for laptops

…reports that there are plans to produce an OLPC that can dual-boot Linux or Microsoft Windows. When I first heard people suggest this, I was against it. I couldn’t imagine how to shoehorn something as huge as Windows Vista or even Windows XP into the tiny flash drive space built into the OLPC. But, the idea is starting to grow on me… especially as I find the various little limitations in the mini-Fedora environment it has now (like the inability to print out of the box — and, yes, I used yum to install CUPS but that seemed to blow up during the installation).

Here’s what I wish would happen though. Back in 2004 I wrote a slightly tongue-in-cheek blog item asking Microsoft to Open Source one of the best lightweight operating systems ever released: Windows 98 SE. It runs fine with 128MB RAM (or less) with a few gigabytes of hard disk and has excellent driver support for WiFi, printers, and a host of other peripherals. Imagine running it on a flash based storage device like the OLPC or the Asus EEE PC. This won’t happen, of course. But, it sure would make for a great little light weight, low cost, well supported ultraportable.

Back to Basics: Soft Reset

Have you ever found your Windows Mobile smartphone (Standard or Professional Editions) in a state best described as frozen? This can happen in several ways. The most common experience on a non-touch Standard Edition device is that it becomes so slow that I can’t seem to get any action to work on it. Can’t dial, can’t launch an application, can’t even navigate. Recently, my HTC Advantage touch screen device (Professional Edition) has refused to turn on once in a while (perhaps 3 to 4 times in the past month).

Personally, many of my apparent freeze ups are usually related to some kind of Internet Explorer related memory management problem. The usual problem is that the cache gets large and slows the entire device down. A little patience while slowly navigating to the IE option to clear the cache usually resolves the problem. However, when my Standard Edition seems completely frozen to the point where the on/off button does not work, I usually end up pulling the battery out, put it back in, and turn on the phone. I’ve never had a problem with this procedure. But, your mileage may vary. So, proceed with caution.

Pulling the battery out and putting it back in amounts to a kind of hardware soft reset. The difference between a soft reset and a hard reset is that a hard reset puts your device back in the state it was at the factory. Data, configuration information, and applications added after you received it will disappear. A soft reset restarts the system but leaves data, configuration, and software alone.

Pocket PC/Professional Edition touch-screen devices have a recessed dedicated soft-reset button somewhere on its chassis. The location differs from model to model. The button is usually very small and fit to the point of the stylus that came with the device. Ballpoint pen and other larger tips will not work. Pressing the reset on the HTC Advantage has brought it back to life each time. But, I’m not a huge fan of using this button. The reset on my old Compaq iPAQ 3650 actually wore out because I had to use it so much on that box. There are free soft-reset software utilities available. But, these don’t help if your unit is completely unresponsive.

Book: Windows Mobile Data Synchronization with SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server Compact 3.1

I just read Rob Tiffany’s (a Technical Product Manager in the Microsoft Windows Mobile group) blog and noticed he has a new book out (with a very long title :-)…

Windows Mobile Data Synchronization with SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server Compact 3.1

If you need to use SQL Server held data with your WiMo smartphone. This book might be a good place to start looking (haven’t read it myself, btw).

Microsoft Releases iPhone Clone in 2009?

The Inside Microsoft blog has a very interesting entry titled…

Windows Mobile 7 To Focus On Touch and Motion Gestures

…with what looks like dozens of Windows Mobile 7 screen captures. From the looks of it Microsoft discovered the Apple iPhone and is trying to catch up to it by 2009 (Windows Mobile 7’s projected release according other blogs discussing it). The problem (for Microsoft) is that Apple will have probably moved on to other new concepts by then. Too little too late, I think.