Category Archives: Microsoft

MobileViews Podcast 379:Reminiscing 25 years of Windows CE/Mobile/Phone with Jason Dunn


Jon Westfall was unavailable for this podcast. Fortunately, our mutual friend Jason Dunn was available as a guest co-host to reminisce about Windows CE/Mobile/Phone as it nears its 25th launch anniversary (November 1996).

Unfortunately, something weird happened during the recording process, however. The Audio HiJack audio-flow template that I’ve used to record hundreds of previous podcasts only recorded what Jason said. The good news is that I mostly asked questions and provided a few discussion prompts. Moreover, Jason is an excellent extemporaneous speaker. So, you can guess what I said. I removed the blank audio spaces (silences) during the segments I spoke.

Way back in Nov. 2010, Jason and I discussed the then new Windows Phone 7 which made a clean break from Microsoft’s older mobile devices and didn’t maintain app compatibility with Windows Mobile 6. Today, we’re looking back even further to Windows CE 1.0 as well as doing a catch-up conversation since his last visit to the podcast in October 2016!

Available via Google Music Podcasts and Apple iTunes.

MobileViews Podcast 334: New Pixel phones, rumored in iPhone 12 models, Surface Laptop Go, Taptic Time, & device etiquette

Jon Westfall and I are back for the third weekend in a row of after a three month hiatus.

  1. What if you could turn your voice into any instrument?

    Google Tone Transfer

  2. Google Pixel 4a(5g) and Pixel 5 – new camera features. Plus “Hold for me” features
    Cinematic Pan, Ultrawide lens. Pixel 5 does not have a 3.5mm headphone jack
  3. Microsoft Surface Laptop Go for $549.
  4. Rumored iPhone 12 specs
  5. Little remembered Apple Watch features: Taptic Time (For when you need to know the time but don’t want to be rude. Turn on in Clock area of settings). Chimes also available, for those who used to like the hourly ding on their old watches.
  6. Good quick discussion: Device Etiquette. What is acceptable today?

Available via Google Music Podcasts and Apple iTunes.

TIL: Amazon Echo’s Bluetooth can pair with Apple OS/X computers but not Microsoft Windows 10 PCs

echo_osx_bt_20151213

Amazon tells us that is Echo intelligent speaker can pair with mobile devices? But, I wondered what about desktop PCs and notebooks? It turns out that it pairs and works fine with Macs running Apple’s OS/X (I tested it with the current El Capitan release). However, Microsoft’s Windows 10 Bluetooth stack couldn’t even detect the Echo let alone pair with it.

So, if you have a Windows PC and want to use the Echo as a wireless speaker, you are out of luck. However, if you run OS/X on a Mac, it works fine.

Testing 1 2 3: Open Live Writer (formerly Microsoft Live Writer)

openlivewriter_20151212

 

Microsoft moved its old Live Writer blogging tool to an MIT Open Source license. The application itself was always free. And, now the source code is available as well. The project provides an installer for Windows. So, you don’t need to compile the code to run it on Windows. I haven’t used Live Writer in years (it was part of the old Windows Live Toolkit package). I’m looking forward to taking a deeper look at it (I’m using it now to create this blog entry) to see if it can perform the relatively simply needs I have for blog writing. You can learn more about the project here:

http://openlivewriter.org/

MobileViews Podcast 133: Surface Book & other new Microsoft products

Jon Westfall and I (Todd Ogasawara) are joined by Sven Johannsen and Frank McPherson on this podcast. We discuss the new products Microsoft announced on September 6, 2015.

Ref: Microsoft Windows Blog:A New Era of Windows 10 Devices from Microsoft

– Surface Book

– Surface Pro 4
Type Cover w/fingerprint reader also works with Pro 3. $159.99!

– Lumia 950 & 950XL
Microsoft Display Dock. $99 (Ref: ComputerWorld

– Microsoft Band 2

We also discuss:
– Starbucks mobile ordering
– Apple Pay coming to Starbucks

MobileViews Podcast 125: Microsoft Windows 10 and Office Mobile launch discussion

Special guests Frank McPherson and Sven Johannsen join me (Todd Ogasawara) to discuss the launch of Microsoft Windows 10 and Microsoft Office Mobile on July 29.

You can find Frank’s detailed notes of his initial experiences with Windows 10 on his blog: FrankMcPherson.net

And, my article about Office Mobile can be found on ExtremeTech.com.

Jon Westfall will be back for the next podcast.