So, you just installed your nice shiny Microsoft Windows Vista. And, the first thing that happens is… Well, I’m not sure since I’ve been running mine for a while. But, when I took a look at my PC running Vista Ultimate Edition shortly after midnight PST, I was greeted with a Windows Update message telling me I had one important update, four recommended updates, one optional update, and a pair of Ultimate Extras.

I installed the critical updates, the BlitLocker/EFS enhancements and Hold Em Poker Game. I didn’t install the one optional update available. Then, yup, you still have to reboot after critical updates. That little annoyance still hasn’t been solved. Maybe, next time…

The Extras, btw, will only be available for Ultimate Edition and maybe Enterprise Edition. For reasons I don’t understand, BitLocker is not available for Business Edition.

I hope all the new first-day Vista users have fun after the little update delay.

Many organizations and government bodies around the world have decided to adopt office software supporting the OASIS OpenDocument standard, and the number is growing all the time.

Around 16 months ago (after the decision in Massachusetts, but before OpenDocument was approved as an ISO standard), the OpenDocument Fellowship began compiling a list of adopters. Not surprisingly, the list at that time was fairly short. It’s grown a lot since then, and it’s hard to keep up with the new additions.

The Fellowship now maintains on its website a Precedent page, which is an annotated set of links to decisions by government bodies. As the page says, “The list is far from comprehensive, addressing only adoption decisions reported on the OpenDocument Fellowship general discussion list and the OpenOffice.org marketing web site. The list is undoubtedly only the tip of a very large iceberg.”

Some of the recent additions that have not yet made the list include Italy, CSIR in South Africa, and the province of Misiones in Argentina.

Software support for OpenDocument continues to grow, too. The Fellowship’s Applications page is also hard to keep current, due to the rapid growth.

I’ve been blogging observations (on a personal site) about upgrading a $500 eMachines desktop PC from Windows Media Center Edition to Windows Vista Ultimate Edition over the past two weeks. Here’s a summary of what I’ve jotted down. Note that I’ve been using various Beta and Release Candidate versions of Vista for about 18 months. So, I’m not new to Vista. But, I was still surprised by a few things after the upgrade nonetheless.

Upgrading a Cheap PC to Microsoft Windows Vista
Choosing the PC to sacrifice to a real-live upgrade: An eMachines T6420 (about $500 after the rebate)

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (~2.2GHz)
1GB RAM
200GB C: drive
160BG D: drive (added after purchase)
No graphics card. Uses shared video RAM

Cheap PC Vista Pre-Upgrade Preparation
Microsoft Vista Upgrade Advisor results. Backups. More than one and different methods.

Cheap PC Vista Upgrade Timeline
This is an upgrade of a real PC used over the past year or two. This is not a test PC. It has real applications and data on it (backed up, of course). 90 minutes later…

Full Aero Glass on a Cheap PC?
Aero Glass effects using an integrated nVidia 6600 with shared video RAM. Very nice!

The Cheap PC, Vista, and AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition
A small surprise. Not a show stopper. Easy fix.

Cheap Vista PC Vs. McAfee SpamKiller Detect
I uninstalled McAfee AntiVirus long before the upgrade. But, it had other ideas. Night of the living SpamKiller time.

Cheap Vista PC: In Search of a Printer Driver
Aren’t HP Photosmart printers kind of popular? Apparently, mine is not :-{

Cheap Vista PC & ReadyBoost
In theory, this is one of the cooler sounding new Vista features. In reality, what exactly does it do?

Microsoft Vista Sidebar

Hated this feature in Beta releases. Warmed up to it in the Release Candidate phase. Must-a, gotta have it now.

Here’s the weekly summary of a mix of Windows Mobile and general mobile tech related items from my personal blog.

Find Your Phone’s Field Test Mode
Have you ever wanted to get more precise information about your cell phone’s signal strength. This Popular Science article briefly describes what the Field Test Mode is and how to interpret its value.

Popular Science: Stop Dropped Calls

The article links to this 4-page PDF file that provides detailed instructions on how to find this value on dozens of phones.

wpsantennas.com Cellular Phone Field Test Modes (PDF file)

The CameraPhone (Concept) is 10 Years Old!
Slate has a retrospective on the camera phone in their article (and podcast)…

The Camera Phone

The first commercial camera phones came out a few years later. And, of course, here in the US, we didn’t figure it out until just a few years ago. But, we certainly seemed to have gotten with the program since then, eh?

Q&A New Pocket PCs?
Reader D.K. says: I’ve been reading your blog and site for some time, and am one of the myriad people who greatly appreciate the lengths you’ve gone through to help us plebieans disseminate the complexities of what’s now the WM platform.After being cursed with the imate sp5 (and wm5 for smartphones - what a crock), I’ve decided that I’m going to switch over to a full fledged wm5 pda-phone. I’ve got my eyes set on the htc p3600 (trinity), but it’s still stuck using the samsung 400mhz processor and worse yet, has only 64mb of ram. You had mentioned that a few manufacturers are producing and will soon produce 256mb phones, and I was wondering if you knew if HTC has any underway. It would be a shame to spend nearly $800 only to discover that the phone is obsolete a few months later.

D.K.: Thanks for the kind words. But, you might have read about upcoming phones with 256MB RAM at some other site. Generally speaking, I tend not to write about rumors and unreleased products? Why? (cough, cough)… Mostly because I don’t catch wind of many rumors or get juicy insider tidbits

That said, the HTC P3600 is a pretty nice looking Pocket PC Phone Edition. I would not be too concerned about the 400MHz Samsung chip. You will probably find it quite acceptable. I’ve got two first generation Windows Mobile 5 Phone Edition units: An iMate K-JAM (195MHz) and an iMate JasJar (520MHz). While the JasJar is definitely much faster than the somewhat pokey K-JAM, the K-JAM is quite usable. I usually carry the K-JAM around as my daily use Pocket PC (I use an SDA as my phone).

I also don’t find the 64MB RAM a limitation. However, I tend not to install a lot of apps on either my Pocket PC or Smartphone. And, I keep all my data on a 1GB mini-SD. So, I haven’t felt any storage crunch issues yet.

Of course, unless you must-a-gotta get a new phone now, it always pays to be be patient and wait for the usual round of announcements of new phones that seem to come out in Spring and Summer.

Windows Mobile Live Messenger Web Client
The…

Windows Mobile Live Messenger Web Client

…is takes Live Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger) out of the mobile client world and into the mobile web client world. The overall experience is not too bad. I still prefer having a Mobile Live Messenger client but recognize that having a web version allows for more frequent updates and, hopefully, more iterative innovation.

These mobile web client experiments by Microsoft and others will probably most benefit, um, Apple, Inc. What? You ask? Why?

After the initial afterglow and reality distortion field diminished as MacWorld 2007 receded from reality to memory, Apple took a lot of heat in the press because their initial stand is that they will not permit applications to be installed on the Apple iPhone by the end user. However, the iPhone reportedly has a full Safari browser. If this is true, this means the iPhone should be capable of fully participating in Web 2.0-ish activities in a way that current web-enabled phones cannot. So, applications could be delivered or redeployed as web apps like Windows Mobile Live Messenger Web Client. Assuming you are always connected either by EDGE (phone data) or WiFi (wireless broadband), you would always have access to web-enabled applications.

Windows Mobile Motion & Orientation Detection
While doing some research for a blog entry for a new site I started contributing to this week (Inside Port 25), I learned about some reasonably priced add-ons for Pocket PCs and Smartphones that add the ability to detect orientation and motion (sort of like the Apple iPhone). You can learn more about these products at…

pocketmotion.com

I haven’t bought any of their products. So, I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has. They sure sound interesting and are reasonably priced consumer gear.

TxtMan: IM-like Interface for SMS
I’m not much of a SMS (texting) user myself. But, if you are, you may want to take a look at Ben Hirashima’s…

TxtMan

It is currently freeware. However, its web page has a notice that a more robust commercial version is being developed.

If you are in a rush to buy Windows Vista or Office 2007, it looks like Costco has had it available for purchase since Jan. 27 (two days ahead of the Jan. 29 release). I received one of their weekly emails and noticed the two sets of products featured prominently.

Since I hadn’t followed the pricing for Vista or Office 2007, it was interesting to see the regular and upgrade prices listed.

Microsoft’s confusing and incomprehensible use of “Live” branding does more than just baffle users — it is also costing the company millions, because people don’t bother to visit Live sites because they can’t figure out what the sites do. When will Microsoft finally fix this nagging issue?’

Here’s a summary of Freeware/FOSS (Free & Open Source Software) for Windows I mentioned in my personal blog last week…

Inside Port 25
I just started contributing to a new O’Reilly Network website named Inside Port 25. O’Reilly’s official definition of the area reads In partnership [Microsoft] with O’Reilly, Inside Port 25 take that dialogue to the community for an objective, outsider’s perspective on lab’s research, insights and bloggers. I’m one of those outsiders looking in at Microsoft’s Port 25 website who will be reflecting (through blogging) about the interoperability discussions on the Microsoft Port25 site. I’ve already blogged about a couple of items that caught my attention. I hope you can find the time to visit Inside Port 25 and join the discussion of the intersection of the Microsoft and Open Source worlds.

DVD Shrink
I mentioned two apps to backup DVDs for Mac OS X users last week. So, here’s one for Windows users. I haven’t tried it myself. So, please let me know how well it works for you.

DVD Shrink

Its site describes it like this: DVD Shrink is software to backup DVD discs. You can use this software in conjunction with DVD burning software of your choice, to make a backup copy of any DVD video disc.

Note that it does not burn DVD and requires some other software (it seems to prefer Nero) for that task.

VirtualBox Goes Open Source
I’ve been doing a lot of virtualization work over the last year or so. But, I have to admit that I never hard of VirtualBox before this week.

VirtualBox.org

It looks like it was a for-fee proprietary product prior to January 15, 2007. But, as of today, is a Free and Open Source Software product.

It hypervisor appears able to run on top of Microsoft Windows or Linux (but not Mac OS X). And, it can host various flavors of Microsoft Windows and Linux as Guest Operating Systems.

I guess Microsoft’s Virtual PC (which is a freeware product now),…

WinDD: Disk Dump for Windows
The UNIX dd command is an incredibly powerful low-level data copy and conversion utility. You can, for example, use it to create disk image copies.

It turns out that there is a version for Microsoft Windows too…

WinDD: Disk Dump for Windows

Its developer has a short but accruate description for it: WinDD - Disk Dump for Windows! Windows XP version of Unix ‘dd’ command. Safe, effort-free backup for FAT, FAT32, NTFS, ext2, ext3 partition.

Dia - Open Source Diagramming Tool for Windows & Linux
I have to admit that I like Microsoft Visio and prefer to use it when a licensed copy is availble. However, if one is not available for you, you might want to take a look at the Open Source diagramming tool…

Dia

It is available for Linux and Windows (no Mac OS X version from what I can tell). You can find some screenshots on Dia’s website linked here.

Mozilla SeaMonkey 1.1
The SeaMonkey community at Mozilla.org announced the release of…

SeaMonkey 1.1

SeaMonkey is the offshoot of the all-in-one Mozilla Suite that included a browser, email client, HTML editor, and IRC client in a single unit.

I prefer using Mozilla’s Firefox browser and Thunderbird email client myself. But, I’ve recommended SeaMonkey to a few people who liked the old Mozilla all-in-one format.

Here’s a link to the SeaMonkey What’s New page.

OpenOffice.org 2.1
OpenOffice.org version 2.1 was released a few days ago. You can find the Release Notes here. This Open Source office suite includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, database, and drawing program.

It uses the OpenDocument XML file format as its default file format. However, it can read and write Office 2003 or older Microsoft Office files. I’m guessing that it cannot (yet) read the new Office 2007 file format.

Note that if you plan to run it under Mac OS X, you…

Any doubts about the significant problems in Microsoft’s OOXML specification should be dispelled by the impressive list of objections in an article published today on Groklaw: Deadline Looms to Express Concerns about ECMA 376 Office Open XML. This follows on from an earlier Groklaw article that I mentioned on Monday.

Rob Weir comments in his blog about the team that put together the list of objections:
“…this last weekend at Groklaw… a team of [around 20] volunteers attempted to review the 6,000 page Ecma Office Open XML specification. Since the specification is already two weeks into a 30-day review in ISO/IEC JTC1, a parallel approach was the indicated solution. The alternative, for each individual to review the specification in its entirety, would have required them to read at the rate of 200-pages/day for a month…

“What they found is amazing… I have been reading the OOXML specification, on and off, for a few months now, noting in this blog the problems I’ve seen. I thought I had a good grasp of the problems. But I was wrong. I was just scratching the surface. The Microsoft guys think I have been complaining too much. But it now looks like I wasn’t complaining enough.”

Even if you’re a supporter of the proposition that two standards are a good thing, you should be opposed to “fast-tracking” a specification as long, complex, and full of flaws as this one. It should be subjected to ISO’s normal processes. ECMA should be embarrassed that they approved the spec without identifying and resolving the problems.

Yesterday I wrote about the contradictions in Microsoft’s Office Open XML, and questioned whether the world needs two standards (especially when one — Microsoft’s — is so flawed).

Later in the day, Sam Hiser posted two entries to the OpenDocument Foundation’s blog, about an ODF plugin for Microsoft Office. Rumors about this plugin have been around for months, but details have been lacking.

IBM today announced today it’s bringing Web 2.0 features into corporations via its new Lotus Connections and Lotus Quickr applications. The software allows employees to find those who share similar interests, and easily share information and collaborate in a variety of ways. Why isn’t Microsoft releasing this kind of software?

The office documents standards war (between Microsoft and just about everyone else) is well into a new phase, as Microsoft’s Office Open XML challenges the OASIS OpenDocument format as the only ISO standard for office documents.

Here’s the weekly summary of a mix of Windows Mobile and general mobile tech related items from my personal blog.

What are the Must Have Applications on Your Smartphone?
One of the major dings people have been leveling against the unreleased Apple iPhone is Apple’s unwillingness to allow 3rd party applications to be installed on it. So, what are the must-have applications on your Smartphone? And, would you be willing to go to another platform if it or something like it is not available?

Here’s the list of my must-have Windows Mobile Smartphone applications:

DeveloperOne Agenda One - Agenda One adds a layer on top of Microsoft’s Calendar. Microsoft’s Calendar views are basically information-free beyond the single day view. Agenda One gives life to week and month views but intelligently displaying event information in a useful way on a small screen. It similarly adds a much needed data entry layer to entering new appointments by using a much better entry method than Microsoft provides.

Ilium Software eWallet - We’ve all got way too many passwords. And, if you work in an enterprise environment, yours probably changes on a regular basis by policy. eWallet eliminates the need for the giant security hole of writing passwords on a yellow sticky note paper.

Ilium Software NewsBreak - I’m still stuck on an EDGE network. Viewing web pages using Internet Explorer on a Smartphone is ok, but sluggish. And, many sites do not display in a readable fashion in the browser. Pre-loading lots of RSS feeds makes reading through a lot of information very fast. I have a couple of dozen feeds on my phone. NewsBreak usually takes about 3 to 4 minutes to refresh everything. Then, reading through the various individual feed items is very fast.

Microsoft Pocket Streets - Microsoft discontinued Pocket Streets. So, I need to find an alternative I can live with someday. Although it never had nearly as many features as the 3rd party GPS mapping software, it was nice to have simple maps. And creating custom area maps using Streets & Trips or MapPoint was very simple to do. Too bad it is gone.

HTC’s Smartphone Guide
HTC seems produce most of the cool Windows Mobile phones on the market. Unfortunately, they also seem to have a bazillion code names for their models and I can never remember any of them. If you have a problem following the phone buzz in various news sites and forums, this HTC sponsored wiki page may help you out.

HTC Community Wiki Smartphone Guides

It has photos, code names, and released product names for each of their products.

Smartphone Tip: Anything That Looks Like a Phone Number is Dial-able
Here’s a tip for Microsoft Windows Mobile Smartphone users…

Go to Microsoft Outlook on your desktop and create a calendar appointment or task. Now type a mix of text and phone numbers in a note field. Just type them in as you might any note to yourself. Then, sync your Smartphone with the PC using ActiveSync.

Take a look at the phone numbers in the note field of the Calendar or Task event you created. They should be colored blue and underlined. Use your navigation pad to move the screen focus to one of the numbers then press return. Your phone should start dialing that number.

It turns out that Windows Mobile Smartphones assume any number grouping that resembles a phone number is in fact a phone number and makes it dialable by focusing on it and selecting it. This is incredibly useful for quickly entering a group (say for a business meeting, lunch with friends, or a parents’ meeting) where you might want to call a group of people quickly. Just store the names and numbers in a notes field somewhere and move the focus and dial each number as needed.

Unfortunately, this feature is not available for Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition devices.

Spb Club Launched This Week
If you use a Windows Mobile Pocket PC, you might want to consider heading over to the recently launched…

Spb Club

This online destination is produced by Spb Software House which created and sells numerous Pocket PC and Smartphone applications. One of my must-have Pocket PC apps is Spb Backup. But, more on that tomorrow when I rant a bit about backup assumptions for the Pocket PC.

Joining this free online site gives you access to free Pocket PC ring tones, free Pocket PC themes, and access to support for Spb Windows Mobile products.

Why Did Microsoft Remove Backup/Restore from ActiveSync?
One of the innovations that came with Microsoft Windows Mobile 5 for Pocket PC users was non-volitile flash RAM and the storage of key Windows Mobile databases in this RAM. This meant that both Pocket PC users would no longer lose their contacts and calendars when a battery died. Since Microsoft presumed that Pocket PC users would no longer need to restore their system from a hard disk through ActiveSync, they removed the Backup and Restore function for Pocket PCs in ActiveSync!

IMHO, this was a truly bad idea. Let’s say you lose or badly damage your Pocket PC (or Smartphone for that matter since it was never able to Backup/Restore over ActiveSync since it always had non-volitile flash RAM for PIM data). You go ahead and get an identical new Pocket PC. You know have to rebuild the Pocket PC from scratch. Sure, ActiveSync will repartner with it and flow data from Outlook. But, you have to reinstall your applications, rebuild email definitions for Messaging (Inbox), type in your name, etc., etc. In other words, you end up wasting an hour or more rebuilding your setup. This is something that ActiveSync Restore could have handled mostly unattended in much less time and hassle.

Manufacturers didn’t help matters much either. Prior to Windows Mobile 5, many Pocket PCs came with manufacturer supplied backup-to-storage-card utilities. These utilities archived your system RAM contents to a storage card in a single file. This file could be easily copied to your hard drive and further archived on a CD-R, thumb drive, or network store. But, many WM5 Pocket PCs don’t have these add-on utilities in firmware.

So, now what? Fortunately, there are other people who, like me, believe that a simple single file archival backup is a good idea. I use Spb Backup from Sbp Software House on my i-Mate K-JAM Pocket PC Phone Edition. It’s simple, fast, and has a notification area on my Start window to let me know when I last performed a backup.

In getting ready for the launch of Windows Developer Power Tools today, I’ve been trading email with Jim Holmes and James Avery, the book’s visionaries and co-authors, to get their answers to questions that readers might well ask about their content. Here are their responses, in mock interview format.

[WinDev Center] Why did you decide to include tools from Microsoft, such as the Visual Studio Express products and Power Toys, in the book?
[James] Microsoft developers have created some of the best free and open source tools (yes open source!) around. The WiX toolkit, Express products, and the Visual Studio Power Toys are just some examples. Microsoft developers often create tools that fill gaps in the same commerical product they worked on, which gives them the distinct advantage of having inner knowledge of that tool. We don’t care who writes the tool, just whether or not the tool is useful!

[WinDev Center] Given all the support that’s provided in Visual Studio 2005, especially Team
System, why would any Microsoft developer need to know about free and open
source tools?
[Jim] The .NET platform and Visual Studios’ various versions, including Team Systems, are great environments, but there is plenty of room for developers to increase their productivity and the quality of their products. There are a great number of testing tools, code libraries, and utilities which can really help out developers — and don’t forget that this book isn’t just for .NET developers. Any developer working on the Windows platform, regardless of whether they’re working in Java, Ruby, PHP, or some other language, will find helpful tools in this book!

[WinDev Center] Can you give a couple of examples from your book of tools that plug holes in
Visual Studio support?
[Jim] NDepend and Reflector.Graph are great for showing dependencies between .NET components. MbUnit gives you the ability to do combinatorial testing to cut down required data for large test matricies. CoolCommands gives you a wealth of neat, immensely helpful additions to context menus.

[WinDev Center] I know O’Reilly has made much in its promotion of the tools you document for Windows, .NET and ASP.NET developers, but, as you say, you also include tools that will be useful to developers who use Windows for building non-Windows applications, such as Java and PHP applications. Can you explain why you did that and name a couple of the tools that fall into that category?
[James] While our book will mostly apply to .NET developers, there are plenty of tools that really apply to any type of developer on the Windows platform. Some of those tools are: Subversion, the best source control around in my opinion. Trac, an open-source feature and bug tracking system. And even FileZilla, a free FTP client.

[WinDev Center] Given the pace of change out there, isn’t putting this information in a book
risky? Won’t the book be out of date as soon as I buy it?
[Jim] Two bits here. First off, this book will introduce you to tools you might not have known about, so you’ll find new ways to bring value to your development process. Secondly, our book’s format shows you where to go for the most current versions and information for each tool. Lastly (and yes, that makes three bits), our companion website will give you a central spot to go for updated information about all the tools in the book.

[WinDev Center] What was the most enjoyable aspect of writing this book?
[Jim] Searching for, playing with, and discovering the value of a bunch of great tools. I (Jim) also enjoyed writing the preface and introduction because it gave me a nice opportunity to try and lay out a good case for how FOSS tools can really help out developers.

[WinDev Center] What was the hardest part about writing this book?
[Jim] The sheer amount of writing we had to do in a short timeframe was pretty amazing, especially considering the book grew from an estimated 800 pages to over 1200.

[WinDev Center] What do you think will surprise readers the most about Windows Developer Power Tools?
[Jim] I really hope readers poke through the book and find themselves frequently saying “Holy smokes! I didn’t know there was a tool to do that!”

[WinDev Center] What’s your favorite “undiscovered gem” in the book?
[Jim] I absolutely love SlickRun, even though it’s not directly a developer tool. SlickRun saves me scads of time each day just through its simple, quick launching of apps, folders, and sites I use all the time. Plus its Jot feature is a great way for me to keep a short tear list for priority tasks I’m on at the moment.

[WinDev Center] What’s one tool you’d like to see created?
[Jim] I’m drawing a complete blank. It’s not that there aren’t remaining pain points for development, it’s just that my head is still stuffed full of all the great things we’ve worked with for the last year!

[WinDev Center] What are your plans for the future?
[Jim] I’m currently heavily involved in putting on a huge software developers conference (www.CodeMash.org), and am then transitioning over to pick up my end of coordinating a regional Code Camp in the Dayton-Cinncinati area. After that I’m going to focus on diving more deeply in to the .NET 3.0 platform, BizTalk, and SharePoint. I also owe my wife an evening at a REALLY good restaurant to make up for all the late hours I spent over the last year working on this book.

[WinDev Center] Thank you both.

When Windows Vista finally ships in a few weeks, don’t expect your PC to run fast and trouble-free, warns Microsoft officials — depending on the PC you buy, it may be weighed down with “craplets.”

Here’s a summary of Freeware/FOSS (Free & Open Source Software) for Windows I mentioned in my personal blog last week…

Azureus: Simple to use BitTorrent Client
BitTorrent is a data sharing protocol that changes the file download paradigm from a one-to-one model to a many-to-many-model (peer-to-peer). This allows extremely large files to be shared without stressing a single download source point. It also means that if you download a file, you will also be allowing others to download fragments of the file from you too for some period of time. You can choose to terminate sharing the file with others after you have a complete file. But, this is considered a breach of netiquette.

One of the easiest ways to use BitTorrent is to use… Azureus

PocketMod: The Free Disposable Personal Organzier
Here’s an item that is hard to categorize.

PocketMod: The Free Disposable Personal Organzier

PocketMod lets you create mini paper booklets of information and organizational forms (calendar, contacts, etc.). It prints the mini-pages on a single piece of paper which you then fold and cut (with a scissors) to create the mini-booklet.

It is somewhat difficult to categorize because this mini-booklet can be either created right from the PocketMod website (using Flash) or by downloading a client to your desktop. The PocketMod downloadable app runs on either Mac OS X or Windows.

Microsoft Research Group Shot
Here’s an interesting freebie from Microsoft Research. They describe it as: Group Shot helps you create a perfect group photo out of a series of group photos. With Group Shot you can select your favorite parts in each shot of the series and Group Shot will automatically build a composite image. You can find it at…

Microsoft Research Group Shot

Google Earth Release 4
Google released an update for Google Earth on January 8.

Google Earth Release 4

The listed enhancements are: More 3D content for terrain and buildings, add your own photos and GPS data, a new simpler user interface.

Google SketchUp 6 and 3D Warehouse
The folks at Google have been busy! They also updated their 3D modeling app SketchUp.

Google SketchUp 6

If you want to see what some talented and diligent people have created with SketchUp, head over to…

Google 3D Warehouse

…to see what 3D models have been uploaded and contributed to the collection there.

Gpg4win: EMail Security Using GnuPG for Windows
Gpg4win is a port GNU PG. GNU PG provides a way to encrypt and sign data and communication using the OpenPGP standard. This port attempts to make GNU PG easy to install and use with Microsoft Windows.

Gpg4win: EMail Security Using GnuPG for Windows

One useful enhancement is a plugin for Microsoft Outlook 2003 (GPGol).

There is a Gpg4win regular version that includes the manuals while the light version does not.

Zelda2D Game Engine
Zelda2D Game Engine is an Open Source fan-created game that pays homage to the classic Legend of Zelda game series.

The Freshmeat entry description for Zelda2D says: It is a classic jump’n'run game in the style of Zelda, featuring Link collecting rupees and defending against evil opponents. The game itself is a game engine that reads levels from XML files. It’s very easy to write your own levels and to design objects in the game..

There are Linux and Windows downloads available for this game.

To celebrate the tools that make Windows developers lives easier–and the people who’ve created
them–we’re unilaterally declaring Friday, January 19th to be Windows Developer Tools Day. It’s an ad hoc and spontaneous effort on our part to draw attention to the growing number of free and open source software (FOSS) tools that support developers who do their work on Windows platforms.

We chose the date to coincide with the final day of CodeMash, a high-energy gathering of developers taking place in Sandusky, Ohio this week. We’re also launching a new title, Windows Developer Power Tools,
by Jim Holmes and James Avery, which documents more than 170 of the FOSS tools available today for Windows.

Want to join in? Here’s how. First, take a few minutes to think about the tools you use, the ones you
couldn’t do without, or the tool that’d make your job easier, if only you knew where to find it. Or write about a tool that you’ve developed. Then, take part in Tools Day by doing one of the following:

• Blog about your favorite tool and why you like it
• Post a free copy of your favorite tool (if it’s legal, that is)
• Tell how a tool saved your life
• Describe a tool you’d like to see

Send a link to your blog to the O’Reilly powertools alias. We’ll post your link and point to
your comments from our site. It’s a great way to bring attention to the tools that developers
rely on and the people who’ve created them, as well as stirring up some innovation for
much-needed tools that don’t exist yet. We’re always looking for good ideas here at
O’Reilly, so jump in and share your thoughts. Feel free to mention the book too: “Windows
Developer Power Tools.”

If you don’t have a blog, then Digg this story. Send a note to the O’Reilly powertools alias to let us know that you Dugg it.

Let’s start the year with a round of applause for the tool makers who made a difference in 2006, and the tools that will surprise us in 2007.

You know, there are times where I find myself wondering “I think you really missed your calling in life… You should have been a poet!”

And then there are times (like for example, the above chosen title) where I realize “You know, you should really just consider yourself lucky that you don’t didn’t get your a$$ beat more often than you do did!”

On a related note, have I ever mentioned how much I love my five sisters?

No?

Hmmm. Strange… I wonder why that might be? I could have sworn that I, …

… well, why I sit and reminisce about how wonderful life was growing up around a group of such spite driven war mongers loving, caring, and above all, compassionate, siblings from another planet all together of the opposite sex, please enjoy the following jolt of exciting news courtesy of Microsoft and rPath’s Appliance Builder,

I decided to upgrade my cheap home PC ($500 after rebate eMachines T6420) from Windows Media Center Edition to Windows Vista Ultimate Edition (final release Build 6000) last weekend. It was something I wanted to do before the Vista wide launch at the end of the month. I’d been running Vista beta releases on test PCs for over a year and wanted to run the production release so I could blog a bit about it. I figured the upgrade process would make for a decent single blog entry. I was so wrong. It has turned out to be a much more interesting experience than I though it would (in a mostly good way, btw). So, I’m writing a series of blog entries on one of my personal blogs for the next week or two about some of the surprises I’ve run into. And, since I’ve installed Vista beta and RC over a dozen times, I’m surprised that I was surprised.

The first surprise was that the upgrade (not a clean install) went very smoothly considering the upgrade advisor gave me numerous warnings about my video driver, sound driver, and network interface.

The second surprise? Well, look for yourself. Note that this cheap PC does not have a dedicated video card with 128MB of dedicated video RAM. It has a system board graphics chip set that uses 128MB of shared video RAM (from the 1GB RAM installed).

I was very very surprised to see what appears to be full Vista Aero Glass features working on it.

So I’ve been focused on a separate, yet (somewhat) related to “the nuXleus project” project over the last week, which has meant I haven’t been able to spend as much time as I would like on the nuXleus project itself. Today is going to be at least partially spent prepping the next preview release of “nux” (my ultra-top-secret-(yet-no-so-much-a-secret-anymore) nickname for the project (though I shouldn’t really take the “nux” aspect of it too far, as once the Linux-based 1.0 release is complete, I plan both a BSD as well as a Windows CE-based version as well (Oh, wait, you didn’t know Windows CE was now open source? Huh… Where have you been??? You wanna’ try and keep up, there, Snappy???!!! Thanks! ;)

Anyway! >> Here’s the deal. I went into the rBuilder section of the site just a few moments ago to build out a new test release, and what to my wondering eyes should appear, but two more virtual appliance hard disk formats to start my new year. (<< Don't blame me... 'Twas born this way... 'Tis not my fault!!! ;)

rBuilder Online - Create New Build

Build Types
Installable CD/DVD

Raw Hard Disk Image

VMware� Virtual Appliance

Raw Filesystem Image

Compressed Tar File

Demo CD/DVD (Live CD/DVD)

Microsoft� VHD Virtual Appliance

Virtual Iron Virtual Appliance

Oh, happy day! So I guess I can now rewrite the project description which currently reads,

Here’s the weekly summary of a mix of Windows Mobile and general mobile tech related items from my personal blog.

ActiveSync: Pocket PC vs. Smartphone

Figure 1. ActiveSync Options for Smartphone

Figure 2. ActiveSync Options for Pocket PC

A lot of the confusion I see in email and comments (to blogs and articles) are caused by Mobile Phone carriers and Microsoft failing to properly distinquish between their Windows Mobile 5 Pocket PC Phone Edition and Smartphone platforms. The main problem is that several Smartphone devices such as the Motorola Q and the T-Mobile Dash look like the Treo 700w Pocket PC Phone Edition. They have similar looking form factors, LCD display, and QWERTY thumb keyboards. But, they are quite different.

Compare the two ActiveSync options lists displayed above. The one at the top is for a Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone. The one below it is the options list for a Windows Mobile 5 Pocket PC Phone Edition. Note that The Smartphone does not provide the option to sync Notes (from Outlook) or Files. We can only guess that Microsoft assumed that the previously keyboard-less Smartphones would not be used as text entry devices for various kinds of note taking options. That is also why the Smartphone does not have Word Mobile or Excel Mobile.

But, several Smartphones do have QWERTY thumb keyboards (though they still lack a touchscreen). And, many people assume that their device is a Pocket PC Phone Edition instead of a Smartphone. So, if you are thinking about buying a Windows Mobile based device, check if it is a Pocket PC Phone Edition or Smartphone and buy the one that fits your needs. If you are voice-centric, a Smartphone is probably the device for you. If you are data-centric, a Pocket PC Phone Edition is probably the one you want to look closely at. The main thing, though, is to be aware of the strengths, features, and limitations of whatever device you choose.

The basic rule of thumb is that a Pocket PC Phone Edition will have many more features and applications than a Smartphone. However, the Smartphone can be easily used with one hand while the Pocket PC Phone Edition will almost always require two hands.

Yahoo! Go 2.0 Beta
Yahoo! announced a beta release of their application for phones.

Yahoo! Go 2.0 Beta

The problem is that it supports a relatively small set of phones from Nokia, RIM, and Samsung. So, if you use a Palm OS, Windows Mobile, or even some other Nokia or Samsung phone, you are out of luck. This is one of the reasons I don’t like client-side applications for accessing web portals.

Apple iPhone - Wow!
Apple announced the…

Apple iPhone

…today. I usually don’t buy into market-speak hyperbole. But, wow, the iPhone sure looks like a winner. The Microsoft Windows Mobile product group has a lot of head scratching and catching up to do now.

Couple of items…

• The iPhone won’t actually be available until June
  
• It will only be available from Cingular (which will become AT&T Wireless). This leaves out a large double digit percentage of US mobile phone users who are on Sprint PCS, T-Mobile, or Verizon Wireless
  
• Assuming it only has a single battery, I’m concerned about battery life if I use it as both my phone and audio/video player
  
• We don’t know what applications will be available. Me? I need Ilium Software’s eWallet on whatever mobile device I use.
  

Virtual Earth Mobile 1.69
I mentioned Virtual Earth Mobile for the Pocket PC a while back. An update to 1.69 became available last week. You can find it at:

Virtual Earth Mobile 1.69

Changes include: Ability to drag the map with a stylus, get directions in text form, bug fix for Add to Contacts option.

Virtual Earth Mobile is a Pocket PC application that uses data from Microsoft’s Virtual Earth to display maps on a Windows Mobile Pocket PC. You can read Jason Fuller’s complete description of his app in the original blog entry describing it at:

Virtual Earth Mobile (2005.10.23)

I Really Want an Apple iPhone, but…
I’ve been a user and fan of Microsoft Windows Mobile (aka Windows CE) Handheld PCs, Pocket PCs, and Smartphones since 1996. I’ve used either a Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition or a Smartphone as my phone for nearly five years now. However, I really really want an Apple iPhone. Take a look at Apple’s Phil Schiller demonstrating it for CBS News if you wonder why.
CBS News: Apple’s Phil Schiller demonstrates the iPhone

That said, there is a “But…” in this train of thought. There are a couple of big issues for me and, I suspect, for others too.

First, the Apple iPhone will be available exclusively through Cingular in the US (soon to be merged into the AT&T Wireless brand). They are the largest mobile phone carrier in the US. But, they aren’t my carrier. And, neither Cingular nor AT&T Wireless have had great acclaim from their customers in the recent past. Take a look at RCRWireless’ discussion of Consumer Reports’ survey of 18,000 mobile phone customers. The title of the article is: Consumer Reports’ subscribers give Cingular, Sprint Nextel coal for the holidays.

Second, there is an issue about the dreaded MRC (Monthly Recurring Cost). The way it looks to me is that I would want their lowest cost voice plan with their unlimted data plan. I’m guessing this will be $40 + $40 = $80. My current plan is $30 for voice and $30 for unlimited data (also EDGE) plus unlimited WiFi at Starbucks, Borders Books, and Kinko/FedEx locations. That’s $60/month. That means that annual service cost would jump from $720/year to $960/year. Over the course of a two-year contract, this comes out to $1,440 vs. $1,920.

Third, Apple has verified that they will not allow 3rd party applications to be installed. Since they use the Safari browser, I guess you could argue that you can use web apps (maybe even AJAX-ified web apps). But, there are still plenty of times I know I will be out of EDGE or WiFi signal range and be app-less. Of course, the built-in apps look nice. I don’t install many apps on my Pocket PC or Smartphone. But, the ones I do have installed have become invaluable to me. I would need them or something like them on my iPhone.

My guess at the moment is that I’m going to have to pass on the Apple iPhone for 2007. I hope one of the other carriers picks up the iPhone in 2008/2009 and has a reasonable voice+data plan for me to consider.

Microsoft Research Outlook Mobile Manager 2.1
Microsoft Research released…

Microsoft Outlook Mobile Manager 2.1

…this past October. The software is installed on the PC, not the mobile device. Here’s what it does for your mobile device though: Microsoft Outlook Mobile Manager (OMM) brings the power of Microsoft Outlook to your portable device. OMM can prioritize your messages and makes smart decisions about when to send email. OMM also sends calendar reminders, task reminders, and an Outlook Today style daily summary all to your wireless device.

Interestingly, it only works for Outlook email accounts that are either POP3 or Exchange Server based. It does not support IMAP4 email accounts. In fact, the POP3 support was only just introduced with this particular update.

Q&A: How to Configure Email for an IMAP4 Server
From the beginning of Windows CE/Windows Mobile-time, it seems like people have had problems configuring Messaging (formerly known as Inbox) for their POP3 or IMAP4 and SMTP email servers. Reader D.B. recently wrote me email asking about this issue.

D.B. writes: I recently got the Cingular Treo 750- my fiorst experience with Windows mobile. I read you peice below and wondered how I can go about configruing my email as you have apparently done the the very last scenario (IMOAP4)…any advice greatly appreciated!

The response is way too long for a blog entry. So, I created a special How-To page for D.B. and anyone else wanting to configure Windows Mobile 5 Messaging with an IMAP4 server. Click on the link below to read what I hope is a simple 10-step process with lots of screen shots to step you through the configuration process.

Configuring IMAP4 Email for Windows Mobile 5

Here’s a summary of Freeware/FOSS (Free & Open Source Software) for Windows I mentioned in my personal blog last week…

Grisoft Anti-Virus 7.5 Free Edition Compatible with Windows Vista
Grisoft’ current AVG Free 7.1 anti-virus software will be discontinued on January 15. However, this doesn’t mean that AVG Free Edition will go away (though some people seemed to interpret this way). Their new 7.5 free edition is available now from…

AVG Free Advisor

The page also links to Grisoft’s free Anti-Spyware software.

According to the information on the page, version 7.5 works with Microsoft Windows Vista (7.1 did not install when I tried it with Vista a few months ago). Note, that this Free Edition is only free for personal use,…

CGSecurity PhotoRec & TestDisk
CGSecurity’s…

PhotoRec & TestDisk

…Open Source utilities can help you analyze and (sometimes) recover files from a variety of disk formats including flash cards.

CGSecurity provides executable binaries for Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. I tried the version for Windows XP on a known bad Lexar 1GB SD memory card. You can see in the image that TestDisk identified a number of sector errors on the card.

Adobe Acrobat Reader 8 for Windows Vista
If you go to the Adobe Reader 8 download page and are running Windows Vista, it will detect it provides a link labeled as compatible with Vista.

I ran into a little glitch that I started noticing just the other day when installing applications. The installers for the last two Vista compatible applications I installed (including Adobe Reader 8) kept telling me to close Windows Explorer even though no IE7 or Windows Explorer file listing window was open. I had to go to Task Manager, end the Explorer process, and lose the GUI menus to complete the installation.

A43 File Management Utility Version 2.49
After mentioning ExplorerXP as a Windows Explorer alternative a few weeks ago, a number of people mentioned that they had problems with it (seems to work fine for me though). One or two people suggested…

A43 File Management Utility

…as a freeware alternative. It has a number of interesting features including an integrated text editor, drag and drop zip/unzip support, and the ability to run from a portable flash drive.

Good news for anyone who hates Vista’s exceedingly annoying UAC prompts: Symantec has said it will develop a Vista add-in that delivers UAC-level security without UAC-level annoyances.

Here’s the weekly summary of a mix of Windows Mobile and general mobile tech related items from my personal blog.

Happy New Year! Get Organized & More Out of Your PDA!
Fellow Microsoft Mobile Devices MVP Jaap van Ekris has an article to help you get started with 2007 on his MobileNomads.info site…

Get more out of your day using a PDA

The article focuses on maximizing what you get out of the PIM (Personal Information Management) and Communications features of your PDA.

After reading Jaap’s article, you might want to consider visiting an article I wrote for Microsoft.com last year…

Get Organized with Windows Mobile

In it I point you to some third party applications you can add to your Windows Mobile Pocket PC or Smartphone to organize your life in 2007.

Have a safe and happy New Year everyone!

MobileViews iPod Troubleshooting Reference Page
Way back on May 11, 2006 (forever in Internet time), I posted a blog item on the MacDevCenter asking…

Cause for iPod nano Spontaneous Reset?

Although the cause of the problem is now known and resolved, this blog item continues to attract questions from people with, apparently, all kinds of iPod issues. It doesn’t seem appropriate to use that blog item as some kind of general iPod issues forum (especially since there are other sites better suited and more focused on that topic). So, I put together a page here (look at the left side bar area under Pages) titled…

MobileViews iPod info

…to help people find iPod troubleshooting information and discussion areas.

I’ve listed a small sampling of the questions my original blog item attracted on that page and will, as time permits, provide specific pointers for some or all of them. Hope this helps the various people with iPod issues that posted to my old blog item.

Flickr Popular Cameraphones List Missing Phones without Exif Data
If you scroll to the bottom of…

Flickr Camera Finder

…you will find a list of popular cameraphones used to take photos submitted to Flickr. In a list of 5 there are 2 Nokia phone models and 3 Sony Ericsson phone models. One would guess that these phones are listed because they all have good cameras (for a cameraphone). But, I began to wonder why there were more Sony Ericssons since Nokia claims to make the most digital cameras in the world. Shouldn’t Nokia have a slight edge just based on total cameraphones sold? Ok, maybe not. The next question was why no Windows Mobile Smartphone had made the list. They seem to be selling well. I submit photos from my Windows Mobile Smartphone (a T-Mobile SDA at the moment) to Flickr. So, I know it can submit photos.

One possible reason may be that many popular cameraphones do not provide EXIF data in their photos. I took a look at photos from a number of phones I’ve used over the last couple of years and noticed that photos taken with the Nokia 3650 (Symbian), Motorola MPx220 (WM2003), and T-Mobile SDA (WM2005) all lack EXIF data in the JPEG files. Photos taken using an i-Mate JasJar and i-Mate K-JAM Windows Mobile 5 Phone Edition devices did have EXIF data in their JPEG image files.

So, it may be this lack of EXIF photo identifying information may be the reason why some very popular phones will never be listed in social network sites collecting camera model information. Too bad.

Akihabara News Mobile Display Format is Back
Akihabara is the part of Tokyo known as Electric City where nearly every floor of every store is crammed with electronic goodies.. Every gadget geek should try to make a pilgrimage there at least once in a lifetime. You’ll see things in Akihabara, and Japan in general, that never get outside of Japan and is miles ahead of what we see in places like the U.S. A good way to keep up with the goings-on there is to read…

Akihabara News

…which has news and commentary in the English language. A recent redesign lost the PDA formatted pages. But, fortunately, a tweak to their new design restored it. And, the announcement specifically states that: AkihabaraNews Mobile was designed for Windows Mobile 5 (and previous versions). Just use the link above on your Pocket PC Phone Edition or Smartphone. It automatically detects the PIE browser and reformats the page appropriately.

You can find an article I wrote for O’Reilly’s MacDevCenter about my trip to Japan back in 2005 to get an idea of what a tech geek can expect when visiting that amazing country.

Japan Primer for the Mac Techno-Tourist

Windows Mobile Email: Which One Works Best?
Windows Mobile Pocket PC (Phone Edition) and Smartphone users have at least six broad techniques to work with email. The problem is finding one that works the way you do (or would like to).

• Microsoft Outlook Sync: This is the way most of us used to deal with email on Pocket PCs in the old days. Unfortunately, this tethers us to the PC running Outlook. There was some relief in the ability to use ActiveSync over WiFi until that option was removed with the introduction of Windows Mobile 5 and ActiveSync 4.
  
• Microsoft Exchange Server: If you are fortunate enough to have a mobile-enabled Exchange server and support staff help you with your device, this is a pretty good option. But, I suspect that this is not an option for many of us. There are some web/mail host services that provide Exchange Server services to individuals, however.
  
• Proprietary Client: A number of these are popping up these days. Good Technology for enterprise solutions probably comes to mind. But, there are also add-on clients from Google and Microsoft itself. I’m not a fan of this solution. It is just one more piece of software to take up valuable RAM space on my Pocket PC or Smartphone. And, it is redundant since we already have Inbox.
  
• Webmail: This is an if-fy area. Some work, some kind-of work, and some just don’t work at all. Of the big three (Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!), I like Yahoo!’s mobile web email solution the best. However, it is also the only one that does not have session persistence. So, I am forever slowly and painfully entering my account name and password.
  
• POP3: Windows Mobile Inbox retrieves POP3 email fairly well. The problem is that email maangement doesn’t seem to work (at least for me). Deleting email does not delete from the server (though some people say it deletes things they want to keep). Sent mail is not saved. And, if you like to keep lots of email on the server, don’t try to send email from Windows Mobile Inbox using SMTP. Everytime you try to send email, Inbox will try to check all the POP3 email first (hundreds or thousands of messages) before sending email out through the SMTP gateway. Google’s Gmail provides POP3 support. Yahoo! provides POP3 support if you upgrade to Yahoo! Mail Plus for $19.95/year. And, I still have no idea what happened to Microsoft’s Hotmail/Live Mail. It kind of sort of works with Inbox. But, it doesn’t look like POP3 to me.
  
• IMAP4: This work moderately well though delete and savings sent mail doesn’t work for me. However, sending mail using SMTP works as expected (mail goes out without rechecking the server’s incoming mail again). This is my personal preference for Windows Mobile email service.
  

GSPlayer: Free Audio Player for Pocket PC
I’m going to try to find and mention at least one freeware or Open Source application each week. No shareware, trialware, etc. Just no strings attached stuff (maybe an online registration required now and then). Here’s the first one for 2007…

GreenSoftware GSPlayer

This Open Source audio player for the Windows Mobile Pocket PC can play a number of formats including MP3 (of course), Ogg Vorbis, and SHOUTcast streaming. It also has a 10-band equalizer for MP3 playback and a sleep timer among other features.