Mike Harsh’s Blog : Silverlight Including .NET Support - Download it Today

Silverlight Including .NET Support - Download it Today

Last year at MIX we announced that we we%u2019re integrating .NET development into Silverlight and today we’ve released a version with .NET support. This is a huge milestone for the team and we’ve been working obscene hours to get this ready. There’s a nice set of other new features in this build as well. Windows Media streaming support. VideoBrush, playlist support, media markers and script commands, support for uncompressing .zip files, improved text rendering, ink support and z-index. One of my favorite new features is the ability to extend the XAML language using managed code. TO test this functionality we’ve created a set of controls that you can download and use. You can download the new builds, the controls, a set of new samples and *way* more information on our new community site Silverlight.net.

Some highlights from the community site:

Refreshed samples
Update Quickstarts
A great set of How Do I videos
New Silverlight forums
What’s new in the Silverlight Beta (Includes breaking change information for updating your February CTP samples)

I’m giving a talk about Silverlight media integration on Tuesday but after that I will update all the samples on my blog to work with the Silverlight Beta plug-in. Until then you may see a script error on my blog page.

Oh, my… Of course, the rumors have been piling up in regards to this event for several weeks now, but until the actual event took place, it still seemed to good to be true.

Apparently it’s not.

Nice! Thanks, Microsoft!!!

In 2000 I saw C# and knew at once that (wanted to set aside c++ and write exclusively in, and about, .net.

Today I saw Silverlight (WPF/E) and had a similar feeling.I believe that, in 1-2 years:

There will be few reasons to develop in WPF
There will be few (no?) reasons to develop in Asp .NET-AJAX
JavaScript will be dead

Recovering Windows Mobile Outlook Data?
Reader D.K. asks: not sure who to ask on this one, but on an htc device (imate sp5) - do you know if there’s a way to recover contacts on there if the device had them wiped off by outlook via activesync over usb? i have not done anythign to the device since it was wiped, im hoping that the data is still on there, but needs to be reassociated with its metadata.

First, ouch! I’m not even sure how something like that can happen. But, I won’t ask. I’ll assume some unfortunate accidental user error was the cause. Second, the data may or may not be there. But, I don’t know of any utility off-hand to recover from that sort of error. Third, this is a good time to get on the soapbox for a general message to my fellow users of Windows Mobile Devices…

Two weeks ago when writing about the recently released Windows Mobile 6 Reference Model, I noted that none of the four user categories noted in the manual included a consumer end-user group. Microsoft designed Windows Mobile for enterprise use, not for individual consumers. The by-product of this design focus means that there is an implicit assumption that the Windows Mobile user is part of an enterprise that uses Microsoft Exchange Server and has an IT staff that performs tasks like configuration, backup, and restore. If you, like me, bought one as an individual consumer without enterprise support, you need to be prepared to do things like think about issues like disaster recovery and business continuance as an individual without supporting staff. I plan to discuss how I’ve tried to plan for my own DR/BC in a post or two later this week.

A Blackberry in Your Windows Mobile Device
The Microsoft Windows Mobile interface and applications just don’t get any respect. When Palm decided to create a Windows Mobile version of the Treo, it made it contingent on Microsoft letting them allowing a custom interface to be used in place of Microsoft’s default one. Why? Palm’s is arguably faster and more intuitive to use. Now, RIMM (of Blackberry fame and network outage infamy) announced that they are working with AT&T Wireless to bring the Blackberry push-email capability to select Windows Mobile 6 devices. And, yep, they are bringing their own custom interface to swap with the Windows Mobile one.

RIM Announces New BlackBerry Application Suite for Windows Mobile based Devices

One interesting aspect of RIM’s press release is the inclusion of a quote from at AT&T Wireless Executive Director. I wonder if any of the network feature modifications AT&T made for the Apple iPhone will be used with the Blackberry app for Windows Mobile?

Backup Outlook 2003 Data on Windows XP (Because Windows Mobile Has No External Backup!)
Two days ago I responded to a question from D.K. who somehow managed to wipe out Contacts in both Outlook and a Windows Mobile Smartphone. This is easy to imagine since most people don’t back-up their Outlook data (or anything else for that matter) and Windows Mobile Smartphones have never had a backup via ActiveSync or to a storage card provided by Microsoft. Microsoft assumes that the persistent storage in the Smartphone (and Pocket PCs starting with Windows Mobile 5) keeps data safe from a battery rundown while the IT staff behind an Exchange server keeps your data safe from accidental erasure. But, oh wait, not everyone has an IT staff and Exchange Server to backup their data. Doh! So, why did Microsoft remove even the so-so ActiveSync backup/restore for the Pocket PC too? Remember, Windows Mobile devices are not intended for individual consumers. Look at the Windows Mobile 6 reference guide again. See the users categories? There isn’t one for consumers.

So, if you, like me, do not have IT staff and Exchange Server to safeguard your data, you better learn to be your own system administrator if you plan to keep using a Windows Mobile device. You can start by getting into the habit of making regular backups of your Outlook data so you don’t lose everything one day like D.K. The first thing you need to do is find it. Microsoft created ridiculously deep and confusing directory structures that make it difficult to find files (although Windows Vista’s find helps a lot). Let’s start with what most people use: Windows XP and Outlook 2003 (I’ll cover Windows Vista and Outlook 2007 later). Here’s how to find your data.

• Start Outlook 2003
  
• File
  
• Data File Management…
  
• Most people at home will have one data file named Personal Folders
  
• Open Folder
  
• Windows Explorer opens up to the directory with your Outlook 2003 files
  
• Copy all the files from this folder to one or more backup devices
  
• I back up my files to multiple places including a USB hard disk drive, CompactFlash card, and a USB Flash Drive. You might even want to burn a CD-R or DVD+R disc once a year or so.
  

You might also want to consider investing in a Windows Mobile backup software from Sprite or Spb that creates backup files on a flash card in your device. And, again, you should copy the file off the device to your PC in case you lose or destroy your mobile device.

Become a WiFi Provider from Your Home
Well, this was totally unexpected…

Time Warner Cable Teams Up With FON For Home-Based Wi-Fi

Who would have thought that the 2nd largest cable modem service provider in the US would team up with FON (not to be confused with Sprint whose stock ticker symbol is FON) to allow its customers to install a FON WiFi Router/AP to provide public wireless. FON’s router has a dual access configuration that lets you have a secure internal LAN separate from the public WiFi LAN service it provides.

GrandCentral Adds Mobile Interface
GrandCentral, the free web voicemail system (among other features) added a mobile web interface to let you check on voicemail from your phone or PDA. You can it at:

http://grandcentral.com/mobile

Backup Outlook 2007 Data Files in Windows Vista
My main Outlook data still lives on a Windows XP PC. So, I had to take a look at my Windows Vista box to check on how Outlook behaves over there. It turns out that the steps I described for Outlook 2003 running under Windows XP remains the same for Vista with Outlook 2007. Outlook did not get the new Ribbon interface that Word, Excel, and PowerPoint got in their 2007 versions. So, the menus are pretty much the same between Outlook 2003 and 2007.

One thing you might be thinking, though, is why not just use Vista’s powerful search function. Um, yeah. Go ahead, try it. Click Start->Search and then type “Outlook”. Now, extend that string to “Outlook.pst”. Not very helpful, is it? Unfortunately, Vista’s search is powerful but not smart (Mac OS X Tiger’s Spotlight is very smart by comparison if you want to see how a smart search should work).

The main thing to remember is to sync your Windows Mobile device to Outlook regularly (at least once a day) and backup your Outlook data to an external storage device regularly too (at least once a week).

Just in time for MIX 07, we’ve released two new online publications that should appeal to attendees and those who plan to listen in on MIX sessions over the web: one is a new O’Reilly Short Cut on Microsoft Silverlight and the other is a Rough Cuts edition of our forthcoming Programming ASP.NET AJAX.

Getting Started with Silverlight is written by Microsoft MVP and Silverlight insider Shawn Wildermuth and provides a succint introduction to one of the technologies that will be in the spotlight all week at MIX. Microsoft will release the first beta of this new cross-browser plug-in at the show. If the beta contains previously unannounced features, no one will be especially suprised. In the meantime, reading Shawn’s Short Cut and trying out his code examples are a good way to get familiar with Silverlight.

We also figure that this is a good time to unveil the Rough Cuts Edition of Programming ASP.NET AJAX by ASP.NET MVP and JavaScript guru Christian Wenz. ASP.NET AJAX with its Extensions, Library, community Toolkit, and Futures CTP, has become a fundamental tool for Microsoft developers who want to build Web 2.0-style web applications. The book’s organization mirrors the packaging of ASP.NET AJAX itself, with separate sections devoted to each of its components. It’s also loaded with script and markup you can use. Experienced ASP.NET developers will want to read the entire book, but developers who remain committed to other platforms can zero in on the parts of the AJAX framework, such as the Microsoft AJAX Library, that are relevant to their immediate needs.

Both titles are published as PDFs, of course. This means you can download them onto your laptop and read them on your flight to Las Vegas.

The much-hyped (and sold-out) Microsoft MIX 07 conference gets underway next week in Las Vegas, starting with an evening mash-up brainstorming session and social hour on Sunday , April 28, and ending Wednesday afternoon, May 2 with a MIX Chat lunch, at which attendees get to mingle with speakers, Microsoft staff and panelists. In between, we can expect a flurry of product announcements from Microsoft and others, and we can hope for greater clarity about the Company’s plans for its Windows Live platform and for it’s recently announced Silverlight cross-browser plug-in.

I’ll be there along with an estimated 4000 other developers, designers, members of the media and what Microsoft calls “business decision makers” (BDMs, for short). There’s no exhibit hall, and thus no booth duty, so for once I’ll be MIXing along with everyone else, listening closely to what attendees have to say, and looking for the next big thing.

Look for me in my new black O’Reilly shirt (picture to come), in the Sandbox, in sessions, at the MIX Chat, in the Press Room, at the parties. And though I’m clearly a trailing indicator, I’ll be on Facebook and Twitter as well, and blogging whenever I have the time here at the O’Reilly Windows DevCenter. If you have the urge to write, be sure to ask me about opportunities at O’Reilly for sharing your knowledge in blogs, podcasts, videos, Short Cuts and books. The possibilities are endless.

See you there!

VioLet Composer
VioLet Composer is an Open Source application for Microsoft Windows that describes itself as: is a tool for writing music from scratch using only a single x86 compatible PC with a soundcard. The latest alpha release was made just yesterday (April 14).

Firefox & Windows Media Player Finally Make Nice :-)
I tend to use Firefox as my main browser when using Microsoft Windows (XP or Vista). It always annoyed me that Windows Media just didn’t play nice with Firefox. However, it looks like those days are over. Head over to Microsoft Port 25 for the announcement of…

Windows Media Player Plug-in for Firefox

Google Presentation (PowerPoint-like app) Hype
There’s been a lot of talk on the net about Google’s Eric Schmidt announcing that a presentation manager (PowerPoint-like) web application that will be available within a few months. The hype is that the Google Docs (word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation manager) will be an Office killer. I was there along with thousands of other people at the Web 2.0 Expo keynote presentation yesterday when Schmidt showed a few plain slides of black text on a white background before making the announcement. And, I think that most of the hype in the news is just that: hype. When asked, Schmidt himself said that it is Google Docs is not positioned to be an Office killer. He considers is complementary (as do I).

HandBrake 0.8.5b1 Released for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
First there was HandBrake (the premiere Open Source DVD to MPEG4 solution for Mac OS X), then it slowed down, then MediaFork picked up the slack, then they announced regrouping and working together. And, now, here’s the latest version:

HandBrake 0.8.5b1

While it is great to see the project reinvigorated, the big news, I think, is that it is no longer just a Mac OS X based project. There is also a Windows and a Linux installer available with this release (as mentioned by the MediaFork people earlier in its development).

Ubuntu Linux 7.04 Can Read and Write NTFS Partitions
This blog item kind of falls out of the normal categories I allow myself here. But, it is definitely important and needs to be mentioned. The highly regarded Ubuntu Linux released version 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) earlier this week. The big news for those of us who use both Linux and Windows is that Ubuntu 7.04 can both read and write NTFS partitions…

Read Accessing the Files on Your Windows Partition

Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Release Candidate
If you are currently running Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 (Service Pack 1) Beta-2, take a look at your web administration page’s event status area. You have less than 50 days before that version expires. Fortunately, Microsoft provided a…

Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Release Candidate

…earlier this week which provides another 150 days of reprieve. We can only hope that the production version is released way before this version expires.

My last blog entry, Why Linux Will Never Take Over the Desktop, got a lot of pushback from Linux folks. Now I’m back with more reasons why Linux will never overtake Windows.

Streets & Trips 2007 vs. Pocket Streets
I never understood why Microsoft kept creating new map file types with each new release of MapPoint/Streets & Trips that were incompatible with earlier versions of Pocket Streets. Now add one more data point to this sillyness. Microsoft stopped releasing Pocket Streets after the 2005 map editions. However, Streets & Trips 2007 can still create maps for Pocket Streets. The gotcha? It doesn’t seem compatible with the version I’m running on my Windows Mobile 5 devices. Ah well. I really do need to find an affordable map applications for the Pocket PC and Smartphone that works with a Bluetooth GPS. Any recommendations?

Nokia N95
I finally saw the Nokia N95 smartphone up close and personal. And, it is quite a phone. The top (left in this phone) slides out to reveal the multimedia controls. The bottom (right on this photo) slides out to reveal a dialing keyboard. The lack of a QWERTY thumb keyboard is the only shortcoming to this otherwise remarkable looking phone. I wish Nokia had used an LCD soft keypad like Microsoft does in Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition devices and provided a pull out QWERTY keyboard at the bottom instead.

The web browser appeared to render much faster than my Windows Mobile Smartphone or Pocket PC Phone Edition devices. It uses a full-screen desktop-like view with a thumbnail navigation window that zooms in like the Microsoft Research Deepfish experimental browser does. Of course, the difference is that this is available in a production Nokia device. That said, the device is unavailable from carriers in the US at the moment. Navigation between applications seemed very crisp.

Speaking about applications, Nokia announced their Series 60 Web Runtime and Widgets for S60 phones today. I’ll have more to say about that later.

Tellme By Mobile
Microsoft bought the telephony company Tellme.com (best known for its VoiceXML work and early telephone speech recognition work). Tellme announced Tellme By Mobile during a keynote demonstration at the Web 2.0 Expo this morning. This client side software provides some added features when using it with Tellme’s backend voice server.

Couple of observations though. First, the service is only available to AT&T Wireless and Sprint PCS customers. The second observation is even more interesting for a Microsoft owned company though. Not being an AT&T or Sprint customer turned out to not be the main roadblock for me to try out this application. The problem is that I use devices based on Microsoft Windows Mobile which is not supported by the Microsoft owned Tellme application. In the immortal words of Homer Simpson, “Doh!” So, if you are fortunate enough to own a supported phone (including models from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, LG, and RIMM (as in Blackberry)), check out the Tellme application. It looked pretty impressive during the demo this morning.

A Few Thoughts on the Nokia Web Run-Time for S60
I saw a demo of the Nokia Web Run-Time for S60 (aka Widgets) this past Monday. It is an interesting development technology for the Nokia Series 60 (S60) based phones of the future (current S60 models will not support it). The idea is to leverage web developer skills to create applications for S60 phones. Applications are developed using HTML, CSS, and Javascript. The source code is compiled, placed into a Zip file, and copied over to the phone for installation there.

It seems like a sure-fire way to encourage quick generation of new applications for the next S60 models. There are a couple of interesting issues though. First, given the inherent insecurity of most browser based applications, will the Web Run-Time create security issues for the S60 phones? Second, the apps are installed unsigned. This would seem to eliminate the possibility for those with restrictive mobile phone service providers from participating in the presumed burst of S60 applications. Finally, how will all those owners of current generation S60 phones feel about seeing cool new web applets appear that they can’t use?

That said, I’m looking forward to seeing the S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 based phones appear with Web Run-Time. It might give Windows Mobile 6 and even the Apple iPhone a run for the money.

ActiveSync vs. Zone Alarm Revisited
Reader H.D. wrote: Just wanted to thank you for this post: ActiveSync 4.1 for Microsoft Windows Mobile 5 devices released. It might be old - but its just solved my Xda sync problem instantly. The MS site implied I was going to have to upgrade Zone Alarm.

Microsoft Windows seemingly unending exploits requiring firewalls, anti-virus, anti-spyware, spam filters, and other security bandaids causes all kinds of problems for its users. My old (November 21, 2005) advice for getting ActiveSync to work with PCs running the Zone Alarm firewall seems to still have some useful information. If ActiveSync stops working, take a look at your various security options to see if one of them might be interfering with ActiveSync’s network access.

I’ve found that after establishing a partnership between a PC and a Windows Mobile device, syncing wirelessly using Bluetooth seems to be more stable than syncing over USB for some devices (my i-Mate K-JAM locks ActiveSync when its syncs over USB but not over Bluetooth).

Just getting caught-up on some LONG overdue blog reading when I stumbled across this gem from Jeroen Frijters,

IKVM.NET Weblog

Via Lorenzo Barbieri (via Google blog search, I don’t read Italian) I learned that Microsoft decided to drop support for J# and the Java Language Conversion Assistant in the next version of Visual Studio (code named Orcas).

I’m glad they finally realised the futility of competing with IKVM.NET ;-)

*YES*! :D

A few days late on this one, but it seems nobody else in the O’ReillyNet Community has announced this, so it could very easily be news to a lot of folks. As such,

[IronPython] IronPython v1.1 Released!

From: Dino Viehland
Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2007 2:44 PM
To: Discussion of IronPython
Subject: IronPython v1.1 Released!

Hello IronPython Community,

We have just released IronPython 1.1. It started out as the work on v1.0 started to wind down. We could not get the features ready before we started locking down for the v1.0 release but we’re happy we can finally include them - as will be our summer interns who worked on some of these features and many of the modules during their stay with us. After that we have been looking at the most requested bug fixes and new features from the community. Based upon this feedback we’ve fixed a large number of bugs, greatly improved compatibility of some of the built-in modules, and a few other new features such as XML doc comments and the array module.

IronPython v1.1 is a minor update to IronPython including both new functionality as fixes for the most voted for bugs. The new functionality in v1.1 includes several new modules (array, SHA, MD5, and select), support for .NET XML Doc comments within the help system and doc tags, as well as support for loading cached pre-compiled modules. This release improves compatibility with CPython and gives the .NET developer a better interactive experience.

You can download the release from: http://www.codeplex.com/IronPython/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=2573

We’d like to thank everyone in the community for your bug reports and suggestions that helped make this a better release: Arman0, Anthony Baxter, Christopher Baus, Christian Muirhead, Coleyc, Diane Trout, Doubleyewdee, Eloff, J. Merrill, JoeSox, Jörgen Stenarson, Michael Foord, Mike Raath, Py_Sunil, Seo Sanghyeon, Sylvain Hellegouarch, sophros, Tarlano, and Whit537.

More complete list of changes and bug fixes:

For my next book, “The Big Book of Windows Hacks,” I’ve just written a hack about how to run Ubuntu inside Windows Vista. Great fun, great hack, and it’s great to be able to run Linux on a Vista machine. But it’s showed me, once again, why Linux will never take over the desktop.

PowerShellIDE
My second favorite new-ish Microsoft free tool is PowerShell (my first favorite is a tie between Virtual Server 2005 R2 and Virtual PC 2007). If PowerShell has caught your interest too, you might be interested in this free IDE (Integrated Developer Environment for it)…

PowerShellIDE 1.03

GAIM has a new name: Pidgin (Instant Messaging)
The GAIM Open Source multiplatform (Windows & Linux) multi-instant messenger (IM) protocol application has a new name and URL:

Pidgin

The name was changed because of a name space and legal collision with AOL’s AIM. Pidgin works with a number of popular IM protocols including AIM/ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, and Jabber.

Jaiku: Twitter Wannabe? Twitter Killer? Or Something Else?
Want to express yourself in 140 characters or less? There are at least two well-known web services that let you do just that. I mentioned Twitter a while back. Now, I’m trying out…

Jaiku

Jaiku has a few more features like the ability to add other RSS feeds (including Twitter) to your stream. But, I think Twitter is easier to read with its slightly larger font. I find this whole co-presence idea interesting. It really does play into the notion that in an Attention Economy privacy is being defined as openness.

How To Get Data from MySQL or PostgreSQL to Microsoft Excel
For some reason many people are surprised when I show Microsoft Excel importing data from a MySQL database server using ODBC. If you would like to amaze and amuse your friends by doing this too, head over to Microsoft’s Port 25 blog at…

Connecting Office Applications to MySQL and PostgreSQL via ODBC

Attending Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco This Week
I’ll be in San Francisco attending the O’Reilly/CMP Web 2.0 Expo this week. So, my blog posts may be lighter than usual this week (not daily). If you are at the Expo and see my name (Todd Ogasawara) on a name tag, say hello!

Want a 61 Page Windows Mobile 6 Reference Manual?
If you want to get a soft copy of the new 61 page (PDF) Windows Mobile 6 Reference Manual, head over to Jason Langridge’s blog (Microsoft’s Mr. Mobile) for a download link. The manual describes 6’s features in various categories. The New Features By Audience section starts on PDF page 4 and is categorized by Mobile Operators, OEMs, Business Customers, IT Professional, and Developers. Note Consumers is not a category considered at all. The bad news is that reading the first four columns of features may put you to sleep. The good news (features) tends to be in the Developers column. If developers take advantage like AJAX support, SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition, and the new Sound API, we should see some interesting 3rd party apps in the future. But, out of the box, 6 doesn’t look like anything to write home about (and remember, I say this as a person who likes Windows Mobile).

There are a lot of screencaps to illustrate the features as they are described in detail throughout the rest of he document.

Let’s hope we see something more interesting in Windows Mobile 7. Maybe, the Apple iPhone and Nokia N95 will inspire Microsoft. Until then, 6 depends on the talent and marketing skills of 3rd party developers to make the platform interesting.

What Happens When You Search for “Windows Mobile 6? on Amazon?
I guess I’m just easily amused. It occurred to me that Windows Mobile 6 is generating zero buzz (or at least so little that I don’t see it). The iPhone buzz has died down for the moment (too much lead time between its announcement and summer availability). The phone that seems to be getting a lot of buzz lately is from good ol’ Nokia: The Nokia N95. Built-in GPS, 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics (same as used by Sony’s digital cameras), nice new mini-browser paradigm, installable applications (unlike the iPhone), and a nice form factor. If the Nokia PC Suite can sync half decently with a Windows or Mac OS X box (I’d lean towards a Mac for syncing), it will get very high on the list of devices to replace my current Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone.

In any case, I decided to search for “Windows Mobile” on Amazon. The first result was my friend Frank McPherson’s great book How to Do Everything with Windows Mobile (How to Do Everything) (no doubt due to superb technical editing :-) . But, what happens when you search for “Windows Mobile 6? instead? Did you guess that the first hit would be the BlackBerry 8800 Phone (Cingular)? Yep, if you search for “Windows Mobile 6? on Amazon, it pops up a RIM Blackberry phone as its first hit. WiMo6 just can’t get any respect :-)

Another Pocket PC Bites the Dust: Dell Drops the Axim
Brighthand reported that Dell No Longer Offering Any Axim Models today. I hopped over to Dell’s website, and, yep, the Axim Pocket PC line is no longer there in the Handhelds, Tablet PCs, and GPS section. In fact, what you do find in the Dell Handhelds section are Palm devices (not the Treo though). Axim accessories are still there though.

The Axim X50 and X51 were great Pocket PCs. My X50v still works fine and gets daily use as a portable news and email device connected to a WiFi network. It will be interesting to see whether this means Dell is getting ready to introduce another Pocket PC based device or is simply dropping the Pocket PC form factor.

Smartphone Calculator Keypad Shortcuts
The Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone calculator looks (and is) awfully weak. However, while it is an “old skool” 4 function calculator, it is reasonably easy to use if you know its keypad shortcuts. The Smartphone’s navigation rose provides the four functions as well as the equal function. Press the top of the nav-pad for + (add), press down for - (subtract), left for / (divide), right for X (multiply) and the center for = (equal; complete the calculation).

The bottom-left key on the numeric keypad (labeled * T9) types in a decimal point (.) while the bottom-right key (labeled #) can be used for addition (+).

And, that is pretty much all the Microsoft provided calculator can do on the Smartphone. No square root, no trig functions, nothing. Very 1971 “old skool”.

This e-petition states: “We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to promote the use of Open Document Format within the UK government.” The deadline for UK citizens and residents to sign the e-petition is 19 May 2007.

I had seen this mentioned in Simon Phipps’ SunMink blog and in Bob Sutor’s Open Blog in late February, but (not being eligible to sign) I had failed to make a note of it at the time.

The OpenDocument Format Alliance’s April newsletter (PDF) is here, or if you’d like to read it in HTML, the OpenMalaysia blog has reproduced it.

Rob Weir has published Part III of his excellent series on The Case for a Single Document Format.

A comment posted to Groklaw on 6 April said, “I have an email apparently originating from Microsoft asking people to support their opposition to California A.B. 1668… by writing to the California Assemblymen involved…” O(blog)N remarks, “This bill is common sense. This will be in the best interest of any organization, any industry, and technology in general… Allow me a moment to explain why…”

The list of applications supporting the OpenDocument Format is growing so rapidly that the team at the OpenDocument Fellowship is having trouble keeping their Applications List up to date, and it’s a daunting task to review all the new applications.

Daniel Carrera briefly reviews one of the new additions to the list: Peepel, “a web-based office suite, [that] competes with Google Docs and similar services… Unlike Google, Peepel gives you a ‘virtual desktop’ where you can have several documents open in a single browser window…”

In February, the IDABC unit of the European Commission held a one-day workshop on Open Document Exchange Formats. There was a strong consensus among the EU Member State administrations on the need to use an open document exchange format (ODEF), on “openness” being an essential criteria of ODEF, and the need to avoid competing standards. Youc an read the conclusions here.

A UNESCO report (PDF), “Ethical Implications of Emerging Technologies: A Survey,” recommends that UNESCO support open standards and protocols that are generated through democratic processes not dominated by large corporations. The use of OpenDocument Format and other open formats is also encouraged as they help mitigate lock-in to certain technologies.

avast! 4 Home Edition Anti-Virus
I’ve been having problems with Microsoft OneCare on an PC running XP and Grisoft Free Edition on a PC running Vista. I have a 3 PC license for McAfee but it (like Norton AntiVirus) seems awfully heavy. Moreover, McAfee insists on putting up all kinds of useless and annoying status messages. So, I decided to try the free…

avast! 4 Home Edition

Trend Micro Housecall
I mentioned in an earlier blog that I was looking for something to replace Microsoft OneCare on a PC running Windows XP and replace Grisoft’s AVG Anti-Virus on a PC running Windows Vista. Although I knew it wasn’t a replacement, I thought I would finally take a look at Trend Micro’s web-based anti-virus scanner…

Housecall

After running for hours on a test PC, Windows Firewall blocked it and it stopped dead in its tracks by preventing it from issuing a report. Oh well, next…

Speedtest.net: Check Your Broadband Speed
There are a number sites that provide an estimate of your broadband speed. However,…

Speedtest.net

…has the advantage of having a nice UI with good feedback during testing. It claims my system has 4.9Mbps downstream and 312Kbps upstream speed with a 70ms latency.

auch - audio–checker
Here’s an interesting FOSS app that describes itself as s a gnuplot-like program to visualize harmonics and test the effect of digital and analog filters…

auch - audio–checker

It might seem a bit on the esoteric side, but go take a look at the graphical representation of sound it produces. The Windows version has been out for a while now. The Mac OS X version (Tiger only) is labeled as experimental.

Microsoft support forums are abuzz with people complaining that Vista boots and launches applications far slower than XP — even though Microsoft said a primary Vista goal was faster boots. Have you noticed Vista booting slower than XP?

Email Documents to Google Docs
I’m sure the feature has been around for a while but I only noticed this evening that you can create document files in Google Docs by sending email to it. After logging in to Google Docs, click on the Upload link to read detailed information about how you can bring in foreign files (Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel, for example) into Google Docs. If you move your eyes down the page a bit more, you’ll see instructions on how to create text documents by email (no spreadsheets yet). It works like this: Google assigns a unique email address to you in the form of username-secretstring@prod.writely.com (Google bought Writely to get their web based word processing techology). You can then either send a simple text email file or an attachment. The text on the subject line becomes the Google Docs document name. And, the text body or attached document file becomes the document text (translated to HTML).

The availability of QWERTY thumb keyboards on current generation phones makes this a simple and convenient way to quickly create easily accessible documents without the need to sync the mobile device by tethering it to a desktop or notebook computer. And, since I view the battle with Microsoft’s ActiveSync and Windows Mobile Device Center to be a losing one, anything that gets me away from those sync solutions is a good thing.

Bev Howard’s Pocket PC Radar Finder
I tried to post a response to a question about weather radar images on Windows Mobile devices to a Microsoft newsgroup earlier this evening. But, the new Microsoft Mail in Windows Vista decided it didn’t have a clue on how to post it to the NNTP newsgroup. So, I figured I’d mention this very cool Pocket PC formatted site here created by a fellow Windows Mobile MVP, Bev Howard:

Pocket PC Radar Finder

Bev’s mobile friendly web page lets you quickly and easily find animated radar maps that can be viewed on your Pocket PC (or desktop for that matter). Check it out. Very cool and useful.

Microsoft Device Emulator 2.0-Standalone Release
Microsoft released a new version of their…

Microsoft Device Emulator 2.0 — Standalone Release

…on April 4. The release information lists 4 major changes (the 5th item is really for Microsoft - Customer Experience Improvement Program). The most important change is probably the performance increase.

Safely Disposing of Old Handheld PCs?
Reader T.W. writes: Hello, my name is […] and I have a very odd question. I work for […] and I happen to have lots of Sharp PV-6000 Pocket PC and the university doesn’t support these anymore. I am in charge of putting together older computers to put into this yard sale and I have to enter but I need to know something about them. Being that this is a state college before anything can be sold it has to undergo a Department of Defense wipe that wipes out the hard drive and I can’t help but notice that there is no way to put in a drive. So my first question is I was told that they wipe after the battery dies, is this true? I have one that I have had unplugged for about 2 weeks and I can’t get the battery to run down, mainly because I don’t have the time at work to sit and play with it. My next question is if it happens to not wipe the information how could I wipe the hard drive? Before they are sold I have to make sure that there is no State information on it and I am not sure how to go about this. Okay so now that I have asked a lot of questions and confused you (I’m sure) please let me know how to go about this. If I am going into about a computer that you know nothing about I would please like any information you can give me about who to get in touch with that might know. I have checked on Sharp’s website and they don’t have any info.

First, let me say the following weasel words :-) My response does not constitute advice and does definitely not ensure compliance with any DoD recommended procedures. The main problem is the confounding of assumptions made. So, let’s look at these issues…

• The Sharp PV-6000 is not a Pocket PC. It is a Handheld PC and a rather large one at that weighing in at several pounds and about the size of a small notebook computer.
  * The DoD approved wiping procedures mentioned applies to hard drives. The Handheld PC does not have an internal hard drive. It might have a removable PC Card or CF form factor hard drive that was modestly popular before flash drive sizes increased dramatically. But, these removable storage cards can be dealt with separately. If one needs to follow DoD policy for this particular device, you need to look at their procedure for ensuring data deletion from volatile memory (if such a procedure exists). Volatile memory, btw, loses all its data when power is removed from it.
  
• There shouldn’t be a need to let the PV-6000’s batteries run down. The Handheld PCs I used (including the Vadem Clio that is very similar to the PV-6000) all had removable batteries. Removing the battery should return all settings to factory defaults. An alternative is to check if the PV-6000 had a specific hard reset procedure.
  

Use the T-Mobile Dash Smartphone as Modem for a Mac (sort of)
If you have a T-Mobile Dash (or some other Windows Mobile Smartphone) and a Mac, take a look at this article and video demo by Brian Jepson…

HOWTO: Tether Your Mac and T-Mobile Dash with Parallels

He explains how a Dash can be used as a wireless modem for an Intel based Mac with Parallels for Mac (virtualization tool) running Microsoft Windows XP as a Guest OS.

T-Mobile Drops the MDA: Is the Pocket PC Phone Edition Doomed?
Too melodramatic a title, I know.

T-Mobile has never had much of a Windows Mobile line-up to start with. They recently dropped the only Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition model they carried: The MDA. This leaves them with two Windows Mobile Smartphone models: The SDA and the Dash.

The most likely reason for dropping the model is because T-Mobile is getting ready to introduce a Windows Mobile 6 Pocket PC Phone Edition (now called Professional Edition) to their lineup. But, wouldn’t it be interesting if they were the first of the mobile carriers to drop the Pocket PC Phone Edition altogether. Ok, it is unlikely. But still, this is something that will happen in the next year or two IMHO.

Paul Graham made a simple statement that is stirring up a lot of commentary on the net…

Microsoft is Dead

His conclusion is: But it’s gone now. I can sense that. No one is even afraid of Microsoft anymore. They still make a lot of money–so does IBM, for that matter. But they’re not dangerous. He makes a pretty interesting case for his statement in his blog and provides four reasons for its demise: Google, Ajax, Broadband Internet, and Apple Mac OS X.

I have a different take on this subject though. Here’s my premise: Microsoft is a big company and different components are in different stages of age and health (not necessarily correlated, btw). So, here’s a start to a health report on the various parts of the Microsoft Community/Ecosystem. Feel free to jump in with your own health estimate on parts I mention or parts I left out. I’m structuring my list more-or-less on Microsoft’s own list of Products & Related Technologies.

VIM: Vi Editor
If you grew up on UNIX or Linux, the venerable vi editor is probably still a mainstay in your toolset. You don’t have to use UNIX or Linux to use this lightning fast text editor. There is an enhanced Open Source version available for many operating systems.

VIM The Editor

Baen Free Library: Science Fiction Books in Various File Formats
This blog entry introduces a little wrinkle to my coverage of freeware and Open Source applications for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. This is something I’ve been wanting to add to my coverage area for a while: Free downloadable content. First up in this category…

Baen Free Library

How To Install MySQL or PostgreSQL on Microsoft Windows
The two best known Open Source relational database products are MySQL and PostgreSQL. We generally associate both databases with Linux (the “M” in LAMP is MySQL). However, both products can also be installed and run on Microsoft Windows. Microsoft’s Port 25 site commissioned two How-To papers that gives you step-by-step instructions on installing these two SQL database server products on Windows. You can find and download the PDF files from the links to Microsoft’s Port 25 site below…

Candy Crisis (game)
Here’s an Open Source game originally developed for Mac OS X and then ported to Microsoft Windows.

Candy Crisis

It looks like an action-puzzle type game somewhat related to the Tetris genre. The game requires a registration code. But, it looks like you don’t need to provide any personal information. The username and code are freely available one of the site’s pages at…

Candy Crisis Registration Information

Gubb: Web List Manager
Calling Gubb a web list manager in the title doesn’t really tell the full story. I only learned about it 3 days ago. But, I’ve really learned to like it a lot during this short period. This is the first tool I’ve had that I can use easily from a desktop (or notebook) computer, a PDA (Pocket PC in my case), or a Smartphone. If your phone doesn’t have a web browser, you can use SMS to manage and read Gubb lists. If you prefer email, go ahead and use an email client to work with Gubb. Its appeal to me lies in its multiplatform and multimodal flexibility.

Microsoft is being sued for deceptive practices for branding PCs a being “Windows Vista Capable,” even though those machines could only run Windows Vista Home Basic, which doesn’t include the most important parts of the new operating system, including Aero. This isn’t an example of lawyers run amok — Microsoft is wrong here.

Audacity Personal DVR for Pocket PC (freeware)
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

Windows Mobile 6 Storage Card Encryption
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.

Pocket PC Today Screen Calendar Tip
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.

Microsoft Live Labs: Deepfish Windows Mobile Browser
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!

gubb.net: Lists to Go
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 them 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.

What’s New for Developers in Windows Mobile 6
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.