Warning: this blog entry is totally self-indulgent, has nothing to do with my books or technology, and there is no good reason for you to read it. Feel free to stop right now….

… There is a great joy, when you spend most of your time on the bleeding edge of technology, in being well behind the curve on some things, and for me that is most often music. I tend to listen to music in extreme phases (ask anyone who has had the misfortune of working next door to me).

When I was at Ziff it was Opera. I’d wanted to learn to like opera since I was a teenagr, and in the early 1990s I immersed myself in Verdi, Puccini, Mozart, and to some degree Wagner (Old joke: the answer is 9W. What is the question. The question is.. “Do you spell your name with a V, herr Wagner?”)

Somewhat later it was jazz, and then blues.

This year, it is grunge( /hip-hop/post-punk/alternative-rock). It’s like opening a small closet and finding a whole new wing of your house.

You may scoff (especially if you’re in your 20s), but until last month, I had never heard of Nirvana, let alone Rage Against the Machine and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Here’s the weekly round-up of Open Source, Freeware, and free web services posted last week over on my personal blog…

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Hotspotr: WiFi Hotspot Finder Google Maps Mashup
Sat, 23 Jun 2007 22:23:16

Read about Hotspotr.com in the July issue of MacWorld magazine. It is WiFi hotspot finder that uses Google Maps as its mapping display. One of the interesting features of the site are the off-the-cuff reviews of the hotspots listed on the site.

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HD Tune 2.53: Disk Drive Status Information
Fri, 22 Jun 2007 23:15:28

HD Tune 2.53 is a freeware Windows utility that provides information about IDE, SCSI, or SATA hard drives. It won’t repair any drive problems. However, it may give you enough information to make an informed decision about dealing with a potentially failing hard drive.

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SendUit: Share Files up to 100M Simply and Privately
Thu, 21 Jun 2007 22:56:34

The folks at Tumblr have another equally simple and equally useful (IMHO) web application.

senduit.com

Here’s what it does… It lets you share files privately without having to go through a lot of setup magic. You upload a file of up to 100MB to their site, set an expiration period (e.g., good for the next 30 minutes), and then give the web link to the upload file to whoever you want to get it. That’s it. Simple and useful.

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KeyJnote 0.10.0: Presentation Software That Uses PDF Files
Wed, 20 Jun 2007 23:15:03

Haven’t tried this one yet. But, it is always good to see a multi-platform Open Source app written in Python (I used to write a lot of small utilities in Python before I switched to Ruby). KeyJnote 0.10.0 isn’t a PowerPoint or OpenOffice.org presentation creation replacement. It takes the output from presentations in PDF format (they recommend Xpdf) and adds features such as highlight boxes and spotlights to the presentation.

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Yahoo! Games Free Online Multiplayer Game List
Tue, 19 Jun 2007 07:00:28

Must be free game list week or something. Here’s Yahoo! Games’ list of 7 free online multiplayer games…

Don’t Pay to Play

Found it on digg.com which has been having an interesting (to say the list) upgrade experience according to Kevin Rose’s digg blog entry.

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YouTube Remixer: Web Video Editor
Mon, 18 Jun 2007 23:01:06

YouTube and Adobe (Premiere Express) released the beta site…

YouTube Remixer

read more

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100 Free (and Legal) Games to Download
Sun, 17 Jun 2007 08:07:34

The digg.com entry says: A List of 100 legal full version games available to download online from all over the web. The list includes free indie games, free to play mmos, once commercial games that are now free to play, hobbyist games, and many more.

100 of the Best Legal Full Version Games You Can Download Online

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Yes, You Can Break a Pocket PC Power Button

First, yes I know that Pocket PCs don’t really have a power button. The button just toggles the device between a low-power suspend mode and active mode. But, let’s just call it a Power Button to simplify life.

The photo above is of my old Compaq iPAQ 3650 Pocket PC. It was released in Fall 1999 and was probably the first Pocket PC that really drew a lot of attention. Unfortunately, mine had two moving parts that wore out a lot quicker than I thought they should: The power button and the stylus release button. I ended up having to turn on the device by using its feature of letting any hardware button activate the underlying application. I used the PHM Suspend PowerToy mentioned a few days ago to turn it off. It finally gave up the ghost in early 2002 after I used it about, hmm, 18 months or so. I had a 3850 by then. But, the 3650 was actually replaced by the a first generation T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition.

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YouTube Mobile Doesn’t Mix with Windows Mobile

YouTube Mobile was released from its exclusive deal with Verizon Wireless this week. Unfortunately, most Windows Mobile devices (at least the ones I have) don’t support the 3GPP video file format. I could swear I had a Windows Mobile Smartphone or two that did. But, I can’t remember which one it is. I tried it with Windows Mobile 2003 2nd Edition, Windows Mobile 5, and Windows Mobile 6 (Smartphone and PDA) devices this evening. None of them could display a YouTube Mobile video.

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How to Turn on a Windows Mobile Smartphone

Every now and I then I hear or read someone advising Windows Mobile Smartphone (aka Standard Edition) users to press and hold the power button until the screen comes on. You could do that. But, I bet your thumb or finger will start hurting after doing that a couple of dozen times. Here’s an easier and less painful way that has worked for every Smartphone I’ve used since the Smartphone 2002 days (1st generation).

1. Press and hold the power button for a two-count (one… two…)


2. Release the power button


3. Wait 4 to 5 seconds. The screen will remain completely blank during this period


4. The screen should suddenly come to life after the waiting period and start up properly

I have no idea why there isn’t some kind of indication (blinking power light or something) during that 4 to 5 second period of nothingness. If someone could explain that to us, I would be grateful :-)

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Opera Mini 4 Beta on a Windows Mobile Pocket PC

I installed the beta release of Opera Mini 4 on a K-JAM Pocket PC Phone Edition (Windows Mobile 5) this evening. I downloaded to a PC and copied the files over to the K-JAM using ActiveSync. Opera Mini is a Java Midlet. So, I used the Midlet Manager to fire up Opera Mini. It went through a lengthy but simple configuration and used my WiFi connection (I don’t have a SIM in the K-JAM) to get to the Interent.

I visited a couple of sites that are not formatted for mobile devices and found that Opera did a pretty good job of rendering the pages to fit both the portrait and landscape screen modes. It got a bit grumpy when I turned off WiFi and didn’t want to surf the net after turning WiFi back on. I had to shut down the Midlet manager and fire it up again to let Opera figure out how to get back to the web.

My main beef is not with Opera but with the general state of Java apps on mobile devices. They always look out of place and don’t conform to the Windows Mobile interface conventions I’m used to.

That said, Opera Mini adds enough value (browsing non-mobile friendly sites on a Windows Mobile device) that I’m keeping it on the K-JAM for a while to test drive it a bit more. I might even install it on the Dash to see how it looks on a smartphone.

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Windows Mobile 6 Professional Edition Still Doesn’t Know What a Phone Number Looks Like
Microsoft keeps telling us design choices such as removing the Pocket PC bottom menu bar area, previously used to good effect by many applications, with the two giant soft keys is to make the user experience and software design experience of the Pocket PC and Smartphone closer. And, yet, as of Windows Mobile 6, they still haven’t given the Pocket PC (AKA Classic Edition and Professional Edition) one very simple and useful feature that has been in the Smartphone (AKA Standard Edition) for years: The ability to recognize any string that looks like a phone number as a phone number and make it a hot link dial-able object.

For example, if you create a Task in Outlook (on the desktop since you can’t create Tasks on a Smartphone… and what’s up with that limitation???) and type in a bunch of names and phone numbers in no special fashion, the phone numbers will appear underlined and can be used to dial the phone on a Smartphone. I hoped the Pocket PC (Professional Edition) would gain this feature with Windows Mobile 6. But, nope. So much for Windows Mobile feature convergence. Guess we have to wait and see what Windows Mobile 7 gives us.

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Windows Mobile 6 Notes Lost its Inked Text Recognize Ability

The Windows Mobile Notes app never seemed to be able to fire on all cylinders from the very beginning. Despite its apparent usefulness, it seems like it didn’t get widely used by most Pocket PC users. For me the main problem was that it didn’t sync reliably with Outlook Notes when I first tried it. And, other applications from a variety of 3rd party developers quickly overtook Notes by providing a lot more useful features and metaphors (think yellow sticky notes).
Notes lost the ability to draw but gained the ability to recognized inked text a few generations ago. Windows Mobile 5 restored the ability to draw in ink again. But, I just noticed that Windows Mobile 6 lost the ability to recognize inked text (it used to be in the Tools menu). It isn’t a big deal, I guess. But, I hate to see Windows Mobile 6 lose a feature. I guess Recognize gets added to the list of dozens of features lost by Windows Mobile over the years.

While I will continue to write for O’Reilly, I did want to let you know that on July 9, 2007, I will begin my new job as “Senior Program Manager” in the Silverlight Development group at Microsoft; working on “building Developer Community.” (My goal is to do for Silverlight some of what Joe Stagner has done for ASP.NET and AJAX and a host of other technologies).

That said, it is my hope that I can remain a reasonably objective and informative voice about this new technology in my writing for O’Reilly. After all, I took this position because of my enthusiasm about Silverlight (and not the other way around), but of course, as a Microsoft employee my opinions and comments must be weighed somewhat differently (where’s that Kool-Aid?). Fortunately, my job is to make Silverlight understandable and usable; not to convince you it is desirable.

In any case, this is my first “real job” in 12 years, so it will be very exciting and consuming, and I will try to document at least some of it in this blog.

The folks I’ve met in and around the Silverlight team are quite extraordinary; and to tell you the truth, I couldn’t be more thrilled to have been offered this position. (Actually, to really tell you the truth, I can’t believe they did give me this job, and maybe you want to check back mid-July to see if they woke up and decided it was all a hideous mistake!)

As part of my job, I will be creating new avenues of communication about Silverlight, both here, and of course through sites and portals and who-knows-what-else at Microsoft. Stay tuned… much to come very quickly, I suspect.

Thanks.

-jesse

CamStudio 2.0: Works Fine with XP but Not Vista
Fri, 15 Jun 2007 21:36:17

CamStudio 2.0 is a free Open Source screen video recording application. It is great for recording activity on your screen for tutorials and demonstrations.

It works great when installed in Windows XP. However, the recorded video breaks up and isn’t usable under Windows Vista. According to its Official Blog, version 2.5 is delayed but in development. Fingers crossed that 2.5 works under Vista!

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CO2Saver: Windows Power Management
Thu, 14 Jun 2007 22:46:16

I’ve been gathering a lot of information lately about reducing my energy consumption for pretty practical reasons: Reduce heat and cost. I even started a little blog to help me keep track of this stuff: GreenTechies.com. So, I was quite interested when I read about…

CO2 Saver

read more

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Yahoo! Web Messenger (Beta)
Wed, 13 Jun 2007 22:07:30

Embattled Yahoo! (is everyone else as surprised as I am that Semel retained the CEO position?) released a new web version of Yahoo! Messenger…

Yahoo! Messenger for the Web (Beta)

It doesn’t have any of the extra features available in the client software version. However, it has the advantage of not needing any download or installation and the usual side effects that result. Since it web based, it may work in some enterprises where IM clients are blocked.

read more

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Google Gmail Slideshow
Tue, 12 Jun 2007 22:16:55

Google first announced a slide web app in April 2007 at the CMP/O’Reilly Web 2.0 Expo. A limited number of Gmail accounts gained the ability to view PowerPoint slide decks from inside a Gmail a few weeks later. And, now, this feature is generally available to all accounts.

read more

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Apple Safari 3.0 (Beta) Browser for Windows
Mon, 11 Jun 2007 19:10:17

read more

Apparently so. Just got a ping from Sylvain regarding the following,

Implementing Silverlight in 21 Days - Miguel de Icaza

The past 21 days have been some of the most intense hacking days that I have ever had and the same goes for my team that worked 12 to 16 hours per day every single day –including weekends– to implement Silverlight for Linux in record time. We call this effort Moonlight.

Needless to say, we believe that Silverlight is a fantastic development platform, and its .NET-based version is incredibly interesting and as Linux/Unix users we wanted to both get access to content produced with it and to use Linux as our developer platform for Silverlight-powered web sites.

*WOW*!!! So much for “an implementation by years end” as was originally the suggested amount of time it would take to implement support. There’s TONS more info at the above linked entry.

Congratulations, Mono Team! GREAT WORK!!!

Update: For all you Debian lovers out there, via a recent post to the Mono Olive DevList, Seo Sanghyeon provides the following intro,

This is a short howto. I’m interested in your experience. The
instruction at http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight is actually
enough. But this howto provides some Debian package names and
workarounds to problems you may encounter.

More goodness at the above linked entry. Thanks, Seo!

Microsoft has agreed to make changes to Vista so that it’s easy to use other search tools instead of Vista’s built-in search. The change will take effect with SP-1 for Vista, the beta of which is due later this year. But just because you’ll be able to change your search tool doesn’t mean you should. Vista’s built-in search easily beats Google’s desktop search.

More Windows Mobile Press Confusion: Maximum PC This Time

Last month I noted the PC World magazine article about Windows Mobile 6 smartphones that incorrectly said that Word Mobile and Excel Mobile on WM6 smartphones could not edit documents. This month iti s Maximum PC magazine’s turn to get it wrong. The Smartphone State of the Union article in the July 2007 issue of Maximum PC includes mini-reviews of many smartphones. Page 44 has a 1/3-page review of the T-Mobile Dash says: You’ll be able to open MS Office documents but not edit them. Given paper publication lag time, this article was probably written way before Windows Mobile 6 became available. Pre-WM6 smartphones did not come with Office Mobile components. So, the review may be speaking of some third party viewing application (but does not clarify this). WM6, however, does provide mobile versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Word and Excel do have edit modes. But, they are just that: Modes. It is not seamless experience like what you find on the desktop or Pocket PC. It is more like old moded vi editor in UNIX. You need to select Edit Mode from the Word or Excel initial menu (the Word menu is shown here). A different menu structure appears at that point and you can edit an existing document.

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Sync-ing a Plain Ol’ Phone with a PC

One of the phones in my household is a Sanyo Katana phone. Although it is not a smartphone, it does have Bluetooth, a camera, and the usual applications that phones have these days. Originally, I paid for web service and photo uploads. But, since those features were rarely used, I moved the phone back to basic voice service. We still wanted to get photos off of the phone now and then though. So, I went in search of something cheaper than $15/month to do that. This weekend I found the… Datapilot Cell Phone Data Transfer Suite Universal (Amazon affiliate link) …at my local Costco and bought it. The box contained a bunch of cables for various phone models as well as a USB Bluetooth dongle. I installed the suite’s software and tried Bluetooth first. The Windows XP PC and the phone seemed to pair ok. And, it looked like contacts information could be synced. But, there didn’t seem to be a way to copy the photos off of the phone. I tried the USB cable next. Getting that to work was an exercise in frustration. But, I eventually managed to get it working (don’t ask me how) and was able to move the photos over. I can understand how the average review of the 39 reviewers on Amazon gave it 2 out of 5 stars. It gave me a bit more appreciation for ActiveSync (but not that much :-) . On the other hand, if we use this Datapilot Suite for more than 3 months, it will have paid for itself.

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Tips for ActiveSync with Bluetooth

Using Bluetooth from a Windows desktop or notebook and anything else seems a lot harder than it should be. And, since Microsoft’s Windows Mobile ActiveSync is a general pain in the neck itself, the combination of Bluetooth and ActiveSync often is a test of patience and some detective skills. Here’s some info that might help you get your Windows Mobile device to sync over Bluetooth with ActiveSync running on Windows XP. Note that even if you do everything right, it still might not work. I could never get my T-Mobile SDA smartphone to sync over Bluetooth, for example. But, I was able to get a Windows Mobile 6 smartphone and pocket pc to sync over Bluetooth.

1. Install Outlook first
2. Start up Outlook, activate it and configure it
3. Install ActiveSync
4. Partner your Windows Mobile smartphone or PDA using a USB cable. Note that the initial partnership must be performed using USB
5. If a Bluetooth device is not installed yet, install it and configure it now
6. Note which COM port is assigned to Bluetooth’s incoming port. You should be able to find this in your device’s configuration utility. Mine happened to be assigned to COM4: (see screen cap above)
7. Open up ActiveSync without any device connected to the PC
8. Select your device (if you have more than one synced) and open up the Connection Settings window
9. Check the box next to Allow connections from one of the following:
10. Select the port you found in step 6 from the pulldown menu
11. Click OK
12. Set Bluetooth on your PC to allow it to be discovered
13. Turn on Bluetooth on your Windows Mobile device
14. Have your WM device search for other Bluetooth devices
15. Pair it with your PC
16. Make sure that the ActiveSync service is visible on your WM device and select it
17. Start the ActiveSync app on your WM device
18. Select Connect via Bluetooth

If all is well, you should see ActiveSync start up on your PC and normal syncing should occur. If not, well, there are all sorts of possible problems. I’m not even going to try to figure out the myriad of ActiveSync awful

• ActiveSync and XP’s Suspend and Hibernate do not always play well with each other. You may need to reboot once in a while to get ActiveSync to work if you Suspend or Hibernate regularly like I do
• Bluetooth drivers seem to lose their way now and then. Try unchecking the box from Step 9, apply it, then check it, and apply again.

Good luck. ActiveSync continues to confound many of us after more than a decade of existence under various names (Windows CE Service, ActiveSync, WMDC). So, again, even after going through these steps correctly, you may find as I did that some devices just won’t sync over a Bluetooth connection.

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Vista 8GB SD Card Compatibility Update Coming June 22
There’s a note on the Windows Vista Team Blog about a… New compatibility update for SD cards …for large (8GB or more) SD cards and improved support for SDHC and SDIO cards. I bought my first 4GB SDHC cards last week and was surprised to find that none of my older SD card readers (including the one built into my desktop) could read it. Fortunately, Sandisk included their MicroMate SDHC card reader with the card itself. I’ll test it with a Vista desktop as soon as the update becomes available on the 22nd.

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PHM Pocket PC Toys Suspend and Reset Work on Windows Mobile 6 PDA

I wrote about the old (last revised in 2004) PHM Pocket PC toys last year. But, since we have moved from Windows Mobile 5 to 6, I thought it was worth mentioning the SUSPEND and RESET utilities from that toy kit works fine with a Windows Mobile 6 PDA (Pocket PC). I use the suspend utility to reduce wear and tear on the Pocket PC’s on/off button. And, yes, actually wore out the button on an iPaq 3650. Reset performs a soft reset without needing to push in the sometimes ill designed soft reset button on a Pocket PC. Some software do not need to be revised and updated to be useful. These two single minded utilities are good examples of such software.

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Windows Mobile 6 Internet Explorer Favorites on Home Screen

I noticed a few weeks ago that Internet Explorer on both my Windows Mobile 6 smartphone and PDA has a drop down Favorites and History area on its home screen. Thinking that it was just another link to the Favorites list, I ignored it until a few days ago. It turns out that the drop-down favorites link provides a list of the last five sites visited from the Favorites list. Very handy, The History list lists the web page titles (not the URL) of the last five pages visited. Again, very handy.

Cross-platform OpenOffice Worm
Fri, 08 Jun 2007 20:35:11

ZDNet Australia (why is that ZDNet in the US never reports anything interesting these days?) reports that an…

OpenOffice worm hits Mac, Linux and Windows

The article links to this Symantec page that describes the…

OpenOffice Worm

read more

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eEye Blink Personal Edition Anti-Virus Anti-Spyware: Windows 2000/XP Only
Thu, 07 Jun 2007 22:59:41

My general rule is not to include trialware in this blog. But, given the apparent importance of this product in the Windows security space and a one year trial period, I figured the rule could be bended a bit for this one…

eEye Blink Personal Edition

read more

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Adobe Reader 8.1 for Windows Vista
Wed, 06 Jun 2007 22:42:57

Adobe released…

Adobe Reader 8.1 for Vista

read more

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Democracy 0.9.6 Internet TV
Wed, 06 Jun 2007 21:41:02

The latest version (beta) of…

Democracy 0.9.6

…is out. This multiplatform Open Source application plays all kind of video file formats on your local drive and can download and play videos from various sources on the net. The video you see in the image is downloaded from YouTube (my current favorite video: The Zimmers performing the Who’s My Generation).

read more

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High Resolution Photos from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
Tue, 05 Jun 2007 21:29:48

For high resolution photography that is literally out of this world, head over to the University of Arizona’s…

HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment)

…site managed by the Department of Planetary Sciences Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.

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Windows Live Writer Beta 2
Sun, 03 Jun 2007 22:48:19

Microsoft released Windows Live Writer Beta 2 on May 30. This blogging client from Microsoft surprised me when it was first released because it works with more than just the expected Microsoft Live Spaces blog. It also lets you post to other blogging platforms. This Beta 2 release adds a number of new features including spell checking, table editing, page authoring for both WordPress and TypePad, and SharePoint 2007 support.

Microsoft may be getting preferential treatment from the Bush administration’s Department of Justice because one of the department’s key lawyers was a top antitrust lawyer for the firm that represented Microsoft in the lengthy antitrust suit a few years ago.

Update: Just because I’m a geek and that’s what we geeks do, below is a screenshot of Safari running on Windows running on Mac OSX. Enjoy! :D

[Original Post]
Just got a ping from Russ regarding,

Apple Introduces Safari for Windows

Apple Introduces Safari for Windows
Public Beta Available Today for Mac & Windows

WWDC 2007, SAN FRANCISCO–June 11, 2007–Apple� today introduced Safari™ 3, the world’s fastest and easiest-to-use web browser for Windows PCs and Macs. Safari is the fastest browser running on Windows, based on the industry standard iBench tests, rendering web pages up to twice as fast as IE 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2. Safari joins iTunes� in delivering Apple’s legendary user experience to both Windows and Mac� users as well as full support of open Internet standards. Safari 3 features easy-to-manage bookmarks, effortless browsing with easy-to-organize tabs and a built-in RSS reader to quickly scan the latest news and information. Safari 3 public beta is available today as a free download at www.apple.com/safari.

“We think Windows users are going to be really impressed when they see how fast and intuitive web browsing can be with Safari,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Hundreds of millions of Windows users already use iTunes, and we look forward to turning them on to Safari’s superior browsing experience too.”

Holy, Hannah!

But wait, it gets better,

Apparently so.

via a ping from Mark Richardson (thanks, Mark!) I learned of the following. You can find out more @ http://blogs.sun.com/ontherecord/entry/project_blackbox_shake_test,

*NICE*! I want one ten!

NOTE: For those unaware, yes, it runs Windows too.

So here’s the thing I really like about the above video… “What we discovered was that X happened, and X shouldn’t have happened, so we’re now going to go back and fix X.” (or something to that effect.)

Folks, *this* is how engineering is supposed to be done,

* Build it.
* Break it.
* Build it again, but this time around build it better.
* Repeat.

As mentioned already, I want ten twenty! ;-)

Nice work, Sun!

Apple’s Steve Jobs is famous for his one more thing… tag line near the end of his keynote speeches. While always interesting, the announcements are generally not of specific interest to Windows users. His announcement at the WWDC (Apple World Wide Developer Conference) this morning is, however, a bit different. He announced that the Safari browser has been ported to Windows and is faster than either Firefox or Internet Explorer. He announced that a beta release will be available at…

apple.com/safari

…but I don’t see it there yet.

Honestly, even though I use Macs regularly, I use Firefox as my browser since I switch between Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows on various boxes. If Safari really does render as fast as Jobs claims and it is available for Windows, I’ll give it a try.

Sample Video from T-Mobile Dash Smartphone

I’m still putting the T-Mobile Dash with Windows Mobile 6 through its paces. If you click on the tiny preview screencap above, you’ll see a transcoded version of a short video I recorded using the Dash smartphone today. I recorded to AVI (Motion Picture JPEG) format which records frames at 176×144 pixels. You probably don’t want to record a feature length movie in this format. But, it does a decent job of recording video given its inherent limitations. And, if you are not carrying any other video recording device, it is better than nothing!

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Ilium’s 10th Anniversary: Good Time to Get eWallet
Sorry this post’s title sounds so much like an advertisement. But, you may have seen me mention their eWallet product (which I’ve used since version 1.0 on an HP 320LX Handheld PC) and rave about it here.

So, if you’ve been thinking about getting Ilium Software’s eWallet (stores sensitive info in an encrypted file), their 10th anniversary celebration week would be a good time. Ilium has it on sale for $10 (regular $29.95) for the Professional Edition on their anniversary page. NOTE: This special was only available for a brief period after I originally posted this blog item on June 4. However, Ilium has extended their anniversary observation by providing a 10% discount until June 16.

Ilium Software 10th Anniversary

You can also read a bit more about their annivesary on their blog.

I moved eWallet and NewsBreak when I migrated from my SDA smartphone to a Dash smartphone which was also a move from Windows Mobile 5 to 6. Both apps to seem to run ok though I’ve noticed a long pause in NewsBreak (RSS reader) that I didn’t see on the SDA WM5 smartphone. I’m trying to collect more details about this and will report the info to Ilium once I can see some pattern.

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PDAmill GameBox Sudoku

I suspect I may be one of the few people on this planet who has not played Sudoku. So, l looked at the announcement of…

PDAmill GameBox Sudoku

(US$14.95)…for the Pocket PC (Classic or Professional Edition in Windows Mobile 6 lingo) with more than passing interest. I installed it on my Windows Mobile 6 Pocket PC to see if it would run on WM6. And, yep, it installed and started up mostly fine. It needed 6MB of free RAM for game play. So, I performed a soft reset (quicker than shutting down individual apps) to free up RAM. Then, I started up the game again and read through the instructions.

There are three board/grid sizes (4×4, 9×9, and 16×16) and three game play levels (Easy, Normal, and Hard). I can see why Sudoku was such a craze for while (Is it still? I’m not sure). I have no idea how easy or hard Sudoku experts would view GameBox Sudoku. But, I can see how it might drain more than a few hours of my time if I let it…

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HiRISE Mobile: Images from Mars

The University of Arizona High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment has some spectacular high res photos of Mars on their website. And, I was surprised to find that they have pages formatted specially for mobile devices too. You can find it at…

HiRISE Mobile (http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/togo/wap.php)

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Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) 6.1
Microsoft released an update to WMDC (ActiveSync for Vista)…

Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) 6.1

The biggest win probably goes to Smartphone (Standard Edition) users who can now sync files with Windows Vista (Windows XP users could do so with ActiveSync). The surprise for me is that the download worked with Firefox. I didn’t have to switch back to IE to download the file to my Vista box.

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SDHC Card Reader Amazingly Fast

I bought a SanDisk Ultra II SDHC 4GB w/MicroMate USB 2.0 Bundle for use with a digital camera. When I bought it the Micromate SDHC reader seemed like a nice to have add-on. However, since the 4GB SDHC card does not seem to be readable by my older SD readers, it became a must-have accessory. The SDHC card is recognized immediately when used with the bundled reader and file transfers are lightning fast. The SDHC card also slips into and out of the reader without any fuss.

The SanDisk MobileMate SD+ reader I bought just a week earlier, on the other hand, has such a tight SD slot, that I’m worried it might strip the metal contacts on SD cards I use with it. I’m probably going to put it away and give it a negative review over on Amazon.com.

The SanDisk SDHC card and reader bundle, on the other hand, gets a thumbs up from me.

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Windows Mobile 6 & Mac OS X
So, the not-quite-ready Apple iPhone is not the only phone that can sync with a Mac. I read an article over at MacNN describing an alpha release of Mark/Space’s…

Missing Sync for Windows Mobile 4.0 Alpha

According to the article the free alpha release (production release is $40) supports WM6 upgraded Blackjack and Dash smartphones. I’m not quite ready to sync my Dash with a Mac. But, if you are, please let me know how well it works for you.

What’s New for VMware Fusion Beta 4

New “Unity” feature: Say goodbye to the Windows desktop - VMware Fusion now lets you run Windows XP applications directly on your Mac desktop, providing full integration with Mac keyboard shortcuts and the Exposé feature in Mac OS X. Use the VMware Fusion Launch Palette to easily access all your Windows applications, and save your favorite Windows applications to the Mac OS X Dock.

Math-Blog Recommends 3 Open Source Math Programs

Looking for Open Source math apps? Head over to the Math-Blogs.com blog entry titled…

3 awesome free Math programs

Maxima, SciLib, and R (the only one that has been mentioned here) are discussed in some detail.

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Foldera: Group Management Web Service

I received an email from Foldera a little while ago apologizing for the delay in activating a beta account. The name, Foldera, sounded familar but I couldn’t place it for a few minutes. And, then in struck me… I had signed up around the time of the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference… Um, the 2006 conference!

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Hugin Panorama Photo Stitcher

The Hugin Panorama Photo Stitcher is a multiplatform Open Source application to stitch photos together into a panoramic scene. There’s a note on the Hugin website that notes the Mac OS X universal binary is a bit unstable and that the previous binary release should be downloaded (or compile it from source yourself)

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manybooks.net: Free eBooks in Many Formats

I heard about…

manybooks.net

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Google Maps Street View

Google added yet another cool feature to its Google Maps service today:

Google Maps Street View

The VR-like street level photography is only available for a small number of cities (like San Francisco and Sausalito across the bay). You see which streets have street level views by looking for streets outlined in dark blue. I can already tell this will be the reason for numerous mostly unproductive (but entertaining) hours. :-)

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YouSendIt Lite: Private File Sharing Via the Web

YouSendIt Lite lets you share files (up to 100MB) privately over the web. It lets you save a large(ish) file on their server. The person you want to get the file to receives an email message with a link showing where to get the file. The recipient has up to 7 days to pick up the file. Ut seems like a reasonable and simple way to get files (Visio, PowerPoint, and other largish files come to mind) that are a bit too big to send as an email attachment.

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In the fight over whether towns and cities should be allowed to have their own Wi-Fi networks, Microsoft has clearly come down on the pro side. The company has conducted several market studies about municipal Wi-Fi, and has found, in the words of Stefan Weitz, director of planning for MSN at Microsoft, that there is “significant demand for free municipal Wi-Fi. There is widespread adoption potential.”

EXIF Data in T-Mobile Dash Photos

The T-Mobile SDA (Windows Mobile 5) smartphone didn’t place any EXIF data in its photos. The T-Mobile Dash (Windows Mobile 6), however, does. It doesn’t store much EXIF data. But, the Dash at least identifies itself as the camera type. This means that if you use it to upload photos to sites like Flickr, statistics about camera types will tally it correctly and viewers of your photos can tell it is a camera phone. It also stores data, time, and resolution and file size. I noticed that flash information is also stored even though the Dash does not have a flash (or one that is evident to me).

The Dash’s camera controls are not as intuitive as the SDA’s. But, more on this later. For now, I’ll just add that I received my MicroSD card on Saturday and finally have enough storage space to test photos and video recording on the Dash. More later…

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Used OneNote Mobile Because I’m Too Lazy to Use a Scanner

I maintain another blog (OgasaWalrus.com) where I focus on one of my other personal interest topics: Freeware and Free & Open Source Software for proprietary systems (Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows). I decided to mention the cover story in the current issue of PC Magazine and wanted to include a photo of the cover. However, I was too lazy to go to the Mac where my scanner is connected to, scan the cover, convert the image from TIFF to JPEG and then post it to my blog.

So, instead, I brought out my Dash (Smartphone), took a handheld shot of the cover from OneNote Mobile, synced the Dash to my PC (using Bluetooth since I was also too lazy to connect a USB cable), and let ActiveSync take care of copying it over to OneNote on my PC. After copying it from OneNote to a photo editor, a quick rotation and crop, I posted the blog item. The cover shot is not nearly as nice as a scanned image (see a previous blog item about a PC World magazine article for comparison). But, it is more than good enough for a quick blog item. If you haven’t tried OneNote and OneNote Mobile for your Windows Mobile Smartphone, give it a try. You might find it as useful as I have.

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Windows Mobile 6 Smartphone Lost Category in Calendar

Microsoft has been telling us not to fret about not being able to sync Outlook subfolders and to use Categories instead. OK, fine. I’ve been doing that since 1997. But, um, look what’s missing in the Windows Mobile 6 Standard Edition (Smartphone) Calendar… Yep, the Category field is not there anymore. If I missed it, just let me know. ‘Cause I actually use Categories when I create an appointment. The Category field still exists in the Windows Mobile 6 Professional/Classic Editions (Pocket PC/Phone Edition) though. So, it is a little bit of a mystery why it was removed from the Smartphone. Maybe only “professionals” need categories for calendar events? I dunno.

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Palm Foleo: The Handheld PC Reborn (with Linux inside this time)


Palm announced (but did not release) its Palm Foleo mobile companion today. It has a 10 inch LCD screen, full-size keyboard, 5 hours battery life, email and other applications, and no hard drive. I got so excited about it, I bought it!!! Uh, well, actually that device in the photo above (device on a desk next to a Casio Palm-size PC)) does meet the Foleo description. But, it is a Compaq Aero 8000 that I bought in 1999 while attending the Microsoft Windows CE Developers Conference in Denver. And, the similarly spec-ed Jornada 820 (with an 8 inch LCD) is from 1998. It is also a Windows CE Handheld PC. Yes, neither one had WiFi or Bluetooth. But, nothing back then did. The Handheld PCs were great. How great? I fired up the HP Jornada 820 last year and used it to write most of Windows for the Intel Mac published by O’Reilly Media. I was very disappointed when the Handheld PCs faded away. And, since the Microsoft UMPCs are nowhere near the $500 level they were aimed at, I am saving my nickels and dimes to by a Palm Foleo when it is released. It will be great to have a Handheld PC again (even if it does not run Windows CE).

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Panasonic Lumix TZ3K 10x Optical Zoom 7.2 Megapixel Camera

It is quite amazing how much the digital camera landscape (pun intended) has changed in just a few years. I played around with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ3K 7.2MP Digital Camera with 10x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom this evening. The photo on the left is the TZ3K compared to the Canon PowerShot S1 IS 10x optical zoom camera from a few years ago (the current model is the Canon PowerShot Pro Series S5 IS 8.0MP Digital Camera with 12x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom which about the same size as the older S1. Panasonic’s controls don’t seem as intuitive or simple as the Canon IS. However, that might be because I have used a lot of Canon digital cameras over the years and this is the first Panasonic I’ve tried. However, there is a lot to like about a camera with 10x optical zoom that is so much smaller than the Canon IS series and with a larger 3 inch bright LCD. It’s also nice not to have to deal with a manual lens cap (what a hassle). More on this camera later… I’m also going to be playing with a Canon PowerShot A710 IS 7.1MP Digital Camera with 6x Image-Stabilized Optical Zoom in the next week or so. It came out last Fall and was, I believe, the first of the Canon A series cameras to have optical stablization. Its price has started to drop. So, I’m guessing it will be replaced by a higher resolution version within the next few months.

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MobileViews Blog Mobile, um, View

Well, in the category of, you sure took your sweet time to get around to doing this… I finally went over to AlexKing.org to download and install his…

WordPress Mobile Edition Plugin

If you visit this blog ( http://mobileviews.com/blog ), you should see a mobile friendly formatted view similar to the screencap above (viewed using a Dell Axim X50v running Windows Mobile 2003 2nd Edition). The top level page does not include images. However, viewing individual blog items does include images (if present)…

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Pocket Sharp MT: No Go on a Windows Mobile 6 PDA
I just tried Pocket Sharp MT 3.3 on a Pocket PC running Windows Mobile 6. It installs and starts up without any problem. However, it crashes immediately after I press the Refresh button after entering the information to post to this blog. I’ll try the Smartphone version on the Dash later to see if I have better luck with that platform.

Yes, I’ll be there, along with O’Reilly User Group maven Marsee Henon from our Sebastopol office. O’Reilly’s a sponsor this year and we’ve got books to give away, including the just release “Learning WCF” by Michele Bustamante.

Be sure you look for Marsee and me, the lint on our our black O’Reilly shirts no doubt glowing like a school of plankton under the black lights of the Glo Lounge. See you there.

No legacy API’s to support.

(or in other words, theres one way to do something, and the way to do that something is the *CORRECT* way to do that something.)

Dear Microsoft Silverlight team,

*PLEASE* don’t given into pressures to provide feature support for *ANY* other reason than it’s absolutely mandatory to provide it. I’m beginning to truly understand just how wonderful of a language within a language LINQ truly is. Please leave it alone. :)

Thanks in advance,

Your *BIGGEST* fan