Windows Mobile Focusing on Windows Live

Brighthand and ZDNet both recently had blog items commenting on Microsoft reorganizing the Windows Mobile group and focusing the division on Windows Live service. I’m a little worried about this me-too strategy that seems to follow on the heels of Apple’s iPhone (and to a lesser extent iPod touch). Windows Mobile’s greatest strength has always been the rich set of client software available for it that gave it a good disconnected experience. And, what about Windows Live anyway? It is a bunch of barely connected web services that doesn’t seem to have a strategy of its own. How can it be the basis of a Windows Mobile strategy?

I hope history doesn’t repeat itself. Take a look at the photo above. See that big white thing behind the T-Mobile Dash (Windows Mobile Smartphone AKA Standard Edition)? That is not a PC. It is an MSN Companion that like Windows Mobile was based on Windows CE. Its only function was to connect to the web (by phone line or Ethernet) and was based on Interent Explorer 4. It was barely web-ready even when it was introduced though I thought it was a good first start and used it quite a bit as stand up terminal for quick web browsing. The problem is that it was orphaned and never had more that 2 firmware updates (which took a month to roll out to customers). Today, with its lack of a modern browser, it is essentially useless. Even the first Handheld PC or the earlier MS-DOS based handhelds, on the other hand, are still useful with their built-in client applications and third-party software. But, try using a GPS in your current day Windows Mobile device with only Microsoft applications and no phone service (when you are out of a service area for example). Now imagine that there were no 3rd party client-side GPS applications. What would you do?

Microsoft’s strategies have not been firing on all cylinders for the last couple of years. Their stock price and the general reception of major products like Windows Vista (Office being a rare exception) are two prominent examples. I think Windows Live needs a strategy before it can be used a strategy for Windows Mobile. Microsoft should focus on the broken aspects of Windows Mobile like ActiveSync/WMDC (Windows Mobile Device Center), email, and Office Mobile before looking at Windows Live services.

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Google Docs for Mobile Devices

Google announced that a mobile-friendly read-only (ack!) Google Docs web access.

Docs on the go

Head over to https://docs.google.com/m to view (but not edit) documents and spreadsheets on an iPhone (iPod touch), Blackberry, or Windows Mobile device. iPhone users can also view presentations (slide decks).

I recorded a quick and dirty 2 minute video demo and placed it on YouTube: Google Docs for Mobile Devices on an iPod touch.

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The Have and Have Nots: Windows Mobile vs. iPhone Sites

The screen shot on the left is of the Weather.com site on a Windows Mobile 6 Pocket PC (Professional Edition). The screen shot on the left is the same site tweaked for the iPhone on an iPod touch. Although it takes a lot longer to load on the iPod touch (both devices were on the same WiFi network although the Pocket PC was limited to 802.11b vs. the 802.11g for the iPod touch), the iPhone version sure looks a lot nicer and provides a lot of functionality without scrolling up and down.

Microsoft has a lot of work to do to bring the Windows Mobile Internet Explorer browser into the 21st century. The iPhone has clearly inspired a lot of firms and their web designers to maximize web-impact for the iPhone’s Safari browser in a way that we have not seen previously for other web-enabled mobile devices.

Microsoft’s announcements of more enterprise mobile-enabling products for 2008 is good for the enterprise. But, again, that is clearly not where most of us are these days even if we work for a large organization. Microsoft really needs to focus on the basics and fix the broken stories at that level: Internet Explorer, ActiveSync and Windows Mobile Device Center, and alarms are just a few of the basics that need fixing.

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Issues With Recurring Meetings in Windows Mobile
Microsoft’s Jason Langridge wrote an interesting blog item related to recurring meetings earlier this week…

Having Problems With a Calendar With Lots of Recurring Meetings?

The problem, it turns out, occurs because Microsoft creates recurring meetings out to 400 years if no end date is set. Um, who was the big brain who decided on that I wonder? I suspect many of us set recurring events that go on forever even if we don’t expect to live for another 400 years. And, I wonder if birthdays and anniversaries are set using the same recurrence algorithm? That might explain some of the bizarre behavior there. Many WiMo users have seen birthday events multiply inexplicably. Some have even seen birthdates split across two days after Microsoft issued a patch to deal with the fact that Daylight Savings’ start and end dates were changed in the US this year. And, then, there is the problem of changing just a single occurrence of a recurring event that I’ve described earlier…

Here’s the scenario for that problem: Set a recurring appointment (e.g., weekly staff meeting) with no end date in Outlook on the PC. Sync the PC with a WiMo device. Detach the WiMo device from the PC. Change just one of the meetings in the series on the WiMo device while leaving the other recurring events in place. Sync the WiMo device with the PC. When I do this, the single event changed on my WiMo device reverts back to the original date/time after syncing with the PC. It does not happen 100% of the time. But, I would say it happens at least 50% of the time for me.

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Google Gmail IMAP4 Works Fine with Windows Mobile
My Google Gmail IMAP4 feature was turned on earlier today (Oct. 25, Thursday). The first thing I did was test it with a T-Mobile Dash (Smartphone AKA Standard Edition) running Windows Mobile 6. And, yep, WiMo’s Messaging (email) works fine with the new Gmail feature.

Google provides step-by-step instructions to configure Windows Mobile 6 to work with Gmail and IMAP4.

Google Mail Help IMAP Windows Mobile 6

However, experienced WiMo users may find the less eye-glazing generic help page faster to go through.

Google Mail Help IMAP Configuring Other Mail Clients

Google’s IMAP service seems a lot slower than service on other IMAP servers I use. However, it may simply be because of all the new clients being configured and downloading email. I’m hoping this will clear up (speed up) within a couple of days or weeks.

Addendum: Hey, I just noticed my Gmail storage is up to 4.3GB. When did that happen?

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Concerned About Asustek Eee PC Math

The October 18 Asustek press release title for the eagerly anticipated (at least by me) ultra compact Eee PC reads…

An Eee PC Sold Every 2 Seconds

However, the text of the release says…

…with 200 pieces snapped up in 20 mins on Taiwan’s shopping channel, ETTV Shopping - averaging an Eee PC sold every 2 seconds!

Um, hmm, so 200 / 20 = 10 per minute = an Eee PC sold every 6 seconds. Still impressive but off by 3x. Not very good math. Hope it wasn’t calculated on an Eee PC :-)

Addendum: Here’s a link to CNET UK’s Asus EeePC 701 Full Review.

Google News Facebook Application
Sat, 20 Oct 2007 22:07:28

Who would have thought a year or two ago that Facebook would become the first contender for the title of the most widely used Web OS (Operating System)? Certainly not me. And, yet, we see app after app developed and released for this social networking Web OS. Here’s one that I learned about while reading Read/Write Web…

Google News Facebook application

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CNET: Five must-have security/privacy extensions for Firefox
Thu, 18 Oct 2007 21:30:21

CNET’s Chris Soghoian’s blog entry titled Five must-have security/privacy extensions for Firefox seems to have a Windows-centric point of view. But, I’m pretty sure the Firefox add-ons recommended apply equally well to a Mac OS X user (or Linux for that matter). Here are the Firefox add-ons he recommends: SafeCache, SafeHistory, Locationbar, NoScript, and CustomizeGoogle.

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Using MySQL VIEW and ODBC Connector to let Excel Users Create Custom Reports
Wed, 17 Oct 2007 22:40:12

Although MySQL 5.1 is in Release Candidate stage and apparently nearly ready for release, I’m only now getting around to looking at the new features in MySQL 5.0 which has been around for a while now. As an old MySQL 3 and 4 user, I just never had the need to use the 5 features until now. I was looking at the Open Source dotProject project management software running on a LAMP architecture (Linux, Apache web server, MySQL, PHP) and wanted to let end-users easily use data from it to generate custom reports.

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PowerGUI 1.0.11: PowerShell Editor
Tue, 16 Oct 2007 22:29:08

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PCLive.com: Free Windows Security Suite
Mon, 15 Oct 2007 22:25:29

PCLive.com provides both a for-fee and a freeware security suite for Microsoft Windows. The difference between free and for-fee is that the $4.95/month (seems kind of expensive, btw, since other vendors provide a 3-PC license for around $40 or less) includes Diskeeper (which, perhaps, justifies the higher cost for PCLive), web content filtering (eh…), and support.

I found it interesting that the anti-virus component uses the Open Source ClamWin (based on the ClamAV engine) anti-virus product.

read more

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MediaCoder 0.6.0.3798: Transcoder for Windows
Sun, 14 Oct 2007 22:05:49

MediaCoder 0.6.0.3798 is an Open Source media file transcoder for Windows (and Linux). It can take one format (say MPG) and transform it into another media format (say MP4).

Testing a preset or two resulted in errors. However, using the default (convert to MP4) worked ok and seemed to work pretty quickly on my old AMD Athlon PC.

Intel has announced a free “concurrency finder” tool for Windows. The tool is named CFinder. The documentation that’s included with the download says CFinder can be used

to check if an application is threaded and if the threads are running concurrently. This tool is aiming at providing developers a quick way to test their applications for parallelism.

Testing CFinder on a Threading Building Blocks app

I tried out the CFinder application on a program I had adapted for investigating of the task stealing mechanism in Threading Building Blocks (TBB), the open source project for which I’m currently “community manager.” For my experiments, I had adapted the StringFinder example in the TBB “Getting Started” guide. You can see the results of my experiment in my post “TBB Task Stealing on a Quad-Core Windows System”.

I tried out CFinder using my adapted StringFinder application. As you can see from my “Task Stealing” post, I had already proven that the program utilizes all four cores in my processor, with 222 seconds of work being completed in 63 seconds. This implies that an average of 3.52 processor cores were active each second.

So, knowing all of this in advance, I was curious to see what CFinder would tell me. I’m not exactly sure how to read the results that CFinder displays, but here is what the “Concurrent Level” pull-down showed me after my StringFinder application had completed its run:

Concurrent Level	% Time
2	4.98
3	92.53
4	1.66

Clearly, concurrency level 3 dominated the run. Why wasn’t more time spent at concurrency level 4, since I have a quad-core system? I’m not sure at the moment. In a sense, I’m comparing apples and oranges (the timing analysis applied in the TBB software and the CFinder analysis). In addition, CFinder itself is running my StringFinder application, so I have an extra process running when CFinder is analyzing StringFinder’s performance. Surely Windows will allocate resources differently under differing circumstances. So — I’m really not all that troubled by the numbers. Everyone agrees that my app is utilizing my quad-core processor in a highly effective manner.

Conclusion

CFinder is a nice little free tool for quickly analyzing the degree to which a Windows program executes concurrently in a specific run (or set of runs). It’s a clear step up from the simple timing of execution instances that I applied for years to test the effect of edits to my multithreaded applications. I think I’ll keep it!

So leave it to the Mozilla Corporation to find a way to hire the best talent the world has to offer (AKA Seo Sanghyeon), tasking him with building a better IronPython than even IronPython itself.

Don’t think that’s possible? Wow. You don’t know Seo like I know Seo, do you?

Yeah, you don’t.

+1 Mozilla.

While you’re working on the math, here’s the info that relates to the latest IPCE release (v.7 for those keeping score),

[IronPython] [ANN] IronPython Community Edition r7

This is the seventh release of IronPython Community Edition (IPCE).

Download from SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/fepy

FePy project aims to provide enhancements and add-ons for IronPython. http://fepy.sourceforge.net/

This work was in part supported by Mozilla Corporation.

FePy project got a blog!
http://fepy.blogspot.com/

FePy blog documents two developments not included in this release. Files under trunk/pyprof/, which tries to implement sys.setprofile with Mono profiler API. (Thanks to Miguel de Icaza and Paolo Molaro for help.) Files under bench/, which benchmarks simple IronPython programs to measure progress of Mono runtime.

This release comes with both IronPython 1.1 and IronPython 2.0 Alpha 5. IronPython 1.x is stable on Mono. IronPython 2.x isn’t. For example, importing string module will crash runtime for Mono 1.2.5. (But os module works fine, which is much more complex. It’s a bit of hit and miss.)

This release is built with Mono 1.2.5.1. The minimum Mono version needed to compile and run for IronPython 1.x is 1.2.3. For IronPython 2.x it’s 1.2.5. Mono 1.2.5 and 1.2.5.1 are same except for ASP.NET bugfixes. DLR-based languages won’t work with Mono versions before 1.2.5. Please check your Mono version before reporting any problems.

Changes in this release follow. Contributions are credited in parentheses.

IronPython

IronPython 2.0 Alpha 5.

Libraries

dbapi module handles DBNull correctly. (Carsten Haese) pyexpat module handles DTD. (Shozo Arai)

Bundles

Following modules are now included: decimal, modulefinder, pkgutil, smtplib. pystone benchmark. (It’s under Lib/test.)

irclib, which works great. Try this example as a sanity test. https://fepy.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/fepy/trunk/example/irc_test.py

Patches

Patches are documented here. http://fepy.sourceforge.net/patches.html

New in this release:

For 1.x patch-ironpython-option-s

For 2.x
patch-{325478,328022,333647} # Numbers refer to Mono bugs
patch-console
patch-cs0177
patch-debug-define
patch-initialize-builtins

Build system

Use NAnt to build IronPython 2.x.
Use quilt to manage patches.
Patches to build all IronPython 2 Alpha releases.
- AssemblyVersion.cs was missing in Alpha 3. (Miguel de Icaza)
Include both IronPython 1.x and 2.x, but share the library using site.py.

Misc

Ms-PL is now included in licenses.

–
Seo Sanghyeon

Video Viewing Experience on Windows Mobile, Zune, and iPods
Viewings videos on ultra portable devices is nothing new. However, perhaps surprisingly, the oldest of the device families, Windows Mobile, falls far short of a good end-user experience. This is especially true for the under-powered (processor-wise) Smartphone (Standard Edition) where viewing anything except a video specially prepared for it results in a disappointing experience. For example try viewing a video podcast NOT specially prepared for a Smartphone. You will probably see what amounts to still images with a sound track.

The Pocket PC (Professional Edition) video experience is a bit better but still not good. Since Windows Mobile is not designed as a media device, you will find it does things like dim or blank the screen after a timeout period. Normally, this is fine since it is a battery saving feature. However, it is annoying to have to remember to change this setting everytime you watch a video and then set it back when you are done. On the other hand, the faster processors on the Pocket PC (compared to the Smartphones) lets you watch a wider variety of video files (including video podcasts). And, it is not often that you see someone showing a video on an external device connected to a Smartphone or Pocket PC. Despite what Microsoft might claim, these are not real media devices (see any WM5 or WM6 Playlists for example?).
The Zune does a better job since it is designed as media device. However, its non-intuitive user interface (navigation pad) makes something as simple as scrolling and selecting from a list tedious. Once a video gets rolling, it is a pretty good experience though and optional docks make it easy to connect to an external display.

The iPod touch has the best video and user interface I’ve seen so far. Its one drawback is that Apple decided that all 6th generation iPods require docks with a special chip for video playback on external devices. So, previous video docking solutions do not work with the latest iPod models.

The 5th (previous) generation iPods only had one model that provided video playback. But, it has a huge existing accessory infrastructure that lets you easily and relatively cheaply purchase devices to provide a larger video screen. For example, there are several portable DVD players with integrated LCD screens that also have iPod docs built-in. This lets you use the player to show and listen to videos on a larger screen.

For the moment, it is a toss-up between the 5th and 6th generation iPods. As soon as the 3rd party accessory market catches up (probably this holiday season or early 2008), the 6th generation will be the device of choice. It will be interesting to see what the Zune 2.0 delivers. And, unfortunately, my favorite overall mobile device family (Windows Mobile) is down for the count when it comes to Media playback.

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FTC Separates Fact from Fiction on Cell Phone Do Not Call Registry
This is slightly off-topic. But, I figured a few other people might find it useful information (I did) in this article from Government Technology magazine.

FTC Separates Fact from Fiction on Cell Phone Do Not Call Registry

There’s a 7-point bullet list specifically related to cell phones.

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Frank McPherson’s PocketPCHow2.com
My old friend Frank McPherson is back from his little blog sabbatical at PocketPCHow2.com. He’s re-emerged from the shadows and has a mini-overview of the new HTC TyTn II (AKA Kaiser) Pocket PC Phone Edition (oops, I mean, Professional Edition). I’m a huge fan of the earlier generation TyTn. Frank provides feedback on both the good and the bad of the new TyTn II. So, head over to his blog if you are interested in getting the perspective of TyTn II from a WiMo expert.

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Asustek Eee PC Gets, Um, Real-er
Engadget reports on the four Asustek Eee PC models announced today. And, Asustek finally has an official looking Eee PC product page…

Asustek Eee PC 4G

So, while I can’t find any prices for the four models or anywhere to order one. It seems like a slighly more real (real-er?) product. Of course, The Palm Foleo had models announced, an official looking product page, and even prices revealed. So, I’m still not quite convinced that the Eee PC has emerged from vaporware quite yet. However, if it actually appears in the U.S., this UMPC-sized Linux based notebook with a 7 inch LCD display looks like something to seriously consider.

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Nokia N810 Internet Tablet
Nokia announced the N810 at the Web 2.0 Summit. Engadget (1st link) and Information Week (2nd link) both have coverage on the announcment (nothing on the Nokiausa.com site yet).

Nokia N819 gets official

Nokia Launches ‘Context-Aware’ Internet Tablet

The first thing you notice about the N810 is that it has a physical slide-out QWERTY keyboard (see the photo in the Engadget article) unlike its touchscreen only devices that preceded it. At $479 it should make for an interesting race between the N810 and the Asustek Eee PC. The N810 doesn’t have has much storage as the top-end Eee (although you can insert an SD flash card for more storage), but it is smaller and lighter. The $1000+ UMPCs based on Microsoft Windows need to get into the $500 price range if they intend to compete in the nano-scale mobile market.

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Use a Virtual Machine to Sync with an Old Pocket PC or Smartphone?
I tend to listen to the podcast version of Leo Laporte’s Tech Guy radio program when I want to listen to something interesting while driving but don’t want to pay attention to very single word (which I tend to do when listening to something like the Security Now podcast). I have a backlog of these files on my iPod. Today, I was listening to Show 363 from June 23 and noted the segment about someone who has an old Jornada Pocket PC who can’t sync with Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) on Windows Vista.

The issue is that WMDC only supports devices going back to Windows Mobile 2003. The last Jornada model was a 2002 device. So, you can’t sync it on a Vista PC. The caller seemed aware of the issue and asked if a Windows XP virtual machine running on Vista might be able to sync with the Jornada if ActiveSync was installed on the Windows XP Guest OS. Leo correctly suggested using either VMware Workstation or Parallels Desktop for Windows. However, the caller asked if Microsoft Virtual PC (which is free) might work too. Leo agreed. Alas, that is not the case. Microsoft Virtual PC has virtually (pun intended) no USB device support. So, it wouldn’t see a Pocket PC or Smartphone and partner it to ActiveSync. VMware Workstation and Parallels Desktop for Windows, on the other hand, have pretty decent USB device support and should be able to run ActiveSync in a Windows XP Guest OS and partner with an older Pocket PC or Smartphone. I haven’t tested this myself. So, you might want to verify this using a 30-day trial before plunking down your hard earned dollars. I have VMware Workstation 6 though. So, I’ll get around to testing this idea one of these days.

FYI: You aren’t limited to virtual machine running on Windows Vista. If you use a Mac, Parallels Desktop for Mac and VMware Fusion have good USB device support too. The wrinkle in this story is Apple is releasing a major upgrade (Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard) next week Friday. All this should still work under Leopard. But, it wouldn’t hurt to check first. I’ve got my upgrade copy pre-ordered and plan to install it next weekend.

AbiWord: Multi-Platform Word Processor
Sat, 13 Oct 2007 21:36:29

AbiWord 2.4.6 is a multi-platform Open Source word processor. I recall using it for a few months on a notebook running Microsoft Windows several years ago. I tried out an early version (1.0 beta release I believe) of OpenOffice.org and have not revisited AbiWord since then.

It’s interesting that AbiWord is available for Windows and Mac OS X (as well as Linux) while the OpenOffice.org project still can’t figure out how to build a native Mac OS X version yet (even though the NeoOffice Project has a solution for them ready-to-go).

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Windows Live SkyDrive Grows from 512MB to 1GB
Thu, 11 Oct 2007 22:54:35

Windows Live SkyDrive (Microsoft really needs to come up with shorter product names) bumped up its online storage capacity from 512MB to 1GB. Um, ok, this is better. 5GB would be nicer though :-). According to the SkyDrive Team Blog, three other features were also just added. (1) RSS Feeds are now available for public folders. (2) You can share a file with someone by just typing in an email address (vs. selecting from a Hotmail address book).

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InfraRecorder 0.43.1 CD/DVD Burner
Wed, 10 Oct 2007 22:30:56

InfraRecorder 0.43.1 is an Open Source CD/DVD burner for Microsoft Windows. It has a bunch of features including the ability to record on dual-layer discs (What ever happened to that? The drives are everywhere but the blank discs are hard to find and expensive), erase rewritable discs (using any of four methods), burning disc images (ISO), and a lot more.

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Jaiku Becomes a Google Site of the Lost
Tue, 09 Oct 2007 21:39:38

Google acquired the Twitter super-clone Jaiku. Jaiku is the twitter-like social network micro-blog presence (enough buzzwords yet???) web service. Like other sites before it acquired by Google, it will remain available to existing users but is essentially closed to new members. Google has developed a habit of buying great web services and then closing its doors for a long time. Remember the JotSpot wiki service?

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Findbyclick: User Contributed Map Locations
Mon, 08 Oct 2007 22:43:31

Findbyclick.com advertises itself as The easiest way to find interesting places, add new ones and share maps with your friends. But, most of the so-called interesting places seem to be Starbucks and Kinkos locations. Still, its an interesting idea. And, I suppose as more people contribute, we’ll see other, umm, interesting things located on its maps.

The Digital Slowness Paradox
The biggest complaint from most people in the early days of consumer digital cameras was the lag between the time the camera shutter button was pushed and when the photo was actually captured. That problem hasn’t completely disappeared yet (except in higher end models and DSLRs) . This seemed odd to most people (esp. non-techies) who expected all things digital to be better-faster than things-analog.

Unsurprisingly, digital slowness is apparent in all kinds of devices now. Some smartphones seem to take forever to fire up and enter a ready-to-use state. My Dash, for example, has a multi-second delay between the time I push the power button to the time it actually starts to boot (something visible on the screen). And, it takes, perhaps, a full minute before the phone is actually ready to make a phone call. The Pocket PC doesn’t appear to have this problem for most users because it is usually in suspend mode and not actually off. But, if you perform a soft reset, you’ll probably need to wait a bit before you can use the Pocket PC again.

The most annoying sources of digital slowness for me, however (aside from Windows XP/Vista’s booting speed) is television related. My digital cable TV box seems to take forever to change channels. The old TVs with channel dials (back when VHF channels were limited to 2 through 13) were instant in changing channels. Digital cable boxes have a noticeable lag. And, the current generation of HD TVs seem to take many seconds to turn off or on. Shades of vacuum tube TVs. I think the TV manufacturers should add the old tube shrink-expand look to let us know when they are going on or off.

And, then , of course, there are Windows XP and Windows Vista. Their login account model that launches all kinds of applications after the user login process (including all kinds of security software) means that it might be several minutes before various processes settle down to the point the user can actually use the system. UNIX, Linux, and Mac OS X (really a BSD UNIX variant) fire up most processes before any login takes place. So, from the end-user point of view, it seems they take less time before you can use them.

Let’s hope we never get digital flashlights or fire extinguishers where instant-on should really be instant.

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Use Windows Mobile Internet Explorer with Care
I think I’ve suggested manually clearing the Windows Mobile Internet Explorer browser cache once a week or so to help prevent what might otherwise be mysterious system-wide slowdowns on a Pocket PC or Smartphone. However, today I got another reminder of why I spend more time using Ilium’s NewsBreak RSS client on Windows Mobile than the IE browser.

When using IE directly, I am pretty careful to stick to mobile-friendly websites in my Favorites list. However, I clicked on a Reuters link in their RSS feed after reading a brief summary in NewsBreak which launched IE (this normal). This turned out to be a bad idea because the feed link led to Reuters normal website formatted for desktop PCs. WiMo IE couldn’t deal with what appears to me to be a decently designed web page for the desktop and froze my entire phone. I couldn’t even turn it off and had to pull the battery to reset my Dash. Upon rebooting, the Dash came up very slowly… more slowly than normal. So, I went to IE’s options menu and manually cleared the browser cache (about 2.5MB, large but not huge). This returned my phone to normal.

In comparison, I just brought up Reuters.com on my iPod touch Safari web browser. And, while it seemed to navigate that site much slower than other sites (there must be some Javascript whackiness going on there), the site didn’t blow up the browser or lock the iPod touch.

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Stylus vs. Finger
The old Windows CE Handheld PCs had large (by today’s thumb keyboard standards) physical keyboards and a touch screen. They never caught on (even though I really enjoyed using them :-) . The problem was that the touch screen were really just a substitute for a mouse and the need to pick up a stylus in between typing was annoying.

Following the lead of the Palm Pilot, Microsoft moved on to the Palm-size/Pocket PC and dropped the physical keyboard completely. Then RIMM’s Blackberry and Palm’s Treo showed that a physical keyboard was indeed a good thing but needed to be sized and designed correctly. Many current generation Windows Mobile Pocket PCs (Professional Edition) and Smartphones (Standard Edition) have physical thumb keyboards too. And, many of them are well designed (I particularly like the Dash’s and TyTyn’s).

Recently, Apple went retro and introduced the iPhone and iPod touch with touch screens that don’t need (or work) with a stylus and dropped the physical keyboard in favor of a graphical tactile-less one. On one hand, the finger gestures for viewing photos and navigating web pages works much better than stylus based Pocket PCs or keyboard based Smartphones. On the other hand, I guess I’m just one of those fumble-fingered people who prefers tactile feedback when typing (even thumb typing). I do think it is great that I don’t have to reach for a stylus to use the iPod touch. But, I really wish I had some kind of option (Bluetooth keyboard for example) for the iPod touch.

I was originally going to comment on the relative granularity differences between finger touch screens and stylus touch screens. But, I need to think that through a bit more. It just occurred to me that one of the original applications categories for the Pocket PC were little mini-PhotoShop type drawing apps. Yet, those never did become very popular. And, we don’t see that category heavily pushed or sold these days. Part of the issue may be the relatively small processing power on mobile devices (compared to desktops). But, I wonder if the digitization errors inherent in any touch screen might have something to do with this too. More later…

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Do You Feel Phantom Vibrations?
Do you sometimes feel phantom vibrations from the area where you phone sits on your body even when your phone is not on you? Apparently you are not alone (I think I’ve felt this too). Check out this article on CNN…

Phantom vibrations shake crackberry addicts

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Apple Web Apps List for iPhone and touch

No third party binary applications for the Apple iPhone or iPod touch yet. However, Apple created a list of web apps for these devices. You can find it linked below.

Apple Web Apps

I was surprised to see so many (relatively speaking) web apps designed specifically for the iPhone/touch (215 as of Oct. 11, 2007). It will be interesting to see if this part of the iPod eco-system continues to grow.

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Senuti 0.50 Beta 2: Copy Media Files from an iPod to a Mac
Just an quick blog item this evening. I posted an item over on my Freeware and Free & Open Source Software blog (OgasaWalrus) about a Mac OS X freeware that lets you copy media files from an iPod to a Mac.

Senuti 0.50 Beta 2: Copy Media Files from an iPod to a Mac

In my case, this is a backup plan in case I can’t restore the backup of my now dead Mac mini (the backup is on an external Firewire drive) to whatever replaces my Mac mini.

Microsoft HealthVault: Who Do You Trust 2.0?
Thu, 04 Oct 2007 20:48:33

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Go-OO OpenOffice.org Fork (Yet Another One!)
Wed, 03 Oct 2007 21:56:03

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CDBurnerXP 4.0.015
Tue, 02 Oct 2007 22:42:38

CDBurnerXP 4.0.015 was released a few days ago (Sept. 29). This freeware CD/DVD burner for Microsoft Windows is another app that definitely belongs on my thus far hypothetical OgasaWalrus best-of-list. The Pro part of the name (it used to be CDBurnerXP Pro) appears to have been dropped between the version 3 and 4 releases. But, it didn’t lose any features. I’m downloading a copy now to try out soon.

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OgasaWalrus Blog 1 Year Anniversary
Mon, 01 Oct 2007 22:33:54

What do you know? It has been one year since I relaunched this OgasaWalrus blog after moving from my old Zope based web hosting service to this one. It started out as more of a personal notetaking system to help me remember interesting Freeware and Open Source apps for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. Fortunately, there seem to be a few other people also interested in this topic and, more importantly, are able fact check me when needed (thanks!) and bring up F/FOSS apps I don’t know about (more thanks!).

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Adobe Acquiring Virtual Ubiquity-Buzzword Web Editor
Sun, 30 Sep 2007 22:04:25

Looks like Adobe wants to go head-to-head with Google Docs. They acquired Virtual Ubiquity which created a bit of buzz with their Flash-based Buzzword web editor. Now they need a web spreadsheet and web slide presentation creation service.

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Notepad++ 4.3
Sun, 30 Sep 2007 21:39:30

Notepad++ 4.3 was released on Sept. 25. This Open Source Scintilla-based text editor for Windows gets used at least a couple times a week when I’m using a Windows based PC. If I ever get around to creating a favorites list here, Notepad++ will definitely be on the list.

Thumbing Around an iPod touch Screen Keyboard
My iPod touch is still wandering around in FedEx-land. But, I was able to use my daughter’s iPod touch for a few minutes to help her set up WiFi access. I found it nearly impossible to type on the screen keyboard in portrait mode. The lack of tactile feedback from a physical keyboard is a real drawback. However, using the screen keyboard in landscape mode was a bit better though I still pressed the wrong key way too many times. I think the 2.0 versions of the iPhone and touch really needs a slideout keyboard even though it would increase the thickness of each device. I’ll get a better feel for this after I have some time to play with my own device (which should arrive soon).

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HTC Shift: Interesting but too $$$ for Mainstream
HTC announced the ultraportable HTC Shift running Windows Vista Business Edition. At 800 grams (1.76 pounds) and with its 3G/HSDPA and SnapVUE low power mode (no Windows Mobile as rumored long ago), it is unique compared to the UMPC device crowd. However, at $1580, it is relatively pricey (compared to standard sized notebooks) although it is not outrageous compared to the truly overpriced and underpowered UMPC devices. If it had come in at $1000 or less (or even $1200), it might have a chance for mainstream acceptance. However, at nearly $1600 (without a CD or DVD drive), it will join the UMPC as being a specialty device for those who crave true mobility with an XP or Vista based device.

The various rumor sites say that Apple is planning to release a sub-notebook class device in the near future. Apple has been able to get away with somewhat pricey devices. But, if they come in with a slick looking sub-2-pound device for under $1000, I think the UMPC and the Shift will be relegated to discount bins.

I’m also waiting for the Asustek EEE PC. I though it was supposed to appear in September. But, here it is October and no sign of it yet. Will it go the way of the Palm Foleo?
UPDATE: According to CNET, the Asustek EEE PC is supposed to be available later this month (October). However, its retail price is rising from $199 to $260 (still very reasonable).

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iPod touch and T-Mobile Dash - Tactile Impressions

My 16GB iPod touch arrived yesterday. Since I’m probably among the last of the mobile enthusiasts who got a touch (even though I pre-ordered it the day it was announced), I’m not even going try to write a mini-review. However, as a Windows Mobile enthusiast, I thought other Windows Mobile users might find a couple of quick observations from that point of view interesting.

The T-Mobile Dash (Windows Mobile 6 Standard Edition, formerly Smartphone) has been my main device for the past half-year or so. As you can see from the photo the iPod touch and the Dash are pretty close in height and width dimensions although the touch is much thinner than the Dash (0.31 vs. 0.5 inches). According the to iPod touch spec page and the T-Mobile Dash spec page, both are 4.2 ounces. Frankly, I’m having a hard time believing this. The touch feels much much heavier than the Dash. But, I don’t have a scale to check this, so I’ll believe the specs. You can see that the screen is about twice the physical size of the Dash’s screen and is exactly twice the resolution (480×320 vs. 320×240).

The one thing that became obvious real fast is that thumb typing as I know it is impossible for me on the touch. The lack of tactile feedback and what appears to be a slight digitizing offset (selection appears slightly to the left of where I touch the screen) is deadly. My typing mode (especially for passwords) is reduced from two thumbs to my right hand index finger. I’m really tempted to use a stylus when I need to type on the touch. The Dash’s keyboard, on the other hand, is the best thumb keyboard I’ve used on a Smartphone (the Universal’s and TyTn’s keyboard are my favorites on the Pocket PC side of the Windows Mobile house).

One somewhat surprising aspect of the touch’s lack of tactile feedback is that I don’t think I can use it without looking at the screen. I’ve also used the iPod nano and the 5th generation iPod (video). Both of those are very easy to use without looking at the device because the click wheel gives lots of location and tactile information.

IMHO Apple was wise in NOT positioning the iPod touch as a PDA. It is clearly not a PDA. On the other hand, its Safari browser is clearly superior to Windows Mobile’s Internet Explorer (and Opera mini on Windows Mobile — for me anyway). That combined with a relatively easy (but not great) YouTube app makes the iPod touch the current overall multimedia champ. I just looked at the new Zune announcements. I think the Zune still has a lot of catching up to do. But, more on that after the firmware upgrade for the current generation Zune’s become available next month. I’ll flash my Zune then and give it a spin.

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Viigo Free RSS Reader
The Microsoft Windows Mobile Owner Circle current featured free offer is Viigo. This free app for Windows Mobile and other device platforms is an RSS feed reader. You can find out more about it on the Virtual Reach Viigo download site.

I haven’t tried it myself. So, let me know what you think if you have tried it. It looks like Viigo lets you manage your RSS feeds from a web page (after signing in). Does that mean you have to be connected to the net to view feeds? One of the things I like about the Ilium NewsBreak RSS reader is that it just downloads the feeds and lets you read them even if you don’t have network connectivity (deep in a large building, etc.).

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Zune vs. iPod Language Handling Differences

An odd confluence of events took place over the past few days. First, my Mac mini died suddenly and without warning last week (which left me Mac media-less since I don’t keep media on my Macbook). My iPod touch arrived on Monday. Then, Microsoft announced the new Zunes yesterday. My 1st generation Zune doesn’t have the 2.0 update yet. But, it got me thinking about the Zune again. So, I decided to put music from the same CD on both devices to see if my non-golden ears could hear any difference. I used a CD that my daughter and I have been listening to lately… Utada Hikaru’s Single Collection, Vol I (an import).

However, before I could get to the audio comparison I ran into some interesting differences in the way the Zune desktop software and iTunes dealt with the disc’s contents. Apple’s iTunes brought in the CD exactly as shown on the jacket. Title parts that were in English (roman letters) remained in English. Title characters in Katakana (phonetic Japanese characters) stayed that way. The Zune software, on the other hand, decided to, um, transliterate from Katakana characters to roman alphabet. The Zune software couldn’t figure out one of the titles at all though. So, it is listed as “[Untranslated]”.
The other difference that amused me was how the Zune software and iTunes decided to deal with the artist’s name. iTunes left it Japanese characters and sorted it out of range (after “Z”). The Zune decided to transliterate it to “Hikaru Utada”. And, this confused me when I tried to search alphabetically by artist. You see it reversed the expected Surname/Given-Name order (Utada Hikaru) to the western Given-Name/Surname order (Hikaru Utada). So, I was doubly confused. It was not listed in the “U” section or out of range (after Z).

It will be interesting to see what the Zune 2.0 firmware update and, presumably, new Zune desktop software does when it becomes available.

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Finally Got to Try Canon Fireworks Preset Mode

I’ve been using various Canon cameras (including several 35mm) for a long time. But, for one reason or another I never got around to trying the Fireworks scene preset available on a number of models. This evening I finally got the chance to try it when I noticed fireworks in the distance and happened to my Canon Powershot A710IS (now replaced the the Powershot 720IS model). I was pretty far away. So, the image above is a cropped and resized (smaller to fit this blog web page). I thought the preset did a pretty good job.

Engcom Virtual Slide Rule Demo
Sat, 29 Sep 2007 23:35:06

The Engcom Virtual Slide Rule is really just an educational demonstration of the slide rule for young folk. But, you can actually move the center slide area around to get an idea of how a slide rule worked.

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Hawaii Foods
Wed, 26 Sep 2007 22:34:07

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OpenCongress
Tue, 25 Sep 2007 22:31:23

Here’s way more info from and about the U.S. Congress than most of us can probably process. But, if you can, head over to…

OpenCongress.org

…where U.S. Congress legislative information as well as news about the Senators and Representatives can be found.

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Sketchcast: Sketching with Audio Voiceover
Mon, 24 Sep 2007 22:41:04

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The Heinlein Archives
Sun, 23 Sep 2007 21:58:59

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MSN Video Beta + Windows Mobile = Nothing

I just read about the MSN Video Beta. So, I figured that surely Microsoft enabled it to work with Windows Mobile smartphones to counter YouTube (which doesn’t play well with WiMo). So, I pointed a Pocket PC Phone Edition at http://next.video.msn.com/ and, well, it turns out I figured wrong. Once again, WiMo users are shut out of a Microsoft product. Not even the login link on the beta page works with WiMo.
And, where is Microsoft Office 2007 compatibility for WiMo anyway? Or, SkyDrive, or multi-page live.com?

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Windows Mobile is Apparently Not Interesting to the U.S.

If put our faith in the results of Google Trends (now updated daily), then we in the U.S. apparently don’t care enough about Windows Mobile to search for it in Google compared to the rest of the world. If you take a look at…

Google Trends results for Windows Mobile

…you’ll find that the U.S. does not even show up in the top 10 world regions (countries) searching for the term Windows Mobile. San Francisco does show up at #4 in the cities list, however. However, if you limit the search region to the U.S., Redmond (home of Microsoft’s main campus) shows up as the #1 city followed by Seattle, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco again in position #4. Huh? Shouldn’t S.F. be #1 for the US if it is #4 worldwide? And, in less that 12 hours, the city rankings changed completely with S.F. dropping out altogether. Personally, I think that Google Trends is not quite firing on all cylinders.

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NPR Mobile

NPR launched NPR Mobile at http://m.npr.org/. This mobile friendly site lets you either call in (voice phone) to listen to a show (not recommended IMHO) or listen to an audio stream (great if you have an unlimited data plan or WiFi). I tried it over a relatively slow EDGE network. It took a while for the audio stream to sync up, buffer, and then start playing. But, once it did, the sound quality was good and I didn’t run into any oddities. Navigating through the large and rich NPR site was quite easy on a WiMo6 T-Mobile Dash smartphone.

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53 Weeks in a Year

Did you know there are 53 weeks in a calendar year? Yep, according to Windows Mobile, that is the case for certain years. This is one of the oldest bugs and has been around since the Windows CE days. So, if you use week numbers for project planning, don’t use the Windows Mobile week numbers as your definitive guide.

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Work with Office 2007 Files on Windows Mobile 6 Devices
UPDATE: It turns out someone at Microsoft jumped the gun on this download. It is not actually available yet.
Just read the announcement in Jason Langridge’s (Microsoft’s Mr. Mobile) blog about the release of…

Microsoft Office Mobile 6.1: Upgrade for Microsoft Office 2007 file formats

This upgrade lets you work with (read and write) Office 2007 generated Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. The upgrade is only for Office Mobile on Windows Mobile 6 devices. So, if you have an earlier generation device, this upgrade is not for you. Note that this upgrade is relatively huge at 6MB. However, the system requirements section says this space can be on a storage card. So, presumably, you can install this on a flash card instead of using up system memory.

The download page also mentions that it is possible to buy Office Mobile 6.1 if your device does not already have it. But, the link provided there just leads to a general Office Mobile information page at this time. I don’t see any link or graphic indicating this purchase can be made today.

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Calendar Year View Incomplete in Landscape View

Here’s a little oddity I noticed just a few weeks ago. The Windows Mobile Pocket PC can display a calendar in year view (something not available on the Smartphone AKA Standard Edition). However, while all 12 months are displayed if the Pocket PC is in portrait mode, only 8 months are shown in landscape viewing mode. You can scroll left or right to see the other 4 months. But, still, this seems lame.