I’m very pleased and proud to announce that my newest book, Programming .NET 3.5, is available, and more important that it may be the most unusual book I’ve ever written. As noted in my primary blog it was our theory; generated long before I started work at Microsoft, that while there was good reason to write what I call “silo” books on each of the .NET technologies (e.g., WPF, WCF, etc.) there was a coherence to the entire Microsoft framework that was potentially missed by that approach.

Our other theory was that .NET 3.5 (broadly defined) was the first version of .NET to fully facilitate the development of n-tier applications and MVC (imagine our shock when Microsoft developed the MVC library for ASP.NET!)

This book was also a blast to write, and even more exceptional, my co-author, Alex Horovitz, launched his own writing career out of it, quickly following with Programming ASP.NET MVC to be released shortly.

Twitter / john_lam: ironruby running unmodified…

ironruby running unmodified rails!

Congratulations John and company!

A day late on this one, but still worthy of a post,

First Moonlight Release - Miguel de Icaza

Today we are making the first public release of Moonlight, supporting the Silverlight 1.0 profile for Linux. The release comes in two forms:

* No-media codecs supported, but easy to install: head to http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight and click on the cute installer for Moonlight. This currently hosts builds for Linux x86 and x86-64 for Firefox.
* Source-code compilation, but you can optionally compile FFMpeg codecs yourself. To do this, download our moon-0.6.tar.bz2. And follow the build instructions.

More goodness at the above linked entry on Miguel’s blog.

Congratulations, Mono Project developers!

As seen on irc://irc.gnome.org/#mono,

Novell is hiring, temporary project 6 months, help improve Mono, use Visual Studio to debug remote Mono apps

Contact: miguelATnovellDOTcom

In what may be a first (at least for me) I’ve secured agreement with the very generous folks I work for at Microsoft and at O’Reilly to loosely join my tutorials on Silverlight.net and the chapters of my forthcoming book Programming Silverlight (co-authored by Tim Heuer, O’Reilly 2008) to create an enhanced approach to learning.

Let me be clear: the goal is to provide more for less; it is not the goal to push you to buy the book; and you have my word that the tutorials will not be limited, constrained or curtailed in service to making the book somehow more worthwhile.

My hope is that the book will have additional value, but the tutorials, like the videos will stand on their own. If we do it right, together they will supplement one another.

Here’s how it will work.

Phase 1 - Tutorials and Draft Chapters

During Phase 1 I will continue to publish tutorials on Silverlight.NET as well as the first drafts of chapters from Programming Silverlight for those who are curious or who would like to provide feedback (more on providing feedback to come).

Note that these chapters will not have gone through technical edit nor copyedit, and will be quite rough; the final chapters will be updated for Silverlight RTW (Release To Web, as opposed to Beta), numerous rounds of technical edit, development edit and copyedit.

Phase 2 - Publication and Beyond

In Phase 2, the 1st Edition of the book will be published, ideally providing cohesion, depth and detail that is simply not possible in the tutorials. It is my plan that the tutorials will continue, supplementing the material already on line, drawing on and extending the book as Silverlight evolves, and serving as both a supplement to the existing edition and a preview of future editions.

Schedule

It is important to understand that the writing schedule for this book does not in any way reflect my knowledge of the timing on the release of Silverlight Beta 2 nor subsequent releases of Silverlight. Further, the current schedule is subject to change and will change. It always does. The Table of Contents will change as well. I’ll post both within a week or so.

Update: A little late on the update, but we have our winner!

mdavid$ svn info http://anonsvn.mono-project.com/source/trunk@100000
Path: trunk
URL: http://anonsvn.mono-project.com/source/trunk
Repository Root: http://anonsvn.mono-project.com/source
Repository UUID: e3ebcda4-bce8-0310-ba0a-eca2169e7518
Revision: 100000
Node Kind: directory
Last Changed Author: ivanz
Last Changed Rev: 100000
Last Changed Date: 2008-04-06 19:25:00 -0600 (Sun, 06 Apr 2008)

Congratulations to both ivanz and in particular, the Mono Project contributors as a whole! This is a *HUGE* accomplishment!

[Original Post]
Okay, so maybe this doesn’t seem like that big of a deal to some of you, but to anybody who has put their heart, soul, blood, sweat, and tears into an open source project, you know what I mean when I state this is something pretty monumental,

Revision 99928: /trunk

Revision 99928: /trunk

So who’s going to be lucky number 100,000? Not a clue (though I personally hope it’s Miguel just ‘cuz that would pretty cool :)), but based on the typical number of daily check-ins we should find out in the next 24 hours, if not less.

Mono Revision Watch Party (#monowatch on freenode) is on!

Listen: Pay attention to what your customers are telling you.
Understand: Take the time to understand what your customers are telling you.
Respond: Follow-up to what your customers are telling you where and as appropriate.
Repeat: Keep listening, understanding, and responding to what your customers are telling you.

Following the LLUR Principal: Bad Example

PM : FooBar Project : Eveel Empire

“We’re sorry our buggy software has blocked progress on your project. If we get around to fixing it we’ll release it in a service pack, but if it happens we’re not sure when that might be. What do you want us to do? Our resources are “limited”!

Customer : BarBaz Project : We’re Not Eveel (At Least Not Yet) Startup

“If you gave me access to the source, I could just fix it myself”

PM : FooBar Project : Eveel Empire

“Bwaahhhahahaaa!!! Wait, you’re serious, huh? Bwaahhhahahaaa!!! That kills me! :D :D :D”

Following the LLUR Principal: GoodGreat Example

In Sunday’s NY Times (February 10, 2008) Tim O’Reilly is quoted as saying

Popfly shows me that Microsoft still thinks this is all about software, rather than about accumulating data via network effects, which to me is the core of Web 2.0…They are using Popfly to push Silverlight, rather than really trying to get into the mashup game.

This raises a host of interesting questions for me as a long time author for O’Reilly Media and as “Silverlight Geek” for Microsoft.

As a start, I decided it was time for me to turn my attention to writing a bit more about Popfly, and I invite you to join me if you’d like to know more about this interesting, if now somewhat controversial, technology.

Thanks.

-Jesse

I’m incredibly proud and pleased to announce the release of the fifth edition of Programming C#.

C# 3.0 represents a significant maturation of the C# language adding numerous small new features, and a few major enhancements including LINQ.

This new edition was a tremendous opportunity to revisit every aspect of my book, and to bring it fully up to date, to ensure that we were adding value, and telling the story of C#; never simply reproducing the documentation already available from Microsoft.

We also took the opportunity to demonstrate how C# supports WPF, ASP.Net and Ajax, as well as WinForms.

We spent months reviewing and rewriting every chapter, and we then subjected the book to the most extensive technical review I’ve ever been involved with.

Finally, I re-edited the entire book, to ensure that it speaks with a single voice, because I believe that a tutorial must ultimately be a conversation between one author and one reader.

This year I will also be producing two new books from O’Reilly Media: Programming .Net 3.5 and Programming Silverlight. More about those when they become available

Sam Ruby: Exclusive Content

As per the above link, Sam Ruby recently pointed to an announcement from S. Somasegar which stated,

We have signed an agreement to partner with NBC Universal to build a Silverlight 2.0 based web broadcast of the 2008 Summer Olympic games. This agreement also sets MSN as the official home of the 2008 Summer Olympics.

At first I didn’t get what should have been Sam’s obvious point (he attached the Moonlight logo (in SVG format, none-the-less, which for those running IE would be unable to view… That Sam Ruby, I tell ya… always the sly one ;-)) inline to the post), something he clarified in a follow-up to my follow-up,

providing a useful service that the rest of us can benefit from

Define “us”. Does it include me?

Of course “me” links to http://www.unbuntu.com, suggesting in no uncertain terms the question,

Is “Silverlight” += “Moonlight” the same thing as,

… a Silverlight 2.0 based web broadcast of the 2008 Summer Olympic games

Or in other words, will I be able to gain access to those same streams regardless of whether I am running Silverlight on Windows or Moonlight on [choose your favorite Linux distro.]?

My assumption is yes, but as Sam points out in another follow-up to my follow-up,

it seems you are suggesting that this same content will not be available to those running Moonlight.

The announcement doesn’t say…

Anyone in the know care to clarify?

IEBlog : Internet Explorer 8

Just as he was the first to talk about IE7, Bill Gates kept the tradition alive and discussed IE8 at the Mix ‘n Mash event here on campus yesterday. Bill was talking to some bloggers about IE.Next and called it IE8, the same way we do here in the IE team hallway.

So, yes, the version after IE7 is IE8. We looked at a lot of options for the product name. Among the names we considered and ruled out:

IE 7+1
IE VIII
IE 1000 (think binary)
IE Eight!
iIE
IE for Web 2.0 (Service Pack 2)
IE Desktop Online Web Browser Live Professional Ultimate Edition for the Internet (the marketing team really pushed for this one ;-)
Ie2.079 (we might still use this for the Math Major Edition)

It’s good to see that if nothing else, the IE team still has a good sense of humor (of course, many would argue that after releasing IE 7, their sense of humor became immediately obvious, but as usual, I digress ;-)

On a serious note, how about we all join in on the fun: If you were in charge of coming up with the name+version number for the next version of IE, what would you choose?

To get things started, here’s my choice,

IE 8 w/ Integrated Support for XSLT 2.0+XQuery (A man can dream, can’t he?!)

Now you try, (this aught to be good ;-)

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

[Ironruby-core] Contributor’s agreement

Hi Everyone,

I have a copy of the IronRuby contributor’s agreement ready for folks to look at: http://www.ironruby.net/contributor.pdf

We’re in the process of getting turning the crank on getting the electronic signature tool spun up for collecting signed agreements.

So don’t bother signing / FAX / mailing this document in. I hope that by the end of today or early next week that you should just be able to electronically sign the doc.

Comments / questions?

Thanks, -John

NOTE: The above document is specific to IronRuby, but I can only assume that this same document represents what we can expect to see for any other projects Microsoft opens up for external contribution. If anyone who knows better happens to read this, please let me know if this assumption is incorrect so I can update this post with the proper information.

Thanks!

Microsoft/Novell Collaboration on Silverlight. - Miguel de Icaza

Today we are announcing a new collaboration with Microsoft around Silverlight. The Mono team at Novell will implement open source versions of Silverlight 1.0 and Silverlight 1.1.

Our implementation of Silverlight is Moonlight.

We have had a cordial relationship with many developers at Microsoft for quite some time. Scott Guthrie and Jason Zander provided us with informal advice on how to implement Moonlight, and we also have good relations with the open source teams working on IronPython and IronRuby.

Today we are formalizing a collaboration between Microsoft and Novell with the explicit purpose of bringing Silverlight to Linux and do this in a fully supported way. The highlights of this collaboration include:

The highlights of the collaboration are:

* Microsoft will give Novell access to the test suites for Silverlight to ensure that we have a compatible specification. The same test suite that Microsoft uses for Silverlight.
* Microsoft will give us access to the Silverlight specifications: details that might be necessary to implement 1.0, beyond what is currently published on the web; and specifications on the 1.1 version of Silverlight as it is updated.
* Microsoft will make the codecs for video and audio available to users of Moonlight from their web site. The codecs will be binary codecs, and they will only be licensed for use with Moonlight on a web browser (sorry, those are the rules for the Media codecs[1]).
* Novell will implement Silverlight 1.0 and 1.1 and will distribute it for the major Linux distributions at the time of the shipment. We will offer some kind of one-click install for Linux users (no “Open a terminal and type su followed by your password…” as well as RPM and DEB packages for the major distros and operating systems.

This is an historical collaboration between an open source project and Microsoft. They have collaborated with other folks on the server space (Xen and PHP) but this is their first direct contribution to the open source desktop.

ed. Emphasis added.

Folks, this is a *MUCH* bigger deal than it may already seem: Up until now, the ability to deliver to users of the Linux operating system the same level of audio and video quality over the web that you can get on the Windows platform was simply not possible**.

And anyone who has been following the Moonlight project already knows that significant effort has been made to deliver the virtues of the Silverlight platform to the desktop user, or in other words *external* to the browser as an integrated piece of the Linux desktop.

In other words, the future Linux *desktop* will, for all intents and purposes, be at least partially funded by — you guessed it — Microsoft.

My oh my, how times they are a changin’. ;-)

Congratulations to Miguel de Icaza, the Mono Project, Novell, and to Microsoft for finding ways to work together with one another on the foundation of tomorrows web-based desktop platform. This is truly a remarkable achievement!

—

** And from the standpoint of Linux desktop applications, if I am reading “they will only be licensed for use with Moonlight on a web browser” correctly, it’s still won’t be possible. But none-the-less, this is a significant step forward for users of the Linux platform, something in which has been a *HUGE* problem in the past.

So with the release of IronRuby to RubyForge and opening things up for community contribution (you will need to sign a contributors agreement before they will be able to accept your contributions, but that’s completely normal and an understood necessity by anyone who has contributed to a large open source project before) what better way to celebrate than by throwing a *HACKFEST* Extravaganza?

Of course, while we’re at it, why not spend some time helping out with the *other* .NET Ruby runtime and compiler project, Ruby.NET?

So without further adieu,

This Saturday… day, day < Sunday... day, day, and < Monday... day, day *ONLY*, the IronRuby and Ruby.NET Labor Day Weekend *HACKFEST* Extravaganza is coming to an IRC channel near you,

irc://irc.freenode.net/#ironruby

- and -

irc://irc.freenode.net/#ruby.net

[Said in the deepest, most stern Monster Truck Weekend announcer voice I can conjure up] BE THEEEERRE…

John Lam on Software: IronRuby on Rubyforge!

I’m happy to announce that we’re live on Rubyforge today!

It’s been nearly 6 weeks since our initial source code release at OSCON. So what’s changed?

* Exception handling
* Parallel assignment
* Instance variables

Added some more library support:

* Comparable
* Enumerable
* Array
* Hash
* String (not quite complete yet)
* Dir

Go get the sources and have a happy hacking weekend!

Congratulations, John and Company!

So for those of you unaware, the release of IronRuby on RubyForge marks that first time, that I’m aware of anyway, that Microsoft will begin to accept contributions from the community; first as they relate to the Ruby library support and eventually to the core platform which will include the actual Dynamic Language Runtime itself (after the 1.0 bits go golden.)

And if you think about how much progress has been made over the last few years to get to the point where significant projects/products are not only being released under a true FLOSS licensing scheme, but as of today are now following in the footsteps of how a true FLOSS project operates, accepting community contributions directly to the code base: Well my friends…

Today marks the beginning of a new era, and while undoubtedly there are those who hate the fact that Microsoft has taken this direction and/or distrust their intentions and/or will go to their grave demanding that none of what MSFT is doing can truly be considered FLOSS and/or haven’t gotten any for so long that they pretty much hate anything and/or everything these days and/or want to make the world ever so painfully aware of the fact that they hate anything and/or everything and/or etc., if you were to ask my opinion (or even if you were not to ask my opinion), well I would most certainly give it to you, and it goes a little something like this,

To John Lam, Tomas Matousek, and Haibo Luo as well as each and every one of you at MSFT that are responsible for helping bring together the many, MANY details that have enabled you to pull off such an amazing feat: In my book, each and every one of you are *ROCKSTARS* and as such: *YOU ROCK*!

Thank you!

Of course what would a good open source community coming in party be without, you know, evidence to the fact that the community is both willing and anxious to — you know — come in and start doing what *TRUE* supporters of FLOSS do best: Finding bugs, filing bugs, and then finding ways to fix those bugs,

Marquee de Sells: Chris’s insight outlet

Duck Typing for .NET!

For structural typing fans (and they’ll be more of you over time — trust me), David Meyer has posted a duck typing library for .NET. There are many reasons this is cool, but in summary, it allows for many of the dynamic features of languages like Python and Ruby to used used in any .NET language. Very cool.

Chris Sells , Friday, August 17, 2007 1:42 PM

Nice!

via the same page Chris linked to above,

From a recent email, it seems the rumors that Citrix will be acquiring XenSource have come to pass, an acquisition reported to be around 500 million. From an open source university research project to a commercial endeavor started up just over a year ago to a 500 million dollar acquisition? That’s not to shabby!

Of course you can’t help but assume that Microsoft’s partnership with XenSource from a while back helped propel this acquisition into fruition. And coupled with Citrix’s focus on the Windows desktop and application delivery (primarily through their terminal delivery mechanism) you can’t help making speculations that MSFT will be given more than enough reasons to place their sights on making a little acquisition of their own. XenSource in and of itself wouldn’t present enough of an advantage to MSFT given they already have VirtualPC/Server. But take the install base of Citrix and couple that with the advantages that Xen provides over and above that of VPC/S and you have what can only be seen as something that may just be a little too tempting for MSFT not to take a long hard look at.

Guess time will tell, but in the mean time,

Codename “Jasper” is an incubation project at Microsoft that aims to deliver the advantages of Rails-like dynamic database application programming to .NET developers. Database expert Julia Lerman, well-known to the Microsoft community as a speaker and trainer, explains the new technology with a hands on example in a new Windows DevCenter article this week: Build Dynamic Database Applications in .NET with Project Codename Jasper.

Like Rails, Django and similar frameworks, Jasper models databases using information derived from their schema. But as Julia points out in her article, rather than relying directly on those schema, Jasper works from an Entity Data Model that is generated by Microsoft’s new Entity Framework, providing an additional layer of abstraction that developers can exploit to create more program-friendly models. In her words:

Jasper’s use of the Entity Data Model instead of connecting directly to the database means that there will be fewer anomalies to manually code around. For example, if the database was normalized so that contact details are spread across a number of tables (contacts, emails, telephones, and addresses) you could customize a model so that all of this information is contained in one entity. Then when you create a dynamic application, a detailed contact record will be created automatically and not require custom code. Much more of the application can be truly dynamic.

Is this an advantage that resonates with developers? Read the article and tell us what you think.

As I mentioned in a previous note, I’ve joined Microsoft; working title “Silverlight Geek” (official title, Senior Program Manager, Silverlight Developer Division); and I’ve done so at a very exciting time (Silverlight 1.0RC and Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 were released today!)

I’ll continue writing here about all things concerning my books, current and forthcoming, but for the latest on my babbling about Silverlight, please drop by my blog on Silverlight.net.

Thanks!

OSCON and Parallel Programming

I’m attending OSCON for the first time, and thoroughly enjoying it. I was briefly anonymously famous during Tim O’Reilly’s opening keynote presentation this morning, when Tim put up a slide showing the front page of ThreadingBuildingBlocks.org, a new open source project announced by Intel at OSCON. I wrote the text that introduces the benefits of Threading Building Blocks (TBB) to developers. I’ll be actively involved in that project, as community manager, blogger, and in as other ways as they come to mind…

I’m finding that there is a lot of focus on parallel programming and scalable architectures at this particular OSCON conference. I’m spending my time in the sessions that focus in that area. I attended the TBB tutorial yesterday, and right now I’m in the “Nested data parallelism in Haskell” session, given by Simon Peyton Jones of Microsoft Research.

Must listen now!

For those with interest > http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2430928882

Update: Given the nature of Facebook, my guess is that this group would nicely facilitate things like announcements regarding local user group meetings, conferences, and other high level interactions that relate to dynamic languages on the .NET platform. In other words, there’s no need to duplicate what already exists (e.g. XSL-List, IPyDevList, Ruby.NET dev list, etc.), but there does seem to be a need to have a somewhat centralized place to communicate high level information at both a local, national, and international level, so this seems like a good place to do just that.

John Lam on Software: A first look at IronRuby

We’ve been working very hard over the past couple of months to get our first source code release ready. I’m happy to announce today the first drop of the IronRuby source code. IronRuby is licensed under very liberal terms as set out by the Microsoft Permissive License.

We’re also happy to announce that we will be accepting source code contributions into the IronRuby libraries. Right now we have a lot of logistical work that we still need to do, but we fully intend on getting IronRuby onto Rubyforge by the end of August.

Congratulations, John and MSFT! :D

Hi! I’m Kevin Farnham, a career software developer on Windows and non-Windows platforms (overall about 2/3 the latter, but turning more toward Windows lately). My core experience is in the area of high volume data processing and data access. I’ve worked with multiprocessor systems, and developed multithreaded applications, for a very long time.

It appears that programming has has reached a turning point — where programming for multiple processors, which hitherto has been a somewhat “arcane” endeavor, is about to become mainstream. Pick up any computer catalog you receive in your snailmail box, and you’ll see all kinds of multicore systems offered to you. Businesses tend to go with what’s current when they purchase new systems, and businesses that sell to consumers need their software to perform superbly on the new computers regular people are buying.

What this means is that: all applications need to take advantage of multicore processing chips, such as those currently offered by Intel and AMD. This means that applications have to be structured as multithreaded programs. What was once an arcane discipline now becomes critically important.

I have just started blogging over at the Intel Software Network Blogs site. I’m researching their “Threading Building Blocks” template library, which brings multithreaded programming in C++ to a new level… kind of raising it above the assembly-language-like patterns of raw threads that I and my long-time multithreaded programming compatriots are accustomed to.

I intend to post here as well, since Windows developers will likely be more significantly impacted by the shift to multicore processors than anyone else, given that most client applications (even for Unix server applications) run on Windows. I worked on the server side of Windows, leading the development of a Windows 2000 server application that successfully served tens of thousands of clients running on a 32-processor Unisys Windows box in 2003. That was a pretty powerful Windows system at the time..

Anyway, I’m happy to be blogging here, and please feel free to ask any questions you might have about Windows development using today’s new multicore systems.

On The Record

SLAC, which studies subatomic particles for the U.S. Energy Department, had been challenged to find ways to add computing resources quickly. “We can’t expand fast enough,” said Richard Mount, the director of scientific computing at SLAC, earlier this year in an article published by Bloomberg. Mount went on to say that Project Blackbox is “…the fastest way we can house computers.” The Project Blackbox system is anticipated to boost the SLAC computing capacity by a third.

Nice! So then what gives with the title?

SLAC’s box, painted white to stay cooler, contains about a million dollars of computing equipment.

Makes sense.

Congratulations to everyone@SunMicrosystems for delivering what can only be seen as a monumental turning point in the history of computing. Nice work! :D

The Sun ODF Plug-In for MS Office has now been officially released. It enables users of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint to read and write documents in the ISO-standard Open Document Format (ODF). It works on Windows in Office 2000, XP and 2003 and is a completely free download.

http://www.sun.com/software/star/openoffice/index.xml

Official Google Blog: All aboard

We’re pleased to announce that we have acquired GrandCentral Communications, a company that provides services for managing your voice communications. GrandCentral is an innovative service that lets users integrate all of their existing phone numbers and voice mailboxes into one account, which can be accessed from the web. We think GrandCentral’s technology fits well into Google’s efforts to provide services that enhance the collaborative exchange of information between our users.

A little late on this one, but none-the-less it’s worth bringing to the surface.

In a post to the IronPython Users List dated June 29th, 2007 Dino Viehland reports,

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

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!

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.

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.

via a recent post to the IronPython Users List, Fuzzyman reports,

Update: *WOW*!

[Original Post]
Bill Gates had a dream: A PC On Every Desktop.

Today that dream evolves,

San Jose Mercury News - Takahashi: Microsoft’s tabletop computer breaks creative ground

Microsoft calls it “surface computing.” The technologies inside it are fairly mundane, but it has taken the company more than five years to develop the applications that make it useful. And, setting the company up as probably the most unexpected entrant into the furniture business in a long time, Microsoft will build the whole thing, from the software to the table itself.

Its goal is to make computing so intuitive that it becomes as simple to use as furniture. Microsoft Surface changes the way we interact with computers in the same way ATMs changed how we get money from a bank.

These machines, with 30-inch table displays, will cost $5,000 to $10,000 at first and compete with ordinary electronic kiosks, said Pete Thompson, general manager of the Microsoft surface computing group. Four key partners will launch products in hotels, casinos and retail stores as early as November.

TITLE DISCLAIMER: Are you really all that surprised? Come on now… ;-)

So, as I was saying… Courtesy of Peter Fisk, the Dynamic Language Runtime has “awl’ gawn ind grow’d uptawn uhs”, adding yet another choice to the list of current and future languages available to the web hacking masses,

Python? Check.
Ruby? Check. (or at very least, soon to be “Check.”)
JScript? Dynamic VB? Smalltalk?

Check. Check. and…

Smalltalk in Silverlight - Workspace Windows � 21st Century Smalltalk

Above is a test of the “virtual desktop” running inside a Firefox browser. To test it in your browser, you must have the Silverlight 1.1 runtime installed.

* Download Silverlight 1.1 runtime
* Open “Virtual Desktop” test in your browser

The “virtual desktop” running in Silverlight is progressing. Windows are now resizable and can be positioned by dragging the header. Open workspace windows by clicking on the desktop background.

Check!

“Yeah,” you find yourself asking with a twinge of doubt and an eagerness to find fault in pretty much anything you can’t claim a part in bringing to fruition, “but does it run cross-platform?”

Great question, thanks for asking…

I’d say we can make that a “Check!”

SWEET! Thanks (again!), Peter!

Fresh off the IPyPress (AKA The IronPython Development List) the ever so resilient IPyHackmasterFoo (which, to provide a comparison, Grandmaster Flash is to hip hop as IPyHackmasterFoo is to IronPython hacking :D) himself (AKA Seo Sanghyeon) has the following piece of information to bring to the WorldWideWebHacking masses,

[IronPython] [ANN] IronPython Community Edition r6

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

I’m sure everyone has heard about Microsoft’s patent-infringement claim against Linux and other Free and Open Source (FOSS) software, as described in Roger Parloff’s 14 May article in CNNMoney.com, Microsoft takes on the free world: “Microsoft claims that free software like Linux, which runs a big chunk of corporate America, violates 235 of its patents. It wants royalties from distributors and users. Users like you, maybe.”

Various commentators include Andrew Updegrove, Elizabeth Montalbano (InfoWorld), Sun’s CEO and President Jonathan Schwartz, and Groklaw, the latter quoting Eben Moglen, legal counsel to the Free Software Foundation.

Meanwhile, Christian Einfeldt (Producer, The Digital Tipping Point) started a “Sue me first, Microsoft” campaign, which quickly became known at Digg (and probably other sites; it’s hard to keep up), causing such a rush on his server that it crashed.

So here I am inside of #conary confessing my guilt in regards to having built 4 5 6 completely unusable rPath EC2 images yet having no way to delete them (and therefore costing rPath storage fees to keep the images hosted on S3) when Tybstar brings to my attention that the fact that because it is so mind numbingly inexpensive to store data on S3, at present time the feature to enable the ability to delete an EC2 image from S3 is a lower priority because the cost of storing data on S3 means that there are higher priority features that take its place. (Update: Thus is the nature of effective project management: A constant balancing act of prioritizing feature development.)

Of course there are those of you who are now going to claim that S3 just stole your job to which my response would be: “No, S3 didn’t just steal your job. *YOU* just need to open a book and learn a more attractive set of hacking skills!” But, as usual, I digress…

To make a long story that much more painfully longer… The conversation led to me suggesting that because rPath was so bleeding edge it must be difficult to find folks who have the ability to pick up the ball and run with it w/o requirement of six months of training (thus is the world of technology… If it didn’t change, there would be no such thing ;-), which led to Tybstar suggesting that at the moment they’ve been pretty lucky, which led to me suggesting that, given the attractive business model and overall coolness factor of rPath, this made sense, which led to this little golden nugget of (apparently) exclusive info…

The first Ignite Boston will be on Thursday, May 31, from 6 to 10pm at Tommy Doyle’s in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA. From 6-7pm, mingle and talk tech with your fellow FOOs, alpha geeks, and techies from the greater Boston area. Join a MAKE challenge team and participate in building bridges (how much weight can your bridge–made from less than 1K popsicle sticks–support?) After that, we’ll have a special keynote address from author Scott Berkun (The Myths of Innovation; The Art of Project Management) kicking off our Ignite night. Then, onto guest speakers who’ll catch you up on the cool, new, innovative stuff going on in technology today. Don’t blink or you’ll miss their lightning-fast, five-minute presentations. During intermissions, get a cold beer and chat with speakers, sponsors, and O’Reilly’s own editors. Join us Thursday, May 31, for a fun, energetic evening of talking, learning, making, collaborating (and drinking!).

Check out the events and activities of our Ignite events on the West Coast.

Presentation Guidelines

Ignite is a user-generated event. If you’re interested in speaking, then
submit a proposal for consideration.

Presentations must:

• Be between 5 and 10 minutes
• Be on an innovative topic (no sales pitches, please!)
• Be viewable on a PC [a MacBook Pro with Powerpoint and Keynote, and PDF] with standard AV equipment

Technorati Tags: Boston, Cambridge, Ignite

Microsoft backs adding ODF to ANSI standards - Network World

… Microsoft backed adding ODF, the document file format used widely in open-source alternatives to Microsoft Office, to a list of business standards.

Microsoft also said it will support Office 2007’s default document file format, Open XML, for the list maintained by The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) as well, according to a press statement.

The company said it supports ODF (Open Document Format for XML) because businesses want choice and interoperability for software they deploy. ANSI recommends business best practices, standards and guidelines to a range of industries in the United States.

An interesting note from Andy Updegrove at the bottom of the first page of the same linked article,

To its credit, Microsoft voted for ODF when it came before the ISO (International Organization for Standards), while IBM cast the only negative vote for Open XML when it was up for approval by standards organization Ecma International, Updegrove added.

Of course, just prior to this he states,

… by supporting ODF as an ANSI standard, Microsoft is “making it appear it is rising above the squabble to do the right thing.” Instead, he thinks the move serves as a challenge to vocal ODF supporters to support approval of Open XML as a global standard when a final vote for the draft specification comes before the ISO.

So let me get this straight,

A slightly belated “happy second birthday” to the OpenDocument Format. The OpenDocument v1.0 specification was approved as an OASIS Standard on 1 May 2005.

(The OpenDocument v1.1 specification was approved as OASIS Standard on 2 February 2007.)

More dates and links are available on the OASIS website and on GullFOSS.

This came in from the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology.

The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) conference is a program of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI) and is co-presented with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), happening October 17-20, in Orlando, Florida.

The online scholarship application for Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is now available. Scholarships will cover conference registration (which includes most meals), lodging, and an upper limit for airfare based on the geographic region of the applicant.

Mono 1.2.4 Released - Mono Project News

Mono 1.2.4 has been released. This release was branched from our development tree in April 20 and includes various important bug fixes that were done during the testing period.

Mono 1.2.4 is the first release where ASP.NET 2 is considered complete (with the exception of WebParts that are still missing). We are shipping the tool “installvst” that helps developers install the www.asp.net starter kits on Unix.

Other hihglights include: 1,000 new APIs implemented (based on the Moma reports), shared memory can now be disabled, major asp.net performance boost, the beginning of C# 3.0, the new Mono.DataConvert class, many 2.0 Windows.Forms improvements (ToolStrip support), Metafiles (WMF and EMF) supported in System.Drawing, start of 3.5 APIs (System.Core), COM support for Callable Wrappers, the 2.0 Socket API, a Solaris/amd64 port and VB can now be used with ASP.NET.

See the release notes for more details about the new features.

The richness of the .NET platform has just got that much richer,

QUT | FIT | PLAS

We are pleased to announce the release of a new Beta (version 0.7) of the Gardens Point Ruby.NET compiler. Since the last release we have added support for debugging (by generating pdb files) and have created a Visual Studio integration package allowing users to edit, build, execute and debug Ruby programs within Visual Studio 2005. This includes syntax colouring, error highlighting, brace matching, hidden regions, Ruby.NET projects, project properties, project templates and project item templates. Ruby.NET projects (.rbproj) enable multiple Ruby source files to be compiled into a single .NET assembly.

As we have not yet registered our Visual Studio integration package with Microsoft, to use it you will need to preinstall the Visual Studio 2005 SDK version 4.0. For those without Visual Studio or the SDK, you can still use Ruby.NET from the command line as previously. We now have two front-ends to our compiler. One called RubyCompiler.exe takes similar command line arguments to the C# compiler and can be used to compile multiple Ruby source files into a single assembly. Our other front-end, called Ruby.exe takes approximately the same command line arguments as the C Ruby interpreter and transparently compiles, loads and executes a Ruby source file without writing any assemblies to disk.

In addition to Visual Studio integration, we have continued extending and fixing bugs in the compiler and our implementation of Ruby’s builtin classes and modules. Still no performance optimizations or support for interop with other .NET languages. We will have support for interop in our next release.

Nice! A list of acknowledgments found at the bottom of the same page linked to above follows. To each of you involved with bringing this project and release into fruition: Thanks!

In his blog last week, Mono Project leader Miguel de Icaza explained why implementing WPF has never in the past been a high priority. But Silverlight is another matter, he wrote:

…Unlike WPF [which ]requires people to rewrite their software to take advantage of it, Silverlight is aimed at the Web and it will become a nice complement, a way of spicing up existing web applications without rewriting what already works.

It makes tons of sense for us to start looking at an implementation of Silverlight on Linux with Mono. There is already a XAML loader, it is the perfect excuse to use Antigrain for high-speed graphics and that only leaves the pesky media issue to be solved.

In fact, am kind of happy that Microsoft did not do the port themselves as implementing this sounds incredibly fun and interesting.

Now it’s official. No sooner had MIX 07 attendees left the bright lights of Vegas, than the Mono Silverlight project page went live. It’s called Moonlight.

The announcement is especially interesting given Microsoft’s recent overtures to Novell, the official sponsor of the Mono Project. Though no Microsoft spokeman at MIX 07 ruled out a Linux implementation of the Silverlight CLR, the official response to the question has been that the Company wants to make sure that the 98% of the market represented by Windows and Mac is covered first. In a Channel 9 interview made the week before his keynote at MIX, Scott Guthrie suggested that mobile devices had a higher priority than Linux in the near term because of their enormous reach. But in a panel (”Why Can’t ASP.NET and PHP Just Get Along?”) on the last day of the conference, Brian Goldfarb, manager of Platform Strategy in Scott’s group, said, if I may paraphrase: “In light of our new relationship with Novell, the idea of a Linux implementation of Silverlight is a lot more interesting to us now.”

Stay tuned, as they say.

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

Silverlight Including .NET Support - Download it Today

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

Some highlights from the community site:

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

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

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

Apparently it’s not.

Nice! Thanks, Microsoft!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you there!

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

[IronPython] IronPython v1.1 Released!

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

Hello IronPython Community,

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

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

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

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

More complete list of changes and bug fixes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On March 26, Daniel Carrera announced that the OpenDocument Fellowship now offers an ODF validation service, similar to the W3C validation service for HTML. You can use this service to verify a document’s compliance with the OpenDocument Format.

Keeping up with the rapid increase in governments embracing open standards and specifically OpenDocument is assisted greatly by the OpenDocument Fellowship’s annotated set of links relevant to decisions by government bodies around the world to adopt office software supporting the OpenDocument XML standard.

The Fellowship’s news page is a good source of the latest information and links to relevant news items and commentary. Here are a few of the many items listed on that page.

[IronPython] IronPython v1.1 RC1 Released
Dino Viehland
Fri Mar 23 13:11:28 PDT 2007

Hello IronPython Community,

We have just released IronPython 1.1 Release Candidate 1. IronPython v1.1 is a minor update to IronPython including both new functionality as well as a number of targeted bug fixes. The new functionality in v1.1 includes several new modules (array, SHA, MD5, and select), support for XML Doc comments within the help system and __doc__ tags, as well as support for loading cached pre-compiled modules. If no regressions are discovered with this release then we will re-release the same binary as v1.1 final.

You can download the release from: 1.1 Release Candidate

We’d like to thank everyone in the community for your bug reports and suggestions that helped make this a better release: Anthony Baxter, Arman0, Christian Muirhead, Doubleyewdee, Eloff, Jörgen Stenarson, Py_Sunil, Seo Sanghyeon, Tarlano, and Whit537.

In a recent entry posted to the IronPython mailing list, Dino Viehland writes,

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

Microsoft Changes Windows Mobile Naming Scheme (again)
Along with introducing Windows Mobile 6, Microsoft is once again changing the device naming scheme. The new device type names along with what we call them now are:

* Standard Edition == Smartphone
* Classic Edition == Pocket PC
* Professional Edition == Pocket PC Phone Edition

To make things even more interesting, the Standard Edition (Smartphone) includes a read-only (no editing) version of Office Mobile. Does all this really help differentiate the different Windows Mobile device types for the non-techie consumer (i.e., the vast majority of people buying these things)? I think not. My guess is that a common scene that will play out again and again are executives asking IT why they were given the obviously inferior Standard Edition instead of Professional Edition based solely on the naming scheme. This doesn’t help anyone and, in fact, may confuse even more people. Microsoft should have just renamed the phone-less Pocket PC to Pocket PC Standard Edition and left the other two names alone.

Microsoft .NET Micro Framework
So, we’ve got .NET Framework for PCs, .NET Compact Framework for Windows Mobile, and, now, .NET Micro Framework for MSN Direct and other embedded systems. It appears that this category also includes Windows Vista SideShow devices. Here’s a bunch of links to help you sort out the information. First up is the press release…

Microsoft .NET Micro Framework Is Now Available

Next is the frameworks website…

Microsoft .net Micro Framework

And, finally, a brief video (WMV format) providing examples of the types of devices that might run .net Micro Framework…

.NET Micro Framework demo video

MSDN: What’s New for Developers in Windows Mobile 6
The Microsoft Developer Network(MSDN) has a new overview page for developers interesting in creating Windows Mobile 6 applications. You can find it at…

What’s New for Developers in Windows Mobile 6

The page has a broken link to the Windows Mobile Wiki. I found it and have it linked correctly below.

Channel 9 Windows Mobile Wiki

Live Search for Windows Mobile and Live Search for Java
Microsoft announced and made available Live Search for Windows Mobile and Live Search for Java over the weekend. Unlike most Live services, this Live Search requires installing client software. The other interesting aspect is that versions for both Windows Mobile and Java based mobile devices (such as Nokia smartphones) were made available.

You can either download the software to your desktop (for later installation on your phone) at…

http://mobile.search.live.com/

…or download it directly to your phone by visiting…

http://wls.live.com/

This service includes live traffic information for 25 U.S. cities. Maps and driving directions are available for other locations.

Hotmail Push Email for Windows Mobile 6
So, this push-email (made popular by the RIMM Blackberry) is all good and well. But, you are a Windows Mobile device user and do NOT use an Exchange Server for your email. So, big deal. Right?

Well, it turns out that push-email can be had with the free Hotmail service from Microsoft and the upcoming Windows Mobile 6 devices. Here’s a link to an article on the MSDN Blogs that describes how to set up a free push-email service.

Push Email with Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Mobile 6.0

ActiveSync 4.5 Ate my Device Partnerships!
Although I have a PC setup running Windows Vista Ultimate Edition and the new Windows Mobile Device Center (ActiveSync replacement), my main PC that syncs with most of my Windows Mobile devices runs Windows XP Media Center. Since…

Microsoft ActiveSync 4.5

…was released for those of us still syncing Pocket PCs and Smartphones with XP, I decided to upgrade from 4.2 to 4.5 today. No problem right? Simple upgrade, right? Wrong…

The upgrade process itself went smoothly. However, when I brought up ActiveSync 4.5 (without any WM device attached to the PC), I noticed it had lost all of its device partnerships! This meant that I had to re-partner every device. The pre-Windows Mobile 5 devices partnered quickly as usual. However, because Windows Mobile 5 devices keep their PIM data in slow non-volatile RAM, the partnership for WM5 boxes took forever. I’m talking what seemed like 5 to 10 minutes per device.

The Windows Mobile platform is over 10 years old now. This sort of problem should have stopped happening during the last century. ActiveSync continues to be a user-hostile application and continues to earn its nickname of ActiveStink. Let’s hope its successor, WMDC, doesn’t earn its own pejorative nickname.

… and on that day there shall be *MUCH* joy!

(More to follow as I unravel the mysteries of my new found toy joy!)

Oh, and to Melissa Richards, Michael K. Johnson, and the entire rPath crew, as well as Tony Bailey, and the rest of the Microsoft Windows Server Virtualization team…

YOU ALL PHREAKIN’ ROCK! :D

As mentioned, more to follow as I begin to start hacking together utilities, tools, and other fun stuff that relates to both the Zune and rPath/VHD-based appliance (the next nuXleus release is slated to take place tomorrow) integration.

More when there’s more to report! :D

I recently referred to Andy Updegrove’s report on the responses. In the past few days, media reports and blog commentaries (too numerous to cite here) have speculated on the significance of the number of responses. Now, Rob Weir has blogged on an important point that many are overlooking. Here is an excerpt:

Andy Updegrove reported on 6 February that “…an unprecedented nineteen countries have responded during the contradictions phase — most or all lodging formal contradictions with Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC1), the ISO/IEC body that is managing the Fast Track process under which OOXML (now Ecma 476) has been submitted.” The article lists the countries (the US is conspicuously missing) and describes the next step in the process.

See also my earlier post, Groklaw Team Exposes Serious Flaws in Microsoft’s OOXML Specification.

On 1 February, Peter Korn reported:
“The OASIS ballot for OpenDocument v1.1 has closed, and without a single dissenting vote, OpenDocument v1.1 has been approved as an OASIS Standard. This is another affirmation of the increasing participation of the disability community in developing technology standards… OpenDocument v1.1 is primarily the work of the disability community and experts in disability technology…”

For those interested in the changes:

Three plugins for converting between Microsoft Word (.DOC) and OpenDocument Text (.ODT) file formats have been announced in the last two weeks: daVinci (OpenDocument Foundation), Open XML Translator (Microsoft), and Conversion Technology Preview (Sun Microsystems). Here’s a quick summary; see also Andy Updegrove’s article And Now There are Two: Sun Announces its ODF Plug-in.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No?

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

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

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

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

rBuilder Online - Create New Build

Build Types
Installable CD/DVD

Raw Hard Disk Image

VMware� Virtual Appliance

Raw Filesystem Image

Compressed Tar File

Demo CD/DVD (Live CD/DVD)

Microsoft� VHD Virtual Appliance

Virtual Iron Virtual Appliance

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

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

I’m don’t think of myself as a viral marketing fanboy. But, when one comes with a puzzle to solve, I guess I’m a sucker :-)

The black envelope you see arrived in the mail today. The return address on the envelope is from LOKI with a One Microsoft Way (Redmond campus) address. However, the postmark is San Jose, CA. Inside the envelope is a small note from the DESK OF LOKI (Enigma Director) and a small black envelope with an odd looking 256MB USB flash drive. The drive contains three files: A text file note, a JPEG image with a graphical cipher key, and a short video from Loki.

The note instructed me to go to http://vanishingpointgame.com/. If you head there, you will see a countdown timer that probably hits zero as CES starts (or Bill Gates’ keynote starts). The solution to the cipher is on the web. So, you can hunt for it if you don’t have a key of your own (all the cipher’s are unique, btw).

The solved cipher leads you to another web page with a list of US cities and dates (probably Vista events). OK, gotta go to try to solve my cipher now. I hope this viral marketing effort turns out to be more interesting than the Origami one for the Ultra Mobile PC launch last year :-)

Here’s a Wiki that provides more info about this ARG (Alternate Reality Game):

http://vanishingpointwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page

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

Why Does Microsoft Confuse its Windows Mobile Customers?
In response to a blog item about Microsoft Money being unavailable for Windows Mobile devices, reader Marcos asks: Good information but SPB Finance is only compatible with Windows Mobile 5 not smartphone. I had purchased Money 2007 and also SPB Finance and now that I upgraded my cell phone for a smartphone (Dash)I am in trouble with no sync. Any idea how can I have Money 2007 in my Dash?

Before discussing it in detail, let’s see what I wrote in my earlier blog that he is responding to:

If you plan to upgrade to Microsoft Money 2006 or 2007 and use it with your Pocket PC, don’t. According to the Microsoft web page Money for handheld devices and Palm Pilots, Money 2007 will not sync with any Pocket PC version and Money 2006 only synchronizes with Pocket PCs that run versions preceding Windows Mobile 5.

If you want something to help manage your finances on your Pocket PC and can sync with both Microsoft Money and Quicken, take a look at Spb Finance.

It would be easy to play the role of an uppity self-proclaimed expert and diss Marcos for not reading blog or to send him to Microsoft’s web site to explain that the Windows Mobile branding applies to both Pocket PCs and Smartphones. But, I’m aiming the dissing where it belongs: At Microsoft’s marketing of the Windows Mobile brand and its effort to unify the Pocket PC and Smartphone platforms.

Microsoft Windows Mobile consists of two main branches: Pocket PCs with touch screens that may or may not have a cell phone radio (CDMA or GSM) and Smartphones without touch screens and always with some kind of keyboard for dialing and other input. Back when the first generation Smartphone 2002 launched, it was pretty easy to tell the difference between a Pocket PC Phone Edition and a Smartphone. In 2006, we have an entirely different story. Go take a look at a Treo 700w, Motorola Q, T-Mobile Dash, and Samsung BlackJack. Which ones are Pocket PC Phone Edition devices and which ones are Smartphones? Ding! Yep, only the Treo 700w is a Phone Edition among this very similar looking bunch of devices. No wonder Marcos is confused. Even Cingular appears to be confused. Take a look at their product page for the BlackJack. Their ad copy for the phone Mobile Word, Excel, and PowerPoint support. And, yet, Microsoft doesn’t provide those applications for their Smartphones. It may have a reader/displayer for those files, but you can’t edit Word or Excel documents on a Smartphone using Microsoft applications.With Windows Mobile 5, Microsoft even changed the bottom of the screen to require two giant softkeys at the bottom tied to two hardware buttons for both the Pocket PC and Smartphone. This took away an enourmous amount of screen real estate from developers who had used that bar of pixels to display menus, status, and other useful information. Now, we just have two giant softkeys wasting space most of the time on a Pocket PC device.

The Pocket PC/Phone Edition and Smartphone should be clearly differentiated so that people like Marcos and the vast majority of customers don’t need to become Windows Mobile experts to figure out which device they should buy and use. This lack of product differentiation is biting a lot of disappointed consumers. Look at my response to Meg’s question just a few blog items ago: Office Mobile for a Smartphone?

This is basically the same issue Marcos faces: People who are interested in or already bought a Windows Mobile Smartphone when they really need a Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition. Why? Because most Windows Mobile Smartphones that were sold prior to the Motorola Q didn’t have QWERTY keyboards. That made them less than useful for applications that are data-entry intensive like Word, Excel, and Money from Microsoft as well as many third party applications. This means you don’t see as many data-entry intensive applications for the Smartphone since their numbers are probably still small compared to the Smartphones with more traditional dialpads.

So, Marcos. Please read my text again. There is NO Microsoft Money 2006 or 2007 compatible with ANY Windows Mobile 5 platform. And, if you want to perform that kind of task with a 3rd party application like Spb Finance, you should look at a Pocket PC Phone Edition or Pocket PC (no phone), not a Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone device like the T-Mobile Dash.

typepad mobile
I don’t use TypePad for blogging. However, if you do and you would like
to use a mobile device to blog from, take a look at…

typepad mobile

There are versions for Palm OS 5, Windows Mobile 5, and Symbian Series
60 (free download). The online manual provides step-by-step instructions
for posting text and photos from a mobile device.

Pocket & Phone SharpMT: Mobile Blogging
I guess this is my mobile blogging topic week. Here’s another mobile blogging client…

Pocket SharpMT and Phone SharpMT

…are freeware mobile blogging applications for Windows Mobile Pocket PCs and Smartphones (with .Net CompactFramework 2.0). As you might guess from the MT part of the app name, this client works with the MoveableType API.

Blogger Mobile
Unlike the previous mobile blogging client-side products discussed, Blogger Mobile uses the more familiar mail-the-blog-in model. Actually, there is a twist. It actually uses a gateway instead of mailing directly to a specific blog address. If you use Blogger as your blogging service, head over to read the following two items.

On the Go with Blogger Mobile

Blogger Mobile FAQ

According to the FAQ, the service works with AT&T/Cingular, Sprint PCS, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless in the US. An email or MMS message is sent to the address go@blogger.com to make the magic work. The message can include a photo as well as text.

Moblogging on Yahoo! 360
I discussed moblogging using Google’s Blogger yesterday. So, it only seems fair to mention Yahoo! 360 today.

If you login to your Yahoo! account and head over to http://mobile.yahoo.com/mblog, you will see simple specific instructions on how to email text and photos directly from your cameraphone to your Yahoo! 360 blog.

Moblogging to Microsoft Live Spaces (aka MSN Spaces)
Continuing on with Moblogging week… MSN Spaces got a web facelift and renamed Windows Live Spaces earlier this year. Like Blogger and Yahoo! 360, you can email text and photos from your cameraphone to your blog. Unlike the other services, it doesn’t have an external write-up you can read without logging in. So, here’s some information in case you are considering using Live Spaces.

• Login to Live Spaces with your Passport account
  
• Click on Options on the upper far right side of the window
  
• Click on Email Publishing in the left sidebar
  
• Fill out the web form and read the instructions about moblogging to your Live Spaces blog
  

So when Seo released IPCE r4 I was fairly deep under water working on various projects that I didn’t realize it until a week later when I came up for air. My apologies for missing an entire release cycle!

That said, according to Seo,

There’s not much updates, but I figured that releasing early & often would be better…

Not much? I beg to differ! ;)

[IronPython] [ANN] IronPython Community Edition r5

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

You can download it from SourceForge. http://sourceforge.net/projects/fepy

FePy project aims to provide enhancements and add-ons for IronPython. Visit the project homepage for more informations. http://fepy.sourceforge.net/

Binary is built with Mono 1.2.2.1. It is strongly recommended to use Mono versions above 1.2.2, as it fixes GC.CollectionCount issue properly. You may meet unexplained NotImplementedError in the long-running process otherwise. (Thanks Paolo Molaro.)

There’s not much updates, but I figured that releasing early & often would be better…

Changes in this release follow.

New IronPython Updated to IronPython 1.1a1.

FePy options

The way site.py is (ab)used by FePy has changed.

Documentation here: http://fepy.sourceforge.net/doc/fepy-options.html

Libraries Improved array module.

Support for CherryPy 3.

Experimental AST support.

Bundles code and ihooks are included from Python Standard Library.

paramiko 1.6.4.

Patches

You can read the summary of applied patches here. http://fepy.sourceforge.net/patches.html

Removed in this release, fixed in 1.1a1:

patch-ironpython-file-canseek

patch-ironpython-open-unknown-mode

patch-ironpython-re-lastgroup

New in this release, for IronPython:

patch-ironpython-compile-co-filename

patch-ironpython-set-func-name

New in this release, for Mono:

patch-ironpython-mono-socket-buffersize

patch-ironpython-tabcomplete-by-default

New in this release, for Python Standard Library:

patch-stdlib-codeop (Anthony Baxter)

–
Seo Sanghyeon

And just in case you missed it,

Support for CherryPy 3.

SWEET! Thanks, Seo!!! :D

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

Tips for using Windows Mobile QWERTY Keyboards
A year ago (2005), the category of Windows Mobile devices with QWERTY keyboards was restricted to Pocket PC Phone Edition devices like the ones pictured below.

Now, however, we have Windows Mobile Smartphones like the Motorola Q and T-Mobile Dash that have QWERTY thumb keyboards too. If you’d like to get more use from your Windows Mobile QWERTY thumb keyboard, take a look at the article I wrote for Microsoft.com earlier this year:
Mobile Typing: Two Thumbs Up!

Spb Mobile DVD
Spb Mobile DVD (US$24.95) doesn’t actually run on a Windows Mobile Pocket PC or Smartphone. It is a Windows desktop application that creates video files (WMV or XVID) optimized for the small Windows Mobile devices’ screens.

Spb Mobile DVD

Although there are a lot of commercial and freeware/Open Source applications that can migrate DVD video to a computer, Spb’s entry into this crowded market focuses on simplicity. And, it definitely wins in that category. The only gotcha is that its wizard waits until the DVD menu appears before turning over control to the end-user. This means a long wait if the DVD has a series of previews (commercials) before the DVD menu appears. The wait (which might be 10 minutes in some cases) is worth it though. Because, once there, a few clicks completes the migration process instructions. And, the actual process seems much faster than other video converters I’ve seen.

The resulting video looked clear and smooth on my relatively slow i-Mate K-JAM Pocket PC Phone Edition (195MHz CPU). A definite thumbs up for this product from me.

Citizen Photojournalism: Yahoo You Witness News (Beta)
Yahoo! finally found another use for the great Flickr site they purchased a while back. Their recently launched…

You Witness News

…site allows anyone to submit newsworthy digital photos and video clips for possible use by Yahoo! News. Photos are submitted through a Flickr account. Video is submitted through an unnamed mechanism (Yahoo! Video one would assume).

We’ve already seen news services use cameraphone photos and videos. With the image quality improving in gradual steps (just adding megapixels doesn’t mean much), we should see some interesting citizen photojournalism used by legacy corporate news sources more in the future.

Ilium Software eWallet 5.0 Public Beta
Ilium Software’s eWallet is a secure information storage application for Windows Mobile, Palm OS, and Windows XP. It is much more than a simple password storage application. It is basically a small secure nearly freeform database application.

I’ve been using a Windows Mobile device since the 1.0 days in 1997 when it was still referred to by the kernel name: Windows CE. From those Handheld PC days to the current Pocket PC/Smartphone days, there has only been one 3rd party (non-Microsoft) application that has been resident on my daily working device: Ilium Software’s eWallet. So, I was very pleased to learn that after all these years, Ilium continues to develop, refine, and enhance this truly must-have Windows Mobile product. You can find information about the open beta of this new version linked below.

eWallet 5.0 Public Beta

Office Mobile for a Smartphone?
Reader Meg asks: I am thinking of buying a HTC Dash but would like to be able to edit word & excel docs on the road. Is there a free software you would recommend? Even one I have to pay for?

Although there are Word and Excel viewers for Windows Mobile Smartphones and one third party spreadsheet for Smartphones…
Westtek ClearVue Office

Repligo for Microsoft Smartphone

Z4Soft PTab

…I don’t know of any actual Office Mobile alternative for the Smartphone that provides editing features. The real question here is whether or not a Smartphone is the appropriate tool for your requirements.

If editing Word and Excel documents on the road is a key requirement, you should really looking at a Pocket PC Phone Edition instead of a Smartphone. T-Mobile has a single PPCPE available: The T-Mobile MDA.

There is one other alternative. However, it requires buying two or three separate devices. You could purchase a T-Mobile Dash Smartphone and a Pocket PC with integrated thumb keyboard or a Pocket PC and a Bluetooth keyboard. This combination would allow you the convenience of a Smartphone with the application richness of a Pocket PC.

Finally, be aware that Office Mobile components are subsets of the full Microsoft Office components. You will not be able to do everything you can do on the desktop. And, formatting can be lost in a roundtrip from your desktop to the Windows Mobile device and then back to the desktop.

Is Your Child a Blackberry Orphan?
If your child texts you to get your attention, you probably have a Blackberry Orphan according to the Wall Street Journal article…

Blackberry Orphans

Blackberry-ies, PDAs, and Smartphones’ ability to keep you connected 24×7 can produce addictive behavior that keeps you staring and typing at it all day (and night) long. Like most maladaptive addictive behavior, this can lead to personal relationship problems (though the people at the other end of your mobile device is probably equally addicted and feeds on your stream of email, IMs, and SMS messages). The WSJ article focuses on the impact Blackberry addiction has on the children of addicted adults.

I don’t think I’m that kind of parent myself, but, umm, ’scuse me, incoming message, gotta attend to that :-( Seriously though. It is a good idea for gadget-prone parents to take a step back once in a while for a little self-assessment. And, yes, I include myself in that group.

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

Why Do Techie Sites Give Up on Mobile Formatting?
I read a lot of web-based news sites on either a Smartphone (240×320 resolution) or Pocket PC/Phone Edition (480×640 resolution). Over the past year or so general news sites seem to have really redesigned their websites for mobile devices to optimize readability and navigation. Three in particular come to mind.

MSNBC http://www.msnbc.msn.com/

Time Magazine mobile site

Time Magazine at http://mobile.time.com/

USA Today http://wap.usatoday.com/

A number of tech sites, on the other hand, seem to have erased their mobile formatted sites in the same time period. Computerworld, PC World, and Wired come quickly to mind. I’ll guess that the rise of RSS awareness and tools may be used as a reason. But, anyone who uses their phone or PDA to frequently view the web knows that RSS is a great adjunct. It is not a replacement for interactively viewing a web site well designed for viewing on a mobile device.

Google Mobile Transcoder & Google Pages
Two Google items I noticed while browing the Official Google Blog.

http://google.com/m takes you to Google’s web transcoder that transforms non-mobile friendly web pages into mobile device friendly ones according to the blog item Viewing the web through a mobile lens.

The blog item titled Simplicity and power talks about recent enhancements to the Google Page Creator (as in web page). One of the new features is called Pages for mobile and is described like this: This feature has an awesome power-to-complexity ratio: Now, every Google Page Creator site automatically has a mobile edition. So when people visit your site from their mobile browser, they will see it optimized for their particular phone.

Opera Mini 3.0
Opera Mini 3.0 is a free feature-rich web browser available for many different smartphones and PDAs (including Windows Mobile based ones).

The features new to 3.0 are: RSS feed reader, photo sharing to blogs, content folding, secure connections (https, I’m guessing), and a faster user experience created by maintaining an open connection to the web server.

I haven’t tried this myself. So, please let me know your experience with it.

Windows Live Search for mobile beta
Jason Landridge’s blog describes Windows Live Search for mobile beta as… [giving] you fast access to local search and maps, driving directions, and even local traffic information. When you get your search results, you can click to call the phone number of the place you found, or even look at a satellite photo (on some phones) to find the best parking nearby!

However, after looking at its FAQ and learning that this app started life as a J2ME (Java) client app, I’m not even going to try to install it a device. My experience with Java apps for Windows Mobile devices has been uniformly horrible so far. They either don’t install, don’t run, run slowly, or simply look bad on a Pocket PC or Smartphone. There is a cab file download for Windows Mobile devices on the site. But, I’m still going to pass on this one. Especially since its website doesn’t even indicate if the installer is for a Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition or Smartphone.

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

Yahoo! Mobile: The Unsung Mobile Portal Page

Yahoo! MobileYahoo! Mobile gets no respect (with respect to the late Rodney Dangerfield). But, it should. Google Mobile gets a lot of press like most Google products. Microsoft’s Live Mobile is in a design transition phase (and it really needs to sync up with MSNBC’s mobile solution while it is at it). Yahoo! Mobile has a few beta-stage components. But, for the most part is a mature, simple to navigate, and content rich mobile portal site. It has much more content formatted for the small screen than either Google or Microsoft’s mobile portals. It also has a simple and fast news interface that makes it easy to go from story to story even on a relatively slow GPRS or EDGE connection. It’s only shortcoming compared to its two major competitors is that its web cookie does not stick properly on a Windows Mobile device. My login/password seems to be forgotten much more quickly after leaving the Yahoo! Mobile site. To be fair, Microsoft’s Live Mobile seems to have a similar problem. Only Google’s Mobile portable has the right amount of session stickyness. So, I find myself rarely using it on a QWERTY-less Smartphone while using it quite a lot on a Pocket PC (where login/password entry can be performed much faster).

If you haven’t tried Yahoo! Mobile, head over to the following URL on your phone: http://wap.oa.yahoo.com.

ActiveSync Info for an Old Pocket PC
Reader Phil Smith (in a comment to a previous blog item) asks: My wife has an HP IPAQ 1910 PDA, running the older version of ActiveSync that allows backups and restores. The battery died and it lost everything. Can you tell me what is the latest version of ActiveSync that includes backups and restores. Also, what is the extension on the backups. I have to hook up an old hard drive to find the backup and don’t know what to look for.

I thought the response to this might be of enough general interest to merit its own blog item. So, here are my responses.

• The most current production ActiveSync 4.2 actually provides Backup/Restore functions for pre-Windows Mobile 5 devices. It does not provide it for current generation Windows Mobile 5 devices though.
  
• The extension for backup files created using ActiveSync’s Backup/Restore feature is .stg. In fact, unless you chose something different the default backup filename is backup.stg.
  
• Click -> ActiveSync 4.2 web page for the current version. Veresion 3.8 seems to have disappeared from Microsoft’s site. So, if 4.2 doesn’t work for you, you can find version 3.6 here -> ActiveSync 3.6.
  

US Copyright Office Gives Cell Phone Users the Right to Take Their Phone to a New Carrier
GSM users (e.g., those with service from Cingular or T-Mobile) have been able to get their phones unlocked reasonably easily to let them put a SIM card from a different carrier to change their service. CMDA phone users (e.g., those with service from Sprint PCS or Verizon Wireless) don’t have SIM card that contain their identify and have had a more difficult time in moving their phone from one service to another.

CNN reports that…

Cell phone owners getting new rights

…that this is changing now that the Library of Congress Copyright Office ruled that Cell phone owners will be allowed to break software locks on their handsets in order to use them with competing carriers under new copyright rules announced Wednesday.

Sony Playstation Portable (PSP) 3.01 Firmware Upgrade
Sony released the Sony PSP 3.01 Firmware upgrade just days after the 3.0 release. The stated reason was to address a security vulnerability. I’ll guess this translates to the 3.0 was cracked by PSP enthusiasts who like to run their own apps on the PSP.

Many of the new 3.0.x features tied into the recently release Sony Playstation 3 game console. It also adds the ability to access online (via WiFi) manuals for both the PSP and PS3. Support for a Sony USB camera is also in this upgrade. But, the camera is not available in the US as far as I can tell.

The most surprising thing about the upgrade to me is how long the download took over its 802.11b WiFi connection. I didn’t time it with a stopwatch, but I believe it took well over an hour over a relatively fast broadband connection.

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

Craig Peacock (Microsoft Windows Mobile) Drops an Anniversary Note
I mentioned Craig Peacock (now a member of the Microsoft Windows Mobile product group) and (as far as I call tell) his creation of the first non-Microsoft Windows CE site 10 years ago in an blog entry a few days ago. I asked him to jot down a few thoughts on the last 10 years of Windows Mobile and he was kind enough to comply. You can read his thoughts below…

From Craig Peacock, Microsoft Windows Mobile Product Group

The last 10 years have flown by at such a pace that it’s hard to believe. I remember with fond memories that day in November 1996 it was my first trip to the USA it was Comdex Las Vegas I walked into the exhibition area I saw the Microsoft stand and saw a group of ladies walking round with bright yellow shirts on asking if I needed helping finding any stands. The devices in their hands were Casio devices and so next stop the Casio stand, whilst waiting to see the devices (the lines were several people deep) I saw some people who looked rather out of place in their suits and one of them ordering the person at the other end of the phone to get as many of these devices to the stores in the Vegas area as the existing stores were all selling out.. Off I went to a sharper image store if I recall correctly and I was the owner of a nice new Casio A11.

Then with the Microsoft SDK in hand (and the cezoom screen grab utility) I spent some time getting the device connected to the Internet - dialup in those days and figured that was pretty tricky stuff I think I want to document that with some screenshots. Login was via a terminal window and after login I was browsing the web on Pocket Internet Explorer and life was great. With hindsight of these last 10 years some of the challenges and problems that I saw users face with those early devices still happen today.. Questions like “Why doesn’t the documentation tell me this?”, “How do I get online easily?”, “How do I connect this up to my laptop and use it as modem?”, “how do I setup my e-mail?” - all familiar to most of you.

Just for a trip back to those days of old - the original email setup page is http://www.craigtech.co.uk/ce-emailhowto.html and the getting connected page is taken from an HP 320LX from early 1997.

I remember some of the criticism from around the time with people saying these gadgets from Microsoft and Casio would never catch on and why do people need to take their email’s or documents around with them - funny how things change - I can’t imagine not having my email pushed to my Windows Mobile device wherever I am on the globe these days..

What’s changed - The software / The hardware / The number of ISVs & applications and of course the integration of Cellular technology into the mobile devices. Push Email and of course the Internet’s become a much bigger place.. I haven’t had time to update my website in about 6 years or so.. (www.craigtech.co.uk). The software - from those early days of keyboards which didn’t even support the uk pound symbol on them to Pocket PCs and Smartphones being available in lots of languages all over the world and now stuffed with lots of features and my oh my look how many different applications exist today.

What’s not changed - Online support from MVPs and enthusiasts is still fantastic and provides the now multiple millions of users Windows Mobile devices with help and support. Manufacturer’s websites and support sites still aren’t the first place people think about when looking for help and getting answers. From those early days I remember seeing Iliumsoft (www.iliumsoft.com) & Bsquare (www.bsquare.com) at the original launch event and it’s great to see those early pioneers still doing great things with the Microsoft platform.

If ten years ago Todd would have said to me - Craig in ten years time we’ll have devices with color screens, multi-gigabyte hard drives in them, cellular network speeds of over 1.5mbps, streaming media to the device and multi-gigabyte storage cards smaller than a postage stamp and all those with much better battery life and an even better Web Browsing experience I would have said maybe I can believe the Browsing one and the battery life but I’m not so sure..

I wonder what the next ten years will bring in this vibrant and exciting mobile space - I just can’t wait to find out..

Craig

Google Spreadsheets Can’t Display Certain Excel Mobile Functions
I wanted to take long close look at a spreadsheet on my Pocket PC the other day. So, I emailed it to my Gmail (Google Mail) account from where I could easily download the file to a PC that did not have ActiveSync on it (and on which I did not want to install it). When I opened my email in Gmail, I noticed that one of the options was Open in Google Spreadsheets. A column with text it in appeared but two columns containing date and time functions (e.g., =date(2006,11,18), =time(22,49,00)) were all empty.

I manually typed in a date function to demonstrate to myself that Google Spreadsheets supported that function… and it does. I was able to view the Excel spreadsheet translated to HTML by Gmail as well as download and work with the file showing that Gmail itself left the data unmodified.

It would have been nice to be able to email an Excel Mobile spreadsheet to myself at Gmail, work on it at any web enabled PC, and then mail it back to myself on my Pocket PC. But, oh well, perhaps Google will fix this in the future.

Happy 10th Anniversary Microsoft Windows Mobile

I don’t know the actual introduction date for the first Windows CE devices. But, I always considered their launch at Fall Comdex 1996 to be their public introduction. The original devices were pretty spartan by even my 1996 standards. So, I waited until early 1997 to buy my first Windows CE device: An HP 320LX Handheld PC. It was a step up from HP’x 300LX. The 320LX had 4MB RAM (compared to the 300LX’s 2MB), a backlit screen, and a CompactFlash slot as well as a PC Card slot. Unlike other Handheld PC, it also had a 640×240 grayscale (greenscale) screen. It was a great device and as you can see from the photos here, it still works! HP engineers really built stuff to last back then (I have a few choice words about the iPAQ line HP inherited from their Compaq merger in some other blog entry). I just stuck in a fresh pair of AA batteries and the HP 320LX fired up. Even the backlight still works fine.

Microsoft’s manufacturing partners experimented with all kinds of Handheld PC form factors before the HPC bit the product life dust in 2000 (or thereabouts). You can see the Compaq Aero 8000 Handheld PC behemoth in the second photo. Yep, this monster is a Handheld PC too. It has a 800×600 color screen, built in modem, and a bunch of other interesting features. But, alas the instant-on notebook sized device concept never caught on. The Aero 8000 also suffered from a pitiful battery life. I recall not being able to get much more than an hour of use under battery power. The T-Mobile SDA phone in the photo is just there to help you get a feel of the size of the devices.

Although the Handheld PC platform rode off into the sunset, a good idea never truly dies. We can see that current day Pocket PC Phone Edition devices like the JasJar, K-JAM (both pictured here), and host of QWERTY keyboard enabled Pocket PCs and Smartphones owe a great deal to the original Handheld PC design.

I have to mention the first non-Microsoft Windows CE web site I found before signing off on this blog item: Craig Peacocks Windows CE Pages. I believe he created the site shortly after seeing the first Handheld PCs at Fall Comdex 1996. I didn’t attend that Comdex. But, I did go to Fall Comdex 1997 and was able to sync up with Craig in person. Craig’s work inspired me to get involved in getting a deeper working understanding of Windows CE and I ended up creating and then managing the MSN Computing Central Windows CE Forum for a number of years. Craig went on to much bigger and better things than I and is currently a key player in the Microsoft Windows Mobile product team!
So, happy 10th anniversary Microsoft Windows Mobile! It will be a blast to see what happens in the next 10 years.

Freeware: XnView Pocket-Image Viewer for Pocket PC
Ran across this freeware image viewer for the Pocket PC the other day…

XnView Pocket

Those of you with older Pocket PC devices might find it especially interesting since its creator provides versions for devices going back to the Pocket PC 2000.

DeveloperOne Agenda One for Smartphone
DeveloperOne released their Agenda One for Smartphone last week and the Pocket PC version this week. I bought a much earlier version years ago for an early model Pocket PC and liked it quite a bit. But, moving from one device to another as I do, I lost my product registration and didn’t install it on subsequent devices. For the past 8 months or so I’ve been using a Windows Mobile Smartphone (T-Mobile SDA) as my primary device. This is quite a change for me since I usually prefer to use a Pocket PC Phone Edition (the i-Mate K-JAM was my previous phone). I still carry a Pocket PC around with me if I need to take notes since I still can’t enter text quickly enough using T9 on DTMF layout keyboard.

My Smartphone currently only has two add-on applications: Ilium Software’s NewsBreak RSS newsfeed reader and Microsoft’s (now defunct) Pocket Streets (most of my data entry related work takes place on a Pocket PC). So, a lot of consideration goes into deciding whether or not to install and try an application on a Smartphone. The weak calendar viewing capabilities of Windows Mobile’s integrated calendar finally drove me to install Agenda One just to get an informative week-view on my phone.

Agenda One provides alternate views for Contacts, Tasks, and other Calendar views too. But, for me the winning feature is the week-viewing feature. That alone may convince me to keep it on the Smartphone beyond a test period.

Firstly, a quick shout out to the folks on irc://freenode/conary, in particular mkj_wk, jtate, and Tybstar for helping me to quickly get to the bottom of a build problem I was having —

And when I say quickly I mean from the time I logged in to the time the problem was solved was less than two minutes.

TWO MINUTES!!!

NOTE-TO-WWW: If you know nothing about rPath and/or rBuilder — you need to fix that and you need to fix that *FAST* else get left behind by the rest of us that took the time to learn about all the wonderfullness that is rPath, rPath Linux, rBuilder, the conary build and distribution system, and the rPath Appliance Agent (among other things.) To truly understand virtualization and appliance-based computing, you need to get to know *EVERYTHING* you can about all of the above mentioned products and services made available to the world at *ZERO* cost by the good folks @ rPath.

More on the above soon, though I would *HIGHLY* recommend watching this two minute clip and be a smarter, more informed human being because of it. I would alsp recommend learning more about rPath, the company, in general. Contact information is located @ that same link. :)

In the mean time,

As per my recent check-in notes to the nuXleus project repository (*PROUDLY* hosted and developed by the same mentioned technologies by the same mentioned folks).

I found the following in my current feed reader of choice yesterday, installed the Windows Bits, and even finished cooking the Linux bits into the nuXleus project earlier this morning (still working on the next release, though its within spitting distance of being ready — two more apps to finish out.)

Mono 1.2 Released - Mono Project News

Mono 1.2 Released

Mono 1.2 has been released.

Go to the downloads page to get a copy.

Very Cool! Congratulations to the Mono folks for yet another amazing milestone!

That said, to whomever came up with the following feature in the latest Windows installation,

Nicholas Allen’s Indigo Blog : V1 RTM Downloads

V1 RTM Downloads

After a long wait, WCF V1 is now available! We will of course be shipping with Vista, but the online download is accessible now. Everyone should be upgrading from the beta and RC releases now. Remove any previously installed versions before attempting to upgrade.

Here are the download materials:
Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 Redistributable Package
Microsoft� Windows� Software Development Kit for Windows Vista™ and .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components

You can also get the Visual Studio Orcas extensions corresponding to this release.
Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP

SWEET! Congratulations to all of those in whom played a role in bringing WCF into being. Today *MOST DEFINITELY* marks the day that a whole new world of intra and inter-application communication interop will begin to make itself known in ways I don’t think most of us have even imagined.

That said, I don’t think it will take very long for the development world to realize what is now possible that simply was not possilble — at least not very easily, anyway — before now.

Thanks MSFT!

*VERY* informatiave Q&A between Jeremy Kirk from IDG and Bill Hilf from Microsoft regarding the recent MSFT/Novell deal,

Q&A: Microsoft open to open-source pacts | InfoWorld | News | 2006-11-06 | By Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service

DGNS: It seems like a veiled threat to Red Hat users — there’s only one way to protect yourself legally and that’s by using Suse Linux.

Hilf: There’s no threat. There’s a fundamental premise that we need to have the market understand we have a substantial amount of intellectual property in the operating system space.

IDGNS: Is Microsoft going to approach other open-source vendors?

Hilf: Our door is open to anyone to do a similar deal.

IDGNS: Why do this deal now rather than a few years ago?

Hilf: We started on the general framework for this three years ago. The deal with Novell started about six months ago. There was just a lot of work we needed to do to understand the GPL side of it and not violate the GPL. We don’t actually license patents in this agreement. There is no patent cross-licensing. We are saying we are providing coverage for Novell’s customers from a Microsoft intellectual property perspective. That allows us to work with the GPL because the GPL is very specific about licensing of patents. That took a while to get to that point from a legal framework.

So what’s the bottom line? First, a bit more from the beginning of the interview,

If you head over to Microsoft’s Live Search Maps site, you’ll find an option to download and install their new Virtual Earth 3D Beta. I happened to see it demoed on the evening news and decided to try it out.

The 2D satellite images are spectacular: Clear and comprehensive. Microsoft Live’s maps showed clear photos in areas where Google Maps a we don’t have any imagery at this zoom level for this region.

It looks like the 3D mapping feature may be a disappointment for those of us with less than high-end gaming machines (in my case, much less). I used a PC with an AMD Athlon 3200+ CPU, 1GB RAM, and an nVidia GeForce 5200 graphics card with 256MB of dedicated graphics RAM. Admitedly, this is pretty low-end in a world of dual and quad processor PCs and Macs. But, still, I had hoped the nVidia card would help with the processing requirements. If you take a look at the embedded video, you’ll see that I had a less than thrilling 3D experience.

I’m saving my nickels and dimes to buy a Core 2 Duo notebook (I’m waiting for notebooks with the Vista Sidenote LCD screen) in 2007. Hopefully, I can get one with a dedicated graphics card and enough horsepower to take a second look at Virtual Earth 3D again at that time.

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

Windows Live Barcode

Microsoft’s Windows Live Barcode sites touts using Denso’s QR Code. QR Code is a 2d matrix barcode that can store more information than other kinds of barcodes currently in use. Microsoft’s website lets you create a QR Code barcode (you can see mine here) and says they will provide a reader for handsets to use them. However, the site does not have any download just yet. QR Code has been around since 1994. It will be interesting to see if it finally catches on because of this apparently new push from Microsoft.

New Google Mobile Gmail (if-fy on Windows Mobile Devices)
Google released a Java Midlet Gmail client for mobile devices today. So, of course, right off the bat it doesn’t work with my Dell Axim X50v (Windows Mobile 2003 2nd Edition) or T-Mobile SDA (Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone). My i-Mate K-JAM (Windows Mobile 5 Pocket PC Phone Edition) has a Java runtime, however. So, I was able to install and test it there. Couple of thoughts.

• The fonts look horrible on he 240×320 LCD. The fonts are small and jaggy (aliased).
  
• The scrollbar on the right is razor thin. I guess this is ok on a phone/smartphone device. But, it is difficult to grab with a stylus on a PDA type device. Of course, the navigation buttons work on a Pocket PC. So, I could use it instead of a stylus. But, when I am using a stylus, I don’t want to have to put it down just to scroll a page.
  
• Navigation through a threaded message list is fast. But the navigation is not as intuitive as it could be. Clicking on a thread item’s tab expands or collapses it. But, it is not immediately obvious.
  
• The menus look ok when my K-JAM is used in portrait mode but are truncated at the bottom when I’m using it in landscape mode (keyboard pulled out).
  

Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) Overview (MS’ Mr. Mobile)
Microsoft’s Jason Langridge (AKA Mr. Mobile!) wrote an overview of the Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) that replaces ActiveSync in Windows Vista. He also provides a bunch of screenshots. So, head over to his blog to get the details.

Windows Mobile Device Center Overview

Free Pocket PC Software @Microsoft Windows Marketplace
The Microsoft Windows Marketplace lets you filter and sort in a number of ways. If you filter on Pocket PC and sort by price, you can find the free downloads for a Pocket PC.

Microsoft Windows Marketplace filtered on Pocket PC

Microsoft Mobile Windows Live Beta

I use Microsoft’s Live.com as my default Internet Explorer 7 home page. Its tabbed page interface and hover over text expansion work great on my desktop and notebook PCs. The Mobile Live Beta is interesting but loses everything but the main page. Clicking More… just takes me to the current Windows Live mobile page which is a rehash of the MSN Mobile page. The Mobile Windows Live portal can be a great resource once they get more of the info from the desktop version and navigation that isn’t totally tied to a phone-centric interface (i.e., don’t forget the larger Pocket PC form factor).

SoftMaker Office for Pocket PCs
SoftMaker is taking pre-orders for their SoftMaker Office for Pocket PCs which bundles TextMaker 2006 (word processor) and PlanMaker 2006 (spreadsheet). Although Microsoft provides Word Mobile and Excel Mobile for Pocket PCs, SoftMaker’s offerings were much more full featured and closer to the desktop Office versions that Microsoft offerings the last time I took a close look a few years ago. If the firmware based Microsoft products lack some of the functions you would like to have on a Pocket PC, take a look at this bundle.

Update: Firstly, Marcel Weiher gently reminds me of a fairly important point,

In regards to OOP — Smalltalk is at the very foundation of classic Object Oriented Programming.

via [Vista:SmallTalk] On Alan Kay: It’s *ALL* About Messaging

Smalltalk is not only NOT its syntax or the class library,
it is not even about classes. I’m sorry that I long ago
coined the term “objects” for this topic because it gets
many people to focus on the lesser idea.

The big idea is “messaging” — that is what the kernal of
Smalltalk/Squeak is all about (and it’s something that was
never quite completed in our Xerox PARC phase). The Japanese
have a small word — ma — for “that which is in between”
- perhaps the nearest English equivalent is “interstitial”.

The key in making great and growable systems is much more to
design how its modules communicate rather than what their internal
properties and behaviors should be.

Think of the internet — to live, it
(a) has to allow many different kinds of ideas and realizations
that are beyond any single standard and
(b) to allow varying degrees of safe interoperability between
these ideas.

Secondly, I think one of the O’Reilly servers needs a bit of a tune-up on the system clock — Regardless of what it might seem, I promise, I didn’t reply to Marcel *BEFORE* he made his original comment. ;)

None-the-less, thanks for the reminder, Marcel!

[Original Post]
As promised, Peter Fisk has followed up yesterdays post with an overview of using JSON Arrays together with Smalltalk messages,

JSON Arrays and Smalltalk Messages � Microsoft .Net and Smalltalk

JSON (Javascript Object Notation) is a simple, lightweight data-interchange format which has libraries available for most languages. Using JSON, simple arrays of objects can be sent between Vista Smalltalk sessions.

And this method in class Object can then execute the arrays as Smalltalk messages:
performArray: anArray
self perform: anArray first asSymbol withArguments: anArray withoutFirst

As an example, the TmsTicTacToe game sends two kinds of messages to the opposing player:
- a text message which appears in the chat window
- a “mark tile” message which marks a tile on the opposing player’s board

For those of you who would rather chew on tinfoil than muck around with angle brackets, my guess is that this is something you will find most exciting. :)

Couple of things to note,

Update: Peter mentioned several items of interest in a follow-up email. With his permission, I have updated the end of this post with two separate tidbits of info I believe are well worth the click and/or scroll :D

[Original Post]
Peter Fisk, developer of Vista Smalltalk, gave a presentation last Wednesday to what I believe was a local Ottawa Smalltalk user group (will verify this with Peter.) the Ottawa Smalltalk Users Group at Carleton University. David Buck attempted to record the presentation, but apparently had some problems half way through. Not to fret, however, as he has created a compelling screencast of Vista Smalltalk running a XAML-based application inside of IE7 which includes various applications that help showcase some of the capabilities of using Vista Smalltalk as a browser-based solution for application development.

Couple of things to point out,

* Vista Smalltalk has built in support for Jabber/XMPP. Couple this with Windows Communication Foundation (the .NET 3.0 runtime library’s are required for VST to run) and you have one heck of a strong communication platform for hucking XML messages from one node to the next. The implications in regards to usage of VST for AJAX-like applications should be quite obvious.
* The XBAP-enabled runtime for Vista Smalltalk will be added to the latest release of the nuXle.us project (I finished the latest release on Tuesday, though there are still a few more pieces to add to the mix, so chose to hold off announcing it until I have a chance to finish building and testing these last few pieces.) and will be ready for download just as soon as I have had a chance to finish out all of the testing. You can find a listing of whats available now and what is to come at the projects ExtensibleForge.Net home.
* Don’t think VST is a cross-browser/cross-platform solution? Think again. ;)

Will update accordingly with a new post when its finished out and ready to go.

Until then, please enjoy the above screencast. *WELL* worth the five minutes invested!

IronPython: ASP.NET Web: The Official Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Site

With Microsoft IronPython for ASP.NET, developers have the ability to create compelling web applications in the popular dynamic language for .NET, IronPython, using Visual Studio or the free Visual Web Developer.

IronPython for ASP.NET is a free extension to ASP.NET that is targeted at:

* ASP.NET developers looking to enjoy the simplicity and flexibility of a dynamic language, specifically IronPython; and
* Python developers looking to harness the power of ASP.NET and its rapid application development (RAD) environment.

Python’s clean object-oriented design, dynamic nature, richness of expression, ease of use, and concise syntax has won over many users in the last several years. IronPython is a new implementation of the Python programming language running on .NET. It is well integrated with the rest of the .NET Framework and makes all .NET libraries easily available to Python programmers, while maintaining full compatibility with the Python language. To learn more about IronPython and to download the project, including complete source code, please visit www.codeplex.com/ironpython.

Microsoft ASP.NET is a free technology that allows programmers to create anything from small, personal web sites through to large, enterprise-class web applications. All you need to get started with ASP.NET is the free .NET Framework and the free Visual Web Developer.

If you are an ASP.NET developer, the key thing to know is that you can leverage your existing knowledge of Visual Web Developer and ASP.NET, including its Page framework, server controls, and file formats. In fact the only thing that is not supported in this preview release is the development of web services.

The benefits of developing ASP.NET web applications with IronPython for ASP.NET include:

* the simplicity and clarity of the Python language;
* the power and extensibility of the ASP.NET framework;
* faster initial page processing; and
* better scalability.

To provide you with a deeper understanding of IronPython for ASP.NET, David Ebbo, an architect in Microsoft’s .NET CLR team, has written a great IronPython for ASP.NET whitepaper, which is also available as a Word document or a PDF document. Additionally to help you get started with IronPython for ASP.NET, the team has provided the following five walkthroughs:

1. Creating a Basic Web Page with IronPython.doc
2. Using Shared Code with IronPython for ASP.NET.doc
3. Databinding with IronPython for ASP.NET.doc
4. Debugging IronPython for ASP.NET.doc
5. Creating a User Control with IronPython.doc

We hope that you enjoy this Community Technology Preview, and we invite you to provide feedback in the IronPython forum.

Microsoft sure had a busy day on Thursday.

• They changed the Vista retail license terms that only allowed for a single re-installation: (WindowsVistaBlog.com): News: Revision to Windows Vista retail licensing terms
  
• They launched the new Microsoft Office site
  
• They launched a new site: Zune.net
  
• They moved Internet Explorer 7 into the critical upgrades list in Windows Update
  
• And, apparently, November 30 has been set as the release date for Vista, Office 2007, and Exchange Server 2007 for business customers while January 30, 2007 has been set as the release date for the release of the Vista/Office consumer editions
  

Microsoft and Novell Announce Broad Collaboration on Windows and Linux Interoperability and Support: Companies also announce a patent agreement covering proprietary and open source products.

REDMOND, Wash., and WALTHAM, Mass. — Nov. 2, 2006 — Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc. today announced a set of broad business and technical collaboration agreements to build, market and support a series of new solutions to make Novell and Microsoft� products work better together. The two companies also announced an agreement to provide each other’s customers with patent coverage for their respective products. These agreements will be in place until at least 2012. Under this new model, customers will realize unprecedented choice and flexibility through improved interoperability and manageability between Windows� and Linux.

“They said it couldn’t be done. This is a new model and a true evolution of our relationship that we think customers will immediately find compelling because it delivers practical value by bringing two of their most important platform investments closer together,” said Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. “We’re excited to work with Novell, whose strengths include its heritage as a mixed-source company. Resolving our patent issues enables a combined focus on virtualization and Web services management to create new opportunities for our companies and our customers.”

While there have been WAY TOO MANY signs over the last year+ that something like this would be taking place, it’s still pretty amazing to see something as official as the above announcement take place.

Wow! Wow, WoW, WOW!

With the above in mind, some of the key “WOW” take aways from the above linked announcement include,

Well, no, O’Reilly won’t be exhibiting, but I’ll be attending DevConnections next week (November 6-9) on behalf of the Company and talking with as many attendees and speakers as I can.

While its easy to see the simple genius of Project Blackbox (the simple genius represented by the “why hasn’t somebody already thought of this?!” statement when you first see something of this nature), there was one question that I had in the back of my mind that left me wondering if this would become a *nix niche market leader, or a true pioneering platform bound to take the Lions Share of the data-center market.

The question: What are my operating system options?

The answer is contained in the following 2minute:22second clip from Jonathan Schwartz,

[video] Schwartz on Sun’s new movable server | CNET News.com

From Oracle OpenWorld 2006: Sun President Jonathan Schwartz discusses his company’s new movable server and supercomputer, the Sun Blackbox.

For those of you who don’t have the same mentioned 2:22 to spare (though when you do, it’s worth every second of your investment to watch)…

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

LifeHacker: 11 Killer Freebies for Your Pocket PC
The LifeHacker article 11 Killer Freebies for Your Pocket PC lists, as the title implies 11 free applications for the Windows Mobile Pocket PC. I have tried just two of the applications from that list (ADB Idea Outliner and Skype for Pocket PC). I didn’t see anything I have a burning urge to try. But, you might find something useful in the list of freebies. And, hey, the price is right :-)

mobile.google.com
The Official Google Blog noted that the Google Mobile relaunched last week with a new layout and simple access to Google’s mobile products. You can find it at…

http://mobile.google.com/

For some reason, though, Google Mobile thinks my T-Mobile SDA is a MiTAC Mio 8390. The Mio is an older (Windows Mobile 2003) flip-style smartphone while my SDA is a Windows Mobile 5 based non-flip phone. And, it still says that the Java-based Google Maps for Mobile doesn’t work on the SDA.

Comparing Video from a Pocket PC with a Digital Camera
I’m a huge fan of cameraphones. Most Smartphones and Pocket PCs with an integrated camera can record video as well as still photographs. I recorded some video earlier this year using an i-Mate JasJar Pocket PC Phone Edition and a Canon SD200 digital camera (still camera that can record 640×480 video). You can see the result of this video comparison test here.

The original comments attached to this video were: I wanted to compare the video from a Pocket PC Phone Edition recording at 320×240 10fps to a digital still camera that also records video at 640×480 30fps. I’m using an i-Mate JasJar Pocket PC Phone Edition and Canon Powershot SD200 digital camera to make the recordings. The scenes are from Kahala Mall near Honolulu, Hawaii. The mall experienced a freak flood last week and re-opened a few days ago.

Excel Mobile on Windows Mobile 5 Pocket PCs

When Microsoft changed the name of their keyboardless Windows CE devices from Palm-size PC to Pocket PC, the platform gained the much appreciated Pocket Excel and Pocket Word applications that were subsets of their desktop Office counterparts. However, the applications remained frozen in time as the Windows Mobile Pocket PCs evolved. No new features, no round trip format protection, and file formats unique to the Pocket PC without translators available on the desktop side continued to be the norm for years. The introduction of Windows Mobile 5 not only changed the names from to Excel Mobile and Word Mobile. It also brought some much needed functional changes.

Earlier this year, I wrote an article for Microsoft.com that highlighted some of the changes in Excel Mobile. You can find the article linked below:

What’s New in Excel Mobile?

PHM Pocket PC PowerToys (Freeware)
PHM Pocket PC PowerToys have not been updated since April 2004. But, you know what? They still work with Windows Mobile 5 Pocket PCs. The two freeware powertoys I use are the PHM Suspend and PHM Reset PowerToys. Why? Years ago, the power button on my Compaq iPAQ 3650 broke. I decided not to tempt the fates after that and started using Suspend to turn off the remaining Pocket PCs and the other buttons to turn on the Pocket PCs.

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

Business Card Scanner for Windows Mobile?
Just noticed a blog post by Microsoft’s Jason Langridge: Business Card Scanner for Windows Mobile. In he asks: Is anyone aware of a solution to allow you to take a picture of a business card and then import the details into your contacts? I’ve seen a solution for Symbian but haven’t been able to track something down for Windows Mobile…. anyone know of such a solution?
The scanR Business Cards web application looks like it fits the bill. I haven’t tried this service. But, I did try their earlier Whiteboard webapp that cleaned up photos of whiteboards, turned them into PDFs and emailed them to you. It worked pretty nicely Their business card web application appears to be able to use a photo taken using a Windows Mobile Pocket PC or Smartphone with an integrated camera, clean it up, translate the bits into text, and then deliver a vCard you can import into Outlook.

Spb Insight RSS Newsreader for Windows Mobile
Spb Software House has created a lot of amazing software for Windows Mobile Smartphone and Pocket PCs. Spb Insight is their new RSS reader for the Pocket PC with a difference: It is not limited to the summaries usually provided by many RSS feeds. This means that you will get full articles downloaded to your Pocket PC. This differentiation gives a great disconnected experience such as having full articles with images to read when on flights or other times you can’t get to the net. It also means, though, that there is a lot of data that needs to be downloaded. I’ve been using Spb Insight with WiFi on a Pocket PC. It looks like over a megabyte of data comes down when I refresh the five feeds I selected. This takes a reasonably long time over WiFi. A conventional RSS reader that just gets the summary doesn’t require such heavy bandwidth requirement. That said, it is great to get full articles for each feed. My recommendation is to buy and use Spb Insight if you plan to sync over WiFi and to take a look at Ilium Software’s NewsBreak if you want an RSS reader for the Smartphone or Pocket PC Edition and plan to obtain feed data over the relatively slower (and more costly) mobile phone data services.

You can find a detailed review of Spb Insight by Clinton Fitch at:

Clinton Fitch Reviews: Spb Insight 1.0

You can find my review of Ilium Software’s Newsbreak at:

Microsoft.com: A Breaking News Breakthrough

T-Mobile Access Point Names & Wireless Modem Usage
One of the nice things about T-Mobile’s GPRS/EDGE data service compared to others (such as Verizon Wireless) is that it lets you use your phone as a wireless modem. And, it worked fine until this past April. Up until this past April, I used internet2.voicestream.com (NAT) Access Point Name (APN). It stopped working at that time and I switched to internet3.voicestream.com (public IP). However, when using my phone as a wireless modem using a Bluetooth connection to my Pocket PC with a nice big QWERTY keyboard, I had to drop the connection from 115.2Kbps to 38.4Kbps. I had to use my phone as a wireless modem a bit over the past week. I played with the settings and verified that I was limited to 38.4Kbps. Then, I switched the APN back to internet3.voicestream.com. And, yep, I was able to set the Bluetooth serial connection speed back up to 115.2Kbps.

Microsoft Windows Mobile + LEGO Mindstorms NXT = WiMo
Ever wonder what would happen if you mashed up a LEGO Mindstorms NXT robotics kit and a Windows Mobile Smartphone? Apparently so did Microsoft’s Brian Cross. You can find his source code and other information about his work on…

WiMo: The Windows Mobile Robot

You can find a video demonstration of an early version (May 2006) of this project by Mel Sampat and Brian on MSDN Channel 9 at:

Mel Sampat and Brian Cross - Microsoft Mobile App Compat

DISCLAIMER: Can you really blame me for not taking FULL ADVANTAGE of the various connections between John Lam (his personal site is IUnknown.com), Ruby (John Lam is the developer of RubyCLR), the fact that the area that used to be south of the Kingdome is called SoDo (actually, the area south of of where the Kingdome *used* to be is still there (e.g. Starbucks corporate headquarters)… But as per the video embedded below, The Kingdome is not), and a few of the lyrics behind Rancid’s song Ruby SoHo**** which include “Destination unknown… Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, SoHo?

Or maybe the better question would be, are you really all that surprised that I chose just such a title?

Pick one and go with it ;)
—

via a post from one of my more favorite Microsoft bloggers, Steve “Say It Like It Is, But Don’t Be A Prick About It Either” Maine***, we discover that John Lam, the RubyCLR guy, has decided to take a position with Microsoft.

Dynamic Languages, Microsoft, and me

I’ve decided to stage a friendly takeover of Microsoft. As of January, 2007 my new work address will be Building 42 at Microsoft. I’ll be working in the CLR team to help bring the love of dynamic languages out to the statically typed heathens :)

You know, maybe I need to look a bit deeper into the Ruby language… Not that I haven’t played with it a bit, and not that after playing with it, I wasn’t impressed, and instead that the work of the IronPython team coupled with encouragement from Sylvain, Uche, and the underlying fact that a majority of the best software developers I know at a personal level are nearly all Python developers has led me down the road to learning Python. Don’t get me wrong, I *LOVE* the Python language, and when you couple IronPython + Saxon on .NET + XSLT 2.0 + XSLT 2.0 Extension Functions the result is like pure magic sprinkled with sugar.

That said, I wonder what Ruby + Saxon on .NET + XSLT 2.0 + XSLT 2.0 Extension Functions would taste like?

I bet it tastes *YUMMY* and without a doubt, soon enough… We will most definitely be finding out. :)

SWEET! :D

NOTE: To those with interest, and those willing to move forward without any documentation nor promise of *ANY* support from me, you can access the Xameleon and/or PyPod.NET Click-Once apps that provide an IronPython console with direct access to the fixed version of Saxon on .NET that allows the ability to implement .NET-based XSLT 2.0 extension functions (the current release of Saxon on .NET had a bug and as such extensions functions didn’t work, but Dr. Kay fixed the problem soon after I reported it and as such, if you build out from source, it will work just fine. How do you build directly from source? How ’bout I just give you the fixed version via the Click-Once app and we call it good? That, or look over these directions I posted to the ExtensibleForge.net Trac interface a while back, check out the source from the repository, and build it doing so with the knowledge that there is *ZERO* support available (read: I wish I had the time right now to launch all of the projects I have long sinced finished out, supporting each and every one of them as a result… But, at the moment anyway… I don’t, so they need to wait for release until I do.)
—

Microsoft today released Beta 1 of ASP.NET AJAX, its new Ajax framework for building richer web clients that play well with ASP.NET 2.0 applications. The downloadable package, formerly known as “Atlas”, was announced by Scott Guthie — Microsoft general manager of “all things web” — on his blog (http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2006/10/20/ASP.NET-AJAX-Beta-1-Released.aspx). Scott’s writeup provides, as usual, an excellent overview of key package features and is well worth a read.

You’ll find the everything you need to install and start using ASP.NET AJAX at the new ASP.NET AJAX web site (http://ajax.asp.net/Default.aspx?tabid=47) including a migration whitepaper and list of “Atlas” to Beta 1 changes.

Christian Wenz, author of our just published Programming Atlas (see http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/atlas/index.html) is also tracking developments and was the first to alert me to the new site this morning, hours before Microsoft posted the actual downloads. He’ll be reporting his findings at his own site (for starters, check out http://www.hauser-wenz.de/s9y/index.php?/archives/210-Microsoft-) over the next couple of days. Be sure to tune in.

Let us know what you think. What’s to like or hate about ASP.NET AJAX? Will you use it? How can O’Reilly help you get up to speed?

I’ve already posted my congratulations and overall thoughts in regards to this release, so with that, the official release announcement from Dean Hachamovitch,

IEBlog : Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP Available Now

Today we released Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP. I encourage everyone to download the final version from http://www.microsoft.com/ie.

We listened carefully to feedback from many sources (including this blog) and worked hard to deliver a safer browser that makes everyday tasks easier. When I first posted publicly about IE7, I wrote that we would go further to defend users from phishing and malicious software. The Phishing Filter and the architectural work in IE7 around networking and ActiveX opt-in will help keep users more secure. IE7 also delivers a much easier browsing experience with features like tabbed browsing (especially with QuickTabs), shrink-to-fit printing, an easily customizable search box, and a new design that leaves more screen real estate for the web site you’re viewing. IE7’s CSS improvements are incredibly important for developers as many of you have made quite clear. I also think IE7’s RSS experience and platform are important, powerful, and innovative.

In addition to our release of IE7, Yahoo! has a customized version of the browser available today and over the next few days partners such as Weather.com and USA TODAY will offer their own customized versions. These versions will tailor the user experience with specific toolbars, additional search engines, favorites, and RSS feeds.

I want to thank everyone who provided feedback as we developed and fine-tuned Internet Explorer 7. Over the 20 months since Bill Gates first announced our commitment to deliver IE7, we released five betas and a release candidate to millions of users worldwide. With each release, your feedback helped us make IE7 better. Your contributions, ideas, and direct comments were crucial in helping us prioritize and focus our work. I can’t imagine delivering this product without the tremendous cooperation we enjoyed from so many of you as well as developers and partners.

That said, we’re not done. Even as we put the finishing touches on Windows Vista and release all the remaining language versions of IE7, we have already started work on the next versions of Internet Explorer. We’ll post more here soon about our plans for the product and our plans for listening to you.

Thanks,

Dean Hachamovitch
General Manager

Attribution Lineage: Dare Obasanjo < PaoloM < Some Genius @ Apple Support < Some BlackHat Hacker @ Some Contract Manufacturer Somewhere Else In The World (if I had a link I would provide it.) < Some BlackHat Hacker(s) Who Wrote The RavMonE.exe virus (ditto)
---

Inoculation Effect

In communication theory, the inoculation effect refers to a strategy of prejudicing one’s audience against an opposing argument they may hear in the future.

Inoculation Theory

The application to persuasion is apparent. If we want to strengthen existing attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, inoculation theory suggests that we should present a weak attack on those attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Again, the key word here is, “weak.” If the attack is too strong, it will cause the attitude, belief, or behavior to get weaker or even move to the opposite position. The attack has to be strong enough to challenge the defenses of the receiver without overwhelming them.

Here are the steps of effective inoculation:

Warn the receiver of the impending attack.
Make a weak attack.
Get the receiver to actively defend the attitude.

Inoculation Instance

Small Number of Video iPods Shipped With Windows Virus

We recently discovered that a small number - less than 1% - of the Video iPods available for purchase after September 12, 2006, left our contract manufacturer carrying the Windows RavMonE.exe virus. This known virus affects only Windows computers, and up to date anti-virus software which is included with most Windows computers should detect and remove it. So far we have seen less than 25 reports concerning this problem. The iPod nano, iPod shuffle and Mac OS X are not affected, and all Video iPods now shipping are virus free. As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it.

So here’s my question,

So this might be the coolest (pun only partially intended ;) idea I have seen come out of Silicon Valley in a VERY LONG TIME.

I don’t know what Jonathan Schwartz is putting in the coffee at Sun these days, but whatever it is…

Please be careful… It’s *HOT*. ;)

Photos: Inside Sun’s Project Blackbox | CNET News.com

Inside Sun’s Project Blackbox
October 16, 2006 9:00 PM PDT

Sun Microsystems believes many customers will prefer to buy data center equipment in convenient shipping container-sized modules rather than building more expensive and elaborate buildings on their own. It plans to show off the idea, called Project Blackbox, at its Menlo Park, Calif., facilities on Oct. 17.

Componentized, Lego-like Data Centers. Now *THATS* innovative!

Photo Credit: Sun Microsystems

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

Q&A: Windows Mobile 5 Printer Support?
Reader OdL asks:
As a simple programmer of our laboratory, i’ve made a handy PDA application for our fieldworkers so they can:

I was thinking about using PIEprint from fieldsoftware.com, but the quality kind’a sucks.

Hmm. I haven’t looked at that issue in a long time (since Windows Mobile 5 came out, basically). Here’s what I found after a quick look-see this evening though.

* Bachman PrintBoy 7.0
* Westtek JETCET

Please let me know if either of this work (or not) for you. I think other people will be interested to learn your findings.

Q&A: Windows Mobile Pocket PC Web Database Interaction
Reader R.L. asks: came across your Blog and similarly O’Reilly articles. Wonder if you
could help please. Looking for a PDA Application (Mobile Windows) that
has the potential to push and pull data to and from a Web Server based
Database. Effectively allowing such aspects as ‘Search’ (via some nice
GUI tools) that then checks Server (assuming WIFI and/or GPRS enabled)
and brings relevant data about that ‘Object’ to the PDA App screen.
Hope you can help; much appreciated.

You are going to have to build it yourself. Here are a couple of Windows Mobile database tools that might do the trick for you.

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Mobile Edition

Syware’s suite of mobile development products

db40

MSNBC’s Krakow Raves about the T-Mobile Dash
MSNBC’s Gary Krakow gave the soon-to-be-released T-Mobile Dash (AKA HTC Excalibur) a rave review in…

T-Mobile’s Dash: Head-turning smartphone

I’d like to make a correction to his article though. He says Dash runs on the latest version of the Windows Mobile operating system. That means you get the portable versions of Outlook, Word, Excel, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player and lots more.

Dash is a Windows Mobile based Smartphone, not a Pocket PC Phone Edition. So, it does not have features like Excel Mobile and Word Mobile.

You can find more information about the Dash on T-Mobile site at…

T-Mobile Dash™

The first things you’ll notice about it is its QWERTY thumb-keyboard and QVGA landscape format screen (320×240). I sure hope it is affordable because I now want to replace my T-Mobile SDA smartphone with the Dash. Its scheduled availability date is October 25.

Bye Bye ActiveSync, Hello Windows Mobile Device Center
Bye bye, ActiveSync! Hello, Windows Mobile Device Center (at least for Vista). If you plan on using a Windows Mobile based Pocket PC or Smartphone with Windows Vista, you will need to learn a new and more unmemorable name for the software that syncs with mobile devices. You can find the download for it at…

Microsoft ® Windows Mobile ® Device Center Beta 3 for Windows Vista™ (x86)

Microsoft Explains Why X Doesn’t Exit Windows Mobile Applications
You wouldn’t think a simple X in the upper right hand corner of a Microsoft Windows Mobile Pocket PC/Phone Edition would cause so much heated discussion. But, it does. The reason? A Windows Mobile Pocket PC somewhat resembles its older and larger sibling: Microsoft Windows. In all its various versions (from 1.0 to Vista), clicking the X in the upper right hand corner causes the application to close (most of them, anyway).

This doesn’t happen on a Windows Mobile Pocket PC. Clicking the X on a Pocket PC simply leaves the application running in the background and brings the previous application placed in the background to the foreground (makes it visible). Mike Calligaro, of the Microsoft Windows Mobile Team, explains the rationale behind this design choice in his blog entry…

The Emperor Has No Close

Microsoft released the Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 Beta today (Oct. 11).

Microsoft Virtual PC

This beta release supports the virtualization hardware built into current generation AMD and Intel processors. It can be installed on Windows Vista as well as run Windows Vista as a Guest OS.

I installed it on a Windows XP Professional PC that had been running Virtual PC 2004. The CentOS 4.4 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux community version) and Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition virtual machines I built earlier using Virtual PC 2004 ran fine under Virtual PC 2007 Beta.

Parallels (best known for their Parallels Desktop for Mac) released a new version of their own virtualization product today.

Parallels Workstation 2.2 for Windows & LInux

I haven’t tried this product yet but plan to do so in the near future. I was very impressed by their Parallels Desktop for Mac product.

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

Microsoft ActiveSync Troubleshooting
A reader posted the following question on my O’Reilly Windows DevCenter blog. My response includes a bunch of llinks which might be a bit much for the blog response box there. So, I’m posting a reply here.

At this point, I am at a total loss regarding what to do. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

The first thing you should check is whether you have a software firewall (e.g., Zone Alarm) running. If so, check out my blog item:

ActiveSync 4.1 for Microsoft Windows Mobile 5 devices released

If that is not the case, check out the following ActiveSync troubleshooting guides.

Microsoft.com: What Does the Troubleshooter for ActiveSync Do?

PocketPCFAQ.com: ActiveSync 4.x Troubleshooting Guide - General

There’s also an item specifically focused on the Treo 700w (one generation older than the 700wx) at:

Microsoft.com: ActiveSync Troubleshooter More Options

Engadget: How-To: Use your EV-DO Pocket PC phone for internet access
Engadget has a step-by-step illustrated tutorial showing how to use a Verizon Wireless Pocket PC Phone Edition (Windows Mobile 5) XV6700 as mobile modem for a notebook. You can find the article at…

How-To: Use your EV-DO Pocket PC phone for internet access

HP iPAQ rx5915 Travel Companion
HP’s web site shows their soon-to-be-released GPS, WiFi (802.11b and 802.11g!), Bluetooth, music/photo/video playing, Windows Mobile 5 powered handheld device with a 3.5″ LCD screen (bigger than the Zune’s) with a price of $599.99.

HP iPAQ rx5915 Travel Companion

So, whatever happened to the $500 GPS-enabled UMPC anyway? In any case, CNET has a video review of this new GPS-enabled iPAQ available at the link below.

HP iPaq rx5900 Travel Companion

Too bad it doesn’t have a QWERTY keyboard of some kind…

Smartphone shipments up 75.5% for first half of 2006
Techweb reports that an unnamed market research firm (might be Gartner since it is mentioned later in the article) says that Smartphone shipments were up 75.5% in the first half of 2006.

Smartphone Market Booming

The article says the report shows that North America is the only region where PDAs outsold Smartphones. Personally, I find that hard to believe even assuming that the popular Palm Treo line is considered a PDA instead of a smartphone.

Upgrading a Windows Mobile 2003 2nd Ed. Pocket PC to Media Player 10 Mobile
Zack Whittaker over at MSBlog.org asks how to upgrade a Windows Mobile 2003 2nd Edition Pocket PC to Media Player 10 Mobile. And, the answer is: Not from Microsoft. Windows Mobile devices are more like applicances than computers. The large ROM-based applications like Media Player must be burned-in rather than simply installed on top of whatever is there. These firmware based applications are updated by the device manufacturer (not Microsoft). It tends differ from manufacturer to manufacturer. My Dell Axim X50v device, for example, got its Media Player 10 Mobile upgrade with the large AKU2 upgrade Dell made available last year. HP and other firms provided similar upgrades.

T-Mobile USA Talking about Apple?
Found this PC Magazine news item via the MacRumors site.

T-Mobile Talks Up 3G Network–and Apple?

The article reports Dotson singled out Apple’s efforts on the desktop as a “great precursor of where I think the marketplace is headed in 3G,” leading to speculation that T-Mobile, not Cingular, will host Apple’s much-rumored iPhone project.

Yet, it also says that Dotson focused on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and not the iPod. So, maybe Apple is going with T-Mobile instead of Cingular? Why? Although Cingular has the largest US mobile footprint, T-Mobile has a larger worldwide footprint.

IronPython

Release 1.01 Production
Oct-06-200611 Files
Description
The motivation of this release is to add a small feature that enables the community to create new built-in modules more easily. Additionally we’ve included a small set of minor bug fixes to the IronPython modules and engine. You can see the more complete list of changes below.
The new support for community written built-in modules enables loading the .NET DLLs on startup and adding them to the built-in module list. This feature was implemented by updating site.py to check for a “DLLs” directory and looking for the PythonModuleAttribute point to an assembly. Now users can create built-in modules by simply adding this attribute to their assembly and re-distributing only the new assembly which the user can add to their DLLs directory.

Microsoft sent out email early today (Friday, Oct. 6) that 2007 Microsoft Office (note the new word order) testing is complete and will be released to manufacturing (RTM) in a few weeks. The Beta 2 Technical Refresh clients will expire on the Ides of March 2007. So, we can probably expect the shrinkwrapped release sometime before that date.

Microsoft also released Windows Vista Release Candidate build 5744 today. I just started to download my copy and am told I will have to wait another 12 hours (I have a reasonably fast broadband connection) for it to finish.

So, it looks like the pumps are being primed in Redmond…

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

Fossil Bluetooth Watch Talks to Your Phone
The USA Today article Bluetooth watches to show who’s calling reports that Fossil and Sony-Ericsson teamed up to create a Bluetooth watch that displays Caller-ID information on the watch and lets you send the call to voice mail if you don’t want to pick up the phone to answer it. It looks like the watch only works with Sony-Ericsson phones that it says that support for other Symbian based phones is planned. The watches will be available by the end of October under Fossil’s “Mobile Wear by Abacus” brand, the regular Fossil brand, and a Sony Ericsson-branded version. Prices will range from $200 to $250.

Visual Studio vs. Windows Mobile Software Development
Mel Sampat, a Program Manager in the Microsoft Windows Mobile product group tells us there is nothing to worry about if you plan to use Visual Studio 2005 SP1 and Windows Vista to develop software for Windows Mobile devices. A link to an 8 minute video demonstrating using Visual Studio with Windows can be found at the end of the blog entry…

Wampad Mobile Portal
Got a note from Shawn McCollum letting me know about his mobile portal site tuned for web-enabled phones (work on PDA format screens too). Its set up to help you find information and display in a mobile friendly format using the Google mobile transformation service. You can search for specific web formats/services such as websites, news, and flickr. You can find it:

http://wampad.com/

NPR reports about GPS for Cell Phones
NPR has two overlapping (shares content) streaming audio reports about GPS for Cell Phones…

GPS Is Smartening Up Your Cell Phone

…about GPS being an open resource on Nextel phones but not phones from other US mobile phone companies.

Power of GPS Phones Locked Away from Most Users

…adds a bit more focus about why the phone companies have not opened up the ability to develop services for the GPS in many cell phones.

Realtime Deployment � Microsoft .Net and Smalltalk

I have recently been working with Gal Zsolt of CalmoSoft on improving several of the Vista Smalltalk tools.

As I have noted in previous blogs, almost all Smalltalk scripts have now been moved to the Vista Smalltalk Wiki, and load streams are generated dynamically from code contained in Wiki pages. Because of this change, it is now practical to do widely distributed code development. When CalmoSoft makes a change, I can test the code immediately - and vice versa.

The Wiki software has features like “access control lists”, “user account management”, and version control. It is also free, as are the Php programs that I have created for it.

And it is not only the Smalltalk code that can be developed in this way. All of the Xaml files used in Vst applications are also dynamically loaded from the Wiki. The Wiki technique should be ideal for graphic artists to participate in creating applications or games.

Vista Smalltalk is capable of distributed development and realtime deployment.

So I have been using DokuWiki for a good year and half and LOVE it for LOTS and LOTS of really good reasons such as those outlined above. Syvlain, Uche, and myself have been chatting on and off for much of that same time span about how much potential DokuWiki holds in regards to distributed application deployment, integrated distributed documentation deployment, etc… so when I read the above post from pfisk I thought “huh… Cool! It looks like another wiki engine has “seen the light.”

Then again…

DokuWiki ROCKS! :D

NOTE: There are simply too many reasons why DokuWiki ROCKS!, and not enough time at the moment to list them. As soon as time allows I will try and update accordingly. In the mean time, here’s a large chunk from a related post** from a while back entitled,

Top Five(5) Reasons darcs Kicks Source Code Control [-exp deleted as per blog ‘intro’ no-profanity policy]

Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework

Release 10-01-2006 Nightly Build
Oct-01-20063 Files
Description
Fixed bugs. Added SimpleXML support (included in the XmlDom managed extension).
Runtime Binaries
Phalanger-2.0-nightly-100106.zip - 2 Downloads
Phalanger-2.0-nightly-100106-Mono.zip - 1 Downloads
VSIntegration-2.0-nightly-100106.zip - 2 Downloads

When I very first started using and publicizing Phalanger back in May of 2005, one of the most often asked questions was “does this work on Mono?” The answer (at least back then),

No, it is currently not possible because some parts of Phalanger are mixed assemblies written in Managed C++, which is not supported in Mono. Although we are planning on rewriting these components to C++/CLI as we switch to FW 2.0, one of them - the Extension Manager - will always contain some native code. So it is likely that Phalanger will run under Mono in the future but without the Extension Manager. However, if Mono supports C++/CLI in the future we would probably port the Extension Manager to Mono.

Some quick research showcases the fact that since 09-01-2006 this has now changed.**

Sweet! :D

—
** though whether or not the extension manager is available is unknown at this stage as I haven’t downloaded and played with it yet. Thats next. ;)

The Microsoft press release says that the Zune will be available on Nov. 14 for $249.99. They priced the 30GB device the same as Apple’s 30GB iPod. The release highlights its unique features including…

One criticism of my last Vista installation time blog was that I performed an upgrade over an existing Vista beta. Fair enough comment though I think a lot of people are going to upgrade existing XP boxes instead of performing a clean installation. In any case, I decided to perform a clean installation with Build 5728 (the previous build was 5600) on the same Pentium 4 2.8GHz PC with 512MB RAM (performance rating = 1). Here’s what I saw.

Here’s the weekly summary of mostly Windows Mobile related items from my personal blog

PlanMaker 2006 for Pocket PC Beta
SoftMaker has a public beta of its PlanMaker spreadsheet for Windows Mobile based Pocket PCs available at its website.SoftMaker PlanMaker 2006 for Pocket PC Beta

The updated Excel Mobile in Windows Mobile 5 has a number of enhancements over previous versions including simple graphs. However, if you need even more functions and feature than Excel Mobile provides, you might want to take a look at PlanMaker 2006 in its Beta release form. .

Microsoft ActiveSync 4.5 Beta 2 BUT You Might Not Want to Install It
Microsoft made its…

ActiveSync 4.5 Beta 2

…for Windows Mobiled devices available as a public download. However, you may want to think twice about installing it if you are using an older Windows Mobile device (pre-Windows Mobile 5). Some features are lost if you upgrade from ActiveSync 3.8.

• LAN/WiFi synchronization is disabled
  
• Access database conversion is lost
  
• Support for Microsoft Outlook 2000 is lost
  
• Support for devices prior to Pocket PC/Smartphone 2002 is gone
  

Syncing Outlook, Google Calendar/Mail, iPod, & Phone
An anonymous blogger posted his/her(?) solution to sync a multitude of software, services, and devices that don’t normally speak to each other (e.g., Outlook and iPod) in a post titled:

The Holy Grail of Synchronization: How to synchronize Microsoft Outlook (multiple locations), Google Calendar, Gmail, iPod, and mobile phone with Funambol / ScheduleWorld

Ilium InScribe: Free Text-Entry Software for UMPC
Ilium Software released a free application for Microsoft UMPC (Ultra Mobile Personal Computers) devices. Ilium Software InScribe is a text entry utility that works with the UMPC’s virtual on-screen keyboard to quickly enter text. I don’t know anyone who owns a UMPC. But, if you do, head to Ilium’s website to download their free offering.

You can learn more about the UMPC at Intel and Microsoft’s sites for it found at:

Intel: UMPC.com

Microsoft Ultra Mobile PC

Avocent SonicAdmin QR and SonicAdmin Pro: Manage Windows Servers from a PDA
Avocent, probably best known for their KVMs announced two products that allows managing a Windows Server remotely from a Blackberry or Windows Mobile based device.
Avocent Corporation Unveils New Products to Enable Management of Servers from Smartphones

Using SonicAdmin QR software, system administrators can access any server allowed by their Active Directory profile to view server statistics, shutdown and reboot servers, view event logs, view and manage processes, manage Active Directory user accounts, and run Quick Commands such as ping, ipconfig and traceroute.

SonicAdmin Pro software offers additional functionality, adding Windows services management, file explorer, file search, file and folder properties, file editor and a Command line interface. The Exchange Server management extensions include viewing queue properties as well as freeze and unfreeze queues and force connection commands. Active Directory management adds user group management and mailbox properties

Here’s the weekly summary of mostly Windows Mobile related items from my personal blog…

Zune… Hmm…

Microsoft announced (but did not release) their Zune audio/video device that will compete with the Apple iPod in the portable multimedia space. I had written it off as an also-ran prior to seeing Apple’s lackluster iPod refresh announcements on Sept. 12. Now, I’m wondering if Zune might have a chance a device generation or two from now. Zune’s larger screen (3 inches) and WiFi sharing feature certainly makes it interesting to me. On the other hand, why is one of the three colors brown? Brown? And, doesn’t it really look like a 1950s speaker with the grill removed? Very retro.

You can find more information at Microsoft’s Zune Virtual Pressroom. And Zune Thoughts’ Jason Dunn took stock Zune video clips and provided a very informative voiceover narrative for those of you interested in seeing Zune in action: Zune Video Overview: See Zune in Action.

Virtual Earth Mobile Updated to Work with Revised Virtual Earth
Jason Fuller noted that a change in Microsoft Virtual Earth (the engine that powers local.live.com) had a change that broke the find business feature in Virtual Earth Mobile for Windows Mobile devices. Version 1.67 fixes this problem. You can download the CAB installer directly from his blog entry at: Virtual Mobile Earth 1.67

TravelPost’s (US) Airport Wireless Internet Access Guide
TravelPost.com has a useful web reference page list WiFi access information for 150 aiports in the US. You can find it linked below.
Airport Wireless Internet Access Guide

Windows Mobile 2003 2nd Ed. Users Get Exchange Server Push from DataViz
Windows Mobile 5 device (Pocket PC/Smartphone) users can get Exchange Server email pushed to them if their firmware includes the Messaging Security and Feature Pack (MSFP). But, if you use a previous generation Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition Pocket PC Phone Edition, you are not left in the cold anymore. DataViz’ RoadSync for Windows Mobile […]

The Microsoft Windows Live movement has finally reached the mobile side of the world. Head over to…

http://mobile.live.com/

Windows Live for Mobile

…on your Windows Mobile Smartphone or Pocket PC Phone Edition (and presumably other browser enabled mobile devices) to see what is replacing MSN Mobile.

My only complaint so far is that Windows Live Mail for mobile devices is specifically formatted for narrow width smartphones and does not show enough of the subject line on a Pocket PC Phone Edition (or a smartphone with a screen wider than 180 pixels).

Not in the archives yet, but when it is I will link to it. In the mean time, via a recent post to the IronPython Mailing List, the increasingly OmniPresent Seo Sanghyeon writes,

I am happy to announce IronPython Community Edition (IPCE for short)
1.0 revision 1, based on IronPython 1.0, to the world.

Get it here:
http://sparcs.kaist.ac.kr/~tinuviel/download/IPCE-1.0r1.zip

Binary is built with Mono 1.1.17.1.

Benefits of this edition:

1. You don’t need to fight Mono with non-working line editing or
white-on-white “blind” console on Linux or Mac. A fix for this issue
and fixed binary is already included.

2. You don’t need to edit makefile to build from the source on Mono.

3. Various bugfixes are included: patches are available here:
http://sparcs.kaist.ac.kr/~tinuviel/fepy/patches/1.0/

patch-ironpython-mono-console
patch-ironpython-mono-makefile
Discussed above.

patch-ironpython-co-flags
This patch fixes an issue that co_flags reports **-argument only
function to have *-argument as well.

patch-ironpython-codedom-empty-return
This patch fixes an issue that CodeDom generator doesn’t handle empty
return statements.

patch-ironpython-oldstyle-setattr
This patch fixes an issue that __setattr__ wasn’t called for old-style classes.

patch-ironpython-os-utime
This patch fixes an issue that os.utime didn’t set modified time and
set access time wrong.

patch-ironpython-re-backslash-escape
This patch fixes an issue that backslash escape \\ wasn’t properly
handled in regular expression.

–
Seo Sanghyeon
_______________________________________________
users mailing list
users@lists.ironpython.com
http://lists.ironpython.com/listinfo.cgi/users-ironpython.com

NICE! Thanks, Seo!

Couple of non-Windows Mobile news items are in this round-up of mobile news summary items from the blog on my personal site.

Blackberry Pearl’s Trackball
I’m not a Blackberry user. So, I was quickly reading through MSNBC’s Gary Krakow’s review of the new Blackberry Pearl from T-Mobile until I hit this sentence in his review: Aside from its size, Pearl’s best new feature is its revolutionary pointing device — a tiny, full-function trackball. A trackball makes so much sense. Every smartphone needs one for navigation. And, every phone peripheral maker should add one to their Bluetooth or Infrared wireless keyboard.

Windows Mobile 2003 Support Lifecycle
Microsoft’s Jason Langridge has a brief blog item about the support life cycle for Windows Mobile 2003 devices(Windows Mobile Support Lifecycle). He says that official mainstream support for Windows Mobile 2003 ends in mid-2009. Of course, as Jason points out in his blog, everything really depends on the hardware manufacturer. Case in point: HP released the […]

Sprint Treo 700wx Pocket PC Phone Edition
Palm’s announcement for the Windows Mobile 5 based Treo 700wx Pocket PC Phone Edition for use on the Sprint PCS network includes a couple of interesting offers such as a free 1GB memory card, free shipping, and a $125 trade-in for Treo 650 owners. The Treo 700wx sells for $499.

Nintendo DS MP3 Player
Gizmodo reports on the sighting of a Nintendo DS MP3 player option that will be in available in Europe soon (The Mysterious Nintendo DS MP3 Player). MP3 audio files are stored on a SD card (up to 2GB). Using Apple’s estimate of 1,000 songs on their 4GB iPod nano, the Nintendo DS option could store up […]

I’m very proud to announce the relase of my first Short Cut: Getting Started With .NET 3 available for $9.99 here.

The goal of this Short Cut is to get you up and running with the future of Microsoft programming: .NET 3.

It is a preview of what is to come, to be fleshed out in a full Programming Book to be released as quickly as our tiny little fingers can type. But this is no white-paper; with this Short Cut you will create a real, meaningful application (Me!Trade) and get a good look at what the Windows Presentation Foundation and the Windows Communication Foundation have to offer (QuoteWrong Web Service), as well as a quick-peek both at Windows Workflow and at CardSpaces (Passport on steroids)