by Frank McPherson, author of How To Do Everything With Windows Mobile

 
Many weeks ago (is it almost a month ago?) the blogosphere was saddened by the news of Marc Orchant's unexpected heart attack and ultimate passing. I am sure that I am like many people that while we did not know Marc personally, we feel like we got to know him a little bit through his blogs and the OnTheRun with Tablet PCs podcast. I have to admit that the combination of Marc's age and the unexpected nature of his death affected me personally, probably because I listened to the podcast and when you learn someone's voice I think you grow closer to that person.

As it happened, Marc and James had been having problems producing OTR with Tablet PCs and had decided to retire the show. Unfortunately, Marc did not have the opportunity to say goodbye to his listeners. James has put together a final issue, which is a montage from the 40 episodes of OTR. I've held off listening to the episode and had put it to the back of my mind until I saw this post from James on the reaction to the episode, and so I am listening to it right now.

Now, clearly neither Marc nor James' knew what was ahead and there is no deep message within the episode, but I think that you can just tell from the tone of Marc's voice that he enjoyed life and enjoyed what he was doing. As I look at myself on this final day of 2007 I know that I have become more negative. The reasons for my negativity are probably varied from simply getting older and disenchanted with my job after more than 18 years, to the death of my grandmother more than a year ago. I know I need to find a way to reenergize and simply find a more positive outlook, and that is my resolution for 2008. For some reason, I think that listening to this episode is a good start.

Labels: 2007

posted by Frank at 12:54 PM 0 comments Links to this post

 
To me one of the interesting affects of the iPhone is how developers have been creating user interface tweaks to make Windows Mobile work like an iPhone. The most known of these is HTC's TouchFlo that first appeared on the HTC Touch but is also on the Tytnn II. It is not as pervasive on the Tytnn II and I find the touch screen is not as responsive as my iPod Touch, but I occasionally use my finger to scroll up or down through my contacts or a web page.

A new development in this area is coming from a company called Point UI, and from the video up on YouTube, I think I am going to try it out. Obviously, this will only be useful on a Windows Mobile device with a touchscreen, but if you are interested in improving the touch interface on your Pocket PC, you might watch to check it out.

Labels: 2007

posted by Frank at 3:03 PM 0 comments Links to this post

 
I am wrapping my head around the idea that the world's first Blackberry store is just down the street from my house. Actually, the truth is that this is a Wireless Giant store that is specializing in Blackberries. The hook is that they sell Blackberries for every service provider, so if you want a Blackberry this is the place to go.

I drive by the store every day on my way to and from work, and with the holiday season it's no surprise that traffic to the store appears to be brisk. However, the store is located in an intersection that makes it horrible to access: you pretty much only safely get to the store coming from one direction, any other directions cause all sorts of traffic problems. The Wireless Giant headquarters is just down the road, which I am sure is why this location, which previously was a "normal" Wireless Giant store, was selected.

So, is a Windows Mobile store in the future?

Labels: 2007, competitors

posted by Frank at 12:12 PM 0 comments Links to this post

 
You may be aware that Microsoft provides Exchange ActiveSync licenses to Nokia and other Windows Mobile competitors, which sounds like a dumb move since it diminishes one of Windows Mobile's competitive advantages, that is Exchange synchronization. What I have not known is the differences between what licensees like Nokia have done with that Exchange ActiveSync and what is provided by Microsoft for Exchange and Windows Mobile, and that is what is explained by Jason Langridge in a blog post. Interesting reading if you have wondered about this topic like me.

Labels: 2007, activesync

posted by Frank at 2:55 PM 0 comments Links to this post

 
Amazon's new eBook device, the Kindle, has been creating a buzz on the Internet. My first personal reaction when I saw pictures of the device is that it is ugly, and many of the reviews that I have read have listed numerous flaws around usability. Most praise the integration with Amazon that allows you to buy books from Amazon and download them to the device, as if that is the first time one could buy ebooks that way, but they are wrong. As I have written, Windows Mobile users can download a free update to eReader Pro that enables one to buy and download eBooks directly on their device. It even works with the bookshelf so that it is easy to download books you either buy from your PC, or have boughten previously. I think that eReader may have more ebooks available than Amazon/Kindle, so I personally recommend that if you are a Windows Mobile owner you consider not using Kindle and checking out eReader.

Labels: 2007, ebooks

posted by Frank at 12:18 PM 0 comments Links to this post

 
I recently upgraded my original Zune, now called the Zune 30, to the latest and greatest version of the software. There are several complaints on the Internet about how the Zune desktop software messes up the metadata associated with music libraries, but my library appears to have survived mostly unscathed. However, oddly playlists that I downloaded from the Zune marketplace are messed up on the desktop, but are fine on the device.

I was anxious to try out the Wi-Fi synchronization that Zune now provides, and while it works there are a few things that I find odd. For example, you can configure Zune to always turn on Wi-Fi but it will not automatically synchronize unless it is connected to a power source. I would prefer it if Microsoft would allow me, the user, to decide whether or not I want the Zune to synchronize while connected to a battery. However, I understand why they are doing this because of what I consider a stupid design decision.

After the Zune synchronizes via Wi-Fi it remains connected to the PC! Why? I would expect that after the Zune synchronizes it would disconnect, after all I don't see much of an advantage to keeping the Zune connected. It's not like I am adding to my music library that frequently. It's is not like PIM data, which does change frequently, which is why it makes sense to keep Windows Mobile devices connected. Obviously, Zune follows the Windows Mobile mobile for synchronization, which is scorned more often than not by users.

Way back in the day when Microsoft was actually interested in what I had to say about mobile devices, I encouraged them to allow users to make decisions so that they can customize devices to their tastes, rather than making decisions for users. If you look at the many things that annoy users with Windows Mobile, such as "smart minimize" which causes programs to disappear but not stop running, they are situations where Microsoft is making decisions for users. Most programs that "fix" the smart minimize problem, such as SPB Pocket Plus, allow users to decide whether they want tapping X to close programs or to minimize programs. They even go so far as to allow users to specify that tapping X closes certain programs while minimizing others.

In the case of Zune, I think Microsoft should first allow users to specify whether they want the device to remain connected after synchronizing or disconnect. They could then allow users to configure a frequency at which they want the device to connect and sync for new content, or allow users to the right to only manually sync either after the first automatic sync or always.

While playing with my Zune I realized that with wireless sync I could now put the Zune cradle near my TV and have it connected to the TV, allowing me to play video podcasts on the TV when I want. My idea is to leave the cradle over there, with it connected to the TV and power, drop the Zune in the cradle to have it automatically sync so that it is ready with the latest content. This set up works, though I did find another thing about the Zune sync that I find odd. You cannot sync the Zune while it is displaying output to a TV, why, I don't know. In fact, there is a bug with this it seems because after I tried wireless syncing while connected to a TV the Zune then would not wireless sync at all. I had to connect it to my PC using the cable at which point I found that the Zune had lost the link to the PC, which I had to recreate. When I recreated that link I also had to reenter the network information so that the Zune connects to my home network.

Obviously, now that I know about these quirks I will know to work around them. The wireless synchronization could be very useful if it allows for updating my Zune without really thinking about it. I really hope that Apple adds a similar type of wireless sync to the iPod Touch. Since the Touch is running OS X, that shouldn't be too hard using something like Bonjour. Since the Touch as built-in Wi-Fi, I see no reason why Apple shouldn't add the wireless sync and if they configure it to automatically disconnect after sync is complete it really should be too much of a battery drain.

Labels: 2007, Zune

posted by Frank at 12:12 PM 3 comments Links to this post

 
This morning I found myself scrolling through some of my old blog posts, and came across this one, where I write about my view of Personal Digital Assistants. While progress has been made towards providing such a device, I am disappointed to see that it is still not all the way there.

Labels: 2007

posted by Frank at 12:47 PM 0 comments Links to this post

 
I've been a customer of eReader ever since they have been known as Peanut Press, which needless to say is a long time. This is an ebook reader that started on the Palm OS platform and expanded to Windows Mobile once it became popular. To this day books are still stored in an encrypted *.pdb format, which I believe indicated a Palm database as the Palm OS doesn't really have a file system.

eReader is popular because of the huge number of titles available. Pretty much any book that you could want is available, though in most cases the book prices are at or slightly below retail. Up until just recently shopping for an ebook was a process of logging in to the web site from a PC, download the book you bought on the PC and then transferring it to your device.

For a while now you could buy a professional version of eReader, which had more features, or use a free version that I always found to be good enough. Recently the professional version became free for Windows Mobile users because the online store has been integrated into the device. In short, you can now purchase and download ebooks directly on your device.

eReader has a couple of features that I like: online bookshelf and wish lists. The online bookshelf is a record of all the books that you buy. If you switch devices or accidentally delete a book, you can always go to the online bookshelf and download another copy. You may need to re-enter the the DRM credentials, which is a combination of your name and the credit card number that you used to buy the book. eReader's DRM is very sensible to me, and is based on the assumption that people will not freely give their credit card numbers to others. If you transfer a book to another device you have to reenter the credentials. I really wish that Apple provided a similar type of "bookshelf" for the music that you buy from iTunes, which would provide a level of security from losing music if you should have a hardware failure.

The new professional version of the reader provides access to your bookshelf, so if you switch devices all you need to do is install the new client then access the bookshelf and download the books you want to read or reference. Unfortunately, eReader does not provide the same for the other feature that I like, wish lists.

I use a wish list to keep track of the books that I want to buy in the future. Since this is a feature of shopping, I think it is curious that it is not included because any book that I would want to download from a wish list is a new purchase, unlike the bookshelf which are books I already purchased. Hopefully in the future eReader will add wish lists to the client, in the mean time I'll just have to go to my wish list on a PC, purchase the book, then access the bookshelf from my handheld to download it.

If you like reading books, and haven't tried eReader, I highly recommend it. I find it particularly handy for carrying a number of books with me, and most Pocket PC screens are very readable. I am particularly happy that my Tytnn II has a job wheel on the side, which is handy for turning pages.

Labels: 2007, ebooks

posted by Frank at 6:50 PM 0 comments Links to this post

 
If you follow this blog, and particularly some of my exchanges with Todd Ogasawara, you know that I really like Voice Command and I think that voice interaction with Windows Mobile is one of the things that sets it apart from other mobile devices and should be exploited more by Microsoft.

Recently Microsoft made available a new version of Live Search that enables you to enter search commands via voice. In the past I have written how I think it would be really cool if Microsoft provided a way to search the Internet via voice. I envision being able to press the button on my Bluetooth headset, ask my Pocket PC for the nearest gas station, have it query the Internet for the nearest gas station using the built-in GPS, and have it provide me with turn-by-turn directions,

Live Search currently doesn't provide the level of integration that I most desire, but I can press a button, and say a search term which is faster than having to type or write that search term in. You can also speak name of the city and state of your current location to set your location.

You can download this new version of Live Search from http://wls.live.com.

Labels: 2007, voice

posted by Frank at 1:06 PM 0 comments Links to this post

 
Thanks to a commenter on my previous post, I now know that the Google IMAP issue with HTML email is a known issue at Google and hopefully sometime in the future they will come out with a fix. On one of the email lists I belong to someone pointed out that Google mail is still in beta, which I personally think is a lame cop-out on Google's part. If they make an application publicly available then they should view it as in production.

In the mean time, I have removed the Google IMAP account from my Windows Mobile devices because it just doesn't make sense to have it there until I can actually read all email. It is still set up in Apple Mail and working well there for me.

Labels: 2007

posted by Frank at 1:00 PM 1 comments Links to this post

 
If you use Google mail (Gmail) you probably heard that it now supports IMAP, which allows you to access email directly from Google's servers rather than having to download everything to your device. While you can use Windows Mobile Messaging with Gmail, prior to this update you could only use POP and download the mail to your device. In my use of Gmail POP on a Pocket PC I found it worked sporadically.

The IMAP support has been slowlly rolled out, and tonight I found it available for my account so I immediately wanted to test it on my Tytnn II. Configuration is pretty straight forward as I describe in my book, but I did have a bit of a problem entering the right username. Initially I entered userid@gmail.com, which is how I log in to Gmail, but that doesn't work. Instead just enter the part to the left of the @ sign for the user name. If you are the type that likes graphical instructions, Jason Pearce has created a nice tutorial with step by step screen shots.

My initial test shows some problems with what looks to be HTML mail because it is not displaying, but the good news is that it appears to delete email correctly. You will find that the default configuration in Messaging is to not delete email from the server, but you can change that if you wish.

Labels: 2007

posted by Frank at 11:27 PM 1 comments Links to this post

 
Microsoft is providing a number of free Halloween ringtones and wallpaper for Pocket PCs and Smartphones to help get you in the festive mood. I am glad to see someone acknowledge that Halloween comes before Christmas!

Labels: 2007

posted by Frank at 9:15 PM 0 comments Links to this post

 
I guess it has been a while since I have posted here. Apparently there hasn't been much Windows Mobile news that has drawn my attention, and that combined with the fact I have been busy with work are the main reasons for the lack of posts here. I would like to change that.

Since I last posted here I have aquired a new device that has become my main mobile device, the HTC Tytnn II, known broadly as the HTC Kaiser. The Kaiser is the most advanced Windows Mobile device that I have owned: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, GSM/Edge/3G/HDSPA, 400 MHz processor, 133 MB of internal storage, and 100 MB of program memory. It has a QVGA display and supports MicroSD storage.

The Kaiser is the latest iteration of HTC's side QWERTY keyboard slider device that we first saw with the T-Moble MDA and the Cingular 8525. I like the keyboard and the Kaiser has a neat feature where the screen can be raised on a 45 degree angle. Another nice feature is the jog wheel that is on the left side of the device like the RIM Blackberriers. Beneath the wheel is an OK button that you cannot program. It would have made so much sense if HTC enabled that button to execute the Back function in Internet Explorer, which would really help one-handed browsing, but it doesn't.

This device has plenty of buttons on the front: Windows, Internet Explorer, Messaging, OK all have separate buttons along with the left and right software keys and the standard green and red phone buttons. Rounding up the device features is a 3 Megapixel camera, and the Tytnn II version of the Kaiser has a front facing camera as well which is designed to capture the person viewing the screen during a video conference.

Like I said, this is the most technologically advanced Windows Mobile device that I have owned. Physically it is no worse looking than the MDA or 8525 and is in fact a tad thinner, but it does not have the same elegance as the T-Mobile Dash.

I do have some disappointments. Battery life is not as good as other devices that I own. I suspect that is due to the 3G data communications, particularly HDSPA. HDSPA is available on the AT&T network in the area where I live, and it is definitely faster but honestly I don't know if on this size of device it provides much more benefit than basic 3G. If I were connecting a laptop I would probably appreciate the HDSPA, but to sync email or pop up the smaller web pages in Internet Explorer I think the 3G communications works fine.

I've also had experience with dropped calls, which I have never had with the MDA or 8525. The radio in the Kaiser is clearly not as strong as the previous generation, all you need to do to confirm is listen to what you hear when you put the Kaiser near a landline phone. No interference, while the MDA or 8525 generate a very noticable amount of interference. My guess is customers complained about the interference but the trade off is more dropped calls. I also suspect that my problem may be due to HDSPA, which I have turned off and since have not had any dropped calls and a bit better battery life.

Another problem I have is with my Jawbone Bluetooth headset, which occasionally loses connections with the Kaiser, usually during the middle of a call. I've tried my old Motorola H500 and didn't have any problems with it, so I don't know what is going on with the Jawbone. Other Jawbone users have had no problems, so it might be something about either one of my devices.

Bluetooth really comes into play for me because I really like Microsoft Voice Command. Unlike the Windows Mobile 6 build of the T-Mobile Dash that has Voice Command built-in, the Kaiser does not and rather has HTC's Voice Speed Dial, which requires you to pre-record voice tags in order to make phone calls. Voice Command doesn't provide programming and can announce reminders, SMS messages, and email message headers.

I can live with HTC not including Voice Command, but I don't think I should have to hack the registry to in order to make Voice Command work on a device, which is what I had to do on the Kaiser.

Anyway, this has been a long post, making up for lost time. As I have more experiences with the Kaiswer I'll post here. I installed the "teaser" (offiically its a "taster") version of TomTom Navigator to test out the built-in GPS. I really like having a GPS in my mobile phone. While the "teaser" is a full version of Navigator, you can only download one city map for free and I couldn't figure out how to buy and download other invididual city maps from their web site, so I bought the full version from Amazon and it is one the way to me.

Labels: 2007, devices

posted by Frank at 11:35 AM 0 comments Links to this post

 
Todd Ogasawara has written a good tip for how you can work with Word Mobile and Excel Mobile documents without syncing them to a desktop using ActiveSync or Windows Mobile Device Center. He suggests emailing them to a Google mail account and then importing them in to Google Docs.

Labels: 2007, tips

posted by Frank at 10:59 AM 0 comments Links to this post

 
Very interesting Powerpoint slide here showing Microsoft's current product strategy. Interesting because it lists Microsoft Office Mobile under the Entertainment & Devices category and not Windows Mobile. Wonder what that means?

Labels: 2007, Windows Mobile 6

posted by Frank at 6:39 PM 0 comments Links to this post

 
Microsoft has released a new version (version 2) of Live Search for both Windows Mobile 5 & 6 as well as J2ME. If you are browsing from your Windows Mobile device go to http://wls.live.com. A browser version is also available at http://m.live.com.

The main new feature is Movie Showtimes, and I think it does a nice job of presenting movies and drilling down to display theatres and show times. The program retrieves a simple description of the movie, while additional information is obtained via a redirect to a web site using Internet Explorer.

There is also supposed to be more local data with reviews, and I checked restaurant listings but didn't find many with reviews. The one restaurant that I did find showed a 4 out of 5 star rating from apparently one reviewer. The program doesn't appear to provide a way for entering reviews, which you would think would be logical via a browser redirect.

The program is also supposed to have better turn-by-turn directions along with GPS integration, but I have not had a chance to check it out.

Live Mobile Search is included with Windows Mobile 6, at least it was part of the upgrade on my T-Mobile Dash. Consequently, one would have expected this to be available for download via the new Windows Update feature in Windows Mobile 6, but so far that does not see to be the case. It does make one wonder whether Windows Update will ever be used.

Labels: 2007, Windows Mobile 6

posted by Frank at 9:18 PM 0 comments Links to this post

 
Not to long after Google aquired Blogger, changes were made to Blogger on the way to integration with the Google infrastructure. One of the changes that occurred is the way posts are archived. At one time Blogger automatically generated an index of archived posted, but that stopped some time in 2006 resulting in such an incomplete index that I removed the link to the archive page.

Ever since I discovered that the index was no longer working I have been pondering what to do. Bloggers answer is to put archive links in a nav bar on the screen, which I find don't render well on mobile devices and it is important to me that it be as easy to read this blog on a mobile device as it is to read on a PC. This evening a work around occurred to me that I am going to try, though it is going to take me some time to reconstitute the index.

What I am going to do is label each post with the year it was entered, which should result in Blogger creating a page indexing each article by year. Going forward this will be easy so long as I remember to add the year label, but I am going to have to go back and add labels to each post and then re-publish that post individually. We'll see how this goes. Oh, and I know I need to add some type of search capability here too. I am going to play around with some ideas on that as well.

Labels: 2007

posted by Frank at 11:14 PM 0 comments Links to this post

 
So, Apple has officially launched the iPhone, though I got to wonder what Cisco/Linksys thinks of the name. Rumor has it that this is Microsoft's response. I couldn't resist.

It will be interesting to see how well this phone actually sells once the geek hype is over. Non-techies tend to like hard buttons for dialing numbers rather than using a touch screen, particularly for one-hand operation.

The price is also high, so that puts it in the high-end market. In that market are Treos and Blackberries, which most people buy for writing and sending email and text messages. I am curious to see whether the market will find it easier to perform text entry using the iPhone's on-screen keyboard.

As a former Newton user, I am a bit disappointed they didn't include handwriting recognition. The HWR in Newton is something Apple still owns, and I got to think it would work sell in OS X.

Labels: 2007

posted by Frank at 6:35 PM 0 comments Links to this post

 
Reading Engadget's coverage of Bill Gate's keynote at CES, and notice the the comments about Microsoft's work with Ford and text to speech for text messages. I really wish that Windows Mobile provided text to speech capability for text messages, which would be really useful for providing me with traffic updates that I receive via text message today while I am driving.

Labels: 2007

posted by Frank at 1:38 PM 0 comments Links to this post

 
I recently aquired the T-Mobile Dash, which I have been using as my main personal mobile phone for the last month. It is by far the most physically elegant Smartphone that I have owned to date, and overall I have been happy with the device though I have a few complaints.

The slider/jogger "switch" to the right of the screen is extremely frustrating as I constantly accidentally enable the switch, no matter how I configured it's settings. Right now I have basically disabled the switch.

For some reason I am experiencing a problem with the Messaging application that requires me to reset the device to fix. I get to a point where Messaging will simply not start. In a similar way, I also experience problems with the device password. In many cases when the device password kicks in, I cannot get to the screen to enter the password. I press the left softkey to "Unlock" the phone and nothing happens, causing me to have to pull the battery in order to get the password prompt.

I haven't gathered enough information for me to determine the exact cause of this problem, but it seems to me that something is getting messed up in memory. I feel as though there is something going on with the radio, but I don't have any evidence to back that up.

Another quirk that I just discovered is that it appears the Dash doesn't have the .NET Compact Framework Version 2 installed in ROM, because I just installed Ben Hirashima's TxtMan and it won't run saying that I have an old version of the CF. I find this very odd since the Dash is actually running a newer version of Windows Mobile 5 than devices sold from the beginning of launch.

Labels: 2007

posted by Frank at 12:10 PM 3 comments Links to this post