YouTube Mobile was released from its exclusive deal with Verizon Wireless this week. Unfortunately, most Windows Mobile devices (at least the ones I have) don’t support the 3GPP video file format. I could swear I had a Windows Mobile Smartphone or two that did. But, I can’t remember which one it is. I tried it with Windows Mobile 2003 2nd Edition, Windows Mobile 5, and Windows Mobile 6 (Smartphone and PDA) devices this evening. None of them could display a YouTube Mobile video.
First, yes I know that Pocket PCs don’t really have a power button. The button just toggles the device between a low-power suspend mode and active mode. But, let’s just call it a Power Button to simplify life.
The photo above is of my old Compaq iPAQ 3650 Pocket PC. It was released in Fall 1999 and was probably the first Pocket PC that really drew a lot of attention. Unfortunately, mine had two moving parts that wore out a lot quicker than I thought they should: The power button and the stylus release button. I ended up having to turn on the device by using its feature of letting any hardware button activate the underlying application. I used the PHM Suspend PowerToy mentioned a few days ago to turn it off. It finally gave up the ghost in early 2002 after I used it about, hmm, 18 months or so. I had a 3850 by then. But, the 3650 was actually replaced by the a first generation T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition.
I noticed a few weeks ago that Internet Explorer on both my Windows Mobile 6 smartphone and PDA has a drop down Favorites and History area on its home screen. Thinking that it was just another link to the Favorites list, I ignored it until a few days ago. It turns out that the drop-down favorites link provides a list of the last five sites visited from the Favorites list. Very handy, The History list lists the web page titles (not the URL) of the last five pages visited. Again, very handy.
I wrote about the old (last revised in 2004) PHM Pocket PC toys last year. But, since we have moved from Windows Mobile 5 to 6, I thought it was worth mentioning the SUSPEND and RESET utilities from that toy kit works fine with a Windows Mobile 6 PDA (Pocket PC). I use the suspend utility to reduce wear and tear on the Pocket PC’s on/off button. And, yes, actually wore out the button on an iPaq 3650. Reset performs a soft reset without needing to push in the sometimes ill designed soft reset button on a Pocket PC. Some software do not need to be revised and updated to be useful. These two single minded utilities are good examples of such software.
There’s a note on the Windows Vista Team Blog about a…
New compatibility update for SD cards
…for large (8GB or more) SD cards and improved support for SDHC and SDIO cards. I bought my first 4GB SDHC cards last week and was surprised to find that none of my older SD card readers (including the one built into my desktop) could read it. Fortunately, Sandisk included their MicroMate SDHC card reader with the card itself. I’ll test it with a Vista desktop as soon as the update becomes available on the 22nd.
Using Bluetooth from a Windows desktop or notebook and anything else seems a lot harder than it should be. And, since Microsoft’s Windows Mobile ActiveSync is a general pain in the neck itself, the combination of Bluetooth and ActiveSync often is a test of patience and some detective skills.
Here’s some info that might help you get your Windows Mobile device to sync over Bluetooth with ActiveSync running on Windows XP. Note that even if you do everything right, it still might not work. I could never get my T-Mobile SDA smartphone to sync over Bluetooth, for example. But, I was able to get a Windows Mobile 6 smartphone and pocket pc to sync over Bluetooth.
If all is well, you should see ActiveSync start up on your PC and normal syncing should occur. If not, well, there are all sorts of possible problems. I’m not even going to try to figure out the myriad of ActiveSync awfulness that can happen. Couple of thoughts though:
Good luck. ActiveSync continues to confound many of us after more than a decade of existence under various names (Windows CE Service, ActiveSync, WMDC). So, again, even after going through these steps correctly, you may find as I did that some devices just won’t sync over a Bluetooth connection.