MobileViews Blog

Year: 2007

  • Bluetooth: Safety First

    Bluetooth Discovery
    With all the discussions about WiFi safety, we sometimes forget that the other wireless protocol, Bluetooth, needs to be secured too.

    I was trying to pair a new Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse with a MacBook over Bluetooth this evening in my hotel room. I was a bit surprised to see someone else’s Bluetooth enabled notebook show up in addition to my new mouse. I shouldn’t have been, of course, Bluetooth has a 10 meter range (or greater depending on the hardware used) and can penetrate walls. And, this person left his notebook’s Bluetooth radio in Discover mode. Since 10 meters is a bit larger than 30 feet and these hotel rooms are not larger than 30 feet long, I could see the notebook.
    The moral to this story is to check your devices: Notebooks, PDAs, phones, etc. Then, make sure Discover mode is turned off except when you need to have the device probed by some other Bluetooth device for pairing.

  • Large Hotel’s 2 T1 (what?) Lines Saturated. Thank Goodness for Phone Data Service

    What happens when you place a large number of techies (Microsoft MVPs in this case) in a large relatively modern hotel? Well, if the hotel (35 floors or so with 20 rooms per floor) only has two T1 lines (1.544Mbps per T1), you have saturated network access.

    Fortunately, my SDA Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone has EDGE service. Unforunately, the SDA doesn’t have a QWERTY keyboard. But, my i-Mate K-JAM does. And, since both have Bluetooth, I used the SDA as a wireless modem and typed email messages from my Pocket PC.

    The MVPs also seemed to saturate a number of cellular carriers’ cell sites around Seattle’s Convention Center during the day. So, that meant even my EDGE connection was lost for much of the day. Kind of strange to be in middle of a geekie techie fest and being without wired or wireless data access during the day and part of the night (just got back online to the hotel’s network minutes ago).

  • What’s the Difference Between Windows Mobile 5 & 6

    I just saw a comment about the Windows Mobile 6 SDK post ask what’s the difference between Windows Mobile 5 and 6?I guess the official statements can be found on the Microsoft web pages at…

    Introducing… Windows Mobile 6

    …and…

    Microsoft Reveals New Windows Mobile 6 Smartphone Software

    My irreverent answer is “1” (6 – 5 = 1). My slightly less irreverent response is: Not much unless you have access to Exchange Server for email (I don’t). I am, however, interested to hear what the Windows Mobile product group has to say to me and other Mobile Devices MVPs later this week to change my mind.

    I should also note that there are differences from a developer’s point of view. Changes to the screen form factors and inner workings make a difference to them. From the end-user point of view, however, there is not much that makes you say “ooh, wow”.

  • Visiting Seattle for a Week/Attending Microsoft MVP Summit

    I’m flying to Seattle on Sunday and will spend the week there attending the Microsoft MVP Summit. I’m planning to update this blog while visiting Seattle. But, hang in there if I don’t post as frequently (daily) as usual.

    Check out my MobileViews TumBlog. I’m planning to update it at least a couple of times a day with cameraphone photos while in Seattle. If you are unfamiliar with Tumblr TumbleBlogs, check out the blog item I wrote about it on my other blog focusing on Freeware, Open Source Software, and free Web Services at: OgasaWalrus.com.

    See you on the net!

  • Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0 for (some) Windows Mobile Devices

    Yahoo! announced the gamma release of…

    Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0 Goes Windows Mobile

    You can find the Yahoo! Go site at go.yahoo.com

    How far it Goes on Windows Mobile is debatable though. The interface looks pretty and slick at first glance. But, then you start to notice things like the soft-buttons at the bottom don’t work. And, wow, is it slow! Of course, this was tested on a relatively slow SDA Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone. So, what about other devices?

    When I tried to install it on an i-Mate K-JAM Pocket PC Phone Edition (WM5), I got a message saying that it was not available for that yet but to check back. So, I tried it on a Dell Axim X50v running Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition (I have the WM5 upgrade disk but never upgraded it). The message there pretty much said that device would never be supported.

    If you have a supported device and want a pretty interface, try Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0. If you want a useful fast experience even at the relatively slow EDGE data rates, go back to http://wap.oa.yahoo.com/. Yahoo’s WAP text-based interface is fast and easy to navigate.

  • NewsBreak 2.0 Released

    Ilium Software released a new version of their RSS newsfeed reader client NewsBreak 2.0 on March 6. As I’ve mentioned before, NewsBreak is one of the few 3rd party applications I leave permanently installed on my Windows Mobile Smartphone (it works on Pocket PCs too). So, this latest release was of special interest to me. I’m going to resist the urge to download podcasts and vidcasts since it would probably take too long to download large files over an EDGE connection. However, the new navigation labels do seem much more intuitive and easier to use. I’m sure I’ll discover new things about NewsBreak as I continue to use it (daily).