Just noticed this blog post over on the Microsoft Business Contact Manager (BCM) Team Blog…
Troubleshooting BCM for Pocket PC/Smartphone
If you are using BCM, you probably want to bookmark this blog entry.
And, I continue to be amused when even Microsoft forgets the whole awful Classic Edition (Pocket PC), Professional Edition (Pocket PC Phone Edition), and Amateur Edition, um, Standard Edition (Smartphone) branding. Tsk tsk. 🙂
I’ve become a fan of social micro presence sites over the past year or so. I think Twitter and Tumblr were the two that showed me the way and their value.
Although all the good mobile web designs are being developed for the iPhone Safari browser, there are a lot of social micro presence sites that look and work fine on Windows Mobile smartphones. Here’s a list of the mobile versions of some popular micro-presence sites I’ve tried (plus one I haven’t – MySpace Mobile). Check ’em out…
If you have a social micro presence site that works with Internet Explorer on Windows Mobile smartphones, please let me know. You just add it as a comment to this blog entry if you would like to share the information with anyone else who might wander by here.
I don’t know anything about the OEDb (Online Education Database) site. But, someone associated with them pointed out this useful looking iPod resource…
100 Ways to Use Your iPod to Learn and Study Better
I thought it looked useful enough to spread the word. The resources are categorized as study guides, podcasts, tutorials, applications, tools ad sites, iTunes U, and other groupings that make it easy to hunt around the long list.
I read about the MSN Direct beta release for Windows Mobile before heading to work this morning. So, as soon I got in, I point my T-Mobile Dash at http://phone.msndirect.com/ and downloaded the installation CAB file. To make a long story short, MSN Direct was removed from my phone within 20 minutes. Here’s what happened…
The installation itself went smoothly. A segment of my home screen displayed MSN Direct with the current Dow Jones Industrial Average chart and left/right arrows. I tapped my navigation rose to get to the next item and saw weather for Seattle. I clicked on the select button to change that. But, nothing happened. I tried a few other things, but still nothing. During this time I noticed my phone getting warmer and warmer and also slower and slower. Finally, it got to the point where my Dash froze completely. I had to pull the battery to shut it down. After rebooting the Dash, I uninstalled MSN Direct. Check my battery revealed that it had dropped from a 90+% charge to about 63%. This was not good to see at 8:15am.
During lunch I decided to try to load it on my HTC Advantage (the other WiMo device I’m carrying). Unfortunately, an error message popped up saying that it was not supported. So, I took a look at the MSN Direct Phone Finder page and learned that it only works with Windows Mobile Standard Edition (non-touchscreen devices formerly referred to as the Smartphone). So, if you have a Windows Mobile Professional Edition, sorry, but you cannot use MSN Direct for Windows Mobile Technology Preview. It is, apparently, strictly for amateurs 🙂
After getting home, I installed MSN Direct on an HTC Vox smartphone. Instead of using a slow EDGE connection, I used a 802.11g WiFi connection. This combination of hardware and network access worked much better than the Dash/EDGE combination. Still, MSN Direct seemed sluggish and balky at some points. The content views have too much white space IMHO. This means I have to scroll down more that I really should have to. The Vox’s battery held up very well through the evening with WiFi left on. My guess is that the sustained EDGE radio usage on the Dash drained its battery. This reminds me of the problem I had last year with Google’s Gmail IMAP4 email. It is so slow that the Dash battery again drains when retrieving Gmail mail from the IMAP4 server.
I should probably move my SIM from the Dash to the Vox sometime to see if the battery drain issue is caused by the EDGE radio or the battery differences between the two phones.
You can watch a 2 minute video demo I recorded and posted to YouTube.
As a T-Mobile customer the first thing that came to mind when I read the headline that Starbucks is switching WiFi providers (from T-Mobile to AT&T Wireless) was… well, I won’t write them in a G-rated blog. However, if you read the Starbucks press release about this switch, you’ll see that they say: In recognition of the many T-Mobile customers who enjoy visiting Starbucks, the Company is also announcing that T-Mobile HotSpot customers will be able to continue to access Wi-Fi services at no additional cost, through an agreement between AT&T and T-Mobile. So, the good news is that T-Mobile data customers are NOT losing their Starbucks WiFi service when traveling or just running around town. Phew.
I read somewhere that the HTC Shift is near shipping and that the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 was announced. (the first Windows Mobile device from a firm that normally uses their home-brewed Symbian OS). Both devices are amazing pieces of ultra mobile technology. The question is: Are they still relevant? We already know that the Shift will be priced around US$1500. And, Sony Ericsson always charges a premium for their products. My guess is that the Xpreia X1 will be priced between $500 and $1000. With ultra mobile devices like the Asus Eee PC, OLPC XO, Everex CloudBook, and Flipstart already in the retail pipeline for well under $1000, are these new entries too little too late?
To make things more interesting, Engadget reports that Microsoft just bought Danger (the Sidekick people). They speculate that this means there will be a Windows Mobile Sidekick in the future. But, take a look at the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 again. Does that look like WiMo despite it actually does form the base OS? Not really, huh? Have both Microsoft and WiMo hardware vendors lost faith in WiMo? Will the Sidekick platform be the basis of a lighter weight OS and let Microsoft dump the current Windows CE based WiMo in a few years?
I guess we will know more by the end of the calendar year.