MobileViews Blog

Category: Windows Mobile

Microsoft Windows Mobile Pocket PC, Pocket PC Phone Edition, and Smartphone

  • FixMyMovie.com: Enhance Your CameraPhone Video Recordings

    FixMyMovie.com

    FixMyMovie.com uses the MotionDSP (which is funded by Q-Tel) video enhancement technology to enhance digital video. I uploaded a few seconds of video recorded by my T-Mobile Dash (Windows Mobile 6 smartphone) to see what it could do with the normally fuzzy video produced by this cameraphone. You can find my video test at: Test 1 walking. If you click on the compare button (middle of the five buttons below the video), it changes the display to full display mode and shows a side-by-side video comparison. You can also use the extracted still photo mode (like screen cap above) to compare the original and enhanced image.

    I think it did a pretty good job of enhancing my cameraphone video. Couple of things to note though. First, it took quite a while to enhance the few seconds of video I uploaded. This is not surprising considering the amount of work that goes into video enhancemnet processing. However, if you upload a longer video, be sure to allow for sometime before you are able to see the results. The system will email you a notification when it is finished. Second, the service is free in its current beta release phase. However, there is no promise that this service will remain free.

    My guess is that Google/YouTube, BiipTV, MSN Soapbox, or some other video site will buy or license this technology. It would probably help a lot of fuzzy videos like mine 🙂

  • New Microsoft Windows Mobile Marketing Corp. VP (Breath of Fresh Air?)

    CNET reports that Microsoft just brought in a new Corporate VP for Windows Mobile Marketing named Todd Peters (good first name :-).

    Microsoft aims to add ‘easy’ button to Windows Mobile

    The article quotes him as saying: From my perspective, it’s not the marketing of Windows Mobile that needs work. It’s the software. After having played around with the latest Windows Mobile 6 software on a demo AT&T Tilt, I still find the software unnecessarily complicated.

    I have never met the man, but I like him already 🙂

  • iPhone AT&T Corporate Accounts Now Available. Windows Mobile Team: Need ActiveSync/WMDC Tools

    Just read over on Engadget that…

    AT&T rolls out iPhone plans for business customers

    Hey, I commented just yesterday that Microsoft needs to fix Windows Mobile’s Internet Explorer browser to let it render iPhone-specific sites because business customers and service providers are now looking at the iPhone as a business device. Now, they have an official mechanism to bring it into the enterprise.

    So, here’s another request. Come this November, it will be 12 years since Windows CE/Windows Mobile made its debut at Comdex 1996. Since it doesn’t look like ActiveSync or WMDC will be fixed anytime soon, how about some ActiveSync/WMDC diagnostic tools so we mere mortals can debug these bug ridden and undependable beasts?

    IMHO, competition is a good thing. Firefox brought back Internet Explorer team from the dead (it had been disbanded after IE6) and encouraged Microsoft to produce the much better IE7 (with tabs and more secure). Here’s hoping that the success of the iPhone pushes the WiMo team to make my favorite mobile OS much much better.

  • Windows Mobile 7 Request: Let IE Render iPhone Sites

    Digg.com iPhone formatted site on a Pocket PC

    There is nothing wrong with your display. This is what the Digg.com site formatted for viewing on the iPhone (digg.com/iphone) looks like when rendered on a Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition (AKA Professional Edition).

    The Windows Mobile product people always ask people to give them examples or use-cases of issues outsiders bring to them. Then, they ask to justify why resources should be spent on solving that problem rather that something else already in the queue. Ok, how about this then…

    ISSUE: Windows Mobile 6’s Internet Explorer browser for the Professional (touch screen) and Standard (non-touch screen) cannot render sites designed specifically for the Apple iPhone (or iPod touch).

    RESOLUTION: Fix Internet Explorer for Windows Mobile 7 so that it can correctly render web sites designed and optimized for the iPhone.

    JUSTIFICATION: It sure looks like lots of major sites are designing web sites specifically for the iPhone’s Safari browser. They are not building sites for WiMo IE. This means your customers (like me) are shut out of these sites (many of which are very useful and/or just plain interesting). The iPhone is making inroads to your customer base: Corporations. Even if you don’t care about individual consumers like me, you probably do care about your corporate clients who can bolt in large numbers.

  • Microsoft Press Release: Survey Shows Increasing Worldwide Reliance on To-Do Lists

    I saw this title in Microsoft’s press release list…

    Survey Shows Increasing Worldwide Reliance on To-Do Lists

    …then saw the subtitle…

    Results shed light on organizational habits and differences between men and women… and thought it might be some kind of early April Fool’s joke since it didn’t seem to mention any product or project. Then, looking further down the release, I found that the study was commissioned by the Windows Mobile product group. There is also a Get Organized sweepstakes (U.S. only) sponsored by the group. The To-Do list data has data comparing different countries as well as genders. It is definitely worthwhile reading through the findings regardless of what kind of mobile device you use.

  • Qipit Good! Scan Cameraphone Photos to PDF

    Original Cameraphone Photo vs. Qipit PDF

    Qipit good!… With apologies to Devo… I signed up for the free Qipit online cameraphone to PDF scanning service today. Although I’m focusing on the cameraphone aspect today, you can upload a digital photo taken with any kind of digital camera and upload it from the desktop too. For this test, I used a T-Mobile Dash (Windows Mobile 6 smartphone) to take a photo of a price sign in a local store. You can see the resized by otherwise unretouched photo on the left and a resized version of the PDF Qipit emailed to me. It also stored the image on their server for access through the web. As you can see, it seemed to do a pretty good job of focusing on the text area and cropping off the unnecessary area (I cropped it a bit more for this posting). The resulting PDF text was reasonably clear and readable.