Blog

  • gubb.net: Lists to Go

    I find lists very useful. So, I use Ilium ListPro, Excel Mobile, Tasks, and (with some embarrassment admitting this), 3×5 index cards (I buy ’em in bulk). I also use Wikis a lot to jot down information in a semi-structured way. But, I didn’t really see any web based solution that worked with my phone the way I wanted to work.

    Today, however, I learned about gubb.net. Like many things that I find interesting and useful, it does variations on a single theme: Manage lists online. What really impressed me though were the options it gave me from a mobile perspective. You can use SMS like other mobile services do. But, I don’t like to use SMS because my provider charges for each one and I generally do not use SMS enough to justify an add-on service with more SMS units. You can also use email to add to or request a list. Now, this is something that seemed very useful to me. It would let me add to a list even in a disconnected mode (e.g., on a flight somewhere) because I could just add things to a list in email messages and then send them off when connectivity was reestablished. It also has a nice simple mobile formatted site at http://gubb.net/m. This stripped down site looks and works fine on my Smartphone. And, it works from a desktop too. So, you can use it even when in bandwidth challenged situations (e.g., on a notebook connected to the net via an EDGE connection).

    I’m looking forward to seeing how this site’s service develops.

  • Microsoft Live Labs: Deepfish Windows Mobile Browser

    Microsoft’s Live Labs has a preview release of an enhanced browser for Windows Mobile 5 (or, presuably, 6) Pocket PCs and Smartphones.

    Deepfish Technology Preview: Enhanced Browsing for Windows Mobile

    The website says Deepfish is currently only available by invite only to a small number of beta users. However, download versions for both the Pocket PC and Smartphone appears to proceed without any issues. You can see a video demo of it on Microsoft’s On10.net website.
    EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: New mobile web browser – Deepfish!

  • Pocket PC Today Screen Calendar Tip

    The Windows Mobile Pocket PC (I refuse to refer to it as “Professional Edition”) defaults to displaying on the next upcoming appointment on its Today screen. Did you know you can change this? Here’s how…

    • Start
    • Settings
    • Today
    • Items (tab)
    • Calendar (from list)
    • Options (button)
    • (select) Upcoming appointments
    • (tap) OK
    • (tap) OK

    If you head back to the Today screen, you should see a list of appointments for the current day and often spilling over to the next day’s appointments.

  • Windows Mobile 6 Storage Card Encryption

    One of Windows Mobile 6’s more interesting new features (and it doesn’t have many) is the ability to encrypt data on a storage card. Ah, but pay close attention to some gotchas in these two blog entries from Microsoft Windows Mobile staffers…

    Jason Langridge’s WebLog – MR Mobile!: Storage card wipe and encryption – What’s the deal?

    Windows Mobile Team Blog (Scott): Windows Mobile 6 Storage Card Encryption FAQ

    The scarier info comes from the FAQ above. Why scary? Consider this… If you forget your PIN, the only way to recover is from an escrowed recovery PIN stored on an Exchange Server. But, what if you don’t use Exchange Server? Ah, you see the problem there.

    What if the Windows Mobile device is hard reset? Um, basically the response is tough luck.

    The moral to this story? If you choose to use storage card encryption, make sure you understand all possible consequences and create manual policies and procedures to make sure you can get access to data on storage cards used in devices under your control.

  • Audacity Personal DVR for Pocket PC (freeware)

    Every so often I think about starting a podcast or videocast. This lasts about as long as it takes me to remember how much work it takes to put one together on a regular basis :-)  If I create a mobile themed podcast someday, it would seem appropriate to actually record it on a mobile device once it a while. Here’s a freeware tool for Windows Mobile Pocket PCs that might make this task a little easier.
    Audacity Personal DVR for Pocket PC

  • We Need a Good Non-Microsoft Windows Mobile Sync Solution

    I just read on PocketPCThoughts.com that HP is no longer providing Microsoft Outlook with Windows Mobile devices. You might be thinking that you can simply buy the most inexpensive version of Office 2007 to deal with this issue. But, think again. Head over to the Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 edition page and look at what it includes: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. No Outlook in that package. While only HP has gone down this no-Outlook-with-devices path so far, they do sell a good sized percentage of Windows Mobile devices in the US. One can assume that Dell and other Windows Mobile vendors will not be far behind.
    Your next thought may be that it might be good to sync with a bunch of Google web apps. Unfortunately, while Google has a decent calendar, it does not have a contacts solution. Yahoo!, on the other hand, has decent contacts, calendar, and notes web apps. It even provides a free IntelliSync (now owned by Nokia) utility to sync with its apps. Unfortunately, I had such poor experiences with it years ago that I am afraid to try it again. Yahoo! has been aggressively pursuing mobile users recently. So, I hope they take this opportunity to create a good mobile sync scenario.

    Microsoft is only focusing on Enterprise users with Exchange Servers. But, that leaves out a lot of consumers as well as double digit percentage enterprise users who do not have Exchange Servers. The importance of the desktop OS has been less and less important over the years as we increasingly find ourselves dependent on web-based applications. Even Microsoft’s own confusing Live brand web services acknowledge this trend. So, why are our mobile devices still often tied to a PC-bound Outlook client? What we need is a good non-Exchange Server web-based sync solution that can sync with any mobile device: Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Linux, Apple iPhone, whatever.