MobileViews Blog

Blog

  • Spb Mobile DVD

    Spb Mobile DVD (US$24.95) doesn’t actually run on a Windows Mobile Pocket PC or Smartphone. It is a Windows desktop application that creates video files (WMV or XVID) optimized for the small Windows Mobile devices’ screens.

    Spb Mobile DVD

    Although there are a lot of commercial and freeware/Open Source applications that can migrate DVD video to a computer, Spb’s entry into this crowded market focuses on simplicity. And, it definitely wins in that category. The only gotcha is that its wizard waits until the DVD menu appears before turning over control to the end-user. This means a long wait if the DVD has a series of previews (commercials) before the DVD menu appears. The wait  (which might be 10  minutes in some cases) is worth it though. Because, once there, a few clicks completes the migration process instructions. And, the actual process seems much faster than other video converters I’ve seen.

    The resulting video looked clear and smooth on my relatively slow i-Mate K-JAM Pocket PC Phone Edition (195MHz CPU). A definite thumbs up for this product from me.

  • Tips for using Windows Mobile QWERTY Keyboards

    A year ago (2005), the category of Windows Mobile devices with QWERTY keyboards was restricted to Pocket PC Phone Edition devices like the ones pictured below.

    Now,  however, we have Windows Mobile Smartphones like the Motorola Q and T-Mobile Dash that have QWERTY thumb keyboards too. If you’d like to get more use from your Windows Mobile QWERTY thumb keyboard, take a look at the article I wrote for Microsoft.com earlier this year:
    Mobile Typing: Two Thumbs Up!

  • Windows Live Search for mobile beta

    Jason Landridge’s blog describes Windows Live Search for mobile beta as… [giving] you fast access to local search and maps, driving directions, and even local traffic information. When you get your search results, you can click to call the phone number of the place you found, or even look at a satellite photo (on some phones) to find the best parking nearby!

    However, after looking at its FAQ and  learning that this app started life as a J2ME (Java) client app, I’m not even going to try to install it a device. My experience with Java apps for Windows Mobile devices has been uniformly horrible so far. They either don’t install, don’t run, run slowly, or simply look bad on a Pocket PC or Smartphone. There is a cab file download for Windows Mobile devices on the site. But, I’m still going to pass on this one. Especially since its website doesn’t even indicate if the installer is for a Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition or Smartphone.

  • Opera Mini 3.0

    Opera Mini 3.0 is a free feature-rich web browser available for many different smartphones and PDAs (including Windows Mobile based ones).

    The features new to 3.0 are: RSS feed reader, photo sharing to blogs, content folding, secure connections (https, I’m guessing), and a faster user experience created by maintaining an open connection to the web server.

    I haven’t tried this myself. So, please let me know your experience with it.

     

  • Google Mobile Transcoder & Google Pages

    Two Google items I noticed while browing the Official Google Blog.

    http://google.com/m takes you to Google’s web transcoder that transforms non-mobile friendly web pages into mobile device friendly ones according to the blog item Viewing the web through a mobile lens.

    The blog item titled Simplicity and power talks about recent enhancements to the Google Page Creator (as in web page). One of the new features is called Pages for mobile and is described like this: This feature has an awesome power-to-complexity ratio: Now, every Google Page Creator site automatically has a mobile edition. So when people visit your site from their mobile browser, they will see it optimized for their particular phone.

  • Why Do Techie Sites Give Up on Mobile Formatting?

    I read a lot of web-based news sites on either a Smartphone (240×320 resolution) or Pocket PC/Phone Edition (480×640 resolution). Over the past year or so general news sites seem to have really redesigned their websites for mobile devices to optimize readability and navigation. Three in particular come to mind.

    MSNBC http://www.msnbc.msn.com/

    Time Magazine mobile site

    Time Magazine at http://mobile.time.com/

    USA Today http://wap.usatoday.com/

    A number of tech sites, on the other hand, seem to have erased their mobile formatted sites in the same time period. Computerworld, PC World, and Wired come quickly to mind. I’ll guess that the rise of RSS awareness and tools may be used as a reason. But, anyone who uses their phone or PDA to frequently view the web knows that RSS is a great adjunct. It is not a replacement for interactively viewing a web site well designed for viewing on a mobile device.