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  • Spb Insight RSS Newsreader for Windows Mobile

    Spb Software House has created a lot of amazing software for Windows Mobile Smartphone and Pocket PCs. Spb Insight is their new RSS reader for the Pocket PC with a difference: It is not limited to the summaries usually provided by many RSS feeds. This means that you will get full articles downloaded to your Pocket PC. This differentiation gives a great disconnected experience such as having full articles with images to read when on flights or other times you can’t get to the net. It also means, though, that there is a lot of data that needs to be downloaded. I’ve been using Spb Insight with WiFi on a Pocket PC. It looks like over a megabyte of data comes down when I refresh the five feeds I selected. This takes a reasonably long time over WiFi. A conventional RSS reader that just gets the summary doesn’t require such heavy bandwidth requirement. That said, it is great to get full articles for each feed. My recommendation is to buy and use Spb Insight if you plan to sync over WiFi and to take a look at Ilium Software’s NewsBreak if you want an RSS reader for the Smartphone or Pocket PC Edition and plan to obtain feed data over the relatively slower (and more costly) mobile phone data services.

    You can find a detailed review of Spb Insight by Clinton Fitch at:

    Clinton Fitch Reviews: Spb Insight 1.0

    You can find my review of Ilium Software’s Newsbreak at:

    Microsoft.com: A Breaking News Breakthrough

  • T-Mobile Access Point Names & Wireless Modem Usage

    One of the nice things about T-Mobile’s GPRS/EDGE data service compared to others (such as Verizon Wireless) is that it lets you use your phone as a wireless modem. And, it worked fine until this past April. Up until this past April, I used internet2.voicestream.com (NAT) Access Point Name (APN). It stopped working at that time and I switched to internet3.voicestream.com (public IP). However, when using my phone as a wireless modem using a Bluetooth connection to my Pocket PC with a nice big QWERTY keyboard, I had to drop the connection from 115.2Kbps to 38.4Kbps. I had to use my phone as a wireless modem a bit over the past week. I played with the settings and verified that I was limited to 38.4Kbps. Then, I switched the APN back to internet3.voicestream.com. And, yep, I was able to set the Bluetooth serial connection speed back up to 115.2Kbps.

  • Microsoft Windows Mobile + LEGO Mindstorms NXT = WiMo

    Ever wonder what would happen if you mashed up a LEGO Mindstorms NXT robotics kit and a Windows Mobile Smartphone? Apparently so did Microsoft’s Brian Cross. You can find his source code and other information about his work on…

    WiMo: The Windows Mobile Robot

    You can find a video demonstration of an early version (May 2006) of this project by Mel Sampat and Brian on MSDN Channel 9 at:

    Mel Sampat and Brian Cross – Microsoft Mobile App Compat

  • Q&A: Windows Mobile 5 Printer Support?

    Reader OdL asks:

    As a simple programmer of our laboratory, i’ve made a handy PDA application for our fieldworkers so they can: 
    • retrieve projectinformation from our database
    • walk through a wizzerd to fill in information
    • make a CAD-drawing, saved as WMF
    • print report including the drawing “on the spot” (HP Deskjet 450, IRDa)
    • transmit information & drawings, so the server can generate certificates for authoriation
    This all works as a charm, except for the printing part.
    We were using “HP Mobile Printing” software, which is now discontinued.
    Now comes the time we have to purchase new printers that are not supported by “HP Mobile Printer” software, and so we’re looking for a new solution as well.
     
    The current reports we use for mobile printing, are basically generated HTML-templates with jpg’s, printed from InternetExplorer.
     
    What I wanted to ask from a PDA-expert, what can be the best mobile print solutions for our situation?
     
    I was thinking about using PIEprint from fieldsoftware.com, but the quality kind’a sucks.
    Hmm. I haven’t looked at that issue in a long time (since Windows Mobile 5 came out, basically). Here’s what I found after a quick look-see this evening though.
    Please let me know if either of this work (or not) for you. I think other people will be interested to learn your findings.

  • Q&A: Windows Mobile Pocket PC Web Database Interaction

    Reader R.L. asks: came across your Blog and similarly O’Reilly articles. Wonder if you
    could help please. Looking for a PDA Application (Mobile Windows) that
    has the potential to push and pull data to and from a Web Server based
    Database. Effectively allowing such aspects as ‘Search’ (via some nice
    GUI tools) that then checks Server (assuming WIFI and/or GPRS enabled)
    and brings relevant data about that ‘Object’ to the PDA App screen.
    Hope you can help; much appreciated.

    You are going to have to build it yourself. Here are a couple of Windows Mobile database tools that might do the trick for you.

    Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Mobile Edition

    Syware’s suite of mobile development products

    db40

  • MSNBC’s Krakow Raves about the T-Mobile Dash

    MSNBC’s Gary Krakow gave the soon-to-be-released T-Mobile Dash (AKA HTC Excalibur) a rave review in…

    T-Mobile’s Dash: Head-turning smartphone

    I’d like to make a correction to his article though. He says Dash runs on the latest version of the Windows Mobile operating system. That means you get the portable versions of Outlook, Word, Excel, Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player and lots more.

    Dash is a Windows Mobile based Smartphone, not a Pocket PC Phone Edition. So, it does not have features like Excel Mobile and Word Mobile.

    You can find more information about the Dash on T-Mobile site at…

    T-Mobile Dashâ„¢

    The first things you’ll notice about it is its QWERTY thumb-keyboard and QVGA landscape format screen (320×240). I sure hope it is affordable because I now want to replace my T-Mobile SDA smartphone with the Dash. Its scheduled availability date is October 25.