David Gardiner - PocketPC

It's all happening!

2010-11-17T21:29:00.001+10:30

First Windows Phone 7 was release last month.. (still haven't got one but am warming to the Samsung Omnia 7(broken link, was originally www omnia7 samsungmobile com))

Then the first CTP of SQL Server 'Denali' was released last week..

And tomorrow (18th) Microsoft's Kinect for XBox 360 is released in Australia.

Don't tell the kids, but I'm thinking this might be the Gardiner family Christmas present this year!

Prices I've seen so far:

Big W 4G Bundle (1 games) $398, 250G Bundle (1 game) $528
EB Games 4G Bundle $461 (1 game), 250G Bundle (1 game) $549
Dick Smith 4G Bundle (2 games) $448, 250G Bundle (2 games) $548
JB HiFi 4G Bundle (1 game) $389, 250G Bundle (3 games) $549

Update 18th Nov, 9pm

Discovered good forum discussion on Economical Gamer site, which highlights Harvey Norman 4G Bundle (2 games) $468

Select your Windows Phone 7 handset with Silverlight PivotViewer

2010-10-22T17:00:00.001+10:30

Windows Phone 7 devices are now available in Australia. I dropped into a Telstra shop yesterday and spent a few minutes playing with their demo model. At some stage I'm hoping I'll be able to actually purchase one of these things for myself! (A definite step up from my super-basic C3050, who's primary reason for purchase was that it could at least play podcasts*).

Of course, the main reason I'd like a Windows Phone 7 is to play Nigel's Word Puzzle game, but there's also the whole "smartphone" thing of email/calendar/podcasts etc. If they can fix the "just show only the default calendar for a single email source" limitation (so that I can retrieve all our Google calendars for our family), then I reckon I'd consider getting Narelle one too, so that I could finally solve my calendar problem.

Anyway, so how to choose from the "vast array" (slight exaggeration!) of new handsets entering the market?

Why not try out a new Pivot Collection I've created that lets you sort and filter by your requirements – just go to https://web.archive.org/web/20120516100942/http://pivot.lobsterpot.com.au/WP7/ and have fun!

Thanks to Rob for kindly hosting this on the LobsterPot Solutions site.

* – And I'm not even doing that right now as I've lost the earphones, and it has a silly non-standard plug so I haven't replaced them yet. Not that I'm saying the loss of earphones alone is justification for getting a new phone!

A new toy

2008-09-09T08:00:00.000+09:30

When I left UniSA earlier in the year, one of the parting gifts I received was a gift voucher, and I’ve finally decided what to do with it. I bought an iPod Shuffle.

I’d been pining the loss of my trusty HTC TyTN II phone, which doubled as an MP3 player, but couldn’t justify the price to keep it. I decided all I wanted was a basic player – nothing too fancy, and the Shuffle seemed to fit the bill, whilst still having the slick Apple look. As long as I could listen to a few podcasts I'd be happy (.NET Rocks! and Hanselminutes for starters.

![ipod shuffle RED](../../assets/2008/09/ipod shuffle red[2].png)

I priced the 1Gb Shuffle in some local stores at $AU64. Apple sell it online for $AU65, plus they let you engrave it with custom text. I liked that idea, so if you ever come across a Shuffle that looks like the one above, it’s probably mine and could I have it back :-)

It’s not the first purchase I’ve made from Apple - that would be a Newton MessagePad 2000 I bought many years ago (and many years ahead of its time), but I think this is just as nifty.

You might also notice it is red – that’s because part proceeds of (PRODUCT)RED™ iPods are donated to fight AIDS in Africa.

TyTN II frozen

2008-03-06T19:56:00.001+10:30

I'm not sure what happened. It was time to leave work, so I un-cradled my HTC TyTN II phone. I noticed it was part-way through synching but that shouldn't matter.

I walked out to the bus-stop and waited, and waited, and waited. I had a meeting in the City and when the bus arrived eventually I realised I'd be late, so I went to try and ring ahead.

The phone was stuck.

I did a soft-reset, and after it restarted it got as far as saying it couldn't do a network connection (not sure why it was trying to do that), and then it would refuse to do anything else.

Further soft-resets didn't help either. Narelle tried to ring me, but I couldn't even answer her call, as none of the buttons had any effect, and the only way I could stop it ringing was to soft-reset it again.

I finally got home, and was able to look up the manual online. For future reference, to do a hard-reset:

Press and hold the left SOFT KEY and the right SOFT KEY, and at the same time, use the stylus to press the RESET button at the bottom of your device.
Release the stylus, but continue pressing the two SOFT KEYs until you see a special message on the screen.
Release the two SOFT KEYs, and then press the button on your device.

That seems to have done the trick, though it does mean I'll have to re-install everything else again.

Listening to PodCasts on your Windows Mobile device

2008-02-11T14:30:00.001+10:30

Over the last couple of years, I've had access to Windows Mobile devices suitable for listening to podcasts, however one thing I've struggled to find is decent podcast software.

There are two kinds - ones that just run on the PC, and have the ability to copy or sync with the device, and ones that just run on the device. Most of the PC-side applications tend to just add the downloaded audio file to Windows Media Player, and you then use WMP to synch with the device. One problem I've noticed is that the COM interface that WMP provides to these applications can be fussy about funny characters in playlist names (eg. ".NET Rocks!").

Windows Desktop

One of the first I tried was Nimiq which is pretty good, though there hasn't been any development since January 2006. As I've commented on their blog, it also has problems when it creates items for Windows Media Player to sync with the device.
Juice Receiver is one of the original podcast receiver apps, but I could never get it to work well on Vista. The last major release was July 2006.
Doppler also has issues with Vista and proxies. Version 2.0 is also from ~2006. They were working on version 3.0 for ages, and then moved over to CodePlex where there does seem to be some activity but no new releases yet.
It turns out Winamp also has some support for downloading podcasts and copying them to a device, but it isn't very stable (it always crashes the first time I go to sync the feeds), so I gave up on it after a while.
Newsgater have made FeedDemon free for personal use. This worked ok, but sometimes choked on some of the feeds (being a bit fussier than some about the XML validity). Newsgator Go! is Newsgator's mobile version but unless I'm missing something, it doesn't appear to support enclosures at all.
RssBandit is written in .NET, but while I tried it for a while, the podcast stuff really feels bolted on the side, and didn't work that well for me.

Windows Mobile

FeederReeder looks interesting, but you need to register in their forums to download, and just at the moment their forums hare having DNS issues.
Pocket Podcasts is a very simple open-source app. It refused to let me add the .NET Rocks feed, and the PC-side app doesn't understand ActiveSync so it couldn't see my device. No updates for around 12 months.
Hubdog looked promising. The app can use a local list of feeds or you can register on the site and store the list there (note, that this makes them public). There's a few bugs in it (eg. I couldn't delete an existing feed) and instead of just getting the latest 4 items (as I'd specified), it insisted on downloading every enclosure for the feed.
Podcastready has a mobile client, but it doesn't seem to work with proxies.

So as unbelievable as it sounds, I haven't actually found any decent podcatching software. I might have to get around to writing my own (though I'd prefer not to).

Mobile browsing

2008-02-06T10:58:00.001+10:30

Microsoft claimed that Internet Explorer for Windows Mobile 6 was a big improvement on previous versions. That wouldn't be hard, seeing as earlier versions were roughly equivalent to most of IE3/4.

Unfortunately, IE for WM6 isn't that much better. Quite a few websites I visit render poorly on it.

I'm a big fan of Mozilla, and they've produced Minimo. This runs like a very slow dog and seems to crash more often than not. Hopefully it will improve over time, but I'm not sure that there's much (if any) further development going on.

I tried Opera's mobile browser, which looked really good. It costs money however, and I'd prefer not to pay for a web browser.

Today I came across Skyfire. It's a free browser, initially for Windows Mobile 5 & 6. It's still in Beta, and for some weird reason, while you can sign up for the beta, if you don't have a US telephone number, you can't get it at the moment. A bit strange as they do say it will work over WiFi too.

What password?

2008-02-04T11:13:00.001+10:30

Why did my phone's alarm either not go off or wake me up on time this morning?

And more importantly, when I turned it on, why was it asking me for a password? (I have a PIN on my SIM card, but this wasn't prompting me for that)

After trying every password it could possibly be, I did a reset, and fortunately, the password prompt went away.

So either there's a weird bug in Windows Mobile 6, I set a password on it in my sleep (unlikely), or someone else did this (also unlikely).

The last thing I did before I turned out the light was to confirm that the alarm was set (so there wasn't a password set then), so this is very odd.

Where's the time zone update for Windows Mobile devices?

2008-01-18T10:01:00.001+10:30

I mentioned previously that Microsoft released an update for their desktop and server operating systems in late November. This included the new daylight-savings ending for South Australia.

For some reason, we're still waiting for a similar update for Mobile Devices. The last release was from August 2007, and that doesn't include changes for South Australia or Tasmania.

What's the holdup? Daylight savings will have finished if they don't hurry up!

Microsoft Office Mobile 6.1

2007-11-29T15:15:00.001+10:30

Here's an upgrade for the Office Mobile applications to support Microsoft Office 2007 file formats. I wonder if this will appear on the Windows Update for Windows Mobile?

Cell broadcast name

2007-11-29T10:04:00.001+10:30

In Australia, channel 50 is used for the "cell broadcast" information for mobile phone networks. Most often this contains the suburb or locality of the current base station the phone is talking to.

I enabled this on my new phone, and it works ok for GSM.

I've just been speaking to Optus technical support who told me that their 3G network doesnt' support this feature. A bit odd, as you'd think 3G would have more features, not less. The guy didn't know if there was some other way to retrieve the same kind of information.

One problem that I did discover is that every time the phone receives notification that it has changed base stations, it wakes up from standby mode.

That's probably why I was woken up at 2am this morning wondering who had left the light on - turns out it was my phone. Amazing how bright a backlit display can be in the middle of the night :-(

I've contacted HTC in Australia and asked them to find out if this is a bug or a feature. I'm certain my old phone didn't do this, so I consider it the latter.

I've also emailed our local Australian mobile device MVP Nick Randolph to see if he has any suggestions.