Nino.Mobile

The Mobile Minute ...is moving

nbenvenuti — Fri, 02 Jan 2004 19:31:00 GMT

I have decided to move out under the umbrella of weblogs.asp.net, and strike out on my own. :-) You can now find Nino.Mobile at http://www.nino.net/blog (rss). For those of you interested in just The Mobile Minute, get your RSS here. Speaking of... The Mobile Minute 23 is out.

Thanks to ScottW for giving me space to start my blog (back in the days of dotnetweblogs). Now come on over to the new place.

-Nino

The Mobile Minute 22

nbenvenuti — Thu, 01 Jan 2004 15:39:00 GMT

Happy New Year! :-)

Windows CE.NET 4.2 has been ported to XBOX via Peter Foot
Will Bluetooth break out in 2004? Mike McCamon from the Bluetooth SIG thinks so.
It seems as though Robert Levy (of SmartphoneThoughts.com fame) has taken the red pill.
The upcoming Paul Yao & David Durant .NET CF book has all of its chapters up for public review

And in this post, Russell makes a good point that Sun (J2ME) and Symbian don't have anything like MDC. I think it would be something important to those camps if they wanted to promote their cause and energize developers. Additionally, I think that such an event would get more than a few attendees whose primary platform was Windows Mobile...but, what do I know?

-Nino

The Mobile Minute 21

nbenvenuti — Tue, 30 Dec 2003 07:03:00 GMT

Did I mention I love the History Channel? :-) Ok..on to a relevant topic:

Scoble talks about the failure of Smart Displays. He notes something that was one of my large issues with the Smart Display - cost. Loren is talking about it, too.
Chris D writes about What is Needed for Windows Mobile to Excel in the Enterprise? I'd like to add to his list an improved ActiveSync. Improved what you ask? ..nearly everything, IMO.
MobileRSS ..even Scoble is talking about it. Disappointing though, that any .Text blog I enter in is evaluated to be an invalid feed. It does work well, IMO, on my Smartphone.
New article at MSDN on the Fundamentals of .NET CF Development. A decent primer...
Tabula PC has a link to the nifty APC Wireless Mobile Router
Wi-Fi Planet has a short article on on some developments in the momentum-gaining trend of Soft APs
Noticed an article published in October that I missed published by Jim Wilson, Improving .NET CF HTTP Communications using HttpWebRequest and Custom ASP.NET Providers
The Survivor's Guide to 2004: Mobile and Wireless via Lance Hunt
AvantGo client for Smartphone - delayed via SmartphoneMinds.com
Rob Tiffany's SQL CE book reviewed at Slashdot
Dan Fergus and Larry Roof's The Definitive Guide to the .NET Compact Framework is also reviewed at Slashdot

-Nino

The Mobile Minute 20

nbenvenuti — Sun, 28 Dec 2003 17:46:00 GMT

it's a lovely day (a sunny 38F) at my father-in-law's, and I found a few interesting things:

A review of the iPAQ H4150
iPAQ h1900 and h2200 series SDKs released via pocketpcdn.com
The new Parrot4 chipset: designed for voice-enabled, wireless devices via SmartphoneMinds.com
Motion has introduced a “value“ TabletPC via Tabula PC
Bistia has released v1.1 of its Camera Wrapper for .NET CF via Google Groups
The fine folks over at mobilizedsoftware.com have referenced yours truly in their Mobile Software Developer's Blog. nifty. :-)

-Nino

..and in other news, Steve Makofsky has written a little utility to check the validity of your IE favorites

The Mobile Minute 19

nbenvenuti — Sun, 28 Dec 2003 07:04:00 GMT

Hello again, faithful readers; after a few days of being disconnected (ok, not quite; I was working on my SPV E200) and spending some time with family (and I must say I made a killer chocolate and raspberry trifle), I'm back at it.

A few things of interest:

CNN has a chart of current wireless technologies (and look, they didn't mess up too badly) via Nauman Leghari
Microsoft abandons SmartDisplay (I wondered when this day would come) via The Daily Grind
Check out the Motorola i930 at SmartphoneThoughts.com ...hmm
Chris DeHerrera asks (and answers) What is in The Future of Windows Mobile Pocket PCs?
An MSDN article published earlier this month on Smartphone application security and code signing model.
Also from MSDN, Develop Screen Orientation-Aware Applications

-Nino

The Mobile Minute 18

nbenvenuti — Fri, 19 Dec 2003 15:57:00 GMT

Home for two weeks.. yeah.. nothing like a well-deserved vacation to catch up on reading, training, cert exams, coding ... not to mention getting to see my wife. :-)

Microsoft announces the details for the mobile event of the year, Microsoft Mobile Developer Conference 2004 (I went last year (the first one) and learned quite a bit and got to do some killer networking. Hopefully things will work out and I'll be able to be in San Francisco in March.)
DigiTimes notes that Motorola will be releasing new Smartphones in Q1. (via SmartphoneThoughts)
msmobiles.com notes that Gartner has released a report that Windows Mobile 2003 is gaining momentum. Yeah!
ITC & HTC sign an agreement to implement EDGE and WCDMA..hopefully in a Windows Mobile powered device. msmobiles.com has the scoop
msmobiles.com has link to an SPV E200 review that they are calling faked. interesting..

Canceled my i-Mate 8080 order from Expansys. They were nice enough, but couldn't give me an accurate ship date as they were having trouble getting the merchandise. I have an Orange SPV E200 on order now. *sigh*

..more later today

-Nino

.NET CF 1.0 SP2 - not for Smartphone

nbenvenuti — Thu, 18 Dec 2003 18:43:00 GMT

Neil points out something that I should have yesterday. .NET CF 1.0 SP2 is not supported on Smartphone 2003.

From the download page:

Supported Device Operating Systems: Pocket PC 2000, Pocket PC 2002 and Windows Mobile Software for Pocket PC 2003, Windows CE .NET 4.1-based operating systems and higher

-Nino

.NET CF 1.0 SP2 (re-release) available

nbenvenuti — Tue, 16 Dec 2003 22:28:00 GMT

I just received this e-mail:

Dear Beta Tester,

Thank you for participating in the Beta Test program for Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 1.0 SP2. We are pleased to announce that .NET Compact Framework 1.0 SP2 will be available for download today.

Downloads available at:

..NET Compact Framework 1.0 SP2 Redistributable (Re-release) http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=359EA6DA-FC5D-41CC-AC04-7BB50A134556&displaylang=en

..NET Compact Framework 1.0 SP2 Developer Redistributable (Re-release) http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=10600643-09B3-46D8-BA28-BC494BC20D26&displaylang=en

UPDATE: 1) sorry about the multiple posts, not sure how I fat-fingered that one. 2) Downloads are active

Here's the fix list:

Performance & Other Improvements List:
- Improved performance of many data tasks, including populating DataSets, searching DataTables, DataSet.ReadXml() method when a schema is used, finding and indexing operations, setting DataSet.EnableConstraints property
- Improved resource loading performance
- Minor GUI performance improvements
- Extend keyboard events to be enabled on all controls (Control.KeyUp, KeyDown, KeyPress)
- Added support for ForeColor &/or BackColor for Button, Checkbox, ComboBox, DomainUpDown, Label, Listbox, ListView, NumericUpDown, RadioButton, Trackbar, TreeView
- Added support for new Smartphone languages: Finnish, Czech, Romanian, Slovakian, Norwegian, Hungarian, Polish, Turkish, Russian
- Improved Control.Enabled and Control.Parent property changing performance
- Support menu hotkeys on Pocket PC
- Support raising context menus from assigned hardware key, Pocket PC
- Tab support for Pocket PC based on Z-Order
- XmlTextReader performance improvements

Defect Fix List:
- Fixed crash when SQLClient or SQLServerCe is installed.
- DataRowCollection.Find() method throws wrong exception
- Fixed erroneous parsing of HttpWebRequest response stream
- Form does not get the focus when all controls are removed from the form
- InputPanel Button disappears from MainMenu on Pocket PC 2002
- InputPanel's EnabledChanged Event fires inspite of setting the enabled property to the same value.
- IrDAClient.DiscoverDevices device names garbled
- Memory leak in the NumericUpDown, DomainUpDown, ComboBox and TextBox controls
- Native Exception occurs when using the get accessor for Control.Capture
- Navigation bar flickers when new form is being loaded.
- ObjectDisposedException occurs when DataBinding a control to a form shown via Show()
- OK button eventually goes away when re-using recycled form for ShowDialog()
- Setting the InputPanel.Enabled property when the form is closing throws an exception
- SIP button does not go away when the toolbar control is removed from a form that does not have a menu
- The Focus method does not work correctly for the NumericUpDown and DomainUpDown controls
- The Text property of a ListView column is reset to “” when removing the column from the ListView and then adding it back.
- ContextMenu: Fixed TreeView issues on Pocket PC 2003
- ContextMenu: Fixed side effects on controls like Scrollbar and Label
- ContextMenu: erroneous functionality when bound to ListBox
- ContextMenu: Showing a context menu on Pocket PC for a textbox unselects the selected text in the textbox
- ContextMenu: Empty ContextMenu on Pocket PC should not pop up
- Web services: After repeatedly canceling asynchronous web request, all web service calls fail
- conversion of 0.0F to a string and results in a memory leak
- Web services: An XmlException is thrown when deserializing a qualified name that has no prefix and there is no default namespace defined
- Web services: Incorrect handling of null headers in SOAP message

-Nino

The Mobile Minute 17

nbenvenuti — Tue, 16 Dec 2003 01:41:00 GMT

Not much for tonight:

eVB runtimes for SmartPhone 2003..if you are so inclined...
Powerpoint Remote 2004 for Smartphone 2003
Rumor: iPAQ 6000
InitializeComponent Optimizer & GDI+ Architect

oh..and I got an e-mail on Friday that started like this:

Dear Nino Benvenuti

Welcome the OpenNETCF Smart Device Framework Beta Program.

Yeah!

-Nino

Number Portability realities

nbenvenuti — Mon, 15 Dec 2003 04:26:00 GMT

I was talking with a good friend of mine who decided to switch from Cincinnati Bell Wireless (an AT&T Wireless affiliate) to Verizon. Alas, things didn't go so well. So far it seems that CBW has done everything OK; however, Verizon has botched things. He can currently call out, but he cannot receive calls. Verizon has given him quite the runaround stating that he had canceled his service (when he hadn't), that CBW didn't port the number, and that it takes a while among other excuses. Update: Other co-workers of his who made the same switch are experiencing the same issue with Verizon.

What about you? I'd love to hear other experiences in porting a mobile number from one carrier to another.

-Nino

The Mobile Minute 16

nbenvenuti — Mon, 15 Dec 2003 04:12:00 GMT

Arggghh .. five days since the last issue of TMM....work, illness, spousal illness, car illness....pick one of many reasons :-/

Jon Box notes a great review for his (co-authored with Dan Fox) .NET CF book. Ordered mine last week.
Simon Fell has opened a Pocket SOAP store Get your swag!
Monday, December 15 - MSDN Webcast: Smartphone and Pocket PC Programming: Performance and Power Considerations
Dug up this article on device configuration with .NET CF
Here, here, and here is info about the upcoming MPx220, the replacement for the MPx200. Purported features are: Smartphone 2003, camera, Blueooth
MoDaCo Smartphone Journal - sync your call history into your Outlook Journal (finally, a reason to use that thing)
Camera wrapper for .NET CF
Walter Mossberg (WSJ) disses the Smartphone

..and on a non-Mobile front, Steve “Furrygoat” Makofsky notes that Microsoft wants to know if you use the SoapFormatter.

Sometime after this week, I'm going to be moving my blog. I've been thinking about it a while, and I just feel too constrained to .NET / technical topics here.

-Nino

Slipstick.com now has an RSS feed

nbenvenuti — Wed, 10 Dec 2003 15:30:00 GMT

I was out at slipstick.com, one of my favorite resources for Outlook and Exchange info, and noticed that they now have an RSS feed. nifty.

The Mobile Minute 15

nbenvenuti — Tue, 09 Dec 2003 19:57:00 GMT

Hello again folks; sorry for the delay in TMM, a bout of bronchitis got in the way. Quite few things of note:

Robert Levy of smartphonethoughts.com comments on the MPx220 rumors
Alex Feinman responds to a question about J2ME vs .NET CF
Geoff Schwab from MSFT informs us that .NET CF FAQ has been updated
Whack-A-Mole for Smartphone2003 Fun.
Don't forget about the Windows Mobile 2003 Power Toys
CoolSmartPhone has a review of the SPV E200
Brian Loomis asks “What is mobile computing?“
DevX has an article (basic, IMO) about Smartphone development
From the presses of Wi-Fi Planet, Intel predicts hazards ahead for Wi-Fi
Peter Foot publishes his article on using NDoc with .NET CF
Peter also has posted code to toggle the Bluetooth stack from .NET CF
Some thoughts on Motion's new indoor-outdoor display for Tablet PC
pocketpcthoughts.com posts an interview with Valentin Iliescu who's PocketPC Chess game was the focus of a MSFT case study

oh.. and I seem to have garnered another reader. Cool.

-Nino

[OT] NWS Alerts

nbenvenuti — Fri, 05 Dec 2003 01:22:00 GMT

The National Weather Service now has RSS (and CAP) feeds. http://www.nws.noaa.gov/alerts/ ..could be handy as we head into the winter months.

The Mobile Minute 14

nbenvenuti — Thu, 04 Dec 2003 18:25:00 GMT

Yay..Thursday.. my travel home day.

Frank Arrigo notes all the nifty resources Microsoft has for mobile solutions development
Microsoft has a list of current Smartphone operators and their respective operating policy and execution mode
Pocket PC Developer Network has an interview with Neil Cowburn and Chris Tacke, OpenNETCF.org co-founders.
Alex Yakhnin posts a snippet on how to implement Control.GetNextControl in .NET CF
SmartphoneMinds.com has launched.
Chris DeHerrera publishes another article on Windows Mobile 2003 Network Security
Windows Media Overview and Optimization for Windows CE.NET 4.2

-Nino