Supporting both WiMAX and CDMA EV-DO connectivity, along with a snazzy looking foldable QWERTY keyboard, the SPH-P9000 provides an interesting alternative to those interested in a UMPC-like device. According to the linked report by Aving.net, the device is set to hit the market in South Korea within the next two weeks (despite initial reports that the device wouldn’t be released until Q1 2007).

In addition to the linked article, a plethora of images can be found in earlier articles published both by Aving.net and Akihabara News. There’s no word at the moment if or when this might be released outside of South Korea. Your thoughts?

Today was the official launch day of Microsoft’s Zune digital media player and music service. It all went off with a bang - concerts were held in major US cities, Bill Gates gave his Zune to an audience member as a gift, and our own Jason Dunn made the trek over to Seattle to pick up five Zunes and a couple of accessories. Head over to Zune Thoughts for all the latest news, and also be on the lookout for Jason’s detailed review, which is set to appear later tonight.

Remember the days of DOS, when every application had its own user interface? (For those that are too young to remember the days when DOS ruled the planet, just go read another thread on OlsenSisterThoughts.com or something ) When you opened up an application, there is no telling how the menu would be laid out, how you would access it or what the commands would be. Then, Windows 3.0 began to bring all of that under control. You could open Windows applications and even if you had little idea what the application did, you could open files, print them, close the application and a few other things. Then, you could customize your user interface. Didn’t like the blue application bar? Make it red, and all applications honored that.

Click for larger image

Now, we are headed back to where the application writer is making up their own custom user interfaces and are not paying any attention to what the other applications look like, nor do they honor any of the visual preferences of the user. The above picture has Outlook 2003 in the background, and that does a pretty good job of following the user’s preferences. Then, there is Internet Explorer 7 in front of that. The colors match my preferences, but where is the menu? Yes, I know you can enable the menu as a “toolbar” but then it sticks it under the address/navigation bar instead of at the top. Well, it could be worse I guess. In front of that is Windows Media Player 10, and it has some hokey down arrow that looks like a Windows 3.x “minimize” button that creates a flyout menu. And does WMP10 care one whit about my color preferences? Do you see the color blue in my theme anywhere? In front of that is Windows Live Messenger. It uses a different menu flyout button and has yet another color preference, which still isn’t my preference. In front of that is Money 2007. It has seen fit to also customize the close/minimize buttons and also doesn’t use my color preferences. This one has a real menu though, except, believe it or not, 99% of it’s functionality can’t be found in the menu. You have to use tabs to get to things, and then buttons and links. And finally, my personal favorite, Audible Manager 5, which you can configure to any color you like, as long as you like “what-the-heck-did-that-baby-poop-in-its-diaper green.” And for good measure, Audible stuck some low res really hideous close/minimize buttons at the top. By the way, if any of you are fortunate enough to be using Audible Manger 4.x or lower, do not upgrade.

If I had iTunes installed, I am sure I would be shown Apple’s lovely glass or stainless steel interface. Bleh. Can application developers get creative in how the application works and leave the border and menus alone? I can see some apps might want those turned off, as WMP10 does, but can I turn them on please? Maybe it is just me. I like consistency. I like my desktop to look somewhat organized, but that thing above looks like a random jumble of UIness. I know… what does this have to do with Windows Mobile? Everything. Every one of the apps above is used in conjunction with Windows Mobile, and chances are, you have most/all of them installed too and your desktop looks equally chaotic. Well, except for Money 2007, which no longer supports Windows Mobile. I guess in a way I am thankful Windows Mobile has such little screen real estate that developers leave it alone, and all of my apps look the same, and honor the theme I choose. What about you? Do you like all the differences or would you rather developers leave that stuff alone?

“New Zealand’s high school students will be able to use “text-speak” — the mobile phone text message language beloved of teenagers — in national exams this year, officials said. Text-speak, a second language for thousands of teens, uses abbreviated words and phrases such as “txt” for “text”, “lol” for “laughing out loud” or “lots of love,” and “CU” for “see you.” The move has already divided students and educators who fear it could damage the English language. New Zealand’s Qualifications Authority said Friday that it still strongly discourages students from using anything other than full English, but that credit will be given if the answer “clearly shows the required understanding,” even if it contains text-speak.”

Um, lol, r u jking?

“A well known Pocket PC software developer - Spb Software House - is about to release their first hardware product. In order to align with the newest version of Windows Mobile - ?Crossbow?, the SPB product’s code name will be ?CrossTalk?! I was able to obtain an engineering sample at the recent Mobius Event in Phuket, here’s the close-up…”

New Gear Diary contributor Larry Liaw decided to have some fun with a hand-out from Mobius Thailand.

“So here’s the funny thing about creating and running Web sites for a living (which is what I do): you end up having really high expectations for each site you launch, and you want everything to be perfectly in place before you launch. Let’s take a brief inventory list here on this site. First, we have an easy to use CMS - WordPress, all set up and ready to rock as of two months ago. Check. Next, we have a killer template, courtesy of Mr. Darius Wey, finished more than a month ago. Check. My matching photo gallery template is also completed, as of two weeks ago. Check. So what was left? Nothing - yet somehow I was obsessing over the smallest details the way I do with a Thoughts Media site. Then I was reminded of a simple truth a few days ago: the entire reason I’m launching this personal blog is to give myself a no-pressure, talk-about-whatever-I-want place that has no connection to my ?real? job. So what the hell was I waiting for exactly? And here we go - launched!”

I’ve decided to launch a personal blog (with an awesome template - go Darius!), and all the reasons why are in my first post. It’s more of a personal project than anything else, but if you enjoy my ranting here you may enjoy the blog. It also is the home to some really old projects that are entertaining to look at in retrospect. I also wanted to let you know about a podcast I did with Vincent Ferrari as part of his “Side Salad” podcast. It has nothing to do with vegetables (although I do say “you know” a lot, so seemingly I may have some form of brain damage) and everything to do with Thoughts Media, the sites I run with the great volunteers that help me, and some good discussion on all sorts of tech topics. I enjoy being a guest on podcasts, because it’s a lot easier than doing one myself where I have to think up a lot of great questions to answer. And that concludes the Jason Dunn Show…back to your regular programming.

Considering we’ve talked about this topic many times before, I couldn’t let this comic strip go unnoticed. Gabe’s expression in the last box is simply priceless. Enjoy!

“1 GHz processor, 30GB HD, 512MB RAM, Wi-Fi®, Bluetooth®, USB 2.0, FireWire®, audio, thumb keyboard, 800×480 indoor/outdoor readable LCD (ships with: removable lithium polymer battery, docking cable, desktop stand, universal power supply, air/auto cable, carrying sleeve, and digital pen.)”

This is a great deal if you’ve been waiting for an affordable price on one of the miniature PCs, and certainly the OQO retains their share of fans amongst us. The price mainly comes down to which OS you want installed. It’s $1199 for XP Home, $1299 for XP Pro, and $1399 for XP Tablet Edition. Rumors have it that the price drops are a precursor to a new OQO line that will be released early next year.

“Alexander Dovgaluk has created the smallest program for Pocket PC I have ever seen. How big is the program? Only 352 bytes. Despite of its small size it has rich functionality. Well, not really. Still the program is almost as good as a classic ?Hello World?. It salutes you with a message box saying ?Msg?.The program features a few tricks such as moving code to the MZ header and using SysCall directly for calling system APIs.”

While not particularly useful on it’s own, the smallest program featured here does provide some neat code-managing tricks to reduce the overall size of programs. Kudos to Alexander for this neat little gem of programming streamlining.

Weird Al - It’s All About The Pentiums

The guy is nuts. ’nuff said.

“Nokia has developed a new, short-range wireless technology that it says could improve on some of the shortcomings of Bluetooth…The technology could compete with Bluetooth in the workplace as a way to link keyboards and other peripherals to computers. But it could also have more interesting applications for consumers, in devices such as wrist watches, toys, and sports equipment.”

Oh goodie. Another wireless initiative, this time by a single vendor. I cannot imagine why anyone would want to replace bluetooth. It is such a spectacular technology, and its name has become synonymous with bliss and trouble free operation.

“YouMail is the new voicemail for cell phones. Among many features, it allows you to record unique voice greetings for anyone who calls you, based on their caller ID. Individualize your voice greetings for friends, family or important callers while maintaining a standard greeting for work and unknown callers. Check your voice messages from any phone or via the web and forward favorite messages to anyone via email. Have fun with the already infamous DITCHMAIL feature that hangs up on unwanted callers after your custom greeting for them is played.”

If you’re still using your boring old cell-phone provider voicemail, then you may want to check out YouMail, with it’s innovative features and ability to forward voicemails to email. While it may be more appropriate for a wild & crazy person who wants to personalize voicemail for each person, it may also be good for leaving important messages for certain friends and family. Personally, I’ve been using CallWave for my voicemail for almost a year and have been very happy with their free service as well. But it’s a tough choice - stick with CallWave or go to YouMail!

“I RECENTLY arrived at a hotel about an hour before a room would be available. So I sat in the lobby and opened my laptop. Just as I expected, a message popped up on my screen. ?Do you want to join the wireless network ?Free Lobby Wi-Fi?’ ? I clicked Yes, and off I went to E-mail Land…As I waited for a big file to download, I was suddenly taken aback. ?Just as I expected?? I’d actually taken it for granted that I’d get online in three seconds, at no charge, at high speed and with a single mouse click? Why, to any normal person of, say, 1995, that would be considered a freaky, utopian, futuristic miracle. I know because I was one. (A normal person in 1995, not a futuristic miracle.)”

Thus begins a very cute little story (great for Friday OT reading, although a free NYT reg is required) by David Pogue, lead technology columnist for the New York Times, about his experience before the days of pervasive Internet access, back when Internet access in some places meant acoustic couplers and lots of crossed fingers — such as on his honeymoon in Indonesia. And now that I think about it, those day seem really distant; I’m essentially bathed in Internet access, even when I was sitting in the lobby of a small hotel in Italy a few weeks ago. How time flies… have a great weekend, everyone!

“Microsoft Corp. today released a beta developer kit for the Microsoft® .NET Micro Framework, a new development platform for use with devices that are typically constrained by cost, memory, processor and/or power consumption. Announced at the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston, the .NET Micro Framework broad beta extends the advantages of .NET and the Visual Studio® toolset into a class of the smallest of devices.?The .NET Micro Framework is a natural extension of Microsoft’s embedded offerings and provides a compelling, easy-to-use solution for developers,? said Colin Miller, director of the .NET Micro Framework at Microsoft. ?We have utilized this platform with several projects at Microsoft and are excited to provide this kit to developers so they can use Microsoft tools to extend their skills to a set of smaller devices.?”

If you’re interested in starting up development for embedded devices, Microsoft has released a beta of the .NET Micro Framework, which enables developers to now target these devices. Happy Micro coding!

“By way of Cory Doctorow, comes a pointer to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s take on Microsoft’s new Zune: a brand that has broken ranks with the Redmond-based company’s previous digital rights management (DRM) strategy that attempted to establish an ecosystem of compatibility (under the name “PlaysForSure”) between content merchants (ie: AOL, Yahoo, Amazon, etc.), the copy protection on the content they sold, and the software and devices that could play that content.”

If you look at footnote 4 in Microsoft’s press release you’ll find “Zune software can import audio files in unprotected WMA, MP3, AAC; photos in JPEG; and videos in WMV, MPEG-4, H.264.”

Now, maybe it can redownload content from Napster, Rhapsody, Cinemanow and other DRM suppliers, it just can’t import it, but I really doubt this is the case. For whatever reason, Microsoft is charting a new course with the Zune that will leave any of you with DRM protected content out in the cold. This is why I have purchased less than $50 of protected content over the years and 100% of it has been burned to a CD and ripped back with no protection. Those of you that left the “Protect Content” box in WMP9 or WMP10 checked and didn’t realize you were protecting your own content may have to rerip all of your CDs to play on the Zune. Personally, I am still looking forward to the Zune. I have no purchased protected content and don’t really plan to, but it would be nice if it could play Tivo2Go files, which are protected as they are transferred across my network.

“Nokia Corp.’s Mobile Search platform will incorporate Microsoft Corp.’s Live Search capabilities to streamline mobile information searches on Nseries smart phones?now ?multimedia computers,? in Nokia’s parlance?and select S60 platform devices in various markets, the Finnish handset vendor announced today. Mobile Search resides on Nokia devices’ menu, allowing users to get results quicker than if they had to use the phone’s Web browser to first locate an Internet service provider’s page to launch a search. Microsoft’s Windows Live Search is designed to facilitate information searches across various platforms and allow users to create preferences for the pages they often visit, personalizing their search habits.”

Microsoft and Nokia partnering? Oh, You’ll have to excuse me. I have a phone call from Satan. Apparently they are in need of some heaters down there.

“I’ve been asked why we used the name “Yamazaki” as a codename for CE 6.0 - There’s some history behind the naming of Windows CE versions, here’s the short version…”

This blog entry by Mike Hall is a fascinating insight into how WinCE codenames came about - with a twist at the end! I can understand how the tree/tool names came about - it’s pretty logical I suppose - but the switch to *whiskey* isn’t quite explained. Now wouldn’t that be a story we’d like to hear - guess we’ll never know . I’ll forbear from making any silly statements regarding the switch from tree/tool names (”solid”, “dependable”, “functional”) to *whiskey* names (”inebriated”, “can’t-quite-focus-on-the-road”). Oh…I just did .

“Chinese DAP manufacturer Meizu has seen quite a lot of interest in its M6 MiniPlayer — so much so that it recently became available Stateside — and now word on the street has the company poised to release an updated version… details are still very sketchy — all the more so because of the nature of machine translation — but from what we can tell, the upcoming M8 will sport a 533MHz Samsung ARM processor, 2.6-inch VGA screen (compared to the M6’s 2.4-inch QVGA display), and the latest Windows CE OS…”

The original Chinese-based rumor can be found here along with a series of mock-up images. If you’re not familiar with Meizu, they recently released a miniature PVP device (C-Net has a video review of the device here) that’s generating some buzz as a worthy iPod competitor.

“Hello. My name is Nathan Breskin-Auer. Some of you may already know me as the father of the kid that does the wicked Mr. Roboto number in “that accessibility video”, but - in fact - I am also the Product Designer and PM for Microsoft Exchange 2007 Outlook Web Access Light. OWA Light is the solution for all browsers and operating systems other than IE6 or IE7 on Windows. So for all of you Firefox users, like myself, all of you Mac users, like my wife (hi honey!), and everyone else using something other than IE6+, here’s a little preview of the improvements that we’ve made to “The Product Formerly Known as OWA Basic.”

As a Firefox user and OWA user as well, I can tell you that I’m really looking forward to a better interface than the basic interface of OWA 2003. Basic is actually an overstatement in my opinion - it’s clunky and not too easy on the eyes in my opinion. Looks like the preview posted over at “You Had Me At EHLO” is good news for those who want a bit nicer basic interface.

“If you’ve ever tried setting up an exchange server at your home, small business, or on any server that doesn’t have a 100% reliable 100% always-on connection, you’ve probably needed a tool like PopRoute. PopRoute lets you “pop” your external POP3 accounts and route the mail from them into an Exchange Inbox. It’s perfect for servers that aren’t always connected (i.e. dial-up), have a rather shakey connection (making forwarding to the user’s exchange email address unfeasible, or for otherwise fine exchange servers with user who stubbornly want their “other” email in their exchange account. The problem with PopRoute is that, while the price is right, the configuration interface leaves lots to be desired. … The nice thing about PopGUI + PopRoute is that, for an extremely low price, you get the same ease of administration that tools costing $100+ provide.”

Ok, I gotta admit, it’s a little weird posting here about a piece of software I’ve written. But since it seems to be getting a bit more popular lately, I thought this crowd may contain some people who would get some use out of it.

Poproute is a nice lightweight program that simply downloads email from a POP account and routes it up to an exchange server. It’s configured by a simple INI file, a file that for experts is fairly straight forward and easy to configure. The problem is that not everyone is an expert or feels comfortable editing an INI file. Additionally, Poproute requires that each mailbox entry be ordered sequentially (i.e. Mailbox1, Mailbox2, Mailbox 3), so removing a POP account high in the list (Mailbox2 for example) requires re-numbering (Which is a bit annoying).

With that in mind, I coded together a .NET 2.0 VB app that reads the INI file and helps make sense of adding, editing, and removing entries in it. I’ve set this up on one of my servers where the other admins aren’t as familiar with the poproute INI file as I am and it seems to be working nicely. Of course since the original is free, I’ve decided to release my frontend free as well - all I ask is that you register with me so I can see how the app is doing, who is using it, and such.

For the record, I know that companies need to make a living - but the cheapest alternative to poproute I can find still runs around $75 or more - making poproute + PopGUI a fairly attractive solution (Although I may be biased )

Microsoft has officially unveiled the Zune digital media player today, so if you’re interested in learning more, head on over to Zune Thoughts.

As regular readers of Pocket PC Thoughts know, we try to avoid discussion on issues that are deeply political, religious, or nationalistic. Such issues tend to bring out very strong emotions in people, and more often than not we end up with angry forum posts flying back and forth, which hurt our sense of community. Yet I believe the loss of any human life is a tragedy, regardless of why it happens, and as such I would be remiss by not acknowledging this day and giving people a chance to discuss their feelings.

Personally, I’m a believer that the best way to resist terror is to go about living your life normally, but I also understand that for some, this may be a day of reflection and thought, where Pocket PC news plays no part. So while we will continue to post news to this site, I suspect things will be a bit quieter around here today than normal.

If you have some thoughts to share, a thread has been started in our forums to respectfully and peacefully discuss what this day means to you.

“No new messages. Why is it taking so long? Did they receive it? Did it get put in the junk mail folder? How long should you wait before emailing again? You don’t want to seem desperate?Waiting for an email reply seems to be a common occurance in this day and age of email reliance. We look for contextual clues to why a response may be taking longer than usual, and decide when we should follow up the email. A paper by Tyler & Tang looks at the the email-replying habits of a group of corporate users in this 2003 paper.”

Since we all do email to one degree or another, I thought this article was worth posting on. Some of the findings include that most users surveyed claimed their checked their email “constantly”, people would leave a voice-mail message to bring attention to their email, and users would reciprocate email behaviours - taking longer to write back to people that took longer to reply back, and responding quickly to email from people that were known to respond quicker to their email. Mind games and human communication always seem to go together. You can dig into the paper itself for a deeper look. I noticed that the surveys were done in 2003 - email and always-on connectivity has only increased in the past three years, so I wonder if any of the responses would be different today?

“FOUR prisoners in an El Salvador jail hid mobile phones, a phone charger and spare chips in their bowels so they could co-ordinate crimes from their cells, prison officials said today.”

Well, these guys are in prison, so maybe Cingular’s commercials showing more bars is appropriate. I’m pretty sure these guys aren’t packing an HTC Universal, but you never know. Phone chargers? That simply cannot be comfortable. Could be worse, could be those British wall warts. Anyway, I’ll have to admit that there are some people more devoted to their mobile device than I am.

“According to the Metropolitan Police figures, 10,000 mobile phones are stolen every month. But a new service from mobile device management company Synchronica (www.synchronica.com) aims to help victims of theft strike back. Synchronica’s mobile phone management software Mobile Manager can remotely lock and wipe data from mobile phones as soon as their owners report the loss. If the phone has been stolen, companies can also turn on the Synchronica Scream Feature, causing an annoying and embarrassing high pitched wail to be emitted from the stolen device.”

An interesting idea akin to the device security features introduced into Windows Mobile 5 (i.e. the S in the MSFP). While I think a thief would certainly find a screaming phone annoying, no mention is made about any kind of locking battery door that would prevent a quick battery removal. Or maybe a secret battery to keep the scream alive?