DevTools - by Diego Samuilov : Windows Mobile, Development

Do almost everything with your smartphone (Part 3/5)

dsamuilov — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 23:34:49 GMT

Recap: I am trying to do almost all my work with my phone and I am slowly getting there. This is the third part with my findings and opinions about the process.

Here is where I am with my little project.

I already mentioned that my work revolves around application development. I still have not found a tool that would do everything for me in that arena but I am currently using a remote session with Remote Desktop, which ultimately would allow me to do anything I want just as if I had a full blown computer in front of me. In all fairness that would be "sort of cheating" even though I would certainly be able to complete all my tasks just as long as I have a decent web connection. I will continue my search on this particular set of features. In the mean time, I will move on to other tasks.

Reading Blog Articles
I have to admit that I do a lot of reading. In fact, I do read several thousand articles a week, I get world, regional and national news, technical, industry and mobile related, and many other feeds daily. Sometimes, keeping track of what one reads is a chore. While on my PC, I do all my blog reading on Google Reader (see [here]). It is simple, yet functional and works no matter what computer I am using. On my HTC Touch HD, I was using the RSS reader that came in bundled with the device originally, it is a custom version of an app available for purchase. I never liked Google Reader's mobile version… it seems lacking substance and functionality when you compare it with native readers for smartphones. It offers no customization options. I also tried using Skyfire to browse into Google Reader a few times and while it worked when I was using my Celio RedFly, the behavior is so desktop-like that I cannot take advantage of reading for example while waiting for a doctor's appointment or at lunchtime at work. Additionally; at some point, when the number of feeds started to get a bit unmanageable, I just couldn't keep wasting my time remembering which articles I had already read on my PC and mark them read on my smartphone, and vise versa. I needed an application that would connect to the Google Reader service and just keep it in sync for me, so what I read on my smartphone, would be marked read on my PC and what I read on my PC would not show up unread on my phone.

Enter Speeed Reader (it is not a typo, it's actually spelled with 3 e's). I downloaded it from the Windows Mobile Marketplace as a trial and within a few hours I had already purchased and registered. I enjoy the simplicity and functionality it provides while keeping all my feeds synced with Google Reader. I am using the latest version available on the Marketplace (v1.12) although the latest version available outside of the Marketplace is v1.13 and has some minor fixes. The next major functional and UI review (v1.2) has already been announced and will be coming shortly. You can find more information [here]. A few specific features have been announced, and if they work as expected, this should be a great enhancement to an already excellent product. I highly recommend this tool if you are an avid RSS reader. The combination between Speeed Reader on my Windows Phone and Google Reader on the PC works like a charm.

Writing Blog Articles
Now, realistically speaking, not everyone writes their own blog or enjoys writing for blogs such as MobilitySite. I wouldn't expect everyone to do so, but blogging and micro-blogging is becoming very commonplace. In my case well, you are obviously reading this article, so there is not much more to say. My intention is to help others learn about the tools and technologies I am most passionate about. In other cases, for example my wife, writes a personal blog for helping our families stay in touch since we live about 6000 miles away from most of them. She started her blog in part at some point in her first pregnancy, so our families would have some participation on all that was happening in our lives even though they were far away. After a while we also realized that it worked as a great way to keep a diary of sorts that can later on be passed on to our children.

My next task is writing articles for MobilitySite and my blog for developers (click [here]). I am surprised to say that there are very few decent blog editing tools for mobile devices (no matter what platform). On my PC I use Windows Live Writer (and I am very, very happy with it). I found Windows Writer for Windows Phones about a year ago [here] but it is in a very early beta stage and I am sad to say that there has been no visible activity since June 2009 when Beta 2 was released and Beta 3 was promised. For now I can certainly get away with writing my articles in the web editors provided by the blogging engines of each of the blogs I am listed as a contributor, but I would probably do much better if I had one tool to do all the writing with. Since I am using Skyfire, my use of these web tools is seamless, but I like the experience of WLW and unfortunately I haven't been able to find anything I can match it on the Windows Phone side... There are a million and one tools for twittering but unfortunately, there are very few for blogging. On the other hand, microblogging (twittering) is not something that I would do as a writer, even though I am a follower of some of the feeds out there. I tend to be on the longer-article side of things and just a few characters doesn't cut it for me.

Along with writing articles for my blogs, comes the need to capture screenshots, do some basic image editing and cropping. So my next search was an image editing application. This section, I'll split it in two: one for capturing screenshots and another for editing images.

Image Capturing/Screenshot
The tool I use the most for screen captures on my device is available for free. Oddly enough, the product is called "Screen Capture" from Ilium Software and using it is a snap (I'm sure you never heard that one). You can download this application from their website [here] select your device platform, then search under free software. I am currently using their latest version (v1.2.1018), it is a small application that doesn't need to be running on your device's background, so you only start it when you need it, take a snapshot and close it. You can set it to take a snapshot by pressing a particular button (you'll hear a camera shutter when the process is done). You can choose the button to use on your first use and then it remains that way. You can also choose to use it in "timer mode", so that you set the timer and it waits a given amount of time, then it takes that snapshot by itself. In some cases, this comes handy as you may want to capture multiple forms all appearing on your screen at once (such as a message box plus whatever remains visible from the other form/s). This being a tool I use for work and writing my blog articles, I would have been glad to pay for this product, but this one does what it was intended for and happens to be free. Additional bells and whistles on this type of product don't necessarily add much more value.

Image Editor
I use a simple image editor to do minor tweaks, cropping and leveling some of the pictures and screenshots I take while on the go. I do not use Adobe's Mobile Photoshop (although I technically could). The product I use is called PocketBrush v1.3 from Gold Vision Mobile Solutions (click [here]). With this tool I can do the basic tasks I require from an image editor and then some: Brightness/contrast, hue/saturation, gamma correction, invert, convert to grayscale, rotate, change size and about 30 different image filters grouped in 7 different categories. This tool is the equivalent of Paint.Net but for the smartphone. The UI is common to almost all existing image editors and comes with no surprises. It can handle BMPs, GIFs, JPGs and PNGs… that's all the formats I need to handle on a smartphone.

Do almost everything with your smartphone (Part 2/5)

dsamuilov — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 23:00:14 GMT

Recap: I am trying to do almost all my work with my smartphone and I am slowly getting there... this series of articles (this is the second part) is intended to document my findings and opinions about the process.

Here is where I am with my little project, and how successful (or unsuccessful) I've been so far.

Web Browsing
For the casual browsing, any browser that comes with your device is pretty good. There are always some limitations in your browsing experience when you use a mobile device... you would think. But my thoughts are that if I use my mobile device most of the time, it better do browsing well, otherwise I am going to have a rough time. In any case, there are many third party browsers to choose from.

Since my device already came with two browsers: Internet Explorer and Opera 9.7 I decided to go for a while with these two. It was good enough, but good enough sometimes doesn't cut it... You see, I had to install Flash Player 3 on top of Opera and was able to see websites that had their menus and minor animations with no problems, but video websites (such as YouTube or Hulu) would take too long to load, and then video quality would be too jumpy. That was when I decided to install a third browser that can handle most of what is out there just like your desktop browser. Enter Skyfire v1.5. This little giant can do wonders... it behaves and reacts just like any of the major browsers on your desktop. You can download it [here]

Email
Having resolved the web browsing issue, I can access my email using webmail, but I usually don't like webmail interfaces, they are clunky and some of the features are not always available, so I put to the test Messaging from Windows Phone. This will be no news, but since Windows Mobile 6, you can see HTML emails formatted in HTML as they are intended to be seen. This makes it work just like the desktop and the major features are just the same as in my PC.

All I need to do is make sure that I can connect to my email accounts and have them setup so that what I do on my Windows Phone also shows up in my PC where I keep a permanent copy of my emails. Windows Phone Messaging is a pretty good solution and I decided that after evaluating other options I will stay with the default. After all, the extended features offered by other tools don't really justify the hassle of installing and using another user interface.

OK, with browsing and email covered, now I am doing about 60% of what any average user uses a Netbook for... let's see what else can be done in these little devices. If I can use it for a few more things, I will be able to reach a comfort level high enough to go around without lugging my desknote around.

Do almost everything with your smartphone (Part 1 of 5)

dsamuilov — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 22:14:19 GMT

Could you do almost everything with your smartphone?

I am trying to do almost all my work with my phone. I really am. I haven't succeeded yet, but I am slowly getting there. A short time ago I decided that my desknote was not worth taking everywhere... therefore I either needed a Netbook or a larger keyboard for my Windows Phone. I decided for the latter and in the process I ended up finding what I consider to be a much better solution. You can see my conclusions on that decision in my article about the RedFly [here]. After that, I would have to find whatever tools I needed in order to achieve my goals. For every tool I use in my PC, I would have to find a replacement tool for my phone.

This article ended up being too long so I decided to split it into 5 parts. I will be releasing the next 4 following this one later today.

Hardware-wise, I went with what now is a run-of-the-mill Windows Mobile 6.1 phone and a Celio Corp RedFly C8N. You could do the same with different hardware available out there. While the particular software may be different; most major platforms can do what I am about to describe in this article. Windows Phone is my personal favorite, but you can do the same with Android and BlackBerry. The iPhone and Nokia smartphones cannot be included in this group because you cannot extend the size of their screens onto another device. This is not a hardware limitation, it just happens to be a limitation that the OS vendors themselves decide to put on their products. The iPad, for example, makes this obvious since it uses the same OS as the iPhone and has a much higher resolution screen than the iPhone. It proves beyond any doubt that the iPhone technically could be extended to a higher resolution and use a physical keyboard. Companies such as Celio Corp are not allowed to extend the iPhone because then, the iPhone and the iPad would pretty much be competing with each other. These limitations are mostly imposed arbitrarily by the Apples and Nokias of the world, they limit what software can or cannot be developed on their platforms as an excuse to protect themselves against competing products (both software and hardware), but I believe that they are only harming themselves.

You may argue that all the tablets popping out here and there are in a completely different category than smartphones, they obviously are. On the other hand, I am not about to ditch my trusty old notebook to get another device that pretty much will do the same for me. You see, the issue here is not what these devices will be able to do for me, but that I will use them for. So; if I am planning to keep my notebook on a desk and use my smartphone as a mobile replacement for it, I am not really looking at lugging around yet another device that is not converged with all the features I want and all the tasks I want to do on the run.

Some say that a killer feature for these devices is eBook readers, but I have been reading ebooks for over 10 years, first on Windows CE, Pocket PCs and Windows Phone. While in a short stint with Palm devices I was also able to read eBooks in them too. I can resize the font to any size I want and I normally don't lay in the sun to read books, so readability outdoors is not a real issue for me. The killer feature would have to be something else (other than eBook readers) for me to see some attractive in tablets. I consider that new features does not necessarily equate the devices being used in a different way, but they certainly help.

Now, in reality, I know I will not be able to do absolutely everything with my Windows Phone. For someone who does application and web development, this would be a completely unrealistic goal. So, what I'll do is leave programming out of my little project and keep using my other devices for development work. The idea is that this way, I will be able to complete 80% of what I normally do online by carrying 20% of the weight. How happy would you be if this were possible for you?

I will do the work, research, compare software, analyze different options and report back to you as soon as I come to some of the conclusions.

Will you be around Orlando, FL this Weekend?

dsamuilov — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 18:43:55 GMT

If you are in any way interested in Development for Windows and Windows Mobile devices then you are invited to attend a FREE event Saturday and Sunday. The weekend event is called Microsoft Community Summit 2008 or ]InBetween[ or Tweener (?!?!). The whole...(read more)

Mobility Opposing Forces - Be Prepared!

dsamuilov — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:12:11 GMT

No matter how prepared you are or how well laid out is your project, you could find some opposing forces to progress. This is something you may encounter in some though not all "old-school-type" businesses. Change, specifically aimed at progress...(read more)

Is Your Company Thinking About Mobile Solutions?

dsamuilov — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 19:59:07 GMT

If it's not, then it should. Let me explain why. Every company wants at least their executives to have work email access on-the-go. They may not have it already but if they don't they are certainly craving for it. We live in a business world that...(read more)

How Secure Is Your Mobile Application Data?

dsamuilov — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 01:13:44 GMT

When developing mobile applications we usually think in terms of a single user; doing only a few tasks in a small device. However, this may no longer be true. We are now faced with devices that have large screens (for a smartphone, that is) such as the...(read more)

Windows Mobile 6.1 Emulators Out

dsamuilov — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:19:13 GMT

With the release of Windows Mobile 6.1 and some models already announced, it was only logical that we would see the WM 6.1 emulators out for Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008. Just like their predecessors, the emulators are stand alone and can...(read more)

Webcast: Creating Location-Aware Applications for Windows Mobile

dsamuilov — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:26:11 GMT

Maarten Struys will be presenting a webcast on April 9th. He is going to talk about how incorporate GPS functionality to your applications and how to build "location awareness" by using the GPS API and the "Fake GPS" GPS Emulator for...(read more)

Orlando Code Camp a Success

dsamuilov — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 02:09:25 GMT

Another successful Code Camp organized by .Net User Groups from Orlando, Lakeland and the Space Coast! Shawn did a great job and had pretty much everything under control. Attendance was full, and everyone was happy about the presentations. Here is a picture...(read more)

How to Associate the Device Emulator with the Cellular Emulator

dsamuilov — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:21:51 GMT

When working with Windows Mobile these days it is very common to have to do work with the cellular connection. Either programming the phone dialing out, receiving calls or testing any other cell-related functionality is very important to make sure that...(read more)

Orlando Code Camp 2008 - Preparing presentations

dsamuilov — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:31:54 GMT

Today I am starting to prepare my presentations for this coming Saturday's Orlando Code Camp 2008 ( http://www.orlandocodecamp.com ). There are no more spaces available, but if you want to attend, there is a waiting list in case some people cancel...(read more)

BlueKatana Tool-Applications for Windows Mobile 2

dsamuilov — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 20:13:50 GMT

Continuing with our release of tool-applications completed by out team, we are releasing today a very cool application that we all started using right away. It is a MPG calculator and Vehicle Maintenance log, that everyone can have in their Windows Mobile...(read more)

Having trouble creating an MSI for Windows Mobile apps?

dsamuilov — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:16:52 GMT

Well, you are not the only one... Creating an MSI file for application distribution is really simple, but when you want to distribute an application that runs on the Windows Mobile environment, it is not that simple any more. This is especially true if...(read more)

BlueKatana Tool-Applications for Windows Mobile 1

dsamuilov — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:10:58 GMT

Our team has re-released some of the applications created recently. They were created as a training exercise by our team members. Each team member has chosen a pet project and executed the training to completion by creating their application. All proceeds...(read more)

South Florida Code Camp 2008 a Success

dsamuilov — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 11:17:00 GMT

Yesterday was a long day, I woke up at 5 AM so that I would make it on time to the Code Camp. Everything went great, I met with Silvia at the event. She is a friend of mine who was also going to the SFCC, chatted for a bit and then went on to the speaker...(read more)