It had to come and competition is great. We are seeing more of 3rd party application stores for mobile solutions. Freeware Pocket PC has opened up an alternative application store for Windows Phones promising instant free downloads for your Windows Mobile phone.  OpnMarket is compatible with most of the Windows Mobile Professional devices with touch-screens, once installed it lets you browse, download and install FREE applications directly on your device. OpnMarket will use your mobile network connection or a WiFi connection to download software to your phone. It’s simple, instant and FREE  with access to more than 6,700 free windows mobile games, tools and themes.

The installer cab can be downloaded from here.

Finally! There is something on the move here. In May i was writing about that I was looking for a Norwegian Compact Framework User Group or something like a dedicated compact framework development forum for us .netcf developers here up north. With no luck finding one I have been brewing on the idea of trying to start a compact framework community, trying to gather some people that are willing to help promote and arrange.

Myself I am quite happy (and lucky) being able to work dedicated in a mobility department for mobile solutions. From designing enterprise back-end systems that can be used by mobile devices, to client applications interacting with existing business systems. Not to mention being a mobility consultant helping organizations streamline their work flow and processes to mobilize the workforce.  This has been both industrial applications running on dedicated ruggedized devices, one which is out running on 9000 windows mobile devices today and general business applications delivering back-end data to windows mobile devices within a company.

As i said, i am quite happy, but also I feel quite isolated. It’s no community feel to it, and there isn’t much buzz around it, for instance when was the last time you went to a Norwegian convention and anyone talked about mobility and development for devices? The closest thing is going to TechEd Europe. Continue Reading

If you are working with rugged devices or are interested in knowing more about these types of devices there is a site called ruggedpcreview.com that is a good source of information.

As the name say, ruggedpcreview.com reviews rugged devices of all types and they have a huge database of tested devices

Their about page say;  ”The purpose and goal of RuggedPCReview.com is to be a information provider and clearinghouse for anything related to rugged computing: hardware, software, peripherals, definitions, terminology, case studies, white papers, and, most of all, unbiased product reviews and roundups.”

If you are considering using ruggedized devices they are worth a visit at http://www.ruggedpcreview.com Continue Reading

If you are working with barcode readers and need to generate barcode test data there’s a few online sites that do that for free. My current favorite is Barcoding Inc.

I prefere barcoding.combecause the no-fuzz generation, just enter data, select type and preferred output format. Barcode symbologies supported is Code 39, Code 39 (Full ASCII), Code 39 (HIBC), CodaBar, Code 93, Code 128, UCC/EAN 128, Interleaved 2 Of 5, PostNET, UPC-A, UPC-E, EAN/JAN-8, EAN/JAN-13,  Bookland and output formats are PNG, GIF, JPG or bitmap

Wasp Barcode Technologies also has a web based barcode generator. It supports all the same symbologies as Barcoding, but since you need to enter your email to generate a preview, and have it emailed to your address if you want to save a copy i don’t use it much. Wasp has a couple of extra features that gives you options for with, height, caption alignment, barcode rotation and image dpi that is useful if you need to test scanner capabilities for size, quality and rotation.

curiously enough, both sites as an “Please link to this barcode generator”  an industry standard maybe?

I live about 1 hour of commuting with bus and subway from my office and my favorite past time getting there or home  from work is to listen to music and read blogs.

One of the blogs I like to read in the morning is www.smallsurfaces.com. A good blog about mobile user interfaces, but as irony strikes it, not very reader friendly on a small surface.

More blogs should be available with mobile friendly user interfaces!

I have used both my HTC Touch Diamond, and now an iPhone. Continue Reading

Microsoft has a new site for show casing Windows Phone applications.

Site contains useful business applications from Windows Mobile ISV’s and it looks like it only takes an email to have your own application listed.

Here’s a collection of useful tools for the windows mobile developer:

NETCF 3.5 Power Toys

 Power Toys for working with .NET Compact Framework 3.5. The Power Toys for .NET Compact Framework 3.5 provides several tools for evaluating performance, obtaining diagnostic information, configuring and working with the .NET Compact Framework. Download here.

ReSharper Visual Studio Add-in

Not a tool spesific for device development but definitely a must-have tool for Visual Studio development. The list of features and goodies is too long to even start here. It’s freeware for classroom or training use, $49 for an academic license, $199 for personal license and $349 for commercial use. As a commercial developer you’ll made the purchase worth after a day or two. Download the 30 day trial and you’ve saved enough to buy a 5-pack Continue Reading

Sbp Software house announces in a press release the launch of Mobile Shell 3.0 today.

Spb Mobile Shell 3.0

Snipped from the press release:Spb Mobile Shell 3.0 is available in 24 languages, is compatible with Windows phones running Windows Mobile 5 and later Professional platforms, qVGA, VGA, Square QVGA, and WVGA screen resolutions are supported. A free, 15-day trial can be downloaded, or Spb Mobile Shell can be purchased for 29.95 USD from www.SpbSoftwareHouse.com. Users of any 2.x versions of Spb Mobile Shell are welcome to upgrade to Spb Mobile Shell 3.0 for just 14.95 USD. According to Spb Software’s upgrades policy, all Spb Mobile Shell users who have purchased the product within the last 90 days, are invited to exchange the previous version of software for the newly released one, for free.

First impression Continue Reading

On a Tweet from Scott Hanselman I learned about his talk on ASP.NET MVC and the Mobile Browser Definition File. Really good article and I learned about a little tool that could become quite useful.

  Blackbaud Labs has created a really useful tool  called “iPhone Web Simulator for Windows” (iBBDemo) useful if you would like to see how your device enabled web solutions behave when seen through an iPhone. You download the emulator application and point the emulator browser to your site on server or localhost and browse as you would on a regular phone . Really useful in a debug situation while developing.

Only requirement is that you install Apple Safari, since the emulator uses the Safari render engine. Continue Reading

As a .NET and Windows Mobile device developer i love my Apple iPhone. It is an inspiratioal device, helps me create better and more usable applications on the WM platform. For some reason everything just looks better, mobile webpages, applications etc.

Today i addet a iPhone plugin to my wordpress blog called WPtouch and it can be downloaded here. What it does is that it redirects iPhone safari requests to a iphone friendly userinterface that makes everything plain nice.

We need to learn (a lot) when it comes to usability! Continue Reading