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.

The day we have been waiting for is finally here. Someone published malware in an appstore, and to no surprise it was published to the Android Marketplace.  Norwegian newspaper Digi.no has written/translated an article form The Register about an phishing application written to hijack your banking account information.

This was bound to happen, and this is whythere is such a strict regime to submit applications into appstores like the Apple AppStore and the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Today’s smartphones are trusted devices and the general public does not yet think of their mobile phone as a device that needs antivirus, firewall and malware detection software. But as long as there are vendor solutions like the Android Marketplace; where there is no quality control and no reviewing of applications except for the user feedback from those who already have been fooled by such applications i think things will get a lot worse before it gets better. Continue Reading

If you are in Oslo, and you’re a developer that do Windows Phone software development, or are curious about what’s in it you should come to the December meetup for Windows Phone Developer Community.

WPDC has it’s first meetup next Thursday on December 3rd.  at 6 pm. The meeting will be held at NITH, located in Grønland.

View Schweigaards gate 14 in a larger map

In this first meetup we want to use more as a “constitutional” meeting. Getting to know those who are interested in Windows Phone development and most importantly find others who are interested in being “driving forces” and help build the community. Continue Reading

Today was a cool day!

Finally the Windows Phone Developer Community is announced and started. I was attending a developer presentation for Windows Mobile 6.5 and Microsoft Marketplace today and just before we broke for lunch i was called to stage to “tell the world” that on Thursday 3. December 2009 we´ll host the first meeting.

This first meetup will be mostly about getting to know each other, and find out who´s interested in becoming driving forces. It is not to be taken lightly that if this is to have any form of success it needs to have support and contribution from developers.

For the occasion we have set up a meetup.com group to handle “members” and announcement of meeting events, so check it out at http://www.meetup.com/Windows-Phone-Developer-Community/. Continue Reading

On Thursday, October 15. (09:00 – 14:30). Microsoft Norway invites developers to Lysaker for a day of  Windows Mobile 6.5 and Marketplace development information. This is a free seminar aimed at developers. This is not only for those already working with mobile development, but also useful for anyone curious about what this is and how to get started.

The first part of the day will be about about WM 6.5, where Director for Windows Phones Norway, Camilla Viken Teigre gives a demo on the new UI and talks about what’s new and improved in this release.

From Finland Vesa-Matti Paananen will be walking us through Marketplace. What is Marketplace and why create Windows Phone applications. Continue Reading

Nice! It’s Friday and in a few hours I am off to go rafting in Sjoa for the weekend. Ice cold river water and adrenaline will hopefully get me back in shape after 3 crazy weeks of 16 hour work days writing system design in a BID case for a huge national computer system.

It won’t be all fun and games tho, because part of the weekend needs to be used for work! Extra fun work tho! On Tuesday i start lecturing .NETCF and Windows Mobile development at NITH in Oslo. This is something i am really looking forward to do! and it will be fun to do it together with my good colleague Per Ola Sæther.

Through the weekend we need to review some of the class material and scheme up a plan on how to tackle this before the first class gathering on Tuesday. Luckily, most of the material looks good and there’s just a few places where we need to do minor changes. To bring it up to date on issues like security, communication and usability. Continue Reading

Stumbled upon this quite funny device while reading ITavisen.no (article in norwegian). It is a Windows XP based ultra portable computer called xpPhone from Technology Group Limited (ITG). ITG say they specialize in research, development and production of pocketable mobile internet devices and this looks like a Nokia communicator on steroids.

A “pocketable mobile internet device” is a device term I have not seen before but no matter what you call it, it could be an ideal device/tool for the busy representative that need to have a really portable device for slide show presentations and light typing. A ruggedized version of this device could have been an interesting feature.

Why has it been equipped with Windows XP? An almost obsolete OS but i guess it´s just a matter of time before this comes with Windows 7 installed. This is a step beyond the NetBook computers and will fit into a bit larger pocket but it has most of the capabilities from a phone adding phone features. Continue Reading

One of many new features that came with the iPhone OS 3.0, was that the IPhone should now be ready for the business market. With improved PIM functionality, true push and better integration with Exchange all of the needs for the professional user should be taken care of – that just #fail!

Iphone is business #fail

Basic PIM functionality is something that exists in every device there is that is used by the semi-professional mobile user. 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

A few weeks ago we tried to launch a pilot for a mobile handheld solution in Turkey through  Turkish carrier Turkcell and came to an halt due to unexpected results in the carrier network.

The pilot was for an international customer that has a custom built .netcf business solution, communicating with their back-end systems with SSL through GPRS/Edge/3G networks running on Motorola/Symbol rugged Windows Mobile terminals. All terminals are configured with local carrier SIM cards for Edge/GPRS/3G communication.

After successful launch in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Germany, Turkey was next. and the whole system was configured according to deployment plans but when we started to test we could not get through to the back-end systems. All devices was online, but we didn’t get any communications with our back-end.  We use a custom built communications layer supporting sync, async and push channels so we started debugging but could not figure out what was wrong until we retried using a Swedish Telia sim card in Turkey and it worked. After digging we got hold of Turcell that informed us we have to buy commercial private APN’s to get SSL for some reason. Our problem was dropped as not related to software issues, but it got us thinking about what needs to be addressed in future projects when it comes to cellular networked applications.

Communication through GPRS/Edge/3G Continue Reading