February 2009 - Posts
If you would like to try the My Phone service, head out to the Windows Mobile developer page on Twitter to get beta invite codes now!
I’m helping out a friend on this. This is a good deal. Upgrade to an HTC now! 
One of the perks I get from my work is I get to play with betas very early on. Just a few days ago, I received an access key from my boss in Microsoft who asked me to try out the new Microsoft My Phone service, to which i gladly complied.
After I did my first sync, i was surprised to find that Text Messages were included in the sync! This is really cool as its as if i could do a full backup/restore of my phone to the cloud!
With this I can just backup my phone to the My Phone service and change Windows Mobile phones anytime and just sync up to get the complete data from my phone. Really cool!
Note though that this wont sync your Exchange and your Windows Live data, for the obvious reason that it already syncs with their own services.
This is a screen shot of what positively is a Windows Mobile Professional device(notice the Start Menu on the top left corner and the task manager or the right), the touch screen variety of Windows Mobile phones, now sporting the slider home screen just like in the home screens of existing Windows Mobile Standard 6.1 phones.
Currently, the Windows Mobile Professional 6.1 phones still has the traditional Today Screen, that is not much different from its old ancestor, Pocket PC 2000. This presents a major change in the UI experience in Windows Mobile and we don’t know how will this affect current 3rd party software that enhances the Today Screen such as SPB Pocket Plus and SBSH Pocket Breeze. We expect that Microsoft should provide a new API for creating Home Screen items for this new interface.
This update shouldn't be surprising as Microsoft made it known than it intends to make the experience and codebase of Windows Mobile varieties, such as Windows Mobile Professional and Windows Mobile Standard, more similar.
What seems to be an update to the Programs Menu seems to be more radical, where it replaces the more Windows-like icon tiles or list interface with a honeycomb-like interface. Thought, it seems to offer a nice eye-candy effect, we are unsure if this would have a negative effect on usability for experienced Windows Mobile users. But it seems the honeycomb style UI was designed to offer a much finger-friendly way to access your programs.
The notification bar icons also seems to mimic the motif of Windows 7 with simple white icons on colored backgrounds.
I don't expect Windows Mobile 6.5 to have a very large impact, but I expect it to maintain Windows Mobile’s relevance in the market and maintain its momentum while Windows Mobile 7 is being prepped up to be the secret weapon that would help Microsoft take the significant lead in consumer Smartphones.
Source: WM Power User
I gave a Windows Mobile orientation to techies from Novare yesterday afternoon when I got a question from the audience about using Chinese in an English Windows Mobile device. Im putting my reply as a blog post so that others may also benefit from this and hopefully also generate traffic to my blog *ahem AdSense ahem ahem* 
Although you can copy Unicode Chinese fonts from Windows and do a registry hack, or find a localized ROM image from sources with questionable legitimacy, it is always best to get 3rd party software from a legitimate source that the user can easily install on the Windows Mobile phone.
The most popular software that enables Windows Mobile Chinese display and input is CE Star from Mobem Technologies in Beijing.
CE Star supports simplified Chinese characters used in Mainland China and traditional Chinese characters used by the rest of the overseas Chinese, such as in the Philippines. The Input Methods it supports are pinyin, chajei, phonetic, quick chajei, cantonese, dayi, array and wubi aside from handwriting recognition in freehand mode, or character-by-character inside a box in the Windows Mobile SIP display.
Aside from Chinese, it also has Japanese support for Katakana, Hiragana and Romanji character sets.
You can find out more from the website of Mobem Technologies.