Keeping Wi-Fi always on, on Windows Mobile devices
Last Updated on Tuesday, 03 March 2009 21:50 Written by Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos Tuesday, 03 March 2009 13:43
I was at a coffeehouse yesterday and I observed the waiters with those PDA's. Once they switched them on, they could take an order, which implies that their PDA's wi-fi connection was enabled even when the device was in standby mode. A bit dissapointed that both my HTC Touch and my Mio P560 would turn off their wi-fi connection upon entering standby, I decided to get to the bottom of this. And I did!
Four user interface customizations for HTC Touch (and other Windows Mobile 6 touch screen phones, too)
Last Updated on Tuesday, 03 March 2009 22:00 Written by Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos Tuesday, 25 March 2008 00:00
Having a Windows Mobile powered cell phone has its advantages over a "regular" cell phone. The larger screen, the wealth of added value applications and the power of almost infinite user experience customization being the spearhead of these devices, it came naturally to me wanting to personalize every aspect of the user interface. In this post I'll present some user interface customizations I dug up from the web. Some of them are only applicable to HTC devices (and therefore marked with "HTC" on the title), others apply to any device powered by Windows Mobile 6 Professional or Classic.
Most of these tricks require messing with the registry. This is potentially risky and could get your device stuck; in this case, you'd have to hard reset it to get it working again. Take a full backup of your device data before trying any of these tricks! If you need a PocketPC registry editor, here's one which is free. For some tricks, you'll need to replace files in the \Windows folder, which isn't possible with the included File Explorer. In this case you can use the Total Commander CE program, which is also free.
I have also stumbled upon a very comprehensive blog on Pocket PC tips (some of the entries are in Greek, though), a great source of inspiration for this blog post.
Developing for .NET Compact Framework, without Visual Studio
Last Updated on Friday, 19 September 2008 17:23 Written by Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos Thursday, 24 January 2008 00:00
If you own a Pocket PC device, or any Windows Mobile based device (i.e. PDA phone) and you know how to code, you start feeling the urge to develop for it. The possibilities seem endless: highly portable, natural (touch screen) interface, integrated mobile communications (Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPRS, 3G, you-name-it), camera, GPS... it's all there, ready to be combined in fun ways.
Now that you want to use your skills to that end, this seems impossible without spending big bucks on Microsoft's Visual Studio (I assume you don't use pirated software, right?). The Express editions are fine for small to medium sized desktop apps, but there's no support for .NET Compact Framework. You are stuck, right?
Well, actually, not exactly.
Read more: Developing for .NET Compact Framework, without Visual Studio