Developing for the Motorola MC 75 smart device

I worked on a small application for the MC 75 handheld device from Motorola this week. The device sports Windows Mobile 6.5 and .NET CF 3.5 and you can use v 2.6 of the symbol EMDK to access the barcode scanner and other goodies.

It was quiet a experience hammering out a app in 2 days considering the last time I worked on windows mobile was when Visual Studio 2005 was the hot new thing and I was the envy of developer brethren for getting upgraded to it. I ended up spending 70% of time setting up my environment and getting the "hello world" or "howdy world" app on the device.

I never realized that Microsoft cut off support for Windows Mobile when it launched the Windows Phone 7 platform in the Visual Studio 2010. They still support the old versions of VS if you have them for smart device development. This was a bummer as getting an older version of a microsoft product can be a pain in the ass.

This is what I did to get the env setup on a Windows 7 (64 bit) machine:

1) Install the trial version of Visual Studio 2008. ( you could buy it too if you wanted to)

2) .NET Compact framework

3) Microsoft device center, this was way cooler then Active Sync.

4) Symbol EMDK ... I used 2.6 for C#

The actual device is pretty cool but getting the Wi-Fi to work was not as straight forward as you would expect. I finally got it to work after reading the blog post and first comment from Michael.

I hope that the smart devices from Motorola ( and Symbol) move either to Windows Phone 7 (or 8) or get on to the Android bandwagon. Windows mobile 6 with the .net compact framework was awesome but its time has passed and I really dont want to code on that platform again.

AppQuu : Love the concept but need more functionality

I hate to say this but I was just thinking about a way to do a "read me later" for the apps that I see and read about on my commute. I had grand plans on how one magical weekend I would find the time to hammer out an app that would let me do just that... and here it is. Came across AppQuu on Killerstartups.com and felt the instant connection.

AppQuu in its own words is "Your Personal App Store" and works pretty well if you have an iPhone. Its really a pretty neat bookmark service.

The only setup required is to install their bookmark in your browser after providing them your phone number on their site. Its a pretty simple step on Chrome and I assume they support firefox and IE too. To use it, all you have to do is click on the bookmark when you are browsing a web page that has the download link of a application. Note, the bookmark looks for links to the Apple app store (http://itunes...) so if the webpage does not have the link then you will not be able to add the bookmark.

Once you collect your bookmarks, you can get them emailed or texted to your device. The message contains a link that pops up a WAP page that lists your apps. You click on the link to install the app. Simple enough ?

How does AppQuu make money ? I am not sure but one of the ways is the click throughs when you download the app from iTunes. The link they provide is through the linkshare network for iTunes.

Thumbs up to the AppQuu team for putting this together and providing a nice UX.

I am a Android user myself and havent yet figured out if they support Android at this time. Looks like my search will continue until they add Android or I find the magical weekend.

Unregistering a WP7 phone from your account

Its annoying when you loose a windows 7 phone that has been registered to your developer account. Its painful when you cannot register your new device with your app hub account as the one you lost cannot be un-registered.

The instructions on MSDN only talks about using the Windows Phone SDK tool to un register the device but if i dont have the device then how do I do it ?

heres how ...... login to your app hub account -> go to your account settings -> select the devices section -> click on remove ... as simple as that.

Non Latin Characters for Domains

ICANN board directors will now vote on allowing Non Latin characters in domain names as specified by the IDN protocol. If the proposal passes then it will mean that we will soon be able to see domain names in Arabic, Chinese and even hindi.

More on this story in the CNN Technology website.

I still cannot imagine how I would be able to type in the domain names using my keyboard. Changing the charset is going to be a pain each time you need to visit a site.

Google flirting with Code 128 barcodes ?

The Google search page is showing a 1 D barcode (Code 128 font) on the search page instead of the logo. Wonder whats the reasoning behind it... I wouldn't have been surprised to see a 2 dimensional QR code to allow a user to repeat the same search on their mobile phone but the use of a 1D font is intriguing to say the least. I wonder what could be the data encoded in the barcode.... from the looks of it .. shouldn't be more than 8-12 chars given the high density of the code 128 font.

Update:

The barcode has "Google" encoded inside it and the logo has been changed to celebrate the 57th anniversary of the first barcode patent. More...