J2i.Net

The Windows Marketplace for Mobile is now Live. If you fire up your 6.5 Emulator and click on the Marketplace icon you'll be able to log in look around.  Right now only a few applications are available.  Edward from MSMobiles.com has uploaded a video to youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6Py1ZYyy1s) and written a review on it (http://msmobiles.com/news.php/8641.html ). Windows Mobile 6.5 devices will start to roll out into the hands of consumers in another 2 days though both newly released devices and ROM updates for existing devices.  Most Windows Mobile devices will have the Marketplace preinstalled (though a few months ago it was reported that Verizon Wireless has decided that the Marketplace would not be included on their devices).

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Windows Mobile 7 has support for vector graphics.  That will address a lot of the concerns that many developers had about targetting multiple resolutions and creating graphical resources for each one. Where did I hear this? At the Windows Mobile Developer camp in Mountain View, California, USA. The event is still going on now, but when the videos are posted I will post a link to them.

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If you are just getting started with Windows Mobile development then you will want to check out a page that Mike Francis has posted on his site.  It gives a a rather complete list of software you'll need/want, community resource, example code, guidance documents and other resources to get you started.  Check it out at http://blog.mjfnet.com/blog/FormatPage.aspx?path=content/projects/resources/resources.format.html

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In reply to developer questions the Windows Mobile Phone team posted a FAQ on including icons in your Windows Mobile Marketplace submissions.  You can read the FAQ and some related post through the following links.

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Wondering what type of security that the Marketplace for Windows Mobile Phone will have? Well stay tuned.  According to Inigo Lopez of Microsoft the details are coming in the next couple of weeks.

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Java and Windows Mobile have long been technologies that have been mutually exclusive.  Other than the midlet manager available on some Windows phones. Sun just released JavaFX and it is available for Windows Mobile. You can download it here: http://blogs.sun.com/javafx/entry/want_to_try_javafx_on

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Microsoft has give RTM status to the code for  a couple of products and made it known on their blogs. Windows 7 has been RTM'd and Windows 2008 R2 has been RTM. A natural question that follows is "When can I get it?"  Here are the relevant dates:

• Two days after official RTM: OEMs
• August 6: Downloadable for ISVs, IHV's, TechNet subscribers, MSDN subscribers
• August 7: Downloadable for Volume Licence with Software Assurance (English only)
• August 16: Downloadable for Partner Program Gold / Certified members (English-only)
• August 23: Downloadable for Action Pack subscribers (English Only)
• September 1: Purchasing for Volume License without Software Assurance (no mention of specific language availability)
• By October 1: Downloadable for Partner Program Gold / Certified members, Action Pack subscribers, TechNet subscribers, MSDN subscribers (remaining languages)
• October 22: Purchasing at retail locations

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I had the need to identify the driver being used in a set of Windows Mobile devices a little earlier and have a very simple program for doing so.   I grabbed some code that Mark Prentice had written to do so. Getting the string that identifies the driver is a couple of lines of code.

AdapterListCollection al = Manager.Adapters;
string driver = al.Default.Information.DriverName.ToString();

If you run this code the one thing you want to watch out for is a driver named "d3dmref.dll".  If you have this driver then that means you OEM didn't create/license a driver for your device and the graphics will render in seconds per frame.

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I found out by way of PocketNow about an HTC interview that asked about some pretty tough questions.  The questions aren't necessarily satisfying (and in some cases they don't address the actual questions) but an interesting interview all the same.

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This week I was able to get my hands on two Windows Phones. It didn't take long to figure out that I had gotten my hands on the best and worst Windows phones ever.  On the best side is the Samsung Omnia.  What can I say, it's a Windows Phone done right.  The hardware is excelent (but that's pretty much most Samsung hardware that I've used) and the software just fits the phone ever so well. The interface is slick, the customizations are well done, and best of all Samsung provides programmatic access to a lot of their hardware.  I don't want to say the name of the worst phone, but I'll describe it.  Like the Omnia it has an accelerometer but the time it takes for the phone to recognize it was rotated is awful.  At times I could rotate the phone and walk through two other rooms before it reacted to the screen being rotated.  This phone also has no directional input at all (the Omnia by contrast has a pad that acts as bot a 5-way input and a mouse pad). The battery life in this worst phone is awful and it makes for a bad experience.

I won't be saying anything else about the worst phone, but expect to hear more about what I'm doing with the Omnia in coming days.

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You can now download the Windows Mobile 6.5 SDK from Microsoft.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=20686a1d-97a8-4f80-bc6a-ae010e085a6e

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Are you waiting for the Windows Mobile 6.5 SDK before developing your application for the marketplace?  There's no need to wait as most of the functionality is already available in the Windows Mobile SDK now.  The only thing you can't access with it are Widgets.  But according to Steve Bell of Microsoft this summer a Developer Resource Kit will be release to update the SDK. It will include guidance on writing widgets and accessing other WM6.5 features.

 via MSDN Marketplace Forums

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I was evaluating the graphical capabilities od different Windows Mobile devices.  I got tired of inspecting the state of the DDSCAPS (Direct Draw Capabilities) structure in code so I put together a UI that would display the information for me.  This is all part of something else I am working on for another Windows Mobile article, but I thought I would go ahead and share the code. now.  If you are interested in the program it is attached to this blog posting.

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The Mobile Camp Atlanta 2009 is an (un)conference event with people interested in the Windows Mobile, Google Android, Palm Pre and Blackberry.

On July 18th, this ad hoc event will be created organically by the participants in a BarCamp-style format. It will likely cover topics such as mobile app development, demos, game creation, strategies, technologies, techniques, mobile solutions, successes & failures and just about everything orbiting around the mobile universe.

www.mobilecampatlanta.org

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