March 2004 - Posts

status
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PostedWednesday, March 31, 2004 6:46 AM by Nino

busy. 

 blog seems flaky lately.  need to get my MDC thoughts posted, generate some IA for work.  TMM needs fired up again.  doing some C# again.. feels good.  VB6 has a high suck factor (although I'm not away from it yet).

 

MDC Post-con
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PostedSaturday, March 27, 2004 9:50 AM by Nino
Today is the MDC Post-Conference session (0900-1800 PST).. woohoo!   This session is being hosted by Doug Boling (author of Programming Window CE.NET)
wither MPx220?
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PostedFriday, March 26, 2004 4:08 PM by Nino

I had not heard anything about the Motorola MPx220, so today Mike and I stopped by the Motorola exhibitors booth and asked about it.  The guy in the booth said "no plans, no comment".   Hmmmm.

 

screen shots of VS2005
PostedFriday, March 26, 2004 3:16 PM by Nino

Michael Yuan has some good screen shots that show the new designer interface.

http://weblogs.asp.net/juntao/archive/2004/03/25/96299.aspx

-Nino

SQL Server Mobile Edition 2005 ("Laguna")
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PostedThursday, March 25, 2004 7:09 PM by Nino

Support for:

  • Windows Mobile 2003 for PPC/PPCPE, “Magneto“
  • Smartphone
  • Tablet PC (as an alternative to MSDE).. more to come here
my blog seems b0rked
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PostedThursday, March 25, 2004 7:07 PM by Nino

It seems as though something has gone awry with my blog.. not sure what has happened.. all my posts from MDC (made with BlogJet and .Text web interface) are unreadable if you click the direct link to the post.. I'm workin' on it....  (but my battery is goin' down so it may be a while)

Update:   I was futzing with the custom errors in web.config trying to see what was the matter, and I set it back to “Off”, and my problem went away. Freakin' weird.  Since I set up this blog, I have made no changes it to it. None.   Hrmph. Damn underpants gnomes.

WM2003SE Emulator Images available
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PostedThursday, March 25, 2004 1:00 PM by Nino

Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition emulator images are now available.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=5c53e3b5-f2a2-47d7-a41d-825fd68ebb6c&displaylang=en

 

MDC: Chris Anderson keynote
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PostedThursday, March 25, 2004 10:44 AM by Nino

Hilarious parody of "The Bachelor" called "The Developer"... I hope this makes it to the conference DVD!

Ori Amiga and Chris Anderson did a demo where they created an ATL COM object that was consumed by NETCF on PPC that leveraged the MapPoint web service.  These guys had a lot of fun doing this.. and it was quite enjoyable to watch.  These guys were great - real seat_of_your_pants coding!

One *very handy* thing that VS2005 has for mobile client development is that the designer actually has an image of the device (i.e. looks like the emulator) to help you better visualize how your app will look.

The designer will also support different form factors (landscape, different resolution) in the IDE (a la Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition), and allow you to switch landscape on the fly.  Awesome!! 

Docking and anchoring is now supported!  Ori also noted that we now have System.Messaging for MSMQ access via NETCF..

They sent an SMS message with the following code -- Sweet!

      SmsMessage msg = new SmsMessage();
      msg.Body = "Hello from the MDC";
      msg.To.Add(new Recipient(phoneNumber));
      msg.Send();

They then went on to add code (again, NETCF) that wakes up the device upon receipt of an SMS message - this is huge (only four lines of code)!

Kevin Collins from the SQL CE team then showed some stuff with SQL Server 2005 Beta 2 - accessing SQL CE from SQL Workbench.  We now get callbacks so we can track synch (replication) status!    GUI showplan for SQL CE - yeah!

SQL Server 2005 has DTS capabilities to get data into a device!  This is great for grabbing data from DBs other than SQL Server.  Of course, we'll be able to take this DTS and plop it in to VS2005.

From VS2005, we'll be able to live edit data in SQL CE - nice!

The name SQL CE is going away - will now be SQL Server 2005 Mobile Edition  (aka SQL Mobile).  oh.. Smartphone will be supported in the future - this is huge!)

Drag & drop tables from SQL Mobile into the designer and it auto-generates and populates a datagrid.

 

 

 

more MDC thoughts
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PostedThursday, March 25, 2004 9:10 AM by Nino

Mike Wood (who just happens to be my Practice Director (AKA big boss man!)) is a bit more verbose in his blog entries about sessions yesterday than I was.  Catch his thoughts here:

BillG keynote

MOTOPro

ActiveSync

Something to note about ActiveSync .. they noted that it will have manged APIs....well, this was in the "future+" version, not the "future" (i.e. v.Next) version.  Bummer.  v.Next is where we need them.  Also, ActiveSync v.Next will have a new architecture but be backwards compatible.  Additionally, they are standardizing on the AirSync protocol which is promising (think HTTP-based sync).  They also noted that v.Next will be the first major release in five (5) years.

and oh yeah..  during the BillG keynote when Ori  did the NETCF demo of creating a Smartphone blogging client - he had it hitting .Text. :-)    I think that says something for the hardwork that ScottW has done!

VS2005
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PostedThursday, March 25, 2004 8:35 AM by Nino

Whidbey bits, Whidbey bits, Whidbey bits!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just sat down in my seat for today's keynote (no Don Box, btw - Chris Anderson will be giving today's keynote) wahoo.. we all have a Visual Studio 2005 Community Technology Preview March 2004 disc waiting for us

well.. we know what I'll be doing later today on a VPC image, eh? ;-)

casey's talk
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PostedWednesday, March 24, 2004 7:19 PM by Nino

I attended Casey's talk on web services in NETCF.  Good stuff!  There were a quite a few “deer in the headlights” looks.. and a quite a few folks bailed when he got to WS-Security.  oh well.  He alluded up front that it wasn't a beginner talk.  This presentation reminded me that I need to get back to WSE and getting jiggy with that.  Casey's done some pretty nifty stuff in writing his own implementations of some of the WSE specs (c'mon Microsoft, let's get those baked in please).

Here's some stuff he talked about.  His thoughts on the presentation

Developer Resources for Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition
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PostedWednesday, March 24, 2004 7:11 PM by Nino

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=6A34DC83-C3CE-4A4C-AB83-491FD5729551&displaylang=en

Overview

Develop for the newest edition of Windows Mobile software. Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition offers new screen orientations and resolutions, including landscape, square and VGA support for Pocket PC and QVGA support for Smartphone.


  1. Read best practices in the whitepapers in the Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition Developer Resources package
  2. Test your applications, using the Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition emulators for Pocket PC and Smartphone
  3. Make your applications screen orientation and resolution independent, so you can target the full range of hardware innovations on the Windows Mobile platform with a single code base
Download the new Windows Mobile Developer Resources package, which includes new and updated code samples and best practice whitepapers.
some other thoughts
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PostedWednesday, March 24, 2004 6:37 PM by Nino
  • during the keynote, BillG noted that VS2005 will be friendlier for running as non-admin and detecting code that needs to be run as admin.

  • Tonight's event is an attendee party at SBC park.. :-)

  • Went to the MapPoint party last night .. had a good time; met some folks from DevX and the MapPoint team.

  • I could have used another day to get adjusted to PST.  I woke up at 0418 PST this morning (that would be 0718 EDT) - ugh..and I couldn't get back to sleep.
MDC complaints
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PostedWednesday, March 24, 2004 6:30 PM by Nino

Where's the beverages?!?  At last year's MDC there was soda and junk food everywhere.  So much for that.  At least give me bottled water, damn it.  (note: there are water fountains around, but I'm too lazy to go to the store and buy a bottle to refill - and the sports bottle in our bag o'swag isn't terribly appealing).

Seating in the breakout sessions: a little wider please!  I'm not huge, but three inches would do wonders for keeping me from my neighbor's shoulders. Here's the problem: they're using those damn chairs that hook together so you can't adjust yourself.  The chairs do keep things orderly though.

Yet again, the CommNet WLAN is shy on capacity.  Hello?!?!  Let's see, it's what, 2004?  Damn near everyone here has wireless be it PC or PPC...and people are always jumping on the wireless.

 

MDC so far today
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PostedWednesday, March 24, 2004 1:56 PM by Nino

some thoughts:

  • Microsoft seems to be pushing VB hard in Visual Studio 2005 ("Whidbey")  -- I can't wait for the Whidbey bits tomorrow - lots of cool stuff in this envrionment..
  • Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition (WM2003SE) is coming.. the Motorola MPx will be one of the first devices to leverage this.
  • I'm stoked about NETCF 2.0 (Whidbey) - access to nearly everything from NETCF (Camera APIs, Telephony APIs....)
  • SpeechServer 2004 is very cool - provides a low barrier to entry for enterprises wanted to speech-enable their apps (think of an automated phone menu system)  Very nifty demo of ASP.NET Speech-enabled app.
  • Motorola has some very cool things coming out of their MOTOPro line
  • The MPx really isn't that bulky at all; however, it makes compromises in screen size (we knew this) that may leave some PPCPE users dissatisfied. I liked it a lot though. :-)
  • MapPoint Location Server is wicked cool!  Although, nearly everthing you do is considered a "transaction", and, as such, costs money.  Reminder to MSDN subscribers: You get a free year (50,000 transactions)!
  • Motorola is offering free upgrades to Smartphone 2003 for MPx200 owners - just stop by their booth!

 

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