The Mobile Minute 148

 Software / Hardware 

• At long last – the MSFP update for the Motorola Q has arrived! (via CoolSmartPhone.com)
• The Treo 700wx has launched on Sprint (at least they got the memory right, unlike Verizon)
• The Two Inch View talks about using the Qtek 8500 as a music player

 Development

• Microsoft has released the SQL Server 2005 Everywhere Edition Access Database Synchronizer CTP (phew, what a mouthful!).  This will allow RDA-type communications between a SQL/Ev db and an Access db on the desktop via ActiveSync.
• MelSam reminds us to _not_ hard-code paths (e.g. “\My Documents”). You need to leverage SHGetSpecialFolderPath with a CSIDL_<something> parameter (aka System.Environment.GetFolderPath with Environment.SpecialFolder enums).  and this means YOU. Get off your ass, stop hard-coding. Even if what your working on is a <cough> prototype, don’t hard-code; using the API will take you, what, an extra twenty seconds? You’ll easily waste that opening another pack of Ding Dongs.
• Formatting a storage card programatically, courtesy of Alex Feinman.
• Neil Cowburn talks about device development on Vista b2 (5472)
• From Peter Foot, the incredible news that Broadcom has released their Bluetooth SDK (desktop + CE) for _free_.  Sweet!  Now we just need Microsoft to give us a standard BT SDK in WinCE…
• Peter also has posted some fixes to the managed sample GPS code as well as some nifty managed code for context menus on aygshell.dll-equipped WinCE devices. Thanks, Peter!
• 32Feet has reached the 2.0 milestone. Check out the bits on CodePlex.

In Other News . . .

• The next Windows Mobile Developer Virtual User Group Meeting is September 20, 2006. Daniel Moth will be presenting.
• Daniel Moth talks about the Windows RSS Platform. Interesting stuff for developers!