Dag König

Fullständig mobil Line Of Business (LOB) att ladda ned

Microsoft släppte precis ett exempel på hur man gör en LOB-applikation för mobila enheter. Det är ett exempel med fullständig källkod. Kan vara kanon för dig som jobbar med sådana här saker.

Här är några skärmdumpar.

Ladda ned hela exemplet här.

AV #40 - Intervju med Henrik Wirén-Hagelbeck om Windows Mobile

Henrik jobbar för Microsoft och är bland annat ansvarig för Windows Mobile. Detta är en intervju där vi diskuterar mobila tjänster, häftiga telefoner, ActiveSynk mm.

Lyssna här.

Qtek 8300 och Qtek 8310 - med Wi-Fi och Windows Mobile 5.0

Och jag som precis skrev att jag skulle skaffa mig en HP. Nu blir jag osäker.

msmobiles.com - 2 new Microsoft smartphones announced : Qtek 8300 and Qtek 8310 - both with built-in Wi-Fi and Windows Mobile 5.0 !

Zoo Tycoon för min SmartPhone (Nördigt)

Jag kunde inte låta bli att köpa Zoo Tycoon för min SmartPhone. Jag har gillat det spelet, även om de säger att det är för barn. (Nåväl, innerst inne är jag väl det.)

Detta är nog 2000–talets variant på Tamagotchi.

Nej, nu måste jag gå och mata min tiger…

Palms handdatorer kommer att kunna köra Microsoft Mobile OS

Det är knappt att man tror det, men det verkar vara sant. Palm håller på att testa Microsofts mobila operativsystem på sina handdatorer. Detta har de själva erkänt.

Microsoft och Palm har ju under en längre tid, nästan i tio år nu, varit bittra konkurrenter. Men sedan Palms andel av marknaden har sjunkit kraftigt, så har de tydligen börjat tänka om. De har också delat upp företaget, så en del står för hårdvaran och en del för mjukvaran. Detta gör det möjligt att göra sådana här saker.

Making the case for Windows on Palm

A good book helping you to write Mobile ASP.NET applications

Even if I am an advanced ASP.NET developer, I learned very much in this book. This is not so common these days.

You probably think as I did that writing mobile application with ASP.NET is the same as to write ordinary ASP.NET applications. Much is the same, but some things are rather different. Even if ASP.NET helps you with the different devices, in advanced applications you soon have to work with them yourself. (By the way, they haven't to be so advanced before you have to take this into account.)
This book, "Building Microsoft ASP.NET Application for Mobile Devices, Second Edition", helps you with that. It is a good book to have as reference literature on your desk when working with this type of applications.

Build a SMS application with Compact Framework

This is a quick start article that will show how to build a SMS application in your SmartPhone with help of Compact Framework and OpenCFNET.

What you need
You need besides Visual Studio 2003 and a SmartPhone, to install the SDK for SmartPhone and the components from OpenCFNET. But don't worry, both are free of charge.

Start
Create a new Visual Studio project. If you choose to build an OpenCFNET application, some references are added automatically. (I think that this is the big difference between an ordinary SmartPhone project and these kinds of projects.)

Choose to build a windows application and the platform should be SmartPhone. When you have done this a new project will be created and it's time to start build our fancy application.

But before we start building our user interface we must add an additional reference to our project. We need support for SMS. Choose Add Reference and browse through the list until you find OpenNETCF.Phone. Choose this component and click on "Select" and thereafter "OK" to add it.

Now, let's build the user interface. It is not so advanced. Put two labels and two textboxes on the form. Change the name of the first label to "Phone number" and the second to "Message". (You could enter a phone number in the first textbox if you don't want to enter it later when you run the program.) Change the name of the textboxes to textBoxPhone and textBoxMessage. The last control to add is a menu control. Add it and make one menu item with the name "Send".

Now is the time to do some programming. Double click on the menu item that you have created earlier. The code for the click event for the menu item will automatically be created for you.

This is the only code you need. In my example I use C#, but it's a no-brainer to convert it to Visual Basic.
The first command will create a new SMS object. The second row makes a SMS address containing the phone number that the user has entered in the first textbox. Be aware that the second parameter tells the method that the number should be entered as an international number. The third command does the job sending the message that is entered in the second textbox. After this we just close the SMS object and show a message that confirms the action.

Run the application
This application will not run in the emulator because we have to send SMS. This is not supported in the emulator. To run the application in the phone you have to change the device from an emulator to the "Smartphone Device". After you have done that and connected your Smartphone you press F5 to run the application. The program will now compile and be deployed to your phone. 

Presentation of SOA with SmartPhone

All my "free" time right now do I spend preparing the presentation that I will have next week. This weekend I have finished the more boring parts. Right now I'm coding the web service. That's more fun.

The presentation will include things like:
- How to implement a service oriented architecture.
- How to design according to the principle "contract first".
- Schema libraries. How to use Xsd in the real world.
- Distinguish between user interface and user processes.
- How to build a multi user interface and multi operating system application.
- SmartPhone - "Hello World".
- What could you do with Compact Framework and SmartPhone.

This presentation is free. Please go to the Sweden .NET User Group home page if you want to register.

The presentation will be held in Stockholm, at 17.00, on the first of December.

Reading books on your Smart Phone

I have always been a fan of reading books on hand-held computers. I have done it since I owned my first Palm. I have to admit that probably more in love with the technique than with the books I read. In Sweden, and I also hope, in other countries, you can borrow an electronic book from the library. The only restriction is that you must have a library ticket.

I found that my favorite program for reading, MobiPocket, has a reader for Smart Phone. That's nice. I have been using it for a while now and it works great. The only negative thing is reading books drain my battery. It has to do with the long use of backlight when reading.

It has several nice functions that I enjoy. You cold rotate the text in all four directions. You could also choose in which size the text should be displayed.

Where to find books?
If you don't have the library where you could borrow them, you have to find them elsewhere. MobiPocket has a shop, but a colleague to me recommended FictionWize. This is a big on-line store for electronic books.

Chronos, Time management software for SmartPhone

This month I will concentrate my free time to develop a SmartPhone application. I will do that together with a friend. We do that because I should prepare to show this application in a talk that I will do in December. But it's not only about SmartPhone and user interface; it's more about architecture, and especially SOA. I hope that I have enough time to write some of my conclusion here, on my blog.

But first, here is a brief introduction to the application.

Chronos is a time management system, written primarily for SmartPhone, but easily converted to other user interfaces. The system is written to be extensible. This is done in mainly in two different ways:
1) We use web services to communicate with the services at the backend. This web services use business objects to transfer information between the user interface and the database. (By business objects we mean own made objects, not a Microsoft Dataset.)
2) We split the user application in two separate layers. One is tied to the user interface and one is agnostic to the user interface. This is often called User Interface Process, UIP.

Other things that we have to consider
Because the SmartPhone is a device that has the possibility to be both on-line and off-line, we need to support both states. In Chronos this means that the user should be able to register both times, new customers and/or projects without to be connected to the web services at the backend. We have to build functions for caching the data and synchronize it, automatic or manually, with the web service.

Description of functions
Chronos gives the possibility to register times, down to a minute. One day could have unlimited times registered. Each registration is assigned to a customer and project. And each registration has also a note field for optional description text.
Each user has his own collections of Customers and Projects. He can add, edit and delete them. They are cached on the client, but is synchronized with the backend
The main screen gives an overview of times that are registered for a week.