The fourth and last MSDN webcast from our webcastseries Windows Mobile: Applications at your fingertips from Patrick Getzmann, Simon Hackfort and myself has gone online today.

The topic covers this time the Consumer Accelerator App "Meeting Assistant".

The webcast, in german, can be found here.

Did you ever wanted to show your skills, how to develop mobile Applications for Windows Mobile?
Probably you have been waiting for some additional stimulation to start off? Especially if you have been thinking about deploying your app via Windows Marketplace for Mobile?

In that case take a look at this post by Frank Prengel, and probably you will be winning one of the prices!

More info on the contest can be found here.

(Sorry – this time german only)

Werte Leser,
geschätzte Kollegen, liebe Freunde,

Torsten Weber und ich, möchten auf eine neue Konferenz hinweisen, die speziell an die Softwareentwickler im Mobile Computing Umfeld gerichtet ist.

Das kommt nicht von ungefähr. Wir hatten in den letzten Jahren bei den „klassischen“ Konferenzen leicht das Gefühl, dass Vorträge, Workshops etc. pp. im Mobile Computing Bereich zwar „dabei sind“, aber zu kurz kommen, jedenfalls uns. Auf der anderen Seite wünschten wir uns schon sehr lange eine Konferenz, die sich rein auf die Mobile Computing Aspekte konzentriert. Auch wir als langjährige Sprecher möchten Erfahrungsaustausch, Wissen und Neues sowie Inspiratives vermittelt bekommen und nicht immer “nur” vor dem Publikum stehen. Saubere und testbare Architekturen wie per Single Responsibility, Substitution Principle, Dependency Injection, Inversion Of Control, Microkernel kennen wir und dennoch, es ist eben nicht 1:1 vom Desktop/Server auf die mobilen Geräte übertragbar – wie zu oft vereinfachend behauptet wird. Kennen Sie z. B. mindestens drei verwendbare mobile Microkernel? Die Antwort ist einfach, denn schon nur der Druck einer Datei oder die Anzeige eines animierten GIFs in einem benutzerdefinierten Steuerelement kann schnell in eine Sisyphusarbeit ausarten. Dazu kommt, dass existierende Konferenzen im Mobile Computing Bereich nicht auf den deutschen Markt bzw. auf Softwareentwickler ausgerichtet sind sowie meist auch nicht in Deutsch gehalten werden. Windows Mobile 6.5 mit dem Marketplace ist gestartet. Stopp! Das sind zig Gründe in die Hände zu spucken, Communityarbeit zu leisten und einfach eine solche Konferenz selber zu gestalten! – die MobileGuru konferenz, zu der uns die ppedv AG ein Zuhause geschaffen hat.

Die Zielgruppe unserer Konferenz sind alle Softwareentwickler, die neu in das Thema Mobile Computing einsteigen oder sich damit hauptsächlich beschäftigen. Die Konferenz leistet damit die Vermittlung aller notwendigen Schritte, Werkzeuge und Informationen vor Stolpersteinen für Anfänger, als auch spezielle Lösungen für stereotypisch konkretisierbare Aufgabenstellungen Fortgeschrittener. Wir bieten Vorträge, Hand-on-Labs und einen Open Space verknüpft mit guten Erfahrungen vom .NET Open Space; nämlich, dass Aufteilungen in Sprecher / Zuhörer nicht immer pro Forma da sein müssen.

Die Fakten:
30.11.2009 – 01.12.2009
2 Tage Konferenz, 1 Tag Workshops
in Leipzig, am Mediencampus Villa Ida
http://www.mobileguru.de/

Content Chair bin ich, General Chair ist Torsten Weber. Um die Organisation kümmert sich Jenny Piesker. Hannes Preishuber hilft per Steering Komitee kräftig mit dem Anschub unserer Idee!

Wir haben heute den Call for Papers mit Einsendeschluss 03.10.2009 verschickt. Als Übersicht zu was wir Vorschläge sammeln, haben wir nachfolgende Stichpunkte aufgeführt. Wir erwarten auch darüberhinaus viele Vorschläge in Richtung Deep Dive, wie z. B. die I2C-Bus Kommunikation mit C#. Auch internationale Gäste haben wir eingeladen. Bewerbungen nehmen wir gerne an!

Einsteiger

• Der Einstieg in die mobile Entwicklung: Ressourcen und Links für Neueinsteiger
• 3rd Party Tools für das Mobile Development
• Unterschiede zwischen iPhone, Android und Windows Mobile für den Entwickler
• Unterschiede zwischen Windows Mobile Standard und Professional für den Entwickler
• Kommunizieren mit der Außenwelt: WCF, Web Services und HTTP
• Das richtige Gerät für die richtige Anforderung: Consumer vs. Ruggedized Geräte
• Die richtige Plattform für die richtige Anforderung: Win Embedded vs. Windows Mobile
• Unit Testing für mobile Anwendungen
• Der Einstieg in P/Invoke unter Windows Mobile
• Performante Anwendungen konzipieren
• Green IT: Clever Strom sparen, wo möglich
• Optimierte Datenkommunikation – Beyond Web Services und Co.
• Consumer- vs. Businessanwendungen: Welche Unterschiede gibt es
• Windows Marketplace for Mobile
• Arbeiten mit SQL CE 3.1
• Arbeiten mit Sensoren
• Die .NET CF Powertoys im Detail erklärt
• Windows Mobile aus Sicht eines Windows XP / Vista Users
• Gute GUIs selbst entwickeln, Resco Tools etc. einsetzen

Fortgeschritten

• Arbeiten mit CPFs
• Neues im WM 6.5 für Entwickler
• Mobile Sicherheit
• Das Web als Anwendungsplattform für mobile Geräte
• Ansprechende Oberflächen selbst gestalten
• Das Sync Framework erklärt
• Eigene Steuerelemente mit dem .NET CF (inkl. Designerunterstützung)
• "Hello World": Kommunikation mit der Außenwelt (GPRS/EDGE, WLAN, Bluetooth)
• Consumer Solution Accelerator – Was bringt es dem Entwickler
• Going Enterprise: Backendsysteme mobilisieren
• Drucken mit mobilen Geräten
• Arbeiten mit db4o

Experte

• Kiosk-Mode Anwendungen erstellen
• Betriebssysteme selber zusammenbauen
• Mobile Device Management im Enterprise Umfeld
• Dienste unter Windows Mobile in nativen und verwaltetem Code
• P/Invoke Deep Dive
• Treiberentwicklung, Hardwareprogrammierung bis Speichermanagement
• Continuous Integration: Tools, Prozesse, Konzepte
• Saubere und testbare Architekturen per Single Responsibility, Substitution Principle, Dependency Injection und Inversion Of Control, mobile Microkernel usw.

Wir freuen uns sehr, Sie auf der MobileGuru zu begrüßen!

Mit den besten Grüßen!

Peter Nowak, Torsten Weber

The third MSDN webcast from our webcastseries Windows Mobile: Applications at your fingertips from Patrick Getzmann, Simon Hackfort and myself has gone online today.

The topic covers this time the new Gesture API from Windows Mobile 6.5, especially in native AND managed code.

The webcast, in german, can be found here.

The second MSDN webcast from our webcastseries Windows Mobile: Applications at your fingertips from Patrick Getzmann, Simon Hackfort and myself has gone online today.

This time we are deep diving into the tools Hopper and AppVerifier which are needed for Marketplace for Mobile testing.

After the recording Patrick had some additional annotations, which can be found here.

The webcast itself can be found here.

Simon Hackfort released his managed version of Microsofts FocusApp in preparation of our upcoming WebCast already on CodePlex.

The advantages over FocusApp are:

• No need for compiling an new version – ManagedFocusApp is configurable
• All existing in managed Code
• Autostart-Feature of Hopper
• …

So check out version 1.0 on CodePlex here.

(For those not familiar with FocusApp: FocusApp is a little helper application in combination with Hopper. Hopper itself is a test tool sending random Window Messages, Mouseclicks and keyboard entries for stress testing an application.
As part of the Application Submission Requirements for Windows Marketplace for Mobile, the Hopper test has to be successfully ran for 2 hours)

Patrick Getzmann, Simon Hackfort and myself are actually recording a new series on Windows Mobile Development for MSDN.

The main topic overall is Windows Mobile 6.5 and additional components available by MS.

Part 1 has been made available already yesterday:

“Windows Mobile Applications (Teil 1 von 4) - Einführung in die Softwarerichtlinien für den Windows Marketplace for Mobile”. You can find the webcast here.

 All new webcasts will be shown here.

The next webcast will be available soon and will be covering Hopper and the App Verifier. Stay tuned.

As I’ve been talking in the past already, it is sometimes valuable, to create applications for the .NET CF, which are running unter the .NET Framework as well.

This can cause some issues on the .NET Framework, as you don’t have direct access to Environment variables and all enumerations from Environment.SpecialFolder when you probably need them.

But you can achieve access to this information through reflection.

For environment variables this is easy:

public static string ReadEnvironmentVariable(string variableName)
{
        return (string)typeof(Environment).InvokeMember("GetEnvironmentVariable", BindingFlags.Default | BindingFlags.InvokeMethod, null, "", new object[] { variableName });
}

The same applies to the SpecialFolder-Enumeration:

public static string ReadSpecialFolder(string variableName)
{
        return Environment.GetFolderPath((Environment.SpecialFolder)Enum.Parse(typeof(Environment.SpecialFolder), variableName, true));
}

Accessing both types of information is also easy. Please be aware of to do this only on the desktop system, via requesting the platform underneath:

if (Environment.OSVersion.Platform == PlatformID.Win32NT)
{
    string tempPath = ReadEnvironmentVariable("TEMP"));
    string localApplicationDataFolder = ReadSpecialFolder("LocalApplicationData");

}

Maarten Struys, a former DAD MVP, has published a whitepaper on Creating Location Aware Applications for Windows Mobile Devices.

This whitepaper doesn’t only cover GPS, but Cell Tower Lookup as well. Cell Tower Lookup is based on GSM, where a position can be retrieved by the according CellID. The pros and cons of each method are covered by the whitepaper as well. A sample application is also included.

As the sample application is using the Yahoo web service for retrieving the location based on the CellID, I’d suggest to take a look at Providers like CellDB and OpenCellID. Those providers don’t only enable (after registration) to request CellID locations, but also to upload new ones.

If you are especially interested in posting new CellIDs, than you probably shall take a look at the Open Cell Client.

I’ve been quite astonished to find out, that the Dev Toolkit for WM 6.5 doesn’t have any documentation on how to create Widgets for WM 6.5 included.

Instead of finding it within the Dev Toolkit, an article can be found under Getting started with widgets on Windows Mobile 6.5 on MSDN. This article is supposed to be a starting point of an article series, as the information provided isn’t fully covered. Topics around the included Widget API are missing.

A small remark on the article: If you have already installed the Dev Toolkit instead of the WM 6.5 Emulator package, the description on how to use the emulator isn’t correct.

Instead of using this entry:

you have to use one of the Windows Mobile 6.5 Emulators, listed under the Windows Mobile 6 Professional / Standard SDK entry.

Yep – it is available now: The Windows Mobile 6.5 Developer Toolkit.

Developer Toolkit means that it isn’t a full blown SDK and therefore needs the Windows Mobile 6.0 SDK as a base installed.

The Toolkit includes the Windows Mobile 6.5 Emulator and is available in 7 languages (yes, already german!!!!).

You can find a brief description on the Toolkit here, or just go ahead and download it from here.

As a few people already realized, the VS 2010 Beta documentation states:

“Support for smart device development has been removed from Visual Studio 2010.”

Short answer: VS 2010 won’t support WM 6.5 / CE 6.0 and earlier, but will support the following versions.

Long answer: Read this official statement from Microsofts Technical Evangelist Frank Prengel.

Ever wanted to write your blog posts from your Windows Mobile device? As there are a lot of mobile twitter apps the applications for mobile blogging are rare.

Therefore you shall take a look at Windows Live Writer for Windows Mobile, which I now take as a working name.

The name itself states that it is an application from Microsofts Windows Live Team, which ISN’T true. It isn’t associated with Microsoft in ANY way, so expect the application name to change soon. :-)

The application itself, as published on Codeplex here, looks very promising for the moment as it has started a few days ago.

The UI isn’t anything extraordinary at the moment: Plain Windows Forms controls. In my eyes this isn’t anything bad as it goes down to the basics and just serves the needs.

Looks promising – let’s see what happens in the future with this tool!

Have you ever experienced the problem, that your .NET CF application throws the following exception using a SSL Connection?

System.Net.WebException: Unable to read data from the transport connection (System.Net.Sockets.SocketException: Unknown error (0x0))

If this is the case, than you probably want to get the HotFix for Web Services over SSL for .NET CF 3.5.

Unfortunatelly this error exists with the .NET CF 2.0, where no fix is available and I’m not commenting this any further. ;-)

MyPhone

If you have been interested in testing MyPhone on your Mobile Device, you now have the possibility as the beta has been opened to all users.

More Info can be found on the teams blog post.

Windows Mobile Marketplace

1.) As a lot of you have been asking, when the registration will be available to NON US citizens: It’s going to be mid july.
2.) The Windows Mobile Marketplace Forum on MSDN has opened it's doors. You can find it here.

New to Windows Mobile Development? Want to speed up fast?

In this case you shall have a look at the rampup modules at MSDN.

In 7 courses you will learn:

• Level 1: Mobile Development Introduction
• Level 2: Device Emulators
• Level 3: Mobile Windows Forms Development
• Level 4: Advanced Mobile Windows Forms Development
• Level 5: SQL Server CE Introduction
• Level 6: Security and Deployment
• Level 7: Mobile Web Development

The rampup modules can be found here.

Thanks Maarten for pointing out!

Are you attending TechEd US and interested in the Windows Mobile Track? Than you shall take a look a this post from the Windows Mobile Blog post for a summary.

I wish everyone a pleasent time over there.

I actually can’t attend the TechEd US but I’m actually looking forward to attend TechEd EMEA, which will take place this year in Berlin from Nov 9th to Nov 13th.

Ever wondered when you will get an optimized Facebook application for Windows Mobile? The time is now.

Some key features are:

• Send messages to any of the people in your Friends list.

• Take pictures and videos on your phone, then upload them right to Facebook.

• Send messages or call people in your Friends list.

• Manage your profile and post anytime, anywhere.

A more detailed description can be found here.

Or download it directly from your mobile browser here.

 
(Source: Microsoft)

Very often I get asked via Mail or Messenger “Can you help me”, “How do I…”, “Can you tell me how…” or similar questions.

My general reply is (especially for german based persons) to use the Windows Mobile Forum on MSDN. There is even a localized forum for those who aren’t that familiar with the english language… (Okay, in that case they aren’t able to read that post, but this is another story ;-) ).

The reason I tell people to use this forum has several reasons:

• Probably there is someone out on the Net, who has the same problem. Documenting it that way makes it easy for others to find THAT solution.
• Searching the forum minimizes the questions.
• I don’t know all the answers. On the forums are several other people around, who can answer questions even better than I do.
• You can ask in native german language. ;-)

Even those of you who tried it earlier and haven’t been satisfied with it shall give it another try: The Forums have been reworked at the beginning of this year.

This doesn’t only mean a facelift but new functionality as well. If you are interested in a breif german overview I suggest reading Kai’s blogpost on this.

As I’m a Moderator on this Forum as well seeing forward to see you there.

Link: German Windows Mobile Forum on MSDN

Yes, I know. I’m old school regarding Web 2.0.

However – haven’t had the chance to resist Twitter any more instead of using the Facebook Status all the time.

So, if you want to follow, you can follow me at: http://twitter.com/PeNoWiMo

Do you want to know, which requirements have to be met for creating Apps for the Windows Mobile Marketplace? Then you should have a look at the Submission Guidelines. This document is actually a 32 pages long Draft in PDF Format.

For a quick overview I’d suggest to head over to pocketnow.com and take a look at the short summary, which gives you a quick overview of which requiremnts have to be met.

This is, how you shall be greeted by VS each morning. ;-)

Nearly every mobile business application uses a database, whether on client side, or on server side.

How you can use a local database, sync with a server database and incorporate in other ways shows this special last edition from the Lost Files series.

Again, this document is kept in german. If anyone is willing to translate it into english, feel free to contact me.

In contrast to the other Lost Files episodes, this time this document is a full featured chapter.

As this german native document has been written at the end of 2006 a few new hot topics are missing, but still it is worth the read.

Happy reading. :)

Please be aware of, that this article and samples are AS IS. No support, no update is being given.