Vodafone UK has posted a Palm Treo 750v webpage up now, so users can register their interest in the new device.

This is one of the models I talked about in my previous blog post "Vodafone is getting some hot smart devices in New Zealand". I was actually shown the device but couldn't talk much about it, but there it is.

We all know it's not an exclusive offer for Vodafone UK users, right? But I am not sure when it will be available in New Zealand, although the model I was playing with had a "Network test" label stuck on it.

The tip came from Conchango Blog.

Wormy, the admin at wormholecreations.com.au has just sent me a couple of t-shirts promoting his site:


He's one of the new Microsoft MVP Mobile Devices, and his website has lots of information on Windows Mobile software and hardware, plus dedicated support sections for some best seller software.

Hmmm. These are nice t-shirts, with different designs. And I have to prepare some of our own for the Geekzone 2006 coming soon.

If you have a Windows Mobile device running the latest OS version (Windows Mobile 5.0) then go ahead and download the new ActiveSync 4.2 for your PC.

Microsoft ActiveSync 4.2 is the latest synchronization software for Windows Mobile-based devices.

Changes in ActiveSync 4.2 help resolve connectivity related issues with Microsoft Outlook, proxies, partnerships, and connectivity: 
 
- Microsoft Outlook Improvements: Resolves issues relating to error code 85010014
- Proxy/DTPT interaction Improvements: Improved auto configuration of device Connection Manager settings when desktop has no proxy path to the internet.
- Improved Desktop Pass Thru behavior with ISA proxy failures
- Partnership improvements: Better resolution of multiple devices with the same name syncing with the same desktop
- Connectivity Improvements: Better handling of VPN clients (resolve unbinding of protocols from our RNDIS adapter).
- New auto detection of connectivity failure with user diagnostic alerts.

ActiveSync 4.2 supports PC sync via USB cable, Bluetooth, or infrared connection. 

If you are using Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition or older, please use ActiveSync 3.8 instead.


 

Welcome to the new fellow Microsoft MVP Mobile Devices, Laura and Stephen (a.k.a. wormy).

Wormy is a new MVP Mobile Devices down under, based in Australia. He is the admin on wormwholecreations, a website dedicated to Windows Mobile, and home of some software support forums, including 1-Pass, XCPUScalar, Tweaks2k2, Battery Pack, IP Dashboard and more.

Laura is a moderator and contributor on Mobility Today.

If you don't know about the Microsoft MVP Awards program, here is a short description:

Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) are recognized, credible and accessible individuals with expertise in one or more Microsoft® products who actively participate in online and offline communities to share their knowledge and expertise with other Microsoft customers. Customers want an enriched pool of knowledge and real-life experience to tap for advice and feedback. MVPs are helping to satisfy this need by independently enabling customers in both online and offline technical communities. Customer feedback is vital to product development and R&D. The MVPs represent an important part of this feedback loop by providing another link for Microsoft to listen to the customer.

I am sorry if I missed any new Asian or European MVP Mobile Devices, but I only receive notifications on new USA and Oceania MVPs.

Congratulations again!

Tonight we had another Windows Mobile User Group meeting, here in Wellington. Attendance was ok, still not many people as I'd like, and less than our record sessions a couple of years ago.

I wonder why is that? Is that people are not interested in development for this platform, is the last Thursday of the month a not so good day for these meetings, or something else?

Anyway, this time we moved the meeting from the traditional Microsoft office location to Unisys. Thanks to John Cleveland who arranged with Unisys to host and supply us with the traditional drinks and pizza.

First to talk was Nick Randolph (Microsoft MVP .Net CF and general good guy), who is living in Wellington for six months because of a consulting gig. He's from Australia, and is coming along to my weekly Wednesday coffee meetings at Astoria as well. He showed interest in participating in our user group, so nothing better than making him talk!

His session was about some development stuff related to data storage, connectivity options and management, SMS notification, user interface design. He also showed some code and did a demo involving replication between SQL 2005 and a mobile database. Cool stuff.

I then did a quick run of the new Archer Field PC, running Windows Mobile 5.0... This is a very interesting rugged Pocket PC, and I managed to keep it here for an extra week, just to show it during the user group meeting. You can find more about it through Lat37 (New Zealand) or through the manufacturer, Juniper Systems.

The first five people to arrive each got a Culminis T-Shirt. We also had a copy of Microsoft Voice Command to give away, a copy Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition, a couple of copies of Caveman for Pocket PC.

See you in the next meeting!

If you read Geekzone for some time you will find out that is our policy not to publish rumours or information we have under NDA. That's why you won't find out much about the upcoming Windows Moble Crossbow, which is rumoured to be "Second Edition" release of Windows Mobile 5.0.

Some say the MSFP is the Blackberry killer. Some say it may be Crossbow. Perhaps this page about Crossbow actually tells us what it is?

If you want to read the rumours, then Google is your friend.

Thanks to riki, fellow Microsoft MVP for the tip. He authors some interesting software for Windows Mobile Smartphone (such as Theme Changer and AbstractStart).

I have been using the Newgator Mobile (beta) for a couple of weeks, but it looks like I can talk a bit about it now, since it's a according to Newsgator.

The software runs on Windows Mobile and completely integrates with the web-based Newsgator feedreader. It means that you can have all your Newsgator subscription being synchronised between the mobile device and the web-hosted RSS feedreader, replicating the Read status between device and on-line version.


The software has been under development by the guys behind Smartread, bought by Newsgator earlier this year.

You can download the beta now. I run my own Newsgator Enterprise Server (NGES), and apparently the NGES has all the same APIs as the public server, so in theory a future version of this software could even synchronise with NGES too.

Currently I synchronise the Newsgator Enterprise Server with my Exchange Server, so I get all my feeds on my Pocket PC through ActiveSync. The result is the same in terms of synchronisation, etc - but not everyone can run this platform, so the Newsgator Mobile software is perfect for users of the web-based Newsgator service.

Oh, this sounds good: VIA and HTC have just sent out an invitation to an event, in Taiwan, showing the release of VIA On-demand. According to the invitation: 

You are invited to witness this fantastic moment first hand together with leadership from VIA, HTC, and many others in the industry.

It goes on to say:

VIA OnDemand is a digital all-in-one platform... serving digital content OnDemand - anytime, anywhere, and any device.

The event is scheduled for this 8 June, 2:30pm Taiwan time.

There's a VIA OnDemand website now, but with a holding page, inviting users to come back later. You can also find an interesting PDF file "Peer-to-peer Communication and Entertainment for Mobile PCs" which probably can clarify more on this. In this PDF we find out more about this "total media client" as they call it, with IM, video conferencing, VoIP, content distribution and more.

We all know how HTC made its name by manufacturing Windows Mobile devices (Pocket PC, Pocket PC Phone Edition and Smartphones), but I can't find any reference to HTC and VIA OnDemand . What are these guys up to now?

It looks like one of the "problems" on Windows Mobile 5.0 will have a solution: synchronisation of Microsoft Access databases with a Windows Mobile device. Actually this is not a problem at all, since the Access synchronisation conduit was discontinued from ActiveSync 4.x, but this was announced to developers a few months ago.

A post on the SQL Mobile blog points to an upcoming software that will enable the synchronisation of SQL 2005 Mobile running on a Windows Mobile device to a Microsoft Access database running on a desktop computer.

ADOCE is not supported in Windows Mobile 2005 and those customers/ISVs that used ADOCE to synchronize CEDB with Access desktop database are seeing a gap in this functionality. Hence these customers/ISVs don’t have a good migration path when they move to Windows Mobile 2005. To address this functionality gap we are implementing Sync with Access to synchronize SQL Mobile with Access. Customers/ISVs can migrate from CEDB/ADOCE to SQL Mobile/Sync with Access. Providing SQL Mobile synchronization with MS Access will also speed up the SQL Mobile adoption. A solution developed using SQL Mobile/SSEV and MS Access sync will have the capability to scale up to SQL Mobile/SSEV and SQL Server replication solution.

The beta for this solution should be available in August 2006 and a final release before end of 2006.

About time to have this. When the deimplementation of ADOCE synchronisation to Access was announced, Microsoft promised a solution. It looks like it is going to happen, sooner or later.

It is official now: the Windows Mobile 5.0 AKU 2.2 update for the Telecom New Zealand Apache Pocket PC Phone Edition (a.k.a. Audiovox PPC6700, Verizon XV6700) is coming to the public very soon.

I don't know the details yet (date and URL for download), but it should be out very soon, since I just got an e-mail with links to the final version and a document with all the information about this new release.

I have been using a previous beta version for about 45 days now, and it comes with lots of features and fixes. It's hard to categorise these, but I will list in the same order they are in the document:

1.Today screen: an updated today screen now brings a "Lock Device" plugin so you can lock the device while not in use.

2.Connection Manager (image below): You can now turn on/off all the wireless features from a single program: CDMA cellular data, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth. You can also turn on/off ActiveSync, Direct Push (more on this later) and disconnect from the CDMA data session:


3.Network Time Sync: the Apache now offers an option to synchronise its internal clock with the cellular network.

4.Smart Dial: entering a few numbers in the dialpad (Phone Application) will lookup contact information using predictive input.

5.Voice Speed Dial and ZIP Manager: you can train the Apache to dial with voice commands, and it also comes with a ZIP program so you can zip/unzip downloaded files and e-mail attachments.

6.MSFP: If your organisation runs Microsoft Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2 then the MSFP (Messaging Security Feature Pack) built-in this AKU2.2 release will allow many new functions:

a) Direct Push E-mail: e-mails can be sent to your Apache Pocket PC automatically, without the need of manually initiating an e-mail checking;

b) Global Address Lookup: find a contact on-line in the Exchange GAL (Global Address List);

c) E-mail security: you can now sign, encrypt, decrypt e-mails directly on the Pocket PC, when using Digital Certificates;

Not listed in the document is the Security Policies: through the Exchange administration interface it is possible to force the Pocket PC to require PIN, specify a limit of failed attempts, and even remotely erase the contents of the main memory in case the device is lost.

You can read a lot more about the AKU2 in this article.

Not all is fixed though: a problem I found existed in the original Apache release (the device sometimes fails to turn on when there's a miniSD card in the slot) is recognised by HTC (the manufacturer) as a fault, but the fix is not scheduled until the next release.