.NET Compact Framework

Catch me at Mobility Developer Roadshow(s)!

Lou Vega — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:00:39 GMT

I had previously blogged about Brian Hitney and Glen Gordon bringing a Mobility Developer Roadshow to Atlanta and Charlotte...well they're still doing it, and they've asked Chris Craft and I to join them in the presentation. I'll be covering the section on managed code development for mobile devices. This should be a lot of fun, so if you're into mobile development or looking to get into it, come out and join us!

Overview

This session is geared towards familiarizing the attendee with developing smart clients using the .NET Compact Framework 3.5 on Windows Mobile 6.x.
Labs will be by demo only (not hands on), and will be available for download after the class.
Lunch will be provided. Class times: 9:00 AM–12:00 PM, 1:00 PM–5:00 PM.
Click the links below to register

Charlotte - June 18, 2008

Atlanta (Alpharetta) - June 24, 2008

30 Days of .NET (Windows Mobile) Revisited

Lou Vega — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:36:16 GMT

After talking with Chris (Craft) about his project for the next 30 days, I asked if he would mind whether or not I took his C# code and converted it to VB.NET to post on my VB Mobile blog and he liked the idea. With that said look forward to having some updated code samples as quickly as I can convert them. See Chris' blog for the latest installments he's released.

Mobility Developer Roadshow - Atlanta and Charlotte

Lou Vega — Thu, 29 May 2008 19:52:36 GMT

Brian Hitney and Glen Gordon are bringing a Mobility Developer Roadshow to Atlanta and Charlotte. They'll talk about the .NET Compact Framework 3.5 and using VS2008 to develop Windows Mobile SmartClient Applications. There will be great take-home resources like books and DVDs, as well as some bigger giveaways (Windows Mobile 6 devices, anyone?)

Overview

This session is geared towards familiarizing the attendee with developing smart clients using the .NET Compact Framework 3.5 on Windows Mobile 6.x.
Labs will be by demo only (not hands on), and will be available for download after the class.
Lunch will be provided. Class times: 9:00 AM–12:00 PM, 1:00 PM–5:00 PM.
Click the links below to register

Charlotte - June 18, 2008

Atlanta (Alpharetta) - June 24, 2008

Windows Mobile slide deck and demo code posted

Lou Vega — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 13:56:19 GMT

I've posted the slide deck and demo code from my user group presentation the other night. You can download it from my VBMobile blog: http://ilovevb.net/Web/files/folders/vbmobile/entry132.aspx

The demo code shows basic SMS Messaging, State & Notifications Broker, Call Blocking (using the State and Notifications Broker) and using System Settings - all in VB.NET.

Enjoy!

How about an ASP.NET Web Server that runs on Mobile Devices?

Lou Vega — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:48:35 GMT

Came across an article about Padarn today. What is it you ask? A pretty cool concept if you ask me. It's basically an ASP.NET web server capable of running on mobile devices (CE 5.0 and 6.0). I've seen similar attempts at writing and hosting a web server on mobile devices, however this is the best one I've seen yet. I can imagine this being useful to more and more devices as the project grows. Go ahead and check it out! http://www.padarn.net/

What a way to find a bug - or why didn't I think of that before?

Lou Vega — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:36:00 GMT

A while back I wrote about a little app I started working on that gives me back control of my phone - basically a configurable call blocker. All was fine and good with the world until a family emergency hit - and I had to abandon all development and basically everything for about 2 weeks...so my little app was left in a bit of an unpolished stage though it had worked well enough for the time.

Fast forward to yesterday when I was talking to my wife and *poof* we get disconnected. Turns out my little app had dutifully detected an incoming telemarketing call and programmatically pressed the "Ignore Call" soft key. Apparently while you're already on a call it seems that the Pinvoke key code I'm using does something different - it hangs up...at least that's what I think was happening. I'll need to go back over the code and see if I had anything else going on that could have caused that to happen...but after several tests of talking on the phone (well talking to my home answering machine) while calling my phone from another number that I'm currently blocking, the original call (and the new call) both get disconnected.

Taking back control of your mobile phone...

Lou Vega — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:46:44 GMT

I just posted the article I wrote up describing the project I created where I'm creatively blocking calls to my Windows Mobile device. Posted it on my VB.NET Mobile Blog. Enjoy!

Taking back control of my mobile phone - a home brewed automatic call blocker.

Lou Vega — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 20:25:26 GMT

One thing I've found increasingly annoying is telemarketing calls to my mobile phone. When I glance down and see that 800 number calling I usually press the "Ignore" softkey and go about my business. I figure if it's really something important they'll know alternate ways to contact me...but I got to thinking that I didn't want to have to spend the time to look at the number and press ignore...and since it's my phone and it's got Windows Mobile 6 on it, I can do something about it.

So I put together a quick little hack using the State and Notifications broker to detect the incoming call, determine if it's an 800 number and if it is, I programmatically route my call to a mysterious void whereby I never have to know about it. So it worked pretty neat on the emulator and I've been testing it on my actual phone the past couple days...it's nice! I don't even know that the call was there except for every now and again I see a notification of a missed call..but the interception is quick enough that I don't notice it happening at the time.

So I know some folks are wondering - "Where's the source?"...calm down, I'm writing up the blog example and going to post the source code to my VB Mobile blog soon enough...especially now that I can do so without being interrupted by calls I don't want :)

Hello World SMS Source Code posted

Lou Vega — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:15:56 GMT

The source code for the Hello World SMS article I had written last week has been posted here: http://ilovevb.net/Web/files/folders/vbmobile/entry71.aspx

Enjoy!

Software Review - Wolf Clock for Pocket PC's

Lou Vega — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 02:49:43 GMT

Available from: http://www.structuretoobig.com/products/wolfclock.aspx

Pros:

Free!
Easy to use – very configurable!
Unlimited Alarms
Set music to auto-turn off while you sleep
Supports a wide variety of sound formats
Just download it! :)

Cons:

Can’t think of any – did I mention it’s free?

So Brian’s probably going to kill me for bringing more attention to a piece of software he hasn’t touched in years…but when I upgraded my phone I lost one of the features I had used on my old one…the built-in alarms that I programmed for different days. I never woke up to an alarm clock in the past 4 years…I’ve always used a built-in alarm on one of my phones.

Some may say “But Lou – you’ve got alarms you can set in Windows Mobile” – yeah but there are only 3 built-in and you can only choose certain sound formats and they just aren’t that cool and configurable…so when I remembered Brian had created this little gem I decided to try it.

When you look at all the features packed into this you wonder how you might have gotten by without them. One of the neat ones I like is that you can set the app to full screen – this way at night when it’s plugged in on my nightstand I can look over and see the clock…you can configure the background image in the program too which actually includes a number of them you can pick from.

Another neat feature is the “ramp up” which allows you to set the rate at which the sound increases…so you can get a more gradual wake up instead of a blaring one. I haven’t tried out the timeout settings on the audio player yet – could use that to set music to play while I fall asleep. What I’m thinking of doing is hooking up the phone to an FM transmitter so that I can play the music on the radio in the room – it will auto-shut off at the determined time and there will just be the soft static of the radio after that…then in the morning the alarm will slowly grow louder over the radio. I know – they make clock radios that can do that stuff, but this way would be so much more fun.

All in all this is a pretty handy little app to have on your mobile device. It’s an older app so it doesn’t do well if you view the app on a horizontal screen versus the standard mode (picture doesn’t update, clock doesn’t scale) but that’s forgivable since it was created before these devices came to be. Maybe if there’s enough interest Brian will start working on this again!