Category: Mobility
Two or three days ago I read in some blog about Live Mesh. What is it?
“Live Mesh puts you at the center of your digital world, seamlessly connecting you to the people, devices, programs, and information you care about — available wherever you happen to be.”
Live Mesh website
You get a place on the web where you can store your data, and access and synchronize from within any computer you use. In this Tech Preview only Windows XP/Vista are supported, but the big picture includes Mac and mobile devices. You can share data with other people, and keep track of the news about your data (changes, additions, deletions, comments added, etc).
Take a look at this video that shows the main features of this new project.
Here is another video tour, this one’s target audience is the developers community. It seems that as usual in Windows Live Services, this new project will be very “developer friendly”.
I look forward to have a chance to try it. Meanwhile I’ll keep tuned in the website.
Some time ago a friend told me about QR-Codes. Before that I had already seen some of them in instant messaging avatars, without knowing the meaning of those images. QR-Codes look like this:
This is a kind of barcode like the ones that you see in the super market, but that can store a lot more information. Take a look at the Wikipedia entry about QR-Code.
An interesting thing about this format, is that there is a lot of software available for mobile phones and even windows mobile, that allows you to read these barcodes using your mobile phone’s camera. It is a nice way of sharing contacts (phone number, e-mail, URL’s) or a simple message (how about wearing a t-shirts, allowing your geek friends to read the message? 
)
A nice software for Windows Mobile is i-nigma barcode reader. Just point your camera at a QR barcode, and read the message!
A nice usage of this technology is present in the Windows Mobile free software directory freewarepocketpc.net. You can browse for software in your computer, and when you want to install an application in your device, instead of connecting it to the computer to transfer the cab file, or copying the download link by hand, just point your camera at the QR-Code in the download page, and download the software using the link encoded in the barcode image, reading it with i-nigma, or other similar software.
Believe me, it works pretty well. I wasn’t convinced until I tried it by myself.
Thanks for the introdution to QR-Codes, Nelson and thanks for showing me i-nigma, André! 
Since I’ve created this blog I’ve been using a nice Wordpress plugin to allow a nice user experience while visiting this website with a mobile device. It is called Wordpress PDA Plugin and it’s installation is plug-and-play. Since this is a blog, and probably most of the readers just subscribe my RSS feed into some reader or aggregator, this plugin isn’t essential, but is still pretty nice.
These are some screenshots from my website mobile version.
As you can see, in the homepage it removes all the images and shows only part of the text, to optimize performance. By entering into a entry details you can read the whole content, including images.
Since I bought my Qtek S200 with Windows Mobile 5 I’ve been having a problem in text messages (SMS) sending.
If I write a text message with accents the number of characters per message is reduced from 160 to 70 characters. This is a problem because without noticing you may spend a lot of money in accentuated messages (you send about the double of the messages).
I had never googled about this issue, but today I’ve found a solution while playing around with my pocket PC. It is just a default configuration problem. Sorry about the screenshots in Portuguese, but is the language of my Windows Mobile.
Step 1: Open Text Messages. Menu > Tools > Options
Step 2: Touch Text Messages account.
Step 3: Uncheck Use Unicode when needed (or similar text ).
This option checked reduces the maximum characters per text message when using accentuated characters, because Windows Mobile automatically uses Unicode encoding which require more space than regular characters.
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I’ve been looking at this application evolution since more that six months. It runs on Windows Mobile, it is freeware and brings to the tips of your fingers a little bit of the iPhone user-experience.It is a contact manager that replaces the default one and allows you to scroll your contacts with your finger.It allows sending SMS, creating a favorites list and adding pictures to your contacts.You can set different themes. My favorite is the black one in the side picture. Download it here.
Still based on the ideal of using your PDA only with your fingers you also can find a keyboard in this website. Download it here. |
Nowadays I don’t use this software. I’m in a minimalistic phase as a windows mobile user. Only the essentials to have it working. (Qtek S200 performance made me took this decision).
Acabou de dar uma reportagem sobre o Portal PPC, mas precisamente sobre a base de dados de Radares.
Já conheço a iniciativa desde que comprei o meu GPS, e sem dúvida é um excelente contributo.
Ter no software de navegação registados os “Points of Interest” referentes aos radares impede multas desnecessárias, e também serve como inibidor do excesso de velocidade em alguns locais.
No entanto a reportagem da SIC deixou muito a desejar… Dizer que o responsável pelo projecto criou uma “aplicação para GPS para detecção de radares” é uma mentira. O que o Júlo Rocha fez e muito bem foi utilizar a funcionalidade da maior parte dos sistemas de navegação de registo de locais de interesse, e mobilizar os automobilistas a nível nacional a contribuirem para a base de dados por si gerida, de forma a disponibilizar a lista de radares e respectivas localizações o mais completa possível.
Os meus parabéns à equipa Portal PPC, e a minha desaprovação pela imprecisão da SIC.
