Mobility Touchdown Team Blog

MusicID for Windows Mobile

2008-04-19T07:14:21Z

Loke just posted something that I didn’t know was in there but haven’t stopped playing with it. If you have a Blackjack II device, check out the MusicID functionality by Shazam.

There are other services that I’ve seen do this by dialing a number, but this is a little app on the device, and so far it hasn’t been wrong. Check it out!

New Content coming for FY08

2007-08-27T20:55:00Z

We're currently heads down working on updating the existing content to include current technologies such as Windows Mobile 6, the new SDKs, Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Compact Framework 3.5. We should have the complete 3 day hands-on workshop and alternative 1 day seminar style content by October.

Mobility Touchdown in Mumbai completed

2007-07-17T22:48:24Z

Thanks to Andre who flew over to Mumbai to conduct this training. Here are some pictures:

Bangalore and Chennai workshops are being delivered right now.

New Mobility Touchdown Content

2007-06-14T20:00:51Z

The FTP we were using had a lot of issues, so the guys at Q4Tech has now hosted the installer file on their website at this URL :

http://www.q4tech.com/mobilitytouchdown/

Mobility Touchdown begins in Bogota, Colombia

2007-06-14T09:31:07Z

Ronald Armas and Leandro kicks off another round of the Mobility Touchdown training in Colombia. Wish I could attend though, Leandro promised that he'll floor me with South American food. He's trying to take revenge for me forcing him to have Durians in Singapore :)

Mobility Touchdown begins in Peru

2007-05-23T08:46:41Z

Ronald Armas, Leandro and Jose from Q4Tech began their Mobility Touchdown workshop today in Lima, Peru as part of their three country Mobility Touchdown Tour in Latin America (LATAM).

Next stop, Bogota, Colombia.

Mobility Touchdown in Australia

2007-05-17T07:20:09Z

We're in Day 2 of the Mobility Touchdown workshop in Sydney Australia. It's a very beautiful day today as you can see from the scene outside the window. Maybe one day we should have a workshop el fresco.

James McCutcheon is our trainer this time round.

Mobility Touchdown Argentina kicks off today!

2007-05-08T20:06:00Z

Q4Tech and Ronald Armas (Architect Evangelist) in Latin America kicked off the first in the series of 3 mobility touchdown workshops to be held in Argentina, Peru and Colombia.

Mobility Touchdown workshop content now available for download

2007-05-01T09:27:00Z

Thanks to Q4Tech.com for providing the FTP site. You can now download the entire 3 day hands-on workshop installer that correctly installs the LAB files, Databases required, sync configuration and slides. You also get a pre-requisite document that describes the machine configuration before you can install this workshop AND the post-install guide.

~~Download it here:~~

~~ftp://201.216.198.25/~~
~~Username: guest~~
~~No password.~~

* UPDATE: new download link here : http://www.q4tech.com/mobilitytouchdown/ *

Error in Developer Support Cards

2007-04-27T20:58:07Z

Thanks to the guys at the Chicago workshop, they found out that the URL on the GREEN Developer Support cards have a problematic URL.

The correct URL should be :

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/developers

The "s" was missing from the URL printed on the cards.

Calling Managed code from Native

2007-04-25T02:22:00Z

This was a question from Zain Ghani of FedEx during the Memphis workshop.

Q: How do you call a managed assembly from native C++? Do you have a sample?

A: There’s no direct convention to do this. We support calling native code *from* managed code, but you can’t just call a managed app directly from C++. Going from managed to native is provided via P/Invoke and COM Wrappers (NETCF 2.0).

That said – there are some creative ways to effectively call a managed app from a native app. One way is to use something like the MessageWindow class. This class basically allows you to pass simple windows messages from native to managed, so you as long as the data is simple, you can pass it that way and send notifications to your NETCF app. You can also use something like a named event -- trap it in the managed app and fire it from native code –or - you could use MSMQ to pass data around. There are also ways to use the COM wrapper you build NETCF 2.0 to use delegates to call back into the managed code. There are a number of ways to creatively get data from a native app into a managed app, but we don’t have a direct way to simply make a direct function call from native to managed. There have also been some 3rd party/community libraries that attempt to do this (e.g. – Mirror, etc.)

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa446497.aspx
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa446485.aspx
http://samples.gotdotnet.com/quickstart/CompactFramework/doc/messagewindow.aspx

Thanks to Reed Robison from the Mobility Premier group.

Patch for Workshop Installer v1.0.0.0

2007-04-19T00:54:00Z

This patch fixes the two problems that were reported with the older v1.0.0.0 version of the workshop installer. It patches:

Generates the "InsuranceInspector" publication for the Putting It All Together lab.
Installs the app.config file that was missing.
It also sets the SQL Server as its own Merge Replication distributor

Thanks Jose.

App.config for final lab

2007-04-17T23:08:00Z

During the Las Vegas lab, we found that there was a missing file that didn't get applied with the "putting it all together" lab in the final step. Attached to this blog post is the missing app.config for that lab portion.

Apologies it wasn't there!

Links from the Vegas Lab

2007-04-13T02:52:17Z

Thanks to all who joined WoodyP and myself in Las Vegas for the mobility touchdown class. I thought I'd braindump some of the links and cool stuff we talked about during the 3 days...so here you go:

New Live Search: http://wls.live.com (from your mobile device)
Chris De Herrera's PocketPC FAQ: http://www.pocketpcfaq.com
Visual Studio Code Snippets sharing: http://www.gotcodesnippets.net
Code Snippet Creation: Snippy
WoodyP's link w/PDFs of the lab, etc.
Mobile Updater Application Block from Q4Tech
Registry editor for Windows Mobile
Using KIOSK mode for a Windows Mobile device

check back on my blog or the mobility touchdown blog frequently for some good information.

But what about landscape?

2007-03-03T00:27:00Z

Do you ever get frustrated by your mobile applications when you switch to a different orientation (i.e., landscape or portrait)? what about then you have a Smartphone application that looks different on the newer square devices and you can't even read the screen?

User experience extends to the mobile platform as well. Heck, I'm not saying we're the best at it :-), but there are things YOU can do in your design and development to ensure you are developing for lowest common denominators but at the same time delivering a great experience to your consumers.

Be sure to attend one of the developer labs in your area to learn about these design patterns and things like the "orientation aware control" to make your life in mobile development a LOT easier! We look forward to seeing you.

(psst...if you want a free code for the registration, reach out to us :-)).