Pocket PC Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

"Fizz Alarms is your every day time manager. From repeating alarms, stopwatches to counters. Its your time so take control"

For those who need just a bit more than the built-in alarms can do for you in Windows Mobile, Fizz Software has released Fizz Alarms. Alarms + Stopwatch, WMA / MP3 support and the like. Trial available, standard and professional (a.k.a. smartphone and pocket pc) versions available.

"The Mac BU today is releasing Service Pack 1 (SP1) that provides increased stability, security and performance enhancements to the suite. The group also is providing a glimpse at the road map of Office for Mac by announcing the return of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) in the next version."



Microsoft's release of Service Pack 1 for Office 2008 for Mac offers a number of enhancements including Mac .PPTX compatibility with Windows Mobile devices. So, if you're one of the few Mac users carrying a Windows Mobile device, hit the Mactopia Downloads page now or wait for Microsoft AutoUpdate to do its thing to enjoy what SP1 has to offer. The standalone installer weighs in at 180MB.

That's right - another contest! Thanks to Astraware, we have two copies of Hexic (one for Standard, and one for Classic/Professional) and two copies of Mozaki (again, one for Standard, and one for Classic/Professional) to give away to you, lucky readers. Do these titles sound familiar? Yes, you've probably seen them on MSN Games and the Xbox 360 before. The Windows Mobile versions are just as brilliant. We published a review of Hexic just yesterday; in case you missed it, click.



Okay, so you want to win. Here's how you enter the contest:

1. Being the colourful games that Hexic and Mozaki are, make a post in this thread stating your favourite colour. Be as creative or as plain as you like. Red, green, yellow, fuchsia, maroon, baby blue?
2. Please also include your device type in the post: Windows Mobile Classic/Professional (Pocket PC) or Windows Mobile Standard (Smartphone).

Entries are limited to one per person, and you have until 11:59pm (GMT) on Monday, May 19, 2008 to get them in. Four winners will be randomly selected from the pool of entries and announced the following week. Good luck!

Product Category: Games
Manufacturer: Astraware
Where to Buy: MobiHand [Affiliate]
Price: $9.95
System Requirements: Windows Mobile Classic/Professional (Pocket PC) or Standard (Smartphone) device

Pros:

• Addictive;
• Multiple game modes;
• Looks and feels just like the MSN Games and Xbox 360 versions.

Cons:

• Lacks online leaderboards.

Summary:
Alexey Pajitnov knows how to turn any shape into an addictive puzzle game. Tetris, which needs no introduction, is a testament to that. So too is Hexic, which MSN Games and Xbox 360 gamers should be familiar with. For years, I searched high and low for a Windows Mobile version, but to no avail. Now, that search is over. Thanks to the combined efforts of Astraware and Carbonated Games, Hexic is available for all flavours of Windows Mobile, and it does not disappoint.

Read on for the full review! Read more...

"Funny chemistry, witty physics, exciting astronomy... Do you think that there are no such things on our planet? If so, you haven't play Hexxagon Labs yet! This amusing tactical logic game includes 17 original hard-to-solve levels. The goal of the game in each level is to occupy as many cells on a field as possible, capturing pieces of an enemy."



From the developers of Revival, Herocraft's Hexxagon Labs is a new logic game that serves up some science facts in the interludes between games - that's a cool twist for you. The game itself consists of 17 different levels where you attempt to fill up each level with your pieces, and maybe learn something in the process! You can pick up the game for $14.96, or grab a trial through our PocketPCThoughts affiliate link or our SmartphoneThoughts affiliate link ($10.96 for this version), depending on your device. Read on for the full Press Release. Read more...

In case you didn't check Digital Home Thoughts over the weekend, we've launched our 31 Days of the Dragon contest where we're giving away an HP Pavilion HDX9200 notebook PC, and a software bundle that if purchased at retail, would total up to a bit over $5500 USD. This is a huge contest where 31 Web sites are taking part, each giving away their own Dragon prize bundle - you can check out all the details over on the 31 Days of the Dragon Web site.

The contest officially launched on the 10th, and will end on the 17th of May. Check out the contest details and enter to win!

"SMS-Chat is a Windows Mobile SMS messenger that organizes your SMS correspondence into threaded SMS conversations. This way you have a separate chat for every contact with whom you exchange short text messages. You can easily follow a conversation scrolling thru chats with a finger: all messages are grouped by date. Manage your mobile texting with a flick of a finger!"

It is a good thing third party developers come up with applications that should be built into our devices to begin with. Oh I forgot, WM 6.1 will have threaded SMS when it arrives in 2025. The good news is you don't have to wait that long because Vito has come up with an interim solution. This one looks pretty good.

"An intelligent personalized agent monitors, regulates, and advises a user in decision-making processes for efficiency or safety concerns. The agent monitors an environment and present characteristics of a user and analyzes such information in view of stored preferences specific to one of multiple profiles of the user. Based on the analysis, the agent can suggest or automatically implement a solution to a given issue or problem. In addition, the agent can identify another potential issue that requires attention and suggests or implements action accordingly. Furthermore, the agent can communicate with other users or devices by providing and acquiring information to assist in future decisions. All aspects of environment observation, decision assistance, and external communication can be flexibly limited or allowed as desired by the user."

This sounds interesting at first glance, but also a little creepy. Look at a few other examples of what this service would be capable of doing:

• Not only does the guardian angel 140 monitor an environment, but also a user (e.g., heartbeat, body temperature, mood, etc.). In other words, as the guardian angel 140 is focusing on its main goal of, for instance, detecting users with a disease (e.g., as evidenced by, among other symptoms, a high body temperature) and precluding those users from entering a restricted area, the guardian angel may be informed of other supplemental issues that may or may not be directly related to the main task.
• In another example, while monitoring a user's environment for weather and traffic, the guardian angel 140 can suddenly notice that the user's heartbeat has stopped and therefore takes automatic action to call for help.
• The user can initially load and return to update his/her schedule and list of preferred dry cleaning services, restaurants, stores, etc. as well as corresponding contact phone numbers, addresses, menus, and ratings. As the user travels through a new environment, the user-attribute store 130 is continually updated with data relating to the new environment that will likely apply to his/her preferences. The information in the user-attribute store 130 may be supplemented, deleted, and modified at any time by multiple parties, but the owner (user) of the user-attribute store 130 can limit access to certain areas or times (e.g., modification by another source is authorized to update a restaurant phone number, but not authorized to change the user's schedule).

I'm not so sure I'd be terribly keen on having my device capable of some of those functions. Why am I posting this here? Because Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie are among the patent holders. The patent was filed April 3, 2008. I'm sure it will have a catchy name like Windows Live OneCare Life Guardian.NET.

[image courtesy of digitalmediaphile]

Because of the server move we had to do last night and this morning, things are a bit back-logged on me getting the 31 Days of the Dragon contest up on Digital Home Thoughts. It will happen today for sure, but it won't kick off until tonight - sorry about that! Watch for it. In the meantime, here's an updated list on some of the contests that are still going on, and some that are ending very soon:

• www.arstechnica.com (ends today)
  
• www.osnn.net (ends tomorrow)
• www.jkontherun.com
• digitalmediaphile
• Boston Pocket PC
• The Gadgeteer
• The Digital Lifestyle.com

Recently while at the MVP Summit, I attended a session on Microsoft's new System Center Mobile Device Manager (SCMDM) product. This piece of software, when set up and running, allows IT administrators to lock down many of the functions in Windows Mobile as well as deploy applications similar to the way admins do it on the desktop. I downloaded a version of the software, and while my test environment caused me more headaches than joyous occassions, the product does look like it has substantial promise. But that's not the point of this piece - I'm more interested in the strategy of mobile device administration that it allows corporations to utilize, and concerned that it may tempt companies to adopt a rollout strategy that may not be appropriate for Windows Mobile. Read more...