TamsWMS – the Windows Mobile Smartphone Blog

Microsoft has just begun accepting applications i8nto its long-awaited Marketplace for Mobile – in order to increase developer attention, the company will give away a variety of gifts including a Microsoft Surface table to four developers which create an app which wins in one of the four categories below:

* Most downloads of a free app
* Most valuable app (downloads x price)
* Most useful (as judged by Microsoft panel)
* Most playful (as judged by Microsoft panel)

Further information can be had here:
http://www.mobilethisdeveloper.com/#meteor=fkWEasRBZCu

Dear Readers,
in case you feel like going to the Mobile World Congress next year: book trip and hotel ASAP!

I have just gone through the hassles of trying to get a room, and failed miserably at various hotels due to lack of free space. Yes, the event is still more than 6 months away – but the vacancies are all used up.

Keep in mind that this event is huge and can easily fill up the entire city…and get booking ASAP.

P.S: If anyone of you has a hint for a hotel, I’d be thankful for a comment for the rest of the gang…

HTC’s recently-released Snap has already found quite a few carrier partners…which has prompted our long-term sponsor Proporta to release some accessories:

Aluminium Lined Leather Case for HTC Snap

Advanced Screen Protector for HTC Snap

As the device’s form factor is static, Proporta’s long industry experience should keep bork-ups to a minimum – which means that all interested can buy with relative confidence…

Windows Mobile icons have always been an eeker of some sort: while not as batshitly difficult as S60 application icons, they have nevertheless given me quite some thought due to the lack of specification on Microsoft’s behalf.

Fortunately, Microsoft has now tackled the problem – the Windows Mobile blog team has just added a post which starts like this:

This post provides a step-by-step tutorial for creating professional iconography for your Windows Mobile application. With these guidelines and Adobe Photoshop, developers will learn to apply the appropriate styling and sizing to their image assets for use within their applications as well as in the Windows® Marketplace for Mobile. In addition to the tutorial, a Photoshop action file is provided for assisting with the creation of the required files. Developers who are planning to distribute applications on the Windows® Marketplace for Mobile are encouraged to utilize these guidelines to ensure their applications adhere to the application submission criteria.

Even though the tutorial is very well-written, it seems to require that wannabe icon makers own a recent copy of PhotoShop. This means that GIMP heads are likely to be left in the rain when it comes to sample images – but they can now get their hands onto the sizes there, too.

Further information can be had here:
http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowsphone/archive/2009/07/24/creating-custom-icons-for-windows-mobile-6-5.aspx

Airlines have used GSM-based credit card billing systems for quite some time – don’t ask me why the FCC had no issues with that after that infamous CrossAir crash which brought us the lovely anti-cellphone legislation we currently enjoy in most countries.

Mexico was very slow to adopt these regulations, and is one of the first to remove them – Engadget reports the following:

…
Soon, travelers there will no longer have to keep their handsets safely stowed or in airplane mode, with the Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Transportes, or SCT (the Mexican FCC equivalent), approving cellphones en-masse for flights anywhere in the nation. This cancels an earlier edict made in 2001 banning their use, and while Mexico’s federal government still has to approve things, that’s not expected to take long.
…

At Tamoggemon’s, we celebrate – now all we need is to motivate Hutchison to get into Mexico…

Image: Wikimedia Commons / Fcb981, lightboxing by Tam Hanna

Microsoft’s touchscreenless Windows Mobile Smartphones are largekly unknown outside of the USA – no carriers touched them after the QTek 8500 failed spectacularly for reasons I never quite understood.

Nevertheless, it looks like the British carrier O2 feels like taking another stab – they have rebranded a PanTech device as O2 XDA Venn and peddle it to their customers (picture on the left).

As of now, not much further information is available – hit the link below to stay in tune:
http://xda.o2.co.uk/devices/xda_venn.jsp

Almost all recent HTC devices have the vulnerable FTP protocol in ROM – don’t ask me why HTC’s recently-released hotfix is limited to the Touch Diamond, Touch Pro and Touch HD:

As we are looking at a hotfix rather than a ROM update, data loss is unlikely…but every hard reset wipes out all the patches on the handset…

Further information can be had here:
http://www.htc.com/europe/SupportDownload.aspx?p_id=133&cat=0&dl_id=609

The blogosphere has been abuzz about a recently-discovered vulnerability in HTC’s bluetooth FTP service. The vulnerability indeed is there – but is it as severe as it looks?

First of all: we are looking at a rather uncommon service. Some devices allow you to access their file system remotely via Bluetooth in an FTPesque fashion. Microsoft itself never supported the protocol, but some HP and HTC devices did so via custom software.

The software in HTC’s devices now has a somewhat annoying issue: it allows attackers who have been permitted to connect to it to break out of the specified folder, and traverse the entire file system of the device.

Sounds dangerous – but it is no cause for concern. The reason is that authentication is handled by Microsoft’s underlying bluetooth stack. Untrusted devices are not allowed to connect to the service, and thus can not do any harm.

You are vulnerable in but one situation: when allowing untrusted users to access your FTP service. As long as you don’t pair with random devices, you should be safe and set…

Dear Readers,
the Tamoggemon team is proud to announce that this week’s issue of the prestigious Carnival of the Mobilists will be hosted by our sister site TamsIJungle. Being selected for hosting a CotM is a great honor, and shows that Tamoggemon is committed to being an active member of the mobile computing market!

In case anyone of you runs a web site about mobile computing: please send your best work to us for consideration! Just follow the instructions outlined at the web site linked above – and see you all next week at TamsIJungle’s!

With best regards
Tam Hanna and the Tamoggemon Content team

Austria has suffered from waves of unwanted premium SMS over the last two years or so – a recent Cisco report claims that the boys now have a new method:

Text message scams targeting users of handheld mobile
devices, such as cell phones and smart phones, are
becoming a common fraud tactic. At least two or three
new campaigns have surfaced every week since the start
of 2009. The spike in frequency can be attributed partly
to the economic downturn, but it’s also the massive—and
still growing—size of the mobile device audience that is
making this new frontier for fraud irresistible to criminals.

…

The report goes on to claim that various kinds of social-engineering based methods are used – a particulariuly devious one is outlined below:

Customers were contacted
by either SMS or phone and asked to provide “verification
details,” such as bank account numbers, to collect a
grand prize. Victims were also asked to purchase scratch
cards worth QR500 (approximately US$135) and provide
those numbers as “security” when they collected their
fictitious prize

Further information can be had in the PDF below – page thirteen, onwards:
http://cisco.com/web/about/security/intelligence/Cisco_2009_Midyear_Security_Report.PDF

Don’t ask me what the Microsoft Marketplace team is smoking/drinking…but their policy on Windows Mobile 6 and 6.1 reminds me of a drunkewn raindeer which is pulling a sledge through the snow.

After publicly declaring that the Marketplace would be a WM 6.5-only thing, their latest blog post reads as follows:

Application Submission Opens on July 27th: Windows Marketplace will open for application submissions from 29 supported countries July 27.

Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 Support: Windows Marketplace will be available for Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 by the end of 2009 (in addition to Windows Mobile 6.5 at launch in the fall).

Business Center: Windows Marketplace will feature a “Business Center” category for business applications.

Developer Contest: Microsoft will be disclosing the details of a Windows Marketplace developer contest on July 27.

Anyone understand what they are up to?

GigaOM reports the following:

…Verizon’s Ryan Hughes, VP Partner Management, said in an interview Friday that the network operator’s app store will be the sole marketplace on devices sold by the company, meaning stores such as Research In Motion’s BlackBerry App World or Microsoft’s Windows Mobile Marketplace won’t get placement on Verizon handsets unless a consumer downloads them.

…

Even though the decision makes commercial sense on the end of Verizon, I think that they will not be able to pull this off as easy as intended: Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer has frequently stated that he considers Marketplace an “essential piece of Windows Mobile which HAS TO BE on every device”.

As manufacturers are not allowed to break Microsoft’s hardware guidelines, this fight could leave Verizon without WM 6.5 devices – let’s see how this all plays out…

Austria’s governmental carrier A1 has had the S740 on its roster for quite some time. So far, the device was sold in very small quantities and was not advertised.

This has now changed – the picture below is from one of their flagship stores in Vienna:

Developers: this bit of news will hit you like a punch:

…

Under the new Net60 Explore license developers may use Net60 free for non-commercial use. The Net60 Explore license is a perpetual license and is linked to an individual device IMEI number. Developers can easily create licenses for themselves by visiting our website and downloading Net60. A Net60 licence will automatically be emailed to them.

Net60 Professional and Premium have no device royalty fee.

A second change to our licensing model is that now commercial users of Net60 can now create S60 applications using .NET and distribute them royalty free. There is no longer a per device fee.

Find out more at our sister site TamsS60:
http://tamss60.tamoggemon.com/2009/07/13/net60-free-for-non-commercial-use-royalty-free-for-commercial-use/