TamsWMS – the Windows Mobile Smartphone Blog

As quite a few of you are visiting the Tamoggemon Content network from a Windows-powered desktop or notebook, I felt like sharing this with all of you.

Microsoft has just warned that the End-of-Support time for Windows XP SP2 and the initial release of Windows Vista is nearing:

If you currently use one of the above-mentioned operating systems, you will no longer receive updates and patches after the specified dates. Fortunately, the solution is easy: install the latest service pack…

P.S. Windows 2000 heads: your EOL time is in July…irregardless of the service pack you use!

Owners of Linux-based routers are in for a “reverse treat” – a botnet called Chuck Norris attacks these devices.

PCWorld reports the following:

…

Once installed in the router’s memory, the bot blocks remote communication ports and begins to scan the network for other vulnerable machines. It is controlled via IRC.

Because the Chuck Norris botnet lives in the router’s RAM, it can be removed with a restart.

…

So: change that default password, folks!

Coming from Austria, yours truly has a healthy dislike of government agencies – wherever the government gets involved, idiocy and bloat usually follow suite.

Travelers and gadget heads in the USA will soon enjoy even more of the above-mentioned. PCWorld reports the following:

Buying your next laptop computer or smartphone online could suddenly get a lot more expensive if a little-known U.S. Department of Transportation proposal to tighten rules around the shipment of small, battery-powered devices by air goes through, says an industry group opposing the move.

Airline passengers would be affected too, as rules banning spare lithium-ion batteries in checked-in luggage would also be extended to alkaline and nickel metal-hydride batteries, argues George Kerchner, executive director of the Washington D.C.-based Portable Rechargeable Battery Association.

…

For air travelers, this means that you are no longer allowed to put batteries or accumulators into checked luggage – which is just insane. More on that can be had at the URL above.

P.S. This is a non-political blog. However, I think that the Terrorists have already won their “war” with us – air travel is such a hassle nowadays that many evaluate taking the train more and more. One can always circumvent security measures if one really wants to.

Big acquisitions do happen in mobile – but they usually take place between hardware manufacturers. Don’t ask me why and how the folks at HandMark’s managed to buy up Astraware two years ago – but the company is now solo again.

A press release has just gone out. It states the following:

KANSAS CITY, MO and LONDON, UK – January 27, 2010 – Handmark®, the world’s leading developer and distributor of mobile applications and services, today announced it has spun off its mobile games studio, Astraware, as the company streamlines its business to focus on other strategic areas of mobile development and support.

Astraware returns to the management of Howard Tomlinson and David Oakley, two of the original founders, and will remain a Handmark preferred partner. Handmark will continue to support Astraware on a variety of distribution and promotional opportunities.

“We saw a great opportunity to join forces with Astraware to help create and extend a collection of fun, well-designed mobile games titles to a new audience, and we did just that,” said Paul Reddick, Handmark CEO. “I still see a great opportunity for their team to continue proving their leadership as a major player in mobile games and we will continue to work alongside them.”

…

The financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

P.S. I asked them about specifics of the deal at a tradeshow two years ago – and got a really really pissed off HandMark manager on my back…

It’s the end of the year. This means next to no news, and loads of top-XYZ lists.

While we usually ignore these beautiful critters on the Tamoggemon Content network, Gizmodo’s most-useless gadgets of the decade list struck my interest.

While most of the victims are weird, largely useless gadgets, the following boxen also made it on the list:

• Sony Clié PEG-NZ90 (IMHO undeserved)
• Nokia N-Gage (all incarnations)
• AppleTV (oh, the horror)
• Motorola Q9m (not sure about the Verizon UI)
• Omnia II (IMHO undeserved)

Feel that the ratings are justified? Let us know in the comments!

HTC’s recently-announced Android handset (dubbed HTC Hero) contains an UI stack of its own – it is dubbed Sense, and is radically different from the current TouchFLO implementations which sit on the Today screen of various WM handsets.

WMPowerUser asked the folks at HTC’s whether TouchFLO is here to stay – and got the following response:

The Hero UI has been created specifically for HTC’s Android-based phones but also represents that three core pillars of HTC Sense. HTC’s future Windows Mobile phones will also be based on HTC Sense, but will enhance Windows Mobile in a way that is as appropriate and valuable to people.

I personally think that their choice makes perfect sense: people think about brands first, and about operating systems only after that. Nokia is as successful as it is as its S40 and S60 handsets share a largely common UI stack, thereby simplifying switching.

HTC gains a lot from unifying their UX: I personally would not be surprised to hear that HTC got thousands of calls from people switching to the G1 and who ended up looking for the Start menu…

Unfortunately, developers will likely end up paying the bill. HTC TouchFLO has already made loads of Today plugins obsolete – the more it does out of the box, the less there is to do for developers.

What do you think?

Microsoft’s firmware update process is famously annoying: all installed software tends to be lost with every update. All other manufacturers have since tackled the problem – Ars Technica has just spotted the following job posting on Microsoft’s web site:

Have you wished to see your Windows Mobile phone with new features “magically” show up without you buying a new one? Do you want to see greater and better quality and cool software delivered to your love ones’ Windows phones from just a click? If this is your dream, this is a place for you. Come join us to make this dream into reality! With the mobile industry’s strong growth and several competitors playing in the field, we are going to have a challenging but fun time to show customers what Windows phone can become in the next few years.

We are in Windows Mobile device update team. Our goal is to enable customers to anticipate and enjoy a predictable stream of new and improved capabilities for their Windows Phone via a Device Update service that is worry-free and easy-to-use. Broad scope and impact, deep technologies, engineering challenges, partner interfacing with OEMs and MS internal partners, and fast pace delivery are all part of our charter. In the agile development environment, you will be working with PM/architect/test and partner teams to deliver critical stack of the update solution. You will lead a team of smart developers to solve problems in mobile OS, PC applications, and interacting with web services.

I personally hope that this will come to fruitition in WM 7 – the current situation where vendors and Microsoft are responsible for updates together is not exactly comfortable.

Moving the firmware update scheme to a method like the one used on the PC would require a large investment on the side of vendors and manufacturers alike, but would make large deployments of new Windows Mobile versions easier on the long run.

While this would help developers, manufacturers are very unlikely to loose control over their device’s life cycles…what do you think?

My trusty Jaybird JB200 bluetooth headset did not survive a recent surprise encounter with a washing machine…while I was perfectly happy with the headset, I decided to give wired headphones another shot. As Apple’s headphones were reasonably cheap and included a microphone, I wanted to give them a shot.

Plugging them in required an unnatural amount of force, and getting them back out of my device turned out to be impossible due to the soft and rubbery finish of both plug and cable. But they were detected as headset at the least.

Unfortunately, this recognition did not mean much. Audio was tinny all the time except when I kept the center button of the remote firmly pressed…the moment I let go of the button, tracks once again sounded like they were being played back through a thick wall of fog.

From my point of view, the 30 Euros invested turned out to be a major waste – 5 Euro headsets will likely deliver better audio quality than these when paired up with an X1 or similar non-Apple handset. Apple: this pair of headphones goes straight back to the shop where I bought them. In case anyone of you is in a similar situation: stay far away from Apple’s Earphones with Remote and Mic.

I have no idea why handset designers keep playing around with their handset’s keyboards…the latest victim is a device designed by Samsung for Verizon (who will peddle it as Alias2):

The image above hits us via PhoneArena, with Engadget Mobile claiming that the keys are “identified” via an underlying E-Ink display.

As of now, no tests have been performed to determine the usability of this new input method. While I personally fear that the usability will be bad due to sub-par materials (this is said to be a cheap handset), I dare to say that this is the first keyboard idea which has impressed me.

Future devices using this technology could allow customers to dynamically adapt the keyboard layout of their devices, for example by replacing unpopular special characters with others he needs more often (I’d love to ditch some weird chars on my XPERIA’s keyboard for < and >, for example).

What do you think?

The Wall Street Journal reports that China has censored various US video sharing sites including our video host blip.tv and Google’s YouTube. The reason for the ban is short and sweet:

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The latest YouTube ban coincides with the March 20 release by the Tibetan Government-in-Exile of a video allegedly showing Chinese forces beating Tibetans during protests that occurred in March 2008.

The video was also posted on Blip.tv, a U.S. video-sharing site that was also blocked Tuesday in China. The site urged the Chinese government to “embrace the openness of the Internet.
…

As the Tamoggemon Content Network is to remain free of political statements due to corporate policy, this post ends here.

Image: Wikimedia Commons, lightboxing by Tam Hanna

I haven’t posted all I saw at the MWC yet, but am happy to inform you of the next event covered on the Tamoggemon Content Network: look forward to the FH Hagenberg’s NFC Congress.

While most university-hosted tradeshows are pathetic, the FH Hagenberg has managed to attract key players of the industry – which means that almost everybody who has something to say in the European NFC world will be there.

In case you are new to the technology: NFC, short for Near Field Communications, is a technology which powers transmitters embedded into everyday objects like business cards. These can then be used for purchasing things, granting access to locations in an iButtonesque fashion, to buy stuff and much more. For example, the MWC tickets were NFC-based…which meant that they contained a chip with visitor information which could be scanned wirelessly by booth attendants wanting to find out more or stay in touch.

Further information is upcoming shortly – stay tuned…

In the smartphone business, selling one million devices is considered a major feat. The figures and quotes below are intended to put all of it into perspective…:

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) today announced that the cumulative worldwide sell-in units of PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) handheld entertainment system (PSP-1000, 2000 and 3000 series) reached a total of 50 million units(*1) as of January 2009.

* Total LTD shipments of Nintendo DS hardware were 96.22 million worldwide, along with more than 533 million games.
* Total LTD Wii shipments reached nearly 45 million worldwide, along with over 312 million games.

So much about smartphone growth by taking market share away from competitors. IMHO, the company which manages to break out of the traditional niche will be king – what do you think?

The picture on the left is becoming more and more familiar a sight as more and more businesspeople, journalists, developers and other power users start to adopt netbooks to supplement – or, in my case – replace their classic 15″ notebook computer.

Unfortunately, Microsoft seems to be hell-bent on curbing this trend – the Redmondians have just announced that Windows 7 Starter edition will be made available to netbook manufacturers:

…Microsoft will allow the operating system to be used in a new way–to power low-cost computers, particularly Netbooks, in developed countries. …

Windows 7 Starter is an ultra-lite version of Windows which lacks various advanced features and is limited to three concurrently-running programs at any given time. As of now, Microsoft has not agreed on what constitutes a “program” – but I am sure that most of us will need more than three.

While this is a somewhat sensible move (as it will allow Microsoft to target sub-200$ netbooks, which are currently dominated by Linux), I fear that hardware manufacturers will “abuse” this opportunity to save a few dollars at the expense of their users (who have to pay a hundred dollars or so to restore the functionality removed)…

What do you think?

PocketPCThoughts Jason Dunn just came back from Microsoft’s latest Mobius conference, and posted a rather detailed 5page wrap-up of the topics covered.

He has a nice summary of all presentations, whose topics ranged from mundane things like Windows 7 to more interesting stuff like HTC’s view of the future and a variety of interesting stats.

As usual, the full scoop can be had here:
http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/news/show/91879/mobius-2008-winter-edition.html