Plug into the wireless world: Introduction to connected applications |
| | Windows Mobile smartphones take the concept of applications to the next level: Software services everywhere. These connected applications take advantage of your smartphone's ability to be connected to the Internet using your cell phone company's wireless data service, a wireless local network connection, or even a short-range Bluetooth connection. These connected applications depend on getting information from or sending information to another computer on the Internet using some kind of wireless data connection.
You and your Windows Mobile smartphone are all about staying in touch. Voice, e-mail, texting, instant messaging: This is all great stuff. But, these features are just the Windows Mobile communications starter pack. For example, you might start out your day checking voicemail, e-mail, and news by using your mobile phone company's voicemail feature and Windows Mobile's integrated messenging and Web browsing applications. You might even use Windows Live Messenger to ask a friend a quick question over IM (Instant Messaging). But let's take a step back for a moment and look at the different kinds of connected applications a Windows Mobile smartphone can work with. |
| This article describes two categories of connected applications you can use with your smartphone. | |
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Designed for Windows Mobile |
| Software applications that carry the Designed for Windows Mobile 6 logo have met Microsoft software design requirements for Windows Mobile 6 smartphones. If you see this logo, you can be certain the software has been independently tested against the standards for good Windows Mobile program design. |
|  | Here are a few connected applications I find useful. Keep in mind that you do need a network connection to the Internet to make maximum use of these applications. However, you don't necessarily need a mobile phone data connection. They work just as well when connected to the Internet using a wireless LAN. |
| Live Messenger | Did you know you can get all kinds of questions answered by using instant messaging on your smartphone? And, no, I don't mean by IM-ing your smartest friend. If you add Encarta@botmetro.net to your contacts, you can ask questions and get answers from MSN Encarta. You can ask questions in plain English and the Encarta agent will try its best to interpret it and respond.
You can think of Live Agents as imaginary robots that operate inside of the Microsoft Live Messenger instant messaging universe. These robots, or bots for short, are knowledgeable about certain kinds of information like movies, restaurants, or everything in the Encarta Encyclopedia as in the case of the Encarta bot described earlier. These bots respond to questions you type into Live Messenger. And, you do not need to know any special programming or database query language to ask these questions. You can ask them using the same words and phrases you might use when speaking to another person. You can find other Live Agents in this Windows Live Agents List. One my other favorite Agents is Movie Scout. You can use it by adding moviescout@botmetro.net as a contact. It can help you find movies and theater schedules in your area. |
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Live Search for Windows Mobile | Live Search on your smartphone gives you maps, directions, and movie schedules in selected cities. If your smartphone has a GPS (Global Positioning System) available, Live Search can use the satellite position data to display your current position. Be sure to check out Jason Dunn's article, Live Search and Bluetooth GPS, for more details. You can download Live Search for Windows Mobile by pointing Internet Explorer on your Windows Mobile device to wls.live.com. | |
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Newsbreak® from Ilium Software | This is an application that I literally use every day. It works with syndicated newsfeeds available for nearly all blogs and news sites these days as well as audio and video podcasts. These newsfeed summaries (news, weather, sports, entertainment, etc.) as well as any audio and video files attached to these feeds are downloaded in a batch to your smartphone. Since the files are stored on your smartphone, you definitely want to get a flash storage card if you use this application. This locally stored information is instantly available to you. This means that you can speed through reading news and other information without pauses or download delays between items. The audio and video files are played in Windows Media player like any other media file. | |
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Yahoo!® Go 2.0 | This gives you a slick looking client application for Windows Mobile that presents information from Yahoo!'s e-mail, news, weather, sports, maps, and other Web properties. You get to all this information on your mobile device at http://wap.oa.yahoo.com/. | |
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Spb Software House Spb Traveler | You might find yourself using this even when you are just hanging around your hometown. In a flat world environment, you may need to know relative time zones, current currency conversion rates, and even the weather of the people you deal with around the world. Spb Traveler includes a Today Screen plug-in to provide instant visual access to its information. Spb Traveler is only available for touch screen Windows Mobile devices (Professional Edition and Classic Edition). If you have a non-touch screen device (Standard Edition), check out Fizz Traveller from Fizz Software. | |
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Quick tip | It is easy to find and install a lot of useful software on your Windows Mobile smartphone. This software and the data associated with them can fill up the smartphone's system memory very quickly. I strongly recommend you buy a flash storage card and install large applications on it instead of on the more limited system memory. |
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| There are many Web sites that interact with you like applications. The difference is that Web applications work through your Internet Explorer Web browser and need Internet connectivity. Some provide specially formatted Web pages to work with mobile devices like Windows Mobile smartphones. This means that you can hop from your desktop computer to your smartphone, and then jump over to a notebook computer and have access to the same Web application — assuming you are connected to the Internet, of course. The downside is that when you are disconnected, you don't have access to Web applications.
New Web applications are popping up every day and many of them are mobile device-friendly. Since there's no software to install, you can try as many of these as you like without using up a lot of device resources. |
| Web applets | Let's start with two simple but useful Web applets that you might want to think of as single function Web applets. | http://iliumsoft.com/device/: This handy little Web page looks at your Windows Mobile device and tells you what it is: Standard Edition, Professional Edition, or Classic Edition. http://dslreports.com/mspeed/: This second single function Web page tells you how fast your connection to the Internet is.
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Making lists | There are two mobile-friendly Web services I find useful for keeping track of everything from my grocery lists (Gubb) to managing my writing projects (RememberTheMilk). |
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Gubb.net | Lists are wonderful things. I depend on them heavily every day. Gubb is a free Web application that manages my lists with just a Web browser. I usually start by creating and modifying lists on my desktop or notebook computer. The big screen and full size keyboard makes list making and editing a fast and easy job. Then, when on the move I point Windows Mobile's Internet Explorer browser to http://gubb.net/m to look at my list and check things off as I complete them. |
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RememberTheMilk™ | This somewhat tongue-in-cheek named site plays a serious role in my daily task management. I use this to note down all kinds of tasks and projects using plain English phrases. And, since it is Web-based, I can use it from my desktop computer or my Windows Mobile smartphone by pointing Internet Explorer to http://m.rememberthemilk.com/. I have tasks set to e-mail me as deadlines approach. So, reminders show up in my smartphone's e-mail inbox too. |
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Maintaining your mobile presence | Twitter, Tumblr, and GrandCentral are great mobile-friendly Web communications tools that I use to maintain what you might call a mobile presence. Twitter and Tumblr lets my friends and colleagues know what I am doing without notifying any particular one or group. They can, in effect, subscribe to what I am doing (Twitter) or what I think it interesting at the moment (Tumblr). GrandCentral replaces the old home answering machine or even office voice mail and gives you the ability to separate your critical smartphone voicemail from other voice messages. |
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Twitter.com | Nice and short seems to be the new Web mantra. Twitter is kind of a combination of instant messaging and micro-blogging. Each entry is limited to 140 characters of text. People who are your friends or choose to follow your twittering can read each brief note you choose to write. And, you can read theirs, too, if you want. This twittering can be constant if you like. And, as you write each brief thought, you create a kind of virtual presence on the Web. You can twitter from your smartphone by browsing http://m.twitter.com/. |
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Tumblr.com | Here's another nice and short Web presence tool, too. If blogging on your Web site gets to be too much of a chore or if you just want to jot down random thoughts and pointers to interesting things on the Web; then maybe Tumblogs are something you should consider. Tumblr makes it easy for you to jot down brief thoughts, post photos, and link to Web sites or videos. And, it looks great on your desktop or your smartphone. You can find my full Web version at http://mobileviews.tumblr.com and a smartphone friendly version at http://mobileviews.tumblr.com/mobile. You can easily create little entries by emailing text and photos from your smartphone. |
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GrandCentral.com | Google bought this Web voice service in the summer of 2007. This Web application provides you a free phone number of your choice in a number of large cities. People who call this phone number can either be sent directly to voice mail or can be forwarded to one or more telephone numbers you choose. You can manage the site through your smartphone by heading over to http://grandcentral.com/mobile/. |
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Go get connected! | This list of connected applications for Windows Mobile smartphones described here are just a small number of what is available. Most of these applications work fine even with relatively slow GPRS or EDGE mobile phone data networks. However, if you choose to download multi-megabyte audio or video files, make sure you have a lot of wireless bandwidth to use. And, if you don't have an unlimited data service, keep an eye on that byte count! With those issues taken care of, you are sure to find connected applications to meet your professional and personal mobile needs. |
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|  |  | About the author Todd Ogasawara has been a mobile device enthusiast since the MS-DOS based days of handheld computers. He was the MSN Windows CE Forum Manager from 1997 to 2001. You can find his current mobile technology ramblings and responses to reader questions at www.mobileviews.com and the O'Reilly network. |
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