The slides from my Introduction to Distributed Version Control with Mercurial grok talk at the January 2010 CINNUG meeting is available here (pdf).

I will be speaking at devLink 2009!  If you are not familiar with devLink, take a look at what great technical content you get over three days for only $75.  Here is my speaker bio, and my sessions will be:

Windows Mobile Development*
Do you want to learn how to develop applications for Windows Mobile that are useful in your personal life, or in the enterprise? Had enough drag-and-drop demos where you build boring-looking applications? This session will include an introduction to the Windows Mobile platform, .NET Compact Framework, Windows Mobile SDKs, SQL Server Compact Edition, and frameworks from Microsoft and third-parties. The latter half of the session will discuss and demonstrate creating advanced user interfaces with .NET CF as well as tools and techniques for testing, debugging, and tuning your applications. This session expects no Windows Mobile or .NET CF experience, but will presume some Visual Studio and .NET experience.

Compact and Capable!**
SQL Server Compact Edition is an in-process database for use in applications that extend data storage capabilities to the desktop and to mobile devices. It is ideal for distributed and embedded applications and delivers essential relational database functionality in a small footprint while providing the familiar programming and management interfaces of SQL Server.  This session will explore how you can leverage SQL Compact as a local data store for Smart Client and Smart Device applications.  Also covered will be Visual Studio support, deployment options, ADO.NET interfaces, and synchronization options. Leave this session empowered with knowledge how to make your applications work anywhere the users are.

My sincere thanks and appreciation to the devLink speaker selection committee for selecting my abstracts.  Register today and come join me in Nashville, TN from August 13 – 15, 2009.

* The WM Dev session is an in-depth session which will be a multi-hour session.
** Yes, I stole the tagline of the SQL CE team for my talk title (and think it quite apropos for the product).

On a recent post, an astute reader (and commenter) noticed that his comment (and all comments on that post) were appearing as ‘January 23, 2008’.  I looked. Yikes! He was correct.  Hmmm.

I hit the Graffiti forums and found a few threads that mentioned it, but no fixes. Time to take a peek on my own.  Once in the control panel, navigate to Presentation > Themes > Personalize (for the current theme). Next, click post.view to bring up the markup template behind an individual post.

At this point I thought the first step would be to just perform a search for the string ‘January 23’.  Makes sense, correct?  You bet.  So, I did; I found the string. And then I was sad. Here is what I found:
<a href="#comment-$comment.Id" title="Permanent link to this comment" rel="bookmark">January 23, 2008</a>

Hard-coded. That certainly explains it. Goofy theme author.

Next, I pulled up the post.view for the default Graffiti 1.1 theme. Oh, it is hard-coded here, too. More sadness.  Not the theme author’s fault. Well, not entirely.

Enough being sad, let’s get happy.  The fix for this faux pas is simple:

1) locate ‘January 23, 2008’ in your post.view template.  delete.

2) replace with: $macros.FormattedDate($comment.Published)    
     My comment link now looks like this:
     <a href="#comment-$comment.Id" title="Permanent link to this comment"  rel="bookmark">$macros.FormattedDate($comment.Published)</a>

3) Click the Save Changes button.

This will now list the date for a comment using a format that appears like this: ‘Tuesday, December 02 2008’. Spiffy!  Fixed.

Next steps?  Ask your favorite Graffiti 1.1 theme author to verify that, if they copied some parts of the default theme, they fixed this item in their theme.  Also, you will need to check this (and perhaps fix it) for any other theme that you use as well.

Oh, and what is so swell about January 23? Not certain, but a few things have happened on January 23.

Lots of device news in this edition (actually this edition will be nearly all device news), particularly since I haven’t posted all week as I’ve been fighting off the flu and a round of bronchitis.  I still feel pretty crappity, but I need to give up on that taking it easy thing so I can get some work done (not like I have pneumonia – although that didn’t stop me from working, either). Time to man up.

Software / Hardware 

• The big news comes Monday morning in a press conference from Microsoft and Verizon.  Here’s a teaser video (via Mike Hall).  What’s the big news?  The Palm Treo 700w (via Engadget), of course!
  
• From the fine folks at NewMobile.nl comes the story that T-Mobile will call their version of the HTC Wizard the “T-Mobile MDA Vario” (via Coolsmartphone.com) 
• PocketPCThoughts.com give us an exclusive preview of the HP iPAQ h7615
• msmobiles.com gives us the skinny on the Samsung i300 pricing
• The kiwis over at Geekzone have put together a listing of Windows Mobile devices  – I’m working on my own list.. I'll have it up soon :)
• From Coolsmartphone.com comes the news that Orange has released the SPV M5000, their iteration of the HTC Universal
• Dell has their first Windows Mobile 5.0 device – the Axim X51V (Engadget),  “if it were software, it would be a dot release” (PocketPCThoughts) and another review (PocketNow).
• More Dell news – PocketPCThoughts.com is reporting that WM5.0 upgrade CDs for Axim X50’s are now available for ordering
• Orange SPV C600 preview (Coolsmartphone.com)
• Sprint is out of the gate as the first US mobile operator to offer a Windows Mobile 5.0 device in the PPC-6700 (HTC Apache) (via InfoSyncWorld)  Also, Jason Langridge has some thoughts
• Acer reveals some VGA-screened WM5.0 PPC devices (via InfoSyncWorld)
• PocketPCThoughts is reporting that Howard Forums has info on the i-mate K-Jam (jump to page 2, no pics on page 1)

 Development

• Jeff Abraham gives us insight into C++ for Devices (VCD) w/r/t solution level platforms, settings, and the deployment toolbar

In Other News . . .

• We finally see a little mobile action over at The Daily WTF   classic.
• The Embedded Linux Consortium (ELC) is dead. (via Mike Hall) – it looks like OSDL will continue ELC work..
• Mike Hall brings us news of a new Embedded RTOS comparison report that includes Windows CE 5.0.
• From PocketNow.com comes news of WM5FixSite.com: “As an increasing number of Pocket PC and Smartphone users upgrade to Windows Mobile 5.0, they are finding there to be very limited software compatibility.  This site is designed to bring everyone together from the Windows Mobile community (both developers and end-users) to keep an updated database of what works and what doesn’t, and when updates will be issued for software that isn’t yet compatible”

-Nino

 So.. it’s Monday morning, 0233 hours and I’m awake and blogging. I can’t sleep, and reading isn’t taking my mind off of how ill I feel, so I started working, and after a bit I decided to blog, thinking, of course, that would do it… but nope.  Hopefully, this – whatever it is – will be gone tomorrow and I’ll be back to normal…

Software / Hardware 

• Woo Hoo!  Microsoft Global Contact Access -Finally, a way to search the GAL from your device (without going through OMA)
• PocketPCThoughts.com says that the PalmOS as we know it.. is dead
• Google releases a “Send To Phone” Firefox extension  I tried it out tonight; works spiffy!
• Engadget asks “How would you change the Samsung i730?”  Three suggestions: Chop off the antenna, put a GSM/GPRS radio in it, and add a camera.
• Mike Hall blogs about his experiences with the EFP (Enterprise Feature Pack) – aka Messaging and Security Feature Pack

 Development

• Neil Cowburn blogs about his discovery of the ability to use modifiers on property getters and setters in C# (2.0)  yeah, I tried it on 1.1 and no dice (didn’t think so, but wanted to verify)
• The Windows CE Networking Team blogs about shipping MSXML in Windows Mobile 5.0   Yippeee!
• Came across this VB.NET <-> C# translator  pretty cool, it converts in near real time.. all ‘AJAX-ish’.  Meddling kids.. I was doing ‘”JAX” back in 2000/2001.  (via rido)

In Other News . . .

• Chicago’s partial mobile phone driving ban started Friday
• The people complained – Nick Bradbury listened re: FeedDemon by Subscription
• Check out this bit from Mike Hall about RIM’s mail service going down
• Russ blogs about MVNOs

-Nino

 ..and this one is mostly dev stuff (and darn good stuff, too).

Software / Hardware 

• Pocket PC FAQ has a nice matrix listing new application names in WM 5.0.  One correction to note: They have the browser listed as “Internet Explorer”.   It used to be called “pocket Internet Explorer”  and is now called “Internet Explorer Mobile”.

 Development

• MSDN Webcast: Implementing Security for Mobile Device Solutions  Monday, September 26, 2005 11am PDT by Bill Steele.
• The Visual Studio for Devices (VSD) team  talks about the roadmap for mobile web development w/ ASP.NET
• My colleague Daniel Moth blogs about the .NET CF 2.0 differences between beta 2 and the Release Candidate – an important read if you’ve been doing .NET CF 2.0 development!
• David Kline publishes the first of a multi-part series on Debugging Multi-Threaded Applications.  This one is on Deadlocks.
• Marcus Perryman posts about his PDC session on consuming RSS on a mobile device.  Be sure to check out the C9 video.
• Luis Cabrera from the WM team posts about using connection manager and WinInet with native code
• Peter Foot talks about 32feet.NET and v1.5 of the Bluetooth.NET library
• The Windows CE Networking team talks about Bluetooth Notifications on WM 5.0, in particular getting notifications.
• Check out, via Mike Hall, this interview with John Spaith about the Windows CE Web Server (aka HTTPD).
• Alex Y writes a great piece about implementing AUTD with .NET CF (1.0, even).
• Finally, some info on WPF/e w/r/t .NET CF (via Mike Hall)
• A View of Windows Mobile 5.0 from 10,000 feet by Jim Wilson

In Other News . . .

• SmartphoneThoughts.com has a piece on Picking the right e-mail strategy for your Windows Mobile device
• Steve Makofsky talks about his super-spiffy Portable CE 2.0  and Portable CE 2.0 w/ WM5.0

-Nino

I attended the Data Anywhere session given by Markus Egger whom you might know as the publisher of this magazine and President of this company.  Excellent talk!  He demonstrated such passion for his topic, not to mention he ran over quite a bit; I really love hearing passionate speakers.  Despite my enjoyment of this talk, I’m actually not going to say too much about it….

An item that came up several times through the day, and Markus got in-depth in this session was the Synchronization Manager    . . . . and you’ve likely used it and not realized it.  Ever set up offline files?  offline web pages?  Yep.. you’ve used it.. and yeah, I hadn’t thought much about it either.

Some notes on the Synchronization Manager:

• is a centralized, standard technology for synchronizing files
• synchronizes files independent of the protocol
• is not just for files!
• has technology that is used by ActiveSync (I can hear the peanut gallery now…)
• The end user can:
  • schedule applications for synchronization
  • setup automatic synchronization to occur in conjunction with specified system events
• The API:
  • can enable applications to register for sync features
  • can process errors
  • is COM (IUnknown) - based  (Arrrrggghh!)
  • Your object must implement COM interfaces ISyncMgrSynchronize and ISyncMgrEnumItems

     In Longhorn, we will get a centralized and consistent sync experience for applications, services, and devices (yep, ActiveSync type functionality will be baked in).  Update (20050209, 20:07PST): Here is a slightly less than clear screenshot of the Longhorn SyncManager

I’m excited about this.. and will definitely be digging in; the more I look at this, the more I see similarities between this and the synchronization engine I created on my last project.* .. cool.

-Nino

*more about my last project in a future post