Obama helped me fix my XBOX 360

I had XBox 360 and it was my home entertainment system(combined with Orb )
I was very satisfied with my game console until the 3 red rings of death appeared.
Unfortunately, there is no official XBox support in Bulgaria (the place where I live) and I had to the buy another one - Elite edition this time.
The reason - I was XBox addicted and really love my XBox experience.


Few weeks ago a friend of mine asked me to borrow him my "bricked" XBox 360.

He spent few days in reading blogs and watching YouTube clips and finally managed to bring the brick , that I gave him, back to live.

See my friend's blog post in the links section bellow for repairing details

Links:
Obama helped me fix my XBOX 360
by Pavel Natov

Mobile sessions during October and November 2008

PowerPoint files are available for download at the bottom of this post

I'm going to have few public speaches dedicated to the Microsoft's mobile development technology stack.
The first two sessions are part of the Microsoft Day events organized in the local universities.
The last two are part of a free set of sessions dedicated to Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008 and Office Project 2007, sponsored by Microsoft Bulgaria and New Horizons Bulgaria

30.Oct.2008, 15:00h,Varna, University of Economics - Varna
Lap around Windows Mobile

31.Oct.2008, 10:00h,Varna, Technical University - Varna
Mobile development with Visual Strudio 2008 and Compact Framework 3.5

6.Nov.2008, 18:30h ,Sofia, New Horizons Bulgaria
Developing Windows Mobile Applications with Visual Studio 2008

20.Nov.2008, 18:30h,Sofia, New Horizons Bulgaria
Under the hood: Windows Mobile and Visual Studio 2008

All the sessions are free to attend, however the last two require you to sign-up in advance

UPDATE:
PPT File: Developing Windows Mobile Applications with Visual Studio 2008

Managed Library to boost your Compact Framework development productivity

Here comes a short list of managed classes/libraries developed by the community members , which may speed up your regular dev activities.

Note that some of them are not complete solutions, but they may give you a good idea how to acomplish tasks considered as hard for the regular managed dev.

1. Managed Today Item
by Christopher Fairbairn
http://www.christec.co.nz/blog/archives/281

2. Managed Notification With Soft Keys
by Christopher Fairbairn
http://www.christec.co.nz/blog/archives/150

3. Improved OpenFileDialog
by Christopher Fairbairn
http://www.christec.co.nz/blog/archives/286

4. Managed Services
by Peter Nowak
Actually it isn't possible to create Windows Services for Windows Mobile and Windows Embedded CE in managed code.
Pavel Bánský's shows in his blog post, how Services in Windows Mobile in managed code can be created...
http://blogs.compactframework.de/Peter.Nowak/2008/05/31/Dienste+Mit+Dem+NET+Compact+Framework+Erstellen+Creating+Services+With+The+NET+Compact+Framework.aspx

5. DynamicDNS Library
by Peter Nowak
Library to update dynamic DNS providers like DynDNS.org , NoIP.com and others. Usefull in some "push" scenarios
http://blogs.compactframework.de/Peter.Nowak/2007/11/29/nahtlosmobilde+DynamicDNS+Library+10+Released.aspx

6. PowerShell Windows Mobile Provider
by Oisin Greham
Explore and manipulate your mobile device with Windows PowerShell. Supports PocketPC and SmartPhone devices; WM2002, 2003, 2003SE, 5, 6 and 6.1...
http://www.nivot.org/CategoryView,category,WindowsMobile.aspx

7. AlphaMobileControls
AlphaMobileControls is a .NET Compact Framework 2.0 API offering WinForm Controls for Windows Mobile 5 or 6 able to handle images with alpha channel and alpha blending.
http://www.codeplex.com/alphamobilecontrols

8. P/Invoke Library
by Warren Tang
http://www.cnblogs.com/WarrenTang/archive/2008/08/28/1278853.html

Projects from OpenNETCF

9. Smart Device Framework 2.2 (Community Edition)
Compact Framework developers know that they have a subset of the full framework to work with, and often it can be frustrating and even crippling for a project. Version 2.2 of our award-winning, industry standard libraries for .NET Compact Framework helps bridge the gap between the .NET Compact Framework and the .NET Full Framework...
http://opennetcf.com/Products/SmartDeviceFramework/tabid/65/Default.aspx

10.OpenNETCF Advanced Debugging Toolkit (ADT)
Advanced Debugging Toolkit -- Addins and libraries to enable faster, more efficient debugging of .NET Compact Framework applications...
http://www.opennetcf.com/FreeSoftware/tabid/84/Default.aspx

11.OpenNETCF.Desktop.Communication
The Desktop.Communication Library contains classes used for communicating with a CE device from a PC such as Microsoft's Remote API (RAPI)...
http://www.opennetcf.com/FreeSoftware/tabid/84/Default.aspx

12.OpenNETCF Smart Device Framework v 1.4
Targeting Compact Framework 1.0 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2003
http://www.opennetcf.com/FreeSoftware/tabid/84/Default.aspx

13.Mobile Ink
The Mobile Ink Library is a .NET component that provides support for the new Windows Mobile 6 WISP Lite API in your .NET Compact Framework applications...
http://www.opennetcf.com/FreeSoftware/tabid/84/Default.aspx

14.OpenNETCF QRCode Library for .NET Compact Framework
The OpenNETCF QRCode Library is a .NET Compact Framework component that allows developers to decode QRCode images on a Windows Mobile or Windows CE device...
http://www.opennetcf.com/FreeSoftware/tabid/84/Default.aspx

UPDATE

15. 32feet.Net
by Peter Foot
A shared-source project to make personal area networking technologies such as Bluetooth, Infrared (IrDA) and more, easily accessible from .NET code. Supports desktop, mobile or embedded systems. The project currently consists of the following libraries:-
http://www.codeplex.com/32feet/

YET ANOTHER UPDATE
16. Mobile MVC Framework
by Alex Yakhin's
Model-View-Controller Framework for mobile devices running .NET Compact Framework 3.5.
http://www.codeplex.com/MobileMVC

17.Windows Mobile Unified Sensor API
by Kuosh
The Windows Mobile Unified Sensor API allows developers to easily access the hardware sensors that are available on various phones.
Sensors supported: Light Sensor,Capacitive Touch Pad,Accelerometer
Devices:HTC Touch *,Samsung Omnia/Instinct
http://www.codeplex.com/sensorapi

 

Did I miss something? Ping me if you know other useful non-comercial third party managed libraries

Interview with Ilya Tumanov

 

Christopher Fairbairn published a short interview with Ilya Tumanov:

I am a Software Development Engineer (SDE) within the Developer Division (responsible for development tools like Visual Studio). I have been with the .NET Compact Framework team almost from the start and helped shipped version 1.0 of it.

I used to own numerous portions of the .NET CF base class libraries (BCL), for example ADO.NET and LINQ and was responsible for the .NET CF installation story on both the desktop and device sides.

Recently I’ve moved on to another position and now I’m with Microsoft’s Office Labs. My line of work is around mobile productivity, so I’m still working with NETCF, now as a regular developer.

Read the rest here...

Managed Services and Today Screen Item with .NET Compact Framework

I'm .NET addicted and never felt comfortable to realize that I can't solve my problem in pure managed manner.
Well, the "native" is a native part of the mobile developer, but anyway I prefer managed.

I was happy to see that some mobile folks here work for my comfort :)

Peter Nowaks has a post about creating Managed Services in Windows Mobile by using .NET Compact Framework. He has created a managed library, hosted in CodePlex. His work is based on article by Pavel Bánský

Christopher Fairbairn also published  a very handy library, which may help you creating a managed Today Screen Item.

 

Great work guys!

 

Links
Peter Nowaks on Creating Managed Services in Windows Mobile
Pavel Bánský on Creating Managed Services in Windows Mobile
Christopher Fairbairn on Creating Managed Today Screen Item

PowerShell Windows Mobile Provider

I'm still interested in automating most of my daily dev tasks , because I am always behind the schedule.

A time ago I've publushed a post about a possible way to automate some windows mobile related tasks by using PowerShell and RAPI ( OpenNETCF wrapper implementation)

Oisin Grehan (Microsoft MVP) kindly informed me few days ago about the PowerShell Windows Mobile Provider developed by him. It is hosted in the CodePlex

It provides the following features:

• Copy, Move, Delete items between folders on your device (including Storage Card) with standard PowerShell Cmdlets

• Move/Copy files to/from your device and your desktop with ConvertTo-WMFile and ConvertFrom-WMFile

• Get device information and manipulate and explore the registry with a rich device object returned from Get-WMDevice

• Invoke-Item against remote items to or execute or trigger their associated applications

• Invoke-Item with -Local switch to attempt to execute a remote file in the context of your local desktop (e.g. office docs or images/videos)

• New "Mode" attributes specific to Windows Mobile file attributes: (I)nRom, Rom(M)odule

• File/Folder objects' attributes can be modified with .Attributes properties just like FileInfos etc.

• Tab completion with MoW's PowerTab

 

Links

PowerShell Windows Mobile Provider on Oisin Grehan's Blogs
PowerShell Windows Mobile Provider on CodePlex
Neil Cowburn on Windows PowerShell,RAPI and devices's GAC
RAPI and PowerShell on My Blog

My PPT files from Microsoft Days 2008 in Sofia

I've just uploaded my PowerPoint presentarions files from Microsoft Days 08 in Sofia

The presentations are targeted toward Bulgarian speaking audience.

 

Links
PowerPoint presentarions files

Microsoft Days 2008

You may register for the Microsoft Days 2008 in Sofia from the event's web site. It will be held on 24 and 25 April 2008 at the Inter Expo Center. The event is payed this year (again), however you will be able to hear about the latest Microsoft products and technologies for the 2 days of the event. There will be a great prizes this year - check out the detail on the Martin's blog.

If you are in the mobile development check out my sessions or just come and say 'Hi'. My sessions this year will be :

Mobile Development with Visual Studio 2008 and Compact Framework 3.5
I will talk about the latest Microsoft development tools in the mobile area. This includes the new features in CF 3.5 , the tools included in VS2008 and some of the newest SDKs and APIs

Windows Mobile for Developers
I will talk about the various features provided by Windows Mobile 6, which makes it the ultimate mobile platform these days. I will outline the features, which every developer shoud know in order to sqweese the best of it. We will discuss device security, management and provisioning and even more "trivial" features like Today screen, Auto Start, Services,Registry ,etc.

Although the time of the sessions will be limited, you may drop a comment of you like me to cover a particular topic.

Robotic arm may help disabled people

I'm usually avoiding to blog about robotics on this blog, althought robotics is one of my favourite tech areas.
I have seen a lot of news/articles about robotic arms, but this video just striked me. It shows functional tests of a robotic arm from DEKA (still in development) and it looks pretty amazing.
They called it the Luke's arm, because its creators was inspired by the artificial arm of Luke Skywalker from the Star Wars movie.

Links
Check out the video
Short article about the arm

Visual Studio 2008 Web Dev Hot Fix

I just noticed there is a hot fix for Visual Studio 2008.
The patch fixes number of issues related to the Web Development.
So if you are unsatisified from the VS2008 HTML Designer poor performance go and get it.

Links
Download link
Info about this hot fix on the ScottGu's Blog
Info about this patch on the Visual Web Developer Team's blog

Sony Ericsson and Windows Mobile

Sony Ericsson announced a Windows Mobile based device, called XPERIA X1.












Quote from the official press release:

• Sony Ericsson XPERIATM X1 – energised communication, the premium experience.


• Convergence of multimedia entertainment and mobile Web communication


• Unique arc slider with wide pitch easy-to-use QWERTY keyboard


• XPERIA™ panels - arrange as you want for easy access


• Enjoy multimedia entertainment on bright wide VGA display


• Windows Mobile® capabilities

XPERIA™ panel interface – experiences just the way you want themEnjoy access to different experiences – Web, multimedia, applications – from your desktop. Navigate with the tip of your finger. Configure and have your XPERIA™ panels just the way you want them.

Multiple navigation – the choice is yoursXPERIA™ X1 lets you interact with yourphone in different ways. Touch, full QWERTY keyboard, 4-way key and optical joystick navigation. Switch seamlessly between operation modes.

Arc slider design – makes it stand outThe arc design gives a distinct and unique feel. Slide the screen upwards to reveal the wide pitch QWERTY keyboard. Ample distance between keys makes writing fast and easy.

Ultimate mobile experience – performance on the moveWith Windows Mobile®, the highest data transfer rate (HSDPA/HSUPA) and WiFi™ support, you can enjoy your favourite entertainment and work efficiently on the move. Mobile access to everything that is important to you. aGPS gives you the freedom to explore the world. XPERIA™ X1 is a premium mobile experience.

Via Jason Langridge's blog





Links
Official press release
XPERIA X1 web page

My Top 10 Posts for 2007

I had to do this summary long ago and finally found some spare time:

Following are my top(by number of visits) ten posts:
1.Resolved: Explorer crash on Vista
2.CCR(Concurrency and Coordination Runtime) samples
3.Sql Server 2005: Change schema for all tables
4.“How to” Series: Automating Windows Mobile with Windows PowerShell
5.Visual Studio Toolbox Icons Mess
6.Configuring Symbol MK1100 Micro-Kiosk
7.NET Compact Framework: Mutex vs Critical Section
8.Visual Studio 2008: Device Security Manager
9.Windows Mobile Device Management
10."How To" Series: Retrieving IMSI and IMEI on Windows Mobile

Obviously my most visited posts are not related to the mobile development - May be it's time to change my focus...