From the category archives:

Hardware and Gadgets

Windows Mobile Case Study: Porting Amplitude to WinMo

August 2, 2009

The Windows Mobile Blog points to an MSDN article covering how Amplitude, an application for the iPhone, was ported to Windows Mobile.
Here’s a quick description of Amplitude, which is developed by Gripwire, a mobile and social app company based in Seattle, courtesy of the Windows Mobile Blog:
Amplitude picks up any sound in a user’s [...]

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The Sub-$1000 Opportunity?

July 24, 2009

Here’s a thought experiment for you Windows developers out there: the fact that Apple pretty much owns the $1000+ computer market is in fact an opportunity. Discuss.
(This article appears with slightly different wording – to try things from a different perspective – on the official Microsoft Canada developer blog, Canadian Developer Connection.)

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The “CSS Is Awesome” Mug

July 23, 2009

If you’ve worked with CSS and multiple browsers long enough, this mug will make you laugh (or cry):

At US$12.95 (available at Zazzle.com), it’s a pretty good “Secret Santa” gift for the web developer or designer on your team.

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Boo-Effing-Hoo

July 16, 2009

(Click the image to get the story.)

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Netbook 2009 == Laptop 2005 (or, “Netbooks Suck, Part 3)

July 13, 2009

Here’s an idea sent to me by a friend of mine who’s not a computer programmer, but a “suit” working at a Bay Street firm in Toronto (for those of you not from Canada, “Bay Street” is Canadian for “Wall Street”).
Consider two systems, with specs as shown below:

Component
System A
System B

Processor
Intel 1.6 GHz w/ 533 MHz [...]

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Netbooks, R.I.P.

June 24, 2009

Another guy who shares my belief that netbooks are a transitional category that will eventually get absorbed into what we consider to be notebook computer is Engadget’s Michael Gartenberg, who wrote in a recent post titled Netbooks, R.I.P.. Like me, he believes that netbooks are not a whole new category of computing device, but the [...]

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Like I Said, Netbooks Suck

June 23, 2009

My article from a couple of weeks ago, Fast Food Apple Pies and Why Netbooks Suck, got a lot of reactions from both the “You’re right!” and “You’re dead wrong!” camps (the article on Global Nerdy got a fair number of comments, but the same article on the Accordion Guy blog got a hundred [...]

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16 Megabytes, Yo!

June 19, 2009

Photo courtesy of “SirMildredPierce”. Click the photo to see it at full size.
I’m sure that this beast of a hard drive is now dwarfed by the USB keys that they give away as swag at tech conferences.

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Fast Food Apple Pies and Why Netbooks Suck

May 26, 2009

If you’re pressed for time, the graphic below – which takes its inspiration from these articles by Kathy “Creating Passionate Users” Sierra — captures the spirit of this article rather nicely:

If you have a little more time to spare, I’m going to explain my belief that while netbooks have a nifty form factor, they’re not [...]

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Mental Models, Mantras and My Mission

May 25, 2009

Mental Models and Bill Buxton’s “Draw a Computer” Exercise

In the mid 1990s, well before he was Microsoft’s user interface guru, Bill Buxton often asked people to carry out a simple little exercise: draw a picture of a computer. Most, if not all, of the people he asked would draw something that fit the common mental [...]

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Old Apple Ad: “What Kind of Man Owns His Own Computer?”

April 30, 2009

Click the ad to see it at full size.
From roughly the same time as the Honeywell “What the Heck is Electronic Mail?” advertisement I showed you earlier, comes this Apple ad for the original Apple ][ computer. You have to remember that this was a time when most people didn’t have a computer at their [...]

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Sneak Peek at the Next “Upwardly Mobile”

April 22, 2009

Yes, I’m working on another tutorial on Windows Mobile 6 development. It’s on some of the standard user interface controls – here’s a preview:

I do try to make my example apps entertaining…

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Woot!’s $140 XBox 360

April 19, 2009

Woot! has a pretty sweet deal on refurbed XBox 360s: $140 for a refurbished model with 20GB hard drive and HDMI output. The package comes with all the stuff shown above. If you want it, get it now, because this deal isn’t likely to last very long!

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Upwardly Mobile, Part 2: Your First Windows Mobile 6 Application

April 16, 2009

(In case you missed part 1, it’s here. Be warned; it’s long, but it’s a good read.)
In this installment of Upwardly Mobile, I’m going to give you a quick introduction to developing applications for Windows Mobile 6 phones and handheld devices. I can’t cover all aspects of Windows Mobile development in this article, but there [...]

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Upwardly Mobile, Part 1: A Brief Tour of Mobile App Development

April 13, 2009

This one’s a long one! You might want to get yourself a beverage or snack.

This week is Windows Mobile Incubation Week, a “jam session” taking place at The Empire’s Silicon Valley branch, where startups are invited to learn about Windows Mobile from Microsoft’s gurus and pick up some tricks from mobile industry gurus and venture [...]

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