Windows Mobile latest vapour

Well a startup is giving a to go to tactics that are made famous by Microsoft itself; cheap vapourware tactics. As in touting software that doesn't exist. Their latest attempt for Windows Mobile: Skyfire... err... note to Microsoft and its affiliates: if you can't stop copying everyone else's products, can you try being original in at least naming the copied products? you know... just to differentiate yourself from software pirates.

ok so what is Skyfire? well its a browser for Windows Mobile, akin to one Microsoft had promised in December it will kick iPhone's butt (laughing already? waite, there's more to come). Ok so couple of questions:

Q: Why does Windows Mobile need Skyfire?
A: cuz its current browser sux.

Q: So what makes it so cool?
A: well it can browse the web that will support features which... umm... well some of the other smartphone browsers already support and have been in the market for a while. (check S60 based smartphones for instance)

Q: So its like a normal web browser?
A: Not really, normal browsers download webpages direct to your phone as opposed to Skyfire's approach which uses a proxy-server to send out web content to your Windows Mobile phone. Meaning, another computer does the browsing then sends out supposedly cached content to your Windows Mobile based smartphone (Ahem! does anyone else hear several alarm bells ringing?)

Q: So if the actual processing is done on some other server not my phone, they can see what I am browsing?
A: Interesting question, and here is some really interesting read from Skyfire's private info:

""When you use the Browser, Skyfire has access to, and in many cases will monitor, your Browser Usage."

"Browser Usage Information includes such information as which websites and programs you access or download on your Device, how long you visit such websites and use such programs, your activities (such as products purchased or advertisements viewed) on such websites, which specific areas of a website or webpage you use and for how long, websites you bookmark, search terms you use, referring/exit pages, browser and platform types, the geographic location in which your Device is being used and information you provide on third party websites."

Whoa.... like are you serious? Sounds to me if the US government had gifted Osama with a Windows Mobile phone running Skyfire, he would be long caught and dead by now, they could have monitored his every move! With this kind of browser, who needs spyware or viruses??

But wait, there is one more question...

Q: Where is Skyfire?
A: At the moment, nowhere actually. Like no one has seen it or used it, or download it or allowed to test it or know if it really exists. OK of all the people, even the staff of msmobiles.com, which provides daily news and information to help Windows Mobile users make better use of their devices, has to say this "...we must conclude that it is just another vaporware product ... that in reality may never materialize as a commercial product." - 28 Jan 2008.

not laughing yet? well neither are the Windows Mobile users. So what about the one that Microsoft had promised in December? Here is some interesting buzz their announcement is creating like from electronista.com:

• Pfft. More like, "Microsoft copying iPhone Safari in next WinMobile."
• Always, MS is saying their next version of vapor/crapware will attempt to copy what [already] works now, except to add 10 steps and requires help from IT department.
• more vaporware from Micro$oft..... Promising tomorrow what already exists on the market today.
• Ha Ha Ha... "Microsoft has not issued a schedule for when it expects any of the updates to appear", oh that brings tears to my eyes .. good luck with that Microsoft..

Umm... what can I say.... they've already said it all.

Bilal
http://elanist.com/bilal

MS Office on smartphones

Folks you might wanna pay a bit closer attention to this one and why I say Windows Mobile is bit of a warning lable if you expect to make good use of your smartphone. Thats right! I said it: its a warning label!

When buying a smartphone, users often presume that getting a Windows Mobile based phone means they would get better usage and support for their MS Office files. Its probably one of the worst myths in the world of smartphones. You cant entirely blame them for this faulse assumption. One would expect "Windows" based smartphone to give better functionality for Word documents, Excel sheets and Power Point presentations. Unfortunately, it doesnt work that way. If only people could google a bit more before investing in a smartphone or better still... read my blog!

Most people would find it strange or might even be reluctant to believe that the first generation of ESeries smartphones came with Nokias own application, Documents, for accessing MS Office files, was so good that not only it was better than any 3rd party software, it was actually better than Microsoft's own devices! Its not just Mobile Review who declared Nokia's MS Office capabilities to be superior to Microsoft's proposition, others have been expressing their frusration with even with just document viewing on Windows Mobile. funny huh? well if you use Microsoft Windows (and most likely you do), its not that hard to believe.

But come on! how hard is it to have a quick browse on the net to find out the most suitable software or using MS files on any smart phone? to figure that Quick Office is probably currently the most popular solution. Until recently, Office 2007 files were not supported by any smartphones, and yes not even for Windows Mobile. But now finally this has been fixed and solutions are availble for most devices. QuickOffice has also just released Premier 5.0 now supports Office 2007 on Symbian smartphones.

Better than that! the ESeries phones like E61 and E62 both come with excellent and comprehensive a built- in full Office suite which allows you to view, edit and create Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. For both these devices, contacts, calendar, tasks and notes, all of them easily sync to Microsoft Outlook using the included PC Suite. And if you're a power user, you probably already own or at least eyeing the E90.

E61 Screens

The lesson learned? Windows Mobile does not mean it gives better support for MS Office, in fact you might even wanna treat "Windows Mobile" as a warning lable (indulge me a little), specially if you wanna use your Windows Mobile device with Vista.


Bilal
http://elanist.com/bilal

Symbian is ripe for developers

all of a sudden things seem to have started falling in place for developers to pay attention to Symbian. So many little things that add up to a lot, and hard to cover in one posting. But the end results will certainly be exciting.

First off, the smartphones are actually selling much faster. Faster in fact, than laptops! According to In-Stat, "sales of smartphones will grow at more than a 30% compound annual growth rate for the next five years." and smartphone operating systems will grow at double digits each year until at least 2012. The devices will very much become the work and infotainment companions in the next few years. In May this year, Gartner predicts, nearly half a billion phone subscribers for mobile TV alone, by 2010. Still more staggering is the figure is that of WiFi phone sales whichi s expected to top $145 billion in 2010.


The numbers alone represent how big a market this is about to become for developers. But the platforms themselves have now become more sophisticated and ripe for developers with tools and supporting framework.

Symbian already has the largest smartphone OS market share by far. So developers would definitely be hungry for more options, tools and framework for writing software for Symbian.
Like the recently announced Symbian60 Touch UI, Sensor Framework and UI Accelerator Toolkit. You can find plenty of detail on this framework on this artcile by Rafe Blandford.


Red Five Labs has just released Net60 (beta 1) for immediate download. Net60 enables managed Windows Mobile applications to run unchanged on S60 devices. So developers can now use C# and Visual Basic .NET in Visual Studio, and use the .NET Compact Framework environment to build applications for Symbian devices.

PHP and mySQL are going to be available for S60 devices in early 2008, with full LAMP stack.

Even Linux developers will now have their greatest opportunity on Symbian OS.

and to top it all, Symbian has just bought over Beijing Genesis Interactive Technology Co. Ltd. (‘MoGenesis’), lock stock and barrel! It does show some serious development ambitions on part of Symbiam. I have not been able to find yet what this company specificially develop, but its certainly one of the leading developer of smart OS mobile applications for the fastest growing smartphone market. Interestingly, before founding this company, it's CEO Dennis Kung held two senior management positions at Microsoft Corporation where he worked for eleven years.

The time is ripe for developers to take this platform seriously, because Symbian is sure to become one of the most lucrative OS's to develop for in the coming years.


Bilal Zaheer
http://elanist.com/bilal

Apple taking notes from industry leaders?

Looks like even Steve Jobs has to take ques from industry leaders now and then. Like he is doing now citing Nokia and Palm? (Apple loosens grip on iPhone software)

Smart of him to open up iPhone to third-party developers, but perhaps they should have done it in the first place. Now its going to take them till February to come out with an SDK! but I suppose at least this delay is justifiable to make their phones more safe from viruses:

"... While this makes such a phone less than 'totally open,' we believe it is a step in the right direction," Jobs wrote of Nokia's stance. " - CNN, 17 October 2007.

Bilal Zaheer
http://elanist.com/bilal

Metasploit: Cracking the iPhone (part 2.1)

for iPhone cracks and other useful stuff for it you might wanna check out this:

Metasploit: Cracking the iPhone (part 2.1)


bilal
http://elanist.com/bilal

Mobile Wars!

Well actually its mobile OS wars.
Anyone heard the news about Google mobile OS? apparantly its supposed to tackle Windows Mobile and not Apple because its a software project not a mobile phone. http://www.electronista.com/articles/07/10/08/google.phone.os.vs.win.mob/

I think its still too early say, firstly cuz the software is not out yet. Secondly, yes Apple has had a great start with iPhone but its still a start (keep in mind, iPhone sales were expected to be three times higher than they actually were in the first 30 hours). Sure its a great product, but its not quite anything revolutionary enough to start a new genere of mobile/portable devices. Apple's Newton was supposed to be just that, long ago, but failed miserably, instead Palm succeeded in its place and now it has more or less disappeared into the crowd.

It sure is very interesting news. But is there room for more mobile OSs in the long run? in the mid-eighties (I'm not old! i just got into computers way too early!) there used to be a whole forest of great home and personal computers, all with different OSs and own breed of software. You dont know any of them? yeah, thats how comprehensively they were wiped out! Mobile OS's case may be a bit different, because content/software is much more platform independant now, but like I said in my previous post (go read it!) for smartphones, its all about market share and ease of use. Ok Symbian has the largest market share by far and its the oldest and most mature mobile phone OS too, so Symbian is not going anywhere. The interesting thing would be to see how the rest of the mobile OS's battle it out!

--
Bilal Zaheer
http://elanist.com/bilal

Symbian or Windows Mobile?

So iPhone is a run-away success. Now who didn't see this coming? And what is to be learned from it? It’s been in the making for like 4 years. This could be a long discussion by itself. But one thing that is sure about any smart pocket devices, most of all smartphones, is that the only way to lead in them is through innovation and ease of use.

How Microsoft has been successful in the PC world, by hook or by crook, is a different matter altogether. I often wonder, if Gary Kildall had accepted IBM’s offer to write DOS for PC, the world definitely would be a very different place today, at least the cyber world.

Thankfully, at least the mobile world already is a different place... Let’s face it, Microsoft has never come up with one original idea for software. Every piece of software written by their developers is a hastily put together pile of code copied from someone else’s products. Is anyone keeping count of how many times they’ve been sued for this? Well here lies the good news for the smartphone users: Microsoft did not copy Symbian! Their smartphone OS is loosely based on their own sluggish and bug infested Windows. So not only Windows Mobile has no unfair advantage in the smartphone world, its inherent design will never let it surpass its competition.

A fellow software engineer friend of mine, who was then working at Microsoft, sent me the source code for Windows XP (most geeks out there have already seen this code I am sure). Windows Mobile cannot be much different from its parent. Allow me to share its source code, though I cannot share the entire source, here is main code:

/* Windows Mobile */


#include "win95.h"
#include "win98.h"
#include "winXP.h"
#include "somethingMobile.h"
#include "longErrorList.h"
#include "oldStuff.h"
#include "finguresCrossed.h"
#define INSTALL_HARD

char make_prog_look_big 1600000 ;
void main()
{
while(!CRASHED)
{
display_copyright_message();
display_start_button();
do_nothing_loop();


if (first_time_installation)
{
make_50_megabyte_swapfile();
do_nothing_loop();
random(hang_system);
}

/* printf("Welcome to Windows 95"); */
/* printf("Welcome to Windows 98"); */
/* printf("Welcome to Windows XP");*/
printf("Welcome to Windows Mobile");
if (system_ok())
random(hang_system);
else
system_memory = open("a:\swp0001.swp", O_CREATE);
while(something)
{
sleep(5);
get_user_input();
sleep(5);
act_on_user_input();
sleep(5);
}
create_general_protection_fault();
}


In the long run, the clunky, resource hungry Windows Mobile has an uphill task ahead of it in the long run compared to its purpose built mobile OS's like Symbian.In the last couple of years, Symbian has out-sold both Microsoft and Palm put. Even in Japan Symbian having a virtual monopoly with its ties to NTT DoCoMo, the leading player in the world's most advanced mobile market. Symbian already has a market share 72% in smartphones. The question is really not of who’s winning the competition, right now its more like, is there really any competition?

--
Bilal Zaheer
http://elanist.com/bilal