Windows Mobile is over
How can you have a twelve year lead in something and for those ten years release nothing but junk and make it hard for developers to release products?
That what Microsoft has done for the Windows Mobile (Phone) Platform.
I develop across three platforms Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and the iPhone. To make Blackberry and iPhone applications, no matter how many releases I make, I pay a flat fee of $99 (USD) and can make programs to my hearts content.
I make a Windows Mobile program to run on a phone and I need to register with at least two agencies and pay a few hundred dollars for each release. That means if I fix one small bug and make a new release I need to pay a few hundred dollars. If want to make it easy for my customer and package that program in an installer, I need to pay twice on every application !
The money doesn’t go to Microsoft it goes to the “testing” agencies required by the Phone Companies. These testing companies really do not DO anything useful like check to see if the applications are malicious or cause trouble, they just make sure they run (I think).
BlackBerry and Apple make it extremely easy to make as many applications I want and no matter how many fixes I make they do not charge me extra every time I want to sign and ship an application. If you do sign an application you need to make two versions because a “signed” application wont run on older Windows Mobile Devices. Its just a mess, start over from the beginning Microsoft and take a cue from BlackBerry.
If you want to get confused just go to the Microsoft Application signing site or go to the Microsoft PocketPC mobile group online, the posts on signing are just overwhelming. Its almost as if Microsoft is turning a blind eye and making a problem on purpose. If I was the Windows Phone team I would hide in shame
In case you did not hear, the exploit for the DSN servers was leaked into the wild, there are exploits everywhere and yes you will be affected. Please point your DNS servers to OpenDNS or patch your DNS servers. To test your DNS servers go here.
I have already talked about ripping DVD on the Apple platform for free, if you want to do it on Windows try DVD Catalyst, its the free version of the program and does not have the bells and whistles, but seems to work ok on the few DVDs I have tried.
Looks like there will be an Apple product refresh in September, if you can put off buying an iPod wait until then.
Microsoft is now letting Windows games get onto the Windows Live network for free. The games are not free but the connection to other players is. They will still charge for this for the XBox 360 people. Now you Windows people can connect to XBOX 360 people and play online.
I noticed the RIAA/MPAA are taking the a different tack in trying to prevent stealing of their music/movies. They are pressuring the government to stop “child porn“, and to do this they need to shutdown avenues of this , which mean the alt.binaries newsgroups. A lot of their stuff on here is pirated music and videos not child porn.
Yawn, who cares about HS-Radio ?
I like this story about this Green PC. You buy a crappy under powered computer with not keyboard and monitor an its saves $35 per a year in Electricity. Yea, if you are going to take my power computing away from me at least save me more.
Last program is for Windows Users called WinPatrol, it tell you everything you need to know about what is running on your Windows XP/Vista. You will be amazed at what is running.
Need some free games over the summer, here are 365 of them.
Later
