Windows Mobile Louisville

Teksoft has released version 2.0 of FingerTouch - FingerTouch Pro.

Features:

• 5 layouts:
  • classic keyboard
  • smart keyboard (predictable)
  • phone keyboard (phone-like)
  • calculator/numeric keyboard
  • the successful big keyboard (predictable)
• Fast text input with patented technologies:
  • Embedded fT9 Technology, this is the Teksoft-Patented, T9-like technology included in Fingertouch Professional
  • Embedded UltraKeyboard Technology, for assigning various actions to text commands (triggers)
• Configurable layout, including keyboard Skin, text font, size and color
• Drag and drop on keyboard for changing the keyboard size, or for customizing the position of the keys
• Magnifier that can help you better see the keys you are pressing
• Configurable fT9 parameters, for easy use including finger easy interface
• Gestures for Backspace, Space, Enter or Upper-case letters
• Ultrakeyboard advanced configuration panel for defining your custom action and triggers.

You can watch several videos showing FingerTouch Pro in action, as each of its features is well documented for easy use.

There is a 16 day trial version available.  Try it or buy it here.

FUNCONTACT GOT NEW SUIT
New stylish black skin for businessmen

VITO Technology releases a new version of FunContact - the best selling contact manager that provides the most exciting and convenient contact management on Windows Mobile touch screen devices. You can do everything with a flick of a finger!
 
FunContact 2.15 presents two major new features: a new black skin like in the recently released ZoomBoard and SMS-Chat, and also joystick support. The black skin fits perfectly brand-new Windows Mobile devices hitting the market like HTC Diamond, TyTN II, Touch Pro and all other devices from Touch series as they all have dim color theme.
 
The original “fun” skin is still available and allows even serious businessmen to take their ease on vacation and relax. After all your wife is not going to believe you are actually updating your contacts or looking thru the call history even if she notices the sliding screens with exciting animation and bright colors. She might want to have a play with it though, so beware.
 
Joystick support has been the outcry from our customers since FunContact was released. New FunContact gives you the choice: you can scroll the list with a finger or with a joystick. Both variants are very convenient, and though the main idea of FunContact is to manage contacts with finger, some FunContact users addicted to joystick now can also benefit by performing all the basic operations in FunContact like calling, texting ,etc. with joystick.

FunContact is available for $19.95 here.  There is a special offer in the post on the forum!  Hint Hint!

Electric Pocket has just added a bunch of new free ringtones to its Ringo ringtone manager for smartphones. The new ringtones were custom composed exclusively for Ringo and won’t be found anywhere else. The ringtones are a mix of Classical, Country, Rock, Salsa and Ragtime.

Ringo gives smartphone users an attractive and easy-to-use interface for playing their own MP3 music as ringtones and message tones on their phone, as well as making personal and group call tones easy to set up and maintain.

Ringo is available at ringomo.com for US$19.95.

I’ve been using Jott for some time now, and I find it incredibly handy and useful - I even have my Google Calendar set up with Jott Links, so I can Jott an appointment from my phone and it shows up on my Google Calendar (then, taking it a step further, I have GooSync, so my Google Calendar syncs with my Mogul!).

Enter Jott Feeds.  “Jott Feeds is a new and easy way to get updates from your favorite websites by listening to them on your mobile phone!  It is a simple service designed to make accessing the information you want as easy as a phone call.

Add any RSS feed to your Jott account, call Jott and have them read to you over your phone. Whether you are in the car or walking around town- you can now listen in to your trusted sources of news and other content without needing Internet access”.

I’ve only been playing with it since yesterday, but it’s very cool!  Jott offers numerous feeds for you to choose from (Yahoo! News, Local Weather, Tech Crunch, Mashable, Lifehacker and many more), or you can create your own feeds.  I created a feed for this blog as well as the forum (see the buttons over in the right-hand navigation panel) - it is pretty cool to hear the posts on the phone!

Check it out - Jott is free!

The official Windows Mobile 6.1 ROM update for Sprint’s Mogul and Touch has been leaked out early.  Yes, this is the official ROM that will soon be available on both HTC and Sprint’s sites.  I have installed the update for my Mogul and it went very smoothly.  I’m going to post details in the forum about the links, how it went and how I restored my data.

Read this post from back in April to refresh your memory on features of Windows Mobile 6.1.

Spb Software is partnering with Toshiba Information Systems (UK) Ltd – Mobile Communications Division, to deliver the ultimate mobile device experience through the recently launched Toshiba Portégé G810. The Portégé G810 features the Spb Mobile Shell-based Toshiba Touch Interface, a customized version of Spb Full Screen Keyboard, the Spb Pocket Plus smart scrolling component, and other Windows Mobile customization enhancements. The strong combination of a powerful platform and functional hardware, complemented by a set of usability tools from Spb, make Toshiba’s Portégé G810 a very fast and intuitive smartphone.

“We designed the Portégé G810 as a stylish touch screen Windows Mobile phone, ideal for both mobile-working and socializing, as it combines a powerful operating system with an incredibly user-friendly interface,” says Bertrand Issard, Head of Product Planning & Strategy, Toshiba Information Systems (UK) Ltd. “We turned to Spb Software, with their extensive Windows Mobile software and usability expertise, to support us in creating a highly intuitive user interface for our Portégé G810,” he concludes.

“Microsoft is committed to support a vibrant partner ecosystem and always delivers opportunities to create solutions that meet a wide range of Windows Mobile customers’ needs,” comments Fabio Falzea, acting as Mobile Communications Business Lead, Microsoft Central & Eastern Europe Area. “The Toshiba - Spb synergy is one good example of the rich benefits the Microsoft ecosystem secures to the market, where partners are able to complement each other’s strengths and deliver new innovative and rich experiences on Windows Mobile platform”.

The Toshiba Touch Interface has been localized into 13 languages, has been skillfully embedded into the operating system, and is incredibly stable. “Toshiba’s Portégé G810 has a very fast and responsive screen, with outstanding color quality,” - says Yaroslav Goncharov, Spb Software CTO - “the Spb Mobile Shell gestures and animation are especially striking, emphasizing the pure beauty of this finger-friendly mobile device.”

Further Information

Further information about this project can be found at the Spb and Toshiba websites:
About Spb customization for Toshiba Portégé G810
Toshiba Portégé G810 website
Spb Mobile Shell

Have you seen Zumobi? This new Windows Mobile application offers a completely unique way to browse the mobile web in format that’s ideal for the small screens of our mobile devices.  Instead of traditional browsing via links and clicking, Zumobi displays a widget with tiles (small squares) representing your favorite web sites.  To “browse” these sites, you zoom in on them – much easier than typing in a URL.  From the application’s configuration menu, you can manage the tiles you want displayed – pulling from categories like humor, finance, news, kids, games, sports, weather, entertainment, and more, but one of the new additions in Zumobi’s latest release is a pretty awesome tool that lets you make your own tiles.  Called the “Tile Wizard,” you can customize a tile’s look-and-feel while pulling in content from any RSS feed.  These user-generated tiles can also be shared with your friends, just like any tile added from the Gallery.  Want to get Zumobi on your Windows Mobile phone?  Just go to http://get.zumobi.com from your device’s browser.

Source: Sarah Perez over at on10.net

PhatWare Corporation announced the release of a new version of its PhatNotes notes organizer for Windows Mobile devices and Windows based PCs. The new version features improved compatibility with Microsoft Windows Vista, two new UI themes, Windows taskbar menu, and improved autobackup feature.

PhatNotes allows users to easily create, search, and sort text-based notes on Windows-based Smartphones, Pocket PCs, and desktop PCs; it also allows synchronizing of notes between multiple platforms, giving users a powerful way to manage and access their personal information on-the-go. PhatNotes was named as Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine’s “Best of Category” honors in the “Utilities-Notes” category for the seven straight years.

A key new feature added to PhatNotes 5.3 is the new Windows taskbar menu which provides a quick access to the PhatNotes application and all opened notes and allows users to hide PhatNotes popup windows when minimized, create new notes, and change other application settings. New Application options allow to toggle PhatNotes taskbar icons and change basic application behavior. The new version of PhatNotes has been updated to support Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and the latest mobile devices powered by Windows Mobile 6.1. In addition, the desktop potion of PhatNotes features two new UI themes and improved autobackup feature which allows creating multiple backup files and is now independent from the manual backup wizard.

“All improvements made in the new version of PhatNotes are based on the feedback that we’ve received from PhatNotes users” - said Stanislav Miasnikov, president of PhatWare Corp., — “We hope that all PhatNotes users, especially these who requested some of the new features, will be pleased with the new version.”

PhatNotes Pricing and Availability:
PhatNotes 5.3 is available now at the list price of $39.95. A free 30-day trial version of PhatNotes 5.2 is available here. PhatNotes 5.3 is a free upgrade for all registered uses of PhatNotes 5.X. Through the end of June 2008, all registered users of previous versions of PhatNotes can purchase the latest version for a discounted upgrade price of only $19.95 here.

Spb Software House has released Spb Backup 2.0 - a tool for making reserve copies of personal data and system settings for Windows Mobile phones.  Spb Backup safeguards from data loss, eliminates the pain of reinstalling applications after a hard reset, a ROM or device upgrade, and delivers a flawless restore experience.  The new Spb Backup 2.0 is smarter, twice as fast, and makes moving data between Windows Mobile phones as easy as unpacking an archive.

Spb Backup 2.0 will come to the rescue if a hard reset disaster strikes, or if the device is stolen or lost.  Spb Backup Sync makes it easy to keep a recent copy of all data and system settings at a secure desktop PC location.  Spb Backup 2.0 will restore from the archive, even if data has to be moved to a new device or ROM.  The backing up process itself is so easy, that regular backups will become second nature.  Spb Backup 2.0 works for both Pocket PCs and Smartphones and copies the entire device, including contacts, sms, emails, storage card files, and even preferences and shortcuts.

Originally, Spb Backup sprung up from Spb Clone technology - a product, trusted by thousands of enterprises for creating exact copies of “master” PDA devices.  The new Spb Backup 2.0 offers a handy desktop component - Spb Backup Unpack.  The tool allows viewing and exploring the backup archive on a desktop PC and pulling out single contacts, messages, and tasks.  During the restore process, Spb Backup will automatically detect if device or ROM upgrade is taking place and prompt to select the appropriate restore mode. (more…)

Back in mid-May, we posted that Live Search was updated, and we highlighted the obvious new features such as Weather, Collections and Web Search, but since then, I happened upon something else they added which is really cool: integration into the Contacts menu.

Previously, this was something that only Google Maps “inserted” into the Contacts menu, and I found it very handy (though it would error sometimes because it would try to find an address including the Country/Region).  Live Search is now offering the same addition to the menu - Show On Map.  So far, on every contact I have tried, it works flawlessly, so apparently Live Search is looking at the contact info correctly, whereas Google Maps occasionally errs…

I am very excited about this find, as it adds a feature that I thought was lacking in Live Search.   Previously, I had both Google Maps and Live Search installed,  so I could have the best of both apps.  Now I just have Live Search on my Mogul.

I hope one of the next things they address is the live navigation - it works nicely, but I wish they’d force the map to turn so where you’re heading is at the top of the screen. Currently, the map always stays with North on top, so if you have your device in a mount in your vehicle, the actual route you are seeing could be pointing in any direction, which is confusing.  It needs to resemble how other GPS’s display navigation, even if it’s only 2D and not 3D like so many GPS’s nowadays.