Archive for category Euro Coins Pocket Collector
Netcafé interview subtitled, Creative Commons and Firefox
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on January 28, 2005
This is another thing I had to do since a long time of which I underestimated the importance, at least from a marketing point of view: I mean adding subtitles to the Netcafé TV interview. 🙂
Technically they’re captions, since I added them using Windows Media Encoder 9 tools. For the occasion I even re-encoded the videos at a higher quality.
I had the chance to show it to some friends on the Pocket PC, but the occasional visitor may easily miss it because he has to browse the site to find it and once found he can’t understand the language if it doesn’t know italian. That explains the work on the english subtitles and that hint to the visitor in a hurry at the top of the page. 😉
While transcribing the interview I liked in particular the questions at the end of the last part of the interview, when Gabriele asked me about the prices and the diffusion of PDAs with a bit of skepticism. Well, we are the country of mobile phones after all, as he often says, and we still have much difficulty to understand the true potential of PDAs not only as personal organizers but also as mini computers, at least compared to other countries. That may change quickly as PDAs with phone capabilities and new Smartphones will start to spread out.
I think my last answers will hold some true even for the next Christmases, who knows?
You may also notice on the left column of this page I adopted the Creative Commons license model for the contents of the website and the link to Firefox, the only browser I’m using.
I even ordered a custom CC shirt from Ken Mickles at GiantRobotPrinting.com. I’ll take a picture of it once it’ll be here.
Watch the videos and stay tuned for more news about Ecpc. 8)
Update: we’re almost there, Ecpc 1.4 will be released in a few days. In the meantime you can read my latest articles about the Loox 720 and the Microsoft Genuine Advantage anti-piracy program published here on the local daily newspaper La Provincia.
How does the Loox look?
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on January 25, 2005
It’s just a word joke, but now that a Fujitsu Siemens Pocket Loox 720 is in my hands I can give an answer to that question: the Look rocks, definitely! 🙂
It was a while I was examining the latest VGA Pocket PC models for the next purchase and when I read about the Loox 720 and its exceptional overall features in various reviews I decided that was the one I had to get although the wallet wouldn’t have agreed as much as the will.
“What a display!” has been the recurring first exclamation when I showed it to friends last week, but from the best VGA LCD on the market to the loudspeaker positioned on the front side there are a lot of killer features inside this limousine among current PDAs.
I got it from Clove Technology, and they were kind to check for any dead pixels on the LCD before shipping it. The italian version should be available in february from Trilogy, although I really hope to see more stuff and accessories for the Loox from this new italian shop soon enough.
In fact the first thing I’m going to add is a screen protector to safeguard such a punch in the eyes! 😉
Then a nice case, and then who knows, surely any useful software optimized for VGA. I’ll write more about the Loox, but the first impression I got is that VGA is the future. I purchased my first Pocket PC to be able to increase productivity, being able to read documents away from the PC, so now with 4x times the resolution of a QVGA Pocket PC you can imagine my joy in reading docs on the Loox! 
Of course I’ve already installed the useful GAPI speed up driver hack by Picard and SE_VGA which is invaluable when using PIE to browse the Internet.
I’ve already did some experiments with the VGA Emulator in the past months, but the impact of seeing such an amount of pixels on a real 3.6-inch LCD is a completely different thing.
I’ve no more excuses to not work on a VGA version of Ecpc. Actually Ecpc, as any other software designed for a QVGA display, does look too much blocky due to pixel doubling routines. Adding detail is a lot more fun, easier and in the end rewarding than removing it to adapt the interface of Ecpc to the smaller Smartphone display, for example. 😉
BatteryLife Activator Test
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on December 21, 2004
When I first read about the BatteryLife Activator I got immediately curious, although I admit I was pretty skeptic about its real capabilities until I read positive comments on some german websites. This mysterious black foil appeared to keep its promises of increasing the charge of a common lithium ion battery by up to 30%, which was pretty amazing actually.
But it wasn’t enough for me and I asked for a sample to make some tests. The guys at BatteryLife sent me the samples and then I’ve been able to use them on the batteries of my Axim X3 and of my Motorola MPx200. On the Axim I run the Spb Benchmark with the option “Max backlight, standard using” several times and if I got 3:05 hours without the Activator, once I applied it on the battery I got results up to about 3:35, which is exactly the increment the Activator promised to provide.
On the MPx200 I did a different test by playing the default video sample at full volume with the Media Player and I got the same percentage increase from about 4:00 to 4:35 hours until the device went off automatically. I’m very satisfied of this product and I hope it will be commercialized and promoted even in Italy. I also wrote an article about it for the local daily newspaper La Provincia, which you can find it here in PDF format.
The advantages of the Activator extend beyond increasing the standby and the talk times by even shortening the battery charging time up to 40%, something I’m glad to confirm, and providing a longer lifetime for the battery itself. Very interesting improvements especially considering a street price of only 9.90 Euro per foil.
Now that I’m fully back to my development schedule with the new workstation, I really hope to make old and new Ecpc users a nice Christmas present with the release of version 1.4.
The next update will be the one they’re waiting for! 😉
Hardware Upgrade and EmEditor
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on December 8, 2004
If used heavily, sooner or later a PC turns into a snail, and I don’t mean the nice gastropod featured in the game Snails by PDA Mill, which I installed on my Pocket PC and Smartphone thanks the special offer reserved to Pocket PC Thoughts subscribers.
That’s to say I’m in the middle of a complete hardware upgrade. In the building of the new workstation I took particular care of two aspects: a fast mass storage subsystem, the real bottleneck of modern PCs, by installing two Barracudas in RAID-0 mode, and a quality Chieftec case providing a good internal ventilation and most importantly silence through the use of quiet fans. 8)
The next step has been the installation of the Windows XP Pro operative system and the software I daily use, each one with its customizations, a procedure that’s time consuming if done properly.
This time however it has been easier thanks to Raxco’s FirstDefense ISR and PerfectDisk, the first one useful for testing drivers and applications without messing with the main snapshot and the second one to keep the Barracudas defragmented. 🙂
And speaking about useful tools to improve productivity, I’m happy since I’ve finally found a text editor with great general features and full Unicode support, EmEditor, useful to edit the language files of Ecpc. Even better is the fact that it’s free for academic and technical use, which includes shareware authors. Thanks to Yutaka Emura of Emurasoft for his policy and as you can read in the Ecpc Wishlist page now I recommend his software to translators. 😉
Update: since at Raxco they’re happy that PerfectDisk v7.0 just won the 2005 Redmond Magazine’s Readers Choice Award for the “Best Disk Defragmentation Tool” they’re offering a 25% discount off their products with the promo code REDMOND25 that they invited me to share. 😉
Coming Full Circle at the Mobile Fun Forum 2004
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on November 26, 2004
On Wednesday 24 November I attended to the Wireless Forum Fall event and in particular I followed the Mobile Fun Forum 2004 conference.
The last year Ecpc won the Cellulari.it Special Award at the first edition of the Mobile Fun Awards and my friends from Impressionware did a big applause when I went on the stage to get the prize. This time they won the Best Gameplay Award for their Java game Metal Racers: Quad Bikes and I had the pleasure to congratulate with them, so I can say that the circle closed perfectly! 🙂
This year the event took place at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Milan. The expo area was much bigger and the event was divided into four main forums: the WLAN Business, the Mobile Office, the Mobile Fun and the Spam Forum.
I followed some interesting presentations during the morning in the Mobile Fun Forum area and I had the chance to meet some old friends such as Pietro of Bryo, Tiziano of Cellulari.it, Fabio of Wireless Gaming and the always kind Marco of Wireless. It’s good to know that wireless technologies are getting even more attention in our country, although mobile gaming and PDA sectors are not certainly at the pace of other countries.
If you’re curious to know if I passed the selections of the Premio Palinsesto Italia contest, well, the answer is no, as they communicated me a few days ago.
Since in any contest part of the fun is in participating, I asked them if the participants will have the chance to show their projects during the two days of the event, set to take place on December 10th and 11th in Bologna, but they told me this was not in program for the first edition of the contest and that they won’t even manage to publish all the submitted projects on the website too soon.
Although I’m curious to know more about the selected finalist projects I doubt I’ll attend to the prize-giving as I was going to, I’ve too much things to do to for the release of Ecpc version 1.4. 😉
Bill Gates at the Microsoft Technical Conference 2004
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on November 22, 2004
On Thursday 18 November I’ve been in Milan to attend to the Microsoft Technical Conference, held at the Assago Forum.
3008 people were present at the event, mostly developers and Technet or Msdn subscribers. The day quickly passed away among the presentations by Microsoft staff divided in four main areas.
Of particular interest have been the application installation and deployment issues discussed by the always brilliant and friendly Fabio Santini, although a bit unlucky with his demos ;), and a preview of the features of Visual Studio 2005 by Gabriele Castellani-Donald Duck voice, as a friend funnily pointed out.
Then Bill Gates performed the final speech in the crowded auditorium. It was the first time I saw him in person and I must say that it has been fascinating hearing about his visions of the incoming future and his intentions on focusing on well-made software to provide a challenging experience to the common non technical user.
After the speech he answered to three questions from as many MVPs and then he disappeared just as he came in. Here are some pictures of the event, sorry for the low quality of the digital camera I used.
Now some news about the incoming version of Ecpc: there’s still some testing to do, but judging from the increase of traffic towards the website it seems this release is getting some attention and that’s a positive sign considering the important switch to the Shareware distribution model I already announced.
This additional time will be well spent since I’ll probably also include the full spanish translation! 🙂
Ecpc version 1.4 Announced!
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on November 10, 2004
I’m ready with the announcement of the long awaited version 1.4 of Ecpc.
It’s currently in betatesting and I won’t release it until the transfer to the new hosting provider TotalChoice Hosting will be completed, but you can get a preview of the new features and changes in the Updates page.
To celebrate the announcement I’ve added a bonus section in the Download page where you can find a little present: a free Euro coins related Pocket PC theme made by McDeb.
Download it, it’s available even for WM2003 SE with QVGA and VGA support.
Another funny addition to the site are the seven deadly sins of e-mail I added to the contacts page, something everyone should keep in mind when dealing with e-mail, me included of course. 😉
It may take up to a week for the hosting transfer to complete, so enjoy the Euro coins theme and prepare for the re-launch of Ecpc! 8)
A Motorola MPx200 in my hands and Premio Palinsesto Italia Contest
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on November 6, 2004
Much work is going on behind the scenes around here and the next week is going to be even busiest.
Since I’m an expert at making things at the last minute ;), yesterday I’ve been able to send a participation dossier for the italian contest Premio Palinsesto Italia containing the latest 1.4 beta version of Ecpc and a preview of the desktop PC version with the same interface of the Pocket PC one, although I use it only for development purposes since the final desktop PC version will have a better and extended user interface.
Finally a contest with some money for the winners, something that might be vital lymph for the next projects if the submission will pass the selections and will go up to the final round. Let’s hope for the best, finger crossed!
I even got my first Smartphone this week, a Motorola MPx200. I don’t like the clamshell design, but I must say that the integration of e-mail, SMS, MMS, Outlook contacts and so on surprised me positively. It only needs a stylus! 😉
And considering that it’s very similar to a Pocket PC from a development point of view, you might expect a Smartphone version of Ecpc well before the desktop PC one.
If you like to read the blog and you check it out for updates every now and then, I suggest you to use the Mozilla Firefox browser and setup up a weekly check in the bookmark manager.
Tabbed browsing and an efficient bookmark management are the killer features which made me to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox as the default browser. Give it a try!
Another quick news: I’ll make a test of the revolutionary BatteryLife Activator. 8)
Update: since version 1.0 of Firefox the development team discarded the notification option in the bookmark manager since it was buggy. I hope to see it again, or maybe provided by some extension plug-in.
Essential Development Software
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on October 18, 2004
As I came back spending much more time in front of the compiler than I did in the previous months, I’ve also started searching for development tools which could increase my productivity or simply make the coding activity easier.
So, when I went back to the Wholetomato website I’ve really been pleased to see that Visual Assist X now supports even the Microsoft eMbedded Visual Tools which I use to build my software for the Pocket PC platform.
In short Visual Assist X is an enhancement to the so called Intellisense, but this definition is too much reductive. If you’re a developer using Microsoft IDEs just try it and you’ll immediately miss it after the trial version will be expired.
So I did and then I’ve purchased a license. On the Wholetomato website there’s also my quote rotating among their many testimonial comments. 🙂
Since Ecpc will soon go multiplatform I’m in the need of a more professional installation tool than EzSetup which I’m using now.
I’m evaluating e-PocketSetup and Installshield X, both finalists in the Pocket PC Magazine 2004 Awards. Unfortunately they doesn’t seem to offer a license model for hobbyists or independent developers.
The choice is an important one because when distributing your software the installation is the last thing you work on, while it’s the first thing the user has to face.
Yes, this means Ecpc version 1.4 is almost ready, although I might delay its release if the two new translators who’re working on the french version will complete the translation this week.
Speaking about good software…
Posted by Albegor in Como, Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on September 24, 2004
While I was working as waiter at the recent Workshop Ambrosetti, the international meeting about economy taking place annually at Villa d’Este during the first week of september, I had the unexpected chance to exchange a few words with Carlo Rubbia, the 1984 Physics Nobel Prize, and you can imagine my satisfaction when I told him that I choose his quote, “Hardware is nothing without software”, as the topic for the written composition at my school-leaving examination, a quote which is now printed on my business card. 😉
So, speaking about good software, I think I’ve finally found the best hard disk defragmenter tool on the market, Raxco’s PerfecDisk, a combination of speed and efficiency which is uncommon in current defragmenters.
Just after purchasing it I also discovered an invaluable system recovery tool on Raxco’s website. It’s FirstDefense, a tool which works with the concepts of “snapshots” and “anchored data” to safeguard from system failures a hard disk with WindowsXP and the NTFS file format or even to quickly boot to a clean OS installation.
Had I discovered it earlier I would had a better time the two times my system crashed, so now I’m passing the advice.
Getting back to good Pocket PC software, I’ve just upgraded to RepliGo version 2.0 and I’m satisfied of the new features Cerience introduced, like bookmarks, text searches and live hyperlinks among the favorites.
Then I must say that SpbTime, the advanced time tool from Spb Software House, has been a new discovery since I find myself often using its timer and desktop clock functions, with different skins.
Well that’s just what I need to keep up with my software projects… time!
But I must also say that Ecpc 1.4 is progressing nicely.
Acurious note about Rubbia: during his lunch a sommelier approached him and asked what was the status of his project for the atomic propulsion space engine and Rubbia told him that the research is proceeding, but in the USA, not certainly in Italy…