#GPI and Mobile Fun Awards contest deadlines hit
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on October 16, 2003
This has been a really busy week since yesterday was the deadline of two contests.
Not only I had to complete the tutorial about Pocket PC development for the the Best Tutorial Contest hosted by #GameProg-Ita, which I already wrote about, but also I built a Special Edition of Ecpc for the Mobile Fun Awards, a contest open to all italian software developers for mobile devices, which will take place on 28 October in Milan during the Mobile Fun Forum 2003, the first event in Italy devoted to content and entertainment software providers for mobile devices.
The event is organized by Wireless, the italian magazine for the Mobile Economy, and it’s endorsed by the Mobile Entertainment Forum organization.
All of this while I’m working on the last feature of version 1.2 of Ecpc and on another thing about the website. 😉
I’ve got a bunch of e-mails who need a reply and I’m sorry I wasn’t able to give them a quick one, but deadlines are deadlines!
The “Die another day” philosophy, the title of the last James Bond’s film, is not applicable here. 🙂
Ecpc on the local newspaper La Provincia
Posted by Albegor in Como, Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on October 15, 2003
I was really waiting for this day since Euro coins pocket collector has appeared in a full page article in the weekly feature the local daily newspaper La Provincia dedicates to news about Internet and new technologies.
La Provincia is an important newspaper not only for the Como province but also for the Lombardia and it’s mentioned in the press preview of some national TV channels.
They print about 45.000 copies daily for a total of 300.000 potential readers! 
At this link you can find the page in PDF format, while you can read the whole newspaper on their website.
Thanks to Simone, the Internet feature editor, who granted me this great opportunity. 😉
My Ipaq takes off with the Frecce Tricolori!
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on October 10, 2003
So here’s the special picture I was talking about, which just appeared in exclusive on Pocket PC Thoughts!
At the recently closed SMAU 2003 I didn’t miss the opportunity to jump into the cockpit of a real Aermacchi MB-339 jet aircraft used by the world famous italian Air Force Acrobatic Team, the Frecce Tricolori, obviously bringing with me my faithful Ipaq.
Thanks to the Air Force specialists who allowed me to merge my two biggest passions ever in this unique occasion. 🙂
Who knows if the Ipaq could survive to the high acceleration acrobatic maneuvers this plane daily performs…
And of course the application running on the Ipaq was Euro coins pocket collector!
Back from SMAU and curiosity about the recent Italian Black Out
This was the most profitable SMAU for me since I began visiting it many years ago, and it was the first time I went to the exhibition for work and not just as a visitor.
I had the pleasure to meet italian Microsoft MVPs, in particular Giorgio Cifani and Pino Paparone, both MVP specialized in mobile devices, who showed me the hardware such as the new Motorola Smartphone.
Also I met Enrico of Pocket PC Italia, in his crowded stand with the latest Pocket PC and Smartphone novelties and accessories.
Most importantly I had some important meetings which I hope will turn into great announcements in the next weeks. I also took a very special picture, which I’ll upload shortly. 😉
I’m already back to the big amount of work waiting for me, but I’ll leave you with a curious picture about the unexpected italian Black Out happened during the night of sunday 28th of september. Here’s the graphic of the Internet traffic on the MIX ( Milan Internet eXchange ), where you can notice the flat line in relation to the Black Out hours.
We hope it won’t happen again…
SMAU 2003 opening day
Today is the opening day of SMAU 2003, the 40° International Exhibition of ICT and Consumer Electronics, the biggest event of this kind in Italy, which is taking place in Milan Fair from 2 to 6 October.
I’ll go there on Saturday 4 and I’m trying to setup some interesting meetings, since all the major players of the PDA market will attend the exhibition. If you want to meet me during that day please contact me.
I’d like to thank Riccardo of Internavigare for the ticket invitation he provided me. 😉
Do you know what the initials SMAU mean? They stand for “Salone Macchine e Attrezzature per l’Ufficio”, an old name which survived the test of time since 1964.
Here you can download the SMAU map to bring it with you on your PDA.
Ecpc at the 11th place of the Handango People’s Choice Awards 2003
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on September 30, 2003
A very nice surprise came into my mailbox today as I discovered Ecpc has almost reached the Top Ten of the Handango People’s Choice Awards in the category Best Education Solution! 🙂
The Handango People’s Choice Awards are designed to honor those applications that offer customers the best quality available in the mobile software world. Handango Members have the opportunity to vote for their favorite software in numerous categories.
Need to say more? I’m amazed I’ve reached the 11th place in such a short time frame, so first of all I’d like to thank the people who cast their vote for Ecpc.
Handango has just reopened voting for next year’s People’s Choice Awards and the next group of winners will be announced in March 2004, so if you like Ecpc now you know exactly what to do: just go to the bottom of the Product details page and vote it in the Best Education Solution category.
The next time we‘ll do much better than the 11th place, won’t we? 😉
#GPI Best Tutorial Contest participation announcement
Those of you interested in getting started with the development of Pocket PC applications, and in particular whoever sent me an e-mail asking “I’ve downloaded the Embedded Visual Tools, now what?”, will be happy to know that I’m writing an introductory, but exhaustive, tutorial about Pocket PC development for the Best Tutorial Contest hosted by #GameProg-Ita, the best Italian resource for wanna be game developers.
Here’s the abstract of the tutorial:
“The purpose of the tutorial will be to provide to the wanna be developer of entertainment software for the handheld platform Pocket PC, the basic concepts related to the distinctive features of such platform, to the available development tools and programming languages, in particular the Microsoft’s Embedded Visual Tools and the related SDKs, including the small GAPI (Game API) library, which contains the functions to access the hardware at low level, something fundamental for any game of medium complexity.
It will also be included a brief analysis of the Pocket PC software market, and the opportunities this new mobile platform offers to independent developers.”
It will be my little contribution to the small italian game development community, but not only for them, since once the contest will be over I’ll translate the tutorial in english and I’ll publish it here on the site.
As if I hadn’t enough work to do, the deadline for the contest is the 15th October… but I’ll make it! 😉
Ecpc finally on printed magazines
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on September 26, 2003
Today Frédéric Botton, Chef de projet of the French PDA Magazine, has kindly sent me a scan of the article about Ecpc appeared in the september-october issue of the magazine. 🙂
As you can see in the picture below, I’ve sort of censored the URL address pointing to the french Special Demo of Ecpc which I build for his readers, since it’s currently on my website and at the moment I can’t afford bandwidth problems. So if you want it you have to buy a copy of PDA Magazine. 😉
A couple of notes: the price in the article refers to the first promotional version of Ecpc and the french Special Demo has already been updated to the latest version 1.1.
The standard Demo version of Ecpc should have been included also in the Cover Disk of the current issue of the british magazine PDA Essentials, but I’ve not been able to get any confirmation of that so far.
Update: Ecpc appeared on the Cover CD of issue 16 of PDA Essentials with a review in the CD pages also. Now I can’t wait to get a copy of the magazine!
Have a nice weekend!
Website external links updated and new feature added to the Ecpc Wishlist
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on September 23, 2003
I’m not an expert web developer, so I was pleased to receive the tips by Quintin Riis, a young web designer from the USA, in particular about the weird way I used JavaScripts to open the external links in a new browser window.
Now I’ve changed all the external links, but feel free to alert me if something doesn’t work properly on your browser.
I’ve just added a new great feature in the Wishlist, the compare collections feature, which will be included in the next version of Ecpc since I’m already working on it. 😉
Finally I’ve uploaded the collection file of Mariano in the swapping page. His swap list file should be soon ready.
Incoming German translation and small bug spotted in Ecpc
Posted by Albegor in Euro Coins Pocket Collector, Mobile, Software on September 20, 2003
Most probably the german translation of Ecpc will be the first one to be released since now two people are working on it, including a kind german from Hamburg, Heiko Heubach, who not only purchased a regular copy of the program, but also offered me his help for the translation! 🙂
He also has a website in german with information about the Canary Islands, so be sure to check it out!
Another new kind italian user, Mariano, from the beautiful city of Naples, reported a small bug related to the variants description of the german 2 Euro coin, year 2002, Mint mark A.
The bug has already been fixed and the fix will be included in the next release of Ecpc, but for those of you who can’t wait, feel free to contact me and I’ll send you an updated executable. 😉
Yesterday I did some swapping with a friend and Ecpc betatester, Stefano, so now I’ve uploaded his collection and my updated swap list in the swapping page.