It’s going to be a very nice toast this evening, with lots of good beer!

In the meantime I’m still working and I’ve just added a simple as much as important question to the Ecpc FAQ page.

Then I’d like to propose this mini contest today: I’ll reward whoever will send me the best e-mail with his birthday wishes with a Special Edition of Ecpc!

So, don’t be shy, but be creative! 🙂

During this week I’ve been busy with the organization of a small party for my birthday at the near Bi-du brew-pub.

Tomorrow, 8 August, I’ll be 28 years old and I thought this could be a very good chance have a toast with a dozen of friends and the great beer they make at the Bi-du to properly celebrate the beginning of my career as an independent developer. 🙂

I got the proper authorizations a bit too late maybe, but the management of the brew pub has agreed to the idea to try promoting the recently released Ecpc, so here’s the deal:

I’ll pay a beer to whoever comes to the Bi-du tomorrow evening with a regularly purchased copy of Euro coins pocket collector on his Pocket PC!

Visit their website to see how to reach the brew-pub, located in Rodero, in the province of Varese, north of italy.

Update: the official discussion about the promotion toast is available in the Italian Hardware Upgrade forum here and here!

While I’m busy testing the version of Ecpc built for devices with the Pocket PC 2000 operative system, which will also includes some minor but nice enhancements, I’ve updated the list of recommended software in the My Pocket PC page, adding the useful Freeware PHM Power Toys by Philippe Majerus and the excellent RepliGo by Cerience, the conversion and synchronization software which is rapidly becoming a standard to make documents really portable on multiple platforms.

As a side note, the emulator in the Pocket PC 2000 SDK is really ugly, but it’s much faster than the better looking one included in the Pocket PC 2002 SDK, at least on my desktop PC.

Take a look: 🙂

I can’t believe it has happened in such a short time frame and in this holiday period!

My little website has almost hit the 1,5Gb of monthly traffic limit in just about a couple of weeks since its opening!

I’m simply amazed and also very happy, since now the current italian hosting provider has a promise to keep. 😉

I wish to thank again the french visitors in particular, since their contribution has been fundamental during this week to reach that limit.

I know, I know that you want to see Ecpc translated in french as soon as possible and you won’t be disappointed!

I’d like to remember that I’m still searching for help to translate Ecpc in the other european languages, as I wrote in the Wishlist.

Finally I forgot to mention that the announcement of the release of Ecpc also appeared on Mobigeeks, the SorobanGeeks forum, XDA-Italia and Palmio.

I’ve just uploaded the FAQ page of Ecpc hoping to answer most of the questions about my recently released software.

I’m getting some nice “BRAVO!” from our cousins from the other side of the Alps after the announcement of the release of Ecpc has appeared on Pocket PC France, Pocket PC Paradise and PDA France, three great french webzines I promptly added to the Links page.

Every time such an announcement appears the traffic towards my website increases, which is good for morale.

I really hope to get the same feedback even from other european countries! 🙂

Yesterday has been a special day because thanks to a new friend and betatester, Stefano, CEO of Wise-lab, I had the pleasure to look at Ecpc on his Ipaq 3630 in full color! What’s so special about that?

Well, although I’ve been able to test the program on multiple devices before releasing it, thanks to some friends over the Net, I currently own and develop on a Ipaq 3130, which as you probably know, has a 4 bit monochrome display.

This occasion gave me the chance to finally update the My Pocket PC page.

Since Stefano’s Ipaq runs with Pocket PC 2000 operative system, I was also pleased to see the current version of Ecpc, built with the PPC 2002 SDK, running without problems on it, except when minimizing the program.

However, as I wrote in the Wishlist, a version built with the PPC 2000 SDK, hence supporting also MIPS and SH3 microprocessors, is only a few days away!

I’ve just updated the features page adding some screenshots to better highlight the features of Ecpc.

Also thanks to the translation in french of the product details page made by Pierre Lagrange, Ecpc is now available on the Handango french partner Mobile Planet.

His Special Edition of Ecpc is ready and he’ll take care of the full translation of the program in French, once he’ll be back from holidays!

Then I’ve updated the resources page with the great Lars Finster’s Münzen-Seiten, a german website which has been a very precious resource during the research for the Euro coins variants.

Many more things to come, but a bit at a time! 😉

After the announcement posted on Pocket PC Thoughts, followed by some positive comments, the new also appeared on the italian TechUp and I even spotted one on Pocket PC Russia!

Fortunately I’ve got a female friend from Ukraine who can help me out to understand what they’ve written! 🙂

Also I’m glad to be able to translate Ecpc in portuguese thanks to Bruno Filipe Pereira Figueiredo, a portuguese architect and writer, besides being a collector of Euro coins of course.

His Special Edition of Ecpc will be on its way as soon as he’ll decide about the customization options.

The Italian translation of the website is finally up and the “localized” Demo versions are ready to be sent to european webzines.

However I’ll announce the contest only once I’ve found at least a host for most of the 12 countries of the European Union, something that might be not so easy in this holiday period.

Don’t worry, I’ve got other nice surprises for the next days! 😉

Announcements of the release of Ecpc are showing up around the web, and with great pleasure I’ve seen them posted on Aximsite and Pocket PC Italia.

Now I’m contacting european webzines in particular, since they will be getting special “localized” versions of the Demo.

The “localized” means that instead of being able to access the national side menu of only austrian and italian Euros, as it happens in the official Demo, those versions will have access to the national side menu of the coins of the webzine’s country, instead of the italian coins (austrian coins must be always present for technical reasons).

I bet there will certainly be someone willing to get all the different Demo versions and this gives me an idea about a nice contest!

Collecting Euro coins is fun, so why don’t you try to collect all the Ecpc Demos? 😉

More details later!