Being a geek, I have a lot of geek friends. Being friends, we tend to eat lunch together. The only problem is sometimes we have a hard time deciding where to go to eat lunch. This invariably leads to the “Where do you wanna eat?”, “I dunno, where do you wanna eat go?”, “It doesn’t matter to me, you decide.” Well here is a simple solution to this daily dilemma:

Lunch-O-Matic

Our UI has just enough class to be exciting and interesting, yet simple enough not to cause us too much grief. Seek balance in all things. The concept: restaurant logos flash across the screen, eventually stopping on the chosen food establishment. The application is visual, which is appealing. The application is clear. The user can easily tell which restaurant is chosen by following the ginormous arrow. A light blue background give the app a little warm and the arrow adds character.

We have a folder called LunchLogos. Any png file found is the folder is added to an generic image list at the start of the program. When the user clicks Spin, the logos are randomly displayed on the screen for a random number of times before stopping on a chosen eatery.

If you don’t like a restaurant all you have to do is remove the logo from the folder. If you have a restaurant you like that isn’t in the list all you have to do is add the logo to the same folder, simple, simple.

Again for this application we used the RNGCryptoServiceProvider class to generate a statistically sound random number.

   1: private int GetRandomNumber(int minValue, int maxValue)

   2: {

   3:     // Use a 4-byte array to fill it with random bytes and convert it then

   4:     // to an integer value.

   5:     byte[] randomBytes = new byte[4];

   6:  

   7:     // Generate 4 random bytes.

   8:     RNGCryptoServiceProvider rng = new RNGCryptoServiceProvider();

   9:     rng.GetBytes(randomBytes);

  10:  

  11:     // Convert 4 bytes into a 32-bit integer value.

  12:     int seed = (randomBytes[0] & 0x7f) << 24 |

  13:                 randomBytes[1] << 16 |

  14:                 randomBytes[2] << 8 |

  15:                 randomBytes[3];

  16:  

  17:     // Now, this is real randomization.

  18:     Random random = new Random(seed);

  19:  

  20:     return random.Next(minValue, maxValue);

  21: }

And we have created a simple randomize list function to mix things up a bit.

   1: public void RandomizeList(List<string> arrayList)

   2: {

   3:  

   4:     if (arrayList == null) { return; }

   5:     int count = arrayList.Count;

   6:     for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)

   7:     {

   8:         string tmp = arrayList[i];

   9:         arrayList.RemoveAt(i);

  10:         arrayList.Insert(GetRandomNumber(0, count), tmp);

  11:     }

  12: }

Last but not least, we use the Mod function to make sure we can loop around the list when picking images.

   1: private void Spin()

   2: {

   3:     int index1 = GetRandomNumber(0, logos.Count);

   4:     int index2 = (index1 + 1) % logos.Count;

   5:     int index3 = (index2 + 1) % logos.Count;

   6:  

   7:     pictureBoxTop.Image = logos[index1];

   8:     pictureBox.Image = logos[index2];

   9:     pictureBoxBottom.Image = logos[index3];

  10: }

Possibilities:

Well, I think it would be cool if there was a background sound to go along with the spin. I also think a UI for adding and deleting logos would be great. It would be nice to be able to assign weights to each restaurant, and to favor new choices over previously selected places.

Download executable: lunchomatic.cab

Download Source Code: lunchomatic.zip

Feedback:

How could we make this application even better? Share your ideas with the community.

I’ve had a lot of requests for SMS related applications. So today we will create a SMS logger application. This application will allow users to scroll through a listing of all the SMS / text messages they have received while the application has been running.

SMS Logger

This is a great application for a beginner to create. It has a very simple UI, the main component is the WebBrowser. The way we can have nicely formatted text easily.

The key piece of code here is the MessageRecieved event off of the SmsIntercepter object.

   1: private StringBuilder documentText = new StringBuilder();

   2: void SmsInterceptor_MessageReceived(object sender, MessageInterceptorEventArgs e)

   3: {

   4:     if (enableInterceptor == false)

   5:         return;

   6:  

   7:     // Cast to SmsMessage to access message body

   8:     // Not expecting to receive any non-SMS messages but use "as" to

   9:     // cast to be extra safe

  10:     SmsMessage newMessage = e.Message as SmsMessage;

  11:     if (newMessage != null)

  12:     {

  13:         documentText.AppendFormat(@"<b>Body:</b> {0}<br/>", newMessage.Body);

  14:         documentText.AppendFormat(@"<b>Name:</b> {0}<br/>", newMessage.From.Name);

  15:         documentText.AppendFormat(@"<b>Address:</b> {0}<br/>", newMessage.From.Address);

  16:         documentText.AppendFormat(@"<b>Last Modified:</b> {0}<br/>", newMessage.LastModified);

  17:         documentText.AppendFormat(@"<b>Received:</b> {0}<br/>", newMessage.Received);

  18:         documentText.Append(@"<br/>");

  19:  

  20:         webBrowser.DocumentText = documentText.ToString();

  21:     }

  22: }

We have a few actions the user do: Start, Stop, Clear, About, and Exit.

Possibilities:

This application logs incoming SMS messages, but it doesn’t do several thing that were requested from our reader. It doesn’t log outgoing messages. It doesn’t save to a text file. And it doesn’t clear out data from Outlook Mobile when the users runs SMS Logger.

I also think there is room to improve the UI. I think some small 16x16 pixel graphic files could really add some life to the application. Maybe one icon for incoming messages, and one for outgoing messages.

So who’s up to it? Anyone want to take this application to the next level? Just let me know.

Download executable: smsLogger.cab

Download Source Code: smsLogger.zip

Feedback:

So what possibilities do you see for this type of application? for business? for entertainment?

Today, is day 15 of my 30 Days of .NET challenge. That marks the 50% point, and we have 15 applications for 15 days. Thanks for your support!

And we have made it through another week. If you missed the week one recap here it is: 30 Days of .NET [Windows Mobile Applications] - Week One.

What’s your favorite?

Rotate Me	Mobile Tipper	What is My IP?	Mobile Signature

Lots of variety, everything from network utilities, to graphics, to humor, to SMS text messaging. Great ideas, guys!

Mobile Quiz	Pocket Death Calculator	Mobile SMS Contact	What will be next?

Feedback:

Got an idea? Got some feedback? Share it? Thanks!

Today’s application is about possibilities. It’s a new area we will explore in our future applications. It’s important to learn how to development applications, but it is also important to learn what kind of applications you can develop. Your goal is always to reach just a little further, and grow from the experience.

The important thing here isn’t what this application does with these ideas, but what you could do with these ideas.

People can use SMS to send and receive information through text messages, but with the power of Windows Mobile it is easy for application to send and receive commands and data. There is a big movement for software to expose its features and functions to other programs. But image a world, that probably isn’t too far, where your mobile device has it’s own API that you and others can use to access its data and functions.

Where could this be useful? Well many companies need the ability to send “Alerts” of some kind to their workers. It is easy to use the Windows Mobile SMS API to have a custom written application that check for specially “tagged” SMS messages.

Mobile SMS Remote

SMS Remote is an application that could run on two or more Windows Mobile device and allow each of the phones run to support “commands” on the phones. For example, a user could get the date and time of another device running SMS Remote. Or the user could run a command to get the other phone’s current GPS location information. The possibilities are limitless. Both devices are both servers and both clients in other words a very simple peer-to-peer network using SMS technology. How cool is that?

What if sometimes we don’t want others to be able to run commands on our device remotely? First of all we could always exit the application. The application must be running in other to execute remote commands. Be I have also added an “Allow Remote Commands” feature.

How can we send SMS remote commands? Use the SMS command ComboBox and choose a command, and enter the remote device’s phone number. Then just click “Send”.

How can we tell what commands have been remotely run on our device? There is a received commands listing at the bottom the screen. It shows the phone number of the device that send the command, the time the command arrive, and which command was requested.

This is a rough prototype of an idea that has HUGE potential. Some point in the next ten years this concept will take off and become something along the lines of Mobile 2.0.

The trick to this application is using the very cooly named Windows Mobile 6.0 SDK MessageInterceptor class. We can use it to have any SMS that begins with “30days:” fire an event in our application that we will then handle. This is very, very, very simple for something so powerful. Use it!

   1: MessageInterceptor _smsInterceptor = null;

   2: private void LoadSmsIntercepter()

   3: {

   4:     _smsInterceptor = new MessageInterceptor(InterceptionAction.NotifyAndDelete);

   5:  

   6:     _smsInterceptor.MessageCondition =

   7:         new MessageCondition(MessageProperty.Subject,

   8:         MessagePropertyComparisonType.StartsWith, "30days:", true);

   9:     _smsInterceptor.MessageReceived += SmsInterceptor_MessageReceived;

  10: }

The rest is simple. Was the SMS a “command” or a “result”? If command we need to run and return a result. If result we need to act on or display to device user.

Possibilities:

I implemented the get date and time function, but not the GPS function. This would be a very useful addition to the application that I would love to say a reader did. Or how about a way to add Internet Explorer Mobile favorites? Or how about something more Web 2.0 like what song is currently playing.

Download executable: mobileSMSRemote.cab

Download Source Code: mobileSMSRemote.zip

Feedback:

So what possibilities do you see for this type of application? for business? for entertainment?

Today one of my readers, Paul Diston, made the following request.

Hi,
I have another idea you might be interested in. I would like to be able to type in a single SMS message and then hit the send button which would then send the same message to all my contacts that have a mobile number specified.

Thanks
Paul Diston

The thing that I really liked about Paul’s suggestion is that is cover two very important mobile development topics: one is working with contacts stored in Outlook Mobile, and the other is working with SMS messaging.

Mobile SMS Contact

I changed it a little bit from Paul’s original request. I decided to incorporate a filter into the application. This way you can send SMS messages to your personal contacts, or your business contacts. You could even create a custom category. I didn’t include an option to select contacts that do not have a category assigned to them. This would be a great modification for a reader to implement. Simply add a ‘<none>’ item to the list, and if that item is selected add any contact that doesn’t have a category.

I added a ListView so that users could see the contacts they were about to text message. Another great enhancement, would be the ability to modify this listing. Just a remove option would be a great addition in functionality.

One feature I added as a polishing touch, was the live character count feature. This feature lets users know how much more text they can send. And we have found another opportunity for improvement here. I limit the text to 160 characters, but if someone entered in more text we could send X number of text messages until the complete message was delivered.

Next with have our SMS Message TextBox where we can type the message we will send. Nothing special here, but I didn’t set a MaxLength of 160 characters.

At the bottom I exposed the RequestDeliveryReport property of the SmsMessage class. What ever the user picks here will be assigned to that property.

One feature that I really love about Windows Mobile programming, that especially came in useful for this application was the Cellular Emulator.

GetContacts Code:

   1: private List<Contact> GetContacts(string category)

   2: {

   3:     List<Contact> contacts = new List<Contact>();

   4:  

   5:     ContactCollection contactsCollection = outlookSession.Contacts.Items;

   6:  

   7:     foreach (Contact contact in contactsCollection)

   8:     {

   9:         if (contact.Categories.Contains(category))

  10:         {

  11:             contacts.Add(contact);

  12:         }

  13:     }

  14:  

  15:     return contacts;

  16: }

SendSMS Code:

   1: private void SendSMS()

   2: {

   3:     List<Contact> contacts = GetContacts(comboBoxCategories.SelectedItem.ToString());

   4:  

   5:     SmsMessage smsMessage = new SmsMessage();

   6:     //Set the message body.

   7:     smsMessage.Body = textBoxSMSMessage.Text;

   8:  

   9:     foreach (Contact contact in contacts)

  10:     {

  11:         string name = string.Format("{0} {1}", contact.FirstName, contact.LastName).Trim();

  12:         string address = contact.MobileTelephoneNumber;

  13:  

  14:         if (address.Length == 0) break;

  15:  

  16:         //Add recipients.

  17:         smsMessage.Body = textBoxSMSMessage.Text;

  18:         if (name.Length == 0)

  19:             smsMessage.To.Add(new Recipient(address));

  20:         else

  21:             smsMessage.To.Add(new Recipient(name, address));

  22:         smsMessage.RequestDeliveryReport = checkBoxRequestDeliveryReport.Checked;

  23:     }

  24:  

  25:     if(smsMessage.To.Count == 0) return;

  26:  

  27:     //Send the SMS message.

  28:     smsMessage.Send();

  29: }

Download executable: mobileSMSContact.cab

Download Source Code: mobileSMSContact.zip

Feedback

One thing I decided not to do with this application is spend any time on the UI. I wanted readers to see one application that was plain Jane vanilla. Consider what you could do to this application to make it appealing to end users. Share your ideas, and maybe I’ll do them, or even better try taking the code and making the changes yourself. If you do this for the application or any other I will link to back to you so everyone can “see” and “learn” for your efforts.

Let’s have some fun today. And do an application that is just for kicks. I had a really hard time coming up with a Friday the 13th themed mobile application. I finally thought of one: The Pocket Death Calculator. Yeah, it’s a bit crazy, but it’s good not to take yourself too seriously. There are lots of these Death Clocks on the Internet, here’s a famous one: The Death Clock.

Pocket Death Clock

This application is about how many lines of code you can write. It shows how a simple idea in a good looking package can really charm a lot of people. Most people enjoy a surprise, or something unexpected, something to break the day from being ordinary and routine. Sure you can write the next great mobile financial planner package, or you could write a quick “fun” app to put a smile on someone you know’s face.

The UI is really simple just a background image file, but it is a good looking background image file. And that is pretty much what is pulling off the application. I thought about putting glowing red eyes on a timer and having their visibility randomly change, but decided to leave it as an exercise for my readers. Try it you’ll be surprised how much it really sets off the application. And makes it stand out.

The death calculation engine is straight forward: we take the user’s age and gender and modify the average human life span appropriately. Then we subtract the users present age from their expected life span. Next we calculate the number of seconds in a year. We use our cryptographically strong random function to pick a random second in that year for the user to “die” on. Now we have our death date. It’s a simple matter to calculate the number of seconds the user has left. We put everything on the screen and update on a timer.

There you have it.

Possibilties:

Simple applications always have the best possibilities. We talked about adding glowing eyes. But you could also add random death quotes. You could also ask the user more questions and better guesstimate their death date. You could also “guesstimate” where and how they would die using data easily found on the Internet.

Always good to know you have less than a million seconds before you are going to die from a shark attack in Quebec. Plenty of time to pick up some shark repellent.

Download executable: pocketDeathClock.cab

Download Source Code: pocketDeathClock.zip

Feedback:

I think this is our first humorous application, not counting Mobile FX, what did you think of it? Would you like to see more of these types of applications, that are creative idea based, or more of the technically focused applications? I like to keep a good bit of variety to show all the possibilities, so I hope that is working for everyone.

If not, share your idea for tomorrows application.

Today we are going to look at another classic goal in Mobile development, data collection. You might need it for a line of business application, for example a field service application where workers need to inspection equipment and fill out a questionnaire. Or you might need it in a mobile poll taker application. You could even use it in a trivia game. There are few applications actually that couldn’t take advantage of a question and answer system like the Mobile Quiz.

Mobile Quiz

There is so much potential with this application. I hope you can see the concept and see the potential here. There are a world of possibilities here. Hopefully this application will help you get ever so slightly closer to realizing some of them.

The UI is a straight-forward and clean design, which was easy to make but should appeal to users. Everything is meant to be intuitive and self explanatory. Users should simple be able to look at the screen and get it.

The first screen is an quiz introduction form. All we have here is some eye candy, the name of the quiz, and some basic menu options: Start, About, and Exit.

After this the user is presented with the questions screen. This is the main meat of the application.

Questions are pulled from an XML file which could be retrieved from a remote server.

   1: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

   2: <quiz name ="Family Guy Quiz">

   3:   <question>

   4:     <text>In what state do the Griffins live?</text>

   5:     <correct>2</correct>

   6:     <answer>Connecticuit</answer>

   7:     <answer>Rhode Island</answer>

   8:     <answer>Massachusetts</answer>

   9:     <answer>Deleware</answer>

  10:     <answer>South Carolina</answer>

  11:   </question>

  12:   <question>

  13:     <text>What television actor is the mayor of the town?</text>

  14:     <correct>1</correct>

  15:     <answer>Adam West</answer>

  16:     <answer>David Hasselhoff</answer>

  17:     <answer>Leonard Nimoy</answer>

  18:     <answer>William Shatner</answer>

  19:     <answer>Harrison Ford</answer>

  20:   </question>

  21:   <question>

  22:     <text>What is Cleveland's last name?</text>

  23:     <correct>1</correct>

  24:     <answer>Brown</answer>

  25:     <answer>Smith</answer>

  26:     <answer>Craft</answer>

  27:     <answer>Cub</answer>

  28:     <answer>Jones</answer>

  29:   </question>

  30:   <question>

  31:     <text>What is the name of Stewie's stuffed bear?</text>

  32:     <correct>3</correct>

  33:     <answer>Barry</answer>

  34:     <answer>Chris</answer>

  35:     <answer>Rubert</answer>

  36:     <answer>Edward</answer>

  37:     <answer>Paddy</answer>

  38:   </question>

  39:   <question>

  40:     <text>What is Quagmire's profession?</text>

  41:     <correct>4</correct>

  42:     <answer>Developer</answer>

  43:     <answer>Police Office</answer>

  44:     <answer>Barber</answer>

  45:     <answer>Pilot</answer>

  46:     <answer>Teacher</answer>

  47:   </question>

  48: </quiz>

It’s a snap to open the XML file and read in all of our data.

   1: DataSet dataSet = new DataSet();

   2: // read quiz data file

   3: dataSet.ReadXml(@"\Program Files\MobileQuiz\quiz.xml");

One thing that I decided was important was to avoid showing modal MessageBox dialogs often. Instead I choose to use a label, place it at the top, set it’s background color to Info, and use it accordingly. This works out great and I think is a much better user experience. Data entry on a mobile device is a huge pain, and if you can take a dialog out of the equation that’s a good thing.

Download executable: mobileQuiz.cab

Download Source Code: mobileQuiz.zip

Feedback

There’s a lot here for a little effort, a couple hours, and there is a huge potential for this type of application. This would be a great project for someone to expand on and create something really special from. Consider it if you are looking for your first mobile project.

You know sometime someone tells you about something, and you can tell there is a whole lot more to it than they are telling you about. Well, signature capture for Windows Mobile is one of those things. It’s really not bad today and you can do it in one sitting easily now. But there was a time, when if your life depending on it you might be able to get it right. At least we have managed code now. A few of us attempted to do this feat in embedded Visual Basic years ago and I’m surprised it didn’t cost us our sanity. Oh the humanity…

You could do it you just had to copy each color pixel by pixel and save it into a bitmap, and that was a challenge too. And GetPixel() had to be the slowest function call ever. It took at least a second. No way, you were going to give someone a full screen to put there signature.

That was then, this is now…

Mobile Signature

Office 2007 might have 2007 features in it. And it works for Office 2007, well to a point. But with Windows Mobile applications less is more. Don’t get me wrong I really do think Mobile Signature would make a great feature in a more complete application. But as far as the feature of taking a signature on a mobile device this is a great approach.

Also note that Mobile Signature could be easily adapted into a drawing application, and so on, especially for kids.

Let’s talk about UI first. Notice how much space is dedicated to taking the user’s signature. This is important; I’ve seen almost the reverse before and that just isn’t very usable. I took a little extra time and care to make sure all control had a black border around them,expect the black color square. It has a gray border.

One thing to note is a wanted the user to be able to tell what color they would be writing in without having to draw on the screen. This is accomplished by having the borders around the active color flash on and off. This is a great visual effect that was easy to implement with a timer. We track the currently active color in a form level variable, and on the timer tick event, which happens every 500 ms, we toggle the visibility of the border around the active color. Works great! Check it out!

The menu is another area that is simple but you can learn from it. Save is very important to us, so it is prominent and has it own hardware button that can cause it to occur. On the menu we have an option for clearing the screen, showing the about form, and exiting the application. But we also have a menu option to change the size of the line we are drawing with. It can be set from any of the following: 1 pixel, 3 pixels, 5 pixels.

The core of the application is the code that actually draws the lines on the screen. Here it is:

   1: private void pictureBox_MouseMove(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)

   2: {

   3:     if (pen.Color != signatureColor)

   4:         pen = new Pen(signatureColor);

   5:  

   6:     if (pen.Width != width)

   7:         pen.Width = width;

   8:  

   9:     x1 = x2;

  10:     y1 = y2;

  11:     x2 = e.X;

  12:     y2 = e.Y;

  13:  

  14:     if (x1 == -1 && y1 == -1)

  15:         return;

  16:  

  17:     pictureBoxSignature.CreateGraphics().DrawLine(pen, x1, y1, x2, y2);

  18: }

One area of code that is worth checking out is the code to save the bitmap of the signature. It’s pretty advanced and powerful.

   1: // P/Invoke declaration

   2: [DllImport("coredll.dll")]

   3: public static extern int BitBlt(IntPtr hdcDest, int nXDest, int nYDest, int nWidth, int nHeight, IntPtr hdcSrc, int nXSrc, int nYSrc, uint dwRop);

   4:  

   5: const int SRCCOPY = 0x00CC0020;

   6:  

   7: private void Save(string filename, Graphics gx, Rectangle rect)

   8: {

   9:     Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(rect.Width, rect.Height);

  10:     // Create compatible graphics

  11:     Graphics gxComp = Graphics.FromImage(bmp);

  12:     // Blit the image data

  13:     BitBlt(gxComp.GetHdc(), 0, 0, rect.Width, rect.Height, gx.GetHdc(), rect.Left, rect.Top, SRCCOPY);

  14:     bmp.Save(filename, System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Bmp);

  15:     // Cleanup

  16:     bmp.Dispose();

  17:     gxComp.Dispose();

  18: }

Everything else is pretty straight forward, but check it out and see what you think!

Download executable: mobileSignature.cab

Download Source Code: mobileSignature.zip

Feedback

So, how do you guys feel about line of business applications? Do you want more days that focus on line of business application topics? or less? Let me know! :D Tomorrow will be here before you know it.

I mentioned to the group that I would post the Prize Picker application we wrote together on my blog as part of my 30 Days of .NET series. I think this was an awesome idea, and it looked like everyone really enjoyed themselves. Hopefully, a few of them will see this post and share their thoughts as well. It was very nice to have a hands on type presentation that everyone got to participate in together. And since only one person was “driving” we didn’t have to stop and fix a disconnected monitor. Ok, we did one time, but just one time.  

Big thanks to everyone that came out and participated! Page Brooks, Donny Craft, Benton Little, , Jamey McElveen , Shawn Morris, and Thad Smith. It was a lot of fun!

Prize Picker

There is probably someone out there who doesn’t think this is the best looking application ever. Well, you’re right! It’s not, but we didn’t really focus on that any until we had a fully functional application. At that point it was time to pick prizes for the lucky hopefuls that became winners at the event.

The only big item we didn’t implement, was an item that came up right at the end, we wanted to show the last winner in the area down at the bottom of the screen in big blog letters. And we wanted to rotate through remaining hopefuls and then finally pick a winner moving them to the winners table.

The application is a firm believer of the KISS principle. We did the entire application in about an hour and a half. And that is including some refactorings, and changes we made along the way. I’m pretty happy with the application, and will love it once we have the “Jackpot” style UI element added.

We added validation as we needed it, and decided to keep the applications logic in the UI, as hard as it was for us to do, to in this case to follow our KISS guidelines.

We have used RNGCryptoServiceProvider class already in the Pocket PasswordGen application on day six. This class makes sure that our random numbers are statistically random and not pretend watered down random.

   1: Byte[] randomBytes = new byte[4];

   2:  

   3: RNGCryptoServiceProvider rng = new RNGCryptoServiceProvider();

   4: rng.GetBytes(randomBytes);

   5:  

   6: // Convert 4 bytes into a 32-bit integer value.

   7: int seed = (randomBytes[0] & 0x7f) << 24 |

   8:             randomBytes[1] << 16 |

   9:             randomBytes[2] << 8 |

  10:             randomBytes[3];

  11:  

  12: int pick = seed % listViewHopefuls.Items.Count;

Download executable: prizePicker.cab

Download Source Code: prizePicker.zip

Feedback

The cool thing is we used this application to actually pick the winners for the prizes, and everything went great. So our intention is to keep using it from now. We are also going to post it on CodePlex soon and allow others to work on it as well.

Wow, today was a busy day. I gave a Windows Mobile Programming presentation today at a .NET user group I help run, PDANUG. I changed it up at the very last minute, and instead of doing the presentation I was planing on doing we wrote a Windows Mobile application together. It was great. I think everyone contributed, and got something out of it. In the end we had a very nice Prize Picker application that we will be able to use again and again in the future. And I have a new talk that I can present. Any takers?

What is My IP?

You may have seen sites like WhatIsMyIP.com, IPChicken.com, and my favorite IPCow.com. Most people prefer command prompt and good ole IPConfig. But sometimes when you are troubleshooting an issue with a friend of family member over the phone that’s not always the best idea. Usually in those kind of situations it is easier to send someone to a Web site and just have them read the value to you. I think some of the sites above will render appropriately on a mobile device, pretty sure IPCow.com does.

But what if you can’t connect to the Internet, and you need to see your Intranet IP address. In this case, and many others, one wants something a little more direct, and clear.

For this reason, “What is My IP?” exists. It couldn’t be simpler. Run the program, then see your IP address, or IP addresses in case you have multiple connections open. Which is very possible with today’s devices, with everything from Bluetooth, cellular connections, wireless connections, and more.

This application only does one thing, so it needs to do it very well. And it needs to be appealing in how it looks and how it does it.

Since the application has minimal features, it has a minimalist style to it. There is only one focus point of attention and that is the large network icon in the center of the screen. Everything else is clean and simple.

There’s only one method of note in this application: RefreshData()

   1: private void RefreshData()

   2: {

   3:     string deviceName = System.Net.Dns.GetHostName();

   4:  

   5:     textBoxDeviceName.Text = deviceName;

   6:  

   7:     IPAddress[] addresses = Dns.GetHostEntry(deviceName).AddressList;

   8:  

   9:     comboBoxDeviceIP.Items.Clear();

  10:     for (int i = 0; i < addresses.Length; i++)

  11:         comboBoxDeviceIP.Items.Add(addresses[i].ToString());

  12:  

  13:     if (comboBoxDeviceIP.Items.Count > 0)

  14:         comboBoxDeviceIP.SelectedIndex = 0;

  15: }

Download executable: whatIsMyIP.cab

Download Source Code: whatIsMyIP.zip

Feedback

Not bad 10 applications in 10 days. Won’t be long before we’re at 20 applications in 20 days, and then 30 applications in 30 days. Keep the feedback coming.