Today, users expect advanced user interfaces, and powerful user experiences on mobile devices. In order to meet these expectations, we need to take advantage of advance graphics techniques. The most of common of which is alpha blending.

Here is some information I have gathered on various ways to do alpha blending on Windows Mobile devices.

Alpha Mobile Controls

http://www.codeplex.com/alphamobilecontrols

AlphaMobileControls is a .NET Compact Framework 2.0 API offering WinForm Controls for Windows Mobile 5 or 6 able to handle images with alpha channel and alpha blending.

Chris Lorton’s Blog

http://blogs.msdn.com/chrislorton/default.aspx

There are two ways to do alpha blending in WM5: the AlphaBlend() function and with the Image COM object in the Imaging API.

Chris has a great post on how to take advantage of alpha blending in .NET Compact Framework.

As a mobile developer, I often find myself in the situation where I have an image that I want to use, but it is not the exact size, or even aspect I need it to be.

Most of the time I can get by using Paint .NET to resize images. Paint.NET is a free image and photo editing program. If you don’t have it, download it. It rocks!

But sometimes it doesn’t matter what I do, I can’t get the image to the size I need. I have tried all of these resizing options:

• Best Quality Resampling
• Bicubic Resampling
• Bilinear Resampling
• Nearest Neighbor
• Maintain Aspect Ration On and Off
• Changing the Canvas Size manually to help things along

But again, sometimes it doesn’t matter what I do. I understand “Garbage In, Garbage Out”. I just hate it when I have “Awesome In, Garbage Out”.

Recently, I heard about Seam carving, or content aware image resizing as it is sometimes called. This is so smart, brilliant even.

Seam carving is an image resizing algorithm developed by Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir. This algorithm alters the dimensions of an image not by scaling or cropping, but rather by intelligently removing pixels from (or adding pixels to) the image that carry little importance.

Now we know what the problem is, and we have learned about a great possible solution to this common problem, all that is left is to learn how to perform Seam Carving on our images. And that’s where SEAMonster comes in.

Download: Mike Swanson's Blog : SEAMonster: A .NET-Based Seam Carving Implementation

Here is a sample image that has been resized using both Bicubic and Seam Carve techniques. Notice how the Seam Carved version still has all the important “data”, and how Bicubic just squished everything equally?

I saw where Photoshop CS4 was adding Seam Carving, and there is a online flash implementation here: http://rsizr.com/

The Raleigh Code Camp is coming this weekend and you don’t want to miss out.

Details:

ECPI College of Technology
4101 Doie Cope Rd.
Raleigh, NC 27613-7387

Directions:

Http://maps.google.com/....

Information Link:

http://www.ecpi.edu/

Location: ECPI

Here are just some of the great sessions you can see there:

Session Titles

• Ocean
• Introduction to Entity Framework
• Wildcard Searches in SharePoint
• SSIS
• Much Ado About the DLR
• Essential Web Services
• LINQ to SQL
• Getting Down and Dirty with SharePoint Branding
• Building Reports in SQL Server Reporting Services 2008
• An Introduction to Castle ActiveRecord, or Stop Writing CRUD
• Design Principles
• Something Silverlight
• Automation with MSBuild 3.5 and Team Build 2008
• Spice Up User Experience With Silverlight 2.0
• HttpRuntime.Cache Management and Thread Safety
• Back to the Basics: Developing SharePoint Features
• Care and Feeding of TempDB
• Bending the Asp.Net MVC to do Your Bidding, the Virtues of Extensibility 
• Creating Custom Templatable Controls in Silverlight
• 0wn Your Phone
• Integration SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services with SharePoint
• Turning the Ship: Getting a Traditional Organization to Adopt Agile Practices
• SOA: Building the Arch
• Introduction to the Microsoft Synchronization Services for ADO.NET
• Extending the mobile experience for your existing website
• Integrating ASP.NET Dynamic Data into Existing Web Applications & Websites
• Using WaTiN for GUI based testing in Visual Studio
• Implementing Microsoft Virtual Earth in Your ASP.NET Applications
• Mixing Static and Dynamic .NET Languages
• XNA Game Studio 3.0
• Microsoft and Ruby Sittin' In a Tree
• Integrate ASP.NET 2.0 application (FBA Management) with SharePoint 2007

Open Spaces

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008
Open Spaces

Topic: Open Spaces - Bring your questions and ideas!

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008, is the next meeting of the Pee Dee Area .NET User Group. 
Open Spaces is the chance for you to discuss topics with your peers.  Any developer topic is fair game and welcome!  This is your chance to gain valuable insight from your peers, so come equipped with your ideas!  This meeting is a general open conversation and there will be no presenters.  See you there!

Here is the tentative schedule:
6:00 PM - 6:20 PM Socializing / Free Dinner
6:20 PM - 6:30 PM Introduction, Sponsor Time, and News.
6:30 PM - 8:00 PM Open Spaces

MSDN Southern Fried Roadshow - December 2008 Edition

The MSDN Southern Fried Roadshow is a free developer event with a southern flair, where you will learn about some of the latest developments in Microsoft technologies. For December, 2008 the Roadshow will be presented by Architect Evangelist Chad Brooks and Developer Evangelists Glen Gordon and Brian Hitney. Chad, Glen & Brian will be loading up a minivan with lots of goodies, and trying to hit 4 cities in North Carolina and South Carolina in 4 days.

• Take a tour of Microsoft’s cloud computing platform and the services that make it easy to give your applications the most compelling experiences and features.  Explore the journey a developer takes, from writing a service to launching that service in the cloud. Learn about the cloud services that enable developers to easily create or extend their applications and services.
• Microsoft Silverlight 2 provides a powerful platform for building the next generation of rich interactive applications on the Internet. In this session, we take a look at the programming model and tools that developers and designers can leverage to build these true next-generation experiences for consumers and business, and demonstrate building a rich interactive application (RIA) using Silverlight and Microsoft .NET.
• ASP.NET is evolving a very rapid pace, come explore all the latest features of ASP.Net such as Dynamic Data, MVC, and even take a sneak peak at the upcoming features in ASP.NET 4.0!  We’ll look at some new features such as taking control of your Control IDs, using the DynamicImage control, and ViewState management options.   We’ll spend plenty of time talking about MVC and creating applications based on this framework, so if you’re wondering how to leverage MVC in your web applications, this talk is for you!

We will also feature local speakers from each of our stops delivering short talks at the beginning of the Roadshow. These Homegrown Nuggets will sure be tasty!

Every attendee will receive a free MS Press book on Silverlight 2 (while supplies last) as well as pointers to tons of resources for further learning. Register today using the links below.  Each day begins at 9 AM and goes until 3 PM. In keeping with our theme, a nice Southern fried lunch will be served.

• December 2 - Charleston, SC
• December 3 - Wilmington, NC
• December 4 - Raleigh, NC
• December 5 - Charlotte, NC

I need to open a new email message in Pocket Outlook today. Keep in mind that’s different from just programmatically sending an email from my application.

Here’s how to programmatically send an email from your application:

   1: Microsoft.WindowsMobile.PocketOutlook.EmailMessage email = new EmailMessage();

   2: email.From = "From";

   3: email.BodyText = "BodyText";

   4: email.To = "To";

   5: email.Subject = "Subject";

   6: email.Send("AccountName");

 Here’s how to programmatically create a new mail message in Pocket Outlook and more:

[Source: Open a Specific Email Account in Pocket Outlook? - WM Experts]

• To open inbox for MyMail:
  • tmail.exe -service MyMail
• To additionally launch a new message with no recipient for sending:
  • tmail.exe -service MyMail -to ""
• To have the new message pre-addressed:
  • tmail.exe -service MyMail -to nobody@nowhere.com
• To add a cc (copy to):
  • tmail.exe -service MyMail -to nobody@nowhere.com -cc somebody@somewhere.com
• To add a bcc (blind copy):
  • tmail.exe -service MyMail -to nobody@nowhere.com -bcc somebody@somewhere.com
• To have the new message pre-addressed to multiple addresses:
  • tmail.exe -service MyMail -to nobody@nowhere.com;somebody@somewhere.com;thatguy@thatplace.com
• To additionally add the subject line "Call Me Tonight":
  • tmail.exe -service MyMail -to nobody@nowhere.com -subject "Call Me Tonight"
• To additionally add a message in the body:
  • tmail.exe -service MyMail -to nobody@nowhere.com -subject "Call Me Tonight" -body "at 555-1212"
• To attach the file "Recipe.xls" in the "My Documents" folder:
  • tmail.exe -service MyMail -to nobody@nowhere.com -subject "Call Me Tonight" -body "at 555-1212" -attach "\My Documents\Recipe.xls"

If you have ever used Total Commander for Windows then you know how fast it is. It gives the command prompt a run for its money.

I was looking around the other day, and notice there is a version for Windows Mobile and it is FREE. Grab it here.

Main features:

• Copy, Move whole subdirectories
• In place rename, create directories
• Delete (no recycle bin)
• Zip and unzip
• Properties dialog, change attributes
• Built-in text editor
• Search function (also for text)
• Select/unselect groups of files
• Select with [Sel] button
• FTP client
• Registry editor
• LAN access
• Send/Receive via Infrared (OBEX)
• Brief, full and large icons mode
• Single or two file window mode
• Option to hide all files in ROM
• Directory hot list as in Total Commander
• Directory history through drop down list
• Tree view
• Configurable button bar
• Simple help function
• Supported languages: English, German, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish and Swedish

ceSnipURL:

Features:

• Auto places URL’s from clipboard into conversion window on application launch
• After conversion the snipped URL is placed on the clipboard for use in your SMS/email or application of choice
• Very simple one screen application
• Built in checking for update via the about screen

MPlayer is one of the most popular Linux/Unix media player. Now, thanks to XDA-Developers forum member amitv_17, the porting to Windows Mobile has started.

This application pretty much plays anything, and is a great application to have install, ready and waiting.

Here’s another option:

The Core Pocket Media Player is an open-source media player for Windows CE / Windows Mobile-based devices.

Here’s an article that list tons of shopping Web sites that have a mobile interface.

Shopping Search, Via Mobile Phone

Has lots of information on these sites and more:

• Amazon
• eBay
• Froogle
• PriceGrabber
• Yahoo! Shopping