And there you have it: 30 .NET Windows Mobile Applications in 30 Days!

I really liked yesterday’s application, Community Megaphone Reader. I think it was because it was a Windows Mobile mashup application. And we can look forward to many more of these types of applications to come our way.

Trippr

You’ve probably already figured out what this application does. That’s right it takes your current GPS position and pulls back pictures that are geotagged for the area you are in. So while you are riding down the road you can flickrscan for photos taken near you, possibly as close as the block you are on.

Really cool idea I think. I’ll probably hook this up to the dashboard of my car and just let it run while I drive around. It should be lots of fun to just see what I see.

The UI is basic sterile white, but I wanted the photos to be the star of the show so I went with the one uber true neutral color.

Control are very simple: Update, Menu, GPS, GPS Start, GPS Stop, About, and Exit. Update is the main feature. Any time it is pressed new photos are downloaded.

Again for this project we looked to the GPS Intermediate Driver Reference, it has served us well these 30 days and I really highly recommend it. If you need to do a Windows Mobile GPS application use this and you are almost done.

Another great API I found is the Flickr.Net API. If you need to connect to Flickr in .NET or .NET Compact Framework this is great. It does all the heavy lifting for you! I was up and running in minutes!

“The Flickr.Net API is a .Net Library for accessing the Flickr API. Written entirely in C# it can be accessed from with any .Net language in .Net Framework 1.1, .Net Framework 2.0, .Net Compact Framework 2.0 and Mono.”

Update Method

   1: if (gpsPosition == null || !gpsPosition.LatitudeValid || !gpsPosition.LongitudeValid)

   2:      return;

   3:  

   4:  double minimumLongitude = gpsPosition.Longitude - 1;

   5:  double minimumLatitude = gpsPosition.Latitude - 1;

   6:  double maximumLongitude = gpsPosition.Longitude + 1;

   7:  double maximumLatitude = gpsPosition.Latitude + 1;

   8:  

   9:  string apikey = "get_your_own_flickr_key";

  10:  Flickr flickr = new Flickr(apikey);

  11:  

  12:  PhotoSearchOptions options = new PhotoSearchOptions();

  13:  options.BoundaryBox = new BoundaryBox(minimumLongitude, minimumLatitude, maximumLongitude, maximumLatitude);

  14:  options.Extras |= PhotoSearchExtras.Geo;

  15:  options.PerPage = 10;

  16:  options.SortOrder = PhotoSearchSortOrder.InterestingnessAsc;

  17:  

  18:  Photos photos = flickr.PhotosSearch(options); 

  19:  StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();

  20:  

  21:  foreach(Photo photo in photos.PhotoCollection)

  22:      stringBuilder.AppendFormat(@"<img src=""{0}"" style=""border: 1px black solid; padding: 0px; margin: 1px"" />", photo.ThumbnailUrl);

  23:  

  24:  webBrowser.DocumentText = stringBuilder.ToString();

Possibilities:

Obviously this needs an auto-update feature and settings for those of use who will use it on the road. If I click on a picture I’d love to see a larger view of it as well. and a details listing telling me more about the photo would be great.

Download executable: trippr.cab

Download Source Code: trippr.zip

Thank You:

I appreciate everyone’s encouragement and feedback. This project would not have been a success without all of you. Keep an out there’s more to come in the future.

We only have one more day left in our 30 days of .NET [Windows Mobile Applications]. Where do we go from here?

I’m really happy with the 30 Days of .NET so I do think I will continue that in one format or another for some time. It’s been a blast. And everyone knows my passion for Windows Mobile programming so we keep finding way to work that in there as well.

I haven’t quite decided what I’ll do for next month but I’m sure it’ll only get better as we move forward.

There have been a lot of request for applications that haven’t made it on deck yet, and obviously they aren’t all going to get done tomorrow. But I think I’ll be able to throw in some Bonus Day of .NET or Return of Day of .NET and knock some of them out over time.

My goal is to take all the existing content and clean it up some and make more through and detailed learning materials to really help beginners take off with Windows Mobile.

Hope you’ll join me on the road ahead…

Wow, it’s hard to believe the month is almost over already. So far we have 29 applications done in 29 days! Thank you for all your encouragement.

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

If you missed the week two recap here it is: 30 Days of .NET [Windows Mobile Applications] - Week Two.

If you missed the week three recap here it is: 30 Days of .NET [Windows Mobile Applications] - Week Three.

What’s your favorite?

GPS Clock	MobileInfo	Mobile Flashlight	SmartDial

Let see we have a time utility, and device information, call blocker, and lots more!

GeoCash	Repeatr	CallBlocker	What will be next?

Feedback:

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

 A friend, a coworker, and an all-around great guy, Page Brooks, has created a contest for building controls for Silverlight.

Here’s the highlights:

"Welcome to the Silverlight Control Builder Contest! With this contest, we hope to incite the development of many open and free Silverlight Controls that all developers can use in their applications, and what better way to do this than through a friendly contest! This contest is your chance to demonstrate your control building skills to the Silverlight community and win some pretty cool prizes at the same time!"

Check out the prizes:

1st Place

• 1-Year MSDN Premium Subscription (Not for Resale)
• Your choice of one book from the entire O'Reilly catalog

2nd Place

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition
• Your choice of one book from the entire O'Reilly catalog
  

3rd Place

• Essential Silverlight 2 Up-to-Date from O'Reilly
• Your choice of one book from the entire O'Reilly catalog

Great opportunity to build a little fame and win some great prizes. Find out more after the jump: http://gosilverlight.org/

Only One Day Left…

Not too long ago Page Brooks and myself made the three and a half hour drive from Florence, SC to Greensboro, NC to attend the Ineta Carolina Community Leadership Summit '08. This was a great event and there we meet a lot of the local Ineta user group leaders. We also meet Andrew Duthie, aka DEvHammer. One issue that rose to the top of things we wanted to work on improving at the leadership summit was awareness of events that are occurring in the local regional area. That’s when Andrew told everyone about the project he has been working on: Community Megaphone.

I love have information at my fingertips, so I decided to write a tie-in application:

Community Megaphone Reader

Basically, this application connects to the Community Megaphone RSS feed and pulls down event data. Then it takes your current GPS position and calculates your distance from each event. Finally, it takes all the events and sorts then so you can find the event that is the closest to you. This is a great application for the traveling .NET geek. Where ever you are you can find great .NET events to attend.

The UI is paying homage to Andrew’s Community Megaphone site. I tried to match the basic colors to keep it familiar. The hyperlinks are active and will take you the event’s page on Community Megaphone. The menu only has a few options: Refresh, About, and Exit.

An application like this is really exciting, because it is tying the world of mobile together with the world wide web.

These types of mashup applications will contitue to take of for years.

LoadRss Method

   1: public static DataSet LoadRss(string requestUriString)

   2: {

   3:     HttpWebRequest feed = HttpWebRequest.Create(requestUriString) as HttpWebRequest;

   4:     StreamReader streamReader = new StreamReader(feed.GetResponse().GetResponseStream());

   5:  

   6:     string rssXml = streamReader.ReadToEnd();

   7:     rssXml = rssXml.Replace(@"<?xml version=""1.0"" encoding=""utf-8""?>", string.Empty);

   8:  

   9:     StringReader stringReader = new StringReader(rssXml);

  10:  

  11:     DataSet dataSet = new DataSet();

  12:     dataSet.ReadXml(stringReader);

  13:  

  14:     return dataSet;

  15: }

GetEvents Method

   1: public static List<Item> GetEvents(DataSet dataSet, GpsPosition gpsPosition)

   2: {

   3:     List<Item> items = new List<Item>();

   4:  

   5:     foreach (DataRow dataRow in dataSet.Tables["item"].Rows)

   6:     {

   7:         Item item = new Item();

   8:         item.Title = (string)dataRow["title"];

   9:         item.Description = (string)dataRow["description"];

  10:         item.Link = (string)dataRow["link"];

  11:         item.PublishDate = DateTime.Parse((string)dataRow["pubDate"]);

  12:         item.Latitude = Double.Parse((string)dataRow["lat"]);

  13:         item.Longitude = Double.Parse((string)dataRow["long"]);

  14:  

  15:         if(gpsPosition.LatitudeValid && gpsPosition.LongitudeValid)

  16:             item.Distance = GeoCodeCalc.CalcDistance(gpsPosition.Latitude, gpsPosition.Longitude, item.Latitude, item.Longitude);

  17:  

  18:         items.Add(item);

  19:     }

  20:  

  21:     items.Sort(delegate(Item item1, Item item2)

  22:     {

  23:         return item1.Distance.CompareTo(item2.Distance);

  24:     });

  25:  

  26:     return items;

  27: }

Display Events Method

   1: public static string DisplayEvents(List<Item> events)

   2: {

   3:     StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();

   4:  

   5:     foreach (Item item in events)

   6:     {

   7:         stringBuilder.Append(@"<span style=""color: #FFFFFF;font-weight:bold;"">");

   8:         stringBuilder.AppendFormat(@"<a href=""{0}"" style=""color: #DBB94F;"">{1}</a><br/><br/>", item.Link, item.Title);

   9:         stringBuilder.AppendFormat(@"{0}<br/><br/>", item.Description);

  10:         stringBuilder.AppendFormat(@"<b>Distance: <span style=""color: #DBB94F;"">{0} miles</span></b><br/>", item.Distance.ToString("0.00"));

  11:         // stringBuilder.AppendFormat(@"<b>{0}</b><br/>", item.PublishDate);

  12:         // stringBuilder.AppendFormat(@"{0}<br/>", item.Latitude);

  13:         // stringBuilder.AppendFormat(@"{0}<br/>", item.Longitude);

  14:         stringBuilder.AppendFormat(@"<br/><br/>");

  15:         stringBuilder.Append(@"</span>");

  16:     }

  17:  

  18:     return stringBuilder.ToString();

  19: }

Possibilities:

Andrew recently added iCalendar file support to Community Megaphone. This would be a great feature to add to a Windows Mobile application, and it is totally doable. The HTML could be a little more fancy maybe even use a few 16x16 fonts for a little personality.

Download executable: communityMegaphoneReader.cab

Download Source Code: communityMegaphoneReader.zip

Feedback:

Want more? What else would you like to see? Time’s running out only one more day. Be sure to get your ideas in soon!

Only 2 Days Left…

Today’s application is CallBlock. It is designed to watch incoming calls, and check and see if they match any on the block phone numbers list. If they do match then the phone is “blocked”.

CallBlock

The first thing you should notice is the flashy logo at the top of the form. I create this logo with an online 3D logo generator. The one simple touch adds a lot of professional polish to the application. I really like red and white so I didn’t change the background color this time. But I am starting to wish I had. It seems a little “blah” to me now.

Next we have our phone number input text box. The user enters the phone number here, and presses the Block menu item to add it to the block number list below. On the main menu we also have options to Unblock, and Unblock All. And we have our almost universal About and Exit menu items.

There are two main pieces to this application. One part is the State and Notification Broker code to give us an event to catch incoming phone calls.

I actually got myself painted into a corner, I assumed you could just programmatically ignore of phone call but it isn’t that simple. Fortunately, a good friend of mine, Lou Vega, came up with a very slick workaround for this. And that is the second part which is the keybd_event method that allows us to send keypresses to the OS to Ignore the phone call.

CallBlock Core Code

   1: const int KEYEVENTF_KEYDOWN = 0x0;

   2: const int KEYEVENTF_KEYUP = 0x2;

   3:  

   4: [DllImport("coredll.dll", EntryPoint = "keybd_event", SetLastError = true)]

   5: internal static extern void keybd_event(byte bVk, byte bScan, int dwFlags, int dwExtraInfo);

   6:  

   7: SystemState phoneIncomingCall = new SystemState(SystemProperty.PhoneIncomingCall);

   8: private void frmMain_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

   9: {

  10:     phoneIncomingCall.Changed += new ChangeEventHandler(phoneIncomingCall_Changed);

  11: }

  12:  

  13: void phoneIncomingCall_Changed(object sender, ChangeEventArgs args)

  14: {

  15:     string phoneNumber = RemoveText(SystemState.PhoneIncomingCallerNumber);

  16:  

  17:     if(listBoxBlockedNumbers.Items.Contains(phoneNumber))

  18:     {

  19:         keybd_event(115, 0, KEYEVENTF_KEYDOWN, 0);

  20:         keybd_event(115, 0, KEYEVENTF_KEYUP, 0);

  21:     }

  22: }

Possibilities:

It would be easy to add support for blocking SMS text messages as well. We’ve done all the code for this already in previous applications. Also the application could really use a persistent data store to remember number to block in case the user closes the application. It would be nice to allow user formatting of entered phone numbers for increased readability.

Download executable: callBlock.cab

Download Source Code: callBlock.zip

Feedback:

Want more? What else would you like to see? Time’s running out on submitting ideas. Be sure to get yours in soon!

So Page Brooks was talking with me earlier this week and he had a great idea for another Windows Mobile application. He wants an application that will repeat alerts for missed phones and text messages. I have to admit this is something I could use myself. So I figured I take a crack at it today, since it would make for a fun, simple, Friday app.

Repeatr

I decided to change up the naming format and play of the popular Web 2.0 naming conventions giving us the name: Repeatr. I have to admit, it is kind of catchy.

I searched for “Web 2.0 Logo Creator” and pretty much went with the first one I saw. This gave me a pretty slick logo in less than 5 minutes. I also decided to make the background a “tooltip” yellow, which I think looks really good.

Other than that everything is rather straight forward. We have checkboxes allowing the user to choose what events we will monitor. And we have a menu with a couple options, namely About and Exit. There is a “Clear Alerts” menu item, as well, that allows users to acknowledge they have responded to the alert(s).

The application allows user to select the number of minutes between alerts up to 60 minutes.

Of course we are using the State and Notification Broker to make all this happen. Using it means we hardly have to write any code ourselves!

State and Notification Broker setup code

   1: SystemState phoneMissedCalls = new SystemState(SystemProperty.PhoneMissedCalls);

   2: SystemState messagingSmsUnread = new SystemState(SystemProperty.MessagingSmsUnread);

   3: SystemState messagingTotalEmailUnread = new SystemState(SystemProperty.MessagingTotalEmailUnread);

   4: SystemState messagingVoiceMailTotalUnread = new SystemState(SystemProperty.MessagingVoiceMailTotalUnread);

   5:  

   6: private void frmMain_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

   7: {

   8:     phoneMissedCalls.Changed += new ChangeEventHandler(phoneMissedCalls_Changed);

   9:     messagingSmsUnread.Changed += new ChangeEventHandler(messagingSmsUnread_Changed);

  10:     messagingTotalEmailUnread.Changed += new ChangeEventHandler(messagingTotalEmailUnread_Changed);

  11:     messagingVoiceMailTotalUnread.Changed += new ChangeEventHandler(messagingVoiceMailTotalUnread_Changed);

  12: }

The way we alert a user to having missed a monitored event is by playing a sounds which is easy to do.

   1: [DllImport("aygshell.dll")]

   2: static extern uint SndPlaySync(string pszSoundFile, uint dwFlags);

   3:  

   4: void PlaySound()

   5: {

   6:     string path;

   7:     path = Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetName().CodeBase);

   8:  

   9:     SndPlaySync(Path.Combine(path, "alert.wma"), 0);

  10: }

Other than a little plumbing to make everything work together that is basically the entire app in a nutshell.

Possibilities:

This is a pretty spiffy application. But software can always be better. An option to allow the phone to vibrate would be great. Another option to allow the user to select the alert sound would be nice too.

Download executable: repeatr.cab

Download Source Code: repeatr.zip

Feedback:

Want more? What else would you like to see? Time’s running out on submitting ideas. Be sure to get yours in soon!

4 Days left…

Today on twitter, Glen Gordon was telling me that Brendon Schwartz had an idea for today’s application:

glengordon @cjcraft here's an idea for a mobile app that @brendonschwartz will like - record $ spent during the day and where it was spent (with GPS) about 13 hours ago from Witty in reply to CJCraft

It’s a really good idea. Probably a better idea than we will be able to do it tonight, but we are all about taking the first small steps to accomplishing great things.

GeoCash

I love the name, it is a play on GeoCaching. Somehow it adds a lot of “buzz” to the application already.

The application is designed to be easy for the user to use and understand. The user only needs to enter the amount they spent along with a note, and then simply press log and it will be added to the GeoCash log.

We are using our own NumericTextBox to be sure the user doesn’t enter in any invalid amounts spent. We have another standard TextBox for the note input. Below this we have the log information. This is done using a WebBrowser control, and setting its DocumentText property.

The main reason to use the WebBrowser control is to be able to do a little better text formatting. This allowed us to easily markup our text in bold and color.

 

HTML formatted output:

   1: sb.AppendFormat(@"<b>Date:</b> {0}", DateTime.Now).Append("<br/>");

   2: sb.AppendFormat(@"<b>Amount:</b> <span style=""color:red"">{0:c}</span>", decimal.Parse(textBoxAmountSpent.Text)).Append("<br/>");

   3: sb.AppendFormat(@"<b>Note:</b> {0}", textBoxNote.Text).Append("<br/>");

   4: sb.AppendFormat(@"<b>Latitude:</b> {0}", position.Latitude).Append("<br/>");

   5: sb.AppendFormat(@"<b>Longitude:</b> {0}", position.Longitude).Append("<br/>");

   6: sb.Append("<br/>");

   7:  

   8: documentText += sb.ToString();

   9: webBrowser.DocumentText = documentText;

Possibilities:

I love this app. It has so many cool possibilities. You could easily save this information to a text file or sent it as an email. I think this is perfect data to do a mashup on for example create a heatmap etc for it so you can see the “dangerous” side of town you need to avoid taking your money into from now on.

Download executable: geoCash.cab

Download Source Code: geoCash.zip

Feedback:

Want more? What else would you like to see? Time’s running out on submitting ideas. Be sure to get yours in soon!

5 Days Left…

So when you are talking Windows Mobile Applications you are usually talking about a cell phone device. We have looked at text messages using SMS, but one thing we haven’t look at so far is programmatically making phone calls. Today we will take a look at creating our own phone dialer application. It’s easier than you think!

SmartDial

I think the UI is pretty nice, not the best, but good overall. It is bright and clean. I found a web site that allowed me to create buttons in a snap and used it for the numbers. At the top of the screen, I added a label to display the number to dial. The menu only has a few options: Dial, Menu, Clear, About, and Exit.

Since we only allow users to enter numbers using our custom buttons, we don’t have to worry about anyone entering invalid characters.

So how much code did we as Windows Mobile application developers have to write to actually dial a number? See for yourself.

   1: private void Dial()

   2: {

   3:     new Phone().Talk(labelPhoneNumber.Text);

   4: }

Possibilities:

I think this has the potential to be an absolutely great application. One thing I think would be cool is if the application supported skinning. In a way it does, since I decided to leave the image resources as external files to the executable. So a user could edit any of the files themselves. Another great enhancement would be to have mousedown images for each button to give a nice “animated” touch to the application. What about quick soft sounds for when each button is pressed?

Download executable: smartDial.cab

Download Source Code: smartDial.zip

Feedback:

Want more? What else would you like to see? Time’s running out on submitting ideas. Be sure to get yours in soon!

Today I am in Atlanta, GA with Brian Hitney and Glen Gordon. We are presenting Mobility Roadshow: Programming for Windows Mobile. We had a long drive last night, and will have another long drive back to Florence, SC tonight. So I choose not bite off anything too intense today.

Many people today carry mini-flashlights on the end of their key chain. Apparently there is a need for this type of device because many stores sell them near the cash registers in the checkout lines. I wonder why these mini-flashlights are so popular when almost everyone has a mobile phone today. Maybe it is because the phone’s back light is not bright enough.

Hmm, this got me thinking. Most Windows Mobile devices have large powerful screens, maybe there is a way we could reuse our device as both a mobile phone and a mini-flashlight.

Mobile Flashlight

The UI is simple but the task is simple. I considered using a watermark image for the background or add a gradient to the background. With a goal of having as much of the screen as bright as possible I think the simple solid color background was the choice to make.

We only have a few menu options: Burn, Menu, Settings, About, and Exit. I decided to use the term “Burn” like you see on road sign saying “Motorcycles must burn lights”. We only have a few screens: Main, Settings, About. The settings screen you should see to the left, and the main screen should be to the right of this text.

On the about screen we let the user choose the color they would like the screen to “burn” at. By default we have chosen white to maximize brightness.

We used NumericUpDown controls to maximize usability, this allows user to choose the soft input panel or the control directly to set the color amounts.

Save Color Values

   1: int red = (int) numericUpDownRed.Value;

   2: int green = (int) numericUpDownGreen.Value;

   3: int blue = (int) numericUpDownBlue.Value;

Get Color Values

   1: numericUpDownRed.Value = (int) Global.Color.R;

   2: numericUpDownGreen.Value = (int) Global.Color.G;

   3: numericUpDownBlue.Value = (int) Global.Color.B;

Possibilities:

The biggest need this application has is a way for the user to save their color preference. Right now if the application is closed the color will go back to the default color of white. Another great feature would be to make the application to go full screen and hide both the title bar and the menu. One last addition would be code to maximize the screen brightness setting in Control Panel.

Download executable: mobileFlashlight.cab

Download Source Code: mobileFlashlight.zip

Feedback:

Want more? What else would you like to see? Time’s running out on submitting ideas. Be sure to get yours in soon!

Information is power. And with the .NET Compact Framework we can have all the information we want. Windows Mobile has many ways to get details about the device our application is running on. Hands down my favorite is the State and Notification Broker. In a word it ROCKS! You can use it to find out any number of things and you can use it to notify us when information we care about change state.

There are pieces of information that are so important in their own right, they could be used to create an application just to monitor and read that one detail. The first one that comes to mind is battery state.

MobileInfo

I thought of a few ways I could make this application flashy, but decided that might get in the way of the facts. Sometimes a simple notepad like application is the most beautiful application. Form and function were meant to be together, but sometimes forms steals the show, and function is what everyone came to see.

So instead we have a WebBrowser control with a simple text listing of the device’s most important details. I decided to use a WebBrowser control in case I ever did want to use more advanced text format.

We stick to our guns about keeping control simple and intuitive. We have a great menu with only a few options: Refresh, About, and Exit.

RefreshData Method

   1: private void RefreshData()

   2: {

   3:     StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

   4:  

   5:     sb.Append("<b>Active Application:</b>").Append("<br/>");

   6:     sb.AppendFormat("'{0}'", SystemState.ActiveApplication).Append("<br/>").Append("<br/>").Append("<br/>");

   7:  

   8:     ...

   9: }

Possibilities:

You can never have too much of a good thing. We have twenty pieces of information here for users to enjoy. How about a hundred? Or how about a quick and easy search bar? And the UI needs to be simple but it could be better.

Download executable: mobileInfo.cab

Download Source Code: mobileInfo.zip

Feedback:

Want more? What else would you like to see? Time’s running out on submitting ideas. Be sure to get yours in soon!

I have put together a calendar of applications for the 30 Days of .NET [Windows Mobile Applications]. Here you can get a quick feel for all the applications we’ve created so far, and will write in the coming days.

30 Days of .NET Windows Mobile Applications

Yeah, we have made it through week three of my 30 Days of .NET challenge. So far, we have 22 applications for 22 days. Thanks for your support!

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

If you missed the week two recap here it is: 30 Days of .NET [Windows Mobile Applications] - Week Two.

What’s your favorite?

Mobile SMS Remote	SMS Logger	Lunch-O-Matic	Mobile Weather

We get around, don’t we? SMS, RSS, GPS, Camera API, and more!

Mobile Speedometer	Mobile Altimeter	Mobile Sketcher	What will be next?

Feedback:

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

I couldn’t resist creating another GPS related mobile application. One of the neat pieces of data you get from your GPS device is time. This is great. It is like having one of the clocks that can update itself over the air by reading data transmitted from various atomic clocks throughout the world. Many phones today have the ability to update their time by connecting to the OEM’s time servers, but not all. And there are still lots of Windows Mobile classic devices in the world that do not have cellular capabilities.

Vista has the ability to update its time by using a feature called Internet Time. Basically Vista connects to time.windows.com and reads a Network Time Protocol server.

GPS Clock

Our user interface is simple and direct. We are using a nice graphic to adds some visual zing to the application. At the top of the screen we show the user their current device time and their current GPS time.

This allows the user to tell at a glance if they need to update their device’s time using the Update menu option.

On the menu we have added some simple settings features: GPS Start, GPS Stop, About, and Exit.

This is one of those Web 2.0 ideas where an application does one thing but does it very well. Sometimes these are the best apps. In this case, our application provides a bride for GPS time data to become device time data.

Somtimes that’s all it takes to make a user happy.

UpdateData Method:

   1: void UpdateData(object sender, System.EventArgs args)

   2: {

   3:     if (gps.Opened)

   4:     {

   5:         if (position != null)

   6:         {

   7:             if (position.TimeValid)

   8:             {

   9:                 gpsTime = position.Time;

  10:  

  11:                 labelCurrentGpsDate.Text = gpsTime.ToLongDateString();

  12:                 labelCurrentGpsTime.Text = gpsTime.ToLongTimeString();

  13:             }

  14:         }

  15:     }

  16: }

UpdateTime Method:

   1: private struct SYSTEMTIME

   2: {

   3:     public short Year;

   4:     public short Month;

   5:     public short DayOfWeek;

   6:     public short Day;

   7:     public short Hour;

   8:     public short Minute;

   9:     public short Second;

  10:     public short Milliseconds;

  11: }

  12:  

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

  14: private static extern bool SetSystemTime(ref SYSTEMTIME time);

  15:  

  16: private void UpdateTime()

  17: {

  18:     DateTime idag = gpsTime.ToUniversalTime();

  19:  

  20:     SYSTEMTIME s = new SYSTEMTIME();

  21:     s.Year = (short) idag.Year;

  22:     s.Month = (short) idag.Month;

  23:     s.DayOfWeek = (short) idag.DayOfWeek;

  24:     s.Day = (short) idag.Day;

  25:     s.Hour = (short) idag.Hour;

  26:     s.Minute = (short) idag.Minute;

  27:     s.Second = (short) idag.Second;

  28:     s.Milliseconds = (short) idag.Millisecond;

  29:  

  30:     SetSystemTime(ref s);

  31: }

Possibilities:

How about changing the color of the date and time if they are more than five minutes off? Simple feature to add but really helps the user. And that’s what matters.

Download executable: gpsClock.cab

Download Source Code: gpsClock.zip

Feedback:

Want more? What else would you like to see? Time’s running out on submitting ideas. Be sure to get yours in soon!

The main goal of 30 Days of .NET was to create a series of applications, any of which, a reader could take and use as a springboard to creating their first application. Well that, and to have some fun along the way and get more people excited about mobile development. A secondary goal of mine has been to show off various capabilities of mobile devices like GPS, Bluetooth, and multimedia features. One feature we haven’t covered so far is using a built-in camera.

Today we will mark that item off our list…

Mobile Sketcher

The goal is to create a basic drawing application, but add a mobile twist to it. On the menu, I have added a menu item for selecting a picture using the select picture dialog. The nice thing about the select picture dialog is it allows you to use your camera to take a picture and then select it as your picture.

In a way this application is a lot like the mobile signature capture application we did a while back, but there are some important differences: picture selection support, camera support, save file dialog support, and more. The business case for this application is something like the following: an insurance agent arrives on the scene of an automotive accident, she takes a picture using Mobile Sketcher and then adds notes and sketches to the picture for claims processing.

So users can select a picture from their device or take a picture and use it for their background. And then they can draw and edit the picture using Mobile Sketcher. At the bottom of the screen we allow user to select different colors for the pen’s ink: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, brown, white, and black. Well okay, white is really a light gray since white on white is hard to see.

SelectPicture Method:

   1: private void SelectPicture()

   2: {

   3:     SelectPictureDialog selectPictureDialog = new SelectPictureDialog();

   4:     DialogResult dialogResult = selectPictureDialog.ShowDialog();

   5:  

   6:     if (dialogResult != DialogResult.OK)

   7:         return;

   8:  

   9:     pictureBox.Image = new Bitmap(selectPictureDialog.FileName);

  10: }

Possibilities:

There is lots of room for improvement with this application. Just think of all the features most drawing programs have and there’s your list for improvements.

Download executable: mobileSketcher.cab

Download Source Code: mobileSketcher.zip

Feedback:

Want more? What else would you like to see? The managed API for using a Window Mobile camera is a great feature that is very powerful and very easy. Use it in your next mobile application or your first.

Yesterday, I had a really hard time between choosing to do a Mobile Speedometer or a Mobile Altimeter. But another day gives us another opportunity, and today we shall create the Mobile Altimeter.

Mobile Altimeter

This will make the third application in the 30 Days of .NET series that has had targeted GPS capabilities. We have created a compass, a speedometer, and now a altimeter. And there are still dozens of applications we could create with the GPS capabilities of Windows Mobile.

This time I decided to a little more with the UI. We have a background that symbolizes “altitude” which is appealing to end users. Plus it gives the program a lot of style and class. On the left side of the screen if you look carefully, you will notice we have an attitude ruler, which has a marker that rises one pixel for every foot higher the device travels up to 180 feet.

This simple feature really takes our application up to the next level. :D (Yeah, I know: I’m terrible.)

At the bottom of the screen we are allowing the user to read all the main stats off the GPS so the application is even more useful. We show altitude in a large bold font in the middle of the screen for impact.

The main event: UpdateData

   1: void UpdateData(object sender, System.EventArgs args)

   2: {

   3:     if (gps.Opened)

   4:     {

   5:         if (position != null)

   6:         {

   7:             if (position.SeaLevelAltitudeValid)

   8:             {

   9:                 labelAltitude.Text = position.SeaLevelAltitude.ToString("0.00ft");

  10:                 if (position.SeaLevelAltitude >= 0 && position.SeaLevelAltitude <= 180)

  11:                     pictureBoxArrow.Top = 173 - (int) position.SeaLevelAltitude;

  12:                 else

  13:                     pictureBoxArrow.Top = 173;

  14:             }

  15:         }

  16:     }

  17: }

Possibilities:

I think a more realistic UI would be a great improvement. And the ability to switch from miles to kilometers would be good too. If the odometer would track miles traveled that would be an awesome enhancement.

Download executable: mobileAltimeter.cab

Download Source Code: mobileAltimeter.zip

Feedback:

Want more? What else would you like to see? There’s been a lot of demand for GPS related applications. Does that help?

After the last GPS related application, GPS Compass, I’ve been wanting to do another GPS focused application. This time I figured we’d get in the driver’s seat with our friend: SPEED.

Gentlemen, start your engines…

Mobile Speedometer

The application is built off of  Windows Mobile 6 SDK included a GPS Application in the samples folder, C:\Program Files\Windows Mobile 6 SDK\Samples\PocketPC\CS\GPS.

This uses the GPS Intermediate Driver. If you are writing a location aware application for Windows Mobile this is definitely the way to go. ;)

The main UI is located at the top of the screen. We have a simple speedometer graphic in the background to add some flair to the application. On top of this we overlay the current speed based off of information returned from the GPS device. We can also use Fake GPS to simulate a GPS device.

Below this we have a readout of various GPS statistics that are updated continuously.

One thing to note is Speed may be return in knots which you will likely want to convert to either miles or kilometers.

We just need to create a method something like UpdateData below.

   1: void UpdateData(object sender, System.EventArgs args)

   2: {

   3:     if (gps.Opened)

   4:     {

   5:         if (position != null)

   6:         {

   7:             if (position.SpeedValid)

   8:             {

   9:                 labelSpeed.Text = (position.Speed/1.15077945).ToString("0.00");

  10:             }

  11:          }

  12:      }

  13: }

Possibilities:

I think a more realistic UI would be a great improvement. And the ability to switch from miles to kilometers would be good too. If the odometer would track miles traveled that would be an awesome enhancement.

Download executable: mobileSpeedometer.cab

Download Source Code: mobileSpeedometer.zip

Feedback:

Want more? What else would you like to see?

How'd we make it this far without a weather application? I must admit its hard to buy anything these days that doesn’t have a weather feature built in. But does everyone understand the basic of writing such an application? That’s what we will explore today.

Mobile Weather

UI is a little plain. I really think a weather application needs to have a top notch exciting UI, but we’ll keep it simple this time. We have an input section at the top that takes the user’s ZIP Code, and we have an output section at the bottom.

In the output section we have some basic factoids like current conditions and temperature. We also have a forecast for the next day showing date, description, with high and low temperature. And finally we have a graphic to add a little something to an otherwise drab application.

How did we mine this information. Basically I connected to a public weather RSS feed that takes zip code as an URL parameter, using an HttpWebRespone object. I then parsed out the data I need using regular expressions.

There are other ways of doing this type of thing, but I thought this would allow us to use a lot of neat Window Mobile technologies we haven’t explorer before.

Our friend the HttpWebResponse:

   1: private void RefreshData()

   2: {

   3:     string lcUrl = "http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=" + textBoxZipCode.Text.TrimEnd();

   4:  

   5:     // *** Establish the request 

   6:     HttpWebRequest loHttp = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(lcUrl);

   7:  

   8:     // *** Set properties

   9:     loHttp.Timeout = 10000;     // 10 secs

  10:  

  11:     // *** Retrieve request info headers

  12:     HttpWebResponse loWebResponse = (HttpWebResponse)loHttp.GetResponse();

  13:  

  14:     Encoding enc = Encoding.GetEncoding(1252);  // Windows default Code Page

  15:  

  16:     StreamReader loResponseStream = new StreamReader(loWebResponse.GetResponseStream(), enc);

  17:  

  18:     string lcHtml = loResponseStream.ReadToEnd();

  19:  

  20:     RefreshScreen(lcHtml);

  21:  

  22:     loWebResponse.Close();

  23:     loResponseStream.Close();

  24: }

Last but not least the Regex object:

   1: string conditionsEx = @"<yweather:condition  text=""(?<desc>[^@]+)""  code=""(?<code>[^@]+)""  temp=""(?<temp>[^@]+)""  date=""(?<junk>[^@]+)"" ";

   2:  

   3: Regex regEx = new Regex(conditionsEx);

   4:  

   5: Match m = regEx.Match(input);

   6:  

   7: if(m.Success)

   8: {

   9:     desc = m.Groups["desc"].Value;

  10:     temp = m.Groups["temp"].Value;

  11: }

Possibilities:

The UI needs more polish, but it is useable. There is even more data in this RSS feed than I’m exposing so that is another way to expand on this project and make something awesome.

Download executable: mobileWeather.cab

Download Source Code: mobileWeather.zip

Feedback:

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

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.

Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
Chris Craft

Topic: Windows Mobile Programming

Tuesday, June 10th, 2008, is the next meeting of the Pee Dee Area .NET User Group.

Chris Craft will be presenting at Microsoft Mobility Roadshow alongside Brian Hitney, Glen Gordon, and Lou Vega in Charlotte - June 18, 2008 and Atlanta (Alpharetta) - June 24, 2008. These are full day Windows Mobile device application development events.  PDANUG will be hosting our own special "Welcome to the World of Windows Mobile" event to keep in theme these two MSDN events.
Focus will be Windows Mobile 6.x and using Visual Studio 2008 to developer mobile applications.
Topics to be covered:

•       Intro to Windows Mobile
•       Data Guidance (some discussion of line of business applications)
•       Whole New Level

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 Presentations

Microsoft has published a SKU Matrix for Windows Mobile 6.1, and there is also an older one for Windows Mobile 5.0.

Windows Mobile 6.1 makes it easier to stay connected and manage your busy life—from just about anywhere. Windows Mobile 6.1 is full of enhancements, made with your needs in mind. Think about this: When you text with a friend, the messages thread together, just like instant messaging—no more confusion about what you’re talking about. Connecting to a Wi-Fi network is now simpler—no more scrolling through multiple pages; a single click and you’re connected. And Windows Mobile 6.1 runs on a growing variety of phones, including touch screen devices with slide-out keyboards, sleek full-keyboard smartphones, and compact flip phones.

Today's application is meant to be a simple, yet useful, application for people to use out on the town. This is an application that a couple of my friends recommended as a good beginner's introduction application to programming for the .NET Compact Framework. One thing I really like about it is that there is nothing to get in the way of a new developer's understanding of what is going on in this application. Everything is direct and straight-forward.

If you have ever eaten out with a large group of friends and wanted to split the tip, then you probably know how much of a challenge this can be. It seems trivial at first glance, but there is a decent set of variable inputs, and another good size set of outputs. All of which are interrelated. But that is the past, now you have Mobile Tipper to take care of the hard work for you.

Mobile Tipper

There's not a whole lot going on with the UI. It is still clean and simple. I have colored the output fields in a light yellow color, and I have added an icon to the top right of the screen for decoration. Also, notice we are formatting our outputs, and allowing users to enter '%' and '$' characters in the inputs. This is a nice touch of polish that users appreciate. The icon in the top right is also the icon for the applications and the forms themselves. (I couldn't take it; I decided to give the application, a famous light blue color to give it a little life.)

There's a lot of fields, and this is technically a mobile data entry application. So we want to enable our users to enter data as easily as possible. That's why we are using editable comboboxes, and allowing users to enter '%' and '&' characters. The comboboxes are pre-populated with a likely set of inputs users will want to use.

One thing I did also to help with data entry is I assign tab orders to all my input controls, and marked all my output controls TabStop properties as false so they would be skipped over.

I implemented a Tip class that handles all the math calculations, and so on. And I created NumericTextBoxes and NumericComboBoxes that only allow numeric data to be entered. Again try to make end users lives easier.

You might be wondering what my secret is to handling the character's '%' and '$', it is the trusty String.Replace() method. I replace both of those characters with String.Empty's. :D

     return Decimal.Parse(this.Text.Replace("$", string.Empty).Replace("%", string.Empty));

I came close to skinning this application with some kind of butler them skin. Basically a white and black theme with a little bowtie band somewhere across the top, or middle with a watermarked jacket front in the application form's background. But decided it probably wouldn't end up looking like it does in my head.

Download executable: mobileTipper.cab

Download Source Code: mobileTipper.zip

Feedback

Tomorrow will be our tenth application, and mark us at 1/3 complete. So far I have managed to design, create, publish, and explain a new and different .NET Compact Framework application everyday. My goal is to do it everyday this month. Your support really makes a difference so keep it coming!

Wow, time sure does fly when you're having fun. Since the beginning of the June, we have already knocked out over a half-a-dozen applications. It's hard for me to choose a favorite, as there is such variety, and many of you submitted great application ideas. If I had to pick a favorite, I think I would pick Mobile FX, since it is just fun.

What's your favorite?

Minutes to Midnight Countdown	Bluetooth Manager	GPS Compass	Mileage Tracker

Look at the variety: a countdown time, a Bluetooth control panel type application, a GPS application, and a work utility.

Mobile Capture	Pocket PasswordGen	Mobile FX	What will be next?

Again, we get around as far as application topics: screen shot utility, password generator, a sound FX app, and who know's what we'll do next...

Looking forward to this week's applications? Let's see where we'll go next.

Wow, things are really moving around here. First Lou Vega offers to help with 30 Days of .NET as the VB .NET Editor. And now Christopher Fairbairn has offered to help as the C++ Editor.

A little about Christopher:

Christopher is the leader of the Christchurch .NET User Group. In case you didn't already know, Christchurch is in New Zealand. (Pretty cool reading about their climate, and I didn't realize they are know as the "Gateway to the Antarctic"). Christopher has a great blog mostly focused on Windows Mobile C++ development, which can be hard to find good information on when you are first starting out. Be sure to take a moment and read Christopher's "About Me" page. I think you'll agree that we are lucky to have him on the team, and that we are looking forward to seeing take on device application development for Windows Mobile.

So far, Christopher is off to a great start having already reproduced two of the applications I have written. One of the thing I really enjoy is reading the blog post Christopher does for application he translates. He a great job of explaining the nuts and bolts of everything that he is doing. He is very detailed and very thorough, you can learn a lot simply following along with him

Day 01 - 30 Days of .NET [Windows Mobile Applications]: Minutes to Midnight Countdown: C# Edition / C++ Edition

Day 02 - 30 Days of .NET [Windows Mobile Applications]: Bluetooth Manager: C# Edition / C++ Edition

We have discussed the ability to assign an Windows Mobile application we have created to a device's hardware button. Once with our day two application, Bluetooth Manager, and once again with our day eight application, Rotate Me.

By default my device's buttons are configured as follows: "Button 1" starts "Internet Explorer", "Button 2" starts "Messaging", "Button 3" starts the "<Start Menu>", "Button 4" starts "<OK/Close>", and finally "Button 5" starts the "<Camera>". If you look at the screenshots below, you'll noticed I changed "Button 2" to start the "Rotate Me" application instead. This is the "as good as it gets" way to start an application; doesn't get better than one button press access.

Just in case everyone isn't aware of the feature in Windows Mobile, I've posted the steps here:

First click the "<Start Menu>", now click on "Settings" menu item, next click on the "Buttons" icon under the "Personal" tab, finally select a button and assign it a program. It's that easy.

Yesterday, I read the following suggestion for the 30 Days of .NET series.

"How about a program to manually rotate from portrait to landscape, the millions of new HTC Diamond owners would love that " - Alex

Lucky guy, the HTC Diamond is a gorgeous device. I mean really, really good looking device - if Scarlett Johansson were a phone good looking here.

Don't take my word for it. See for yourself:

On my HTC device there is an today plug-in named "HTC Home", that gives me an icon I can click on my today screen which will rotate my device's screen. See screen capture, I've converted everything else to grayscale.

This is a great little app, that does everything it claims it will do. Only thing is I hate it. I hate it because it doesn't do what I want it to do. It rotates through all four combinations of screen directions: top (0 degrees), left (90 degrees), bottom (180 degrees), and right (270 degrees). See that's the rub, never want to see my device upside down.

So basically, every time you click this icon the screen rotates 90 degrees, which means I have to go through what I consider two junk orientations, bleh.

I think we can do better.

This is probably going to be the easiest application we write. Thanks, Alex! ;D

I considered a few approaches to this application. I thought about following the same model as HTC and placing the application somewhere on the Today screen. Basically there are three ways to accomplish this. One we could write a today screen plug-in, but this isn't straight-forward in an managed application. There is a way to do it however: Creating a Pocket PC Today Screen Plug-in with the .NET Compact Framework.

Or we could create a task tray icon for our application. If you look right about the Contacts menu item in the bottom right of my screen, you can see three application task tray icons. Again, I felt this was more work than worth. But here how you could do it: Using the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework MessageWindow Class.

Finally, I though we could add an icon to the notification area at the top-right of the screen. If you'll look at my screenshot again you'll see where I have 6, count them 6, notification icons on my device. Everyone is doing this lately, and it starting to get out of hand lately. But if you like here's the information you'll need to accomplish this: Programmatically create and display Notifications.

So what was my solution? Well, I decided to leave well enough alone. This leaves the end user three choices, one assign the application to hardware button, to assign the application to a today screen plug-in that can launch other applications, and three to simply run the application manually. A lot of today screen plugs-ins have application launchers capabilities. Back to my screenshots, the today screen plug-in at the top of the screen allows for nine applications to be started from it. I've highlight the icon for Rotate Me, and made the rest the screen grayscale.

So how hard is it to check the screen orientation and change it? You tell me.

using Microsoft.WindowsCE.Forms;

if (SystemSettings.ScreenOrientation == ScreenOrientation.Angle0)
    SystemSettings.ScreenOrientation = ScreenOrientation.Angle90;
else
    SystemSettings.ScreenOrientation = ScreenOrientation.Angle0;

Here's a link to a blog post I did on How To: Assign an Application to a Windows Mobile Device's Hardware Button in case you need it.

Sometimes it is surprising just how much you can get for such little time and effort. That's the power of the .NET Compact Framework.

Well, that does it for today. Here are the binaries. Hope you enjoy them.

Download executable: rotateMe.cab

Download Source Code: rotateMe.zip

Feedback:

Thanks guys, it's been fun. Keep the ideas coming. Don't wait until the last minute. I hope these applications are helping you realize the raw rapid application development power of the .NET Compact Framework.

This is my favorite application so far. The concept is awesome. It takes the idea of a "sound effect keychain", and make it into a fully open and extensible mobile application.

Mobile FX

So if you are following me, then you know that if you press the birds button you'll hear a birds sound effect, and if you press the bomb button your hear a bomb sound effect, and son on down the list.

This application tries to be as much about form as it is function. All of the icon graphics are created with Axialis IconWorkshop. (Thanks for the heads up, Jamey!) It makes making really great icons a snap using its Image Object Packs. (See the image to the right for a small sample.)

What I really like about this application is there is the possibility of creating add-in sound packages. I'll discuss this more in a follow up blog posting to come soon. [If there is interest? Let me know.]

The way the application works is it looks for an XML file that tells it where each of its possible icons are and where the sound files for each icon are located as well. If you want to change the order of the icons on the screen just change the order of the "buttons" in the XML configuration file.

I haven't completed the extensibility point for others to add there own icons and sounds but that is a small enhancement which I'll do shortly.

Download executable: mobileFX.cab

Download Source Code: passwordGen.zip

Feedback:

How interested are you guys in the follow up article? Is this something you would enjoy? Would you like a second pack of sounds? Is this application something you would use? Would you create a sound pack of your own?

I had a couple submissions for ideas to use in today's application, but decided I would use one of my own. Friday night and all: girlfriends like to go out on Friday evenings, we need to go shopping, and later we want to watch a little TV together, so I didn't feel tonight was the best night for a big project.

My idea is a simple yet very useful application for generating random passwords.

Pocket PasswordGen

Nothing too fancy here. It's a good looking application, but it didn't take much to make it so. Just clean layout and simple design. I did add a horizontal ruler line between the inputs and the outputs. It is actually two panels set to 1 pixel high each with ones back color set to light blue and the other pure white. The form's background is just a little off-white to add some warmth, but it is hard to tell directly.

The application engine is also clean and simple. There is a password class that has properties for each of the options, and there are two methods: Generate, and ConvertToPhonetic.

I have four character groups:

     static string  lowerCase = @"abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwyxz";
     static string upperCase = @"ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWYXZ";
     static string numbers = @"0123456789";
     static string punctuation = @"~!@#$%^&*()-+='"",.?";

Based on options the user chooses a character list is created with all possible characters for the user's password.

Next I Generate PasswordLength worth's of characters for the password.

This is very important. I use RNGCryptoServiceProvider to generate a random seed number for the random number generator. We want real random numbers, not wishy-washy random numbers. This is a good source for how to use Crypto providers to make a password generator.

Pretty cool code, so check it out if you haven't ever generated random numbers before.

I pulled the Phonetic Alphabet off Wikipedia and made it into a generic dictionary object.

Lastly, I added a menu item that allow users to copy the password to their clipboard. I had to write some code to copy text into the clipboard. This is the best code I could find for doing so.

BTW, there is a bug in the above screenshot. Fixed in the current release. Can you see it? It's subtle. It has to do with the handle the last character. Good luck finding it.

Download executable: passwordGen.cab

Download Source Code: passwordGen.zip

Feedback

Nothing but positive feedback so far. I really appreciate. It seems we are off to a good start. Still I have another 24 days left, and only a handful of ideas I really like. So don't keep that good idea to yourself. One comment on the blog and you might have yourself your first Windows Mobile custom application.

Today was a day I get to pick what I was going to write. One thing I've been doing a lot of lately is taking screenshot captures of either my emulator or my device. I don't know if there is a perfect solution for this, but I figured this would be a great "pain" to try to overcome.

Also, I just think this is a great utility to learn from and to use.

Mobile Capture

As always, let's look at how the application looks. Noticed I had more controls than I could put on one screen. Or if I could put all the controls on one screen it was going to look like a train wreck. I really try to make it so that if the user has to do something "tedious" like data entry, especially on a mobile device, that there is some sort of "cool" factor for the user to "experience".

In this case, I decided to make 3 sections to the form and have each fill the screen in response to the user clicking either the light blue "Capture", "Activation", or "Option" buttons. Notice how I disguised the buttons to look like section headers.

With a little effort each section could expand open as a visual effect, I choose to have the section just instantly pop to their minimized or maximized states. This would be a great feature enhancement for an enterprising reader to tackle. Just a matter of fine tuning it.

As far as features go, we have a lot happening there as well. Full Screen mode, Area mode, Hardware Key support, Time support, and the ability to take multiple pictures in a row.

That's a lot of application to take on in one day, and really only a couple of hours, but that's how we do it around here.

One issue I ran into was I managed to confuse myself. I though when I called Form.Hide() that is wasn't hiding the form's menu bar in time before the screenshot was taken. So I went and found the following blog article: Christian Helle's Blog: Programmatically Minimize an Application in .NET CF 2.0. Work's fine, but so does Form.Hide() just didn't figure it out for a while. Figured I'd leave Christian's code in for while since it is more interesting, P/Invoke and everything.

I wasn't quite sure the best way to take a screenshot anymore in .NET Compact Framework, so I looked that up to find a better way. I found this: Alex Yakhnin - Creating a screen snapshot in CF v2. And I decided it would do lovely, and it has so far. I haven't had the first problem with it.

Does anyone recognize where the feature set of this application is based on? It is a very famous Windows graphics program that was really popular a few years back now. Give it a guess.

The .NET Compact Framework HardwareButton device component made working with the device's hardware buttons a snap.

The way the application figures out what it needs to do between on the various combinations, and there are a lot of them, is pretty cool to check. Notices I didn't say clean and slick, just pretty cool. It could use some clean up.

I'm really happy with the UI; it was a simple trick to pull off the effect but I think it works great. Try it out see what you think! Alright well I think that wraps up day 05, I hope you like the

application.

Download executable: mobileCapture.cab

Download Source Code: mobileCapture.zip

Feedback

I'm looking forward to seeing where we go next. I hope you are too. There hasn't been a lot of comments yet but I know word hasn't really gotten out yet either. But feel free to post your comments and ideas.

I wasn't sure what to do for day four. I knew I wouldn't have a ton of time to work on it so it needed to be something short and sweet. That's when one of my closest friends, Chris Reeder, paid me a visit and told me to take a look at a comment he left for me on my blog. Chris runs a Web site you may know, StupidProgrammer.com. If not you should check it out.

I would like to recommend a mileage tracking application using a SQL CE database (had to get SQL into the app).

I decided this would be a great application for today. Unfortunately I multiple sets of unexpected visits from friends and family tonight and just about didn't have any time to sit down and knock this one out. But once I cut some features: SQL CE, metric support, stats graph, and the ability to compare MPG (etc) over time, it wasn't so hard. :D

Mileage Tracker

I think tomorrow I'll do an application of my own choosing, you guys can't have all the fun. But I'm glad for the participation. Thanks!

First thing to discuss is the design. There is some eye-candy but it is really minimum. Just a pretty background. Actually it is a background based on Windows Live Messenger's default theme. Just enough color to not be sterile.

First issue I ran into with this was transparent labels. The .NET Compact Framework for some reason does not support these. You can set it to transparent it just isn't implement and it doesn't do anything. The way I got around this was to following this guide: Alex Yakhnin - Transparent labels. (There's a minor typo: the Graphics grx object that is passed into the method is called gxOff inside the method. Just correct that and everything works great.) Very nice work-around Alex.

Not to the technical design: I had to decide what calculations I was going to support. I decided I wanted to do the following:

1. Miles Per Gallon: required I know total distance and total fuel used. (standard mpg value)

Gallons Per 100 Miles: no new information needed. (How many gallons does it take to make it 100 miles.)

Cost Per 100 Miles: I would have to also get price per gallon. (How much does it cost to travel 100 miles.)

Maximum Range: I would need the user to provide total gallons tank can hold. (How far could I travel on a full tank of gas.)

The menu has Clear, About, and Exit menu items that are all basically self explanatory.

I decided to break out the fields and calculations into a separate class called Mileage.

I almost forgot to make a custom icon for this application. I would have hated that. I really dislike the default icon and try to always replace it.

Once again we take advantage of the custom string formatter in the .NET Compact Framework. By using .ToString("0.00") we always get numbers to two decimal places, versus huge unwieldy and unsightly values.

Like I said, "short and sweet". I hope you like it.

Download executable: mileageTracker.cab

Download Source Code: milesageTracker.zip

Feedback

So I think we are off to a great start. Today request is for reader to help spread the word and let others know about this resource. These are meant to be great resources for training and proof of the rapid application development power of .NET Compact Framework and Windows Mobile. So if you are enjoying this series and know someone else who might maybe you should let them know about us?

Just caught sight of a really good post by Robert McLaws: Windows Vista Edition : Windows SideShow for Windows Mobile Beta – FINALLY!

Awesome. This is really good news.

What is Windows SideShow?

Windows SideShow is a new technology in Windows Vista. With Windows SideShow, developers can write gadgets to send data from a computer to devices connected to that computer.

The beta requires you to have a device with either Windows Mobile 5.0 or  Windows Mobile 6  Professional or Standard Edition. You will also need a Bluetooth-enabled Vista PC.

Even though Robert warns that the Beta is "version 0.01", I didn't have the first problem. It just worked. :D

The ScreenShot Tour

No gadgets available	No gadgets are turned on	Options

Things are pretty dull when you first set up Windows SideShow for Windows Mobile.

Let's enable some gadgets for our Device. The HTC-8900 you see above is my AT&T Tilt phone. "Inbox - Windows Mail", and "Windows Media Player" gadgets are installed by default in Vista. And I think the "Office Outlook 2007 Calendar" find its way into your machine if you have Office 2007. I download the "Countdown" gadget, and the "Office PowerPoint Remote" from the SideShow Gadget Gallery.

[ Stopped ]	Albums	Browse Media Library	Genres
Play now	[ Playing ]	Let's Get It Started	[ Stopped ]

Great background. It's just eye-candy, but it really adds a lot of polish and class to the application. Nice feature set for this Windows Media Player gadget. And since it is so simple, it is fast. You can get to Albums, Artists, Playlists, and Genres very easily and get to your media quickly. You can see album art for the currently playing song, but it is very small. I think this should be updated. Notice, I added a second gadget, "Office Outlook 2007 Calendar, between the first screenshot and the last one.

[ Playing ]	No information available	Inbox - Windows Mail

You can see the SideShow gadget from the desktop which is a really good idea. And I've included a couple of screen shots of the calendar and mail gadgets. Not a lot to see here but it is mostly because I don't have good data to see it shine on this machine.

 

Hmm, I couldn't resist I had to try the Microsoft Office PowerPoint Remote for Windows SideShow.

Office PowerPoint Remote	Session 5 Mobile Data.pptx	Next Slide	Presenting: Session 5

Wow, this gadget is just awesome. People pay really good money for PowerPoint remote and how many can show the PowerPoint deck on the screen. It even works from the Today screen, and you can just use the hardware buttons to control the presentation. This is going to be really popular.

Feedback Wanted:

If you decide to give Windows SideShow for Windows Mobile a try, please consider posting what you think, or maybe even do a Screenshot Tour of your favorite SideShow gadget.

For day three, I  had already decided to write a GPS Compass application, short and sweet. It just so happens I received a comment from Paul Diston today (see below) asking for that very thing. It's a small world.

Hi,

I may have an idea that you might be interested in. I have a GPS receiver in my device and use the GPS Sample as provided with the Windows Mobile 5 SDK. I would be interested in a 'snail trail' kind of application which would draw your current location and keep track of your movements, a simple line showing your movements would be great. Also maybe a compass type application which would calculate your bearing.

I have had some success with these ideas however I just don't get the time to explore them further.

Thanks

Paul Diston

GPS Compass

Again we have another 30 Days of .NET application that was at least in part due to a reader's request. So keep them coming gang.

I'm not a graphics designer, but as I've mentioned before I believe it is important for a program to have some eye candy. It needs to look good and professional. Now beauty is in the eye of the beholder and you may be thinking GPS Compass is ugly, but the point is I tried, and IMHO I think it looks decent.

Now did I draw the compass rose you see to the right? No. I went to Wikipedia and found one in the public domain here. But that's my point it is important to make best use of all the resources you have at hand. Notice I didn't spend hours trying to do it myself only to end up with a nonprofessional looking graphic.

Once I had the base I need for the aesthetic design of GPS Compass, it was time to decide how to design the GPS engine. I narrowed the possibilities down to the following: access the GPS as a serial device, use the OpenNETCF GPS Library, or use the GPS Intermediate Driver.

I decided to use the GPS Intermediate Driver since it is fairly new, and it as the documentation says, "It is useful because it provides an intermediate layer that abstracts the actual GPS device from developers and manufacturers."

One thing about hardware nobody builds anything the same way. There are always like quirks and variations. If somebody else volunteers to let that be there problem you'd be wise to take them up on the offer.

Next I needed a way to test the application. I have an AT&T Tilt, that I love, and it does have built-in GPS but it isn't going to work from almost the dead center of my house. Fortunately Microsoft loves their developers and have included a Fake GPS utility for this very purpose. "FakeGPS uses text files containing GPS data to simulate the functionality of a GPS receiver." I really like this tool it just works.

I read through the GPS Intermediate Driver reference material and found the object I was interested in: GPS_POSITION. For this simple application all I really needed was access to flHeading: Heading, in degrees. A heading of zero is true north.

At this point I discovered that the Windows Mobile 6 SDK included a GPS Application in the samples folder, C:\Program Files\Windows Mobile 6 SDK\Samples\PocketPC\CS\GPS.

I checked it out and realized it would be a snap for me to take the sample and convert it over to what I needed. Sure I could have duplicated the effort, but everything I needed was right there waiting for me to take advantage of it. Again, always remember to make the best use of all the resources you have available.

The GPS Application has a nice status screen which I moved to a menu item option. I mean the main event here is obviously the sexy screen you see above. A few nips here, and a few tucks there, and I was done.

One thing to be aware of is the sample, and the GPS Application it stands on top of are great base applications to build almost any GPS application you can think of.

There is nothing stopping any of you from taking this and creating your own .NET Application of the Day. And if you do let me know and I'll mention your application.

Download executable: gpsCompass.cab

Download Source Code: gpsCompass.zip

Feedback

We only have 27 days left for you to submit your idea, or even your .NET [Windows Mobile] Application of the day.

Lou Vega, leader of the Charleston, SC .NET User's Group, asked me if he could be the VB .NET Editor for 30 Days of .NET. Again my goal is to make this as much of an open forum as possible. Since its hard to do that with one person, and Lou totally rocks, I said of course, thank you!

Basically Lou is going to take up the task of converting each of the applications to VB .NET. This is a huge boon for the community. If you are a VB .NET programmer and you want to do Windows Mobile development you will quickly discover that only something like 1 in 10 examples are done in VB .NET, if that many. And outside of Microsoft almost all content is done in C#.

I understand the decision Microsoft made. Basically most Windows Mobile developers, at least in the early days, had a background in C++ and usually Win32 programming. Microsoft wanted to cater to these developers, and win them over for the success of the platform. Also, with a new platform guidance is very important. If there was a budget for 10 tutorials that year, then if they were split between C# and VB .NET, there would only be about half as many such examples.

The choice was made to make more examples that could help beginner developers all the way to advance developers, versus having to cut out a lot of material. And trust me in the early days you needed as much help as possible because if you were doing any out of the norm it could be just a little rough. Today things are so much better, if you want to do something it is usually simple and direct.

So with that out of the way let me officially welcome Lou Vega into his new position, and offer him my sincerest thanks. Great idea Lou!

Today, Page Brooks was telling to me about a limitation with his Windows Mobile device. His device's battery isn't powerful enough for him to be able to leave his Bluetooth radio on all day. But he really wants to be able to use his Bluetooth headset while he is driving to work in the morning, and on the way back home in the afternoon. One requirement he has is he doesn't want to have to look at the screen to accomplish this.

It would have been real easy to create a Bluetooth Toggle application that simply takes the current state of the Bluetooth radio and toggles it from on to off, and vice versa. Instead, I've decided to build a simple Bluetooth Manager application that will provide our readers with the code needed to create the Bluetooth Toggle application. My hope is that someone from the community will take this code and help Page out.

Technically I make some special "modifications" to the application that should help Page get by for the time being. When the application first starts, it toggles the Bluetooth radio mode. And I added a timer that will begin an auto shutdown after the program has been running for 1 minute. All Page needs to do is assign the application to a spare hardware key and then when he press that key it will toggle the Bluetooth radio on and off, and after 1 minute it will auto shutdown.

So according to Minutes to Midnight I have 2 hours, 21 minutes, and 6 seconds left to make today's application. So let's get on with the show.

Bluetooth Manager

This application came about due to a reader's request. So be sure to submit your ideas for applications. I strongly favor working on user submitted ideas over my own.

I always like an application to have a little eye candy, and that explains the interactive Bluetooth logo at the top of the screen. It is in color when the Bluetooth is enabled, and grayscale when Bluetooth is off. Clicking the Bluetooth logo toggles the Bluetooth radio from on to off.

I added a multiline textbox so users could see a history of Bluetooth radio state changes. There are buttons to allow users to directly turn the Bluetooth radio on and off.

One caveat is that this uses P/Invoke to access the Microsoft Bluetooth stack dlls.

Here are the calls:

   [DllImport("BthUtil.dll")]
   private static extern int BthGetMode(out RadioMode dwMode);

   [DllImport("BthUtil.dll")]
   private static extern int BthSetMode(RadioMode dwMode);

Also, we had to take advantage of State and Notification Broker API. Here's why: if the state of the Bluetooth radio were to change due to an action outside of our program we wouldn't know about it. That's where SNB API comes in. It allows us to subscribe to notifications for almost any event that we are interested in. The code is below.

   SystemState bluetoothStatePowerOn = new SystemState(SystemProperty.BluetoothStatePowerOn);
   bluetoothStatePowerOn.Changed += new ChangeEventHandler(bluetoothStatePowerOn_Changed);

   void bluetoothStatePowerOn_Changed(object sender, ChangeEventArgs args)
   {
       UpdateScreen();
   }

The last thing to check out is the auto shutdown code: it's simple but works great. There is a timer that waits for 1 minute to pass, and then there is a loop for the count of ten, which uses a Thread.Sleep(1000) to pause the application for 1 second each iteration of the loop. This creates a great effect that keeps the user from thinking the application has crashed.

Download executable: bluetoothManager.cab

Download Source Code: bluetoothManager.zip

[Be sure to check out the C++ Edition of 30 Days of Windows Mobile Applications]

Feedback

28 days left to go, and so far we had one idea submitted for an application. Keep them coming. So what do you guys think? Is the format working for you? Any ideas on what we can improve?

One goal I have for the "30 Days of .NET" series is that I write each application on the day I publish it. That really doesn't leave me any room to spare. I'm not sure I can do it, but that's part of the fun and challenge. I do have a life. And between family, friends, career, hobbies, and dreams, there isn't as much time in day as I would like sometimes. One thing that would be useful for me is to know how much time left I have in day to complete that day's application.

“When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the state of science.“
- Lord Kelvin (William Thomson)

 

Minutes to Midnight 

Simple, simple application, but I would say it is useful. At first I just had it say 2 hours, 45 minutes, and 38 seconds remaining. But I decided that was too simple. I decided to use progress bars, because it adds a visual element that gives the application a little, let's call it, "weight".

Then I looked at the application and felt it looked a little sterile, aka dull, dull, dull. I decided the answer was to add some color. I did this by going to http://www.colourlovers.com/ and browsing their color palettes. I was even able to search color palettes by using the color of the progress bar, which I got by doing a screen capture and getting the hex color from Paint .NET.

I didn't take me long to notice I had an issue. From my point of view, it's subjective, the progress bar wasn't right. progressBarHours.Value = timeSpan.Hours; needed to be progressBarHours.Value = 24 - timeSpan.Hours;. Once I did this it was working like I wanted it to.

I wasn't thrilled with the top progress bar. It was meant to show the total remaining time left in the day, but I didn't have room for another label. But there is a saying, "The perfect is the enemy of the good." I think of this as, if you follow the road to Perfect forever, you may never get to Good. If Another reason to use the color scheme to help break the form into logical sections: yes, there is method to my madness, well, at least sometimes.

The only other thing I had to handle was total minutes left. Depending on the math, it would sometimes display "X.666666666 of 1440 total minutes left". Fortunately, there is an easy fix for this, custom numeric format strings: timeSpan.TotalMinutes.ToString("#.0").

Download Executable: minutes2Midnight.cab

Download Source Code: minuates2Midnight.zip

[Be sure to check out the C++ Edition of 30 Days of Windows Mobile Applications]

Feedback

Ok guys, I really need everyone's help here. I need some ideas for applications to write for the next 29 days. I have some, but I could use more. Also I'd love to hear your thoughts on how we make this series even better. I always open to ideas, and suggestions so please feel free to let me know what you think, because if I think it is a good idea I will do it.

Over the years, I have given many presentations on developing Windows Mobile applications. One thing that I have heard time and time again is that people have a hard time writing their first mobile application. I think sometimes people have a hard time taking those first steps. It is easy to think that it will take too much time, and that it will be too hard. But that is simply not the case.

But instead of telling people, I'm going to show them how easy it really is. The key here is simple: "Taking baby steps is better than taking no steps at all!"

I plan on writing 30 mobile applications in the next 30 days. I will publish both the executable and the source code for each application.

My goal is for each of these applications to be useful, interesting, and straight-forward. Someone considering writing their first Windows Mobile application should be able to look at these applications and "get it".

If you search, you can find tons of simple code to do specific tasks, like playing a message beep. You can even search and find code for fully developed applications, but these are too advanced for many developers, first starting out. What you'll have a harder time finding are simple applications, with source code, that can be the building blocks for new developer's understanding of mobile development. It's my hope that in the next 30 days I can do something to help with that.

Feedback

Please consider this entire series an open forum. I'd love to hear what you think, and what you want. Do you think this will help new mobile developers? Are you a new to mobile development? If so, what would most help you "get it"?