TamsPPC - the PocketPC Blog » Software News

TouchFLO 2.5 – the changes

Tam Hanna — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:36:26 +0000

I have to admit that I never liked HTC’s TouchFLO too much – I am, however, perfectly aware that I am very alone with this sentiment.

The list below hits us via xda-developers; a user dubbed shadowline claims that it’s the “change log” for the upcoming version 2.5 of the UI:

Home screen:
New look
new shortcut icons on up swipe, along with 3 on the main screen.
Tapping on an appointment brings up a new appointment info screen.
Tapping on date lets you change the date.
Tapping on the alarm info lets you change alarms.
Tapping on time lets you view the world clock.

People Tab:
New layout, grid style like Manila 2D.
New Messaging screen (see messaging below)
– All people:
Nothing new in the main screen, but under “Updates and Events” tapping on “me” brings you to a list of your facebook notifications.

Messaging Tab:
Nothing new on the main screen
– All Messages:
Brand new all messages screen. Listed by conversation/contact, and includes contact icons.
– In a conversation:
Brand new screen, scrolling has changed, icons included in each message along with the contact icon at the top.

Mail Tab:
Nothing new.

Internet tab:
New bookmarks view, includes thumbnails of your favorite sites (can be used on home screen too)

Calendar tab:
Nothing new

Stocks tab:
Nothing new

Photos and videos tab:
Nothing new

Music Tab:
Totally new page
Album thumbnails now “flow” in from the top
new controls
– Menu:
Update album art from the web on selected track, or on all of now playing.

Weather Tab:
Nothing new
– Add City:
New search by typing name.

Footprints Tab:
Brand new tab, works much like its Manila 2D cousin.
Not able to test more on this as it is not currently working for me.

Settings tab:
So much to list!
All of the windows mobile settings menu has been placed into this tab.
If you could get to it from start > settings, then it is now here too.

None of this is final, and there are a LOT of features that at either not working, temporarily broken (requiring a restart), or tf3d itself crashes a lot.

As of now, no further information is available – stay tuned!

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Firefox for Windows Mobile: Fennec Alpha 2 released

Tam Hanna — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:03:57 +0000

The Mozilla Foundation has just unleashed the second beta of its mobile FireFox (dubbed Fennec):

The following things have been added or changed:

New for Alpa 2:

* Improved panning performance
* Newly designed theme
* JavaScript error console is now built in
* Improved add-on support
* Numerous bug fixes
* Improved UI polish

As of now, the Mozilla Foundation has stated nothing about hardware requirements – all they state is that Windows Mobile 6 is required. This means that the program will likely work on all supported screen resolutions – further information can be had here:
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/fennec/1.0a2-wm/releasenotes/

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HTC: we will unify UI across Android and Windows Mobile

Tam Hanna — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:34:38 +0000

HTC’s recently-announced Android handset (dubbed HTC Hero) contains an UI stack of its own – it is dubbed Sense, and is radically different from the current TouchFLO implementations which sit on the Today screen of various WM handsets.

WMPowerUser asked the folks at HTC’s whether TouchFLO is here to stay – and got the following response:

The Hero UI has been created specifically for HTC’s Android-based phones but also represents that three core pillars of HTC Sense. HTC’s future Windows Mobile phones will also be based on HTC Sense, but will enhance Windows Mobile in a way that is as appropriate and valuable to people.

I personally think that their choice makes perfect sense: people think about brands first, and about operating systems only after that. Nokia is as successful as it is as its S40 and S60 handsets share a largely common UI stack, thereby simplifying switching.

HTC gains a lot from unifying their UX: I personally would not be surprised to hear that HTC got thousands of calls from people switching to the G1 and who ended up looking for the Start menu…

Unfortunately, developers will likely end up paying the bill. HTC TouchFLO has already made loads of Today plugins obsolete – the more it does out of the box, the less there is to do for developers.

What do you think?

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Windows 7 Upgrade Option: 26th June 2009

Tam Hanna — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:53:00 +0000

Microsoft Austria has just gotten in touch with us for some further information about the WIndows 7 upgrade program. First of all, it starts on the 26th of this month.

From that time onward, Austrians who buy their PC at a participating retailer will be able to obtain an equivalent version of Windows 7 after its release. In particular, the following transformations will be possible:

Vista Home Premium
Vista Business
Vista Ultimate

to corresponding version of Windows 7. System Builder licenses will get the same treatment – so people who get their PC with an SBC license (decoupled OEM licenses, are very popular in Austria) will also get their upgrade free of charge.

The offer will be free except for processing fees, which are said to be different from manufacturer to manufacturer. The Offer will run to the 31st January of 2010.

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Adobe: Flash 10 mobile beta drops in October

Tam Hanna — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:04:54 +0000

Windows Mobile always boasted some kind of Flash support – while not native as in other platforms, a downloadable Flash plug-in allows our boxen to access quite a few pages. Unfortunately, the emphasis is on few…as applets which require advanced functionality tend to break the plug-in.

Our handsets might just be in luck – the slide below is from an Adobe keynote:

As of now, nobody knows which devices will be affected – but things nevertheless could get very interesting soon…

The full slide deck can be had here:
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/09q2analyst/

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AvantGo: going, going, gone

Tam Hanna — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:53:10 +0000

Content agregators like AvantGo date back to a time when mobile data traffic was unaffordable – back then, the only way to read newspapers on your handheld in an affordable way was to download them via your desktop PC and sync them over. Fortunately, data has become a lot cheaper…and this trend has now claimed its first victim.

AvantGo’s mother company has just posted the image below to the official AvantGo web site – the intentions should be clear:

While this move will hit users without a data plan hard, most of us should IMHO switch over to RSS feeds. RSS feeds are available from most news services (including this one), and tend to offer the same thing which AvantGo has offered. A variety of such programs are available – hit the TamsShop to find free and paid ones…and don’t forget to use the discount code CRAZYSUNDAY to get 20% off your paid app of choice…

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Idiots hit fan in German video game ban

Tam Hanna — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 12:04:23 +0000

GamePro, one of Germany’s largest video game magazines, reports the following (translated by yours truly):

Germany plans to introduce a law which prohibits the production, manufacturing and/or sale of games which are based on detailed simulation of killing of humans or humanoids.

Even though the law has not yet been ratified, its ratification is somewhat likely given the current political climate in Germany: the recent Paintball law failed due to intense lobbying, and left the government in a void and forced to act.

Obviously, raising a public stink is a very good idea – the articles below should give you food for thought:
In defence of first person shooters
We’re all paintballers now…

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Sprint’s Touch Pro may get Windows Mobile 6.5

Tam Hanna — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 22:45:09 +0000

Although I don’t trust the customer care team of carriers too much, the quote below struck my interest:

…
Currently, we are working to launch the Windows Mobile 6.5 upgrade for HTC Touch Pro.

Although, no official release date has been declared for the upgrade.

However, as soon as the upgrade is launched, we will inform our customers with high profile promotions.
…

If this really turns out to be true, the folks at xda-developers will have a lot less effort when it comes to getting WM 6.5 onto other Touch Pro-like devices. However, I dare to bet that they will be done by the time Sprint moves…

via PocketNow

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Windows 7 drops October 22nd

Tam Hanna — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 03:17:59 +0000

Vista haters will be happy to read the lines below, which hit us via Xinhuanet:

… confirmed that Windows 7, the next version of its operating system, will hit stores on Oct. 22, in time for the holiday shopping season,
…
Microsoft said it plans to offer a guarantee program that would offer a free upgrade to Windows 7 for people who purchase computers installed with Windows Vista close to the launching date of Oct. 22, The Seattle Times newspaper reported on its website.
…

Even though I haven’t had any hands-on time with Windows 7 as of this writing, other Tamoggemon employees have had this pleasure and have described the operating system as “amazingly fast compared to Vista, and more featurerich than XP”…

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Windows Mobile team: WM 6.5 done

Tam Hanna — Sun, 17 May 2009 20:38:49 +0000

We have seen our fair share of Twitter hoaxes recently, but I am pretty sure that this tweet is authentic:

BTW: the message hits us via the Twitter account of the Windows Mobile team – it can be accessed here:
http://twitter.com/wmdev/status/1797927736

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