How To Develop Windows Mobile Applications on Windows 7

Tasked with developing an application on a barcode-scanner running Windows Mobile 6.1, specifically this device, I started down the development road.  This blog post is about my encounters, and will hopefully help you avoid the pitfalls, and have you off to development as quickly as possible.

First you'll notice that Visual Studio 2010 doesn't support Windows Mobile projects.  That may be the end of story for some of you right there as there are no workarounds.  But, if it's not, and maybe you have an MSDN license, you'll need to use Visual Studio 2008 Professional (intentional use of the word Professional here).  Of course when installing VS2008 Professional, make sure you do a full install, or at least select the mobile development parts you'll need for the install.

Okay, once VS2008 is installed, you're ready to develop a simple application.  For an excellent example on how to get started with a hello world, here's one from Microsoft.

If you need your application to actually connect to anything (who'd have thunk it?), you'll need to configure your device (or emulator) for network connections.  Note, this is not done by default even on the emulator.  First step is to install the "Windows Mobile Device Center" as a free download from Microsoft.  If you should get a happy "Device did not install correctly" error message during the install, feel free to ignore it.

Once you've installed the device center, there is an excellent tutorial from Microsoft here on how to setup "sync" between your device (or emulator) and your computer.  With sync setup, your device will automatically use your computer's internet connection.

With the network connection setup, you should be ready to start development!

As a side note, if connecting to a MySQL database, you can use the latest framework (3.5) and the latest version of the MySQL connector (6.3.0 at time of writing), and it will work just fine.  If you do encounter an exception from the MySQL Connector however, there is a chance that it will not have a meaningful message associated with it as it may be missing the string resources...

The New Journalism: Palin "Slams" while Obama "Blasts"

The most frequent words appearing in the new "journalism" era of the web include two of the most over-used verbs in today's headlines: slams, and blasts.  It seems like lately everyone is "slamming" everyone else while others are "blasting" people for their comments.  Honestly, if a story doesn't have either "slams" or "blasts" in the headline, I don't read it...

I realize that in order to try to grab readers headlines need to add a bit of sensationalism, but I think maybe, just maybe we're going a little overboard with these...

Starbucks Should Embrace Their Mobile Users

Starbucks has just announced plans to start offering mobile payments to their cardholders:

http://business-video.tmcnet.com/news/2011/01/31/5278422.htm

Of course this is a great idea, allow users to pay for their beverages uses their mobile phones.  But, I think Starbucks might be missing out on what it's customers could really use: mobile ordering.

For most, the biggest "inconvenience" at Starbucks is not how long or how difficult it is to pay for your order (paying is usually the quickest part), but it's placing your order, ensuring it is correct, waiting for it to be fulfilled, then verifying the order was made correctly.  Chances are that regular customers may be ordering complex drinks with numerous adjectives, and may be placing a large order for friends or co-workers.  In a crowded and noisy Starbucks, this can result in mis-matched orders, lost items, confused baristas, or worse -- irate customers.

Here's an idea: allow account customers to place orders via the phone or computer with a pickup time if they go ahead and pre-pay with their account.  That way, the order can be placed in the barista's cue by the system at the appropriate time, and there is no chance of "mis hearing" or mis-interpreting the order by the order-taker.  Users simply go and pick up their order, no waiting in line and no paying...  This saves time for the customer and Starbucks.  Bonus: this should result in fewer "remakes" as the order is always placed correctly...

This option could be enhanced to save your favorite drinks, at which point you could enable "one touch" ordering of your favorite drink at your favorite location, something that most of the regular customers already do anyway...