Blog:: Craig Pringle

Something I'll be doing a bit of this week I'm afraid. My nearly 2 year old daughter has come down with chicken pox.
Poor wee girl. She is feeling a bit miserable!

The other day I managed to get hold of a MiniMax EVDO modem for a short time.  Although I can find it anywhere on their website this EVDO modem is available through Telecom NZ.  If you're interested in purchasing one you can contact your local Telecom store.  I was keen to get a chance to try it in Windows Vista.

I connected to the modem to my LS800 using the USB cable provided.  I then tucked the modem in behind the strap on my LS800's bump case.

Although the device driver was not available via Windows Update I was able to do and he windows XP driver to install and function correctly.  The dialer application shown below was intuitive and easy-to-use.

I only time to do a quick speed test, which gave me a download speed of just under 300 kilobytes per second.  I have arranged to get one for a longer period of time when I get my EVDO bump case for my LS800.  At that time I will do further speed testing and report back on the impact on batterylife.

According to this page Toshiba are participating in the Express Upgrade to Vista programme. 

Depending on the SKU you are upgrading from and two you will either pay nothing but a nominal shipping and handling fee or a small sum for the upgrade.

So if you are looking at one of these fine Tablets or notebooks there is no need to wait for Vista.

Model	Vista Capable
Portégé M400	■
Portégé M500	■
Qosmio F30	■
Qosmio G30	■
Satellite A100	■
Satellite M100	■
Satellite M110	■
Satellite P100	■
Satellite R20	■
Satellite Pro A100	■
Satellite Pro A120	■
Satellite Pro P100	■
Tecra A6	■
Tecra A7	■
Tecra A8	■
Tecra M5	■
Tecra M7	■
Tecra S3	■
Tecra P	■

 

According to this page Toshiba are participating in the Express Upgrade to Vista programme. 

Depending on the SKU you are upgrading from and two you will either pay nothing but a nominal shipping and handling fee or a small sum for the upgrade.

So if you are looking at one of these fine Tablets or notebooks there is no need to wait for Vista.

Model	Vista Capable
Portégé M400	■
Portégé M500	■
Qosmio F30	■
Qosmio G30	■
Satellite A100	■
Satellite M100	■
Satellite M110	■
Satellite P100	■
Satellite R20	■
Satellite Pro A100	■
Satellite Pro A120	■
Satellite Pro P100	■
Tecra A6	■
Tecra A7	■
Tecra A8	■
Tecra M5	■
Tecra M7	■
Tecra S3	■
Tecra P	■

 

In my previous post I pointed out that the Office compatibility pack released today.
Guys if you use Office 2000, XP or 2003 in your organisation, deploy this patch now! Even if you have no plans to deploy Office 2007 (and you should - it rocks!) unless your line in a bubble other organisations you interact with will.
Deploy this pa tch and you can open, edit and save the new XML formats. Documents created in the new formats will start making their way into your environment. Your can either have them break or just work. Your call.

Just read on Marc Orchant's Office Evolution Blog
Microsoft has released a Compatibility Pack for Office 2000, XP, and 2003 that lets those older versions open, edit, and save to the new XML file formats used in Office 2007.
It's a free download available in English, Japanese, French German, and Spanish and provides users of older Office versions to the following formats:
Word
.docxMicrosoft Office Word 2007 document
.docmMicrosoft Office Word 2007 macro-enabled document
PowerPoint
.pptxMicrosoft Office PowerPoint 2007 presentation
.pptmMicrosoft Office PowerPoint 2007 macro-enabled presentation
.potxMicrosoft Office PowerPoint 2007 template
.potmMicrosoft Office PowerPoint 2007 macro-enabled template
.ppsxMicrosoft Office PowerPoint 2007 show
.ppsmMicrosoft Office PowerPoint 2007 macro-enabled show
Excel
.xlsbMicrosoft Office Excel 2007 binary workbook
.xlsxMicrosoft Office Excel 2007 workbook
.xlsmMicrosoft Office Excel 2007 macro-enabled workbook
.xltxMicrosoft Office Excel 2007 template
.xltmMicrosoft Office Excel 2007 macro-enabled template
.xlamMicrosoft Office Excel 2007 add-in
The download links and more information can be found here.

A conversation started recently:  Where do Origami devices (a.k.a. UMPCs) sit in the market?  Are they consumer devices?  Should they be lining the shelves at the local Best Buy, Harvey Norman, Dick Smith or whatever they call the big electronics retail outlets in your part of the world?  Or should they be sold through the network of distributors, resellers and integrators that we call the channel as business devices?  Where do they belong?

Dr Neil and Hugo chatted about this recently on an episode of Dr Neil’s Notes.  One (the good doctor with the apparently infamous moustache) took the stance that they should be consumer devices.  Hugo on the other hand sees a niche in the business market for these devices.  They both made some good points, but in the end I don’t think that either really convinced the other of their viewpoint.

So where do they belong?  In my opinion - everywhere... and almost nowhere...

Now before I get torn apart for origami bashing let me explain that.

We’ve been here before with the first PDAs – though with a slightly different bent.  When the first PDAs came out they were almost universally touted as business devices, and yet there were people who bought them for personal use and started putting games, calorie counters, exercise planners and personal media files on them.  They became Personal digital assistants.

 In my opinion there is no one market in which these origami devices will rule.  They will go everywhere.  They will be used by meter readers and in doctor surgeries as surely as they will be used by soccer moms to check their email and by people in their homes to control their media centres.  But not yet.  And that brings us to the almost nowhere.

The Origami Project defined a platform.  Devices that conform to this specification are referred to as UMPCs.   But a platform does not provide utility in and of itself.  It only provides the potential to be useful.  In order for the Origami to realise its potential it needs applications that leverage the platform.  Yes – you can run pretty much any application that will run on Windows XP on an origami – but to get the most benefit the applications need to be designed for a mobile platform, display well on the small screen and users need to be able to interact with them efficiently.  While some applications just happen to translate well to this platform, a great many don’t.  Without applications to run on them – it’s just a platform.

So there exists now a gap.  We are beginning to see a fair range of devices.  We have yet to see much in the way of applications designed to leverage the platform.  But we are starting to see some – Kevin Tofel blogged the other day about Cinemar bundling their home automation client with the Samsung Q1. 

Initially uptake will be slow and spread across both the consumer and corporate markets – but as the number of units sold into both markets increases, so too will the number of applications in the market.  This will fuel the sales further and in the grand tradition of supply and demand this will put downward pressure on prices.  In conjunction to this the technology will continue to evolve, making the devices faster, cheaper, more connected and longer running.   This will create additional potential for utility, which will then be leveraged by another generation of applications and so on and so forth.  Soon we will see these devices everywhere, even though for now – you see them almost nowhere.

The Tablet PC User Group and the Windows Mobile User Group have merged. See below for the invite to the first Meeting...

Yes, this is the time again... But now it’s different: this is the first Mobile Computing User Group Meeting, where we bring the Tablet PC and Windows Mobile communities together to talk about mobility.

 

The idea is to have a common interest group in mobile technologies (laptop, Tablet PC, UMPC, Pocket PC, Smartphone) instead of a platform-specific user group. This will allow us to bring a more diverse set of speakers that will interest to the group profile.

 

 

Mark in your calendars: 26 October, 6pm, Microsoft New Zealand(Lambton Quay, Midland Park, Wellington).

 

 

Dion Knill (Vodafone New Zealand) will take the audience through Vodafone New Zealand’s roadmap, showing some of the Windows Mobile devices coming to the market now, and some non-Windows Mobile devices that however include ActiveSync for Microsoft Exchange Server synchronisation.

 

Darryl Burling (Microsoft New Zealand) will show us a UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC) up close, and even better, running Windows Vista. Come along and hear Darryl Burling talk about his experiences with this new form factor and using Vista on a UMPC.

 

As usual after the sessions we will have some Q&A time, and beer and pizza.

 

Please confirm your presence by replying directly to me at wmug@geekzone.co.nz

 

Mauricio Freitas

www.geekzone.co.nz

www.geekzone.co.nz/freitasm

Microsoft MVP Mobile Devices

OK. After much discussion Mauricio Freitas and I have decided to merge his Windows Mobile user Group with The Tablet PC User Group I run.
The resulting group will be called The Mobile Computing User Group!
As Mauricio says in his invite to the first combined meeting (see my next post):
"The idea is to have a common interest group in mobile technologies (laptop, Tablet PC, UMPC, Pocket PC, Smartphone) instead of a platform-specific user group. This will allow us to bring a more diverse set of speakers that will interest to the group profile."
I think that this is going to be great and it will open the door for all sorts of interests content. Hope to see you there!

Yay! Techsmith have released a new version of Camtasia Studio
This is one of my favourite apps and I've used it to bring you guys some cool screen casts in the past.
Can't wait to see what's in the new version (first hand)
In the meantime here's what's new according to TechSmith's site:
What's New in Camtasia Studio 4
Share with Anyone, Anywhere
We live in a mobile world, and Camtasia Studio 4 helps you keep pace by making it easy to publish videos and MP3 files for portable media players. Now your message, lecture, or just-in-time training video can reach your audience practically anywhere on the bus, in a coffee shop, or while theyre jogging. Camtasia Studio videos are designed to share.
Click here to watch video

Give Your Audience Playback Choices
Sometimes its hard to predict what your viewers will need. Will they watch your videos on a laptop? Or would they prefer an MP3 or iPod video file to take along? Now you can stop guessing and give your audience a variety of options. Choose the primary file format you want, then add iPod and/or MP3 to the production list, and even attach a PowerPoint presentation. Then, produce them all at once.
 Click here to watch video

Seamless Publishing through Integration with Screencast.com
Camtasia Studio 4 provides a fully functional screening space for your videos. Directly from within the production wizard, you can publish videos to Screencast.com, where others can easily view your content. Screencast.com has built-in RSS and iTunes functionality, so you can deliver videos directly to your viewers desktop or portable media player. With this seamless integration between Camtasia Studio and Screencast.com, sharing your videos, screencasts, and more, is just a click away.
Click here to watch video

No More Background Noise
Even in "reasonably quiet" conference rooms, offices and classrooms, unwanted room noise can seep into your recordings, making them sound less than perfect. Camtasia Studio 4 can edit out background noise to drastically improve the quality of your video. Either choose one of the many presets to automatically remove the noise, or manually select the noisy portion of the timeline. Then, Camtasia Studio will identify this sound pattern in your recording and remove it across the entire audio track.
Equalize Volume Levels
Its easy to speak too softly or sit too far from your microphone during recording. Its also common to experience volume variations when two or more voices are being recorded. Camtasia Studio 4 can remove volume variations across the timeline to ensure consistently good sound throughout your video. Advanced users can manually control volume ratio, threshold and gain.
Click here to watch video

Compare Results before Producing
Have you seen Camtasia Studios perfect-quality Flash SWF or new Flash Video (FLV) files? How about the incredible results of QuickTime's H.264 compression? With so many choices, it can be difficult to decide which is best for your situation. Camtasia Studios new production preview feature lets you explore options beforehand and quickly compare the results of different formats and compression settings.
Its Your Video Customize It!
Choose from a variety of playback bars and Flash pre-loaders to create a presentation thats just right for you. And, Adobe Flash users can access our source files to easily customize our pre-loaders.
Faster and Easier than Ever
Click here to watch video

Survey your viewers
Camtasia Studio 4 lets you add open-ended survey questions to your videos to engage viewers and gather feedback. Quizzes and surveys are now also easier to create and more professional in appearance.
View and adjust audio volume
An audio volume indicator and an Audio Setup Wizard make it easier to choose the best audio settings for your needs.
Click here to watch video

Produce in three clicks or less
Eight production presets, based on the settings and file formats people use most often, let you publish videos quickly for the Web, iPod and portable media players. Edit the presets or create new ones to use repeatedly or share with others.
Move on from PowerPoint fast
PowerPoint recordings created with Camtasia Studio 4 are processed almost instantaneously, so you can finish your presentation and move on to something else.
Click here to watch video

Narrate as long as you need to
Extend any frame of a previously recorded video, and take your time adding narration or concluding remarks.
Callouts automatically resize to fit
Have a lot to say in your callouts? Now Camtasia Studio will automatically resize your callouts to fit your text.

In response to my post last night about the Speech Recognition Tutorial in Windows Vista not running at 800x600 Rob Chambers has posted about some of the thinking behind the decision:

“I understand the feedback ... and it was a painful decision to have to make ... but we had to go up to 1024x768 minimum resolution for a bunch of the screens in the Tutorial that Craig didn't show you. We tried doing that in 800x600, but it just didn't work; especially in the "Dictation" and "Working with Windows" sections of the Tutorial.

You see, in the tutorial, we try to make the system look as much like an actual running Windows Vista PC as possible, and also give the user instructions off to the right. We ask them to interactively try things (in a directed manner) so when they're done with the tutorial, they'll have a great idea of how to use WSR in the real world.

We may revisit this decision in the future (for Vista + 1), but for now, you'll have to run the Tutorial on a system that supports 1024x768. However, users can still use the old style Training window on lower resolution screens.”

Firstly I would like to thank Rob for responding at all.  It is good that you are listening at all and that you take the time to respond.  That said I could not disagree more.

Rob claims that a couple of the screens didn’t work at resolutions below 1024x768.  As a user of a small screen tablet I would much rather have to put up with something not quite working visually than have it not work at all.

Typically users who have chosen a device with a small screen and a lower screen resolution have made a conscious decision to give a little bit away visually to get some other benefit small physical size, light weight or both.  We choose to do that.  We live with the applications and websites that don’t layout properly and we scroll left and right as well as up and down to use them.  If it is too unusable then we can choose to go away and dock to do what must be done.  Developers – when you error out below a particular resolution (or don’t take into account that the screen can be oriented in portrait mode) you take that decision away from the mobile user and that is bad!

Rob – that exact same if statement that is used to throw up the error that tells me that my screen resolution is too low could instead be used to change the layout of the form, turn some stuff off or simply enable scroll bars.  Sure it may not look quite as pretty but at least it would work and put the decision with me as to whether or not to go and dock instead.

Developers of the world – use your if statements for good, not evil.

As a final point – don’t forget that it is not just mobile PCs that run at 800x600 either.  My in-laws run their desktop PC at 800x600.  It drives me nuts, but that is how they like it and it is not for me, or any developer, to tell them they are wrong.

Last night I decided to set up speech recognition on my Motion Computing LS800.  The thing with speech recognition is that you should set it up in the same environment that you are planning to use it.  So I settled into a chair in the study and configured the microphone.

Vista asked me if I wanted to run through the speech recognition tutorial.  I have run through this tutorial on another machine before but I know that as you talk your way through the tutorial you are actually completing the first training session.  For this reason I decided to run through the tutorial anyway.

What the?

Microsoft – What were you thinking?!?!

Don’t you think that perhaps small screen devices are exactly the kind of device that would benefit from natural language input like speech?

As I said I have run through this wizard before.  I’ve seen the interface and there is a stack of white space in it.  But don’t take m word for it – I dropped the resolution down to 1024x768 on my Toshiba M400 and kicked off the tutorial.  It runs in a full screen window that you can’t resize.  Here it is.

Now I don’t know about you but I think that this interface has a bit of potential to be trimmed down to fit into a lower resolution screen.  This smacks of form taking priority over function.  Come on guys – get your priorities straight.  I’m logging this as a bug!

In the course of testing my little ink plug-in for Vistas search (http://www.pringle.net.nz/Blog/PermaLink,guid,55e3cc16-a9c0-4177-b5bd-b8a4eed260fd.aspx) I discovered something cool.
The search indexer in Windows Vista is including the index from OneNote 2007. The upshot? In your search results you get sections that include your search term in your handwritten notes! I noticed because I have a section in OneNote called Demo that has "Blah" written in it. I use that to demonstrate how I can search for text in OneNote and get hits from handwritten notes. I wrote" Blah" into SearchPad and Demo.one was in the search results!
Hey - when did this start working? I explicitly tested this in an earlier build of Vista and was disappointed that it did not work.

This hit my inbox a couple of weeks ago in the midst of a very busy time. It scrolled out of view and I forgot all about it until a conversationthe other day reminded me.

Elegant Packaging have released a great new bump case for the LS800 with a slot and cable routing for a USB EvDo adaptor.

Heres a shot of the case:

And here is a shot with tablet.

 

With Windows Vista RC2 on my LS800 one of the issues I noticed is the in-box sound driver does not work.
If you have an issue where the sound driver is installed and seems to think it is working, but does not play any sound check your driver.
The version in RC2 and also available on Windows update does not ask for me and is dated 19 July 2006.
Installing the version on the motion computing site works for me. It is version 5.10. 4246.0 dated 16 Nov. 2004.
Go figure!

One of my favourite new features in Vista is the “search” field in the start menu. This is great. You just hit the Windows key and type something and the computer will hunt high and low for that term. It will bring back documents, applications and even emails. Great feature and so easy to use...

Except when you are on the couch with your trusty slate. Then it is a bit too fiddly. You have to click start, then click the search field to make the TIP turn appear, then click that, then write something and click Insert – too hard!

Enter SearchPad. (I had this idea yesterday and had it kind of working last night. Tidied it up a bit tonight.)

Here’s how it works.

I have a shortcut to it in my Start-up folder so it will load at boot time. That puts a search icon in the system tray.

 

Double-click that and you get an ink enabled dialog above the system tray...

 

When you click “Start Search” it will bring up the Start Menu and enter the ink recognition result into the Search field. Vista does the rest.

You can also right-click the icon and select exit if you want to get rid of it, but why would you want to do that?

I’m going to release this version as a beta to a few people and then fix bugs – after which I'll make it available to all for free!