Category: Software

Impatient hackers who cant wait for Windows Phone 7 have been creating a variety of skins to bring the UI to older devices.

This one by LeSScro is based on WisBar Advance Desktop 2.x and features:

• Lockscreen with time, date and notifications
• Start screen with familiar blue tiles and links (hopefully customizable)
• Profile settings (WiFi and volume settings)
• Transitional animations
• Pictures Hub
• Games Hub (probably to hold all your games)
• Media Hub for music, video, podcasts, radio
• Office Hub
• Stocks Hub
• All apps launcher in list format
• Weather
• WVGA

Read more about it at  XDA-developers.

Via Pocketnow.com

Gregory T. Huang wrote:

One of the big questions surrounding the burgeoning field of healthcare IT is, who is going to push to adopt the technology—patients, doctors, or hospitals? After much thought, it seems Microsoft is banking on the latter.

The Redmond, WA, company (NASDAQ: MSFT) is announcing a new software system geared toward hospitals today at the 2010 Annual Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Conference & Exhibition in Atlanta. The software, called HealthVault Community Connect, helps gather a patient’s electronic health information—typically stored in a hospital’s separate IT systems—and makes it available to both the patient and referring doctors. Some of these capabilities existed before, but this is the first time a unified system, based on Microsoft’s SharePoint platform for Web-based process management, will be licensed to hospitals.

The software will let patients do things like pre-register online for appointments (sort of like checking in for a flight) and get access to their test results, clinician notes, and medication lists. Doctors can track all the data through the hospital system and make sure the right people have the right charts available before the patient’s next visit. Microsoft says a prototype version was tested at New York Presbyterian Hospital, and the new product is being used by early adopters like Brooks Rehabilitation Hospital, based in Jacksonville, FL. It will be widely available in the third quarter of this year.

Microsoft HealthVault, which was released in October 2007, fits into a larger effort within the company’s 700-strong Health Solutions Group. HealthVault, as the name suggests, is meant to be a secure repository of medical records accessible by patients and their doctors. The program has about 150 partners so far, as is compatible with some 70 home healthcare devices. Other related Microsoft products include Amalga, which tries to get all 65 or so proprietary health IT systems in the average U.S. hospital to talk to each other, and Amalga Life Sciences, which seeks to help genomics researchers put their data in a form that will eventually be conducive to personalized medicine.

David Cerino, a general manager in Microsoft’s Health Solutions Group, calls the new HealthVault offering “first-of-its-kind software that can bridge the islands of care from hospitals to the home to the referring community, and engages patients and families in their healthcare.”

One major selling point to hospitals, he says, is that it will help them address the …Next Page »

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Here is a comparison between an iPod Touch 2nd Generation and a HTC Touch HD2 both running a Playstation emulator  (psx4iphone on iPod Touch and FPSEce on HD2).

Malherbe notes with this example the difference is very obvious,  with the game is completely unplayable on the iPod Touch while on the HTC HD2 the game runs at full speed with sound.

FPSEce can be downloaded here.

The HD2 can do many things, and with Windows Mobile anything is possible. This new tweak was made by the XDA member exidler. The tweak uses the HD2’s proximity sensor to turn of the screen when a finger or any object is detected in front of it. This would work a little like during a phone call, except it does not turn back on until you press a hard button. This tool only works in portrait mode, to prevent accidental screen-offs when using landscape apps.

It switch off screen using proximity sensor detection.
Like alternative power button.
After proximity detected – screen switched off and proximity sensor don’t used until screen will be switched on again manually.

Give this a try

Many have asked what’s up with the poorly fitting text on the many screens of the Windows phone 7 OS, with words and even screens often spilling over from one screen to the next, and space seemingly being wasted.

LukeW, Chief Design Architect at Yahoo! Inc, explains what is really going on from a product design point of view.

He notes the Windows Phone 7 Series uses a Natural User Interface (NUI) paradigm that turns actual content into interface controls, and that the user interface needs to signal what elements are interactive and encourage exploration.

This is often achieved through “teasing”, and in WP7 on the home screen this is achieved with a slight animation that hints at the content below the home screen image.

The Windows Phone also makes use of truncation throughout the user interface, with each of the main application screens include a tease of the content on the next screen over. This hint of additional content gives people a reason to move to the next screen and explore.

Transitions also help communicate interactions, with animation reinforcing that UI elements are active and provide feedback when an action has been successfully completed.

Read Luke’s full and detailed blog post here.

Pocketnow have published this video review of a great mini-golf game for Windows Mobile. The software is available from Marketplace for only $6.99, and unlike most games can be purchased by selecting the US market in the Marketplace selector.

Read more at Pocketnow here.

About the only Windows Mobile device close to qualifying for a Windows Phone 7 upgrade is the HTC HD2, but so far we have had many conflicting reports regarding the likelihood of this happening.

HD2Hacks is not prepared to sit around and wait for HTC to say yes or no, and is asking for the HTC HD2 community to make their preference clear by signing his online petition asking HTC to release an update.

Now I am sure most of us do not think petitions ever achieved much of anything, but all the same they don’t hurt much either, so to join the 82 people who have already shown their support sign here.

The HTC HD2 is pretty loud, but when connecting it via the audio jack to my car stereo it still tops out at significantly lower volume than a CD in the same stereo.

If you have the same problem this cab at XDA-Developers may be the answer.  The cab is taken from the Samsung Omnia and is by SRS labs, and ads control over 3DEffect, Boosts Sound, Bass, Treble, Presets and also a significant volume boost.

Download the cab at XDA-Developers here.

Orange has announced it will be one of the first to bring Windows Phone 7 series devices to their customers.  With Microsoft, they plan on integrating their services with the phones, and provide special support to customers to help them set up their devices.

For the first time, Orange plans to combine its SIM and network authentication with Microsoft Windows Phone 7 Series to create a single customer “ID”, simplifying sign-in and eliminating the need to register for multiple accounts. This move would allow Orange customers on 7 Series handsets to enjoy single sign-on access to Microsoft services such as Xbox LIVE and Zune Music, alongside a range of Orange services which are seamlessly integrated within the Windows Phone 7 Series platform. Depending on which market, Orange services are expected to include Orange TV and Orange Navigation and access to exclusive, localised content such as the national football league in France (Ligue 1).

Together with the Windows Phone 7 Series, the extended Orange and Microsoft partnership will also see joint collaboration that goes beyond devices, delivering enhanced customer care services to help customers get more out of their phones.

Olaf Swantee, SEVP of Orange’s global mobile business, comments: “We have a long-standing and successful relationship with Microsoft, having introduced the first ever SmartPhone together back in 2002. Eight years on, our collaboration continues to bear fruit as we look to bring Orange Windows Phone 7 Series customers more than just a phone, but a full end-to-end multimedia experience that will give them enhanced access to content and dedicated in-store support. This partnership we are planning with Microsoft, sharing service capabilities expert customer assistance, is just part of how Orange is working with the industry to revolutionise customer care and bring mobile multimedia to everyone.”

“People want a phone that focuses on what matters most to them, works on their behalf and simplifies common tasks. They want a phone that helps manage and organize all of the information that is constantly swirling around them. Windows Phone 7 Series brings together related content from the web, applications and services into a single view to make life easier,” said Andy Lees, senior vice president of Mobile Communication Business at Microsoft. “We are excited that Orange will use Windows Phone 7 Series to offer differentiated services and added value to their customers throughout Europe with their dedicated care package.”

Orange plan to make the OS available on a range of handsets in France, UK, Spain, Switzerland and other markets.

I think most of you already know the first version of the “wobble-application” for windows mobile devices, it is hdwobble. You can add wobbly bits to any images and this application uses the g-sensor of your device to shake those bits. It might sound unnecessary and useless, but it is quite popular. This is not an application for daily use, it is more a “party-fun-app”.

See video, which may be not safe for wives , after the break.

Read more at BestWindowsMobileApps here.

With Windows Phone 7 series still more than half a year off, and upgrades mostly not coming to our devices, Windows Mobile hackers have responded by emulating the shell.

The version above has been created by Jaxbot and is still early work. So far you can:

• Set Phone, Text, Outlook, and People to a certain app
• See upcoming appointments on lock screen
• See information on live tiles

The software is still sluggish, but does feature live JavaScript-based tiles which runs data from the web, which is quite likely to be the same solution Microsoft has in the works.

Follow the XDA-Dev thread here.

Via Pocketnow.com

You know that webOS 1.4 update for Pre, Pixi, Pre Plus and Pixi Plus that we’ve been talking about since January? The one with video recording and Flash 10 beta and some other stuff? It’s live. [Palm]

Each and every one of us who has used Photoshop knows that when working on a big project it is prudent to keep saving copies of the same project as you progress. This is a  huge help as you can always go back to a previous version of your work if necessary, however, the problem lies in knowing the exact version of the project to go back to. Often, going through each and every file becomes too tedious a task. This greatly increases the amount of time spent on the project.

The good news for Windows users is that there is a free utility called ComparePSD that carries out a quick comparison of Photoshop PSD files on a layer-by-layer and effect-by-effect basis, making your search for that particular version of your work a whole lot easier!

You can select the files to be compared by right-clicking on them in Windows Explorer, meaning that the files can be selected from the folder itself without opening them first. ComparePSD will then show the files side by side and compare each and every layer in terms of the effects used in each layer, the layer visibility flags as well as the styling attributes. Thumbnails also contribute towards highlighting and making the differences more easy to detect.

The minimum OS requirement for ComparePSD is Windows XP.

The picture above offers a glimpse of how ComparePSD lists the differences between two selected PSD files.

Don’t miss these Related Posts:

• Compare Two Files With DiffMerge
• Compare YouTube Videos By Watching Them Side By Side
• Optimize Photoshop Start Up Time With Photoshop SpeedUp
• Compare Contents of any Files In Different Folders and Remove Duplicates
• Creating Custom Brushes in Photoshop – Part 1

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TracyandMatt.co.uk published this 10 min unboxing video of the Sony Ericsson Aspen. The device appears pretty feature complete, but I suspect we will have to wait a few more months for it to arrive on the market, as is typical for all Sony Ericsson handsets.

Read more at TracyandMatt here.

Erin Kutz wrote:

Unlike the retail industry, Northwest startups pulled in a fair amount of cash in January. Venture investing jumped from $22 million in December to $57 million in the first month of 2010. But there’s another layer of data that further attests to the state of financing in the startup landscape.

That would be last month’s list of under-the-radar deals, a group we typically characterize as debt and equity financings that range from $100,000 to $1 million, provided to us by New York-based private company intelligence platform CB Insights. Northwest startups pulled in 10 such deals last month, one fewer than the month before. But the January financings included far more equity deals (eight out of 10) than the December list, which had six deals in equity and five based in debt. Washington took home nine under-the-radar deals, and one Portland, OR-area company showed up on the list for January.

The biggest under-the-radar deal was $942,455 in equity-based funding for Seattle drug developer Kineta, a move Luke wrote about. Incline Therapeutics, a stealthy life sciences company, came in second with $440,000 in debt funding. We’ve also covered Impel NeuroPharma, a Seattle-based company working on getting drugs more quickly to the brain with a device that functions like a combination of an asthma inhaler and a nasal spray pump. Impel pulled in a $305,364 equity investment in January.

There was a range of software companies on the list, solving problems from data hosting to expense paying to analyzing and appealing property tax charges. The sole Oregon deal went to NVoicePay, an electronic payment software company that grabbed $90,030 through equity funding last month.

Some of the companies were so stealthy I couldn’t even find websites for them. That would be the aforementioned Incline Therapeutics, described by third-party websites as developing a late stage drug-device combination, and iOculi, a Seattle company that pulled in $30,000 in an equity offering, and is listed as being in the technology sector in its SEC filing.

There was even a beverage company on the list, but don’t worry, we promise that it’s high-tech enough to make our cut. That would be Pullman, WA’s Ecowell, which raised $250,000 in debt-based funding. This company is working to innovate in the vending space, with computer interfaces that consumers can use to customize a drink selection. We first heard about them at the UW business plan competition last year, where they nabbed the prize for best service/retail idea.

Check out the table below for the complete list of January under-the-radar deals.

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Here is a quick video showing the rather simple process of synching recorded TV shows to your smartphone.  Now if only I had a TV tuner on my PC, I may actually have an excuse to connect my phone once in a while…

Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop told CNET correspondent Ina Fried that recent rumours of Microsoft abandoning the enterprise mobility market were unfounded.

While he admitted the new interface was designed to appeal to consumers more than other versions of Windows Mobile, he assured Fried his unit is investing more in software for Windows phones than ever before.

"The business division is more involved than ever before," he said.

Emphasising that those reading Microsoft’s move with Windows Phone 7 Series as a move away from the enterprise were misunderstanding the situation, he refused to comment on rumours of Microsoft making a version of Office for the iPhone or iPad.

While the reassurance is welcome, Microsoft has been incredibly low-key about their support for the full range of enterprise requirements, including support for legacy software and multi-tasking, preferring to leave all questions to be answered at upcoming events in March.

Are our business-focussed readers reassured? Let us know below.

If there was one star of MWC 2010, it was the Toshiba K01, the Snapdragon powered Windows Mobile 6.5.3 smartphone with a 4.1 inch WVGA OLED capacitive screen and slide-out full QWERTY keyboard, all in a 12.9 mm thick package.

The handset at Mobile World Congress was a mock-up, but a real version must exist somewhere, as it has just passed through the Global Certification Forum .

The Toshiba K01 features quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE as well as dualband UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA in the non-US 900/2100 MHz bands.

Hopefully the certification is an indication the handset will be released to market rather soon.

Is anyone else salivating for this device? Let us know below.

Via theunwired.net.

If you have a CLIQ, it’s probably a good idea to hold off on any updates, as a multitude of issues have cropped up. And most importantly, a T-Mobile forum mod recommends you “not to Master Reset your phone if your OTA update did not download or if you are experiencing issues at this time.” [T-Mobile forums via Android and Me via BGR]

For all Smartphone lovers Ultimate Start will be something special. And I belive it will soon be the first application that any Smartphone owner will want to have installed.

First thing that caught my attention is how user friendly this application is. After few minutes of usage, you can tell that developer is active user of this platform. Every functionality is where it suppose to be and allows you to do what you want with fewest key presses possible. So lets start a little deeper.

More after the break.

Ok…I can’t help it…i’ll start with this bonus feature. Audio routing for Skype!!! Yes, when Skype is an active application it will route audio to an earpiece so that you can finally use it in a right way. One small problem is that this feature can’t work on all devices because it’s device specific (Developer says it will probably work on most HTC devices and it is tested on s740, s730 and HP Voice Messenger…it works on my s740 very well). Anyway, as you will see, this application is so good that even if this feature doesn’t work on your phone you can be more than happy with all the other features that Ultimate Start offers.

Main feature of Ultimate Start is of course Start Menu. It looks really nice. The thing that you will use the most is T9 search of the whole Start Menu tree. You are probably use to that in Contacts application and we all know how fast you can get to any contact. Well now you can use that in your Start Menu to get to any application that you have installed. But that’s not all. This Start Menu has some special folders. Bookmarks folder contains folders for every browser that you have installed (IE, Oper Mini 5, Iris) and it is filled with all the bookmarks from corresponding browser. So instead of scrolling through your default start menu to open appropriate browser and then going to bookmarks list and finding the bookmark that you want to open, now you can with just few key presses open bookmark in your favorite browser. Bookmarks can be opened in default browser or in corresponding browser (default). Since not all sites look good in all the browsers, this is very useful. Second special folder is Java applications folder. This folder contains direct shortcuts to all of yours Java applications. This works for Esmertec Jbed java emulator. Navigating between pages of Start Menu is animated and is really working fast and smooth.

There is a task and process manager with standard features of closing application/process and activating applications. Both of them also allow T9 search and ascending/descending sorting of a list by CPU usage, RAM usage or name.

Tools page has some very nice icons with following features : turn screen off, reboot, shutdown, flashlight (white screen), mirror (black screen), screen rotation and taking screenshot in 10 or 20 seconds.

Switching between pages is nicely animated with gear rotating icons in the middle at bottom of the screen. There are 6 types of animations and random option. Animations are somehow optimized according to a speed of your device. When you change animation or smoothness/speed on Settings page than application needs to run the animation a few times to optimize it. Also battery and RAM status are always visible above menu buttons which is very useful. Order of pages can be changed through Settings but I think it’s best the way it is. Wherever you are in the application, you can press ‘0′ to get list of keys and actions that are available on current screen.

Also nice thing is that Ultimate Start costs only $4.99 which is very affordable and you can find demo version here.

This post was submitted by callah.