Comments on: Advisory Board Assignment #2: Windows Mobile Ideas

By: Sachin Palewar

Sachin Palewar — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 07:17:33 +0000

I think the most basic app on every phone, which is phonebook or contacts should be revisited and should be given a complete overhaul. It will be nice if it can display current location and time of every contact. Integration with other social networking sites right from your phonebook is a great idea as well and many companies are already trying it. I have written a detailed post on my blog titled PhoneBook 3G.

By: Sachin's Blog

Sachin's Blog — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 15:45:43 +0000

PhoneBook 3G…

I have been toying with idea of developing a phonebook application for sometime now. Here is what I think:

Location/Time-Zone Aware PhoneBook: Whenever I travel, I try to connect with people I know from that city. Contacts/PhoneBook app on my phone …

By: Jim Dantin

Jim Dantin — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:01:12 +0000

Your new iPills app is nice. It looks like the user interface of the iPhone is the best thing about that toy! Since other developers are offering the same finger-friendly design for Windows mobile devices, I’d suggest you use iPills as a test for our operating system.

By: FirstSalvo

FirstSalvo — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:57:50 +0000

I use and love Newbreak. It suits my needs and I like the interface save one thing. I use a Treo 800w so most of my navigating is done one-handed. Even though it has a touch screen I rarely use the stylus. It would be nice if I could navigate through my categories without using the stylus. My right soft key is MENU and my left is REFRESH. Its nice having the REFRESH key handy but I use that function WAY less than I switch categories (automatic scheduled updates handle it for me). So I would suggest dropping the refresh function on the MENU key and change the REFRESH key to drop down (select) my categories. That single change would make this app perfect for me.

By: David

David — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 20:32:25 +0000

Marc, the more I think about it, if you could make Listpro finger friendly, that would be huge. Now that companies keep previewing their phones coming out in the next year, they are all focused on the “touch” aspect. Pocket Informant and other PIMs are now touch friendly, so it would be a great feature to have that ability. Have a great week!

By: Bago

Bago — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:27:34 +0000

I have to say that RSS hub & newsbreak are probably the best Windows Mobile feed readers I have come across. I use RSS hub that came with my HTC Touch Pro. What I like best about it is that it has extremely decent support for RSS, ATOM, and OPML. It also has a intuitive and responsive interface for navigating feeds. Ilium’s feed readers are perfect for power users who like to host their own planets instead of using hosted services like Newsgator Go, Google Reader, Avantgo, etc. For that reason, I am a huge fan of RSS hub.

If you want to do something to make someone who is already a fan of RSS hub fork over $20 for newsbreak, then I would add the feature to mark an item as a favorite. Often, I mark an article as unread to come back to it later, but I lose my place when the feed is refreshed.

Other than that, as long as you keep rendering most feeds well and support the most popular formats, then Ilium will have a superior feed reader product. Thanks for the good work, and please implement this so I can switch to newsbreak for good!

By: Dave Beauvais

Dave Beauvais — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:51:50 +0000

Wow, that was way longer than I realized. Sorry for being so verbose!

By: Dave Beauvais

Dave Beauvais — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:51:10 +0000

My suggestions:

eWallet
- Over-the-air sync with no dependence on ActiveSync/Windows Mobile Device Center. Ideally, sync would be to a secure online service, but also to file shares, FTP/FTPS/SFTP, etc.
- FTPS (FTP over TLS/SSL) support for SyncPro (Different than currently supported SFTP (FTP over SSH)
- Make Search more readily accessible in the Windows Mobile interface. Search is almost always the first thing I do after unlocking my wallet on the handheld. While I can easily press Ctrl-F on the PC, it’s irritating that Find is buried three taps away. Since all the results are returned, I’m not sure there’s a need for the ‘Find Next’ option. Perhaps Find could be moved right to the root Menu, or even a search box added to the main display.

ListPro
- Add over-the-air syncing similar to the eWallet suggestion.
- Custom label colors. The pre-defined pastel colors are ugly and dated. (Sorry!)
- Option to use the 5-way “action” button to open an list item rather than marking it. Even though I’ve used ListPro for years, this behavior seems very unintuitive and is extremely inconsistent with the behavior of Windows Mobile apps. It should definitely be an option, though, as I’m sure many users prefer the current behavior.
- Item-level, rather than file-level syncing. If I change an item on a handheld and a different item on the PC, I shouldn’t lose one or the other when syncing.
- Refine the search interface and make it more accessible.

Screen Capture
- Allow user to specify a custom screenshot save location instead of the default My Documents or Documents folder.
- Separate hotkey binding for normal and timed captures.
- Save screenshots as PNG files rather than bitmaps.

Tip Calculator
- Remember last used tip percentage.

Overall Updates
- Interface overhauls. ListPro looks and feels very dated. Yes, the interface works, but there are several elements that just don’t work the way things normally do in Windows and Windows Mobile UI conventions.

I use my Treo Pro exclusively as a stand-alone device with an Exchange server. None of my PCs even have ActiveSync or WMDC installed. As a result, my use of both eWallet and ListPro on the phone is much more inconvenient than I’d like, as I have to manually copy the wallet and list files to the device on occasion. Shortly after the Live Mesh beta for Windows Mobile came out, I tried the same Live Mesh method that Frank McPherson described above, but found it to be more awkward than I wanted to mess with. Native OTA syncing would be an awesome addition to eWallet.

Thanks for asking for your users’ input! That’s very cool!

By: eric

eric — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:18:02 +0000

thanks

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 21:03:29 +0000

I would be lost without ewallet. Finger friendly would be great as I see more devices going in that direction. The ability to copy data items without going into edit mode would be a huge advantage. Seems like i always am copying user names and passwords but it is a pain to do it currently as you are pretty much forced to use the stylus.

Make sure print can be read easily. Am finding that the font is way too small.

mobile browsers have a difficult time with ewallet. Seems like I always have to input my un and pwd.

keep up the great work.