Pocketnow: Introduction to Smartphone 2002 for Pocket PC developers. A straight-forward look at what is new, missing, and changed.

11:38:41 PM | Comments:

Casio's developer site has what appears to be a new SDK for the BE-300 with .NET upgrade, but the documentation says that it doesn't support the Compact Framework and there is no indication of the .NET CLR being available. Puzzling...

The BE-300 is not a Pocket PC, rather it runs Windows CE with Casio's own shell and applications. Casio seems to be targeting the industrial space instead of the general business/consumer market. Except for a keyboard, Casio offers virtually every accessory that may be needed, from WLAN cards to barcode scanners, PC Card sleeves to extended batteries. The $199 price tag makes it an easy purchase for a specific application. No need to ruggedize it, for the price it is disposable.

I'm interesting in targeting the BE-300 if the .NET CLR become available. I'm planning to work on a business-oriented CMS package, with PDA extensions, and being able to support such an inexpensive device would be advantageous.

11:34:56 PM | Comments:

Busy day with DSL

Today my DSL connection moved from an Alcatel USB modem to an Ethernet one. I've been trying to get an OpenBSD firewall built to secure my LAN from the WLAN and Internet, and I just could not get the USB modem to play ball.

Unfortunately, the migration wasn't plug-n-play. The firmware on the Ethernet modem was hopelessly out of date, and the manufacturer doesn't directly provide updates. It took serious hunting to find the right update, and significant effort to get the modem to actually accept the update. I hate hardware.

Anyways. It's done now, tomorrow I'll dive back into BSD Land to get things secured again.

7:10:13 PM | Comments:

PPCW: IRemote wireless MP3 player, a WinAmp remote control application for the Pocket PC.

10:41:17 AM | Comments: