Jeroen Ritmeijer

Using Bluetooth GPS on PocketPC - Would Apple have designed it this way

First of all a major disclaimer; although I quite often focus on functional and technical defects in software, the only reason I do this is because I actually use the software and, at least to some degree, admire it.

Right, so what do we have to moan about today? Well, today it is pairing PocketPC devices with Bluetooth GPS units. For me, and possibly most readers of this blog, this is a relatively simple process as we are....well..... technical. However, imagine you are my dad or, god forbid, my mum, who has finally listened to his son and decided to start using a car navigation system in order to save the marriage. They pick up a top of the line iPAQ and Bluetooth GPS unit at a bargain as well as a copy of the excellent TomTom car navigation software and then find out they somehow need to let the GPS unit ('the what?') talk to the PDA (again, 'the what!').

I have put together a visual guide and to my surprise and utter disgust it takes at least 38 clicks in 4 different applications to setup a Bluetooth GPS connection.

As an ex graphics designer using Apple Macs who happily switched to Windows I can only wonder, how would Apple have designed this process?

Disabling the annoying ActiveSync Guest dialog

If you are a casual PocketPC user then you are probably not aware of this, but when you are a PocketPC developer or you work with a number of different devices then you don't want to create a profile for every device or even be asked for it every time you plug a cable into a device.

Apparently it is too much effort for Microsoft to put a checkbox in the 'Options' dialog so I have created a small application that allows you to toggle the visibility of it.

The application is very simple, all it does is put a 0 or a 1 in the following registry key.

         SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows CE Services\GuestOnly

If the application is started without a command line a user interface will be displayed. If true or false is specified on the command line then no user interface will be displayed and ActiveSync's guest dialog box will be enabled or disabled.

The application can be downloaded here. It has only been tested with ActiveSync 4.1.

Another shameless plug, have you heard about the guy with the cheap iPAQs?

The joy of shortcuts in Windows Desktop Search.

If I could give only one award to a piece of software a year (believe me, I am giving many ;-) the winner for 2006 is Windows Desktop Search by a large margin. I haven't performed any measurements, but it must have increased my productivity by at least 10%. I hardly ever use the Windows File Explorer, Outlook search or even the Start menu any more. I search through my email archive at least 10 times a day, which now happens at the blink of an eye.

Anyway, enough praise, on to my latest discovery in this fab piece of software, shortcuts. I have known for a while that it is possible to add shortcuts using the '@' command, but I never had the time to look into it. Today I did and from now on I will probably stop using my Internet Explorer Favorites as well.

• Create shortcut to my bug tracking system: @bugs,http://somehardtoremembereurl.com/bugtracking
• Create shortcut to my helpdesk system: @helpdesk,http://somehardtoremembereurl.com/helpdesk 
• Create shortcut to my home dir on server: @home,\\server01\home\j.ritmeijer
• Create shortcut to important project: @GolfMate,\\server01\projects\customername\GolfMate
• Create shortcut to Photoshop: @Photo,C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop CS\Photoshop.exe

I can now invoke any of those shortcuts by just typing in the shortcut name without the '@' character and pressing enter.

Life is good......for now.

Right, before I forget, a shameless plug. I have recently got hold of a large number (and we are talking really large numbers here) of refurbished and new iPAQ 4150 devices including Bluetooth GPS modules, extended batteries, SD cards and lots of other extras. I am selling them at a huge discount of over £200. They are selling quite well, so get them while you can. For those who don't know, the 4150 model is the best iPAQ ever made.