[General Topics] Menneisyys:
k. There have been several new Windows Mobile game releases; in my opinion, however, none of them is worth devoting a self-standing review to. See the frontpage of PocketGamer.org or, if you speak German, PocketPlayers Reloaded for more info.

Note that the latter features an article on making Toy Golf (an EXCELLENT minigolf simulation; see review HERE) run on any Pocket PC, which, by default, is only compatible with the Intel 2700G-based, 3D hardware accelerated Dell Axim x50v / x51v. The article states all you need to do is copying libGLES_CM.dll (available for download HERE; it's originally from 3D Benchmark (GLBenchmarkCM.rar) available HERE) \Windows and voila - it runs. (Note that it's in \Windows that you must copy the DLL file to, NOT the home directory of Toy Golf; otherwise, you'll get an "Unable to load texture" error message during loading.) I've tested it on my WM6 VGA HTC Universal and WM6 QVGA HTC Wizard and found it pretty much useless. On the latter, it was completely unplayable because it only shows the upper left quarter of the landscape screen (the game has originally been designed for the VGA x51v); on the former, it worked, albeit a bit slow. Unfortunately, it had orientation problems on both Pocket PC's: it displayed the, by default, Landscape game in Portrait, effectively hiding the leftmost / rightmost part of the screen. In the above-linked article, Damien has presented some QVGA Landscape screenshots running the (hacked) game on his (QVGA) Blue Angel (XDA III, MDA III, Qtek 9090, PDA2K). He didn't explicitly mention whether he started toygolf_qvga.exe or toygolf.exe - more on this later.

If you (also) find the hack not working on your particular model / Toy Golf version, what I recommend is the following. Installing the game (with either the desktop-based installer or executing the CAB file directly on your handset) will install two files onto your handset, no matter whether you have a QVGA or a VGA device:

07/14/2005 08:02 PM 10,848,290 minigolf_dell.cfl

07/15/2005 09:25 PM 1,036,288 toygolf.exe

You will need to extract and rename two additional files from the CAB install file, MINIGO~1.001 and TOYGOL~1.002. Rename them to minigolf_dell_qvga.cfl and toygolf_qvga.exe respectively:

07/14/2005 10:50 PM 9,561,409 minigolf_dell_qvga.cfl

07/15/2005 09:19 PM 1,339,904 toygolf_qvga.exe

Copy these two files to the same directory on your handset where the two other files (minigolf_dell.cfl and toygolf.exe) already reside and start toygolf_qvga.exe regardless of whether you have a QVGA or a VGA device (toygolf.exe is strictly meant for 2700G-enabled devices, it seems). It will NOT need libGLES_CM.dll to run and will be very fast. The only problem will be the logos' and some of the dialogs being too big and (partly) invisible; however, all the in-game controls will be visible.

Also see THIS Russian language thread for more info (Google "translation" HERE).

(This all applies to version 1.10 coming on the x51v CD; the CAB inner filedates are 07/15/2005.)

l. Windows Live for Windows Mobile has officially been released and is available HERE. Unfortunately, it painfully lacks Live Messenger - currently, if you need to install it (and don't want to go for an alternative like IM+, imov Messenger, fring or Agile Messenger), you'll need to look around on, say, XDA-Devs for the installable CAB file. I better not provide you with a URL, just to be on the safe side (hope you understand.) See for example THIS thread for more info on the new release.

(Note that there have been some other releases / apps; I just haven’t had the time to test / review them all.)

3. The Competition

a.	Nokia’s latest announcement of the Nokia Tube is REALLY interesting. If you can put up with the typically Finnish pronunciation of English, the keynote speech and Q&A session are well worth checking out. A full video is HERE, a shorter excerpt showing the touchscreen in action is HERE. While there aren’t much to report on as yet (no fancy 3D demos like those of NVIDIA at MWC - see the YouTube links at the end of the NVIDIA section HERE), the advancement in the last two months, for example, the sheer existence of a reference hardware design is certainly promising and surely shows Nokia is taking adding touchscreen support seriously. (At MWC, in mid-February, the Nokia folks didn’t have any of them – their S60 Touch demo was run on touchscreen-enabled notebooks.) I really hope they will come out with something REALLY cool – after all, their N95 (and, to a somewhat lesser degree, the N82) is already one of the best phones out there – and simply unbeatable when it comes to multimedia, gaming and built-in camera.

Software-wise, the Next-Gen N-Gage platform has, finally, been opened for the more traditional, high-end models like the N95 and N82. Several titles have been announced; head over to All About N-Gage for more info.

b. RIM (BlackBerry)’s generic CTIA booth sneak peak is HERE - not much of interest in this video. However, unlike with MWC, there are a lot of developments to report on.

First, version 4.5 of the OS, with its brand new looks and goodies like HTML mail and A2DP support, is getting closer. See THIS for more info.

Second, pictures and videos of the long-awaited BB 9000 have also surfaced; unfortunately, it won’t have a touchscreen, unlike what has been generally thought.

There are some other announcements as well; for example, a Slingplayer client in late 2008 (up to now, only available for Windows Mobile and Symbian) and an XM Radio client (natively supported, with third-party clients and a Web interface, by Windows Mobile and, via transcoding, on Symbian – see THIS for more info): 1 2).

4. What can you expect from me? Plans for the future

Yes, I know I've been pretty quiet lately. There are several reasons for this:

I've been working in real life too (I need to do some work to make both ends meet because, as you may already know, I only write for fun and, except for some gifts like free hardware, mostly from Hal Goldstein, I don't get any money for it)

I've been getting ready for my 45-minute W3C speech on multiplatform (WinMo, Symbian, BlackBerry) Web browsers. I'll soon release the English-language PowerPoint slides.

As you may already know, I've been working very hard on my Digital TV Bible explaining what WikiPedia or even commercial books targeted at non-Electric Engineers fail to explain. This involved reading several books and many recommendations / white papers. This also means I'll post some self-standing book review articles reviewing, for example, Amitabh Kumar’s Mobile TV: DVB-H, DMB, 3G Systems and Rich Media Applications, K. F. Ibrahim’s Newnes Guide to Television and Video Technology, Fourth Edition: The Guide for the Digital Age - from HDTV, DVD and flat-screen technologies to Multimedia Broadcasting, Mobile TV and Blu Ray and several other books on wireless technologies. Not only on digital TV broadcasting / unicasting, but also on CDMA (most University textbooks out there painfully fail at explaining how CDMA really works - I know this because, back in the university time, the textbooks we've used failed at this too) and WiMAX. I'm absolutely sure you'll find it VERY useful and enlightening!