Posted by Mike Temporale of Smartphone Thoughts:

"Mobile applications require many of the same engineering considerations as other development paradigms but some areas such as deployment bring their own, unique challenges due to the very mobile nature of devices. During development of managed and native applications both Visual Studio .NET 2003 and Embedded Visual C deal with deployment to a device over Active Sync very adequately but much more is needed to distribute and manage final product deployment."

Marcus Perryman is the latest Microsoft employee to join the companies blogging initiative, and his first post couldn't be more helpful for new mobile developers. Check it out!

[Via Smartphone Thoughts]

Read the Deploying applications to Windows Mobile article...

I'm not a big game player - the most recent game I played was Windows Solitaire over 7 years ago ... but if it's free what can be wrong about that ?!

* OK, OK, I must confess, I did try a couple of games on my smartphone 8-)

So, here it goes:

This weeks free Smartphone software at Handango is Game Pack 1 SP by Implicit Software Solutions - includes 6 games - a $20 value.

To get the game pack for free, simply add it to your cart and use coupon code "FREEAPP".

Don't forget to thank Handango, and check out other software by Implicit Software Solutions

Ilium Software has announced today NewsBreak, a news reader for the SmartPhone platform. Previously this program was only offered for the PocketPC but is now available to both platforms.

Although NewsBreak has become available just today, it looks very polished. Besides all the features you would rightfully expect to find in a typical RSS aggregator, it features keyword filtering and setting notifications.

I did encounter a couple of very minor issues (or rather inconveniences) but given the product is one day old I would not hesitate to call it a brilliant (and nice looking too) piece of work.

I tried in the past both freeware RSS readers and one more written in Java and I uninstalled all of these after 15-30 minutes of use.

I'm very excited about NewsBreak, still enjoy playing with it and it looks like this tool will change my view on using RSS on Smartphone. It was really hard to get used to the other ones for me spoiled by RSSBandit. But this is not the case with NewsBreak!

If I got you interested, you can read more and download the tool for evaluation from Ilium Software web site

New version of xBar was just released.

xBar is #2 essential tool for Smartphone on my list. Not only it adds missing Alt-Tab functionality to Windows Mobile but also enables needed Copy-Paste operation between applications.

One of the greatest additions in version 2.5 is two new macros that allow to remap the Clipboard Copy and Paste operations to any keys. I wasn't comfortable using the default Vol-Down and Vol-Up buttons for Copy-Paste.

Just few days ago I emailed David and asked about the enhancement and now I can reassign Copy-Paste to the softkeys!

Great job, David! That was quick! Very impressive!

Microsoft released some tutorials that run directly on your device for Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition Smartphones.

"Learn to use Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition software by downloading tutorials to your device.

The Tutorials for Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition are designed to introduce novice users of Smartphone, Pocket PC, and Pocket PC Phone Edition devices to the capabilities of the latest release of Windows Mobile software. The tutorials combine text and animations to illustrate how to perform common tasks."

Click here to download the tutorials from Microsoft

(Make sure you have enough storage on your smartphone before you install the tutorials - they require 6.5MB of space)

The .NET Compact Framework Team is looking for feedback from developers on what they would like to see in future releases of the framework. Here is your chance to help shape the future of Windows Mobile from a developer point of view! Stop by the .NET Compact Framework Team blog for more information and details on how to submit your suggestion.

http://blogs.msdn.com/netcfteam/archive/2005/01/04/346372.aspx

Alex Yakhnin of OpenNETCF.org has posted list of his best .NetCF blog articles in 2004 - another one worth bookmarking if you are serious about development for Smartphones and Pocket PC.

As found on Windows Mobile Team blog entry that points to Nauman Leghari's blog which lists plenty of great SmartPhone Programming articles grouped nicely:  

• Introduction to the .NET Compact Framework
• The Smartphone User Interface
• Smartphone Controls
• Graphics
• Files and Directories
• Mobile Web Services
• Working with Unmanaged Code
• Deploying Smartphone Application
• Interoperability
• Game Programming with Smartphone
• Advanced Topics: Security, Debugging, Performance and such 

I recommend you bookmark this one if you ever intend on building an app or two for Windows Mobile.

Smartphone "Tip-o-the-Day" posted a great Bluetooth trick:

Want a very fast way to enable (or disable) Bluetooth?

Bluetooth Toggle allows the least amount of keystrokes to accomplish this. It can be done with one keystroke (just add a single-digit speed-dial to this utility). Personally, I made it two keystrokes--"2" and "8" (for "B" and "T", BlueTooth, get it?). That way it is easy to remember.

Simply download the file, "BTToggle.CAB" from here:

http://www.modaco.com/index.php?showtopic=99493

and copy it to your phone. Click on this CAB file from your device to install it. After a quick installation, a shortcut to it is placed in the Accessories section of Start menu. Create a speed-dial shortcut to it and you're done.

If you are using a BT headset, this speed-dial can even be invoked while in the middle of a call.

[Via Smartphone "Tip-o-the-Day"]