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View Full Version : The Most Innovative Use For Your Pocket PC?


Jon Westfall
04-19-2006, 01:00 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2006/02/19/535171.aspx' target='_blank'>http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile.../19/535171.aspx</a><br /><br /></div><i>"I had an interesting experience with a cool Windows Mobile app last night. I was invited for dinner to someone's house for the first time. While driving to their house, I remembered good etiquette and decided to pick up a small gift...Someone once gave my family an indoor plant, and I thought that was a very thoughtful gesture. So I drove up to a Fred Meyer store and started looking in the plants department. I found some great looking plants but then began to wonder if it really is an appropriate gift. Some people spend way too much time growing things around their house while others simply neglect plants. If only I could peek at this family's backyard or landscaping, I might be able to guess whether they're "plant people". Oh, and do they even have a yard? What kind of house is it – an apartment, condo, townhouse or something larger? While pondering all this, I suddenly remembered having Virtual Earth Mobile installed on my Pocket PC. So I quickly loaded it up and entered my host's address (from an email invitation). In a few seconds I had a direct bird's eye view of their home and neighborhood. "</i><br /><br />Mel Sampat wrote the above entry in the Windows Mobile Team Blog earlier this year, giving a great example of using a cool program for an innovative and unexpected use (After all, Virtual Earth Mobile probably wasn't designed to allow you to give better gifts!). It got me wondering just what kinds of innovative, outside-the-box ideas our community has had and executed on a Windows Mobile device. What have you done that has stretched your Pocket PC (or its applications) beyond their original purposes, and has it worked?

Watti3460
04-19-2006, 01:53 PM
Maybe this is not innovative, but I have used it as a cookbook. I collect recipes on the web, cut and paste them to OutLook notes and they are always there when I sync them. I also save recipes for kitchen science experiments for the kids.

The first time I ever did the science experiments, I was dealing with my 2.5 year old daughter who was acting very cranky on a cold rainy day. I suddenl yremembered I had a copy of a homemade playdough recipe in Notes on my Axim. I grabbed the unit, fired it up and cooked up some playdough.

She was quiet for hours with the stuff.

bigray327
04-19-2006, 02:40 PM
The iPAQ 2215 had built-in consumer grade infrared and came with that cool universal remote control software. I work for a large and boring government agency that loves to have large and boring meetings. I used to dial in the make and model of the overhead projector and turn it off, change channels, and just mess with the presenter. People would look around, wondering what was up, and it would appear as if I was hard at work on my PDA. Fun! :)

szamot
04-19-2006, 03:06 PM
OK I think we are stretching the truth a bit here. Even on Google Earth Pro you can hardly make out anything from 1000 feet up so this whole notion of let's see if they are plant people by using Virtual Earth Mobile seems like a lot of hot steam.

At best you can make out a green blob where the grass would be and see the trees if they are large enough. Come on people I think Creative should in this case mean realistic not imaginary.

warptime
04-19-2006, 03:06 PM
The iPAQ 2215 had built-in consumer grade infrared and came with that cool universal remote control software. ... Fun! :)
I Had one for a couple weeks and tried it in a sports bar... I will leave it at that. I returned the 2215 for a 4155 before I endangered my health any more.

I know others have used their PocketPC to help build a home (Jason comes to mind), I used mine extensively as well. Along with the usual calendar/task/contact duties, I used it to keep a copy of the blueprints at hand at all times using the included image viewer ability to pan around the digital images. Even though items were on the blue prints, I also used it to show contractors pictures of items/features we wanted that were not normal in our area. But I can tell you a picture is not always worth a 1000 words, in any language, if the contractor doesn't care or does not have the mental flexibility to interpret the picture. I downloaded PDF manuals for items we were installing for on-site reference (we did the electrical/low voltage ourselves). In later stages I kept pitures of the wiring on-board for reference when the sheetrock was up and the wiring hidden. Yes, the wires were labeled, but some were incomplete or labeled above the box. ListPro and Word played a big role in keeping notes and lists of course. I think the contractor almost got to the point of running away when I approached with my 'pocket gizmo'. Not because we were adding something new or changing something (we had less than 5 changes/adds on the entire build!), but because I caught something else he had missed. I just wish I had my ppc-6700 back then!

warptime
iPAQ 4155 >> PPC-6700 (Sprint)

Jason Lee
04-19-2006, 03:23 PM
OK I think we are stretching the truth a bit here. Even on Google Earth Pro you can hardly make out anything from 1000 feet up so this whole notion of let's see if they are plant people by using Virtual Earth Mobile seems like a lot of hot steam.

At best you can make out a green blob where the grass would be and see the trees if they are large enough. Come on people I think Creative should in this case mean realistic not imaginary.

It could be possible. The map details vary greatly. The pictures of southwest missouri are not that great. I think that fuzzy blob in the street is my car... maybe.
higher population areas seem to have much better detail. I was looking at tokyo and could actually count the people at tokyo disney. I could read writing on top of buildings. very high detail.

So maybe his friend lives in a higher population area.

melsam [MS]
04-19-2006, 03:24 PM
OK I think we are stretching the truth a bit here. Even on Google Earth Pro you can hardly make out anything from 1000 feet up so this whole notion of let's see if they are plant people by using Virtual Earth Mobile seems like a lot of hot steam.

At best you can make out a green blob where the grass would be and see the trees if they are large enough. Come on people I think Creative should in this case mean realistic not imaginary.

This is what I saw:

http://216.119.94.21/temp/virtearth_capture1.jpg

azhiker
04-19-2006, 05:29 PM
Often at a conference I will take notes via my Bluetooth keyboard on my PDA. It sure saves me lugging a laptop to overthing. But sometimes the speaker or conference is so good that I use NoteM (Freeware) to record it as an mp3 for review later and make better notes. I set up NoteM as a hotkey so I just press the button and start recording.

I have arthritus in my back so I sometimes have to soak in a hot-tub. While doing that I surf the web, listen to wifi radio, play music, etc. (Always careful not to drop the PPC in the water!)

I used it on Easter Sunday during worship because I ahve the Book of Common Prayer as a MS Reader file, and open to the Scripture reading for the day.

I use the Bluetooth to beam phone numbers and pictures to my cell phone.

Jon Westfall
04-19-2006, 07:57 PM
I have arthritus in my back so I sometimes have to soak in a hot-tub. While doing that I surf the web, listen to wifi radio, play music, etc. (Always careful not to drop the PPC in the water!)


I use a plastic ziploc bag to keep water away from my PPC while using a hot tub, although if I ever started doing this more than occassionally I'd probably invest in a water-proof case.

szamot
04-19-2006, 08:06 PM
This is what I saw:

http://216.119.94.21/temp/virtearth_capture1.jpg[/quote]

Really the only thing you can get out of this picture is an average suburbia, in an average neighborhood, with a taken patch of grass for each resident and not a tree in sight some small bushes though. You tell a nice story but the facts just don’t add up.

Euroclie
04-19-2006, 09:37 PM
The first "innovative" use of a PPC that comes to my mind, if you interpret the word "innovative" as in "not designed with that use in mind by the manufacturer", is something really not-so-new and already mentioned dozens of time in the past, but here you are anyway: I think that countless PDA users use their precious gadget, sooner or later, as a flashlight...

One other unexpected use of my PPC was, earlier today, when I was in a shuttle bringing me from the airport to the city center on a foreing place. I knew only the subway station's name of the closest station to the place I was going to, and I had no idea, with only the names of the shuttle stops, of where I was supposed to get off the shuttle.

Of course, the simplest and most obvious thing to do was to ask the bus driver, or any local, but a true geek should always be able to sort things out on his own, right? ;)

So instead, I used the "Metro" application on my PPC to find out which of the stops was providing me with the best (if any) connection to the subway network in general and the shortest route to my destination station in particular. Then I used Tom Tom Navigator to explore the City's map and get a general idea of where I was supposed to go. And finally, while in the shuttle, I tracked (still using Tom Tom Navigator) the distance between our present position and my destination, to see if, by chance, one of the shuttle stop would be close enough to my goal for me to walk to it and enjoy the sunshine during an outdoor walk (which wasn't the case, unfortunately).

Naturally, using a paper map or a network plan would have proved equally successfull, and probably faster at that, but it was the first time that I was using a navigation application in a situation where I would be driving away from the selected destination (or not toward it, in general). The program kept re-calculating new routes because the shuttle often wasn't going in the right direction... I wish this program would let you calculate an itinerary between two locations, not only between your GPS position and a destination point...

kimylawson
04-20-2006, 03:24 AM
I use it as a bible. I downloaded the, old and new testament. I just key in the scripture and it appears. I also use it as a tv guide. I have the tv listenings portal saved in favorites. I just key in my zip code and I get a daily listening of programing in my area. I use it every time I want to know what's on but I don't have the cable box remote to tell me. Its really cool. :lol:

PocketSebas
04-21-2006, 01:43 AM
I work in an international company, and on a corporate meeting (with people from 5 different countries) most people had a Notebook. I didn't have one. I spent 5 days on the meeting, with my iPaq 4700 (now I have a Dell x51v, and have made the same on a couple of shorter meetings) connected to the network using Wifi, using my Bluetooth Keyboard and mouse, and connected to my PC remotely using Terminal Server. So I was virtualy on my PC (on a 640 x 480 sideways screen) using my Lotus Notes, Office, even SQL Server. It became my "Notebook" for 5 geeky days. This might be something Windows Mobile was intended to do, but the bluetooth keyboard and mouse adds an extra functionality to it.

The other day I was in front of the beach with my girlfriend, 30 minutes away from the city, and suddenly we were in the mood to see a DVD movie. Instead of going back to the city, we chose one I had on my 1Gb CF card to watch. So far, nothing new. My Sony MP3 car radio has an Aux input and I carry a cable to plug any device I might want to hear on my car speakers. I pluged my PDA, put the PDA in the center (with the help of my cel phone and the car manual) and we watched a whole movie (Underworld) on the car. And at about $300 less than the car audio/video price.

I have some more things I do with my PDA, but I can't recall them all just right now. I hope this adds some extra ideas (or maybe you already have done any of this) to you all.

Sorry for my more than imperfect english.

Endroren
04-21-2006, 03:43 PM
RE: The google image and the 'plant people' concept

Actually I don't think the story is that far off. Here is what I get from the image posted.

1. They live in a house with a yard. If I get an outdoor plant it isn't unbelievable that they could plant it.

2. I don't see a lot of trees. Buying them something that needs a lot of shade probably isn't the best plan. I need to pick up something that will do well in full sun.

3. Their yard doesn't appear to have an intricate manicured garden. This suggests a couple of possibilities. a) I won't screw up a carefully thought out garden plan with my unexpected addition OR b) they don't care about that sort of thing and I'm on the wrong track with an outdoor plant.

So sure, the image does provide some helpful info. It won't tell me that they like any particular TYPE of plant but it does help me make a decision.