My contract with Alltel (now Verizon) is pretty solid so I cannot consider another phone for at least another year. That means, for good or for ill, I am stuck with Windows Mobile 6.1. While I did take a brief look at WM 6.5, there really was not much of a reason to switch anyway. For mobile phones there has been much ado about the apps available for other platforms. If like me you are mired in another contract and want to try some decent apps for free I have compiled my list of favorites:

Skyfire – Simply put Skyfire is the best mobile web browser I have ever used. This puppy handles Flash with ease, You Tube is accessible and even useable. I have been on board with this browser since early beta version were available. At this point it is difficult to use any other browser, my only concern is the underlying technology routes all traffic to the Skyfire servers that includes passwords. Needless to say I would not do mobile banking using Skyfire. Get it here!

Bing – Live Search recent rebranding to Bing has finally trickled down to the mobile world and while there are no substantive improvements, this app is still worth considering if you you want to get the best Gas Prices, Maps, or local searches in your vicinity.

My Phone – This was already a solid product during the beta release, helping with the task of phone backups. Well they added the ability to share photos on you favorite social networking sites. To round this out they have added a couple of premium features (at cost to you) that allow you to locate a lost phone, or even wipe data from a stolen phone. Real nice!

Windows Live – Again this an existing app found on most Windows phones, however, there has been a nice refresh that adds a lot of polish and also bring the app in close relation to the Windows Live experience on line. If you have a Windows Live account and use Live IM then this is a compelling upgrade for your phone.

Microsoft Tag Reader – With the Microsoft Tag application, just aim your camera phone at a Tag and instantly access mobile content, videos, music, contact information, maps ... nothing to type! Of all the apps I believe Microsoft Tag reader has the best chance of changing the way we interact with our our environment using our phones, just have to wait and see if this really catches on.

Netflix - Only really useful if your a member of Netflix but still … Managing a Netflix account while mobile has never been easier!

With the release of WM 6.5 and WM Marketplace getting a list of top rated apps is really easy, unfortunately there is some artificial delay in letting WM 6.1 join the fray. Until then (late November?) I hope you find this list marginally useful.

I recently purchased the a Zune HD, and may I immediately say this is simply the most compelling and interesting touch screen interface that I have ever used on any device. They spent a lot of time on this device and it just oozes cool. With all the coverage on the device I am really going to spare you the wonder tour but I will say this, if you are not entrench in the world of iTunes DRM and you want a great music\video player, this is the device for you.

There are a couple of draw backs. First trying to watch videos anywhere but indoors is almost impossible, I am assured this activity is only slightly less painful on the iPod Touch. Secondly the device is only currently available in 16/32gb. This is primarily because the industry has turned to the flash drives, which have only recently started make significant strides in capacity.

Part of the appeal of the Zune HD are the graphics one enjoys when playing music, you also are always a couple of touches away from a full artist bio, photos or complete a discography. This comes at a significant price, what I would like to call the Zune HD tax.

When I synch all my music to my Zune 80 I end up consuming 17.96gb, unfortunately when I synch the same “music” to my Zune HD it takes up 21.15gb. It is certainly worth the 15% tax on the flash drive space but this seems to be more evidence that we need a 64gb version of Zune HD. You also have no way to turn off this feature as far as I can tell.

I saw this quite official looking opportunity to import yahoo contacts into my Hotmail account, I do not have a yahoo account but I wanted to check out what kind of transfer process they were going to initiate between yahoo and hotmail. Now I have seen this done before with OAuth, and with this technique you are basically redirected to the target site where you can safely put in your credentials. However with this process I was redirected to another site that seems to be under the auspices of TrueSwitch.

Now I have nothing personal against TrueSwitch, but I do wonder why would I trust any third party with not just one email and password but two. It begs the question why would Hotmail, a trusted name and brand, need to go to a third party for this kind of transfer when they have proven that they can use OAuth to fulfill this kind of information transfer.

I can only assume that TrueSwitch is providing additional services that the OAuth process does not cater to (may be the Email history, who knows), either way there is zero chance of me using this kind of service when I have to give over the keys to the email kingdom.

This is my final rant about transferring online information I promise, I just want to see a trusted standard implemented that does not encourage and involve password sharing!

Related Links:

• How OAuth helps us all!
• Social Networks - Who do you trust?

I was actually very surprised at the amount of cheap software you can get from Microsoft. If you look in the right place, and are studying you can actually get a lot of the software for free. It makes sense you get ‘em hooked young and early and hope they are repeat customers for life. Not to dissimilar to other forms of commerce, that I will not get into ;)

Here is what I have found:

Dream Spark
If you’re a current university or high school student, you can download professional Microsoft developer, designer, and gaming software through DreamSpark at no charge. Students (High School and College) get to download software at no charge. DreamSpark enables students to download and use Microsoft tools. It doesn’t matter what classes you’re taking just as long as you’re a current student in a verified, accredited School and use the tools in pursuit of advancing your education in one of these areas.

Windows 7
Looking forward to the upcoming release of Windows 7 but have no desire to pay the retail price ($119). Well the 741 promotion is for you, the upcoming Windows 7 will be made available for $29.99 for qualified students. You will need to hurry once Windows 7 is available, as the offer ends January 3, 2010.

Microsoft Office
Finally, Office 2007 Ultimate edition is currently available for all qualified students. You must have a valid email address at an educational institution ending with the domain suffix .EDU (e.g. ipfreely@usuni.edu). This offer allows you to save a whopping 91% (@ $59.95). Apps included in this office edition include Word, Groove, Excel, Publisher, PowerPoint, Access, Outlook, InfoPath, and OneNote. Compare this to the Office Students Edition and the savings become even clearer.

This topic has been done to death but I see the occasional errors in code that are directly related to a misunderstanding of “shallow” vs “deep” copies of reference types. Putting it here provides an outlet for my thoughts and a link I can point developers to so I do not have to repeat myself.

A shallow copy is best illustrated by the following diagram. Effectively both variables A and B are pointing at the same memory address, so any updates to A are reflected in B and vice versa:

Here is some code that performs a shallow copy:

MyClass c1 = new MyClass();
MyClass c2 = c1; // A shallow copy is performed here

c1.SC.SomeValue = "25";
c1.ST = "45";

//c2 will reflect the changes made to c1 above, trust me.
MessageBox.Show(String.Format("SomeValue: {0} : ST: {1}",c2.SC.SomeValue,c2.ST));

In C# shallow copies can explicitly performed by a MemberWiseClone and can be completed as follows:

MyClass c2 = c1.MemberWiseClone();

In contrast a deep copy creates and entirely new memory space from which the variables are referenced as show:

In order to provide deep copy capabilities you can use the ICloneable interface and make your class Serializable (I am sure there are other ways to do this).

public object Clone()
{
    MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
    BinaryFormatter bf = new BinaryFormatter();
    bf.Serialize(ms, this);
    ms.Position = 0;
    object o = bf.Deserialize(ms);
    ms.Close();
    return o;
}

So now the code for completing a deep copy would look something like this…

MyClass c1 = new MyClass();
MyClass c2 = (MyClass)c1.Clone();

c1.SC.SomeValue = "25";
c1.ST = "45";

//the message below will have empty strings as c2 was never initialized.
MessageBox.Show(String.Format("SomeValue: {0} : ST: {1}",c2.SC.SomeValue,c2.ST));

Please do not make the assumption that all ICloneable implementations are deep, Framework design guidelines were very vague and developers are notoriously inconsistent. You have been warned.

I cannot be the first person to consider what the music industry will look like 50 years from now, but I am wondering where music sales will be considering that all music sales for the last 15 year or so has been in a format that is currently digital or easily digitized. Unlike previous years where the Vinyl album had a shelf life and only existed in one location, digital music last forever and can be replicated. Each household will effectively have a growing library that they can pass on to future generations … legally.

Every track from antiquity will lose value because each household will have ready access to more and more of these old MP3’s. Superficially I think this will have the effect of putting a greater premium on new music and basically making old MP3’s free or cheap. I now just wonder how the owners of these vast, old and expensive catalogues will continue to make money if in fact the value continues to fall. This is just an educated guess but the industry is going to have make their old libraries attractive by making them more available.

As an aside I think the Beatles need to consider making their songs available via MP3. As great as they are, they will become almost irrelevant in the next generation or so. As great as Benny Goodman (King of Swing) was in his day, there is not a lot of takers for his music today.