Interesting Article from Marketing Sherpa

There's a fascinating article on MarketingSherpa.com entitled "Mobile Surveys Show Higher Response Rates, Lower Costs: 12 Strategies & Creative Tips. It's a long article, but a fascinating read that illustrates the many advantages of conducting surveys in a mobile fashion.

Is Another Tech Bubble About To Burst?

If you're in the I.T. business then you may be following the latest crisis going on at Facebook. On paper, Facebook is worth a LOT of money right now. But will that value last forever? I wonder.

Watch this hilarious and yet telling video:

Even Microsoft Has A Sense of Humor!

Microsoft has created a website called "Untamed Workforce" that takes a few humorous jabs at users of mobile technology. It's made to look like it was made many, many decades ago!

Windows Vista: A New Way To Sync

I haven't jumped on the Windows Vista bandwagon yet, as I'm waiting for the expected [HUGE] service packs that are sure to come along. But the laptop of a colleague of mine crashed the other day and she had to buy a brand new one. It came with Windows Vista.

In helping her set it up, it became clear that Vista no longer used ActiveSync. It was supposed to be built in. However, when we synched her Pocket PC it would only allow synchronization of music and basic files, not the Outlook data she was most interested in. Some research quickly lead to this update of the Windows Mobile Device Center.

Strange that Microsoft would have overlooked this necessity for the millions of Pocket PC and SmartPhone users out there! Anyhow, install it and all works pretty much as before, albeit with an updated UI on the Windows machine.

Pocket Pollster on the SoMo 650

Socket Mobile has kindly loaned me one of their new SoMo 650 Pocket PCs. It's a Windows Mobile 5 device and is absolutely spectacular in every way. They included one of their combo RFID / Barcode readers that plugs directly into the Compact Flash port on the top.


There's always a moment of anticipation when I try installing Pocket Pollster onto a new device I've never seen before. But sure enough, it installed flawlessly and worked immediately. I loaded in several existing templates and used one to start a new poll that had a Freeform text field. I positioned the reader near an RFID tag and pressed the hardware button on the left side with my thumb. The tag number was read and immediately copied into the text field.

It's always wonderful when technology works flawlessly from the get go!

New Pocket PC from Socket Mobile

Socket Mobile, long famous for their mobile computer accessories, are launching their first Pocket PC. It's called the "SoMo 650" and comes equipped with these great features:

• Intel 624 MHz processor
• 128 MB Base RAM
• 256 MB Flash RAM [permanent storage]
• WiFi
• Bluetooth
• Windows Mobile 5.0
• Extremely durable case
• Pre-loaded Socket Mobile scanning software
• Compact Flash and SD sockets
  

Into this device you can insert one of their many RFID and/or Barcode scanning adapters. The device will retail for US$650.

It reminds me a lot of the old Casio E-800 Pocket PC that I absolutely loved. It was super durable - not military grade but good enough for most industrial applications. But the internal guts of this unit are very modern and fast!

Working with an iMate Phone

One of my clients had an iMate phone onto which I installed Pocket Pollster. In the early days of the software I would have faced such a situation with great trepidation because there were so many different devices, each with different nuances. But this forced the "smarts" of the installation engine to be tremendously beefed up.

With this unit, the .Net Compact Framework 1.0 had to be installed and then Pocket Pollster. It ran flawlessly the first time!

Compact Framework 2.0 - Moving Ahead

The original version of the Pocket Pollster mobile software was built using Microsoft's "dotNet Compact Framework 1.0" (CF 1.0). This is a comprehensive library that provides functionality to do an assortment of tasks. The great thing about this version was that it could be installed on any Pocket PC dating back to the very first. In fact, I've successfully tested Pocket Pollster on the original HP Jornada - circa the late 1990's. Even with just 16MB of RAM, the software actually works fine on it!

To date, every line of code of the Pocket Pollster software has been created using Visual Studio 2003. A newer version - Visual Studio 2005 - has been available for some time but I stayed with 2003 because it was the last version to support the CF 1.0.

But all things must eventually come to an end. I'm now in the final stages of transitioning from 2003 to 2005. This newer version will only support the CF 2.0. A comprehensive table of information is provided here.

What I plan to do is compile a "final" version of the mobile software for the older devices, which will always be available should a customer happen to have such a device. I'll then be free to proceed forward with a new version of the mobile software, which will have a host of new features that take advantage of the great new offerings bundled in CF 2.0.

Make no mistake that this was a difficult decision to make. But I spoke with a number of industry experts and they pointed out that mobile devices get upgraded even more frequently than PCs. The good thing is that CF 2.0 supports as far back as the Windows Mobile 2003 devices so it's really only the much older ones that won't be able to use the many new features being planned.

Alpha 1.32 Released

Several new features have been added, one of them quite significant.

Change Mobile UserName
From its inception, I always envisioned Pocket Pollster being used in the field with one mobile device per user. But the new client wanted to have a smaller pool of devices and let anyone take any device at any time. This meant there had to be a way to allow the mobile user to input their name on-the-fly.

The solution is the introduction of a special screen that now appears at the very beginning of a poll. It displays the current user's name but provides a simple way to change it, if required. Here's an example of this screen:

The presence of this mobile screen is controlled in the Pollster Privileges section on the Settings screen of the Desktop software:

If checked then the screen will appear on the mobile device; if not, it won't. The poll's creator is thus given the maximum amount of flexibility to control whether this option should be provided.


Data Transfer Options
In the past the Options screen on the Desktop consisted of just a few items that all resided in one small dialog box. But the addition of some new items necessitated an expanded version. There's now a Data Transfer page that looks like this:

The initial two items added to this screen are these:

• Unattended Sync - Sometimes Pocket Pollster is setup on a desktop computer and then isn't used for a period of time. Unchecking this box will prevent the Data Transfer dialog box from automatically appearing every time a mobile device is synched. If, however, the Pocket Pollster desktop software is running then the dialog box will appear.
  
• Audible Feedback - When the Data Transfer dialog box appears a distinct series of tones are heard as well. Unchecking this box will turn off these sounds. It should be noted however that the sounds emanating from ActiveSync are unaffected by this setting.

Testing in the Real World

Even before Pocket Pollster is officially available for sale, an engineering client wanted to try it out. So they purchased 4 new HP iPaqs, 4 Rhinoskin cases, and 4 x 1GB memory cards.

The software installed flawlessly, each unit taking less than 1 minute to configure. All mobile installations were done with just 1-touch, and that can even be reduced to hands free installation if so desired.

As part of our agreement, I added one major new feature to the product and a few minor ones. These I will describe in a subsequent posting.

Pocket Pollster was tested on a prominent construction project in Vancouver and then another one in the Canadian Maritimes. At such time that I'm at liberty to provide details, I will. But all reports back were very positive. In fact, the Desktop's graphical Summary screen was used to present the field testing results to top executives of the company, much akin to a PowerPoint presentation. I never envisioned the software being used in this way but there's an old adage amongst software professionals to never assume your customers will use your software in the same way you would!

Automated Export

Ever since Alpha Version 1.2, there has been an automated export feature in Pocket Pollster. It has become apparent that the powerful nature of this feature is not fully understood by everyone.

Once activated (on the Settings screen of a poll), an associated MS Access MDB file will be updated every time new data is downloaded from a mobile device.

This MDB file can reside on the same computer where Pocket Pollster is installed or on a computer half way around the world, if one's Intranet so allows. Other software applications could then potentially (and continuously) be fed with the updated info in the MDB file.

It is envisioned that once setup in this way, the Desktop component of Pocket Pollster may seldomly ever be used again, instead just serving as the automated data collection engine for most any other software a company owns. Powerful simplicity indeed!

Pocket Pollster is Still Going Strong!

Some colleagues have asked me why there haven't been many blog entries on here the past few months. There are actually three reasons:

1. I've been consumed with some consulting for a major client, which had to be attended to.
2. I took some time off in December, including a trip to Chicago to visit some old friends. While there I met with some people who are interested in creating Chicago Digital Divide, modeled after the organization I founded, BC Digital Divide.
3. Now that Version 1.0 of Pocket Pollster is essentially complete, I've been focusing my time on building a brand new version of the website using ASP.net. It'll be much more functional (and better looking!) than the existing one.

So all is well. In fact, I will soon have some great news to report about the first major customer of Pocket Pollster!