Now this is neat.

The latest version of Windows Live Search for Mobile adds speech recognition - so if you're somewhere you can't type your search, all you need to do is speak it. I've been trying it out on some of the harder items to recognise, especially words with sibilants - and was impressed that it handled both "Cinema" and "Sushi" first time.



Of course map search is a relatively closed domain, so the range of terms that are going to be used is small (and most queries are going to be single words or short phrases). That means that it's going to be easier to build an effective recogniser, but even so, this is running on a low powered mobile device. It's not even one of this year's phones...

Well worth a try if you're using Windows Mobile 5 or 6.

[Update: Speech recognition is done on the server, not the device. That makes more sense - all the device needs to do is encode the speech and send it back to the server - a much lower power job. The servers can be as powerful as you like...]

I'm helping marypcb work on a Tom's Hardware piece on mobile mapping software. As it's for an international audience she needs to be able to show some US specific features, like the traffic tools. That's fine with Google Maps for Mobile or Yahoo! Go - both have one installer for wherever you are in the world, and you can map US traffic from the UK quite happily.

Unfortunately there are two different versions of Windows Live Search for Mobile. One US, with traffic data, and a UK version for the rest of the world, without. It doesn't matter which version you try to download, the site will download one standard installer no matter which country you select.

The first time the application runs, it checks the device location, and if you're not using a US phone it gives you the Rest of the World version. You can be in the US with a UK device and you won't be able to get the traffic data - so you could get stuck on an LA freeway without knowing how to escape the jam. Now Microsoft rarely makes two binaries where one will do, so I suspected that what we were seeing was something in the application configuration. I first used a mobile device registry inspector to see if the application was using the registry.

It wasn't. So it was time to pour through the Windows Mobile file system to see if there was anything there. There was. Sat right next to the application executable was a preferences.xml file. I copied it across to my desktop, and had a look through with an XML-aware text editor. The file contained some canned searches, details of most of my last few searches, as well as some slightly less obvious sections. In one, <R>, was the text GB. I changed it to US, and put the file back on the mobile device.

I reopened Windows Live Search. Bingo! The traffic option was now available, and I could see the state of the LA rush hour. At least I won't get stuck on that stretch of 110...

I've finally got Exchange's new push email set up on my phone (and on the house mail server). I have to say, it rocks. It works really well and I'm getting mail on my phone before it pops up on my desktop PC.

That's not to say there weren't some rocks along the way.

Everything began smoothly enough. Downloading and installing the AKU2 Windows Mobile 5.0 update working on my SPV C600 was fairly straightforward. I still need to reinstall some favourite applications, as the ROM install wipes the phone's memory, but that's pretty much par for the course.

Unfortunately for those of us who self sign our server certificates Orange has kept the ROM update tightly locked down, and the old certificate unlocking methods have stopped working. I ended up using the automated certificate installation tools that Orange have set up for registered developers to create a signed copy of my server certificate in a CAB file. It's easy enough to sign up for the service, but I really shouldn't have to be delving into the heart of my PKI to get this working...

I'm still waiting for AKU2 updates for the MDA Vario and the MDA Pro...

Next, on the mobile home email front, is getting our own Blackberry Enterprise Server up and running...

My Orange SPV C600 arrived this morning. It's a lovely little phone, and it looks like it will quickly become my regular hand-held device.

However the usual fly in the ointment appeared when I tried to connect it to my mail server using Exchange ActiveSync.

It wouldn't work. The phone refused to accept my server's perfectly valid security certificate.

This was not good. I need mobile email like I need oxygen.

So why was I having problems? Like many small businesses I self certify my server. marypcb and I (and a couple of trusted folk) are the only people who need remote access to the server, so there's no need for us to spend money on a commercial certificate.

The standard trick of running Small Business Server 2003's sbsmobconfig.exe to load my server certificate on the phone didn't work - Orange's default setting for their Windows Mobile 5 devices locks down the certificate store, and the server certificate can't be loaded.

Any why is this? The answer's quite simple: Orange doesn't trust its users.

However there are ways around the impasse.

A bit of frantic googling and I found this thread on MoDaCo.

The instructions weren't quite right for a SBS installation. Here are my modified steps.

1. Download RegeditSTG.zip and SDA_ApplicationUnlock (there's a zip file in the thread with them both in).
2. Connect your phone to your PC and make sure that ActiveSync 4.1 is running.
3. Copy RegeditSTG.zip onto the phone without unzipping, and unzip on the phone. Run and install RegeditSTG.
4. Run RegeditSTG and change the value of HKLM\Security\Policies\Policies\00001017from 128 to 144.
5. Run SDA_ApplicationUnlock on your PC. This should remove the application lock on the phone.
6. Power cycle the phone.
7. Run sbsmobconfig.exe from your PC.
8. Power cycle the phone.
9. Check your phone settings for your server certificate.

Exchange ActiveSync should now work.

You can now breathe and read your email wherever you may be.

However, that is too many steps, and too difficult for the end user. Orange needs to stop being paranoid about application installation and ship its phones unlocked. Microsoft needs a more user friendly certificate installation tool than one that only ships with Small Business Server 2003.

There's a reason why Blackberry is successful. It's easy to use one to get mobile email from any source.

Innobec SideWindow

Turns your Pocket PC PDA into another (very small) monitor that's part of your Windows desktop. Just move your mouse onto it, and drag application windows across to the PDA screen. You can even use the PDA's pointer as a mouse... Quite useful for putting task lists and the like where you need them, without losing screen real estate. After, your PDA isn't doing anything else whilst it's connected to your desktop...