Mobile Manager for Netflix

Check out this info on Mobile Manager for Netflix from Windows Mobile Team Blog.

A few weeks ago at the Consumer Electronics Show(CES), Steve Ballmer talked about the Microsoft vision for connected experiences that extend across the three main screens people use every day. Specifically, PCs, mobile devices, and TVs. As part of that discussion Robbie Bach showed a demo of a Windows Mobile Netflix application that would allow users to update their movie queues from their phone. Well, as of today, the application is available for download (desktop/mobile) and in fact does more than just let you update your queue. The first official Netflix application for Windows Mobile phones, this app makes it simple to manage a Netflix experience from your mobile device. Leveraging the Netflix API, but with some exclusive extensions, I think Mobile Manager for Netflix is a great example of an on-device application that interfaces seamlessly with a web service.

I’ve been playing with the application for about a week now and I thought I’d highlight the two scenarios that impressed me the most. Let’s start with this past Sunday after the Super Bowl, when a new episode of The Office was aired. I’d seen a couple episodes of the show previously, but I honestly hadn’t ever followed it closely. After the first few minutes I came to the conclusion that it was definitely a show I’d like to see more of. Being lazy and full of Super Bowl snacks, I decided to give the Netflix application a try from the comfort of my couch rather then hike upstairs to my computer. The application started up with a simple login screen that accepted my regular Netflix credentials and once signed in it was easy to start a search

As you can see below, my search on “The Office” came back with 20 results and what I wanted was right at the top.As you can see below, my search on “The Office” came back with 20 results and what I wanted was right at the top.

Though you can add items to your queue using the Menu softkey, I clicked on “The Office: Season 1” to get more details. The details screen provided a lot of useful information, including a synopsis and the fact that The Office could be added to the Instant queue. As a huge fan of watching instant Netflix content through my Xbox, it was great to see that I wouldn’t have to wait for a DVD in the mail. Deciding to give it a try, I added the first couple seasons to my Instant queue and moved them to the top of my list.

From that point, it was just a matter of starting up my Xbox and navigating to the Netflix blade. Below you can see a picture of my Instant queue on the phone and on the Xbox. I personally really liked how easy it was to be watching TV, add something to my Instant queue from my phone, and then transition to watching it on my TV using my Xbox.

Moving on though, let’s take a look at the second scenario I encountered, which highlights one of the remaining features of this application. Even though I’ve seen it before, I recently found myself wanting to watch The Dark Knight again. Since I wasn’t in any particular hurry to watch it, I figured I’d add it to my regular Netflix DVD queue. Opening up the search screen, I again found what I wanted on the first try.

As you reach the bottom of the movie synopsis, you’ll see the one feature that really differentiates this application from any other Netflix application. Specifically, the ability to see a preview of the movie before you add it to your queue. Clicking on the See Preview button, a new window opens and buffers a video clip. I didn’t time it, but in a reasonable period of time I was able to watch the trailer for The Dark Knight right on my phone.

Even though I didn’t need the trailer to know I wanted to add this particular movie, it was still fun to be able to watch it from my phone. It played well and the feature will definitely be helpful in the future with films I’m not as familiar with. I know I went over things quickly, but hopefully this post has given you a good idea of what this app can do. If you’re a Netflix and Windows Mobile user, take some time and try it for yourself.

BizTalk RFID Mobile

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced the general availability of the latest addition to the BizTalk Server RFID platform - BizTalk RFID Mobile, an RFID platform for mobile devices based on Windows CE and Windows Mobile. BizTalk RFID Mobile consists of a runtime engine as well as tools and components to develop, deploy, and manage RFID solutions on mobile devices.

Developers, independent software vendors and systems integrators can build device-agnostic mobile applications utilizing RFID and sensor data on devices running Windows CE or Windows Mobile 5.0, 6.0, and 6.1. Events and data can be stored on the mobile device using a SQL sink service, and then communicated to the BizTalk Server RFID platform for further analysis. Mobile devices can be discovered, queried, and managed from the BizTalk Server RFID platform. Support for industry-ratified standards like the Low-level Reader Protocol (LLRP) and the Tag Data Translation (TDT) library provides a standards-based approach to discover, provision and troubleshoot RFID devices, in addition to surfacing business-relevant attributes from RFID tags

For more information on the product, capabilities, and evaluation versions, browse to: http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/rfid-mobile.aspx.

The documentation on how to build applications using the BizTalk RFID API can be found at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd351599.aspx.

Geeks Only Today

Uninstalling Applications Programmatically in Windows Mobile is the title of a blog post from Jim Zhang.

This might be an old topic but doing a quick search online I noticed this question is still being asked.

There are several ways to uninstall your application programmatically but perhaps the simplest way to do it is using the Uninstall Configuration Service Provider (CSP).

Being able to programmatically do things is always a good thing, but for uninstalling programmatically, perhaps the most common use case would be the ability to remove a program without any user-intervention.

Essentially, you need to "push" an XML file that the Uninstall CSP will process. Provisioning an XML file can be achieved in different ways but for this post I'll go over the API DMProcessConfigXML.

In native code all you need to do is include "cfgmgrapi.h" and call the function:

DMProcessConfigXML(LPCWSTR pszWXMLin, DWORD dwFlags, LPWSTR* ppszwXMLout)

In managed code, a managed wrapper is provided by the object ConfigurationManager found in the namespace Microsoft.WindowsMobile.Configuration:

public static XmlDocument ProcessConfiguration ( XmlDocument configDoc, bool metadata)

As for the actual XML string, take the following but replace "Your App" with the name of your application:



The code above will trigger the uninstall of your application without any prompting.

Keep in mind that if your application contains a setup.dll and your Uninstall_Init function displays UI, this will might defeat the purpose of a silent uninstall. Of course, you can design your setup.dll in such a way that will not prompt during a programmatically initiated uninstall.

I hope the above will help some of you.