Adobe is holding a developer conference this week, where the company plans to demonstrate a number of new technologies, including a version of Flash 10 that will run on devices with ARM processors, ranging from Windows Mobile phones to televisions and mobile internet devices.

Also on the docket:

• Adobe AIR 1.5 will be released, with support for WebKit and Flash Player 10
• An alpha version of Flash for 64-bit Linux systems will be released
• Preview versions of the latest versions of Adobe Flash Catalyst and Adobe Flex Builder will also be made available

Conspicuously absent from the announcements? Any word on a version of Flash 10 for the iPhone.

The Windows Mobile team has publicly released Internet Explorer Mobile 6. There's just one catch: You can't run it on your Windows Mobile phone yet. Instead, the download lets you run Windows Mobile 6.1.4 on your Windows system in an emulator. So if you want to get a feel for how the new browser, which is based on Internet Explorer 6, will work, you can take it for a spin. If all you're waiting for a mobile version so that you can actually view full web pages on your Windows Mobile phone or PDA, it looks like you'll have to wait a bit longer.

This is the second time in the last few weeks that we've seen a software developer preview a mobile browser by releasing a desktop-only demo. But while Mozilla released a relatively light weight desktop version of Fennec, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 demo includes a full Windows Mobile emulator, which makes the installer file weigh in at 200+ MB.

That said, Internet Explorer Mobile 6 is a huge improvement over past versions of Pocket Internet Explorer. Like Safari for the iPhone, you can view full web pages the way they would look in a desktop browser and then zoom in tight for a better reading experience. Web pages did take a fairly long time to load, but it's not clear if that's the browser's fault or the fact that it's connecting to the internet through an ActiveSync connection with my laptop.

Internet Explorer Mobile 6 also features Flash Lite 3.1 and the Javascript v5.7 engine from Internet Explorer 8, which means you can watch Flash content from sites like YouTube and render Javascript-heavy pages like Google Docs.

My only real complaint with Internet Explorer Mobile 6 is that there's still no support for tabbed browsing.

[via Windows Mobile team Blog]

Something odd is going on in the world of Windows Mobile development. Last I'd heard Microsoft was working on a new product called Windows Mobile 7 that would be due out in the second half of 2009. But Motorola's CEO of mobile devices Sanjay Jha mentioned something interesting during an earnings call today. He said phones based on Windows Mobile 6.5 will be available during the second half of 2009. He also mentioned that Motorola would have an Android-based phone by next year's holiday season, but that's another story.

So what's this Windows Mobile 6.5? Is it an incremental upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.1? Or is it just another name for Windows Mobile 7? Based on leaked screenshots, we know that Microsoft is certainly working on something new in the mobile space. But it's not clear whether Jha's comments mean that Windows Mobile 7 has been pushed back, or if Microsoft will release the next OS on schedule, but call it Windows Mobile 6.5 instead, which would seem to imply that it will be an incremental upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.1, not a revolutionary new mobile OS.

[via CoolSmartPhone]

Opera has released the second public beta of Opera Mobile 9.5. There are two major changes since the last beta release. First, Opera Mobile 9.5 is available for Symbia UIQ as well as Windows Mobile devices. And second, the browser now supports Opera Widgets.

Widgets for mobile devices don't necessarily work the same way as widgets on a full sized computer. You can't fit a bunch of widgets on a 2 or 3 inch screen at the same time the way you can with desktop widgets. So what exactly is an Opera Mobile Widget?

Basically, it's a one-click web application. Rather than launching your mobile web browser and navigating to a page, you can click a widget icon and access a web page or application designed to work well with the Opera Mobile browser. Right now there 5 widgets available, including a clock, weather app, and Twitter application. The advantage of using widgets instead of bookmarks is that you can save the icons on your home screen or in a widget directory and you can access them with a single click.

Opera Mobile 9.5 also features the ability to view the full desktop version of web pages or zoom in for a closer look, much as you can do with Safari for the iPhone or the Google Android web browser.

The browser is free while in beta. No word on when the final version will be released, but there's a good chance that it will cost about $30 when it is available. That's the price Opera typically charges for its mobile browser. Of course, if Mozilla manages to push out Firefox mobile before then, Opera might feel the need to drop the price a bit.

Yes, your PDA, cellphone, BlackBerry, or whatever it is you carry around in your pocket probably came with a calendar and contact manager. And they probably suck. Pocket Informant doesn't.

This personal information management suite was originally designed as a complete replacement for the PIM applications that come with Windows Mobile. It's now available for iPhone and BlackBerry devices as well.

The Pocket Informant calendar is nothing short of awesome. It offers agenda, day, week, and month views that are quite frankly more useful than anything you'll find in Outlook or Google Calendar. And they just happen to fit beautifully on a small screen. You can easily see at a glance how much free and busy time you have in a day. And you can link appointments to contacts, set reminders, and show tasks from your To Do list in your calendar.

Pocket Informant's search utility also puts the built in Windows Mobile search function to shame. Results appear almost instantly, and you can find top level information like a contact's name or phone number, or results that are buried down a bit deeper like a name mentioned in a note attached to a calendar item from a year ago.

Pocket Informant for Windows Mobile costs $29.95. The BlackBerry and iPhone/iPod touch versions are each $20.

Mozilla CEO says the first Alpha version of Firefox Mobile will be available in a few weeks. That's pretty exciting. But I wouldn't read too much into it at the moment.

It's not clear exactly what devices or operating systems will be supported by the early Alpha. Pre-alpha releases of the browser, code-named Fennec, are already available. But at the moment, they only run on the Nokia N810 internet tablet. The N810 is a pretty cool little device, but it's not as ubiquitous as say, Windows Mobile or Symbian powered cellphones.

Mozilla does plan to make a Windows Mobile version of Firefox Mobile available. I just don't know whether we'll see that version in a few weeks when Fennec hits alpha.

[via Gizmodo]

SoftMaker has released two free and one kind of free office applications. First up, now that SoftMaker 2008 is available for Windows and Windows Mobile, the company has decided to offer the older SoftMaker Office 2006 Windows applications for free.

Like the current version of SoftMaker Office, which sells for about $80, the 2006 edition includes a word processor and spreadsheet application. SoftMaker office 2006 does not include SoftMaker Presentations, the PowerPoint-like presentation app that comes with the newer version. But while the older office suite might not have all the bells and whistles of the new version, the programs are pretty robust and they do support Office 2007 documents.

Softmaker is also giving away the free TextMaker Viewer 2008 application for Windows which lets you open, view, and print text-based documents including Word, OpenDocument, and RTF files.

Last, but not least, SoftMaker is beta testing the Linux version of SoftMaker office 2008 for Linux. You can request a registration key online and then download an RPM, DEB, or TGZ installer. I took the office suite for a spin on Ubuntu 8.04 and installation was as smooth as could be. I did find that PlanMaker, the spreadsheet application didn't recognize comments inserted in an Excel document I tried opening. But most functions seem to work as expected. If you're looking for an alternative to OpenOffice.org, SoftMaker Office might be worth checking out. The Linux beta expires on October 31st, after which there will either be a new beta or the office suite will be available for purchase.

The company also makes Office applications for Windows Mobile and Windows CE devices. But there are no freebies available at the moment. A full license for the Windows Mobile version will set you back $90.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has all but confirmed that Microsoft is working on an iPhone competitor with a Zune phone. That's not to say that Microsoft will build and sell the hardware. But in an interview with CIO Magazine, Ballmer stated that the Zune isn't just hardware, it's also software. And that the Zune software will be ported to run on other devices including PCs and Windows Mobile devices..

In other words, future cellphones running Windows Mobile could ship with Zune-style media player software instead of the mobile versio nof Windows Media Player. It's also possible we could see devices where the default look and feel of the devices is built to suit the Zune UI rather than the typical Windows Mobile interface with its old fashioned start menu paradigm.

And before you ask, the image is from wmpoweruser, and I'm pretty sure it's a mockup created by combining the Zune and Windows Mobile user interfaces. Ballmer may be willing to talk about the future of the Zune software, but to the best of my knowledge Microsoft has yet to release a screenshot.

[via Engadget]

A year and a half after introducing an innovative web browser for Windows Mobile, Microsoft is killing the project. Back before there was an Opera Mini 4 or an iPhone version of Safari, the Deepfish web browser offered a way to display full desktop views of web pages on a tiny browser, allowing you to zoom in on the area you want to read.

The browser was developed by the Microsfot Live Labs team and was never released to the general public. But I wouldn't be surprised if some Deepfish code has found its way into the upcoming Internet Explorer Mobile 6.

In a blog post, the developers behind Deepfish say the goal was never to build a complete browser, but rather to show that an innovative user interface could make for better mobile browsing. The team also implies that Deepfish helped inspire the development of full desktop views in other browsers like Safari, Opera Mini, and Opera Mobile.

You can check out a video shot early last year of Deepfish in action after the jump.

[via jkOnTheRun and My Today Screen]

If you frequently find yourself browsing on a low-bandwidth connection, you can potentially speed up your browsing experience by using the compressing proxy server at Toonel.net. The concept is simple: install their application on your computer (versions are available for Windows, Mac, Linux, Sun Solaris, and even Windows Mobile and Symbian), then set your proxy settings to point to your localhost IP address on port 8080 (127.0.0.1:8080). Once you do, all of your web traffic is routed through Toonel.net's server, which compresses it before it gets to you.

The compression used is lossless, which is required to ensure the pages show up as expected, though there are image-specific options that allow you to change the compression that is applied to JPEG and GIF images. This is likely only worthwhile on a very slow network, since it takes the server a bit of time to recompress images before your browser can download them, but could be handy on a struggling network.

I wouldn't recommend running Toonel.net full-time, or even at all if you're always on a broadband connection, but if you find yourself struggling with a lack of bandwidth, this is a great trick to have in your back pocket.

[via TechRadar]

Microsoft will be rolling out the first major upgrade to its mobile version of Internet Explorer since... well, practically ever. The version of Internet Explorer that ships with Windows Mobile devices is based on code from Internet Explorer 4. The new version will be based on the desktop version of Internet Explorer 6 and should be able to handle pretty much any web site you can view in IE6.

The::unwired got a handful of screenshots of Internet Explorer Mobile 6. And it looks like a pretty major upgrade. First, you can choose between desktop and mobile browsing modes. In desktop mode the browser will squeeze full web pages onto your PDA or Smartphone's small screen. In mobile mode, you'll get the mobile version of any web page that's optimized for mobile browsers.

There's certainly still room for improvement. Full desktop mode on the iPhone version of Safari or on the Opera Mini web browser manages to squeeze large pages onto small screens without the need for scrollbars. Yet Internet Explorer Mobile 6 requires a bit of side to side scrolling action.

Internet Explorer Mobile 6 is expected to be available as a free upgrade for Windows Mobile 6.1 users soon. But if you just can't wait, you might want to check out the Skyfire web browser for Windows Mobile. It's available today and supports the desktop version of Flash, which means it can handle YouTube videos and other Flash content all within the browser.

T-Mobile and Google are announcing the availability of the first mobile phone running the new Google Android software today. But if you're holding out for the next generation of Windows Mobile devices, it looks like you might have to wait a while. CNet is reporting that Windows Mobile 7, which had widely been expected to ship early next year, will not be available until the second half of 2009.

The news comes from Microsoft partners, not the company itself. But a delay could seriously hurt Microsoft's mobile market share. The company faces increasing competition from Apple, Google, and Research in Motion.

Microsoft could offer some new features to Windows Mobile 6 users this year, including an improved web browser and better support for online Flash content.

My iPaq might be two and a half years old, but it's got a thumboard and WiFi. While that might not count for much, it's enough to let me rock on with three mobile web apps that have allowed me to stick with Old Faithful instead of springing for a new device.

What are they? Gmail, Google Reader, and Ping.Fm Mobile.

The three things I really want to be able to do with my handheld are check and send email, read my RSS feeds, and update my status on sites like Twitter, Plurk, etc. I am, however, terrible at remembering to keep my iPaq docked and charged, and I'm not good at saving my favorite mobile app installers when I reformat my base PC.

All of which means that I need three simple apps that will run well on a freshly booted, totally naked Pocket PC 2003 install with clunky old Pocket Internet Explorer.

These three have never let me down. They're all formatted nicely for my vertical QVGA screen and stripped of any annoying elements that mess with rendering. What's more, I can follow Brad's advice and have all three open in tabs at the same time.

Gmail is great with a thumboard, and way better than texting from my cell. Reader does an excellent job of reformatting all my feeds so that they're easily readable. Using Ping.Fm means I don't have to worry about whether or not sites like Plurk, Rejaw, or Pownce will function on the iPaq. One simple form updates them all for me. Rad.

These three must haves - along with the basic PIM and media functions that Pocket PC 2003 came with - are enough to keep me productive, even with a handheld that's woefully out of date by today's standards.

The iPhone gets a lot of attention these days, and rightly so. It's an attractive phone/media player with a beautiful interface. And Apple brought the idea of an innovative finger-friendly multi-touch display to the masses. But you know what? The iPhone isn't for everyone. There are plenty of things it can't do, or that you can do better with another device. And while the price of the phone continues to drop, you have to pay a rather pricey phone bill every month if you really want to make use of the phone.

With that in mind, Download Squad brings you anti-iPhone day. Throughout the day, we'll be looking at alternatives to the iPhone. To kick things off, I wanted to review some of the posts of DLS past that have already shown that there's little you can do with an iPhone that you can't already do with a Wndows Mobile-based phone.

Program Launchers

Somewhere between the time when Steve Jobs first demoed the iPhone and the day it actually hit the shelves, third party developers decided it would be cool to create an iPhone-like interface for Windows Mobile. Probably the most interesting project is FreeStyleWM, which started out its life as WhoNeedsAniPhone.

But not every third party developer wanted to replicate the iPhone interface. Some were just inspired enough to go out and create their own easy to use, finger-friendly program launchers and other applications. Thus GoodWin and iSwish were born.

Meanwhile, before the iPhone was even threatening your pocketbook, folks were puting out software that takes Windows Mobile and makes it feel like an entirely different operating system. Over a year ago, we brought you a roundup of applications designed to make Windows Mobile look and feel a bit more like Windows XP or Vista.