Well as i was hoping wouldn’t happen, XMAS got me into holiday mode and with a mix of good Steam Sales and a back log of Netflix and Anime i pretty much did nothing constructive over break.

I spent a whole week just marathoning games, such as Crysis (and warhead), SW: Empire at War(surprisingly fun!), FEAR 2, Bullet Storm, Homefront (was lame), Chantelise, Battlefront 2, Red Faction G, and others. To then spent the next week marathoning anime: Air, Air Movie(better than the show), Kanon, Clannad, Clannad AS, Hen Zemi, Hurahi-chan, and a few missed specials from Elfen Lied, Clannad, K-On and caught up with Wafku, good times but none productive.

So now school is starting back up, had planned to have a OBDMobile for Android and SideAmp for WP7 running by now but nope. Now i have about 16 hours of classes set for this semester. Good thing is that most of them are related to projects i am working on or interested in so that should be very helpful. In fact some can be used for extra credit.

Of course school comes first but other than that i should be able to become productive again. Im sure some of these i said last time but my first goal now is to get a decent “demo” disk to ship out to replace the crappy factory one with the OBD Connectors. Then i want to revise the debugging and licensing stuff for OBDMobile and try and make it officially “Windows 7″ certified. Then have a Android version running around (one school project is to basically convert a C# program to Java how convenient) then with a Windows/Android/Whatever else base is to then advertise it everywhere to get feed back and reviews. Then use that data/feedback to do OBDMobile 2 over the summer. Along that time i will have some smaller WP7 and .net projects every now and then. If i keep on it right then i can do the projects along the school projects and get two birds with one stone.

On another good note is that i have noticed more and more Windows Phone 7′s on campus. I can only think of one out in the public, but i have seen quite a lot on campus.

So should be a good semester, with a slight chance of graduating in the Fall.

Picked up a HP Touchpad during HP’s crazy weekend ebay fire sale. Overclocked it and dual-booted Android on it the day it came in. Its kind of cool i guess, runs a older form of Android 2.3.7 but other than for development usage i dont really know what to do with it. Its cool but with Android on it its going through its battery faster than my Atom netbook does with Windows 7. With OneNote not on android im playing around with Evernote, not like i used OneNote anyways and i hope it becomes a great tool for school. So we will see if it was a good $150 investment. I dont see why someone would want to spend 500 plus on any non-”real” OS tablet, but im hoping for a Windows 8 port to it

I have been playing around a lot more with SideAmp for Windows Phone 7 then i planned. SideAmp is kind of at a cross roads. It was made just to work with Windows SideShow and SideBar. But Microsoft has pretty much said that they with Windows 8 its going Metro with it. I mean you cant download any more SideShow/SideBar gadgets from MS anymore. Which is fine because their distribution system for it was crap. I am kind of playing around with the SideShow drivers hoping to come up with a Windows Phone 7 compatible system. I knew a guy who supposedly already made one but hes not answering to anyone and it seams like his group has move passed it. If that ends up working maybe i can beat that horse a little longer.

Anyhow SideAmp is at a crossroads. Do i keep it like it is and let it die with SideShow/SideBar? Do i move it over to the mobile side and compete in that area? I mean Zemote for WP7 is much more in depth then i have any intention of being. WinAmp has a app already on Android so who knows. I mean my only driving force is that i love my little SideShow display i created SideAmp for but there is not 64 bit drivers, and my next system will be 64, but i do have the drivers for it so i could try and hack it over to 64.

What i will probably end up doing is cleaning up the SideAmp GUI to fit the Mobile remote stuff on it, release a app for WP7 and Android and kind of see where it falls. I could try and make it Metro friendly but i would think that Zune and WinAmp will have Metro versions by then. Part of me also wants to make it Open Source and just throw it out there so maybe ill do that too.

I do have some more small apps i want to turn out for WP7, with it being holiday i have not tried to do anything to in depth. Though i should really be working on OBDMobile for Android…

So i generally have my work cut out for me for the next month or so, should be fun and productive.

I was also one of the lucky ones who picked up a HP Touchpad tablet on Sunday for $150, already over clocked to 1.7 and dual booting  Android so maybe ill play around with WebOS over break.

I have cleaned up rklenka.com a bit and also moved most of the OBDMobile stuff to http://www.obdmobile.com

So yea expect some cool stuff this next month or so

I have been playing around in Android with Eclipse, and all though i am familiar with Java, Eclipse and all that its not exactly fun. Im trying to port over the current version of OBDMobile to Android and have been working on the metro stuff for WP7 for OBDMobile in the hopes that XDA or someone cracks the ad-hoc problem. I have also been in talks with some manufacturers to start up our own hardware connector. Nothing major at first just a variation of what we have been selling but with a few changes . Once that gains a hold we will be trying to branch out into more specific designs and hopefully even specialized hardware with at least one being WP7 compatible.  I am hoping to have a Android port and the first batch connectors out for the holidays.

There have been a few background changes to the site, it should be loading up faster for you. It was designed for a bunch of small programs but with larger applications like OBDMobile and SideAmp its a bit cramped. I will be splitting OBDMobile off into its own site: http://www.obdmobile.com in the upcoming weeks. That should help with some confusion.

Intel AppUp is doing about as good as i expected, and also as expected Intel never sent my connectors back

There submission process is very different than with Microsoft’s app marketplace for example Intel actually tested to see if my app worked. MS just tested to make sure i didn’t break anything. This and the fact MS is wanting app numbers shows something interesting, Marketplace is full of crap applications. The amount of just straight up copyright infringing apps is just mind blowing. Luckily thought they drop to the bottom of the barrel. Also the amount of generic public domain books on Marketplace is amazing. There are like ten versions of the same public book selling for $4.99 that you can read online for free, maybe im in the wrong business

As always i am always looking for comments and ideas for OBDMobile, im always stuck on the building mind set so its harder for me to see it and go, man it would be awesome if it did this or that. So comments are always welcomed.

This week is midterm week and ALCS for baseball (Go Rangers 3-1) after that i have some plans to work more on the Windows Phone 7 platform. Mango is out and is nice, but it is still missing Blue Tooth API and Ad-Hoc WIFI support so OBDMobile is at a stand still for now. I am planning on porting a form of SideAmp to Windows Phone among other apps planned for it. Unless something changes on the WP front i might let OBDMobile simmer for a while.  I do have a road map for OBDMobile 2 planned out which kind of relies on WP and Windows 8 working themselves out and it will be a major update. That probably wont be released until next year, i still have more update plans for OBDMobile 1.x

The WP version of SideAmp is kind of going to decide on what way that will go in the future.

I also have a new major project planned, which is more like a lot of smaller related projects.

I also want to port these all over to Android eventually but who knows if i will ever have time.

Also means i can, and did, submit OBDMobile to Intel’s AppUp once that goes through im hoping to have at least enough of a footprint to get a hold of some hardware to work on a Windows Phone 7 version. Im also going to then start rounding up updates for OBDMobile depending on how it works with Intel. I am wanting to make it more touch and tablet like for Windows 8 which should work smoothly with WP7/8 development.

Intel showed some interest in SideAmp but i dont think they fully understand it, its a plug in for WinAmp and Zune, not a stand alone Media Player. Now right now it is dedicated to just SideBar and SideShow, which are not big successes for Microsoft and Sideshow for example has been pretty much killed off. I might roll SideAmp into say a more touch based, tablet media base but i bet MS already has that covered for Windows 8, but as long as my PicoLCD device works ill keep using it (drivers doesnt work on x64, though by then ill get desperate enough to roll my own) I even played with the idea of making some WP7 port of SideShow and still might (wheres my BT API Microsoft!)

Ether way it should be a pretty interesting semester with all of this and school plus other projects.

Right now i am trying to finish up my major projects, SideAmp is done for now, OBDMobile is up and running, all that is really left is finishing up RingTimer for WP7.
Oh and code signing everything when Comodo finally approves it (going on week three now of waiting). Which is funny because Intel would have given it to me for free, and its not even the one Microsoft wants for its Certifications.

Im trying to get all that done, not only because i need to, but mostly to get “ready” when school projects start adding up. I have a bad tendency of getting fixated on a project, and only one project at a time. This last month has been OBDMobile, today was SideAmp, tomorrow will probably be RingTimer. Then hopefully it will move over to school work, but probably back to new projects, like Adding Windows Phone 7 support to SideAmp, adding Windows 7 Sensor API and other such things to OBDMobile, finishing the GUI for OBDMobile for WP7 for when BT or AdHoc is ready. Plus a list of others. Its funny you can tell where i am by my weight. When im fat then you know i am working on a bunch of projects either for school or for me. When im skinny then i caught up and have nothing new so i work out all the time, your talking i can go +/- 30 pounds in a year easily. Take a guess what side i am on now (poor Wife)

It will soon be available on Intel’s AppUp as soon as i get my code signature verification. Which i started a few weeks back, man its a bit of a pain. I got it through Comodo via tucows for those who are interested. To then find out that Microsoft prefers VeriSign, and also that Intel would have paid for the processing fee for Comodo. Which means to qualify for all the fun Windows certificates i get to do it all again through VeriSign. Microsoft does give you a discount, but the catch i guess is you cant use it to sign code. In other words they are using it to verify identity not to sign.  So it i would just end up in the same place anyways.

One plan for this blog was to use it a bit like a developer blog. Ill do a write up, kind of like a “Making of” OBDMobile some time soon if any one is interested.

So go try it and buy it and let me know if there are any problems.

Here are two preview pictures of OBDMobile for Windows. Im still playing with the GUI so it could all change. Right now it shares about 95% of the same code as with the WM version. That means that any update for one could be easily added to the other. The only difference right now is the GUI and Graphing sections. There rest are interchangeable.

As for Windows Mobile version, its stuck in Limbo. It was submitted before the deadline  but was approved after. I have been sending tickets to MS to get the update on the catalog but with no luck, they have not responded. There it is a huge update from OBDMobile 1.1 so its well worth the effort. Soon you will be able to get it off the website and maybe even other app stores.

The Windows Phone 7 version is even worse off. Even with Mango there is still no Blue Tooth API or decent Socket APIs so there is no way to directly access the OBD Connector.

I have about three apps up there now, each two with planned updates in the pipeline plus a few in development, and two weeks to finish them. Does not look like thats going to happen.

OBDMobile 1.2 is practically done and is the most important, it has been more or less redone and greatly improved, im hoping to make it to where it will display nice in landscape mode without scrolling like 1.1 but i don’t think that will be done in time. That should be submitted this week and im trying to get in as much testing as i can in such a short time.

The updates i had planned for RingTimer such as: GPS, Maps, Routes, accelerometer and more wont be  done in time, so instead i had to remove pretty much all of those in order to make it. So basicly i just updated the GUI.

FlickPick i have not even looked at, and it probably needs the updating the most. Maps, Routes, Directions and reviews plus a GUI over hall is all needed for that one.

So what will happen after July 15th? Well the idea is all future updates will be posted on the site, FlickPick and RingTimer will probably become free and probably wont get the updates they need.

People will be able to purchase OBDMobile for Windows 6.x through paypal and there will be a way for people to update them as well.

Most of the efforts will then be placed towards Windows Phone 7 which i am totally digging for the most part, really looking forward to Mango.