a blog by Peter Leonard
Let's say you've got a newer cell phone, such as a Nokia 3650, and your co-intern has an ancient WinCE device such as an HP Jornada 540. Theoretically you should be able to push your business card over Infrared to his PDA, right? Well, it turns out the circa-2000 Jornada accepts simple business cards, but not those with estoric extensions such as a full-color image of yourself.
The solution? Use a modern Windows Mobile handheld to perform the intermediary conversion. In my case, I sent my business card over Bluetooth to an unbranded HTC Blue Angel (which incidently lost the picture, due to Windows Mobile 2003's iffy support for caller ID photos). Then I used the HTC to beam the now picture-less card to Vinay's Jornada. This gave me an interesting status message as the Windows Mobile 2003 software on my device tried to make itself understood to the older WinCE OS:
The HTC sucessfully sent the card in "legacy mode" to the older handheld. To celebrate I took what is probably the worlds' worst picture with the world's worst cameraphone on the HTC:
(Interestingly enough the original implementation of IrDA contact transfer in WinCE was a little broken/proprietary, and users of the expensive new Windows devices found themselves unable to communicate or send their cards to owners of the much more popular PalmPilots. So many OEM's started shipping 3rd-party software which sat on top of the OS and listened for the Palm data format. "PeaceMaker" gave you a couple extra options in your Contacts Tools menu, inexplicably bounded by parenthesis as if seeking forgiveness for their humble presence:
Choosing Card Exchange pulled up a trainwreck of a UI, which may have lacked grace and subtlety but won points in my book for "best use of MIGRAINE icon":
Peacemaker proved unfortunately about as effective as Hans Blix for me, as the jpeg embedded in my Nokia's business card caused a severe case of indigestion when it hit the Jornada.)