Yet another release of Bluetooth Remote Control for Windows Mobile.

This time, I've added two features that were requested for a long time, which are the ability to control application that I did not include out of the box, and the ability to use the device as a simple mouse and keyboard device.

About the first part, there is now a configuration file that allows the addition of new applications by defining each and every command that can be used on the mobile side, and their corresponding action. I intentionally did not comment the file, this is not meant to be modified by a standard user, but rather by an experienced user or developer that wants to control a custom application. The configuration file will hopefully be really simple to understand for a developer. So, if you understand how this file works, just feel free to add a new application, or update an existing if it does not fit your needs.

Now about the part with the keyboard and mouse. I added a new "application" which actually is not, which is basically a pass-through for mouse and keyboard actions. You'll be able to move your mouse and type in any key you want in the focused window. On my TyTN II, the key mapping is a bit funky when using the function key, but I'll try to fix that for a future release.

Both features are fairly stable, but I suspect minor issues to come up as users are using it. Feel free to comment !

Download version 0.9.0 at http://www.jaylee.org/remotecontrol.

Here is the change log :

• Fixed warning message when ActiveSync is not detected to install the mobile side program.
• Added application definition file.
• Added screen control application.
• Fixed Widcomm PC side support when transmitting large chunks of data.

This is one of the biggest missing features of VPC 2007, the lack of USB passthrough support. The lack of a proper snapshot feature is annoying too, even though it is possible to move Undo Disks to simulate snapshots. But I still prefer VPC 2007 over VMWare, mainly because I find the latter to be too intrusive and unstable...

Anyway, I was looking for any update to VPC 2007 for the support of USB devices, in one form or another, maybe with a beta VPC 2008 or 2009. This is still not happening but, I came across this software, Usb over Network, which does exactly what I need to do.

This software is particularly easy to install, and it works right after being installed. I'm able to "export" my integrated USB Bluetooth dongle to the VPC, and it works like a charm ! I'm able to run both bluetooth stacks in controlled environments, without crippling my main OS with multiple stacks.

A really nice software, not free, but really useful if you're depending on USB hardware and you want to test it in a virtual environment.

There's been a lot of Buzz lately about a "Windows Workstation 2008", which actually does not quite exist, but that should. It is actually installing Windows Server 2008 and making it a workstation platform, by enabling every workstation component that is disabled by default.

From my point of view, Vista is definitely interesting, though it has too many services that are enabled by default and that do not make sense in every situation. For a computer savvy user, all this stuff is not really interesting, and Windows Server 2008 with its "do not enable unused components" policy, is quite interesting.

I decided to give it a shot by installing it as my main (and only) laptop OS, and quite frankly, I'm pleasantly surprised ! I do get the same user experience that I did have with Windows Vista with Aero, the nifty new features like the new start menu, and I seem to get a performance improvement over Vista. (Performance improvement is only a feeling; I don't have any numbers to show, though some did).

Everything works as expected, except for the bluetooth part, for which I do not seem to be the only one having problem with. The microsoft stack does not seem to install completely, as there are three "unknown devices" left : BTH\MS_RFCOMM, BTH\MS_BTHBRB and BTH\MS_BTHPAN. All three of them are core components of the bluetooth stack, and are obiously needed to get bluetooth related software working properly. The interesting part is that there are actually all the driver and metadata files required to install these devices, but for some reason, Win2008 does not want to use them. The driver files seem to be identical to the files Vista SP1, so this is one bit of a mystery to me. Added to that, this installation issue seems to be related to the KB940199 where the infcache.1 file could not be found. Screwing with that file did not help either...

So as a backup plan, I decided to fall back on the Widcomm/Broadcom Stack with this guide, which seems to work fine, at least for the part I'm interested in, Bluetooth Remote Control . I still don't understand the licensing policy on this software... You need the hardware to get that software to work, why bother having an licensing scheme over this, haven't you already paid for it buying the hardware ?

Anyway, if you're a tech savvy user, give Windows Server 2008 a try as your workstation OS, you might be surprised :)

Now, I'm going back to adding new features to Bluetooth Remote Control !

Since I've changed my top level blog engine, I've had some troubles with YAF, the forum engine I'm using for my Remote Control software.

The forum I'm using is in a child directory, which is a child application defined in IIS as an other application. The BlogEngine.NET disables the use of Sessions, and YAF requires sessions to be enabled, plus BlogEngine.NET adds some custom HTTP handlers, which incidentally are not known but the forum application. This is quite a mess, and to be able to get both applications running without fine tuning each one to work with the other, I had to use the little known attribute inheritInChildApplications.

This attribute prevents an application from passing its configuration as a default to child applications. Using this attribute is a little tricky, and has to be used this way :

This way, any child application defined below this application will not use the current configuration. There's some mystery around the inheritInChildApplications attribute; it is not defined in the dotnetconfig.xsd file and it still is a rather helpful configuration option...

Even though there is a way to expand all nodes in the solution tree of Visual Studio 2008, there is no way to do the opposite, which is collapse all. Not collapse all top level nodes, but collapse all child nodes, one by one.

There's a bug in VS2005/2008 that prevents a node from being collapsed properly for some obscure reason. The Expanded property keeps on being "true" even if set to "false".

Fortunately, a fix by Scott Kuhl which was working with Visual Studio 2005 is also working with Visual Studio 2008. The script is doing some trick to simulate a DefaultAction each node, which seems to collapse a node without using the Expanded property. 

Nice trick :) It avoids me the burden of hitting the minus and enter keys numerous times...