I hate that.

Also, now that I work on Windows Mobile, I have two SIMs with unlimited minute plans on them.  But, back when I was on Visual Studio, I had a 1000 minute plan, and sometimes went over.

Well, for people who are in a similar situation to me, some nice free services are filling in those gaps.  Skype is now providing free outgoing calls (SkypeOut) from your computer to any real phone number in the US.  That satisfies that second problem of going over your minutes.  And now AOL has AIMPhoneLine which will give you a free local phone number that has voicemail.  It saves the voicemail as an mp3 and sends it to an aim.com email address associated to your screenname.  I’ll never use that address for anything, and I’ll never check it.  Luckily, they have a setting to send you a text message to your cell when you get a new voicemail.

So, it’s great all around now.  If I didn’t have an unlimited voice plan, I’d use the Windows Mobile version of Skype on my HTC Wizard for outgoing calls, and then give out the AIMPhoneLine number to people I don’t actually want to reach me.

Now the world has gotten much better.

I might even start trying out CallWave to get call screening and mp3 voicemail on my primary cellphone, now that I’m trying out all of these other free services.

Freeware

• SmartSKey – multitask the softkey buttons, plus some other great stuff (like letting the volume slider do page scrolling!)
• OmapClock – overclock the Omap processor
• Skype – Definitely needs to run overclocked on the Wizard
• VirtualEarth Mobile – It’s nice to be able to quickly find places and their contact info based on locality
• NoteM – wonderful voice note recorder that records directly to MP3
• TCPMP – can play directories of music…WiMP can’t do that.  DivX supported as well
• CalcNote – nice little calculator that can site on top of other apps
• .NET Compact Framework v2.0 – I code most of my personal apps in .NET, so this is a must
• Agile Messenger – Let’s me use AIM and MSN Messenger at the same time in one UI
• Office Communicator Mobile – now I can appear to be working 24/7
• WM5Storage – Wonderful tiny app that lets you use your Windows Mobile device as a mass-storage device. If this doesn’t work for you, there’s a commercial program similar to this by Softick.

Commercial

• Mapopolis – voice prompts and directions.  More than Pocket Streets allows
• PocketRSS – there are still a couple one-hand usability issues with this, but it’s one of the cleanest, professional looking RSS readers that I’ve found.  An annoying bug though with scrolling in an item prevents it from having completely one-handed operation.
• PhatNotes (standard) – I’m a HUGE notes user (over 400 notes), and the only way for them to be useful is to keep them in a fast, searchable database like PhatNotes does…AND it sync’s with Outlook…perfect.
• RepliGo – The flowed view feature is HUGE for a small device.  Makes reading docs much easier
• WisBar Advance – It’s hard for me to use a PPC that doesn’t have this installed.  Between the EXTREMELY important cascading start menu, and the other small customizations it does to the shell…
• Spb PocketPlus – With the other apps that I have (SmartSKey and WisBar Advance) doing much of what this provides, I mainly use this for the multiple instances of IE and extra IE options
• eWallet Pro – My wallet has gotten much thinner ever since I started storing my less-used cards in here.
• Resco File Explorer – Power users really need something more powerful than the built-in one.
• Resco Photo Viewer – Nicer UI and more features than built-in browser

There are more apps that I used to additionally use on PPC only device (my trusty ‘ol iPaq 3955), but until I find an easier way to batch install and set preferences for all of my apps automatically, they remain only on my older device as it takes too much time to reconfigure my dogfood device on each flash.

• Flip It! – flipbook creator
• Pocket Artist – for my doodling needs
• AIM – to chat with my non MSN friends
• Sprite Pocket Backup – was great when I wasn’t flashing the OS itself so frequently
• Conversions In Hand – Nice, simple conversions calculator.
• MobiPocket – I was a huge Microsoft Reader user until I got too frustrated with the fonts remaining too large on books I was creating myself.
• Pocket Guitar Ref – nice reference tool when writing songs

I’ll talk about how I semi-rapidly configure my device in a separate post another time.

Luckily, the v600 saves the pics with filenames in this format: MM-DD-YY_TTTT.jpg.  I decided to write up a quick little app that used a Regular Expression to grab the time info from the filename and then update the file creation/modification timestamps so that the photos would have the proper meta information.

I did a quick search online and found a great short code sample on Code Project that told me the API to use to change the timestamps (it’s File.SetCreationTime(file, dateTime) by the way) and I verified my RE using my favorite RE editor, Expresso, and twenty minutes later I had my tool.

I’m going to add a bit more customizability to it (in case there are cameras out there that use a different filenaming method) and post it up here.  Should have it up later this week.