If you are waiting for the breakthrough of something like Skype on an iPhone, you’re about 1-2 years behind the times (Skype for WM5/WM6 has been around for a while). This is because MS has had a WinCE or Windows Mobile SDK out for years. The SDK is free, but you need to have a non-free version of Visual Studio to use it.

More importantly, you don’t have to use a MS server to download the apps, so the developers don’t have to pay MS squat. Apple’s 30% cut can’t be considered anything close to reasonable.

Here’s some 3rd-party apps I have or have had installed on my Windows Mobile pocketpc:

Skype

Kevtris – tetris-like game

Pocket sudoku

Dope Wars

Adobe Flash/FlashLite (compatible with Flash 7)

Adobe acrobat reader

acbPower meter – for monitoring power useage

GPS viewer (for viewing data from bluetooth GPS receiver)

ibisBrowser – proxy-based web browser

Opera Mini – another proxy-based web browser

Java midlet manager – run any java-based midlet app

TCPMP – alternate to WMP and used for Flash video workaround

Pocket Player – alt to WMP includes equalizer, UPnP, DRM, etc.

Streaming Media – allows streaming video not supported by WMP

ThaiWinCE – addin to allow Thai keyboard and handwriting

Total Commander – powerful file manager/registry editor

Task Manager – task manager/reg editor/service mgr/network mgr

Screen Capture – good for posting in forums

putty – ssh client for *nix terminal

1CalcLite – calculator w/unit conversions

Yahoo to go

A2DP tweaker – adjust settings for optimal BT stereo quality

WM5 Storage – USB mass storage access to miniSD card

HTC home – includes time/weather/contact

Live Search – maps(w/GPS),directions,traffic,local searches

VoiceCommand – voice activated searches, calls, etc.

SDHC driver update – can use >2GB cards (have 4GB of music now)

WiFiFoFum -WiFi sniffer(I never use WiFi since EVDO is as fast)

Google maps – not as good as Live Search

Some program (I forget the name) to use the camera’s flash/light as a flashlight

These are in addition to the WM6 standard apps

Word

Excel

Powerpoint

Internet Sharing – PAN over BT or USB (phone as nework card)

Remote Desktop – control work computer from phone

VPN client – supports PPTP or IPSec/L2TP (single horizon)

Windows Media Player – streaming video (e.g. w/Orb – watch TV)

Plus, I’ve run linux on it, too (though many features aren’t implemented yet).

Almost all of the things people dream of doing with the iPhone that you can’t do right now (notably use Flash!) I do with my WM phone. For instance, I use Rhapsody to download full tracks for free (with the subscription) to the 4GB miniSD card. Then I use by Bluetooth stereo headset adapter to play the music with Pocket Player through my car stero without plugging anything in. Then I can use my Bluetooth GPS receiver and Live Search (or google maps, but the hybrid satellite-map view is missing) to track myself and view traffic conditions. All while using my Bluetooth earpiece for phone calls (the only Bluetooth device that works w/the iPhone AFAIK). During baseball and football seasons I stream the games from a desktop with a video capture card and Orb software installed to watch the games over EVDO (even Rev0 is usually faster than 802.11b) without being tied to a WiFi hotspot.

My only real complaints are with Adobe not supporting Flash beyond 7 (FLV support starts with Flash for Windows Mobile (though they are doing so for Nokia’s OS) and Rhapsody not providing either a standalone Windows Mobile Rhapsody client or a Pocket IE activex control for their web interface.

The competition Apple faces is from Windows Mobile devices which actually exist and do more than the iPhone, not Google’s vaporware phone.

Thanks for the article, it helped a lot to understand the XML- PHP parsing.

I have tried it by my own and it worked smoothly still i wondered i should write a Class for this and here it goes

< ?php

class Simple_Parser
{
var $parser;
var $error_code;
var $error_string;
var $current_line;
var $current_column;
var $data = array();
var $datas = array();

function parse($data)
{
$this->parser = xml_parser_create(’UTF-8′);
xml_set_object($this->parser, $this);
xml_parser_set_option($this->parser, XML_OPTION_SKIP_WHITE, 1);
xml_set_element_handler($this->parser, ‘tag_open’, ‘tag_close’);
xml_set_character_data_handler($this->parser, ‘cdata’);
if (!xml_parse($this->parser, $data))
{
$this->data = array();
$this->error_code = xml_get_error_code($this->parser);
$this->error_string = xml_error_string($this->error_code);
$this->current_line = xml_get_current_line_number($this->parser);
$this->current_column = xml_get_current_column_number($this->parser);
}
else
{
$this->data = $this->data['child'];
}
xml_parser_free($this->parser);
}

function tag_open($parser, $tag, $attribs)
{
$this->data['child'][$tag][] = array(’data’ => ”, ‘attribs’ => $attribs, ‘child’ => array());
$this->datas[] =& $this->data;
$this->data =& $this->data['child'][$tag][count($this->data['child'][$tag])-1];
}

function cdata($parser, $cdata)
{
$this->data['data'] .= $cdata;
}

function tag_close($parser, $tag)
{
$this->data =& $this->datas[count($this->datas)-1];
array_pop($this->datas);
}
}

$xml_parser = new Simple_Parser;
$xml_parser->parse(’test‘);

?>

MySQL Reference Manual

Or from MySQL.com