We are pleased to announce our partnership with RACO Industries on Solution Packs.  Solution Packs are complete, end-to-end applications built around ITScriptNet Omni, that incorporate portable Data Collection programs, a PC Application for Database Maintenance, reporting, and configuration.  We have been working very hard to complete these applications, and we will be posting more information on the coming weeks.

We haven't posted much lately, but we have been hard at work!  We'll have news very soon on our new Solution Packs, new ITScriptNet features, and a website relaunch.  Keep watching this space for more!

Following the announcement of Windows Mobile support for the Pegaso, Datalogic has announced that the Kyman is now available with Windows Mobile 6.  This device can have a GPRS/EGDE radio for wide-area communications.

Honeywell (Hand Held Products) has announced the availability of the Dolphin 7600 with GSM.  This also upgrades the Dolphin 7600 to Window Mobile 6.  We are pleased that the ITScriptNet OMNI client and several Ready-To-Go^TM Applications are pre-loaded on the 7600 to give users a good out-of-the-box experience.

Honeywell is purchasing Metrologic, adding to the purchase of Hand Held Products.  It's too early to know how the two groups will be integrated, if at all.  Metrologic makes a line of hand held scanners, and a few mobile computers.  Only one is Windows CE based, the SP5700.

Do you remember when we mentioned that the US Census Bereau was using a Windows Mobile device for collecting the 2010 census data?  Well it turns out the project has not gone well, and will be scrapped.  Its too bad - its an interesting application with biometrics, wireless communication, etc.

Where have we been?  If you've noticed the lack of postings over the last few weeks, we've been hard at work on something new which will be announced at our Training Session in a few weeks.

Here are a few news items of interest that we've collected.

Motorola to split
Motorola has announced that they are splitting their handset business from the rest of the company.  We assume that the former Symbol Technologies group will be in the Broadband and Mobility divison, but that has not been announced yet.  It appears that only the consumer Handset division (mobile phones) are being split off.

Unitech PA500
We've received a Unitech PA500 device and we are working on a client for it.  This device is a small form-factor (PDA-style) data collector with a linear scanner.

Opticon
We're looking at the Opticon HT16 / 19 devices.  These are mobile phone-style devices with integrated scanners.  They are interesting units, and we are planning support in ITScriptNet for them.

This note came across the Intermec wire.  Honeywell, which just completed the purchase of HandHeld Products, has become an Intermec RFID licensee.  We'll keep an eye out for what this might mean.

We hope everyone has a Happy and Successful New Year.  We have many exciting plans in store for 2008, and we look forward to bringing them to fruition.

Here is a roundup of a few HandHeld Products related items we've found over the last few days.

Whitepaper: United Utilities Chooses Dolphins To Collect Meter Data (registration required)

Whitepaper: Siemens Uses Dolphins To Read Meters (registration required)

From Europe: Hand Held Products and Maporama International join their know-how in favour of mobile professionals.  This is about a system using Dolphin 7900 GPS units.

Aquisition news: Honeywell completes acquisition of Hand Held Products, Inc.

Happy Holidays to everyone!

HandHeld Products has announced a partnership with SOTI for MobiControl.  This is a remote device management tool used by enterprises to inventory, manage, configure, and troubleshoot portable devices.  According to the article, SOTI MobiControl will be available for all HandHeld Products mobile computers and kiosks.

Google has released a new version of Google Maps Mobile, including a native application for Windows Mobile similar to Microsoft's Live Search application.  The big news with Googe Maps Mobile is the My Location feature, which attempts to locate your position based on either a GPS receiver, or by triangulating cell towers!

Have you seen the mobile device slated for use by the U.S. Census Bereau in 2010?

The device has Windows Mobile 5, an SD card slot, and a Fingerprint reader.  It appears to be more rugged than a consumer device, but probably not as much as an industrial data collector.  It also has a wireless modem on the Sprint network, and a dial-up modem built in for areas with no wireless. 

It looks quite capable by todays standards, but I wonder what we'll think of it in two years.

AIM Global has announced the development of a new, royalty free Dot Code symbology.  This code was developed by Dr. Andy Longacre at Hand Held Products, and is a 2-D symbology intended for high-speed production line use.  It is capable of being printed by in-line inkjet printers since it does not require continous lines to be printed.

Here is another press release about the Dolphin 7900 with integrated GPS.

Also, GPS is now listed as a feature on the 7900 product page at HandHeld.com.

Update: Here is the press release directly from Hand Held Products

Today at CTIA, Microsoft announced System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008.  This is an Enterprise-wide system for managing Windows Mobile devices.  It provides a centralized mechanism for security, device management and data access control.

Recently we mentioned that UnIQue ID was supplying a GPS radio for the Dolphin 7900.  Now we find this article suggesting that Hand Held Products is making a GPS-enabled 7900 generally available.  No word on whether this is worldwide or limited to Europe.

Several Windows Mobile 5 devices are also coming with integrated GPS, including the MC35 and MC70, and generic Windows Mobile devices.  We are taking a look at adding GPS support to ITScriptNet in the near future.

This news just came across the wire:

Honeywell to purchase Hand Held Products

We just saw this item about UnIQue ID supplying Dolphin 7900s with Integrated GPS to a package delivery company in the UK.  Since we haven't seen any 7900s with integrated GPS, a little research turned up this article from last year, about UnIQue ID developing these GPS modules themselves.

Symbol has just announced that they are adding GPS capability to the MC70.  It looks like devices will become available in early 2008.

Here is some more information on the newly-released Hand Held Products 7850.  The specifications and details are now available on Hand Held Products web site.  Also, here is a press release regarding the release of this new device. 

Last week we attended Blue Star's Vartech event in Nashville.  Several hours were dedicated to CodeZone, which is basically a trade show.  We were quite busy as the traffic of resellers was continuous.  We obtained many good leads and talked a great deal about specific applications, most notably Route Accounting.

We were demonstrating a Controlled Access application using Unitech's MR650 kiosk with finger print reader.  It was a crowd pleaser.  We'll be spending the next few weeks following up with resellers with the hope of assisting them with successful data collection solutions.

Are you planning to attend BlueStar's Vartech event next week in Nashville?  The registration system you will be using at the event was developed by us with our ITScriptNet data collection program development software.  The system integrates the scanning of your Vartech ticket, the confirming of your information, and the printing of your Vartech badge.  We hope you enjoy using the system.

Please stop by the Z-Space booth (#126) to see various applications running on Hand Held Products, Motorola, Unitech and Datalogic devices that were developed quickly and easily with ITScriptNet!  Register your thumb at our showcase demo to win prizes!

See you in Nashville!

Our phone system is down this morning.  If you need to contact us, please use email while we work to resolve the problem.  We apologize for the inconvenience.

Happy July 4th!  We are closed today to celebrate the holiday, but we'll be back Thursday.

Microsoft Research is working on the AURA Project, which is a mechanism for scanning IBSN barcodes with a standard PocketPC or SmartPhone with a camera.

We downloaded and experimented with the package, using a Verizon vx6700 and had excellent success.  This device has a Macro lens, so it was able to scan and decode the symbols with good accuracy.

At this time, it appears that the decoder only supports EAN and UPC codes, but we will monitor this project to see what develops.  We would be very interested in integrating a decoder like this into the Standard Windows Mobile 5 client for ITScriptNet.

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Welcome to the ITScriptNet New blog.

We are starting this service as a way to provide information on Portable Data Collection topics.  We intend to keep you up to date on the development of ITScriptNet, the latest news on Windows CE and Windows Mobile, and portable devices that we hear about.

We welcome your input as well.  Please feel free comment on any topic, or suggest topics that you think are of interest.

Thank you for reading, and we hope you find this information useful!