Windows Mobile Today Screen Tools

One of the best tools that Windows Mobile offers PDA owners is the Today Screen. It’s your primary source of information and can be set to appear every time that you turn your PDA on, reminding you of things to do or places to be. With a little bit of free software you can make the Today screen even more useful and there’s nothing better than a bit of extra utility for no outlay.

The first tool is a replacement for the standard calendar Today plugin: Calendar+. The default calendar plug-in is very restricted, only showing the next appointment or next day’s appointments. Not much use for forward planning. Calendar+ however, allows you to select the number of future appointments to display (up to a month), the format that they are displayed in and how much of the Today screen will be dedicated to the purpose.

The second tool is an application launcher from Scott Seligman, which manages to be both slick and lightweight at the same time, visually integrating into the Today screen in a way that commercial competitors fail to do. As first installed the program creates shortcuts to all the applications on your device, however by simply adding or removing files from the launcher folder you can customize this to your own taste.

Capture A Screenshot From A Streamed Video

Ever wanted to take a screen shot of something you’ve seen in a streaming video? Sure you have!

You set up the stream, advance to the right time counter, and snap! But.. oh no! The frame of the media player is black. What happened? Well, the problem is likely due to video card acceleration and overlays. Basically, to produce higher quality video, your computer asks your video card to display the accelerated video in an overlay, which “overlays” the rest of the screen. From the user’s perspective, the video and the other windows are all on the same plane.

However, from the software’s point of view, the only things on the screen are the windows, since the actual video is in the overlay. This is why the streaming media player’s window appears black. How to fix this? Well, I will demonstrate with RealPlayer v 10.5 for Windows as an example, but the general idea should hold for any media player.

Go to the menu bar, and select “Tools.” Scroll down and select “Preferences…” The preferences window should appear. Within the window, select “Hardware” from the side menu. In the bottom panel, select “Most Reliable” which will show “Disable optimized video and overlays.” Then, restart RealPlayer and try capturing the image again. Voila!