Viewing Chinese on an English version of Windows Mobile 5 phone

Mobile phone ROM are often customized to specific regions to reduce ROM/RAM size. For example, US and international versions of WM5 devices (e.g. Tmobile SDA, iMate SP5, iMate Jasjar) do not include support for locale and character sets such as Chinese and Japanese.

After trying (and failing) several suggestions in postings that generally required copying a Chinese font and setting registry keys to use that font, I came across CE-Star by Mobem Technologies that worked well on both Smartphone and Pocket PCs. It copies the fonts, sets the registries for fonts and IE Mobile, and changes the locale to Hong Kong. The free, downloadable version lets you view Chinese/Japanese, and the paid version gives you input capability for these languages, including handwriting.

I noticed that IE Mobile fails to display some web pages (e.g. News.com) if you change the locale back to English and with IE Mobile set to use Chinese or Unicode encoding.

Study: for most, all-in-one phones aren't - Engadget Mobile

"over half of multimedia phone owners are still toting a dedicated MP3 player, some 75% of smartphone users lug a PDA as well, and a staggering 80% of cameraphone owners "regularly" carry their digital camera."

Mobile Learning at the Stanford Learning Lab

"Last summer, the Stanford Learning Lab (SLL) developed a few rough prototypes for mobile learning. The SLL staff chose foreign language study as the content area, hypothesizing that mobile devices could help provide sorely needed opportunities for review, listening and speaking practice in a safe, authentic, personalized and on-demand environment.

The prototypes developed let users practice new words, take a quiz, access word and phrase translations, work with a live coach, and save vocabulary to a notebook - all in an integrated voice/data environment. The intent this summer was not yet to support an actual Stanford course, but instead to begin exploring recent technologies and fundamental human cognitive challenges involved i learning on-the-go."

Microlearning

"Microlearning deals with relatively small learning units and short-term learning activities. Generally, the term 'microlearning' refers to micro-perspectives in the context of learning, education and training. More frequently, the term is used in the domain of E-learning and related fields in the sense of a new paradigmatic perspective on learning processes in mediated environments on micro levels."

Ambient Mobile Communications

"In a world where people are busier than ever and arebombarded with more information than they can process, ambient communications through mobile media can provide rich social connections to friends and family. Users can stay connected to the people that they care about by sharing awareness information in a passive way and being able to access this information at leisure, even in quick spurts throughout the day."

PDF link
http://chi2006mososo.telin.nl/docs/papers/Bentley_CHI2006MoSoSo.pdf

Glanceable Peripheral Interfaces

"Glanceable visuals better help users monitor secondary tasks while multitasking by enabling quick and easy information uptake. However, little is known about how to best design glanceable information abstractions for multitasking situations. ... The major contribution of this work is an understanding of how to design and evaluate glanceable interfaces, which will improve user ability to manage multiple tasks through low-effort monitoring."

Situated Learning

Situated learning is education that takes place in a setting functionally identical to that where the learning will be applied.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situated_learning

Mobile Phone Energy Use

Do you unplug your phone as soon as it's charged?

"If 10 percent of the world's cell phone owners did this, the group's final report said, it would reduce energy consumption by an amount equivalent to that used by 60,000 European homes per year."

http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-6118116.html