this week i'm at some windows mobile developer events and it is always fun to be around people who have searched out things you haven't found yet...did that make sense?

anyway, here's some dump of some cool windows mobile things i've learned about today...

phone sharpmt - this is a windows mobile smartphone blogging client tool.  not the greatest UI, but it worked for my blog earlier

newsbreak - solid rss reader for windows mobile...moreso than some of the others.

quickmark - take a picture of a UPC symbol with your smartphone and get product information

smart2go - gps navigation system for your phone/gps adapter -- free open source from nokia

sms voter -- application to enable voting into your mobile device using SMS messaging

vista interface for your phone -- i tried this, but with varied success -- memory hog, can't recommend but looks cool

vixy.net -- take a youtube, etc. url, feed it into vixy and get the AVI or other formats and put them on your device...great quality

maybe more to come as the week progresses...

eric schoonover pointed me to what jan completed late last night -- implementing ajax support in the smartpart...yippee...

check out the smartpart for sharepoint now with asp.net ajax support!

as i continue to build on top of my virtual earth example that uses proximity searching, i found myself wanting to add more visualization to the mix.  i wanted the radius being searched to actually show a radius ring for the area...so the user could see the proximity being searched where the results are plotted.

so, i started digging -- how do you draw a circle using the polyline api?  hmmm...rounded corners with straight lines...seemed like a challenge.

well after a prod to some people i was pointed to a solution already doing this!

and thus the ViaVE Wiki had the answer.  basically it is a javascript function like this:

   1:  function addCircle(polyname, latin, lonin, radius, vecolor, linewidth) 

   2:  { 

   3:      var locs = new Array(); 

   4:      var lat1 = latin * Math.PI/180.0; 

   5:      var lon1 = lonin * Math.PI/180.0; 

   6:      var d = radius/3956; 

   7:      var x; 

   8:      for (x = 0; x <= 360; x++) 

   9:      { 

  10:          var tc = (x / 90)* Math.PI / 2; 

  11:          var lat = Math.asin(Math.sin(lat1)*Math.cos(d)+Math.cos(lat1)*Math.sin(d)*Math.cos(tc)); 

  12:          lat = 180.0 * lat / Math.PI; 

  13:          var lon; 

  14:           if (Math.cos(lat1)==0) 

  15:          { 

  16:              lon=lonin; // endpoint a pole 

  17:          } 

  18:          else 

  19:          { 

  20:              lon = ((lon1 - Math.asin(Math.sin(tc) * Math.sin(d)/Math.cos(lat1)) + Math.PI) % (2 * Math.PI)) - Math.PI; 

  21:          } 

  22:          lon = 180.0 * lon / Math.PI; 

  23:          var loc = new VELatLong(lat,lon); 

  24:          locs.push(loc); 

  25:      } 

  26:      var poly = new VEPolyline(polyname, locs, vecolor , linewidth); 

  27:      return poly; 

  28:  }

(note: the 3956 indicates this is miles...if you need km, then you'd have to adjust the earth radius setting to be km instead)

now that i add that to my code, i simply call:

   1:  map.AddPolyline(addCircle("SearchRadius", center.Latitude, center.Longitude, $get("MilesRadius").value, new VEColor(255,0,0,1), 4));

and have a radius drawn around my resulted plot points.

the beauty is that as with everything, this applies to the 3d views as well:

very cool -- hope this helps others as well.

the gang up in utah is organizing a code camp!  they have a call for speakers going on RIGHT NOW.

currently they have a developer and SQL track planned and are looking for speakers to present.  you don't have to be an expert...if you have an idea to share and speak about -- sign up!  code camps are a great mechanism to learn with your peers.

if you are interested in speaking, contact Pat Wright at [email protected] (put "code camp speaker" in the subject line).

have you been looking at sharepoint (yeah, yeah, okay "moss")?  wanted to add some ajaxified love to those new interfaces?  or perhaps some of your own web parts.

take a look at some comments from mike ammerlaan on the topic.  in a recent post, mike talks about integrating asp.net ajax with sharepoint (see he doesn't even use moss).  there are some tips on extending the sharepoing web.config with the appropriate elements, yada yada.

in addition to that, eric schoonover writes about the AjaxBasePart and provides examples and code for you to use.

with these two resources it should be enough to get you started -- or at least thinking.