Yuri Magrisso

I am not aware of a way to use JSR 177 to obtain a unique ID of the phone.

What you need is either the Customer API of Motorola or you can use the Bluetooth API to get the Bluetooth address of the device, which is unique. In both cases, however, you are limited to devices that support the API.
On second thought - Bluetooth is wide-spread already.

No, it goes against the sandbox security model.
I suppose your midlet connects to the server - in that case you can generate an id on the first connection and have the midlet send it on every consequative connection. If you want to identify the midlet accross multiple installations you can ask the user to register the midlet with a username / password he has registered on your website before.

I don't think you can save a signature to a file from the browser on Pocket PC. Most likely you'll have to write a custom application, which embeds the browser as ActiveX.
The only JVM that runs on Pocket PC that I am aware of is IBM J9. I am not sure that it supports applets, though. And if you have to install something on the PDA, it will be easier to install your own application.

I am not sure how it is for IBM J9, but for the Motorola IDEN phones the code looks like that:

String url = "comm:com0;baudrate=19200;databits=8;"+
"stopbits=1;parity=n;flowcontrol=h";
CommConnection cc = (CommConnection)Connector.open(url);

I think you won't need to specify the params after the baud rate, since those are the defaults.

Hope it helps,
Yuri

Thanks for answering!

Timmon looks very promising! I like the tree-table organization of tasks and the automatic roll-up (summing) of task times. The tree drag & drop is great and the ability to start / stop or switch between tasks with a double click is very nice.

The things that I am currently missing are:

1. Ability to enter arbitrary time intervals. For example when I am recording tasks that I performed away from the computer or tasks that are recorded in other programs.

2. Ability to backup and restore the data. I suppose I can just copy the '.timmon' directory to my backup location or replace it, but it is not very convenient.

3. Ability to define task types and activity (time entry) types. It will be nice to have the most common development tasks and activities predefined with specific icons for them. Ability to define custom types is also welcome.

4. General useability improvements are necessary - for example I am not able to view the time log of tasks when another task is running. It is good to be able to edit task properties in a dialog box, not only in the table.

5. Having special nodes for client and project (or better - deliverable with various types) with ability to enter specific for them data is also good.

Best regards,
Yuri

You can use OpenOffice to convert the Word files to Open Document Format, which is XML based.

I am not sure that this is the best place to post the question, but since I am looking for a java app (preferably) I'll give it a shot.

I spent more than half a day searching for a decent personal time tracking application and I couldn't find anything that fits my requirements. If any one has come across such an application, I'll be very grateful to have a link to it.

The requirements:
1. Organize tasks (in a tree) by project, sub projects, preferably by any kind of deliverable. Full drag & drop in the tree. The tree could start with clients.

2. Classical fat client, that uses XML as file format or at least provides export to XML. No web based applications with heavy DB as datastorage. By heavy DB I mean anything in the lines of MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS SQL etc. Embeddable DBs (Firebird including) are ok. I want to have my data in a single file and back it up easily.

3. Start & Stop time track function; not a timesheet table where I fill up activities or automatic tracking of PC activity. Option to add notes to every time track / log. Ease of switching between tasks is a plus.

4. Option to create time logs manually (not by tracking), option to enter time by start time & elapsed time (important) or start time & end time. Options to enter time intervals in hour:minute:second or hour.decimal formats.

5. Ability to create time reports for the branches of the projects tree.

6. Open source or affordable. That one is not the least important - by affordable I mean something under $70. If it is open source it should be comparable to the commercial applications and preferably active.

7. Must run under Windows, cross platform (preferably Java) is a plus.

There are several open source applications in that space, but they fail to meet those requirements. For example:
hourglass
timetrack
Timmon

The best fit for those requirements that I found is Timeless Time & Expense - http://www.magsoftwrx.com/projecttracking.htm
But it is not cross platform and more importantly I cannot export to XML. That is a problem, because I don't want to spend hours inputting the data, without actually owing it.

Thanks,
Yuri

On all Motorola phones that I know, you can deploy via data cable. Motorola provides special applications that you should use for the purpose. For iDEN phones use the Java App. Loader from idenphones.motorola.com and for the rest use the Midway application from www.motocoder.com

It depends on the particular phone.
Some phones like Motorola i730 have an option to start a program when the phone powers on.
You can put an application in the background by calling MIDlet.notifyPaused(). Usually the application continues to execute its threads on the background.

You can autostart application also by using the PushRegistry.

I haven't tried that one, but you should check out what will happen if you don't set a screen in MIDlet.startApp(), but call MIDlet.notifyPaused() instead - this should put the application in the background immediately when it starts.

Sure, just like in J2SE - use Thread and Runnable.

I have found www.jbenchmark.com to be quite useful to see what j2me devices are available and their graphical performance.

From there I usually use the developer sites of the manufacturers.
For Nokia www.forum.nokia.com;
For Motorola www.motocoder.com and idenphones.motorola.com;
For SonyEricsson www.sonyericsson.com/developer;

There is probably a problem with the Ant build file - you are not passing correctly the parameters for the WTK emulator and it cannot find the MIDlet class.

I once tried to do that with HttpConnection and I didn't succeed even if I set connection type to keep-alive (httpConnection.setProperty("Connection-Type", "keep-alive").
What I noticed was that the data was not sent to the server until I call HttpConnection.getResponse() or HttpConnection.openInputStream() and once I call any of those I can't write data anymore. It looks like HttpConnection is made to work in request/response type of communication..
This probably depends on the specific phone too (its KVM) - I was working with Motorola i85 then.

With SocketConnection that works without problem, but you either have to implement HTTP by yourself on the client, or write a custom TCP/IP server.

Regards,
Yuri

If I understand correctly, you certainly can.
If you are working in MIDP 2, I would advice you to base it on Form + CustomItem. What you need to do is to implement a component that can display multiple lines.
To display multi-line text on Canvas or on CustomItem, you'll need to implement a line breaking algorithm, break the string you want to show into lines and paint the lines with alignment of your choice.

I think it is better to do it as Form + CustomItem because you will be able to use the platform title and thus preserve the UI style throughout the application. If you implement it on Canvas, you will have to draw the title too and this can be quite different on the various handsets and not easy to draw.
In MIDP 1 devices you'll be forced to base it on Canvas, but those devices have usually more simple title styles.

You can use standard commands in both cases, so this is not a problem.

Hope this helps,
Yuri

What do you understand by "unique key" and later "unique"?