What technology is Microsoft recommending to replace Microsoft Sync Framework? - windows-ce

I have an project where I want to scan data to a table using a handheld device. The device would be docked sending the batch of data to the PC to be processed using ActiveSync or Windows Mobile Device Center. The device in this case runs Windows CE 6.0.
The customer has an existing app that uses PocketAccess to do this, but that support was removed many years ago in CE, so it limits his access to new devices.
I first started looking at alternatives and saw a lot about Microsoft Sync Framework. But I have since discovered that it is no longer supported in SQL Compact 4.0.
So rather than design something that is already obsolete, what should I be looking at?

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Does Amazon Fire TV support HbbTV Applications?

I can't find any information about whether or not the Amazon Fire TV (original release as of the posting of this question) supports the HbbTV specification.
I'm building an app using the TAL framework, and I've successfully added my hello world application as a web app hosted on my local server to the Amazon Fire TV, via the Web App Tester Tool.
But I am at a loss with HbbTV. Perhaps Amazon doesn't support it? I can't find any documentation that says either way.
no support for HbbTV in the box, but the TAL framework seems okay (on both original and Stick) as the BBC News app is how I get my fix most mornings in the US
As the FireTV doesn't seem to support external USB devices at the moment I'm not sure that even with a USB HbbTV you'd be able to rig something up (and the Stick has no USB port, apart from power)
I've read some folks are working on HbbTV over IP but not seen a working solution yet (though assume if there was just a local IP stream the FireTV like any Android device could work with that)

Is there a way to test a Android Sender app for Chromecast using the SDK's Android emulator?

Without support for Google Play Services and WiFi (similar to the 3G network support, through the host's network connection), the SDK's emulator is useless for Chromecast app development. I know we can use real hardware, but some things are simpler using the emulator, especially quickly testing changes on a wide range of devices.
We're about to start developing the iOS version, here's hoping the Apple emulator is better!
The main issue is with the mDNS discovery that is not supported on the emulator. We currently have no plans to work on that (this is copied from my comment, made it an answer and removed the old answer that was irrelevant).
Update: Cast discovery now is supported in the emulator.

iOS BLE - How to keep app active in the background?

I am trying to find a clever way to keep a BLE app active in the background on iOS 6, without breaking any of Apple's rules. I plan to use the phone as a peripheral device and another BLE circuit as the central. My app will automatically be opened when a user arrives to a building using geofencing. After that the iPhone will connect to the first BLE central device it sees (the device will be in its white list). The user will then be able to move throughout the building switching to different BLE "nodes".
My question is: What do I need to do in the background when a user is stationary at their desk so that the app does not get suspended due to memory resources?
My idea is based on this solution for a separate problem: There could potentially (not regularly) be 10-50 users in an area with only a few BLE "nodes" and I read at bluetooth.org that I could setup a dynamic connection system, basically rotating connections through all the users.
My idea is to setup a similar dynamic system where the central device (not the iPhone) disconnects the device on regular intervals (30-40 minutes) and then the iPhone will reconnect.
Is this something that some feasible? Is this against the iOS development guidelines? I was unable to find anything explicit about this. I have also asked on the iOS developer forum, but unfortunately it is not as popular as this site.
Thanks in advance!
Xcode -> Project target -> Capabilities -> Enable background mode
Check Uses Bluetooth LE Accessories
Capabilities
Also enable the following key in .plist file
Required background modes
App communicates using CoreBluetooth
Plist

How to go about developing and deploying an SCEP/MDM infrastructure for the Enterprise iOS program

I am trying to use the new OTA enrollment and device management capabilities in iOS 4 to provide wireless app distribution for the enterprise. So far, I have come across a lot of third party MDM providers that seem to charge by the device. I don't believe this is something very hard to do on our own, especially as a prototype.
My search has led me to some open source software for SCEP. Together with the OTA configuration reference from Apple, I want to believe that the next step would be to actually implement an MDM server. Now, the WWDC talk had slides on various MDM queries supported by iOS 4, including installing and removing provisioning profiles, but there's no reference implementation or even exposed API that I could find.
Does anyone have any experience trying to fully develop an enterprise distribution and management system without third party software?
MDM providers that I've seen are acting as SCEP proxies so that you don't have to expose your certificate server to the internet.
The best open source SCEP server I've found so far is Dogtag (http://pki.fedoraproject.org/wiki/PKI_Main_Page)
woops I was meaning to comment.. not answer.

Auto Detect Windows Mobile Device programmatically

I am writing a windows application (written entirely in C++) which reads files from a storage card on a mobile phone running Windows Mobile. The tough part is, I don't know how to make my application detect the event that a user has connected the mobile phone to the USB of laptop. I did some reading on MSDN and have written a small code using RegisterDeviceNotification, which detects whenever a USB disk is attached/removed from the laptop. However, I am unable to tweak this to make it work for phone type devices. Please help me out through any links/tutroials which explains this(preferrably C++, as I don't know .NET or C#).
Thanks
Alok
According to this article you can use RegisterDeviceNotification to get notifications when activesync detects a device has been plugged/unplugged. (See option 3 at the end of the article)
It may just be a matter of setting up the correct notification filter.
Windows Mobile devices use RNDIS, a network interface protocol behind the scenes. Hence, the RegisterDeviceNotification method still works, but you're looking for a DEV_BROADCAST_DEVICEINTERFACE, not DEV_BROADCAST_VOLUME. (i.e. dbch_devicetype==DBT_DEVTYP_DEVICEINTERFACE)
You can use RAPI or RAPI2 to detect when a Windows Mobile device connects to a PC via Active Sync or Windows Mobile Device Center. RAPI can also be used to read the files on the storage card and much more.
RAPI is simpler to program because it is a C based API. RAPI2 has more functionality than RAPI, but is an object oriented COM API. If your needs are simple and you only care about one device/connection at a time then RAPI is good enough. There are two RAPI functions used to detect connections: CeRapiInit (blocking), and CeRapiInitEx (signals an event upon connection).

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