If there's one piece of Windows Mobile Professional that's driven us (and likely many of you) bat-poop-crazy over the past few years, it's the little "X" button that might or might not actually exit out of an application. In the earlier days, when RAM was at a premium, this was more of an issue, as we needed to actually exit apps and not just shove them into the background. A functional phone is a good thing.

And so, one of the first apps we'd often install was one that would actually make the "X" button exit the app, as we've grown accustomed to on desktops. We long scratched our heads at this. It just didn't make sense.

Today, it's not nearly as big a deal. But now we're getting an inside look at the story behind the story here, from Mike Calligaro of the Windows Mobile Team blog. And it's a heck of a read, explaining how things progress from the first Pocket PCs. A teaser, if you will:

One thing we did has been pretty contentious. Along the way, we got feedback that users didn’t mind letting us manage the memory for them, but they really wanted a way to say, “I’m done with this. Make it go away.” So we put a “go away” button in the upper right corner of PocketPCs. This button just sends the application to the background. It doesn’t close it. If the system needs more memory while the app is in the background, it’ll close the app. But, if the system doesn’t need more memory, the app will stay in RAM and be ready to come back quickly the next time the user needs it.

Go read the whole thing here. Then weigh in below.

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Managing space on your WM device is becoming less and less a concern as newer devices are coming with memory aplenty. But still, after a few months of installing and un-installing, storing pictures and documents, that device space can disappear. More importantly, sometimes an app will store cache on your device, depleting memory without your knowledge.

So how to know what is taking up the most space on your device? One way is to use Resco Explorer, which allows you to sort by directory size. Another is MemMaid which can show you memory space.

But both of those are pay apps (though highly recommend). Enter Mobile Monger a new freeware app that has a very unique method to inform you of your space allocation: it shows you.

Basically you launch the program and it shows you how much space something is taking up. Clicking on a directory will "zoom in" to show you details.

The program does require .NET 3.5 (download the .cab here!) and does zap resources, so don't use any other apps during the "scan" process. Redrawing the screen is also a bit slow, but hey...it's free and does it what it's suppose to, so give it a shot!

Download HERE

Via PocketNow

Apparently "Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Texas Instruments, Micron Technology, and others" are developing a new flash memory card standard they hope will replace the now-common SD card standard. The good news: it should be faster and require less power than current memory cards. The bad news: yet another memory card standard out there.

We already have MMC, SD, miniSD, microSD, Compact Flash, xD, Sony's whateverStick, and so on and so on. I'm happy these days that I can put everything on a microSD and then use adapters for basically any smartphone I would want to use. If this UFS is to be the new standard, let's hope that the consortium gets everybody on board, because I smell a BluRay vs HDDVD kind of situation in the offing and it doesn't smell good.

The goal of the new specification, dubbed Universal Flash Storage (UFS), is memory cards with high-speed access to large multimedia files, while at the same time reducing power-consumption. The target performance level is a significant advancement beyond that of the varied flash cards popular today. Under the new standard, a 90-minute movie that that takes up 4 GB on a memory card will be loaded in seconds.

Read: Mobile Phone Makers Developing Another Memory Card Standard