Hardly a week goes by now when I don't hear of or find another new industry or application for Windows Mobile. One of my favourites to date is Pocket Cow Manger which allows agronomists to gather their field based data (pun intended) on a Pocket PC and sync with the Interherd application. The latest addition I found when browsing for a COSHH solution was FieldMan Farmer for crop recording and farm assurance from Pear Technology. I love it - more and more uses for Pocket PC's :) If you know of an application that does provide COSHH details on Pocket PC, I'd love to hear about it by the way!

Global Contact Access is just one of those applications that makes you think - "why did it take so long?"
We've had this application internally here at Microsoft for some time and I've been waiting forever for it to be released knowing that for many it would be a killer app. It allows you to do a number of very cool (and very useful) things on both Pocket PC and Smartphone. They are

• Check the Global Address List (GAL) remotely from your devices. When you have many thousands of GAL entries (as we do here at Microsoft) it gives you access to a tonne of information at the click of a few buttons. Phone numbers, email addresses and more - and once found, you can add these directly to your phone contact database.
• Check Free/Busy information (i.e. the calendar) of your colleagues
• Create new meetings from your device.

There is a great FAQ that answers all the questions you'll likely have about GCA such as "How does GCA work".

Enjoy!

I know many of our mobile partner community are out there connecting Windows Mobile to SBS so though you may like to kno wthta th e The Official SBS Support Blog is now live. "This site will host technical articles and discussions regarding a wide variety of SBS-related topics" It promises to be a great resource.

Now available to download here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=DB3813C5-B0FA-4230-813B-902ACA775ADA&displaylang=en

Note the following caveats:

• This release is not intended for production environments and should only be used in a test lab environment.
• Some of the mobility features contained in this CTP download are not yet available for testing, pending availability of Windows Mobile 5.0 devices.

For those who couldn't make it to the live webcast, the recording can be viewed here: https://www119.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/view?id=MB9CF5

Paul Flaherty did a great job explaining the ins and outs of troubleshooting Exchange Activesync. If you want to hear what Paul had to say, check out the link above.

A couple of days ago a white paper sneaked on to microsoft.com without me noticing. It is a nice little overview of Exchange SP2 and MSFP, great for leaving with customers to give them a hint of some of the cool new things we can do with our mobile messaging solution.

Here is a link to the paper: http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/evaluation/features/mobility/e2k3sp2.mspx

The official blurb:

This white paper examines how Microsoft responds to the evolving mobility needs of your business. Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 communication and collaboration server with Service Pack 2 (SP2), and Windows Mobile 5.0 with the Messaging and Security Feature Pack (MSFP) deliver an integrated, scalable, security-enhanced and cost-effective enterprise mobile messaging solution.

Included in this document:
• Introduction
• The Microsoft® Mobile Messaging Solution
• Mobile Devices Overview
• Exchange Server SP2 and Windows Mobile 5.0 MSFP Advances
• Meeting Enterprise Needs
• Customer Experiences
• Conclusion
• Related Links
 

My friend and colleague, Jason Langridge, is going to be presenting a webcast on Tuesday 13th December on some of the myths that are around about Windows Mobile. I have had a preview of the presentation and there is some great messaging in there that you can pick up and share with your customers. I thoroughly recommend checking this webcast out. Jason has a great presentation style and it is likely to be great fun as well as informative.

Here's the official desctipion:

The term “myth” can be defined as “a widely held but false belief.” This webcast debunks the most common myths about the Microsoft Windows Mobile platform. Learn the truth about security, push e-mail, battery life, virus protection, Microsoft Office integration, management, and instant messaging support in Windows Mobile. Find out why Windows Mobile is an excellent platform for the mobile devices in your enterprise.

Presenter: Jason Langridge, Enterprise Mobility Solution Specialist, Microsoft Corporation

Jason Langridge is an enterprise mobility solution specialist in the Devices division at Microsoft, where he is responsible for business development of major enterprise accounts. Jason has been with the company since 1998, working to help enterprises to become more mobile, agile, and flexible so that they can achieve the next level of productivity.

Registration Link: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032285634&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

The Microsoft Exchange Server ActiveSync Web Administration tool enables administrators to manage the process of remotely erasing lost, stolen, or otherwise compromised mobile devices.

By using the Exchange Server ActiveSync Web Administration Web tool, administrators can perform the following actions:
• View a list of all devices that are being used by any enterprise user
• Select/De-select devices to be remotely erased
• View the status of pending remote erase requests for each device
• View a transaction log that indicates which administrators have issued remote erase commands, in addition to the devices those commands pertained to

The Microsoft Exchange Server ActiveSync Web Administration Tool is designed for use With Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 and compatible mobile devices.

This blog has been dormant for a while but now I wrestled control from Steve and Martin it's time for it to rise Phoenix like from the ashes of Jason Langridge’s cast off phones and PDAs.

The focus will of course be devices running Windows Mobile but I will also sidetrack into other things Microsoft including my recently acquired Xbox 360 and other things that I things I think you might find interesting.

Feel free to drop me an email.

I’ve been using an i-Mate K-Jam for a while now and I’ve been impressed, wonderful device and a pull out keyboard to boot.  But my job requires that I swap devices now and again (tough I know) so in the spirit of objectivity I’ve started using an Orange C600 and as Orange have already posted the AKU2 update I can easily get ‘push’ mail.  I even like the colour.

My C500 which was and still is a cracking device has been retired to the old phones home.

I just need Jason to part with the Samsung i320, not I suggest an easy task.

I've had a number of Thinkpads in the past and always found them well bolted together and best of all had a nipple.  Also the current tablet, the X41, gets my vote as it has a superb screen and seems pretty sturdy.  Spare a thought then as it seem Lenovo are accelerating the move to drop the IBM name and logo from the PC business it purchased from Big Blue less than two years ago. 

I hope for two, not make that three things.  They remain some of the best made laptops you can buy, you can still get them in black and it's nipples not touchpads.

One of our UK sparring partners in Microsoft has written a great piece on his blog about Windows Mobile in Kiosk Mode. Marcus does a fine job of explaining why people conclude that it'd be great to use WM devices in kiosk mode (cost) and why it's not such a great idea (complexity). There is a great OS out there for this - called Windows CE but Windows Mobile is a platform that is designed to allow you to many things - not few!

Mike Calligaro wrote a great blog entry on Persitent Store recently and why it's so cool. His latest entry on: RAM, ROM, NAND, NOR is equally excellent. There are many types of memory in mobile devices these days and it's useful to know your acronyms when you go shopping.

I like this simple view of things - "by and large, the amount of RAM you have determines how many things you can run at one time.  And the amount of ROM you have determines how much of your stuff you can keep around"

Still one of my favourite applications two years on since it was shown at the world wide launch fo Windows Mobile Smartphone it Tuve. The guys at Visual IT have been hard at work and have just released Tube 2 which has a host of new features such as a thumbnail view and inter maps links. I also noticed they have a GB road atlas that I'd not seen before which looks pretty cool.

Check out Tube 2 - and best of all if you're already a customer you get 50% off.

El Reg has spotted the forthcoming Mio GPS smart phone - though it's actually a Windows Mobile Pocket PC. Pretty decent spec and I have long craved a device with built in GPS to use on my favourite programs (CoPilot) with. It raises the question of what is the ideal device and of course it's one that is tiny, has amazing battery life, a large amount of memory, wifi, Bluetooth, 3G and GPS. It doesn't exist (yet!). I have a lot of devices and still use my C500 Smartphone as my primary device but do love the iMate Jam for it's looks, size and features. eXpansys just announced they will soon ship the iMate k-jam which is roughly the same dimensions though a bit thicker to accommodate a slide out keyboard!! The have also announced they'll soon have the iMate Jasjar available too - basically the Universal 3G Pocket PC that Jason has been blogging about a lot lately.

it's going to be an intersting few months on the device front as some very cool products come to market both via mobile operators and independently via folks like eXpansys. I'll come back to the topic of my favourite device and favourite applications soon...but now I'm off to say goodbye to "our Marie" - a longstanding Windows Mobile legend in Microsoft.

Jonathan over at Sentient sent me this great Skido cartoon recently - good fun and if you do any kind of sport, you should check this application out. Running on both Smartphone and Pocket PC, the SportsDo range of products utilises GPS to provide realtime information whether you're skiing, cycling, running and more. This really is a killer app and I wrote an article about it a while back on windowsmobile.com as I use this on my mountain back to track my speed, calories, distance and compare with previous trips.

The UI is very intelligently designed for an application that will be used on the move and is very intuitive. Don't take my word for it, go check out their webiste and download an eval version!

This is a pretty interesting report if you're deploying Exchange and/or thinking about connecting mobile devices to Exchange - with SP2 of course this becomes even more compelling. Enough about my favourite topic for now though :)

The scope of this Radicati report from the exec summary is

"This study provides an analysis of Microsoft Exchange from 2000 through 2009.  We examine revenue and installed base market share data for Microsoft Exchange in the following segments:

1.      Corporate Messaging Software:  CPE messaging software that is deployed within an organization

2.      Messaging Software for Service Providers:  Messaging server software designed for service provider customers (xSPs), including ISPs, ASPs, telecom operators, portals, wireless providers, and more. 

So hopefully that should prove useful if you're thinking "where is the market for (mobile) email?" between now and 2009. Just one stat to whet your appetite:

• Between 2004 and 2005, the installed base of Exchange 2003 grew 60%.

The report is a pretty easy read that is mainly tablular in format so go ahead, take a look :)

According to those device hounds at Engadget, the HTC Universal will be on sale from T-Mobile in Germany later this week. If this is true, I think it makes it the first Windows Mobile 5 device in the marketplace and makes our German friends very lucky - I've been playing with my Orange M5000 for a few weeks and it's excellent. The device feels solid, the keyboard is very usable and the screen is crisp as you like. I'll let you know as soon as we have confirmation of UK shipment dates from the operators though it's already on the eXpansys website and Orange's.

Some eagle-eyed people have spotted that the HTC Universal is in the latest O2 catalogue in the UK. Check out their news item here.

A scan of the catalogue page is here.

Well mine is on order from those fine chaps at eXpansys and I think this could be very close to the killer device for me. The i-mate K-JAM is pretty similar in dimenions to the exisiting Jam/M500/MDA Compact but has Windows Mobile 5 and a keyboard - along with Bluetooth and a phone of course, this is a pretty fine combination that will let me do all the PIM stuff, have a range of applications like BikeDo and ALK CoPilot and not bulk out the fine Italian threads.

It's due in a few weeks and as soon as I have it, you can expect a report here along with a long queue as my desk to "borrow" it

This just made me think how far things have progressed since the original iPAQ and I'm thinking of bringing a whole bunce of my devices out of the graveyard (bottom draw) and putting a photo on here. hmmm

32mb RAM, 16mb ROM and, and a 4086 colour screen.

This article on msmobiles reminded me to add to my last post that T-Mobile was showing off the HTC Wizard at our TechNet event last week. For those who go to play with it, I think you'll agree this is a cracking ltitle unit. Looking forward to seeing it in the TMO stores!

Mobile-review has posted a great review of some forthcoming HTC devices and pays particular attention to wireless capabilities and ergonomics. I used to think I knew a lot about HTC devices but recently haven't been able to keep up. Having been involved in quite some detail in bringing the HTC Canary in to the world (the original Orange SPV) it's great to see how both HTC's devices and the Windows Mobile platform has flourished - in no small part to the excellent folks at HTC. Some of the new devices that are coming down the line really show the software to it's full potential. Well worth a read for a brief HTC history lesson and an insight in to the next evolution of Windows Mobile 5 based devices.

Okay, I know you think this is gonna be off topic but it's not. Check out the Virgin Skiing Holidays to USA and Canada page and you'll see a link to the SnowDo product from Sentient. I've been thinking for a while that there are lots of other channels that could be potential routes to market for Windows Mobile devices based on specific applications -for example it would be great to see golf stores selling devices that have Links installed. Just a though and hopefully we'll see more of it

Infomill, another great UK partner for Windows Mobile, has teamed up with Corgi to offer CORGI Parts Arena. The product allows engineers to view complex documents such as enginnering manuals on a Windows Mobile Pocket PC (or Smartphone!) in amazing detail. CORGI partsarena allows CORGI registered gas installers to view enlarged parts diagrams and lists for a large number of gas appliance manufacturers within the UK. With the data stored on an SD card, the installer can drop this in a Pocket PC and potentiall ditch their bulky paper manuals in favour of a system that allows them to pinpoint the right part first time.

Key Benefits:

1. The full text search facility allows parts to be found with ease and speed via part name or number.
2. Thousands of pages of information can be stored on a pocket pc, which means you can carry this around with you, and obtain access to it whenever you require it.
3. Full details of the part can be viewed, including the correct manufacturer's part name, number or Gas Council number where available.
4. The simple graphical screen means that using CORGI partsarena is pain free and even non-technical people can learn to use it in minutes. 

This is another great example of taking mobility beyond email - which of course all these devices can do along with a whole bunch of other stuff. You can find out more about Infomill and Parts Areana from www.infomill.com