I had an email from Brandon over at PocketNow.com and he pointed me at a site that they have set up for the community to track experiences running current applications on the new Windows Mobile 5 devices. At Microsoft we do a lot of testing to ensure application compatibility and we provide a lot of documentation and help for developers about the changes that occur with OS revisions, but inevitably some older applications have hiccups and some ISVs are not resourced to get application updates out straight away. The site is at: www.wm5fixsite.com
Next Monday (17th October) we will be hosting another LiveMeeting for our Partners. This time the topic will be "Mobilising Small Business Server 2003". The webcast will be broadcast 4pm - 5pm and will also be available for offline viewing afterwards.
The webcast will be presented by Scott Millar of Exactive Ltd. Scott has a lot of experience with SBS2003 and Windows Mobile and will be giving an overview of the mobile capabilities of Small Business Server and how it integrates with Windows Mobile. Scott will also provide an insight into some of the customer scenarios he has come across, gotchas to watch out for and additional value that you can bring to your customers.
The link to attend the webcast next Monday is: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/join?id=47NFCH&role=attend&pw=PB%40%3E7%3AxpT
See you there!
News just in - I just took delivery of an iMate SP5 Smartphone. This device is getting pretty close to my ideal single mobile device - a smartphone with Windows Mobile 5, Bluetooth *and* WiFi. I'll be road testing over the next few days and reporting back but you can land one yourself from eXpansys. I just got it connected with WEP key to my home WiFi network and will be testing out Skype tomorrow. Any questions, just shout!
One of the most frequently asked questions when I talk to partners and customers about Windows Mobile 5 is "how do I get it?". Unfortunately the answer is not straightforward. To shed some light on this one of my colleagues has posted a nice article explaining some of the thing that goes on by the OEMs and operators when considering providing upgrades.
Check it out at: http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2005/10/06/477999.aspx
Being the bit of a geek that I am, I always keep an eye out for what devices and phone people around me have when I travel. Today I popped into London for a brief time and on my travels I saw far more Windows Mobile devices in use than other technologies. Of particular note, I saw these people:
I only saw one person using a Blackberry device on my travels, but the thing that really struck me was that these people I saw could have been doing anything on their Windows Mobile devices. When you see someone with a Blackberry you natrually think "Oh, they're just checking their e-mail" and when someone has a mobile out "they're just texting", but when I saw these people with Windows Mobile devices I was really curious about what they could be doing. The potential is huge!
I know, device spotting is geeky, but at least I haven't hit the nerdy point of walking up to someone and saying "Oo, that's a nice device, what're you doing on it...?" [:)]
You may think from the title of the message that I have a broken space key on my PC - thankfully not :) WindowsMobileTraining is a website that has a terrific set of resources to learn more about the Windows Mobile OS and the devices on which it runs. Windows Mobile 5 training just got added too!
There is also some great content on Windows Mobile vs. competitive devices.
My colleague John Westworth has posted a useful link to Partner Readiness around the impending end of support for Exchange 5.5Worth a look to learn more about how to leverage the upgrade campaign
One of our team here at Microsoft UK spotted an iMate poster on the Tube last night and she couldn't resist whipping out her Windows Mobile device to take a snap. Nice to see the devices starting to pop up in places like this - word is getting out :)
With the announcement yesterday of the Palm Treo running Windows Mobile, there is a useful article on MSDN for folks with Palm experience looking to develop with on the Microsoft platform.
Summary: Learn how to help the Palm OS developer make a transition to programming for Windows Mobile. This article describes how to produce powerful software on a variety of Windows Mobile–based devices and how to use existing knowledge to master Windows Mobile programming. (15 printed pages)
There has been lots of speculation about certain hardware manufacturers and Windows Mobile on the web for a while now. Mike Hall from the MED product group in Redmond has posted a little teaser video on his blog that hints at an announcement coming on Monday from the Windows Mobile group, Verizon and a certain well known hardware manufacturer.
Check out the video at http://blogs.msdn.com/mikehall/archive/2005/09/23/473531.aspx
Well I know Jason has been blogging about his new Pocket PC Phone Edition - the HTC Wizard - and I decided I should do the same. This is a fantastic device that has pretty much everything you need - the once excpetion vs. the Universal is 3G which is a shame but I'm prepared to let that slides given the size of the Wizard. It's not much bigger than the old iMate Jam (which is now looking on forlornly at the Wizard in my hand) but has a better camera (1.3mp), wifi, more memory and of course Windows Mobile 5. The slide out keyboard works a treat and is very usable compared to some others I've used. I know several people were keen to know if Skype works and I'm pleased to say that works great too. I've loaded up some of my favourite apps (Infomill's Parts Arena, Tube 2 & Egress and they all work great too. It's a bit of a killer package I think and I suspect it'll ship in big numbers as it becomes available. Our friends at eXpansys are already taking pre-orders on the QTEK and iMate versions. I'll post some photos later today so if you want to see it compared against anything or ask questions, feel free!
Check out the new article posted on MSDN for some high level information about what developers can achieve with Windows Mobile 5. It is a great read, even if you are not a developer, to get a feel for what can be achieved on the devices and how simple device development is. Here's the official blurb:
Summary: Jim begins a series of articles exploring the new tools and application programming interfaces (APIs) that developers will find in Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0, Visual Studio 2005, and the .NET Compact Framework version 2.0. The series begins with an introduction to Windows Mobile 5.0 and the tools needed to get started developing for Windows Mobile 5.0 today.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dntake/html/yctiwy_wm5.asp
Earlier this week I put together a short webcast about the forthcoming Messaging & Security Feature Pack for Windows Mobile 5.0 and Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2. If you want to view a recording of the webcast you can get to it here: https://www119.livemeeting.com/cc/microsoft/view?id=G22FMC&pw=kK4b3*%2Bxs. The presentation outlines some of the key features of the Feature Pack and includes a demonstration of the Remote Wipe capability.
Another great validation of the partnership approac this week - TBS announced a partnership with Anite Mobile that allows the latter to take the TaskMaster Field Mobility solution in to local and central governments, complementing Anite's Enterprise Mobility solution. Anite will act as the exclusive reseller into UK public sector for TBS Taskmaster, whose unique ‘push’ capability will allow real time delivery of jobs; mostly in the housing sector responsive repairs field
O2 are now listing the Samsung i300 Smartphone ont their coming soon pages. This device has a 3GB hard disk - and no restrictions on how many music tracks you can store til you hit that 3gig limt!
I've worked with Vodafone for a long time on Windows Mobile and it's a pleasure to now see a range of devices bearing a Window Mobile OS on their UK site. The QTEK 8020 smartphone is there along with the QTEK2020i Pocket PC Phone Edition and the VPA Compact (aka Jam). That round out the major operators in the UK now all offering Windows Mobile devices - O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone. Hurrah!
On a BusinessTime 200 tariff you can get the 8020 for £25 with a monthly charge of £22. For many organisations, a shared user plan is useful and Vodafone offers this with their ShareTime tariff's.
One of the areas I've been a real advocate of this year has been our ability to bring partners together to build ever better solutions based on Windows Mobile. TBS has long been a leader mobility and has a great history of deploying Windows Mobile solutions based on their TaskMaster platform to customers ranging from the RAC to the London Borough of Lewisham and Furmanite. It's SQL all the way for TaskMaster - client and server. Meantime, ALK's Co Pilot product is just a terrific SatNav solution for Pocket PC and Smartphone and they're rightly received a lot of acclaim for their work. The Live element in particular is an impressive tracking solution that shouldn't be overlooked.
A few months back, TBS met ALK and they have since formed a strong partnership to location enable the TaskMaster platform. It's a no-brainer that mobile field agents may need to know where they are or how to get to another location so a perfect marriage was born. Check out the TBS Mobility press announcement around this.
I guess all I wanted to say is that there are tonnes of potential partnerships like this out there waiting to happen. Whether you're an SI partner looking for a solution beyond mobile email or an ISV looking to extend your existing product. I'd like to make this blog a forum (somehow) where we can help make these connections so if you have ideas, lets us know by commenting here.
Our friends over at Westcoast have a great newsletter that hopefully you receive already but if not check out their site They have a great offer on the HP 6515 Pocket PC Phone Edition which includes GPS in the unit. They also offer special pricing for partners on Windows Mobile devices!
Okay, apologies for going off topic again but I thought you may like to know that XBOX 360 day in the UK is going to be Dec 2nd. Start saving those pennies and informing Mr S.Claus :)
This site has been around for a while in several guises but never well publicised, at least in the UK. The My Windows Mobile Site allows you to configure your Windows Mobile devices "over the air". This is something I uused to demo like mad when we first launched Smartphone back in 2002 but it kind of fell away as we get exicted about other things. Well worth a look though as it allows you to setup email on your phone by entering the detials on a website and having the settings automatically pushed to your device using SMS - it really is quite impressive. You can also send other stuff like favourites and applications.
Though I'm not a huge fan of the word "gadget" this is a great new blog on gadgets...though not quite what you traditionally think of when you hear that word! check oy the Microsoft Gadgets blog
Just in case you wanted to see the O2 XDA Exec really close up!
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!
For those of you deploying Exchange 2003 with ISA 2004 (hopefully lots of you!) this guide from TechNet may prove useful as it details how to use the New Mail Server Publishing Rule Wizard and additionally configure the HTTP and SMTP filters appropriately for an Exchange Server 2003 environment.This help to simplify the deployment of secure mail topology. You can grab the guide as a Word doc (1mb) too.
Off topic but I love Channel 9 and Scoble managed to get a few minutes with Bill. Check out Bill Gates - A short chat with Microsoft's Chief Software Architect