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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Exchange product team have blogged that they expect to release a customer technology preview of SP within a couple of weeks. Check out Harold Wong's Blog Site - we'll be sure to shout it from the rooftops when it hits as you'll get a look at Direct Push, device wipe and more!

Check out this webcast by Dave Field from MDPG in Redmond. It covers the Messaging & Security Feature Pack details coming soon for Windows Mobile 5 including remote device wipe capability from the Exchange admin console. SP2 will be required for this and per the previous entry, this will go in to tech preview very soon :)

We'll have our partner training for Exchange and mobility updated very soon and will let you know as soon as it appears - with subsidized places for certified and gold partners. I'm hoping that we can get this out within the next month to get you all ready to talk about and demo SP2/MSFP when they hit the streets later this year. Stay tuned

Check out the blog entry from John Westworth on Exchange 5.5 Migration Assistance If you're a gold or certified partner in the UK, you can get Microosft speaker support for seminars you may want to run on Exchange 5.5 migration assistance given it reaches end of life support at the end of this year. Be sure to talk to your customers about the built in mobile features of course that let them connect to Windows Mobile devices seamlessly and the forthcoming improvements from Exchange SP2 and MSFP.

One of my main partners in crime, Jason Langridge, is now blogging over at http://blogs.msdn.com/jasonlan/rss.aspx - should be a good one to watch as Jason always has a good handle on the latest and greatest devices and applications. We'll also keep you abreast of how our budding golf careers are progressing - or perhaps not...

Anyway, he just laid his hands on a Universal (3G Pocket PC Phone Edition) and I'll have mine on monday so expect some comparative reviews soon.

Prep for the forthcoming mobility competency with MCSA/MCSE Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-284): Implementing and Managing Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 This site shows you some US resellers of the book but check out Amazon.co.uk where you can get it for under £30 in the UK :)

Our Mobility Solutions - Partners - Microsoft UK has been up and running for a while and includes what I hope is a bunch of useful information for partners. Orginally much of the content was focused on suporting the Small Business Server and Mobility roadshow we ran earlier this year but we've been adding more including a very cool video that shows lots of the forthcoming functionality of Exchange SP2 and the Messaging and Security Feature Pack. On the video front, there is also a video with Scott Millar and Terry Doherty of Exactive and Doherty IT Solutions respectively, talking about why they're out there selling mobility.

The date is confirmed - we'll see the Community Tech Preview of Exchange SP2 next week :) Wooohooo
Check out Harold Wong's Blog Site : Exchange 2003 SP2 Community Technology Preview available for Download for more details including caveats related to the release. In summary though, it's a good thang!

Lots more handy info at http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/downloads/2003/sp2/overview.mspx too

The guys are MSMobiles have picked up on one of our well hideen assets today - our Exec Circle webcasts. Well worth a look at Mobility webcasts from Microsoft for September 2005 with topics including Field Force Effectiveness with GPS, How Windows Mobile Can Make Your Life Easier, Developing with MapPoint and Mobile Device Security.

Tune in find out :)

As Steve mentioned below (http://blogs.technet.com/windowsmobile4partners/archive/2005/08/16/409294.aspx), we should be see the Community Tech Preview in the very near future. If you are anything like me, you'll be saying "well the feature list looks great, but what does it actually do and how does it work?". If you want to find out more about how the new functionality hangs together check out these posts on the Exchange team blog:

Solving the Phone Synchronization Problem End-to-End (http://209.34.241.68/exchange/archive/2005/06/07/406035.aspx)

Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2) Remote Wipe functionality (http://blogs.technet.com/exchange/archive/2005/07/07/407416.aspx)

Enforcing security settings on mobile devices with Exchange 2003 SP2 (http://blogs.technet.com/exchange/archive/2005/06/20/406586.aspx)

One really interesting snippet hidden away in last paragraph of the third article is that the security policies that you can now apply are available at the mailbox level. The Exchange System Manager only gives the ability to set these at a global scope, but using scripting or ADSI calls you could set differing policies on individual mailboxes. I smell an opportunity here. If anyone has the time to knock up a GUI tool to enable administrators to manage this effectively I am sure there will be a lot of demand from enterprises for it and I will certainly be interesting in hearing from you! 

This is a question I've found myself answering several times over the years - why dosn;t a Pocket PC retain it's data when the battery runs down completely. This article from the Windows Mobile team blog gives a terrific explnation as to Why Persistent Storage Is A Good Thing as there are some significant benefits beyond persistent storage - such as much better battery life. Well worth a read if you want to understand some of the under the cover stuff in Windows Mobile 5 (for Pocket PC) - this has been around since day 1 on Smartphone of course.

If you'd like to see some of the cool new devices coming soon from Microsoft's Windows Mobile hardware partners, check out the recently posted Channel 9 video at http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=95972 The Samsung SGH-i300 is just one of the devices included with it's 3GB hard drive!

Eric Engineer comments on the developer additions in Windows Mobile 5 such as managed API's.

Channel Development is a new role in Microsoft UK and is chartered with building our partner channels for solutions, specialisations and competencies - working closely with our Partner Technical Specialists (PTS) to do so. Over the last 10 months we've been working hard to do this in mobility and a number of other areas and it's been incredibly educational. Very quickly we figured out that we had a lot of information to share but needed to find a way to do it as effectively as possible with as little intrusion as possible - with mobility things happen pretty frequently (new devices, new applications, new services) so we decided to publish a WIndows Mobile kitbag email on a bi-monthly basis and send it to the partners we knew were working in mobility. This newsletter of sorts aimed to keep partners up to date on new devices, applications, tips and tricks and potential partners to partner with. I think we'll continue to do this but over time it became clear that a blog was a more efficient rouete to communicate this kind of information. Why you may ask (well you may not but in case you were wondering)

• A blog is "opt in" - i.e. you choose to read it rather than get the newsletter which you may never have wanted (though we did give you the option to "opt out"
• A blog is less intrusive - you can decide when this information gets to you and who. There are a tonne of great ways to get a blog delivered be that in to Outlook with tools like Newsgator, FeedDemon or SharpReader (my personal favourite). You can also get feeds on your Windows Mobile device with applications like Newsbreak
• A blog allows us to drip feed information in a more timely manner - a lot can happen in 2 months which is our usual schedule for the newsletter
• A blog is just cooler :)

With that said, I hope you enjoy this blog and find the information we publish useful and relevant. If not, we're failing and I'd appreciate you letting us know. I'll explore the channel development role a little more soon and hope to give you a useful insight in to what a typical week holds for me and I'm sure Martin will do the same from a PTS point of view. All I can say for now is that our mobile technology is a valuable asset in the way I (and 1600 or so other people at Microsoft UK) go about our work. Stay tuned!