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!
Just in case you wanted to see the O2 XDA Exec really close up!
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
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.
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 :)
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!
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.
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.
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!
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
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.
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
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!
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
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)
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 :)
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:
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
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
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.