Windows Mobile for Partners : Applications

More and more uses for Windows Mobile

stevecla01 — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 18:36:30 GMT

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!

CORGIDirect - Gas installers go mobile!

stevecla01 — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 00:34:52 GMT

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:

The full text search facility allows parts to be found with ease and speed via part name or number.
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.
Full details of the part can be viewed, including the correct manufacturer's part name, number or Gas Council number where available.
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

Virgin Ski's with Windows Mobile

stevecla01 — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 13:39:52 GMT

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

Skido cartoon

stevecla01 — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 23:42:57 GMT

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!

get Podcasts on your Windows Mobile device

stevecla01 — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 22:28:58 GMT

I'm fascinated by blogging and the associated phenomenon of podcasting. I was going to say it has the potential to change the landscape of publishing but I think it's already done that - it's just that I think what we're experiencing now is the tip of the iceberg. We're starting to see a shift in blogs becoming the place people go for their authoritative information on topics of all choices. I regularly use Sharpreader to keep up with the news from a wide range of sources and whilst I love the utlity of RSS it's also interesting to see that I subscribe to more feeds that are non commercial media sites than commercial ones. BBC news is still my home page and my favourite place for information of all kinds (mainly sport for me) but I wonder how long that'll last? Anyway, back to topic - I just found an interesting little program called Smartfeed that allows you to bring podcasts down to a Windows Mobile Pocket PC or Smartphone. I'm off to check it out but you may want to do the same by looking at http://www.smartfeed.org/Download.aspx

Microsoft Global Contact Access

stevecla01 — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 23:46:54 GMT

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!