Peter Bernard's MEM Thoughts

For the sake of my own sanity and reader comprehension I've decided to move to a single blog model. Digtal Dad is my original blog pre-Microsoft and I will contiunue to post only there. Please feel free to visit at www.digitaldad.com.

pb

This is quite useful....

http://www.ufomaps.com/index.php?ve=1

Odd to have on a Microsoft blog, but a friend of mine just published his book on Plain Old Java Objects, or POJOs.

So in case you're having trouble sleeping . . . :)

The CTIA panel went well (nice compliment from Sprint on our developer program!) and the show a was abuzz with the news of the Windows mobile based Treo. I had the opportunity to have one of these for a short time in my hands and it looks like a real winner - very responsive and physically the phone is very well balanced.

Although the new Treo was the buzz, my favorite item at the show was the ThinkOutside speaker system for mobile phones. Unfortunately it's not on their web site yet (should have snapped a pic), but it's a brushed aluminum looking tube that has two satellite speakers that twist off at the ends. The sound was great and I can't wait to pair it up with my Windows Mobile phone with bluetooth stereo headset support - yowza!

I am off to CTIA in San Francisco in a few moments. I'll be on a panel entitled "Trends in mobile productivity beyond email" @ 1pm - be there or be square! Now that we are in the same division as XBox it's a bit ironic to be talking about productivity, but it's a no-brainer that be productive when NOT sitting on your butt has value. WM5 is my ticket to that.

Apparently I'll be handed a very cool device when I land there this morning after the 9am announcement - I wonder what it will be? The kicker is I have two other devices that haven't been announced yet (always a step ahead).

If you're at the show and see me wandering around, please stop me and say hello. We should have a decent booth as well.

 It will be my first time back to SF since the big move up here. Hard to believe it was only three months ago. 

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PDC is well underway and it looks like the $149 promotion for PDC attendees was a big success. We only had 1000 of them and they sold at a rate of about 8 per minute! Apologies to all of those who didn't get a chance to buy one at this great price. There were also 250 new Plantronics bluetooth headsets for $9.99 for attendees.

The purpose of the promo was to get a great new Windows Mobile 5.0 based device into the hands of these innovative developers and drive some creative thinking about how to "go mobile". The new APIs in Windows Mobile. both native and managed, and the ability to run .NET CF2.0 applications makes it a great platform to extend your Windows application developer skills, tools, and assets.

I also understand that the mobile labs are VERY well attended as is the device bar.

As our PDC literature says, "Want to know how to develop for Windows Mobile? No problem. You already know how."

PDC photos here.

http://product.samsung.com/cgi-bin/nabc/campaign/i730/b2c_optin_i730.jsp

I've used this device a  bit - a bit thick, but very pocketable and the EV-DO speeds are blazing. Ideal to use as a modem as well.  

The New York Times has a good list here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/30/national/hurricane-resources.html

I am digging the new PocketMSN implementation on Windows Mobile. Zero-setup, single sign-in for Messenger and offline Hotmail.

You can pick it up here.

Check out the great TV ad from Spain.  

Good stuff . . .

http://www.virtualearthinfo.com/video.asp

OK, I've been waiting for this for a while. You can now getting a kickin' good search service on your phone at http://mobile.msn.com and then select Beta Services.

Mobile Local Search gives you results on basically anything in the white pages or yellow pages, including name, address, phone number and distance from your location. Use your Windows Mobile phone to just dial the number right out of search. Once you select the name you can get more detail with a color map an even turn by turn directions.

Another beta service just launched today is mobile spaces. This enables you to view or post/edit to your space from your phone. Nice.

OK - here it is.....http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/

I just flew in from the Australia/Malaysia MEDCs yesterday (and, yes, my arms are tired). I was catching up on my work, trying to stay awake in the late afternoon and enjoyed listening to the recent .NET Rocks radio show.

Great stuff, and Russ Nemhauser is talking about Smartphone programming on July 17.