SWMUG May 2008
What a great meeting of minds last night at SWMUG. Er, that's the Sydney Windows Mobile Usergroup to the uninitiated.
We kicked off with a segment on Microsoft and Mobile News from April. I seriously thought that this would be a 5 min segment summarising perhaps 4 or 5 happenings over the last month or so. Instead 30 mins, and 15 items later we moved onto our guest speakers.
So some of the things that have been happening in the last month or so:
- Yahoo! - SteveB withdrew the offer for Yahoo! after some 3 months of negotiation.
- The HTC Shift has been released in Australia
- Today was Jon, our fearless leader's, birthday. He's looking forward to now being old enough to drink alcohol
- HTC announced their new Diamond device.
- The MSPress Bookshop went live in Australia. www.mspress.com.au Usergroup members get 50% discount on all MSPRess titles. Remember you get speedy delivery on these titles from the Sydney warehouse.
- The iPhone will be released this June. Optus (& I believe Vodafone) has won this contract from Apple.
- An MS Forum for mobility has been started. We're sketchy on details, and will report back.
- Redfly was announced.
- Android the Google Open Source platform for Mobile Phones was released a little more than a month ago. Yet some developers have ported a limited functionality OS onto the HTC TyTN II.
- Fring was launched. This is a multi-chat client application which runs on most Mobile Phones. The most popular use for this is as a mobile front-end to Skype.
- ReMIX, the Australian delivery of the MIX Conference was announced. This will take place on 20 May in Sydney (SOLD OUT) and 22 May in Melbourne (ALMOST SOLD OUT). MIX is a conference for web developers and designers.
- PointUI, a presentation layer for Windows Mobile 5 or 6 devices, was released. This is very performant, and gives a great experience similar to the "TouchFLO"TM found on the HTC Touch and Touch Dual Devices.
- CodeCampOz, the annual community driven developer conference, took place in Wagga Wagga over the ANZAC day week-end. SQL and Security CodeCamps will take place on the October Long Week-end.
- Sony announced their "Water Batteries." Again sketchy details, probably to do with Fuel Cells, we'll get back to you with details and links etc.
- And finally Microsoft released the Tech Preview for Live Mesh. www.mesh.com This is a visionary move to the Software + Services world, currently providing synchronised folders, but with huge promise to connect all of your computing and other devices (e.g. Photoframes, cameras, mobile phones, GPS's, media players, even appliances?)
So after a rowdy, and enthusiastic discussion on all these issues, we moved onto Rick Anderson, MS Mobile Solution Specialist, demonstrating how to use SOTI Remote Control, both to control the device and maintain the ability to connect to the network. Unfortunately technical issues ensued, so we diverted to a discussion about Twitter, and possible uses for this great technology.
Note: By the end of the evening, 4 more people had signed up to Twitter and started to follow Rog42 - w00t!
We decided to move onto our next guest speaker, who brought us the delights of SOTI MobiControl Manager. This is a great little app, very powerful, and aimed squarely at the SMB market. If you run the IT for a small to medium business, and have to manage a fleet of mobile devices, it would be worth taking a look at this application.
Next up we had AJ from Asus present on the upcoming ASUS P750 Lamborghini device. Very sexy:
Then Rick got his demo working - whew - and did a great little demo on SOTI Remote Control. This is such a powerful tool for anyone developing, consulting, or presenting on their Windows Mobile Device.
After all of these great presentations, a greater hunger came over the crowd, so we moved next door for the monthly feed. Pizza, mmmm!! (i.e. for everyone not trying to lose weight like me)
More photos can be found on our SWMUG Facebook Group Site.
After the feed, we returned for the monthly giveaway, amidst much cheering and jeering our "random" winners. (They are randomly picked by Chris Anderson's Mobile Prize Winner app - honest 'guv)
And just before we left, James McCutcheon gave an appeal to sponsor him walking the Kakoda Trail for Camp Quality. With only $100 from his IT contacts, we've a lot of ground to make up. So get out there and sign up....
Our next meeting will be on May 20, and for those in remote places, or whom can't make it, we'll be hosting a LiveMeeting.
Note, if you do use Twitter, follow @hashtags, you can get the summary conversations by searching on #swmug at http://www.hashtags.org/tag/swmug/
R42
