Microsoft's Mobile World Congress 2009 press conference is scheduled to take place in a little under four hours. Alas, not everyone and their pet dog has the luxury of attending, but that doesn't mean you can't live vicariously through the live webcast (local times featured below). We'll also be reporting the announcements as they happen - and Microsoft is promising plenty related to Windows Mobile, Windows Live for Mobile, and MSN Mobile - so simply watch the front-page for updates.

• Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle: Monday, 6:00 AM
• Chicago, Houston: Monday, 8:00 AM
• New York, Washington, D.C.: Monday, 9:00 AM
• London: Monday, 2:00 PM
• Paris, Berlin: Monday, 3:00 PM
• Moscow: Monday, 5:00 PM
• Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong: Monday, 10:00 PM
• Perth, Tokyo: Monday, 11:00 PM
• Brisbane: Monday-Tuesday, Midnight
• Sydney, Melbourne: Tuesday, 1:00 AM
• Auckland: Tuesday, 3:00 AM

In November I received an invitation to the second Mobius event of the year, held in Seattle just like last time. Mobius is a time where the invite-only attendees typically get to see Microsoft's road-map for future, hear from vendors and OEMs, pass along feedback to Microsoft, and network with each other. Microsoft covers the airfare and hotel stay for people who attend, unless they choose to pay their own way. Rarely one to turn down a free ride, I took them up on their offer.

The first part of every Mobius event is the meet and greet, held the night before the conference officially starts. It's always enjoyable to see my peers, and there are usually a few new faces every event. Meeting new people is a key part of what makes Mobius a fun event. The folks from Celio were present, showing off the new REDFLY products, and upon leaving we were given a nice laptop bag. I have a bit of a laptop bag fetish, so I always appreciate new bags to carry my gear in.

Mobius Day 1

The morning kicked off with an introduction from John Starkweather, and then the demos began. It's a Mobius tradition for everyone to stand up, introduce themselves, and show something off. Being the gadget geeks that we all are, there were demos of the Sony-Ericsson XPERIA, the Samsung OMNIA, and other phones and mobile devices.

Figure 1: Laptops galore, and in fact, Macbooks galore, at Mobius.

Windows Mobile Branding

Liska Rutherford kicked off a session talking about the Windows Mobile brand. Some of the challenges they face with the Windows Mobile brand include power user awareness, the significant marketing investments made by their competition, the compelling competitive brands, and the fact that software isn't top of mind for all consumers. The strengths they can bring to bear include the fact that there are 1 billion Windows users world-wide, and a large percentage of those users like the idea of having Windows on their phone. We had a discussion about the perception vs. reality of having Windows on a phone. I believe many consumers who answer yes to whether or not they want Windows on their phone are thinking of it in terms of a desktop/laptop experience, when the reality is that a phone is going to offer up a very different Windows experience than a desktop or laptop. Still, there's clearly an opportunity here for Microsoft - as long as they can address the consumer market properly, something they've historically struggled to do. Read more...

I was able to participate in a conference call today about Windows Mobile 6 with some people from Microsoft (and my fellow Mobius members). Windows Mobile 6 has a lot of changes over the previous version, but they're not all easily summed up in a few bullet points. Below are my notes from the call, and what I think about the new features that were discussed. Overall, I left the call feeling quite excited about Windows Mobile 6.

Contacts are now integrated with Windows Live - they showed us a contact that was also on the Messenger list of the devices owner. When you're signed into Messenger on the device, it will actually pull down the avatar and integrate it into the contact. Being the visual person that I am, I'm quite excited about that. I asked how this process worked, and they explained that when you're logged into Windows Live Messenger, a background process will cross-reference your contacts with your Messenger list and download the avatars in the background. It will also refresh them if they're updated (how often I don't know). There's also a gleam that shows up, which you can click on if they have a MSN Space that has been updated. I dearly wish MSN would open up their system to allow pings from other blogging platforms such as WordPress, Typepad, Blogger, etc. Not everyone uses MSN Spaces.

Email setup has been streamlined - there used to be an XML blob up on a server that Microsoft had some basic mail settings on, but it wasn't updated often and tended not to work all that often. Microsoft recently contracted a third party service that has now taken over this task, and the experience is supposed to be much better than before with a broader range of ISPs. Unfortunately they haven't yet added the one thing that would help me and many others: if I put in [email][email protected][/email], the odds are very high that my POP/IMAP and SMTP server settings are going to be mail.domain5.com. There's still no sync with Outlook email accounts - I've been hoping (asking) for years that when you dock the device with your PC it would copy over all your Outlook email account settings. That would save me a good 10 minutes of device setup - in fact I've tended not to even add all of my email accounts because it was such a hassle. There's also an irritating IMAP bug that has apparently been fixed in Windows Mobile 6, which will make my device useful with IMAP again.
You know that cool smart filter in contacts where you can start typing out the name of the person and it will filter down to their contact? You can now to the same thing in email - you can type the name of the person that the email is from, or the subject line. You can also search for messages on the server if the smart filter didn't find what you wanted - it requires Exchange 2007 to accomplish this though, which isn't all that surprising. But it opens up some very interesting possibilities when you can search through 20,000 messages on your Exchange server and finding the email you want. All the more reason to get a 4smartphone (affiliate) account if you still haven't experienced how superb it is.

Email downloads are now progressive - let's say you have your email sync to pull 3K of an email. If the email is bigger than that, there's an option at the bottom of the screen that says "Get the rest of the message" (not the exact wording). When you click on it, ActiveSync will kick off in the background and it will pull down the rest of the message. What's really impressive is that it does it immediately, and doesn't change your location in the message - it will literally grow the message below you, and you can watch the scroll bar get longer.

There's still no way to do multiple selections for email messages, but this has been largely mitigated by the one button delete. The left soft key has been changed do be Delete by default - before it was New, which didn't make much sense on a device where people will largely triage email and do a lot of deleting. It's now very fast to pound through deleting your email with just a single button press, which will make a lot of people happy.

When you select an attachment in an email message, you have the option to open it or do a Save As to put it on a storage card or something similar. Excel in Office Mobile has some basic editing functions - you can change a data field and it will update the embedded chart.

The calendar "ribbon" is useful if you plan your time by looking at the blocks of time - I personally never use this method of appointment planning, but I know a lot of people do. The week view has added a preview of the appointment being selected, so as you move your selection over your appointments you can see what they are.

You can FINALLY invite attendees to an appointment on the Smartphone client, which is a first - and happens to be one of my long-standing pain points with the Smartphone platform because I use the invite attendee function to coordinate appointments with my wife. If someone sends you a meeting request, the request will tell you if there's a scheduling conflict. You can add required attendees, but you can also add optional attendees. The company directory (via the Exchange GAL) can also be accessed - meaning if someone isn't in your contact list but you want to invite them to a meeting, it will pull down their information.

Windows Media Player now has the "smart search" for your songs - you can start to type the name of the song and it will filter down to find the song you want. I'm not sure if it works just on songs, or if that includes artist or album names. I hope it works on metadata and not file name. I've also been told it will now do full-screen video on VGA devices, which is a big improvement over Windows Mobile 5. It seems like an eternity since Windows Media Player Mobile has had any improvements, so I'm very pleased to see some forward movement with this application. I don't know if the horrific library update functionality has been improved, but I can hope someone realized it needed an overhaul.

Windows Live Messenger looks like it has a lot of new features - when you select a contact on your list, it expands slightly and it will show you the avatar for that contact. I changed my avatar on my profile, and on the device I saw it updated in about five seconds. Not bad at all! There's a tabbed interface for multiple chat windows - a critical update if you're a hardcore chatter. You can quickly move between chats by pressing left and right on the d-pad. There's a voice clip feature that I've been waiting forever for - on the device you can press a button to record a voice clip, press it again to stop and send. It appears on the other end looking like this:



It's sort of a poor man's PTT (push to talk), but I think it will get some great usage because voice is such a natural way to communicate. That clip above sent to me was 14 seconds long and 216 KB in size in WAV format - it would be great to see some MP3 encoding someday, but that would probably require a different licensing fee. It has the file name formatted as [messengerusername]_2_8_2007@18_35_43.wav.

And that's about all that was covered � at the moment I don't have a Windows Mobile 6 device in front of me, but if you have questions I'll do my best to answer them.

Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys mobile devices, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, and his sometimes obedient dog. He's loving the Windows Mobile 6 so far!

Did you miss the MEDC 2006? MEDC is a Microsoft hosted developer conference for Windows Mobile and Windows Embedded developers, engineers, and business managers. In case you missed this event, then you should definitely check out these presentation slides. These slides cover application development, and management and deployment of devices. If you plan to download these slides then give yourself plenty of time; the Web server hosting these files is s-l-o-w and the files are h-u-g-e. :wink:

"Mobility Connections is new this year from the DevConnections folks and this year, will feature updated Mobile content from the Mobile PC and Windows Mobile groups here at Microsoft. You'll also be able to take a look at the new tools and platforms that we'll be releasing pretty soon. (can't talk much about it now). So sign up now and make sure you're there to get your first taste of what's to come in the Mobility space."



Developers, Developers, Developers. It sure seems to be the focus of the Windows Mobile group lately. I keep seeing more and more information to help get the developers in the crowd moving. If you're one of them, this event sounds like it could shed a little light on what's coming down the pipe. You can get all the conference details at the DevConnections website. 8)

Microsoft has released the video recordings of the PDC 2005 presentations. Microsoft had earlier released the presentation slides. Now you can watch the presenters walk you through demonstrations and listen to their comments. I believe that this is the first time that Microsoft has made the conference presentations available for free, instead of the conference DVDs, which you had to buy. :-)



Following is the list of Windows Mobile related presentations.

� Putting a Conference In Your Pocket: By Marcus Perryman
� .NET Compact Framework 2.0: Optimizing for Performance: By Roman Batoukov � Extending Virtual Earth for Windows Mobile Devices: By Steve Lombardi
� Windows Mobile: New Emulation Technology for Building Mobile Applications with Visual Studio 2005: By Amit Chopra and Barry Bonds
� How Microsoft Gathers Expense Reports on Windows Mobile Devices: by Mark Brown
� 10 Tips for Extending Your System to Windows Mobile Devices: By Andy Sjostrom from the:unwired

The complete set of presentations can be downloaded from here.

By combining the previously separate Mobile and Embedded developer conferences Microsoft have dramatically scaled up the conference from last year. The venue was the glittering city of Las Vegas in the Mandalay Bay conference centre. Windows Mobile 5.0 was released, representing a large step forward with not only new functionality for the end users but also major improvements to the APIs available to developers. There was a lot of detail on the upcoming .NET Compact Framework v2.0 and Visual Studio 2005 tools.
This year Microsoft combined the Mobile and Embedded conferences into a single event in the glamourous surroundings of Las Vegas, in this article I look back over the full duration of the event at all the cool announcements, along with highlights from the technical content.

The Road to Mandalay


This years event was held in Las Vegas, a very unique setting for the conference. Having never visited Las Vegas before, as I�m sure was the case with many other attendees, the venue in itself was an interesting experience, having to walk through the casino every morning on route to the conference centre. The Mandalay Bay is situated at the southern end of �The strip� very close to the airport.

The �Goodie� bag


Each conference attendee received a neat bag featuring a built in laptop compartment � a pretty smart design, and much better than last years which was way too �clever� having numerous compartments but soon fell apart. Also along with the obligatory pad of paper and pen (of course all true mobility nerds would use a device or laptop for note taking), there was the usual mix of marketing paperwork, and a selection of discs for Windows XP Embedded, Windows CE and Windows Mobile development.


The Windows Mobile 5.0 kit was distributed during the keynote and includes the SDKs, ActiveSync 4.0 and Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2. You can order the kit online along with the Mobile Application Developers Kits.

Day One

Bill Gates Keynote


Bill Gates' keynote was fairly lifeless but featured the much anticipated announcement of Windows Mobile 5.0 the latest platform for Pocket PC and Smartphone devices. The demos added some pizazz to the session, especially watching Mike Hall pull the plug on an XP Embedded terminal and watch it quickly restore from a hibernated image. If you haven't seen it already you can view the entire keynote online.

Windows Mobile 5.0 adds support for soft-keys to the Pocket PC interface making it closer to the Smartphone experience and allowing you full control over the device through keyboard and hardware keys. The productivity applications have been revamped as the Office Mobile suite - Outlook Mobile, Excel Mobile, Word Mobile and new for Pocket PC PowerPoint Mobile. The user interface in the built in productivity applications is dramatically changed with support for contact pictures and support for actions, such as sending a text message, from the contact screen via softkeys. Microsoft will also allow OEMs to incorporate Voice Command, previously a separate application, directly into the ROM on their devices.

Windows Mobile 5.0 requires a new version of ActiveSync � 4.0 which for Windows Mobile 5.0 introduces a new approach to synchronisation where the device is the �master� in the relationship rather than the PC. However ActiveSync 4.0 also supports previous devices and will work in the same way as ActiveSync 3.8 does at present.

For managed code (.NETCF) developers there is a whole suite of Windows Mobile 5.0 specific libraries including new common dialogs, configuration, telephony and full access to the Outlook Mobile data. The full listing can be found in this previous post. Robert Levy from Microsoft has also shared with us a detailed class diagram for these new APIs.



The new Visual Studio 2005 toolset, currently in Beta allows developers to create both native code (C++) and managed code (C# and VB) applications for Windows Mobile 5.0. The tools include powerful database management tools for working with the SQL Mobile database engine and quickly building database driven applications. During the keynote, Neil Enns demonstrated building a restaurant database application by selecting database objects and having the tools build the forms controls.

Windows Mobile 5.0 Security
The security model in Windows Mobile has been changed to bring the Smartphone and Pocket PC lines into closer alignment. Pocket PC now supports code signing with prompt mode, and applications and cab files can be signed to remove security prompts. However there isn't the two-level model found on many smartphones where applications must be signed to utilise specific "priviledged" APIs.

New Native Code APIs
Windows Mobile 5.0 introduces a unified API for image and video capture devices, previously developers had to work directly with APIs from individual hardware manufacturers. Also new is a GPS abstraction layer which allows you to connect up a GPS device and access it�s location information from multiple applications. You can also expose it as a standard COM port for existing applications. Having a standard API to program against which plays nicely with other applications should hopefully improve the developer experience and encourage greater use of GPS within applications. Adding to the Softkey support in the shell, the notification APIs now support soft-keys for Notification bubbles so that they can be easily dismissed one-handed.

Game development with Managed Direct3D
Direct3D is coming to devices and also will have a .NETCF library to create high performance 3D graphics with .NETCF v2.0 code. The support for Direct3D will only be available on Windows Mobile 5.0 devices and even then it will depend on the device and whether hardware support is available. Currently the device to use is the Dell x50 which has a dedicated graphics accelerator chip. The presenter Chris Muench displayed the basic technique of rotating a 3d object and went on to show us a fully animated 3D interface to a mahjongg game. The graphics were incredibly smooth and this marks a major step forward for games developers on the Windows Mobile platform. If you are interested in Managed Direct3D Mobile development I highly recommend checking out two articles by Casey Chesnut, /cfMDX and /cfWorldWind Casey showed me his World Wind application running on a device and it was incredibly smooth.

Cabanas
A new feature this year, though previously used at other conferences, were the cabanas, these were areas where speakers, Microsoft staff and MVPs could hang out and answer questions. I personally thought these were a useful addition to the conference, as many attendees were more comfortable with questioning speakers on a one-to-one basis rather than at the microphone at the end of each session. This also means there is more time between session changeovers so sessions are less likely to over-run. The only minor issue with the layout was that they did appear somewhat out of the way and perhaps not too inviting, it would have been nice if they could have been located somewhere central where everyone going to and from sessions would walk past.
Read more...

I took GoToMeeting for a spin a couple of weeks ago, because I was curious about it as a solution for conference calls (and you've no doubt seen all of the banners for it on this and other sites). I'm usually in a couple of conference calls a week, and even with some of the biggest companies on the planet it's often difficult to get the right information for the call. Most companies send you an email with the info you need, but you have to figure out the time zones, enter it into your calendar, they're usually a pain to get set up, and they only involve voice - you need a separate solution to share applications or do collaborative white boarding.

GoToMeeting is different in a few ways that I thought were impressive. First, the installation of the client is completely silent - which is a bit scary in a way. When you run the install EXE it installs itself without any dialog boxes, which was surprising (this might be from it's Java heritage though). Once installed (and only the person who wants to organize the meetings needs to install it) it lives in your system tray, allowing you one-click access for setting up meetings.
It also installs hooks into Outlook and MSN Messenger, which I thought was very cool - in MSN Messenger windows there's a little tab that appears in the chat window, and with a single click you can create a meeting and invite the person into it. It's a very streamlined process that would be perfect for sharing on-screen ideas, even if you didn't call in. You could also combine this with using Skype for a low-cost conference call and collaborative session. I might use this with Fabrizio when we're talking about design changes. :-)

It's Java based, so there's no client software for the person to install and should work through most firewalls. I'm not normally a fan of Java applications because they're usually slow and the UI design is always a bit alien, but GoToMeeting looks and feels like a regular Windows application.

The Outlook hook is equally nice - it installs a small toolbar where, with a single click, you can start up a meeting and it opens up an email with the meeting details and links. You'd enter in a few email addresses and send it off, people click on the link, and as long as they have a Java VM installed, they'd be in your meeting within a few minutes. You can also schedule meetings in advance, selecting the date, time, meeting name, and even a meeting password. It then opens up an Outlook appointment and automatically populates the correct fields. Slick!

The interface of the application is excellent - it's a docked toolbar of sorts that sits on the right side of your screen. You can turn screen sharing off and on, give another person in the meeting control of your keyboard and mouse, or make another person the presenter - which means everyone in the meeting would be looking at their screen. There's a chat window which is useful for sideline comments or input from people who aren't in on the conference call, and you can send private messages to people in the call. Each meeting has a unique meeting ID, making it incredibly easy to join a meeting. That's what impressed me the most about this application - the ease-of-use and streamlined nature of setting up a meeting. They did a superb job of making it easy.

There are always ways to make things better however. One of the things I'd like to see them add though is a voice over IP (VOIP) solution for the meeting organizer in the instances where you want to present something and it's ok for the others in the meeting to use the chat feature to ask questions. In fact at one point in time I had grand visions of a huge Pocket PC Thoughts interactive chat, but when I realized GoToMeeting was aimed at a different scenario, I gave up pretty quick. If they were to add VOIP features I think this could become an even better solution.

You can &mpvc="]try out GoToMeeting for a 15 day free trial - if you're involved with conference calls and online meetings on a regular basis, especially if you're in charge of hosting them, I think you'll find GoToMeeting a useful tool.

"If you�re going to have a trade show in February, why not make it on the French Rivera? Perhaps that�s what the planners of 3GSM World Congress had in mind when they chose the city of Cannes to host the enormous show, an extravaganza of all things wirelessly mobile. All the big players in cellular phones are on hand, luring over 1,200 journalists and an army of industry representatives from around the world."

Laptop magazine has some good coverage of the hottest new gadgets displayed at the 3GSM conference. I really like the pictures of Motorola's new SLVR V8 phone. At just under 0.5 inch thick, it's just an amazing size! Too bad it's not Windows Mobile based. :( From what I read, it looks like Motorola trying really hard to become the top handset maker. Check out the coverage, and let us know what you think.

"Shattering the mobile usability barrier, Action Engine Corporation, the mobile application platform leader, today announced the Action Engine Challenge and free smartphone giveaways among several promotions to be offered at the 3GSM World Congress being held in Cannes, France from February 14-17, 2005. The no-risk promotions are intended to make it easier than ever for mobile device users to test drive the Action Engine Mobile Application Platform(tm) and its Brand-n-Go(tm) applications. "Action Engine makes bold claims regarding the highly intuitive, responsive, and personalized mobile applications running on our platform," said Scott G. Silk, president and CEO of Action Engine. "This show is our opportunity to prove our speed and ease of use to some of the world's most sophisticated mobile users.""



Action Engine is also giving away 20 Smartphones over the course of the 3GSM conference. You must be wearing an Action Engine sticker, and of course, be at the conference. :wink: Is anyone here planning to attend?

"Smartphone Summit 2005 presents 'Smartphone Solutions', an exclusive one-day event to be held on March 13, 2005 to coincide with the opening of CTIA WIRELESS 2005, at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, La., March 14-16, 2005. The 2005 Smartphone Summit has been expanded beyond the sold-out 2004 Smartphone Summit Conference to bring added attendee value with even more informative speakers and topics. The event takes center stage to host the only dedicated smart phone industry discussion and will be sponsored by industry leader Symbian as platinum sponsor and keynote. The Smartphone Summit brings together the top Smartphone based Enterprise Solutions from all Smartphone OS platforms including Symbian, PalmSource, Microsoft, and Linux. This industry-specific conference targets enterprise users as well as developers and I.T. professionals. Throughout the conference attendees will be given the inside track on the ways their business can benefit from the latest Smartphone technologies, solutions, hardware, software, and accessories."

The Microsoft Mobile and Embedded Developers Conference (MEDC) is going to be in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay. the festivities will run from May 9th until the 12th, and will cover all sorts of stuff like: NEW tools, strategies for Windows Mobile based Smartphones and Pocket PCs, .NET Compact Framework, SQL Server CE, MapPoint Location Server, next-generation Microsoft mobile and embedded development platforms and much more. Check out Mike Hall's Embedded Weblog for the full scoop. :D

I'll be in San Diego in a couple of weeks for the Windows Embedded Developer Conference. Will any Thoughts readers be in attendance?

"Thus far, Microsoft has struggled to replicate its dominance of the computer operating system market in the next generation of mobiles, or so-called "smartphones". But it is hellbent on doing so.

Sales of smartphones, which allow you take and send pictures and emails and surf the internet - as well as make plain old phone calls - will this year overtake sales of pocket computers, which fell 5pc in 2002."

Dominic White has written a great article about the current battle between Symbian (Nokia) and Microsoft over the smartphone market. Along with the nervousness felt by other handset manufacturers now that Nokia is taking control of Symbian.

One more reason to sign up for the Mobile Developers Conference: one of the greatest story-tellers in the business, Don Box, will be giving one of the keynote addresses. Don is an architect for XML messaging at Microsoft. That's a tame way of saying he's responsible for a significant portion of the plumbing for future versions of Windows. He's been giving thought to .NET application development in mobile device scenarios. This should be a great talk!

I'm pleased to announce that the details on Microsoft's Mobile Developer are now on the web at MicrosoftMDC.com. Last year's MDC in New Orleans was great and considering all the massive changes announced at the PDC a couple months ago, I have a feeling that the content at this MDC is going to be really important for developers interested in leveraging the features and tools of next generation Smartphones and Pocket PCs.

What: 80+ technical sessions, hands-on labs, exhibits and networking events.
Where: Moscone West, San Francisco, CA. Together with VSLive!
When: March 23 - 27, 2004

Microsoft Mobile DevCon is the premier developer event for building and bringing to market mobile applications, content and services for the Windows Mobile and Windows platforms. This a must attend event for developers seeking knowledge about the latest platform advances for mobile technologies, including Windows Mobile-based Pocket PCs and Smartphones, .NET Compact Framework, SQL Server CE, ASP.NET, and MapPoint Location Server and other mobile technologies.

If you register before the end of January, the price is $995. After that, it will be $1,295. This conference is being co-located with the popular VSLive! so for an extra fee you can get access to those sessions as well. What's cool about this co-location strategy is that traditional web and desktop developers attending VSLive! are likely to get lured in to the much more exciting world of mobile devices. 8) As for the keynote, the website doesn't say this explicitly but a Microsoft source has told us that Bill Gates himself will be there to address the crowd and assert that Microsoft is serious about mobility.
Pre-conference Workshop
March 23, 2004

Conference Sessions
March 24-26, 2004

Post-conference Workshop
March 27, 2004

FREE TO ATTENDEES
Each conference attendee will receive:

• Conference DVD with session recordings and PowerPoint slides
  
• Microsoft Mobile Development Resource Kit
  
• First access to beta versions of Visual Studio "Whidbey" featuring device development (when available)
  
• Special offers on Windows Mobile-based devices

Learn about future platforms and devices.
At the Professional Developers Conference 2003, Microsoft announced a broad set of new development technologies, including the next generations of Visual Studio, code-named "Whidbey"; SQL Server, code-name "Yukon", and Windows, code-named "Longhorn". The Microsoft Mobile DevCon provides developers with the opportunity to learn first-hand about the latest advances in these key technologies to help build mobile applications.

The Microsoft Mobile DevCon will host more than 80 sessions and hands-on labs covering the following technologies and more:
Device and PC Platform Futures

• Future generation Windows MobileTM - based Pocket PCs
  
• Future generation Windows MobileTM - based Smartphones
  
• Windows "Longhorn" for Tablet PCs and Laptops
  
• Windows CE.NET

.NET Technologies

• .NET Compact Framework "Whidbey" Release
  
• ASP.NET "Whidbey" Mobile Web Application Development
  
• MapPoint Web Service
  
• Mobile Web Services

Server Technologies

• SQL Server Mobile Edition "Laguna" (next version of SQL Server CE)
  
• MapPoint Location Server
  
• Windows Media Services/Player
  
• Exchange Server 2003

Development Tools

• Visual Studio.NET "Whidbey"
  
• eMbedded Visual C++ 4.0