BostonPocketPC

Thanks to everyone who attended my two sessions this past weekend at Code Camp 9 in Waltham, MA. As always, it was great meeting new folks and connecting with friends.

I have now posted the presentations for download -

• Leveraging the .NET Compact Framework 3.5 Developer Tools
• Windows Communication Foundation ("WCF") for Windows Mobile 

Well we have arrived in Las Vegas for the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show aka CES, which makes this eight years in a row for me of attending the technology preview of things to come in the future of CE. Technology sure has changed over the years and so has the size of the show. This year I was just planning on hitting several events at CES and just leisurely walking the floor, but for some insane reason I am going to be meeting with some companies to show us their latest and greatest and I will be sure to take lots of pictures and share our findings here at BPPC. The we being Johan van Mierlo and Eric Hicks will be joining myself in Vegas and we will be sharing our finds and info with you here. If there is anything of interest you would like to see or hear about give us a shout and will see if we can make it happen like shots of the next largest television at CES, which is supposed to be a good sized bigger than last years winner from Sharp at 108" from Panasonic.

We will also be meeting up with some friends and colleagues as well at several events and will share those as well. Our next meeting I will do another annual slide show and presentation like have done from previous years. So stay tuned.

Due to an unforseen work emergency I will be working late and won't be able to conduct the meeting tonight and Don is off in Toronto on business. We will make it up next month with a pretty good agenda with a mix of Developer and Enthusiast/Enterprise focus for the next meeting. We will nail out an agenda to fit both and post it up well in advance.

Again I am sorry for not being able to do this at the last minute, but we will make it up to next month! :)

Thanks to everyone who attended my two sessions at this weekend's Code Camp 7: Deer In The Headlights event. I really enjoyed the interaction, questions and comments during both sessions!

As promised, my two presentations are now available for download. The ZIP files contain both the Powerpoint slides and any sample code shown during the session.

• Windows Mobile Application Performance Best Practices (592 KB)
• Leveraging Speech in .NET Applications and Windows Vista (211 KB)

As an "added bonus", I have put up the C# project I wrote to test out Ink and Speech with Vista and the Tablet PC. It is the little spelling application I wrote for my son to do his homework, and domenstrates speech synthesis and the Tablet PC ink APIs. Even if you don't have a Tablet PC, you can fill in the fields using your keyboard. The download also includes a setup installer for the compiled version of the application, allowing you to just install it and play around with it if you'd like.

• Vista Spelling Practice Application (3.75 MB)

Enjoy!

Our good friend and Mobility Guys associate Chris Leckness was fortunate enough to make it down to Orlando, FL this week for the CTIA Wireless 2007 Conference. It has been a while since I have had the opportunity to attend this conference, but I can tell you it is a must-see for anyone interested in the cellular industry.

Chris was good enough to post some great "First Look" videos while he was there and post them MobilitySite, including:

• HTC Advantage Hands-On
• Toshiba G900 Video First Look
• Asus Aries Smartphone Video First Look
• HP iPAQ 500 Video First Look
• HTC VOX Video First Look

If you want to check out the "latest and greatest", this is a great chance to do so.

Great work, Chris!

For all you New England-area .NET developers - Code Camp 7: Deer In The Headlights is coming to the Microsoft offices in Waltham, MA on Saturday, March 31st and Sunday, April 1st. As always, this community-oriented event (organized, run and presented by community members) is a fantastic, fun and FREE way to learn about a variety of .NET development topics.

If you take a moment to view the current presentation list,  you will see that I am slated for two sessions:

"Leveraging Speech in .NET Applications and Windows Vista"
One of the more overlooked features provided in the .NET Framework 3.0 is the new Speech namespace. When combined with Windows Vista, this new functionality opens the door to a number of developer possbilities around speech-enabling desktop applications.
In this presentation, you will learn about the new Speech API, and see how you can implement both text-to-speech and voice recognition for applications.

"Windows Mobile Application Performance Best Practices"
While the Windows Mobile platform has evolved greatly since its inception, developers are still challenged by the limitations in mobile devices. Limited in screen size, reduced memory and and power-efficient CPUs make Windows Mobile development performance-oriented development even more essential when compared to traditional computing platforms.
In this presentation, you will learn a variety of programming techniques to make your Windows Mobile applications perform common development tasks in efficient and user-friendly ways.

There are still spaces available for this event, so don't hesitate to register today!

DEMO is a paid to present conference for 68 companies in 6 minutes present their new companies, products and technologies. The presenters are picked by hand picked by Chris Shipley and a board of experts and they do a pretty good job of bringing all this technology in nice simple to understand forum. All the presentation are available online for viewing and are pretty impressive. I really like Apollo from Adobe , BlingSoftware, TeleFlip and Zink.

As with CES most of the products are now geared toward the Web and Mobility. If you have the time it is definitely worth checking out.

An alternative "free conference" is in the works by Mike Arrington of TechCrunch and Jason Calcanis here are the details so far a few other members of the board are showing up like Robert Scoble:

1. It will be in the San Francisco area.
2. We will have around 250 people at the event.
3. 20 companies will present over two days.
4. The event will take place in the fall.
5. We are looking for a location that can fit 250-500 people. We arehoping we can find a a University that would host the event, or an affordable conference center. Any ideas please let me know.
6. We hope to put together an advisory board of people we really respect to suggest companies.

I would love to see more Unconferences like this spring up in multiple locations like Boston, NewYork, Chicago,Austin,etc, but no so many that it dilutes the content. More like an East and West like VON does.

If you are unfortunately bogged down with work in the office and regrettably are not able to attend the launch event in New York City’s Time Square today you can still view the video here.

If that isn't enough for you and are looking to get down and really celebrate, there are some local events worth checking out that have some NFL football superstars doing some signing and picture taking in association with FOX Sports new addition to Media Center. For the Boston area at the Framingham,MA Circuit City the infamous 'Master of Hail Mary' - Doug Floutie will be signing autographs and you have the chance to win some cool stuff. To find out what is in your local area head here.

Also if you haven't noticed Microsoft has updated the Windows Vista page for the Launch!

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/default.mspx

It is always interesting to see how quiet things can become in the world of vendors, PR, marketing and the likes just before a major event. Such seems to be the case with the 2007 edition of the Consumer Electronics Show. CES 2007 begins next Monday, January 8th.

Expect lots of news surrounding the world of mobility to start this weekend, with lots more to follow. In addition, our own Steve "fyiguy" Hughes will be at CES, so watch for the "latest and greatest" news and information next week.

While we are attempting to get things back to nornal, I do want to take a moment and put out the early word for the next Club Pocket PC - Boston meeting.

The next meeting will be held on Wednesday, January 17th starting at 6:30 PM at the Microsoft offices in Waltham, MA (201 Jones Road, 6th Floor).

Our next meeting will include:

• CES 2007 Roundup. Steve Hughes will be attending the 2007 edition of the Consumer Electronics Show ("CES") in Las Vegas. Steve will provide us with some of the highlights from the show.
• Windows Vista for Mobile Users. A few months back, Steve Hughes and I covered various pieces of information regarding Microsoft Windows Vista in relation to mobile users. Well, the code has shipped and we will be days away from the official launch. What better time to cover things in greater depth? 

We look forward to seeing you there!