Mobile and Embedded Developer Conference 2005

[Peter Foot]

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.

Day Two

Right-Sizing
This session, given by Ginny Caughey, was a good overview of the different choices available for developers when storing data locally on the device. It looked at a range of technologies from the simplest text files up to the latest version of SQL Server Mobile currently in Beta. A key message from the session is that there is no right technology for all, it should be based on your storage requirements, target devices and required functionality.

New Managed APIs in Windows Mobile 5.0
One of the key new features in the Windows Mobile APIs is support for a number of common dialogs used by the built in apps – the ChooseContactDialog, the SelectPictureDialog and the CameraCaptureDialog. These present the user with standard dialogs which they will already be familiar with for common tasks and require only a few lines of code to utilise. This session was fairly light and more marketing than technical - once you've created one object and called ShowDialog() the rest of the classes are obvious. However this is not to understate these new controls, they do allow you to add functionality to your application very quickly and easily.

Emulator Enhancements
The new emulation tools which will debut with Visual Studio 2005 make a significant step ahead of the current emulation tools available. The major change is that the emulator now emulates an ARM processor (rather than X86). This means you can use the exact same binaries on the emulator as a real device, even allowing you to install third-party applications onto the emulator. The emulator can be connected to ActiveSync to perform synchronisation and access the device file system from the desktop. A Community Preview of a standalone version of the emulator is now available, this makes it possible to demonstrate applications without having the full Visual Studio product installed.

Exhibition Hall
This years exhibition was smaller than at last years event, however since last years event was co-located with VS-Live this is understandable. One side effect of this was that there was less free swag. A number of device manufacturers were present at the show, including iMate and HP. iMate confirmed that they would be making Windows Mobile 5 upgrades available for existing devices from August, but no firm details on which devices would be supported and what the cost would be. HP had their newest device the 65xx series mobile communicator. It’s still early to tell whether users will warm to the square screen format, it would present a problem with older software. When you consider the device has a hardware keyboard and that you wouldn’t need the on-screen SIP the smaller screen size is less of an issue. The device manages to include a number of useful technologies such as GPS, Phone, Bluetooth etc.

Intel won my personal award for the best swag having a very cool pen which doubled as a pocket pc stylus, torch and laser pointer.

Other Platforms
Lets also not forget that Windows Embedded covers a large range of devices beyond the Pocket PC and Smartphone which we are most familiar with. One of these platforms is Windows Embedded for Point of Sale - WEPOS for short. This is built on top of Windows XP Embedded and optimised for point of sale and kiosk platforms.

Closer to familiar Windows Mobile territory is Windows CE - this is the operating system on which Windows Mobile is built but is used in a wide range of devices from Smartphones to Sewing Machines. At the Microsoft booth a number of devices were on show. Of particular interest was a souped up Hummer kitted out with a variety of stuff. One of these platforms is Portable Media Centre which is a handheld video jukebox, with a very slick interface. Another area in which Microsoft is trying to make inroads (sorry couldn't resist) is Windows Automotive. This is a highly optimised Windows CE based platform which integrates with the vehicle and can use information from the vehicle data bus as well as supporting features like driver distraction prevention to reduce the amount of data available to the driver while in motion. It also uses a voice interface. However neither of these two platforms have APIs which developers can take advantage of.

Multithreaded Applications
In the final session of the day, Maarten Struys, described multi-threading techniques and new functionality in the .NET Compact Framework v2.0. A key point highlighted was the need to use the Invoke method to ensure you only update controls in your applications UI from the form in which they are created - if you try to do this from a background worker-thread your app will crash, or in v2.0 raise an exception.

Evening Event
The Blue Man Group show was really good, very difficult to describe as it was a mixture of comedy, music and audience participation (not to mention lots of paper and strobe lighting). The show started with a selection of spoof announcements on a scrolling display, I laughed as the whole auditorium was asked to sing happy birthday to me (It wasn’t really my birthday of course).



Day Three
The third day, for me personally at least, was very much about in-depth technical sessions, so there weren't any notable announcements but plenty of detailed content.

ASP.NET Mobile
The first session I attended described ASP.NET Mobile controls allowing you to create web applications which display well across a variety of mobile devices, not just Windows Mobile but from the simplest WAP browsers upwards. This is a great technology which takes some of the work away from the developer of redesigning content for different types of device. You can find out all about supported features at www.asp.net/mobile.

.NETCF v2.0 COM Interop
The second session was a deep dive into COM Interop in the .NET Compact Framework v2.0 by fellow MVP Alex Feinman. The end result of this session was to demonstrate that it is possible to host ActiveX controls (such as the Flash player or Media Player control) from within .NETCF v2.0 code although not supported directly "in the box". This was really incredible to see and shows just how far interoperability has improved in .NETCF v2.0.

OpenNETCF.org
Next up we had an introduction to OpenNETCF.org and it’s resources for .NETCF developers, along with suggestions for developers who are interested in creating their own community projects. The much anticipated SDF v1.3 was released along with the Application Blocks – Compact Framework versions of the Microsoft Patterns & Practises blocks.

Bluetooth Source
Microsoft have recognised that developing with Bluetooth is currently difficult, so have released a shared source .NETCF wrapper around the low-level Bluetooth APIs. This only provides the very basics of Bluetooth programming but it is a starting point at least, it unfortunately lacks a number of key features such as device discovery which are already available in other free libraries. It’s success will also depend on how many device manufacturers Microsoft can woo over to using their own Bluetooth stack as currently devices are split between Microsoft’s and Broadcom’s stacks which offer very different programming models (and only Microsoft’s SDK is free).

Performance
In the afternoon we heard two very detailed sessions on both Performance and Debugging with .NET Compact Framework from members of the product team. Performance was covered by Roman Batoukov. The first step with performance is to look at how to measure the performance of your application, in .NETCF 2.0 you can now generate statistic files for individual applications measuring objects and memory allocated and interop calls. The session highlighted the new Generics support in v2.0 and their effect on performance in collections by avoiding boxing and type casting. Performance hints were given across the board for .NETCF developers from Exception handling to Windows Forms. You might like to also check out the Performance and Working Set FAQ produced by Roman.

Debugging
The debugging session given by David Kline and Mark Ihimoyan described new logs available to developers including assembly loading, interop calls and network traffic. A demo was given showing just-in-time debugging, finally tips to avoid deadlocks and memory leaks were given. A new free tool “TuneIn”, which will be available soon, was described which provides live running statistics, this will definitely be a tool to watch out for. This shows that Microsoft is committed to improving the tools and developer experience for the .NET Compact Framework v2.0.

SumoBot Competition
The conference ended with the finals of the SumoBot competition. Attendees could compete in a series of rounds to force their opponent out of the ring. An interesting spectator experience and the lighter side of embedded development. Unfortunately I missed most of this, but got to watch some bots seemingly dancing with each other.

Closing Thoughts
This year’s conference was on a much larger scale than last year’s events and combined the two previously separate Embedded and Mobility developer conferences. There were approximately 2000 attendees registered for the event, so it was a rather less intimate affair than last year. By merging the two conferences it had to meet the expectations of two very different sets of attendees although there are some large overlaps. The highlight for mobility developers was of course Windows Mobile 5.0 and a large number of sessions were focussed on this. The sessions covering application development generally covered managed code (.NETCF) more than traditional native code development. I think the attendees appreciated this and it shows a shift in approach to developing applications. A key message of .NETCF v2.0 is improved performance and interoperability, both of which help to make managed code a viable option in a greater range of scenarios. Our introduction to Windows Mobile 5.0 and new functionality for developers was very useful, and I look forward to seeing cool new devices to take advantage of these features over the coming year.

Peter is a .NET Compact Framework MVP and owns a small development company in the UK providing a mixture of consulting and off the shelf developer packages (www.inthehand.com). He is also one of the driving forces behind OpenNETCF.org, which just goes to confirm that he has an unhealthy interest in .NETCF.

[Peter Foot]

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.

Day Two

Right-Sizing
This session, given by Ginny Caughey, was a good overview of the different choices available for developers when storing data locally on the device. It looked at a range of technologies from the simplest text files up to the latest version of SQL Server Mobile currently in Beta. A key message from the session is that there is no right technology for all, it should be based on your storage requirements, target devices and required functionality.

New Managed APIs in Windows Mobile 5.0
One of the key new features in the Windows Mobile APIs is support for a number of common dialogs used by the built in apps – the ChooseContactDialog, the SelectPictureDialog and the CameraCaptureDialog. These present the user with standard dialogs which they will already be familiar with for common tasks and require only a few lines of code to utilise. This session was fairly light and more marketing than technical - once you've created one object and called ShowDialog() the rest of the classes are obvious. However this is not to understate these new controls, they do allow you to add functionality to your application very quickly and easily.

Emulator Enhancements
The new emulation tools which will debut with Visual Studio 2005 make a significant step ahead of the current emulation tools available. The major change is that the emulator now emulates an ARM processor (rather than X86). This means you can use the exact same binaries on the emulator as a real device, even allowing you to install third-party applications onto the emulator. The emulator can be connected to ActiveSync to perform synchronisation and access the device file system from the desktop. A Community Preview of a standalone version of the emulator is now available, this makes it possible to demonstrate applications without having the full Visual Studio product installed.

Exhibition Hall
This years exhibition was smaller than at last years event, however since last years event was co-located with VS-Live this is understandable. One side effect of this was that there was less free swag. A number of device manufacturers were present at the show, including iMate and HP. iMate confirmed that they would be making Windows Mobile 5 upgrades available for existing devices from August, but no firm details on which devices would be supported and what the cost would be. HP had their newest device the 65xx series mobile communicator. It’s still early to tell whether users will warm to the square screen format, it would present a problem with older software. When you consider the device has a hardware keyboard and that you wouldn’t need the on-screen SIP the smaller screen size is less of an issue. The device manages to include a number of useful technologies such as GPS, Phone, Bluetooth etc.

Intel won my personal award for the best swag having a very cool pen which doubled as a pocket pc stylus, torch and laser pointer.

Other Platforms
Lets also not forget that Windows Embedded covers a large range of devices beyond the Pocket PC and Smartphone which we are most familiar with. One of these platforms is Windows Embedded for Point of Sale - WEPOS for short. This is built on top of Windows XP Embedded and optimised for point of sale and kiosk platforms.

Closer to familiar Windows Mobile territory is Windows CE - this is the operating system on which Windows Mobile is built but is used in a wide range of devices from Smartphones to Sewing Machines. At the Microsoft booth a number of devices were on show. Of particular interest was a souped up Hummer kitted out with a variety of stuff. One of these platforms is Portable Media Centre which is a handheld video jukebox, with a very slick interface. Another area in which Microsoft is trying to make inroads (sorry couldn't resist) is Windows Automotive. This is a highly optimised Windows CE based platform which integrates with the vehicle and can use information from the vehicle data bus as well as supporting features like driver distraction prevention to reduce the amount of data available to the driver while in motion. It also uses a voice interface. However neither of these two platforms have APIs which developers can take advantage of.

Multithreaded Applications
In the final session of the day, Maarten Struys, described multi-threading techniques and new functionality in the .NET Compact Framework v2.0. A key point highlighted was the need to use the Invoke method to ensure you only update controls in your applications UI from the form in which they are created - if you try to do this from a background worker-thread your app will crash, or in v2.0 raise an exception.

Evening Event
The Blue Man Group show was really good, very difficult to describe as it was a mixture of comedy, music and audience participation (not to mention lots of paper and strobe lighting). The show started with a selection of spoof announcements on a scrolling display, I laughed as the whole auditorium was asked to sing happy birthday to me (It wasn’t really my birthday of course).



Day Three
The third day, for me personally at least, was very much about in-depth technical sessions, so there weren't any notable announcements but plenty of detailed content.

ASP.NET Mobile
The first session I attended described ASP.NET Mobile controls allowing you to create web applications which display well across a variety of mobile devices, not just Windows Mobile but from the simplest WAP browsers upwards. This is a great technology which takes some of the work away from the developer of redesigning content for different types of device. You can find out all about supported features at www.asp.net/mobile.

.NETCF v2.0 COM Interop
The second session was a deep dive into COM Interop in the .NET Compact Framework v2.0 by fellow MVP Alex Feinman. The end result of this session was to demonstrate that it is possible to host ActiveX controls (such as the Flash player or Media Player control) from within .NETCF v2.0 code although not supported directly "in the box". This was really incredible to see and shows just how far interoperability has improved in .NETCF v2.0.

OpenNETCF.org
Next up we had an introduction to OpenNETCF.org and it’s resources for .NETCF developers, along with suggestions for developers who are interested in creating their own community projects. The much anticipated SDF v1.3 was released along with the Application Blocks – Compact Framework versions of the Microsoft Patterns & Practises blocks.

Bluetooth Source
Microsoft have recognised that developing with Bluetooth is currently difficult, so have released a shared source .NETCF wrapper around the low-level Bluetooth APIs. This only provides the very basics of Bluetooth programming but it is a starting point at least, it unfortunately lacks a number of key features such as device discovery which are already available in other free libraries. It’s success will also depend on how many device manufacturers Microsoft can woo over to using their own Bluetooth stack as currently devices are split between Microsoft’s and Broadcom’s stacks which offer very different programming models (and only Microsoft’s SDK is free).

Performance
In the afternoon we heard two very detailed sessions on both Performance and Debugging with .NET Compact Framework from members of the product team. Performance was covered by Roman Batoukov. The first step with performance is to look at how to measure the performance of your application, in .NETCF 2.0 you can now generate statistic files for individual applications measuring objects and memory allocated and interop calls. The session highlighted the new Generics support in v2.0 and their effect on performance in collections by avoiding boxing and type casting. Performance hints were given across the board for .NETCF developers from Exception handling to Windows Forms. You might like to also check out the Performance and Working Set FAQ produced by Roman.

Debugging
The debugging session given by David Kline and Mark Ihimoyan described new logs available to developers including assembly loading, interop calls and network traffic. A demo was given showing just-in-time debugging, finally tips to avoid deadlocks and memory leaks were given. A new free tool “TuneIn”, which will be available soon, was described which provides live running statistics, this will definitely be a tool to watch out for. This shows that Microsoft is committed to improving the tools and developer experience for the .NET Compact Framework v2.0.

SumoBot Competition
The conference ended with the finals of the SumoBot competition. Attendees could compete in a series of rounds to force their opponent out of the ring. An interesting spectator experience and the lighter side of embedded development. Unfortunately I missed most of this, but got to watch some bots seemingly dancing with each other.

Closing Thoughts
This year’s conference was on a much larger scale than last year’s events and combined the two previously separate Embedded and Mobility developer conferences. There were approximately 2000 attendees registered for the event, so it was a rather less intimate affair than last year. By merging the two conferences it had to meet the expectations of two very different sets of attendees although there are some large overlaps. The highlight for mobility developers was of course Windows Mobile 5.0 and a large number of sessions were focussed on this. The sessions covering application development generally covered managed code (.NETCF) more than traditional native code development. I think the attendees appreciated this and it shows a shift in approach to developing applications. A key message of .NETCF v2.0 is improved performance and interoperability, both of which help to make managed code a viable option in a greater range of scenarios. Our introduction to Windows Mobile 5.0 and new functionality for developers was very useful, and I look forward to seeing cool new devices to take advantage of these features over the coming year.

Peter is a .NET Compact Framework MVP and owns a small development company in the UK providing a mixture of consulting and off the shelf developer packages (www.inthehand.com). He is also one of the driving forces behind OpenNETCF.org, which just goes to confirm that he has an unhealthy interest in .NETCF.

[Sven]

Originally Posted by Peter Foot

Intel won my personal award for the best swag having a very cool pen which doubled as a pocket pc stylus, torch and laser pointer.

Torch? you mean you can weld with this thing? :wink:

[Peter Foot]

Originally Posted by sven

Torch? you mean you can weld with this thing? :wink:

Ah sorry, in american english you would call it a flashlight. Interesting idea though, maybe we'll see metal work tools next year...

Peter

[Kris Kumar]

Thanks Peter for an excellent conference report. 8)

The detailed class diagram is pretty handy. Will have to see if I can print it on a wide format printer at work. ;-)

Surprised that this year no one was offering beta WM 5.0 upgrade. (Last year HP and Moto both had offered WM2003 SE.)

Oh..I miss the goodie bag. Last year's bag was terrible.

[Mike Temporale]

Originally Posted by Kris Kumar

The detailed class diagram is pretty handy.

I agree, very handy. 8)

Originally Posted by Kris Kumar

Surprised that this year no one was offering beta WM 5.0 upgrade. (Last year HP and Moto both had offered WM2003 SE.)

Actually, I'm not really surprised about this. I think the free upgrades caused a lot of people to expect that the upgrade would be released at some point by that company. Which we all know never happened. I'm sure that they didn't want the expectation and ultimate disappointment of the customer again. At least, I hope that's the reason. :lol: