Satter Ramblings

MEDC 2005 - Final

The conference was fantastic. Not because of anything in particular. It was great because it was one of those you either loved it or hated it conferences.

The most vicious comment was from some anonymous guest who said a journalist would know their career was over if they were sent to cover this conference. But a lot of folks just thought the conference was so so.

I was among those that thought nothing new here. And that made me all smiles. The SmartPhone, PDA, and embedded device space was becoming ho hum even average. Major corporations had sent representatives to the conference as they began to roll out new devices to support field operations. All pretty normal. Well except for the fact that not but a few years ago Palm and BlackBerry ruled the roost.

The next generation of embedded devices will come from either Microsoft or Linux. The only remaining question is can Microsoft crush Linux at least in the mass market. If I were a gambling man it would be hard to know which has the edge at the moment.

MDEC 2005 - Day 1

I was lucky to get to go to this year's Mobile and Embedded DevCon 2005. This conferences shows a growing strength in the space that was not there in the early years.

The new tools that I saw, show a commitment by Microsoft to the space and developers. There is particular attention paid to building tools and making development easier. This would go hand in hand with seeing more corporations building handheld applications for use in the business.

Bill Gates keynote was of particular interest. He envisions a world in which the differences in data between your handheld, smartphone, and desktop would no longer exist. I was also intrigued by the comment made about talking on your smartphone and the call seamless moved to your desktop. While that is all pie in the sky he did show very seamless syncing between smartphones and desktops. For example taking a picture with your smartphone, attaching it to your contacts and that image getting synced to your desktop.

Whidby also looks to be a much more productive environment. I look forward to playing with my copy. The compact framework 2.0 looks to have been significantly improved.