MEDC 2007
Robbie Bach, President of Entertainment & Devices Division, led today's keynote address at MEDC 2007. The overarching theme of the presentation was that Microsoft is known to be your connected solution in the workplace, but they want to also be your mobile solution. MS wants to give users "what they want when they want it." They are continuing to focus on expanding mobile services from both MS (SQL Server, Office, Dynamics) and partners (VCast, Yahoo!, Sling, Weatherbug, vodaphone), improve development provide tools (VS.NET), and supporting the market (Mobile Marketplace, Verisign) to foster growth in the mobile landscape.
The presentation was a little heavy of the marketing side of things, but there were some cool highlights:
- Clarity's own Jon Rauschenberger demoed a Crate & Barrel touch screen Gift Registry kiosk application, highlighting the use of Expression Blend, Target Designer and USB boot/deployment
- Microsoft Robotics Studio was demoed, using an XBOX control to drive a robot through a full 3-D, full-physics simulation environment
- Additional help for developers including SQL Server CE in-ROM, .NET CF 3.5 support for LINQ and support for unit tests
- A new technology shipping with .NET CF 3.5 Futures called Store And Forward that allows a mobile device to push data (like inventory information) through Exchange to another mobile device
- Using web services on devices (WSD) to control things like lighting and the thermostat in your home remotely
- A demo showing a full Silverlight web site running on IE mobile