Windows Phone Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

Once again, it's Mobius time! Mobius is an invite-only event, hosted by Microsoft, where the invited guests are shown what Microsoft is doing in the mobile space. Full disclosure: Microsoft generously covers our flight and hotel expenses, and keeps us well fed during the event - though there are some attendees that pay their own way to get here, and pay for their own hotel. I'm not one of those people - if a company is willing to pay for me to fly out to see what they're up to, I'll take them up on the offer. It won't change my opinion about what they're showing me.

At every Mobius event I've been to in the past, the content has been a mix of presentations that we can talk about, and some that we can't. This event so far has been radically different - the entire day was made up of presentations that we've agreed not to talk about. There was some truly eye-opening stuff; stuff that reminds me again that so many of the rumours we read about online are utterly and completely false. I think if every blog or news site went back correct the rumours they've been wrong about, they'd be too embarrassed to publish rumours...for at least a day or two. I lump myself in this group as well; hot and highly-speculative rumours are always fun to ponder, but they often bear little resemblance to reality.

Here's a list of who's in attendance, and the sites they are representing: Read more...

Hey everyone! This is a quick heads-up for you to check Digital Home Thoughts if you're interested in winning some free stuff. It's by far our #1 site when it comes to contests, largely because it covers a broad spectrum of topics which makes it easier to get giveaway items. We've been running a hard drive giveaway (3350 GB in total storage) for the past five weeks, giving away a variety of hard drives, and this week we're giving away a 500 GB Western Digital hard drive. Also going on is a giveaway for a Skooba Design Checkthrough Brief bag, and on Monday we're launching a contest giving away 10 copies of Corel Digital Studio 2010. Watch for it!

"Our strategy for all of this is pretty straightforward; we want to create a global marketplace for Windows Phones where developers and users meet to sell and buy high quality and high value applications that make work easier and life more fulfilling. We're creating a clear process and new opportunity for developers and ISVs to make money from their investment in innovation. The applications we feature will be well organized, easily accessible by PC or phone and backed by a money back guarantee. And when they're ready to buy, customers will have a variety of payment options to choose from. These are new customer experiences, and frankly, capabilities that will set us apart."

As of this morning afternoon, Windows Marketplace for Mobile is now accepting application submissions from all 29 supported countries - and the Race to Market Challenge contest also kicks off. That site is password protected at the moment but apparently later today it will be live. Yeah, a bit strange. This contest is a way to build up the content on Windows Marketplate for Mobile, and to give developers a "first mover" advantage in terms of getting their applications into the marketplace. I think Microsoft is taking a realistic approach to this - they're not saying "Develop for Windows Mobile, it's the best!" they're saying "Develop for our platform as well - we have something to offer".

Want to build your application? Here's the Windows Mobile 6.5 developer toolkit (it's not an SDK mind you - you'll need to use the 6.1 Professional or Standard SDKs). Want to submit your application? Here are the Application Submission Guidelines. The prizes are a bit unusual: winners get one of four Microsoft Surface tables (Developer Edition), online marketing & promotion of their app, and a challenge trophies.

Think you have what it takes? Let's see those apps!

Remember the iZel review that I published a few weeks back? Well, the makers of the iZel have offered us three to give away to lucky Thoughts Media readers! This contest is open to anyone in the US or Canada (sorry rest-of-world). Entering the contest is really easy: all you have to do is post a message in this discussion thread telling me what kind of device(s) you'd want to use with the iZel. That's it! I'll randomly select three entries and each person will win an iZel. Nice and easy! The contest is open until the 16th of July, at 12pm (GMT -7). Enter now!

UPDATE: Only one entry per person, and if it's your first post, please allow up to 48 hours for it to show up.

UPDATE #2: The contest is now over and the winners have been randomly selected. iZel has a little consolation prize for everyone though. If you use the coupon code 5OFFIZEL you'll get a $5 discount off the normal price of $24.95 from Amazon.com [Affiliate]. The coupon code is valid until midnight July 31st, 2009.

You want an easy contest? You've got an easy contest: Expansys is giving away a Palm Treo Pro, and all you have to do is answer their question about which operating system the Treo Pro runs. I'll give you a hint: it ends in .1 and has the word "Professional" in it. Shh. Don't tell anyone I told you! The contest ends in 10 days, so enter now.

"We are busy building the next generation features for Mobile Phone Backup. Completely re-engineering backup to make the most of the features offered in Microsoft's new Windows Mobile 6.5 and 7. We would like to invite you to take part in a massive prize contest we're calling the Sprite Backup 7 Feature Hunt. You can win some great prizes..."

The crew over at Sprite Software are busy working on the next version of Sprite Backup, and they're interested in hearing from users of their software about what feature they'd like to see the most in version 7.0 of Sprite Backup. That's it - talk about an easy contest! The contest starts today (April 21st) and goes until May 8th. The prizes? Two winners will get the first prize, which is a Touch HD! Five winners will get the second prize, which is a Bluetooth GPS, and 30 winners will get the third prize, which is an 8GB microSD card. Nice! Winners will be announced on May 15th. Jump on over to their contest page and enter now.

HTC has a pretty rockin' contest going on right now for people located in the USA (sorry rest-of-world) that's worth checking out: the grand prize is $25,000 in cash with two HTC Fuze devices, the first-place prize (given out to four people) is a $15,000 American Express gift card with two HTC Fuze devices, and the daily winner gets an HTC Fuze. That's a lot of prizes! So how do you enter? If you're in the USA, you'll no doubt see the green HTC Fuze banners on this Web site - click on one of the banners (turn down your speakers first), and once it loads, you'll see an orange "WIN" graphic in the upper-right corner. Click on that and you'll be taken to the HTC Fuze contest page. Have fun! The contest is open until the 5th of April.

UPDATE: Our contest is now live, post your entry here.

Remember that awesome 31 Days of the Dragon giveaway contest Digital Home Thoughts was a part of earlier this year? Well this new contest from HP that we've been invited to partake in dwarfs that one on a number of levels. First, the prize pack is even bigger: $6000 in total prizes, consisting of one desktop PC, three laptops, a Media Center extender, a printer, and some software and accessories. Whew! There's some awesome hardware here. The scope is bigger too: there are 50 different blogs involved, and they range from tech blogs like this one, to women's blogs, to student blogs, to Spanish and Portuguese blogs. The complete list is further on in this post. If you do the math, that's $300,000 USD in total prizes, thanks to HP and Microsoft's Windows Live team.

The HP Magic Giveaway is designed around the idea of the magic of sharing, so it's not a coincidence that it's happening as we lead up to the Christmas & holiday season. Each blog is running their own type of contest (and you can enter all of them), but the idea that many of us are focusing on is sharing. One person probably doesn't need four computers all to themselves, so when I kick off my contest later on, it will include some sort of prize-sharing element. Start thinking of who and how you'd share this with others. A contest like this is even more timely when you look around at the financial markets world-wide, and even in your neighbourhood. Stay tuned for more details on my contest.

So what's included in this huge giveaway? Here's the full list:

Hardware

• HP TouchSmart IQ816 PC

• HP HDX 18 series Premium Notebook PC

• HP MediaSmart Connect

• HP Pavilion dv4 series Entertainment Notebook PC (with Windows Live)

• HP Mini 1000 (with XP)

Accessories

• HP Photosmart C6380 Wireless AIO (printer)

• HP 564 Photo Value Pak [thanks for the PDF Gear Diary!]

Software & Entertainment

• Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate/Home Premium or Microsoft Windows XP pre-installed on all units (Mini 1000 runs XP)

• Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition 2007 (Student-Teacher Edition) – 1 DVD with 3 licenses

• Microsoft Windows Live

• Corel VideoStudio X2

• Kung Fu Panda (2 widescreen DVDs; 1 widescreen Blu-ray disc)

Read more...

The seventh and final of our 8th anniversary contests is now over: the winner of the one week vacation stay, selected randomly from amongst all the entries, is makicr. Congratulations! Thanks to everyone that entered this contest, and all of the other contests. It was a lot of fun to give away so many devices! Special thanks to PPC Techs for their prize donation, and to all of the companies who allowed me to give away devices that I'd been holding on to for a while. I hope all the winners enjoy their devices, and all of you enjoyed the contests. Thanks for supporting Pocket PC Thoughts!

The sixth of our anniversary contests is now over: the winner of the MWg Zinc II, selected randomly from amongst all the entries, is Kassad. Congratulations! Thanks to everyone that entered.

A word about the final contest: I had intended to launch the last contest last Friday, but you can all guess what I was working hard on. There's some some more work to be done, so I'm going to schedule the final contest for this coming Friday. Watch for it!

The fifth of our anniversary contests is now over: the winners of the PPC Techs Super Packs, three of 'em, selected from amongst all the entries are martin_ayton, V-IPAQ, and Pony99CA. Congratulations! Thanks to everyone that entered.

The fourth of our anniversary contests is now over: the winner of the iPAQ 310 Travel Companion, pulled randomly from the 210+ entries is...Flycs! Congratulations! Thanks to everyone that entered. I've got one more contest to announce, and I'm going to wait until this Friday to do it. Watch for it!

Continuing our 8th anniversary celebration (this is the second-last-contest), I have an MWg Zinc II to give away. This is a unit that I reviewed and was allowed to keep, so I'm passing it along to one lucky winner. The Zinc II is a GSM-based Windows Mobile Professional 6.1 smartphone. It has a 500 mhz Samsung CPU, 64 MB of RAM, a 2.8 inch 320 x 240 resolution touch screen, GPS, and a slide-out keyboard. It's a quad-band GSM (850/ 900/1800/1900 Mhz) and tri-band HSDPA 3G phone (850/1900/2100 Mhz) that will give you 3G in both North America and Europe/Asia/elsewhere. The MSRP on this is $429 USD.

Want to win it? Here's how: post a message telling me the name of one of your all-time favourite songs. But here's the catch: every post has to be by someone who has an avatar on their profile. No avatar, no valid entry. Why? Ever since we switched our forums to vBulletin, there's a sad lack of avatars in profiles, and I miss seeing them. What's an avatar? The small graphic you see in forum threads below the posting name. Mine is an image of Iron Man for instance.

Where do you find avatars? You can look here, here, or here for avatars, then save it to your computer, or you can make your own from an image you have. Avatars can be up to 100 x 100 pixels, non-animated, in GIF or JPEG format, and 64 KB or under in size. How do you upload the image? Go to your user control panel, then click on Edit Profile Picture. Select option two, which is to upload the image from your computer. And that's it!

One message per person please. I'll randomly select one post at 3 PM mountain time on Tuesday the 4th of November. If you don't see your post right away, please wait 24 hours before looking for your post. Odds are that it's your first post since we moved to vBulletin and it's simply held in moderation.

UPDATE: Evidently vBulletin has the worst avatar uploading system ever designed. If you upload your avatar and it doesn't appear, wait a few minutes and try to re-upload it. I've gone into the first 40 posts and fixed the missing avatars that I saw, but I can't do it for all of them. Fear not, however - if I select the winning post and it doesn't have an avatar, I'll check the profile to verify whether or not there was an attempt to add an avatar.

The third of our anniversary contests is now over: the winner of the HTC Touch Dual, pulled randomly from the 220 entries is...mwfielder! Congratulations! Thanks to everyone that entered. I've got a couple of contests left to go, so stay tuned.

The second of our anniversary contests is now over: the winner of the CoPilot Live software, pulled randomly from the 160+ entries is...BudPritchard. Congratulations! Thanks to everyone that entered. I've got two, maybe three, more contests to launch - so stay tuned!

I'm still launching new contests for our 8th anniversary, but the first contest is now over: the winner of the HTC Touch Cruise, pulled randomly from an impressive 430+ entries is...Tony711sc. Congratulations! So what was Tony711sc using back in October 2000?

"Being new to the cyberworld - I was using a Ma Bell landline and a Franklin Day Planner."

Thanks to everyone who entered - it was great to read about what people were using!

This is just a quick reminder that two of the birthday giveaways are ending soon, so be sure to enter if you haven't already!

• HTC Touch Cruise giveaway (ends Oct. 23rd, 3 PM)
• CoPilot Live 7 giveaway (ends Oct. 24th, 3 PM)

Continuing our 8th anniversary celebration, I have another Windows Mobile Professional smartphone to give away: this time it's an HTC Touch Dual. This smarpthone uses a Qualcomm MSM7200 CPU at 400MHz, has 256 MB of ROM and 128 MB of RAM, a 2.6 inch QVGA screen, a slide-out 16-key keypad, Bluetooth 2.0, a 2 megapixel camera, and a 1120 mAh battery. It's a European 3G version, so it operates on HSDPA/UMTS 2100 MHz and GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz.

Want to win it? Here's how: post a message to this discussion thread telling me one thing you hope will be fixed, improved, or added in Windows Mobile 7. If you want to list more than one thing, go for it. One message per person please. I'll randomly select one post at 3 PM mountain time on Monday the 27th.

If you don't see your post right away, please wait 24 hours before re-posting. Odds are that it's your first post since we moved to vBulletin and it's simply held in moderation.

All right, let's kick off our 8th Anniversary celebration right - with some nice hardware! This is a near-new HTC Touch Cruise that I haven't done much more than toy around with during an unboxing video. This Windows Mobile 6 Professional smartphone features a Qualcomm MSM7200 400MHz CPU, 256 MB of ROM, 128 MB of RAM, a 2.8 inch QVGA screen, HSDPA/UMTS 2100 MHz (Europe) 850/1900 MHz (USA), quad-band GSM, Bluetooth 2.0, 802.11b/g WiFi, both a front-facing and outward facing camera, and a 1350 mAh battery. It's unlocked and sells for around $500 USD.

Want to win it? Here's how: post a message to this discussion thread telling me what sort of device(s) you were using for organization and communication back in October 2000 when this site was launched. Were you still rocking the paper daytimer and a mobile phone? A Windows CE-based HPC? A Palm PC? Any answer is fine. One message per person, and I'll randomly select one post at 3 PM mountain time on Thursday the 23rd.

UPDATE: A reminder that if you don't see your post right away, please wait 24 hours before re-posting. Odds are that it's your first post since we moved to vBulletin and it's simply held in moderation.

A handful of sites were in London today to live-blog the HTC event from start to finish. If you're interested in seeing what went on, head over to Engadget, MoDaCo, and BGR for triple the fun. And in case you missed the big HTC Touch Diamond announcement, click.