I have lamented on many occasion the lack of Calendar synch support within the world of Windows Mobile and Windows Live. While I do believe that calendar synching is a non trivial task, I never thought it would be a show stopper (I think this may have more to do with killing a cash cow). It appears that Google has just released Google Sync for Windows Mobile (they licensed Exchange ActiveSync from Microsoft).

This is a great move for Google as the Trojan horse here is the contact list synch that comes along with the calendar synch. You may or may not have noticed that your contact list in Gmail has been slowing revamped into your who’s who list. Whoever controls your contact list controls the world! ;)

I got my wife to play on the Xbox this weekend, I believe this is the first time she has tried  a video game in about 8 years, and she seemed to have a blast. It got me thinking about games I used to play when video games first captivated me. I then took that list and cross referenced it with Xbox Live Arcade list and this is what I came up with:

- Street Fighter II
- Pac Man
- Soul Calibur
- Gauntlet
- Golden Axe
- Prince of Persia
- Speedball 2

These each cost around 400 Microsoft Points ($5.00), that’s a grand total cost of $40. You cannot a buy new game for that amount these days!

I had not heard of the concept of shimming until I started looking at Windows compatibility and the problems that arise when trying to shoe horn applications from old operating systems to new ones. An application shim is a compatibility layer that fools a legacy application in to believing it's running in an older operating system.  For example, a shim will tell a legacy application that it is running in an 16-bit color and that it's running with all the privileges Windows has to offer, when in actuality, it is not. 

Shims intercept an applications attempt to modify the hard drive or registry that would ordinarily require root permissions, those requests are seamlessly redirected to temporary locations on the hard drive and registry.  This means that unmodified legacy applications will run under Vista with the same poorly vetted code, but Vista (or Windows 7) will not complain about the obvious security ramifications of some of these calls.

The year was 2007, the location was the annual CES conference, the announcement included the promise of the IPTV on Xbox 360! 

We have had been spun a long tale and even though Mediaroom (U-verse) has made some great strides I am not seeing any of the promises being fulfilled. I am not sure who should catch the blame here AT&T or Microsoft so this serves as my small protest to both … Where is my integrated entertainment experience in the home!?

According to some reports this promise may come to Europe long before it gets state side. British Telecom is set to deliver on the promise of IPTV later in 2009, apparently their BT TV service has been flagging and they are hoping to be a barnacle on the ship of Xbox success.

If you have seen the new Android (Googles phone) adverts where the guy grabs his phone takes a picture of a barcode and is immediately comparing prices on his phone, then you we will really dig this new mobile app called Microsoft Tag.

You can quickly create create tags and define what action (URL, vCard, Free Text, Dialer) that tag will take. Below is a tag I created in about 5 seconds … download the mobile app from here and check it out. You do not have to even get the camera to focus accurately and the app quickly picks up enough information to pull down the command for the mobile action.

My tag simply display some text on your cell phone (I am curious how it reacts on non Windows Mobile phones), but you can also prompt your phone to dial a number, add a contact or navigate to a URL. I really think the applications for this are endless from advertising, real estate, to every day purchase … below is an example of a Microsoft game that is using a tag. Give it a try and find out all about the Halo Wars gaming!

I have been reviewing Live Mesh recently and simultaneously helping my wife synch information between her notebook and PC, my music workstation and the cloud. There are a couple of things that I think need additional polish (interface for synching any folders) but overall it is doing a good job of replacing the functions of FolderShare Live Sync.

I had heard rumor that there were a few fortunate folk who have added there Windows Mobile phones to the Mesh after successfully downloading and installing the Live Mesh software. Unfortunately when I installed the software I was politely informed that it could not add my phone to the mesh.

Coincidentally I had recently tried to sign up for the Tech Preview of Azure, I actually thought it might be fun to try and develop a couple of apps that relied on Azure Cloud services we have been hearing so much about. Almost immediately after signing up for Azure I was able to add my phone to the mesh and I have been happily synching my pictures and documents from my phone to my Live Desktop.

So if you have a Windows Mobile phone and often lament the lack of automated synching to the cloud or your desktop try:

1. Sign up for the Azure Tech preview.
2. Download and install Live Mesh to your mobile device: http://m.mesh.com.

Your mileage may vary, this may have been a pure coincidence, but this worked for me!