try windows mobile 7 on your PC right now

Microsoft sure is busy with its best mobile OS yet - The Windows Mobile 7. Its slated to release sometime late 2010, maybe sooner or maybe a bit later. A few prototypes of the phone were showcased in major international technology conventions and a lucky few got to try it too! But for the rest of us folks who never had an opportunity to be there at the event, here's how you can try windows mobile 7 on your PC right now!!

To get started, you need a few pre-requisites:
1. The Visual studio express edition for Win mob 7 [here]
2. The Windows mobile 7 rom [here]
3. A Windows PC (XP's not supported)

After you have downloaded your developer studio, proceed to install it. It will give you options for XNA or Silverlight based developer environment, leave them at defaults or choose the one that suits you best. A system restart is recommended after the full installation is complete.

Now fire up your Microsoft Visual studio 2010 and you will be shown the workspace.

Choose "New Project" and it doesnt matter if you choose either XNA based or Silverlight based template. Once all your compiler libraries are loaded, hit F5 on your keyboard or the tiny green play button above to enter debug mode. In short, we are executing the ROM in windows phone emulator environment. You should see something similar to this.

This is the Windows Mobile 7 emulator which tries to simulate the look and feel of the actual Windows phone 7. But the catch is, Microsoft has totally ripped off nearly 80% of the applications from this ROM.,but we do have a workaround!

Now that we have confirmed that its loaded and running successfully, close down the emulator. Exit the Visual Studio 2010 and proceed to unzip the windows mobile 7 ROM that you have downloaded earlier. The extract process should give you a *.BIN file. This is our compile phone ROM. We need to replace this with the Visual Studio 2010's inbuilt Windows mobile ROM.

Navigate to the following Location. "Root" is your primary boot hard drive. Its usually C:\

Root:/program Files/Microsoft SDKs/WindowsPhone/v7.0/Emulation/Images

There should be a single BIN file inside, just rename the extension to something like .BAK. Now copy your downloaded custom ROM to this folder, rename it exactly as the old one, it should be WM70C1.bin

Now start Visual Studio 2010 again and start a new project. This time, the IDE should load the New ROM we provided instead of the old one. Hit F5 and enter the emulator mode. Within seconds, you should have the Windows phone 7's UI loaded and ready to play! Hope you had fun with the new windows phone :)

Here's a youtube video that I uploaded of Windows phone 7


Reference source Gizmondo

An evening with Microsoft Tag reader

Microsoft's officially launched their "TAG" application on May 27th 2010. I had a free evening that day and thought I should try it out, you know, just to see how the stuff works. I kinda liked the appz. So here's how it all began.


7:00pm - in front of my PC
I navigated to Microsoft Tag homepage and I was required to login with my live account before i could play around with the tag creator. Upon logging in, i was taken to a really neat layout that had three simple functions, create, track or edit Tags. Nice!

7:10pm - setting up my windows mobile
You need a reader + internet connection to be able to read the tag informations as all data is relayed from their servers. After going through a few "about tag" pages on their website, i bumped on to the reader...Atlast! I got the *.cab file and proceeded to install it. It was around 300kb, so it was all done in a jiffy.

7:12pm - Creating the tag
Creation of tag was pretty straightforward and simple, so i created this test tag to see if it works the way it claims. I clicked on create, and the wizard asked me a couple of questions like a title to the tag, a link or text, and the type of layout i wanted. After keying out the info, it took a couple of seconds and suggested me to print it out. I opted to save my tag as a Jpeg, as this is a test tag, just for sake of convenience and green environment! ;)

7:15pm - Tag! You are mine!
I fired up Tag reader on my windows mobile 6.1 (yes its kinda outdated) and it asked me approve a set of EULA agreements. The appz initiated my camera mobile along with a onscreen cross mark that said requested me to point at any tag image. I pointed it at the jpeg that i created few minutes earlier. For a few seconds nothing seemed to happened as there was no status indicator. I thought it might have been buggy and as i was about to take away my phone from the tag image, suddenly a msg poped up quoting "Tag scanned successfully" and executed the function i embeded in it. I actually had it say "Success, your appz reads tag" ;)
 I had my pocket pc connected to wifi network at my place so the whole process was lot faster than our Indian GPRS networks ;)

I am starting to like this tag application. I took a print out of couple of tag images and stuck them as notes all over my desk! lol it was fun.
Could have some true potential but I'm not sure how far would this go in terms of productivity. We gotta wait and see!

7:30pm - some wicked ideas creep into my mind 
I googled for some tag images made by others and woah, loads showed up! I am gonna go on tag scanning spree to see what info they hold!!  


Click here to see if you mobile reads microsoft Tag images. As a prerequisite, you should have the tag reader installed in your mobile. You can get it here. All major mobile OSes are supported.

And here's the tag to madzindia blog. If you feel generous, just take a print out of this one and stick it as a note in your desks ;)

Update: Consolidated tutorial on using Microsoft Tag

* Visit http://tag.microsoft.com and login to your live account.
* Click on create a tag on your dashboard
* Key in required details (sample below)

*create and render them in any format you see fit
*You are all set! Have fun and spread the word!

free apps for windows mobile

10 FREE Cool apps for windows mobile users

           Hey, so you are a proud owner of a shiny phone that runs Microsoft Windows Mobile? Impressive enough! Here’s top 10 must have 100% freewares that’s guaranteed to spice up your device!

PRODUCTIVITY

1. Your Personal Secretary!

For people who are “too busy” to answer a phone call, here’s one cool app that begs your attention. Say hello to Mobile secretary, an app that silently runs in the background carefully sending “I’m busy messages” to people whose calls you have missed! ;)

A preset message with custom text can be configured which is sent to all, select or anonymous callers as per your preference.

Download it here

2. Carry my books!

For people who love reading e-books, Foxit PDF reader is the way to go truly mobile! This software lets you read all your PDF/e-books on your windows mobile. Now go ahead, carry all those eBooks in your pocket!

Download it here

3. Thy call’eth van gogh!

So you think you can paint? Can you sketch out your works in parking lot? How about the ticket counter, or at the park? Well, now you can! Say hello to “Vs painter lite”, a full fledged painting software for that win mo. This amazing ppc software lets you paint and draw you’re your stylus, resembling a digital tablet pad! Definitely a great way to sketch your ideas that just crop up at unearthly time and place. Power of colors, now in your palm!

Download it here

4. Size Matters??

Yes, we all love to hate our tiny Windows mobile onscreen keyboard. If only it was a little bigger…Well, Get Swype! A nice glossy looking keyboard that’s big enough for your fingers and allows you to swipe across the screen for predictive text input.

Download it here

5. Secure my Pw3D!!

Do you have a load of user accounts on every existing website out in the wild? Or maybe you have multiple email accounts that gets you clicking the “Forgot Password” button each time you want to log in. Maybe we all are too paranoid to write down our credentials. Here’s one good application that will manage all your passwords. Just remember one little password for the app, let it do the rest.

Download it here

EVERYTHING ELSE

6. Movies on the move= Magic!

Sure Windows Media player is good enough, but how many times has it failed to playback your flvs,div x or other format avi? Try the “Core player” that performs extremely well and can play almost all of your video formats in your mobile! Yes it plays music files too.

Download it here

7. For the Adrenaline Junky!

If your Win-Mo has GPS, say hello to Sporty Pal, One nifty appz you wanna take along with you on your morning job. It does a good job of keeping track of your jog, biking, exercise sessions in personal profile system. Calculates hours exercised, calories burnt and stuff.

Download it here

8. Accelerometer + Gaming!

Modern day Win-Mo like the HTC diamond & others, come with gravity sensors or accelerometers as they call it technically, offers loads of hours of entertainment on the move. Follow the link here and choose the one you like! Psst, there’s one for the “grown ups” too ;)

Download it here

And hey, try out Guitar Hero III for mobile, Not free but hey an hour of fun is worth it.

9.Your own gig!

This is the most recommended appz and I personally love it. Get your own music band for free! Welcome the Omniano, a cool app that absolutely rocks when it comes to busting loads of time. You get a touch drum kit, a piano and a flute! Yes, its FLUTE! Similar to the iphone appz, just blow into the microphone and it plays flute in 6 different notes!

Download it here

10.Social Networking

Move along, you probably have this installed already! It’s the twitter, facebook, orkut, blog minis that enable you to tweet, blog, scream out to the web right from your mobile in the discomfort of the roads! ;)

Try out these apps and let me know how you liked em! All these apps are running on my ASUS win mo fine, Please verify compatibility before you install on yours.