Windows Phone 7 Business Features

New business and security features for the next update of Windows Phone 7 were outlined at Microsoft's Tech-Ed conference. From desktop synchronization to information management, Windows Phone 7 will challenge Android and Apple devices. And if Microsoft's acquisition of Skype is approved, it will be able to offer even more features.
Microsoft unveiled a new swath of business Relevant Products/Services-oriented capabilities for its next-generation Windows Phone 7 platform at the software Relevant Products/Services giant's Tech-Ed conference Relevant Products/Services in Atlanta on Monday. Among other things, the new mobile Relevant Products/Services platform, code-named Mango, will make it possible for mobile workers to synchronize their handset e-mail and calendars with the same apps Relevant Products/Services running on desktop Relevant Products/Services PCs or laptops and gain access Relevant Products/Services to hidden corporate Wi-Fi networks.

Slated for commercial release later this year, Mango will provide security Relevant Products/Services-conscious IT Relevant Products/Services departments with support Relevant Products/Services for complex alphanumeric passwords. Moreover, enterprises will be able to protect corporate e-mails and Microsoft Office documents through the application Relevant Products/Services of new information-rights-management technology Relevant Products/Services being built into Microsoft's mobile platform.

"Mango is a big release and we are seeing more and more capabilities come out," said Al Hilwa, director of applications software development at IDC. "At Tech-Ed the focus is on business, even though some of what's talked about is useful for both business and consumer, which is a hallmark of where we are in mobile technology now -- namely, that you can't easily divide the two anymore."

Strong Additions

Windows Phone 7 handset users running Mango will be able to search their company's Microsoft Exchange server for older e-mails no longer stored on the phone so mobile users will have ready access to all their messages. What's more, users will be able to save and share Relevant Products/Services Office documents through Office 365 and Windows Live SkyDrive as well as consolidate incoming e-mail messages into a conversation Relevant Products/Services view.

Microsoft also expects to provide business users with access to a set of unified Relevant Products/Services communications capabilities, including instant messaging Relevant Products/Services as well as the ability to see the presence of coworkers. The software giant's new mobile Lync app "will be a free download from Windows Phone Marketplace and will be enabled with support from your business organization," Microsoft blogger Paul Brian wrote.

Though Mango's new e-mail conversation view and back-end searching capabilities will be seen as strong additions by time-limited users, they should also prove useful for non-business back-end applications, Hilwa noted. "Overall, the capabilities for business create a front for Microsoft's Windows Phone marketing that it can use against Android and, to some extent, Apple," he said.

Leveraging Some Serious Assets

With Mango, Microsoft will be able to offer a significant number of features that many enterprises have been waiting for. However, the software giant has to continue to follow through over time by delivering a steady stream of innovations in later releases.

"They have to keep the features coming, because in some ways competitors like Apple have begun to focus on business as well," Hilwa observed. "But Microsoft has some serious assets and account-management strength that it can leverage here, and we are just starting to see the beginning of the story with these features."

Microsoft's recent deal to acquire Skype for $8.5 billion also gives the software giant control over strategic capabilities that have already become widely popular among small-business users across the world. If the acquisition passes regulatory scrutiny, Microsoft will be able to directly connect Relevant Products/Services Skype's 170 million users with Lync, Outlook, Xbox Live, and other communities.

The software giant expects Skype to eventually support a wide array of Microsoft devices, including Windows Phone 7 handsets, Xbox and Kinect. "There is no doubt that it will leverage Skype in mobile, gaming and business, but Mango was already in the works before the acquisition," Hilwa said. "So the Skype integration is likely [to come] in a post-Mango release.

Microsoft tech.ed 2011

Microsoft on Monday kicked off its TechEd North America conference in Atlanta with a focus on the cloud and devices, including details on Office 2010 SP1 and updates for Windows Phone 7.

The first service pack for Office 2010 and SharePoint will contain updates to improve stability, performance, and security. With it, Microsoft promised a better Internet Explorer 9 browsing experience, improved Office Web Apps functionality, and better SharePoint database performance. The service pack will consist of minor updates as well; including all public updates through June 2011 and all cumulative updates through April 2011, in addition to some previously unreleased fixes made specifically for this service pack. SP1 will be available for download at the end of June and will be offered as an automatic update 90 days later.

New Windows Phone 7 features include organization, security, and search enhancements in Microsoft Office Outlook Mobile. Outlook Mobile now has a conversation view, pinnable email folders, server search, and complex password support. Information Rights management is now included for email and documents as well as targeted distribution for business apps from the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Windows Phone 7 has also been updated to support Office 365. Users can access Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Lync Online. Microsoft Lync 2010 Mobile for Windows Phone, a solution to deliver unified communications to mobile workers, will be showcased for the first time at TechEd.

Robert Wahbe, corporate vice president for Microsoft Server and Tools Marketing, and Jason Zander, corporate vice president of Visual Studio, underscored Microsoft's heavy investment in the public and private cloud. The public cloud consists of Windows Azure, SQL Azure, Office 365, Dynamics CRM, and Windows Intune. Customers who want to run these products in their own private cloud can do so with Hyper-V (Microsoft's virtualization server) and System Center.

Wahbe also demonstrated how customers like HSBC and Travelocity are using Microsoft's virtualization and public and private cloud solutions. In addition, he said NetApp and Cisco Systems have joined the Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track program, designed to streamline the delivery of a private cloud. Zander focused on a new feature in the next version of Microsoft Visual Studio, the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) technologies, designed to ease application development and management for organizations.

Zander demonstrated a connector that links Microsoft System Center Operation Manager 2007 R2 and Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010. The connector enables an operations team to send application performance monitoring and diagnostic information immediately to the development team—the potential benefit being improved interaction between operations and development. ALM is available in Visual Studio 2010 with an MSDN subscription.

Other announcements include:

* Additional supported hypervisor scenarios for virtualized Exchange Server 2010, including Unified Messaging, combining Exchange's high availability solutions, Database Availability Groups (DAG) with hypervisor based clustering and failover solutions.
* An updated Exchange Server 2010 Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) program for Exchange 2010 server experts to get MCM certified.
* New license mobility options, which will be available on July 1, 2011 through Microsoft Volume License agreements with an active Software Assurance benefit. Customers will be able to deploy application services on-premise or through hosted service providers for the cloud.
* Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V will support Linux-based CentOS.
* Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) v3.5 Extension for SAML 2.0 Protocol enables .NET developers to build applications for the enterprise and government that require the SAML 2.0 (Security Assertion Markup Language) protocol.
* Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit beta 6.0 will be released on May 31. The toolkit provides data and analysis on IT infrastructure. It was designed to help ease the process of migrating existing software to a virtualized or cloud environment. Version 6.0 includes the ability to provide consolidation guidance for Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track Infrastructures, including computing power, network, and storage architectures.

ChevronWP7 custom ringtone manager screen

We now have the first WP7 homebrew application taking advantage of unlocked phones - a Windows Phone 7 custom ringtone manager.

The applications has two components

• Desktop application - used to build a custom XAP package with 5 custom ringtones you select from your computer (Requires .NET 4.0 Framework)
• XAP application - to be deployed to your WP7 to install custom ringtones to the system

Notes

• Ringtones have to be in the WMA format at 48KHz as required by the OS. We recommend using Expression Encoder 4 (free) to transcode any MP3s.
• Currently, to deploy the XAP you will have to use the Microsoft “Application Deployment” tool with the Windows Phone 7 Developer SDK. In the future, we hope to make available a standalone deployment solution for homebrew apps.
• U need to unlock your phone to Deployment Phone first by using MFG tools, before u can deploy the ringtone using Windows Phone 7 Developer Software.

With this app you can store SMS templates so you can quickly send them with a couple of taps without the need to type. More than that, it allows you to define variables or parameters which will be prompted in a friendly and easy way just before sending the SMS. The app will prepare the syntax and serve it to be ready for tap and send. Common uses? Many! For example:

• With your friends and people: to tell you will call back, a birthday salutation, to say you are arriving at any specific time, etc.
• To recharge or pay your cell phone bill
• For SMS banking operations
• For any other kind of SMS-command based systems: prepare fixed SMS syntaxes with variable parameters so you just enter the parameters before sending to perform the desired SMS operation.
• Or give it the particular usage you desire!

Key features

• Easy creation of SMS templates
• Parameters/variables which can be text, number, picklist, datestamp, timestamp or location-stamp.
• Manage unlimited categories for the templates, with a default SMS number for all
• Easily tap, fill the variables and send!

Download SMS machine (lite)


Download SMS machine (full)


Lite version limitations:

• Can only send to single SMS recipient at a time
• Has Ads
• Cannot attach GPS location map to the SMS, only coordinates.

More info at http://jdbp.mobi/smsmachine