How To Demo Device Applications

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This past week, I was teaching the mobility lab in St. Louis with Denny (Architect Evangelist) and Loke (Windows Mobile team). On the first day, we spent part of the time talking about existing momentum and products. One of the applications that we talked about was Live Search for Windows Mobile. While we didn't show the application, we did mention the top capabilities (Virtual Earth maps and satellite imagery, movies and local theaters, traffic, search, gas prices, weather, GPS support, speech enabled, driving directions, etc). It's a nice little application. If you have it, go to https://wls.live.com. There's a download for Blackberries too.

On day 3, I asked if anyone could remember what we told them about Live Search. I got a few answers, but my guess was that not seeing it definitely did not allow their brains to internalize this well. It's just human nature, i.e. the more senses that you can engage, the better the teaching will stick.

So, this time, I gave them a tour using my Blackjack device, being displayed on the screen. To do this, you need a remote control application. As Loke has mentioned before, we have a licensed copy of SOTI's Pocket Controller.

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So, here is a picture of the SOTI application as it is displayed on my laptop. There are several interesting features here:

  • I can click on the device or on this SOTI application, to control the device.
  • SOTI provides a way to select a skin. I gladly show my Blackjack skin.
  • The SOTI menu provides a ton of features not discussed here (exploring the device, system information, command prompt, annotation, screen capture, video capture, zoom, file sync, etc).

The main point is that sometimes "a picture is worth a 1000 words".

If you need a free controller, see what Loke says about a free one.