Steps to create better meeting

Given our love for meetings, we need to make them more effective. Having recently “enjoyed” several truly pointless meetings, I know there’s a better way.

1. Make sure the meeting has a clear purpose. If I could scream this, I would: “What is the purpose of this meeting?” If you can’t define the purpose clearly, or you’re obfuscating it in order to get me into the meeting then shame on you.
2. Avoid suspense. There’s no place in meetings for suspense. Whether you’re delivering bad news or good news - just get to the point. You can explain all the circumstances of your news after the fact, but don’t keep people sitting around waiting.
3. Document what’s going on. The best thing about a meeting is not remembering what was talked about 5 minutes after it was finished. I suppose to avoid pointless meetings I could say, “be remarkable and memorable” but barring that, pick one person as secretary and have them distribute their notes later on.
4. Avoid distractions. Every meeting has at least one guy that’s distracted by something. He’s looking at his computer screen, staring out the window, signaling to people walking by the conference room, or picking his nose. Boot his butt out of there, he’s Mr. Pointless Meeting.
5. Have an agenda. This won’t work for impromptu meetings, but an agenda is a very good way to keep people on track. Distribute it beforehand. Don’t ask for everyone’s approval. If you do, and don’t get it, you’ll have a harder time following the agenda. Agendas are an opt-out effort; if someone doesn’t put in suggestions or request changes (or respond in any way) they’ve - by default - accepted the agenda.
6. Avoid regular meetings if there’s no agenda. Following point #4, if you’re having a regular, weekly meeting but there’s no agenda, why have the meeting? If you say “habit” then poke yourself in the eye. Meetings aren’t meant to satisfy your need for organization and habitual, mindless behaviors; they’re there to solve problems.
7. Schedule something critical right after. If you have the sense that a meeting may be pointless schedule something important right after. Tell the attendees as soon as you get in there, so you’ve got an escape route setup. You could always fake it, or even have someone call you during the meeting to get out, but it’s much more effective if you legitimately have to move on. It’ll help you keep others focused, moving through the agenda and accomplishing something.

Wireless doorbell rings you in

After testing the technology in its home Dutch market, wireless startup Waleli now plans to sell its GSM Doorbell internationally, beginning in northern Europe, the company said Tuesday.

The wireless doorbell allows apartment dwellers, home owners, and small businesses to answer their doorbell, talk to visitors, and even open the door remotely with their GSM phones.

The GSM Doorbell consists of four parts: an intercom, an electronic lock, a GSM-enabled doorbell, and a SIM (subscriber identification module) for the GSM device.

When someone presses the doorbell device, it rings your handset, allowing you to communicate with visitors and, by entering a pincode, to grant them access to your home, all without having to leave your location.

The technology can be useful when dealing with delivery people, door-to-door solicitors, and many others who need or want to stop by. And you don't have to worry about locking yourself out of the house or apartment again because the machine will recognize your mobile's number and unlock the door for you

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Google VP: Mobile phones the future of the Internet

The future growth of the Internet lies in the hands of mobile phone users, not computers, according to Google Vice President Vinton Cerf. Speaking in Bangalore, India this morning, Cerf said to reporters that while the Internet population has exploded from 50 million to 1.1 billion since 1997, it still only reaches a sixth of the world's population.

The only way to reach the remaining 5.5 billion people on the planet will be to make it more affordable to access the Internet, according to Cerf. Internet access via mobile phone has been slowly gaining momentum in developed countries—over 50 percent of those surveyed toward the end of 2005 had used at least one data service on their phones. However, such mobile access could be the key to quickly getting large populations in developing countries online due of the marginal cost of a mobile phone compared to a computer.

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Explore the world with free maps on your mobile

A nice software offering from Nokia, the charging model will be in conjunction with operators, they will charge a subscription for turn-by-turn directions.

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Vista Windows Mobiles Device Center Walk Through

Chris Leckness is walking us through the Windows Mobile Device Center in Windows Vista.

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link to device centre Software

Free Ebooks

There are approximately 550 digital libraries separated alphabetically and by category, with over 500,000 unique ebooks


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Microvision To Demonstrate Breakthrough Ultra-Miniature “Thin Mint” Candy Sized Projection Display for Mobiles

Company Microvision to Unveil Tiny Display Module During Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas
REDMOND, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Microvision (NASDAQ:MVIS), the global leader in light scanning technologies for display and imaging products, announced today that it will unveil and demonstrate during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas an ultra-thin, miniature full-color projection display that is small enough to be embedded in portable hand-held devices including mobile phones. The miniature projection display prototype, based on Microvision’s proprietary Integrated Photonics Module (IPM), has been developed in collaboration with one of the Company’s high volume manufacturing partners to position Microvision to deliver mobile users worldwide a large screen viewing experience inside a thin and sleek portable package. “Small, two inch displays that are common to mobile devices such as cell phones are barriers to growth of exciting mobility markets, because they limit the user viewing experience,” said Alexander Tokman, President and CEO of Microvision. “Our projection display solution is expected to eliminate this bottleneck, benefiting consumers, mobile operators, content providers, and consumer electronics OEMs. As our display is further optimized for high volume manufacturing, OEMs are expected to create a new generation of mobile devices with powerful projection display capabilities. Content providers should benefit by expanding their portfolio of visually rich content and application services. Mobile operators should benefit from an enhanced user experience by increased adoption of mobile data services such as mobile TV. Consumers should be able to obtain a radically new viewing experience by projecting photos, videos, movies, and TV from personal mobile devices onto virtually any surface for entertaining and sharing with friends and family -- whenever, wherever.” The image produced by Microvision’s display is extremely sharp and vivid whether being projected to view an image the size of a laptop screen or further away to view an image the size of a big screen plasma TV. Currently measuring a slim 8 mm this extremely small display package, about the size of a “thin mint” chocolate candy or the generation two iPod® shuffle, has been dramatically miniaturized to 1/10 the size of the company’s original prototype shown in June 2006 at the Society for Information Display. The Company and its high volume manufacturing partners will continue to develop this exciting technology into products that are expected to meet very aggressive market requirements for size, power, cost, and performance. Microvision plans to demonstrate the projection display prototype at private showings for prospective global OEM customers, members of the media and institutional investors during the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, January 7 – 11. The company is showcasing how its display could be embedded directly into a device like a mobile phone, as well as be used as a standalone accessory display with a variety of mobile devices. “This development represents a major milestone in the company’s turnaround and growth strategy set in place in 2006,” – concluded Tokman. “Our product development team has done an outstanding job and we believe that our customers and partners will be delighted by what we have to show during CES.”

Internet Tablet Nokia N800

The Nokia N800 is the follow-up to the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, building on the Maemo Linux platform developed by Nokia. The N800 uses the third incarnation of Maemo, called the Internet Tablet OS 2007 edition which adds a few new features to the 2006 edition (which in itself was a huge improvement over the original platform).

It's roughly the same size as its predecessor - the Nokia N800 measures 75x144x13mm and weighs 206 grams. The 770 was 230 grams in its protective case, and 185 grams without it. The N800 shares the same excelled 800x480 pixel display of its predecessor.. this is a very high resolution display that puts the competition to shame. The N800 adds a webcam plus improvements to the tablet's WiFi and Bluetooth implementation. One key weakness of the old 770 was a lack of internal memory, and this has been increased in the N800. The N800 also accepts a wide variety of memory cards, including RS-MMS, miniSD, microSD and MMCmobile units, which gives a great deal of flexibility. One nice touch is that the N800 has an integrated stand, one of the first things that got lost on the older 770. It's important to note that the Nokia N800 isn't a phone, although it will support Skype in the future. Connectivity is either through the N800's WLAN adapter, or via a Bluetooth phone. The 770 wasn't limited to Nokia phones either, so you should be able to use just about any Bluetooth handset with the N800, including 3G, EV-DO and HSDPA phones.

The range of software available now and in the future for the Nokia N800 demostrates clearly that this is an ultra-compact computer. There's a version of the Opera web browser, an email client, RSS newsreader, multimedia player, games plus a range of utilities and other applications. It will also be possible to use the N800 with a GPS receiver as a satellite navigation system.

The Nokia N800 has different looks too - the 770 was a bit "retro futuristic", the N800 is more polished and contemporary. Either way, both Nokia internet tablets have plenty of "wow" factor.. especially when people see the quality of the display.

You could regard the Nokia N800 as "version 2.0" of the Nokia Internet Tablet. The original version of the 770 had plenty of rough edges (call it "version 1.0") which were largely fixed by the 2006 OS (call it "version 1.1"). Perhaps the N800 will be polished enough to make it a proper consumer product, whereas the old 770 was really for enthusiasts.

The Nokia N800 is available now in the US and soon in certain European markets at around €400 / US$400

China to Make USB the Standard for Cellphone Charging

China is moving to standardize all cellular phones sold in the country to using the USB port for charging. The thought is that having one charger for every brand of cell phone will make it easier for consumers. It will make it easier on consumers, but cut into the profits for he accessory makers. I would imagine that if China standardizes to USB, we will likely see all cellular phones going to the same standard. However, China has set no date at which they will begin enforcing the standard.

Videos explore Windows Embedded CE 6

Break out the popcorn, sit back, relax, and enjoy the following videos, which are located in the MSDN "Channel 9" area:

• What’s New in the Windows CE 6 Beta Platform Builder Tools -- Jonathan Lyons, program manager on the CE 6.0 Platform Builder IDE Team walks through the process of bringing up an OS design for a device, adding an application, and customizing the application using the new Platform Builder Tools in Visual Studio 2005. This is a 2-parter with Part 2 here.
  
  
• Driver Development and Much More With Mike Calligaro -- In addition to discussing Windows CE device drivers, Calligaro reminices about his 13-year career at Microsoft including work on the Sega Dreamcast, an early attempt at video-on-demand.
  
  
• Understanding the Primary OEM Performance Tools -- Sue Loh, Software Design Engineer on the Platform Builder Remote Tools Team, discusses the two most important performance tools for Windows CE OEMs -- the kernel profiler and CeLog / Remote Kernel Tracker. Some familiarity with the tools is assumed as the discussion focuses on the relationship between the two.
  
  
• Collecting Thread Data Without Remote Kernel Tracker -- Sue Loh shows how to collect CeLog threading data without a connection to Remote Kernel Tracker. This is a core method for collecting performance data on a standalone device. She also shows how to look at the data using a command-line parsing tool, readlog.
  
  
• Analyzing Physical and Virtual Memory Usage Using Control Window Commands -- Sue Loh again, this time demonstrating how to look at virtual and physical memory usage on a device using control window commands. Loh uses the Target Control Window to examine memory usage, and explains how to read memory dumps.
  
  
• Application Compatibility -- Migrating Windows CE 5.0 Application to Windows Embedded CE 6.0 -- Senior Technical Product Manager Mike Hall demonstrates the new Application Compatibility Tool. The CEAppCompat Tool reads executables and device drivers, and provides HTML results showing which called APIs are no longer supported in CE 6.0, APIs that are only supported in the kernel, and APIs that may not be supported in the future.
  
  
• Managed Application development for Windows Embedded CE 6.0 -- Mike Hall demonstrates how to configure a baseline CE 6.0 operating system (OS) image and then add the components needed to support a managed application within Visual Studio 2005 as the application development tool. Hall shows how to get an IP address and then configure Visual Studio 2005 to deploy an application to the running OS image.
  

Oh, and when you're finished with the above new videos, be sure to check out the link below.

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How to Turn an Ordinary Photo Into an Extraordinary Photo

A simple Photoshop tutorial that will show you how to liven up an old image and transform it from ordinary picture to an Extraordinary photo!

Integrated Photonics Module Brings Big Screens to Mobiles

It will be handy to project your Smartphone screen on the nearest wall. MicroVisions PicoP is just the thing. Nice for editing email and business presentations. Just add the i.tech Virtual KB, and you have the next generation phone.

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Understanding Mobile 2.0

Written by Rudy De Waele of m-trends.org and edited by Richard MacManus. This kicks off a mini-series of posts on the topic of Mobile 2.0.

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Microsoft begins private beta of VoIP server

Microsoft today opened a private beta of its new enterprise voice communications server , Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, to 2,500 IT professionals. The new server is aimed at allowing companies to integrate voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) technology into existing telephony infrastructure and is the successor to Microsoft Live Communications Server 2005.

MOTOROKR E6

Motorola has announced it’s about to start shipping its new MOTOROKR E6. The MOTOROKR E6 will offer RealPlayer music library synchronization on your PC and a built-in FM radio to keep you entertained plus full-size SD card support. Moto is also touting the phone’s PDA-like capabilities including business card reader, POP3 email capability, doc viewer for Word and Excel files and a nice big juicy 2.4 inch touch screen display, stylus included. (No WiFi or 3G capabilities apparently.)

Crossloop Simple Secure Screen Sharing

I just found this on the net looks like a good tool to support remote pcs

www.crossloop.com/index.html

# Connect Any Two PCs on Earth
# Simple, Easy-To-Use Interface
# Fully Encrypted Help Sessions
# Works through Firewalls and NAT
# Secure Screen Sharing in under Sixty Seconds

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Windows Embedded CE 6.0 documentation online

Microsoft's MSDN developer website is hosting an extensive collection of Windows Embedded CE 6.0 documentation online. The series begins with a thorough introduction to CE 6.0 that reviews the kernel architecture and what's new in this latest release. Subsequent articles cover application and driver development, hardware platform bring-up, and more.

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Vista and Office 2007 Microsoft webcasts

Free webcast well worth a look

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