MICROSOFT WINDOWS EMBEDDED DEVWIRE - September 2006 Edition

Windows CE Shared Source Contest winners announced The first-ever Windows CE Shared Source Contest has drawn to a close, and three winning submissions have been awarded Xbox 360 game consoles and other goodies. • First Place: Smart Cameras for Smart Conference Rooms (video, whitepaper, source code) • Second Place: Rear-View Toddler Cam (video, whitepaper, source code) • Third Place: StreetBlog (video, whitepaper, source code)

The contest, which ran from May 23 through July 28, challenged developers to create an exciting Windows CE-based real-world project. The official theme of the contest, co-sponsored by Microsoft's Mobile and Embedded Devices (MED) group and WindowsForDevices.com, was "Show-It-Off at the Shared Source Project Competition." Contest participants were encouraged to create cool, practical projects combining Windows CE 5.0 along with either or both of two Shared Source components -- the Windows CE WebCam driver and/or the Windows CE DVR engine.

Virtual Labs for Windows CE 6.0 Register for the Windows CE 6.0 virtual lab "Introduction to Building/Debugging Operating System Images." The objective of this virtual lab is to provide an overview of Windows CE 6 platform builder features. To achieve this you will create, customize, build, download and debug a Windows CE image on the Microsoft Device Emulator. Visit MSDN Virtual Labs for more information.

Two Windows XP Embedded Sessions to Be Presented in TechEd China in September Two sessions on Windows XP Embedded will be presented in TechEd China to be held in 3 cities Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou in late September. The two sessions are:Session 1: Quick Introduction to XPe. It covers the basics of the Tools, Components and Enabled Embedded Features, explains benefits of XPe over XP-Pro and a basic comparison of XPe to CE. It will also cover how to use XPe to bring your devices to the market in the Embedded Ecosystem. It's a 100 level presentation. Target audience would be people not familiar with the platform at all. It's also good for CTOs to IT Pros and developers familiar with other embedded platform, such as Windows CE.Session 2: Discussion of XPe's Tools, Components and Enabled Embedded Features in length with demos. It will also cover the work we're doing in the Feature Pack due to RTM this fall. It is a 200 level presentation that builds on the first presentation above. The session will demo building a runtime using CHS MUI to show the benefits of XPe over XP Pro. It will also demo other key features of the latest release XPe SP2, plus some new features from the Feature Pack to be released.If you are going to the conference, be sure to check out the sessions. For more information on TechEd China, please check the website: https://www.microsoft.com/china/technet/TechEd/default.asp.

Windows XP Embedded Feature Pack 2007 Community Technology Preview Released We are excited to announce that on July 31st we released the first Community Tech Preview (CTP) download for Windows XP Embedded Service Pack 2 Feature Pack 2007! Among our biggest goals in this Feature Pack are to improve the developer's experience and to enable new capabilities and Microsoft technologies on your embedded device. The most interesting aspects of this Feature Pack are: • New EEFs! Such as File Based Write Filter and Registry Filter. • USB Boot! Yes, this is native USB Boot capability in XPe! • Enhancements to EWF and Hibernate Once Resume Many • Many of the bug fixes you've been asking for in the Tools (such as Target Designer, CMI, Import Framework, SLX/XML usability) • New command line tool that replicates Target Designer, enables you to script your builds and much much more! • Tons of work on component dependencies to reduce footprint (including removing dependencies to the full "Internet Explorer" component! ) • We've added new configurable UI to common components to simplify your offline configuration of images • New components added to the database to address more Application Compatibility challenges • New macro components to allow installation of other Microsoft technologies in your runtime • All security patches for XPe-SP2 rolled up to the Feature Pack repository

For detailed instructions on how to join the program and participate in early testing, please visit the article on the Embedded Windows team blog site: https://blogs.msdn.com/embedded/archive/2006/07/10/660998.aspx

So far we have close to 1000 downloads and 35+ customer logged bugs from the Connect site. The Feature Pack is scheduled to RTM later this year.

Developers Needed to Participate in Microsoft Usability Research Microsoft Usability Research has an ongoing need for professional developers to take part in Usability research studies. We need real feedback from real users to make the next generation of server products and developer tools better than ever. Usability studies typically take 2 hours or less and are scheduled at your convenience. You'll get to take a look at products under development, give us your honest feedback, and have a direct impact on the development of those products! In addition, each study participant will receive a hardware or software gratuity. Choices include several of our software packages such as Visual Studio Professional, Office 2003 Professional. Xbox games, wireless keyboard/mouse combinations and much more! Interested? Sign up today.

 

Posted by Jason Hoobler

Comments

• Anonymous
  May 01, 2007
  I am great appreciator of win CE.