Microsoft® Windows Mobile® 6 Consumer Solution Accelerator

Brief Description

The Consumer Solution Accelerator for Windows Mobile is designed to help developers see how they can harness the power of Windows Mobile to craft compelling consumer solutions. The Consumer Solution Accelerator consists of a documented sample Visual Studio project as well as documents which detail the creation of the project and how it functions.

Overview

The Consumer Solution Accelerator (“Meeting Assistant”) showcases a mobile consumer application written in Microsoft® Visual C#® and Microsoft Visual C++® using Microsoft Visual Studio® 2008. This .NET Compact Framework 3.5 application assists a user who is travelling to a meeting. The application can:

Display maps and other location data relevant to the user.

Estimate how long it will take to get to the meeting.

Notify other meeting attendees if you are going to be late.

The application will interact with the mobile device’s built-in Calendar and Contacts applications, use the device’s GPS receiver (if available), use the device’s SMS capability, and use Microsoft Virtual Earth™ Web services. Application Features and Functionality Starting the Meeting Assistant Application The user launches the application from an appointment’s context menu in the Calendar application, and the application tries to use the location data from the appointment to retrieve location data for the meeting. This location data includes:

Map images

Car parking details

If necessary, it is possible to fix or override the meeting location from within the Meeting Assistant application. The application caches the location data to avoid having to re-download it every time the user runs the application. Tracking Progress After the user has launched the application, it will periodically use GPS positional data and Virtual Earth to calculate an estimated time of arrival (ETA) at the meeting location. The application assumes that the user is travelling by car. If the application determines that the user will be late for the meeting, it will offer the user the option to send SMS or e-mail messages to other attendees to inform them of the new ETA. These messages will include the new ETA and, optionally, the user’s current location. The user will also be able to override the ETA calculated by the application. Removing Cached Location Data The application automatically removes cached location data from old meetings. Display Meeting Updates The application can receive specially formatted SMS messages from other meeting attendees, sent by the application running on another device if another attendee is running late.

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