THE WINDOWSFORDEVICES.COM WEEKLY NEWSLETTER WindowsForDevices.com Newsletter -- December 2, 2002 

Monday, December 2, 2002

By Alexander Wolfe, executive editor


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***************** THIS WEEK'S SPONSOR *****************************
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IN THIS ISSUE:

1) PERSPECTIVE: DOES EMBEDDED SYSTEMS/SPRING STILL CUT IT?
2) INTEL SEES MULTI-HOP WIRELESS NETS
3) CE DEVELOPERS TALK TECHNICAL TURKEY ON YAHOO
4) BILL GATES SAYS JAN 8 IS SMART DISPLAY DATE
5) GET YOUR FREE SOFTWARE: EMBEDDED VISUAL C++ 4.0
6) "XBOX LIVE" IN ONLINE RAMPAGE
7) TRANSMETA PREVIEWS 'CRUSOE' SUCCESSOR
8) VISUAL STUDIO, FRAMEWORK.NET GET READY TO ROLL

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1) PERSPECTIVE: DOES ESC/BOSTON STILL CUT IT?

Is the Embedded Systems Conference under pressure? Maybe so, if 
last month's edition of ESC/Fall, held at Boston's Hynes convention
center, is any indication. Of course, ESC in Boston has long played
 second fiddle to the much larger spring incarnation of the show. 
Indeed, for the last few years at least, the received wisdom among 
embedded-industry veterans has analogized ESC/Spring to the 
"Big Bang" theory of cosmology. Namely, the spring session, 
lately held in April in San Jose, Calif., has gotten too 
big and is about to recede in on itself. (Though it's not expected 
to implode; any analogy along those lines would more appropriately
applied to Comdex.)

So while ESC in Boston may have always suffered by comparison to
ESC/Spring, it's always had a much lower base of expectations. And
of course Boston is on the East Coast. Though once a center of 
high-tech, and still home to many embedded developers, the 
Northeast hardly has the potential attendee population of the 
Valley.

All of this perhaps dovetails with the reason that, personally, 
I've always loved spending a day at ESC in Boston. (And if I've 
stretched it, I've usually been able to justify a day and an 
overnight.) Namely, it's such a quiet conference. A place 
to have a leisurely dinner, spend time with an old acquaintance, 
actually ATTEND A CONFERENCE SESSION. All those things that are 
impossible to do amid the "Hi, oh-I-see-somebody-across-the-room-
who's-more-important-than-you-are, so long" atmosphere of the 
West Coast version.

More importantly, analysts at the market forecasting firm of 
Venture Development Corp. have discerned an emerging trend of 
interest to people who do embedded for a living. In their latest 
report, the VDC folks write: "In speaking with many companies at 
the show, we heard well articulated strategies based around 
attacking specific vertical markets or device categories, which 
matched up well with each company's technology, product offerings,
 internal knowledge and chosen business model. This speaks to a 
larger issue, which is the transforming of embedded systems 
vendors from being technology driven, to marketing and customer 
driven."

Say that again three times slowly: "transformed from being 
technology driven, to marketing and customer driven. Now think 
about what that means. In all cars I've ever been in, whopper's in
 the front seat usually does the driving. So if the person who 
used to be in the back seat suddenly unseats the person in the 
front seat, that means you've got that back-seat driver 
controlling the vehicle. As that (marketing-or customer-type) 
person's not likely to be an engineer, would one think that he 
would try to assess on a tough, rational basis any information
he needs to successfully navigate the road? Or rather (Mr. Spock),
 would he more likely go for what's presented in the most enticing
 manner?

story

2) INTEL SEES MULTI-HOP WIRELESS NETS
How will we build wireless networks robust enough to support 
multimedia-aware digital homes chock a block with laptops, TVs, DVD
players, and camcorders? Intel thinks we'll do it with 
self-organizing multi-hop wireless nets. These nets will serve to 
bridge both data and consumer electronics devices, and they'll 
have to support higher bandwidths, lower latencies, and wider 
geographical coverage.

story


3) CE DEVELOPERS TALK TECHNICAL TURKEY ON YAHOO
Got a question about Winsock programming? Trying to figure out how
 to speed up the execution of perl under CE? Looking for source 
code for an ftp client? We've uncovered a little-known forum where
 software pros like yourself discuss these and about 1,100 other 
Windows CE developer-oriented questions. It's Yahoo's special 
interest "wince-devel" group. While much of the focus is on open 
source for CE platforms, there's also buried treasure in the form 
of CE bug lists, workarounds, and useful tech hints

story


4) BILL GATES SAYS JAN 8 IS SMART DISPLAY DATE
The first 'smart displays'--formerly 'Mira'--will ship starting 
Jan. 8, 2003, according to Microsoft chairman Bill Gates.. Two 
models from ViewSonic will be first out of the box. And they're 
not going to be cheap--around $1,000, according to initial 
reports. That could be significant, since some market analysts 
believe consumer prices of more than $400 or so will result in 
slow adoption.

Smart displays are essentially wireless Web pads which work as
untethered, touch-screen monitors for a user's deskbound PC. Other
vendors readying smart displays include Fujitsu, LG Electronics 
Inc., NEC Corp., Philips, Tatung, and Wyse Technology Inc.

story


5) GET YOUR FREE SOFTWARE: EMBEDDED VISUAL C++ 4.0
Along with evaluation copies of Windows CE.NET, Microsoft has been
handing out CDs of its Embedded Visual C++ 4.0 tool. In case you 
don't have yours yet, we noticed that the latter is available as a
free download.

Embedded Visual C++ is billed as a complete desktop development
environment for creating applications and system components for
CE.NET-based devices. Features new to 4.0 include C++ exception 
handling, Run Time Type Information (RTTI), include STL library 
components, and lots of new debugger functionality. System 
requirements are a 450 MHz or faster Pentium II; and Windows 2000
professional or XP professional.

story

6) 'XBOX LIVE' IN ONLINE RAMPAGE
Microsoft's 'Xbox Live' online game initiative, which we told you 
about in our previous newsletter, is off to something of a 
stunning start. More than 150,000 starter kits were sold within 
one week of launch.

The service is billed as the ultimate online arena for 
collaborative gaming. We see it as an attempt to move a successful
embedded platform--Xbox--away from an "each user is a island" 
model into a networked consumer-electronics entertainment 
paradigm. If successful (or even if not), this could be 
Microsoft's first of many networking moves to tie together all of 
its digital media technologies.

On its sign-up ads, Microsoft has posted the obligatory warning 
that only persons 18 or older are eligible to subscribe. So we 
hope all those adolescent game enthusiasts have been checking with
 their parents first.

story
story
story

7) TRANSMETA PREVIEWS 'CRUSOE' SUCCESSOR
Upstart x86-compatible mobile-processor maker Transmeta has begun
previewing its new TM8000 microprocessor family. Code-names 
"Astro," the TM8000's are due in the middle of next year, when 
they will be positioned as successors to the company's current 
TM5000 "Crusoe" processors. Transmeta hopes Astro will compete 
successfully against Intel's upcoming "Banias" mobile processor. 
To date, Transmeta has carved out something of a niche in 
low-powered subnotebooks and in Tablet PCs. But it will need more 
design wins if it is to remain a long-term player.

story

8) VISUAL STUDIO, FRAMEWORK.NET GET READY TO ROLL
Microsoft has released its highly anticipated .NET Compact 
Framework for smart devices, which allows developers of Visual 
Studio apps to deploy their code on the Pocket PC, Pocket PC phone
edition, and other CE .NET-based devices. They've also unveiled 
the final beta of CE.NET- and XP Embedded-capable release of 
Visual Studio .NET 2003. Microsoft said it will soon lift 
licensing restrictions and allow beta customers of Visual Studio 
.NET 2003 to deploy production applications based on the
.NET Compact Framework.

The 2003 edition of Visual Studio, formerly code-named 'Everett,' 
has support for more than 200 web-enabled devices, according to 
Microsoft. Also supported are ASP.NET mobile controls for phones, 
pagers and wireless PDAs via the ASP.NET mobile controls. For 
front-line programming, Microsoft says it has upgraded the C++ so 
that it's almost completely ISO-compliant (an issue that has long 
been a sticking point for many developers).

story

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