MS SideShow Beta for PPC released

[bedoig]

MS recently released a beta application to use your PPC as a bluetooth SideShow device.

From the SideShow team blog:

SideShow for Windows Mobile Developer Preview Released @ TechReady 2008!

Today we released the Windows SideShow for Windows Mobile Developer Preview. Now any Windows Mobile 5 or 6 phone can work as a Bluetooth Windows SideShow device! We've got some favorite uses of it already, including using it to control PowerPoint presentations while viewing the speaker notes, using it as a remote control to Windows Media Player, and viewing RSS feeds on the road. Really, though, we’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s possible here, and developers have the opportunity to invent a whole new range of scenarios using the software and the Managed API SDK (see below) that allows Visual Basic and C# development, so we’re really excited to see what’s going to come out next. Enjoy!


GoGadgets had an app out there that would do the same thing, but it is nice to see MS finally getting involved.

Download here.

Edit: Full package and cab installer attached.

[devren]

Anyone else check this out. It works I guess but there really aren't any useful gadgets. Windows media player is not bad though.

[bedoig]

I think the powerpoint gadget could be pretty useful, if you ever give PPT presentations (which I don't).

At this point the only one I really use is the WMP gadget. I've tried a few other remote media control programs, and this works as well as any. It's good for controlling music at parties, etc.

The home screen looks good, and has some nice animations between gadgets. The rest is fairly plain. Functional, logical, and easy to use...just not pretty. Here are some screenshots of the WMP and Mail gadgets if anyone is interested. There is also a Today plugin that you can see in the last shot.

[datawrhsdoc]

Too bad this doesn't work with Windows XP as the host system.

-Doc