When I started working on the Webcast series that Jim Wilson and I presented in January about using Windows Live Services on Windows Mobile Devices I was a bit skeptical. Surely, from a technical point of view it is not too hard to get access to Windows Live Services on the device. After all, most of these services use XML as transport means and they can be reached either as a Web Service or by using URL encoding. However, technical feasibility does not automatically lead to useful solutions. When I began explaining all the plumbing code that is necessary to call out to Windows Live Services I still had the idea that this was nice to show but I wondered if we really are waiting to use services like Live QnA and Live Expo on the device. However, when Jim tied all the pieces together all of a sudden it became clear to me that we have a powerful solution at reach. Especially Jim’s demo during part 4 of the series to make use of Live Search to maintain the contact list on your device was very convincing. Think about it. One of the harder things to do on a small form factor device is data entry. If you are on the road and if your device is connected you can make use of the phone book capabilities of Live Search to find phone numbers and addresses with a minimum amount of information like the contact name and town. Live Search can be used to lookup all the other details of your contact and you can store the additional information on your device. All of a sudden you have to enter less information. You can use the contact information in off line scenario’s as well and better still, all your applications that need contact information can benefit from the contacts you easily entered in this way. However, this is only one part of a potential success story. Retrieving contact information is cool, but if you look at the currently available Live Services we probably can do much more. A number of Live Services are focused on finding information. Live Search can find information on the Web, but also contains phone book information. Live Expo contains information about products that the world has to offer. In other words, this is yet another search engine, but now specifically for products in the broadest sense. You can look at this as a huge market place. Live QnA is a question and answer service. Everybody can ask questions and the whole world can answer them. All these services can be reached from your device and you don’t have to run them in a browser. Using the techniques that we explained during the Webcast series, you can also incorporate those services inside your own client applications, making these applications more powerful. Think about the following scenario. I am walking in Seattle and I really have a craving for Thai food. Suppose I am not familiar with restaurants in Seattle here is what I could do. I just take my Windows Mobile device to the nearest Starbucks since I know they offer wireless Internet access. Being in Seattle it is not too hard to find that nearest Starbucks. It is harder to figure out which one to enter, given the fact that there is a Starbucks on each and every street corner. After ordering my favorite triple espresso I begin looking for a cool restaurant. Inside my Windows Mobile device I start my brand new restaurant finder application, a smart client application. The application stores a list of all my favorite restaurants in a SQL Server Compact Edition database. Since I am new to Seattle in this scenario I don’t have restaurants stored for this part of the Pacific Northwest. However, my application is aware of the fact that I am connected to the Internet; after all I am drinking my coffee in a place where they provide wireless Internet access. Using my application I create a question like “What is your favorite Thai restaurant in Seattle” and post that question to Live QnA. This service returns an RSS feed containing all answers. After a while I check for answers and the majority of people like a place called Thai Ginger. Now I can do a few other things. Maybe I want to find out if they have their menu published on Live Expo. Feeding the name of the restaurant to Live Expo might give me some results. Another thing I want to do is find out where they are located. Since all people answering me on Live QnA only gave the name of the restaurant I will use Live Search to find its contact information. Live Search provides me with a phone number and an address. The next thing I might want to do is update my SQL Server Compact Edition database to add this new restaurant. My application also stores its phone number and address in my Pocket Outlook Contacts list. Hey, using my application I can immediately call them to make a reservation. Oh, finally there is one more thing to do. Since I am at a Starbucks and I don’t have a clue how to go to Thai Ginger I need some more services. Luckily my device has a build-in GPS receiver. Using yet another set of services (MapPoint, MapPoint Location and Virtual Earth I can get a route to the restaurant and even maps in 3D view. I got all of this information while enjoying my triple espresso. Finally my application has one cool last feature. Using services provided by Live Meeting I see that one of my friends is in Seattle as well, actually not too far away from me. I ping my friend and we decide to have dinner together in this restaurant that was highly recommended by the community. I hope you get the idea. This is a powerful application that definitely brings more value to my SmartPhone or PocketPC. And this is just one simple scenario. The only problem here: The application I just described does not exist yet. However, with the information that Jim and I provided during our Windows Live on Windows Mobile Devices webcast series it should not be too hard to create that application. After all, we are not talking about rocket science here, but simply about software that talks to other software to provide us with powerful information. Next thing to do for me is start Visual Studio 2005 and begin developing this application. Next time I am in Seattle I know for sure that I will end up at 6^th and Pine in Seattle to eat some great Thai food.