Today I got notice that I have once again been honored as Microsoft MVP for 2008 in Visual Developer - Device Application Development. Thanks again to Microsoft, Mobile Product Team, my MVP lead Mehmet Emre and all those who have supported my community work past year.

My MVP Profile

While Microsoft's Flash competitor Silverlight is still not available for Windows Mobile (except Microsoft internal Betas), Nokia today announced plans to make Microsoft Silverlight available for S60 on Symbian OS smartphones as well as for Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets. Adding support for Silverlight will extend opportunities for developers to create rich, interactive applications that run on multiple platforms in a consistent and reliable way.
Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering next-generation media experiences and rich interactive applications.

Silverlight is already powering thousands of applications around the world and organizations including Entertainment Tonight, the NBA and NBC Universal to deliver superior Web-based experiences to their customers. The arrangement with Nokia will substantially extend the reach of Silverlight by making the platform available for hundreds of millions of devices, including S60 on Symbian smartphones from a range of manufacturers, as well as Nokia Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets.

Microsoft will demonstrate Silverlight on S60 during the opening keyote at Microsoft's MIX08 conference on March 5 in Las Vegas. Silverlight is intended to be available to S60 developers later this year with initial service delivery anticipated shortly thereafter for all S60 licensees. This will allow S60 application developers to use an even wider range of development environments for S60 on Symbian OS than today. Today S60 developers can use: C++ (using native Symbian OS APIs and Open C providing subset of standard POSIX libraries), S60 Web Run-time (supporting standards-based web technologies such as Ajax, JavaScript, CSS and HTML), the Java language, Flash Lite from Adobe, and Python.

Microsoft Silverlight availability for Nokia Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets will be confirmed later. When will Microsoft announce Silverlight's Windows Mobile availability?

Microsoft will soon release version 2.5 of its .NET Micro Framework platform for low-end embedded processors. The new release adds support for networking via a native TCP/IP stack, and for Web Services on Devices (WSD), according to postings on the .NET Micro Framework Team's blog.

Microsoft released .NET MF version 2.0 in February 2007, and .NET MF 2.0, Service Pack 1 in September. However, these releases still did not include a native TCP/IP stack, which was listed as "coming soon." Therefore, networking a .NET MF device has required calling through to an underlying operating system with sockets support, according to the company.

Version 2.5 of .NET MF will now offer a stack that is available even when running directly on the hardware. Device makers need only provide a driver for the network interface. This will result in a wider selection of network-capable hardware development platforms for developers to choose from, Microsoft says.

The company adds that the new version of .NET MF will also include client and server support for Web Services on Devices, also known as Device Profile for Web Services (DPWS). Already part of Windows Vista and Windows CE 6.0 Release 2, this "enables a USB-like level of plug-and-play for networked devices," in the company's words. DPWS-enabled devices on a network can discover one another, then invoke the functionality each device provides.

Further specifics of .NET MF, version 2.5, were not provided, nor has a release date been announced. However, according to the .NET MF team, the new version should appear in "early 2008."

For further information, see the blog posting, here.