This is way cool... You can give the home page of your Windows Mobile 2003 Smartphone or Pocket PC a nice Beta Experience look-and-feel. (For those that don't know the Beta Experience, have a look at http://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience.)

This is an example at how your Smartphone/Pocket PC home page can look like if you install the themes:

Smartphone theme

Pocket PC theme

You can install it on your own phone by following these steps:

• Download the file to your desktop PC.
• Copy the file to your mobile phone. (I placed it under "Storage/Windows", but I guess you can place it anywhere.)
• Start up the File Manager and go to the location where you stored the file.
• Click on the file and confirm the automatic installation of the theme.

It is possible to switch back to other home page skins at any time through the Settings menu.

Do not hesitate to drop me a note if you've installed them on your Smartphone/Pocket PC.

Note: If you decide to install the home page skin, you take full responsability for it. I had no problems installing it on my Windows Mobile 2003 powered Smartphone, but I cannot guarantee that it will work with yours too. Damage to your device, data loss or earthquakes (or anything else) are your own responsability if you decide to download and install these home pages.

Update: The files are now available from the Microsoft.com Download Center. I also updated the instructions.

Update April 2006: a new Beta Experience campaign started and a new Windows Mobile theme is available now.

On April 29th, the Visual C# and Windows Forms product teams are coming to Brussels for a full day of presentations on their products and technologies in Visual Studio 2005. Both Dan Fernandez (C# Product Manager) and Joe Stegman (Lead Program Manager for .NET Client team) are very experienced and good speakers. In fact, I still remember one presentation by Joe Stegman on WinForms 2.0 on PDC. In fact, I was so impressed that I even blogged about that particular session. More information and registration on http://www.microsoft.com/belux/msdn/events/.

BTW: Dan Fernandez invites for a meet up when he's in Brussels.

See you all in Brussels on April 29!

It seems we are teasing both our developers and IT professionals...

• Visual Studio 2005 - Beta Experience (live on April 11th 25th, now only information) 
• Gatekeeper Test (live on April 4th, now teaser video's available)

I know that "exciting" and "marvelous" and similar words tend to be perceived as "marketing talk". So to avoid these words, the least I can say is that it certainly looks promising.

Hey, we're looking for a new colleague in the team I work in. That person will become our IT Professional Evangelist. Just to be clear: this job is not oriented towards software developers.

One of my colleagues is also looking for someone to strengthen his team as IT Pro Audience Marketing Manager. There is a long explanation of the job on the website, but basically his responsabilities would be to run the TechNet program at Microsoft Belgium & Luxembourg. But I do recommend you to read the full page if you want to apply.

And those are only some of the open positions. You can find them all here...

Want to share an opinion with your co-workers? Are you tired of the standard screen savers? Do you want something else to decorate your screen while you are not working on your Tablet PC?

The "Ink Screen Saver for Tablet PC" from the Microsoft PowerToys for Tablet PC is something you must have. The "Handwriting Analysis Tool for Tablet PC" is also a cool tool that can help you to get the attention of even non-technical (geeky) people. And there are a whole lot more PowerToys for Tablet PC.

It's more than one week ago that we had the Developer & IT Pro Days. Amazingly enough, we are receiving a very high number of evaluations. Would the Motorola MPx-220 Smartphone contest have to do something with that?

Most of you already know by now that a few weeks ago I became the new developer audience manager and product manager for developer tools at Microsoft Belgium & Luxembourg. While I already did parts of the job for several months on "ad interim" basis, now it is official. And I'm sure we'll all continue to be part of a vibrant developer community.

On March 2nd, the "ASP.NET 2.0 On Tour" event will be helt in Belgium (Kinepolis, Brussels). It appears you are all very interested in learning about this upcoming technology according to the number of registrations that are coming in. I don't remember ever having that high number of registrations after only one week.