SharePoint 2007 goes mobile

I already new that Office SharePoint 2007 was going to support mobile browser access,  but this article by Martin Kearn provides a good description and some images that show you what to expect (functional but ugly)

Anyway the post has an extra treat, it introduced me to the fact that you can download a networked emulator for the Pocket PC that you can use to actually try this integration with SharePoint out even if you don’t have a Pocket PC, and even if you do it should be great for demos over a web conference.  Here are the details from Martin’s site:

The easiest way to investigate this further is to get the Microsoft Windows Mobile emulator from http://msdn.microsoft.com/mobility/windowsmobile/downloads/emulatorpreview/default.aspx. Follow the instructions on the page for getting onto Betaplace and downloading the emulator.

Once you have the installation file, I suggest that you install it directly onto your SharePoint server. This way it is much easier to configure the networking between the server and the emulator.

The emulator will allow you to emulate a smart phone or PDA. I found that the PDA is easiest to work with. Follow these instructions to get a mobile view of SharePoint on your PDA emulator (you should be able to adapt them for SmartPhone if you are familiar with the SmartPhone interface)

–          Install the emulator and start the ‘Emulate Pocket PC-WM 2003 SE(Cold Boot)’ from your start menu

–          Map your real network card to the device by going to File > Configure > Network Tab > Enable ‘NE2000 PCMCIA adapter and bind to’ and click ‘OK’

Note: All of the following instructions are for the device interface itself, not the emulator application, unless otherwise stated.