Posted by Arne Hess - at Thursday, 12.10.06 - 17:47:46 CET under 01 - General News - Viewed 6528x
 The Microsoft Slam team on Monday announced the release of Slam 1.0: a Windows
Mobile social software client and service. Slam allows users to make and manage
social groups right from their phone for group-based messaging and photo
sharing. You can also use Slam through the SMS and/or web interfaces.
Slam is a Microsoft Research Community Technologies Group research project,
developed in conjunction with the Microsoft Photo and Imaging eXperience (PIX)
team. It is a (Windows) mobile device-based application that enables
lightweight, group-centric real-time communication, location awareness and
photo-sharing.
The core concept behind Slam is a "Slam", a group of people with whom you can
exchange messages and photos. When you send a message in Slam, it is
automatically sent to everyone in the group to which you sent it. For smartphone
users that have the Slam client installed, their phone will buzz and they will
have an indication on their phone's home screen that there is a new message. For
SMS users, they will receive the message as an SMS from the Slam server. Like
smartphone users, SMS users can be members of multiple slam groups. SMS users
will send/receive messages to a different phone number for each slam group they
a member of.
Slam users can also see where other people in their groups are on a map. The
Slam client will periodically let the server know where it is, then, when
someone in a group requests it, the server generates a map using MSN's Virtual
Earth with everybody's location marked. Of course, this only works from slam
smartphone clients, not SMS users. However, this feature does not require a GPS
device, as it attempts to determine location based on the cellular towers your
phone detects.
That said, you have to know that SLAM is only available for U.S. users at the
moment since it requires a U.S. phone number. Other MSISDNs are not allow yet
for registration. Also only Windows Mobile Smartphones are supported at the
moment; no word yet if and when Pocket PCs might follow.
Cheers ~ Arne
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