If you want to know anything about Windows Mobile, a great place to start is the Smartphone & Pocket PC Web site (http://www.PocketPCmag.com). There you will find our very active support Forums, Best Software Awards 2005 page, Encyclopedia of Software and Accessories, listing of the Best Sites for Windows Mobile users, Archives of past issues of the magazine, At A Glance device comparison chart, links to our Podcasts, free newsletter sign-up page, and more. Although it's a great place to begin your research, until recently it's been missing one important feature—fresh topical content updated daily. That changed recently with the addition of our new blogs (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/).
We've wanted to do this for some time, and recently several things happened to make it possible. First, we decided to redesign our Web site to make it more appealing and the content more accessible to users. We felt that this would be the perfect time to make fresh daily content a major part of the new design. Second, we noticed that one of our forum moderators was particularly prolific. Werner Ruotsalainen (a.k.a., "Menneisyys") has been posting on our forums and on many other Windows Mobile Web sites. His posts are detailed, well researched, and incredibly useful. We invited him to make our Web site (http://www.PocketPCmag.com) his home base, providing him his own home blog page.
Throughout the years, our magazine has attracted some very knowledge people who contribute an incredible amount of time judging our Best Software awards, moderating our forums, and writing articles for us. In fact, we receive so many articles that we're not able to publish them all. Since many of these people don't have the time, energy, or inclination to create and market their own Web sites to share their knowledge, we decided to provide them with their own page on our new Blogs. Initially, you'll find blog pages for the following frequent contributors: Dan Hanttula, who writes the regular "Get More" column for the magazine. He is also responsible for redesigning our site and setting up the Blogs; Allen Gall, or Games Editor; Ed Zabrek, our Medical Editor; Tari Akpodiete, the lead forum moderator for the Multimedia section of our forum; Bob Katayama, moderator for our forum's Developer and Support sections; and David Shier, our Wireless Editor. You'll also find blog pages for our great contributors, including Derek Ball, Tim Hillebrand, and Justyn Miller. Finally, Diane Dumas, Jim Karpen, Rich Hall, Duncan Brown, Jim Karpen, and myself will have our own blog pages. If you feel you have a lot to contribute and would like to join our blog team, please e-mail me (http://hal@pocketpcmag.com).
Just to give an idea of the quality and nature of the content, here are some slightly edited headlines for blog posts that appeared in a recent two-week period: