Sarah In Tampa

Pivot Demoed at TED

Sarah Perez — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:00:00 GMT

At the recent TED Conference, Gary Flake, a Technical Fellow and founder of Live Lab, demonstrated Pivot as can be seen in the video available here. This new technology, launched at last year’s PDC, lets you browse and manipulate images and data using Seadragon technology. It’s primarily meant to be a visualization tool for discovering patterns and insights by viewing datasets as thumbnail images. The visualization is done via the web using Silverlight, as opposed to using a software program installed on your computer’s hard drive.

In the demo, Flake showed how Pivot could be used to browse a magazine’s archives, Wikipedia, and even your own web browser’s search history. If you have five minutes to spare, the TED video is definitely worth a look.

Microsoft Demos Game Playing on Windows Phone 7 Series, Xbox, and PC

Sarah Perez — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:00:00 GMT

At TechEd Middle East, Microsoft's Eric Rudder showed the potential of Windows Phone 7 Series when he demoed a game that could run on the mobile phone, Windows PCs, and the Xbox 360. The game, in this case Indiana Jones, was created using Visual Studio which allows developers to share 90% of the game’s code across the three platforms: Xbox, Windows, and Windows Phone 7. The additional 10% of the code changes required are to implement features unique to each platform – like touch sensitivity and accelerometer support for phones or mouse support on PCs, for example.

What’s even more amazing, perhaps, than the cross-platform support was that Rudder was able to continue playing his game on the Xbox from where he left off on the mobile device. Amazing!

You can see a video of Rudder’s demo here.

Zune HD Facebook App Lets You Share Songs for Live Streaming

Sarah Perez — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:00:00 GMT

After a bit of a false start on Monday, the Zune HD Facebook application was relaunched on Wednesday and is now available for installation via the Zune desktop software. As you may expect, the app offers the typical Facebook features: a News Feed, the ability to post status updates, view photos, check out your friends’ profiles, and more. Plus, as PocketNow discovered, the phone offers a cool Zune-specific feature: it lets you post an update about the music you’re currently listening to. The app creates a link to the album and song and automatically posts a picture of the album art along with whatever text you input in your status update. When your friends click the link you shared on Facebook, they can stream the song right in their web browser via Zune.net.

You can see a video of the app in action here.

Microsoft and the Cloud: The Highlights from Ballmer's Speech

Sarah Perez — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:31:00 GMT

In case you missed it, Steve Ballmer spoke on Thursday about Microsoft and the company’s vision for its cloud services to a group of students from the University of Washington’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering. If you missed the speech, you can go watch it here on the Windows Team Blog.

However, if you just want the highlights, we’ve got you covered:

The New Website

A site dedicated to Microsoft’s Cloud Services launched at http://www.microsoft.com/cloud/

The Stats

70% of Microsoft’s workforce is working on cloud computing or cloud-related activities
Next year, that will be 90%
Windows Live ID’s identity and authentication system has 460 million users

The 5 Bullet Points

The Cloud creates opportunities and responsibilities: This made me think of the Spider-Man quote, “with great power comes great responsibility.” But that’s kind of what he meant. As SeattlePi summarized, “The industry must strike a balance between the immense power of cloud computing and the privacy concerns that go along with it…As a result of this interconnectedness and the cloud's relative ease of use, the ‘creators,’ as he called them, have all the power. ‘For the creator to have the opportunity to build a strong business,’ Ballmer said.
The cloud learns and helps you learn, decide and take action. Here he talked about how the cloud needs to learn in order to improve. The idea of machine learning was touched on.
The Cloud enhances social and professional interactions. No surprise here: social networks like Facebook, Xbox Live, and Twitter are big cloud businesses. Ballmer also mentioned how Office was moving to the cloud with Office 2010 and the Office Web Apps that arrive with it.
The cloud wants smarter devices. Here Ballmer talked about the 3 screens: TV, PC, mobile. The PC is represented by Windows, the TV is connected to Xbox and the mobile is now Windows Phone 7 Series – a device “really designed for the cloud.”
The cloud drives server advances that drive the cloud. As cloud technology advances, so will the server technology that supports the cloud. Things like scaling, rapid deployment, peak load, virtualization, and next gen servers were discussed. A containerized data center was shown – it actually sat outside the Allen Center where the talk was held. Inside the shipping container were servers, cooling systems and cabling.

A Round-Up of the Latest Outlook Add-ons

Sarah Perez — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:31:00 GMT

Microsoft Outlook is one of the top email software programs in the world, but there’s no email program out there that can protect you from the information overload of a busy inbox. Although Outlook has several great built-in features for managing your messages, appointments, contacts and tasks, it’s still easy to get overwhelmed. Luckily for us, there are a ton of Outlook add-ons that can help.

Some of the more recent add-ons integrate social networks into your inbox for a bit of social CRM while others focus on more advanced search and organizational tools.

Below are some of the more recent ones I’ve come across.

(One caveat: I haven’t used all of these in the list below myself. However, the ones I have used in the past – Lookeen, Xobni, and ClearContext – all worked well.)

NEO Pro 4.1 (www.emailorganizer.com) - Automatically manages your inbox and catalogs all email messages using virtual folder structure to significantly reduce email overload and boost overall productivity – with no manual upkeep, clicking, or dragging to folders.

Lookeen (www.lookeen.net) - Provides a fast search for all things in Outlook.

Xobni (www.xobni.com) - Helps find emails, conversations, contact info & attachments faster while integrating social networks and email analytics features.

ClearContext Professional (www.clearcontext.com) - Keeps messages organized by suggesting the right folders to instantly file messages and conversations with one-click.

Chilibase for Outlook (www.chilibase.net) - Easily search and track all contacts and conversation threads.

RedCritter (www.redcritter.com) - Plugs documents, tweets, messages, maps and more — all related to the message you are currently viewing — into Outlook.

SimpyFile (www.techhit.com) - Turns filing Outlook messages into a one-click action and suggesting the correct target folder.

Auto-Mate (www.pergenex.com) - Applies flexible rules to your Outlook folders periodically, automatically organizing your mail in the manner of a personal assistant.

Advanced Folders Watch (http://www.mapilab.com/outlook/folders_watch/) - Monitors new mail messages and posts appearing in Microsoft Outook folders and public folders on Microsoft Exchange Server.

E-mail Follow-Up (www.mapilab.com/outlook/email_followup/) - Reminds you if an email you sent did not receive a reply after a certain time, thus requiring a follow-up email.

Olympic Photosynths

Sarah Perez — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:31:00 GMT

Over on the Photosynth blog, they’ve rounded up the top contributions from users who submitted Photosynth’d collections from the recent Winter Olympics. Over the past several weeks, there have been over 40 different synths from the games added to the online gallery, including contributions from the following synthers:

Rick, beatnavy, fjcwhistler, siblog, cgsguy2, Mooseboys, MidnightFrog, rieskame, erickoo, BDsynth,Onyxmoon63, singalittlesong, kriskrug, GaryGlanz, brad_dennis, bal, jessica.glago, neilbl, msnbc.com,jimcseke, Lit, aeolien

(Click through on any of their names to see their Photosynth submissions.)

The top synths – aka the “most viewed” – included those featuring the sports themselves like luge, skating, curling, and skiing in addition to synths from Vancouver and those from other major events like the torch lighting, for example.

You can see some of these favorite synths in the image below:

For more Olympic action, head to the Photosynth site and search for Olympics.

Windows Phone 7 Series Themes for 6.5 Devices

Sarah Perez — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:31:00 GMT

The announcement about the next version of Windows Mobile Phones – Windows Phone 7 Series – has inspired some developers to create (unofficial) themes for their Windows Mobile 6.5 phones. Right now, Jaxbot on the XDA-Developers forum is working on a theme that resembles Windows Phone 7 Series’ new UI. So far, he’s been able to make a homescreen and lock screen with live tiles for SMS, mail, and weather. You can also set phone, text, Outlook, and People to a certain app, see upcoming appointments on the lock screen, and launch programs.

However, this theme is in alpha and has some issues that are still being addressed. The known issues include occasionally sluggish animations, problems with kinetic scrolling, and unlock problems.

Another developer, LeSScro, also from XDA-developers, has been working on a WP7S-inspired theme for WisBar Advance Desktop 2.x, the software program that lets you replace your existing Today screen and more. This theme offers time, data, and notifications on the lock screen, profile settings, transitional animation, hubs for games, media, and Office, and an apps launcher.

You can see a video of the first theme here and the second one here.

(via Engadget)

Bing Autosuggest Now Pulls from History

Sarah Perez — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:22:00 GMT

Bing has just launched improvements to its autosuggest functionality. When you start typing in the search box on Bing.com, the autosuggest function – which previously just suggested words and phrases based on popular searches – now prompts you with words and phrases from your own search history, too. According to a post on the Bing Search Blog, this change was made because many search tasks span multiple search sessions that last for days or even weeks. In fact, they found that 44% of non-navigational search sessions last longer than 1 week. In other words, a lot of the things you search for, you’re going to search for again. And again and again and again. By providing those searches to you just a click away, you can get to the info you need faster.

To differentiate your queries from the other autosuggestions (is that a word?), your items will appear in purple – the same color as a previously visited link. The other search suggestions appear in blue as always.

Of course, if you don’t want your searches appearing here, you can simply switch your History off using the “Manage History” option. Alternately, you can use IE8’s private browsing mode to make sure nothing is recorded.

Geosense for Windows

Sarah Perez — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:23:00 GMT

Popular bloggers Long Zheng of iStartedSomething and Rafeal Rivera of Within Windows joined forces to create a Windows 7 sensor driver that connects the location platform of Windows 7 with geolocation service providers. The new tool, called Geosense for Windows, is now available for download from both of their websites (click links above).

As Zheng noted on his blog, Windows 7 offers a built-in location platform and accompanying API which allows third-party developers to build location-aware native apps. However, the way the platform was designed, it required OEMs to first ship GPS-enabled laptops before developers could take advantage of this feature. The Geosense application is essentially a workaround for that limitation as it provides a way to connection the location platform in Windows with various geolocation providers. The providers match and triangulate known cell towers and wireless access points to estimate latitude and longitude.

By offering Geosense for Windows for free, Zheng and Rivera have made Windows 7 location-aware and they hope that third-party developers will take advantage of this to create new applications for the platform.

HP's New Business-Ready Slate

Sarah Perez — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:23:00 GMT

HP just announced their new line of business-ready computers called the “EliteBooks.” These multitouch-enabled PCs come with Windows 7 Professional pre-installed and allow for input and navigation with either a keyboard, or, in the case of the EliteBook 2740p tablet, a stylus or your fingers. The EliteBook 2540p is similar, but without it’s sibling’s swivel screen. It’s also the lightest of the two, weighing only 3.3 lbs.

Both EliteBooks come with the following:

reinforced glass 12.1 inch 1280x800 LED screen – you can choose to opt for a less reflective screen for easier outdoor use, too
a range of Intel Core i5 and i7 processor options
a 6-cell lithium ion battery which provides 5 hours of use and you can optionally add a supplemental battery for 11 hours of use
stainless steel finish and magnesium casing
an optional easily portable expansion bay which functions like a laptop dock where additional ports, hard drive bays and an optical drive are available
military-grade resistance to high temperatures, dust, vibration, and altitude
HP’s DriveGuard technology

The 2740p tablet starts at $1599 and the EliteBook 2540p starts at $1099. Both will be available next month.

Augmented Reality Comes to Silverlight

Sarah Perez — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:20:00 GMT

The ARToolkit, a library of tools for creating augmented reality applications, has just been ported to Silverlight. The SLARToolkit, as it’s called, is hosted over on Codeplex where it and its source code are available for download. Available features in the SLARToolkit include direct Support for Silverlight's CaptureSource, multiple marker detection, simple black square markers, real-time performance and more. It also uses the Matrix3DEx library.

While the above feature list may mean something to application developers, what it means for consumers is that we’ll soon start seeing augmented reality applications developed using the Silverlight platform. These apps will be able to take advantage of your computer’s webcam to launch “augmented reality” applications – that is, those that use technologies like computer vision and object recognition, for example.

There are already two sample apps available on Codeplex, one being a 3D game called Balder and the other a sample that uses Silverlight's 3D projection capabilities. To run these samples, you’ll need a webcam and at least the Silverlight 4 runtime. For more information on this toolkit, check out the documentation.

(via ReadWriteWeb and Channel 9)

Facebook for Windows Mobile Touchscreen Arrives

Sarah Perez — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:20:00 GMT

Remember a few days ago when we blogged about the updated Facebook application for Windows Mobile? At that time, the app was only available for standard edition phones - that is, those without touchscreens. Now, touchscreen users have an updated app too. According to reports from Unwired, the touch client, Facebook Mobile 1.2, introduces features like the ability to like and comment, read and respond to friend requests, view and write wall posts, message your friends and other users, update your profile picture, upload photos and videos directly from the phone, and call your friends’ using their Facebook phone numbers. You’re also able to share your Facebook activity with the Windows Live service, too.

At the moment, the new version is only available in the U.S. Mobile Marketplace, but users in other countries can switch to “world view” to download the app.

Outlook PST Spec Released

Sarah Perez — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:19:00 GMT

Back in October of last year, Microsoft announced plans to release the documentation for the PST file format – the file where your Outlook email, calendar, and contact data is stored on a PC. The documentation was to be released under Microsoft’s Open Specification format, said the blog post, which means that anyone could implement the .pst file format “on any platform and in any tool, without concerns about patents, and without the need to contact Microsoft in any way.”

Now that documentation has been made publicly available. On MSDN, anyone can read through all the details about the PST Structure Specification, including all the data structures it uses, examples, considerations, data algorithms, and product behavior.

Armed with this info, developers will be able to interoperate with PST data in both server and client scenarios on the platform of their choice. You can access the full spec details here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff387869.aspx.

Windows Easy Transfer Tool Tip: Back Up Windows Live Writer

Sarah Perez — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:28:00 GMT

Over the weekend, I had the fun experience of reinstalling Windows 7 – no, I’m not being sarcastic, I’m a geek, I like doing things like this. For one thing, a fresh install lets me pare down the number of applications I’ve crammed onto the machine to just the essentials. And despite my move to the cloud for many things, I’m always surprised at the number of desktop programs I still use. (For example, Windows Live tools like Messenger and Live Writer, Adobe Photoshop and Reader, FileZilla for FTP uploads, Microsoft Office, and Skype just to name a few.

Anyway, after backing up the essentials (files, photos, music, videos, and my user account) via the included Windows Easy Transfer tool, it occurred to me that I needed to back up my Windows Live Writer settings too. This led me to the free software program called Windows Live Writer Backup. I thought I had used this in the past successfully, but this time around the program just hung. It looks like the current version was released back in the summer of last year, so maybe it just needs an update? (It’s open source, guys, so have at it!).

Since I couldn’t automate the process with the tool, I took a couple of screenshots of my settings and moved on. After reinstalling Windows, re-downloading my favorite programs and re-running the Easy Transfer tool to restore my files and other settings, I launched Windows Live Writer. I was prepared to reconfigure my settings using the saved screenshots, but - low-and-behold! - they were already there! I guess the Easy Transfer tool grabbed them too. How nice!

If you’re preparing to reinstall Windows (and users of the Release Candidate like I was – this means you!), I thought you’d be grateful to know about this little tip. It certainly made my experience easier and hopefully will help you too.

Windows Phone 7 Series Gets Its Own Twibbon

Sarah Perez — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:28:00 GMT

If you’re a regular Twitter user, you’ve probably seen a lot of “twibbons.” These Twitter avatar overlays let you put a small icon, often in the shape of a ribbon, overtop your profile image. These can be used to support a particular cause – for example, something political in nature – but have also become a popular way to express your interest and/or fandom of other subjects, like sports, celebrities, TV or movies, events, promos, games, hardware or software, and more.

The new Windows Phone 7 Series twibbon is designed for those interested in showing their support or desire to own one of the newly announced phones. When you support this cause your avatar will be overlaid with a Windows Phone twibbon picturing a small icon of the phone next to the text “Windows Phone 7 Series.”

Note that Twibbon posts a tweet on your behalf when using the service. In this case it reads: “Support Windows Phone 7 Series, add a #twibbon to your avatar now! - http://twibbon.com/join/Windows-Phone-7-Series.” They also auto-follow you to the @Twibbon account, but you can unfollow if you wish.

You can grab the Windows Phone Twibbon here.

(Hat tip: My Microsoft Life)

New Beta of Launchy Arrives

Sarah Perez — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:15:00 GMT

It’s been awhile since I last looked at Launchy, the open source application launcher for Windows. With this application, you use keyboard shortcuts to launch applications, files, folders, bookmarks and more with just a few keystrokes. Once installed, it hides in your system tray waiting for its next command. When you’re ready, you hit “Alt + Spacebar” to display the input window. Then you can just start typing what you want. Launchy finds it.

For users of Windows XP, this app has clear benefits. However, later versions of Windows offer a similar feature just by using the “Search” box in the Start Menu. Still, some Launchy enthusiasts prefer the app to the native functionality and, well, that’s the great thing about Windows – you can tweak away by installing alternative programs like this.

Just recently, the developer released the next edition of this application – the Launchy 2.5 Beta. This version offers the following changes:

• Faster performance
• Icons displayed correctly
• Environment variables updated correctly when system changes
• Controly includes more items
• New shortcut keys
• New controls:
o Shift+tab or Shift+bkspc deletes previous tab
o Shift+Ctrl+Enter launches in elevated mode (Vista and Win7)
o Down arrow shows history (when there is no current search text)
• Default skin built into executable in case no other skin is found
• Down arrow
• Launchy now has an icon in the system tray
• Skins are simplified and easier to create

The executable is here. As with any beta software, the usual caveats apply. Install at your own risk. But this sounds like a good update to a pretty great program. Can’t wait to check it out!

Track Olympic Tweets on NBCOlympics.com

Sarah Perez — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:15:00 GMT

On NBCOlympics.com, the official site for Winter Games coverage, there’s a Twitter application called the “Olympic Twitter Tracker.” I recently discovered this thanks to a tweet from Marshall Kirkpatrick, who said it was “pretty cool.” If he thinks so, then I definitely had to check it out. And indeed it is.

Unlike many Twitter trackers, this one doesn’t just stream the tweets in a big, unwieldy flow. It’s not just one window that aggregates everything tagged “Olympics.” Instead, the interface to the application uses images to display the various topics being tweeted about and sizes them proportionally to the number of tweets. Obviously, the sports and other keywords associated with the events occurring now will have larger sections and those past will be smaller. In addition, within each section, other popular keywords appear for even more granular filtering of the Twitter stream. So if you’re interested in snowboarding tweets but only those about “Shaun White,” for example, that’s an option.

When you click into any of these sections, the Twitter stream appears on the left with related keywords on the right. So if you click “Evan Lysacek” you’ll see keywords like “gold,” “men,” “skating,” “wins,” etc. (Yep, as you may have guessed, he won a gold medal.) The Tracker even has a bar at the top that counts down until its next automatic refresh – every minute. That’s better than a live stream since it gives you a chance to actually read what’s in front of you, but it’s still fast enough to keep you up-to-date in near real-time.

Also at the top is a link to “Olympic Tweets” for even more types of tweets. These are sorted by different categories like tweets from the athletes, tweets from the NBCOlympics.com Twitter account, tweets from the Olympics Health Twitter account, and “All.”

The entire Twitter app is part of the larger “Olympic Pulse” – the app that tracks the blogs, tweets, and other news from the Olympics. You can check out the entire Olympic Pulse here.

Want to Make Apps for the New Windows Phone?

Sarah Perez — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 13:13:00 GMT

Since the announcement of the Windows Phone 7 Series, a new mobile operating system that provides a completely refreshed look-and-feel (and back-end!) for Windows Mobile devices, many developers have been asking how they can get started building applications for this new OS. As John Mullinax, a Platform Strategy Advisor at Microsoft, writes on his blog, “I’m already getting emails from folks asking how they can build apps for Windows Phone 7 Series and integrate with the experience.” They’ve seen photos from the Mobile World Conference press event that appear to feature a Pandora app on the phone’s homescreen and are wondering, how can I do that?

The answers will be revealed next month at the MIX10 conference. All those attending the event, a web conference intended for designers and developers, will receive free development tools and exclusive free support for Windows Phone 7 Series. There’s also a dedicated track on the Windows Phone 7 Series platform that runs throughout the event for mobile developers to follow. And if you register before February 21st, you can get $200 off.

So how excited are the developers? Well, as the first comment on MIX’s site about the offer reads, “Can't wait! Windows Phone 7 is made of win.” We couldn’t agree more.

Image credit: Engadget

Go Hyperlocal with Bing's Local Lens

Sarah Perez — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 13:12:00 GMT

“Local Lens” is one of Bing’s cooler features that displays hyperlocal content from various blogs on Bing Maps. Once enabled, snippets from blog posts appear in the sidebar when viewing a specific locale in the maps service. The feature, introduced late last year, is one of Bing’s many “mapplications” – applications that add a new layer of data to Bing Maps. In this case, blog posts from your hometown or, in some cases, specific neighborhoods.

This is one of Bing’s undiscovered gems, I think, since map apps that add Photosynth, Twitter, traffic, and Streetside Photos are the ones getting all the attention these days. Local Lens is certainly deserving of a deeper look too.

I was reminded of Local Lens when Matthew Hurst updated his blog with a note about an update just pushed out on Thursday, the 18th. The backend text mining systems which recognize map entity names (restaurants, shops, etc.) and addresses has been improved, he says. Now, even when an address isn’t obvious (e.g. “123 Main St.”), Local Lens can pick it up. In the example on his blog, he cited an article which read “Irving Street remained closed between 19th and 20th.” Local Lens can identify that more complex expression as an address and hyperlink it to an exact location on the map. Click the link and the map zooms right to that location.

The only downside regarding this technology is that it has just been rolled out for a handful of major U.S. cities for now. At the moment, only Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, L.A., Miami, NYC, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle are supported. I only hope the next update will add more cities soon!

Bing Tracks the Most Popular Olympics Sports

Sarah Perez — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 13:12:00 GMT

Thanks to Bing’s popular “Instant Answer” feature, web searchers can quickly find out Olympic-related info like who won what event, what time figure skating is on, when a particular athlete is competing and more. Now it appears that the Bing Team has been tracking these Olympic search trends to come up with a measurement of what the most popular winter sports are and not surprisingly, snowboarding is #1. Not just because it’s fun to watch, I’d guess, but also because the U.S. has been crazy for the snowboarder champ Shaun White.

The next most popular search is hockey, followed by “skeleton” (maybe because people don’t know what that is? I didn’t – had to look it up on Bing myself), then figure skating, curling, luge, bobsled, speed skating, cross country skiing, biathlon, freestyle skiing, alpine skiing, ski jump, and then nordic combined. Of course these stats are influenced by what events are on when and which ones have come and gone. When all’s said and done and the Olympics are over, it would be interesting to revisit this data to see what ended up being the most popular throughout the course of the Winter Games.

But if perusing data isn’t really your thing, you can goof off instead. Take the Winter Games Quiz on Bing's Facebook page and you can test your knowledge of the games while also exploring some of Bing’s features.

Bing on the iPhone

Sarah Perez — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:16:00 GMT

Did you know there’s a Bing app for the iPhone? Yep, and it’s been there since this December, too. Although you can’t change out the iPhone’s default search engine, you can move the iPhone icons around to position the Bing app on your homescreen for easy access. With Bing’s app, you get a mobile-ready interface that lets you search by voice or by text while also offering search verticals for images, movies, maps, businesses, and directions. These are all available using the buttons at the bottom of the app’s homescreen. And just like the Bing website, the Bing iPhone app features the same daily iconic image and its related trivia.

You can grab your own copy of the mobile app from here.

Facebook for Windows Phones Updated

Sarah Perez — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 02:03:00 GMT

A new version of the Facebook application for Windows Mobile Standard edition was released in late January and with it you now have the ability to like and comment on messages, receive notifications, and search through your friends list. You can also search for people, add them as friends, and send them messages. If you’ve been using the mobile website instead of a native app for accessing Facebook, this update now makes the downloadable software a much more worthy alternative.

However, this update is for standard edition phones only, users of touchscreen mobile devices will likely prefer touch.facebook.com for now.

(via/img via PocketNow)

Windows Phone 7 Series a Hit? Here's What They're Saying

Sarah Perez — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 03:12:00 GMT

With the launch of the new Windows Phone 7 Series device, Microsoft has refreshed their mobile platform with a bang. The new phone takes many risks from its live tile interface to its onboard Bing button. It also introduces some features other phones don’t – and won’t ever have – like the Xbox LIVE and Zune integration. But did the revamp pay off? Here’s what people are saying so far:

Engadget

The sheer minimalism of the interface is striking, and we're really impressed by how many risks Microsoft is taking here.
This OS looks nothing like anything else on the market, and we think that's to its advantage.
…the design of the interface is definitely in a class of its own.
…for the first time in a long time, we're excited about Microsoft in the mobile space.
…things are really starting to get interesting.

Gizmodo (and Gizmodo again)

The result is a feat no phone has performed before: Making the iPhone's interface feel staid.
I think it feels natural and just…fun. There's an incredible sense of joie de vivre that's just not in any other phone.
The People hub might be the best social networking implementation yet on a phone.
If Microsoft's got an ace-in-hole with Windows Phone 7, it's Xbox Live.
The Outlook email app makes me question how people read email on a BlackBerry. It is stunning. I never thought I'd call a mail app "stunning," but, well, it kind of is. It's the best looking mobile mail app around.
It's actually good. It brings together a bunch of different Microsoft services—Zune, Xbox, Bing—in a way that actually makes sense and just works.
No matter who you root for, to be anything short of impressed is stupid.

istartedsomething

Overall I’ve been pleasantly surprised and impressed by what they’ve shown off today and it’s a great sign that not only is Microsoft taken a giant leap forward in the mobile space but also is offering something that is far different to Windows Mobile today if not everything else on the market.

TheNextWeb

The devices themselves are sleek, with fast beautiful user interfaces…Am I going to buy one of these “Windows Phone 7 Series” phones? It’s quite likely…Now, Microsoft makes my favorite operating system, music player, software, productivity software, and now perhaps phone. That means that in short order Microsoft might be in my phone, PMP, and computer. Welcome back Redmond, we all missed you.

The Top 8 Things to Know about Windows Phone 7 Series

Sarah Perez — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 03:11:00 GMT

At the Mobile World Congress 2010, Microsoft introduced the Windows Phone 7 Series, a completely revamped mobile operating system that makes the Windows Mobile phones a real contender in the world of smartphones. But what exactly makes the phone so new and exciting? It’s not just a UI makeover - that’s a good part of it, but only the beginning. Below are the major changes the new OS has in store:

1. “Live Tiles”

The homescreen now features real-time content in so-called “live tiles” which replace the Start screen of past Windows Phone devices. Nor are these tiles anything like the static icons found on many smartphones today. Instead, these brightly colored squares serve as customizable shortcuts to applications and the data they contain. For example, you can create a live tile for a friend and see their latest pictures and posts just from glancing at your homescreen.

2. Zune Integration

The long-rumored Zune phone appears to have arrived. Much of the UI is Zune HD inspired with its bold oversized text and the way you flip from screen to screen. More importantly, though, the phone offers the standard Zune HD features including the built-in radio tuner, Zune Social experience, and Zune Marketplace. You can also copy over music and video content from your PC, of course, using the Zune software.

3. Xbox LIVE Integration

Yes, Xbox comes to your phone. Your phone is tied to your Xbox LIVE profile so you can see a gamer’s avatar, Achievements and gamer profile. Oh and you can play games. Xbox LIVE games. Seriously!

4. People “Hub”

One of the six focus areas for the new phone, the People “hub” lets you see all your friends’ status updates in one stream while also letting you update your own Facebook and Windows Live status. And you can pull your favorite people from the hub and make them their own tile on your homescreen.

5. Pictures “Hub”

You can share you photos from your Pictures hub with your social networks while also syncing them with your PC and web. Here, you can also browse through the photos of your friends, too.

6. Office

Microsoft Office, of course. But not just Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and Outlook – OneNote and connections to SharePoint Workspace too.

7. Hardware Spec Requirements

Unlike with past Windows Phones, there is less leeway when it comes to the specifications required to run the OS. This time, Microsoft is a bit stricter, requiring a specific CPU and speed, screen aspect ratio and resolution, memory, a capacitive, multitouch screen with at least four points of touch, accelerometer, 5-megapixel camera and even button configuration.

8. Bing Button

Speaking of buttons, all Windows Phone 7 Series devices will have a dedicated Bing button that provides one-click access to the search engine from anywhere on the phone.

The OEMs making the new phones at launch are: Qualcomm, LG, Samsung, Garmin Asus, HTC, HP, Dell, Sony Ericsson, and Toshiba.

Adobe Flash Now Works with IE8's InPrivate Mode

Sarah Perez — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 03:11:00 GMT

Adobe just announced that their latest version of Flash supports InPrivate Browsing, according to a post on the IEBlog. This new update, version 10.1, now creates something called “Flash Cookies,” small files similar to browser cookies but created by Flash instead. With these Flash cookies, websites can store data on your machine. However, when you browse the web in IE8’s “InPrivate” mode, the anonymous browsing mode that leaves no record of your activity behind, those Flash cookies now get deleted along with all your other internet activity upon closing the IE8 window.

“Prior to Flash Player 10.1, Adobe’s player behaved the same whether the browser was in private browsing or not,” explains Jimson Xu on Adobe’s blog. “Browsers could clear browser data temporarily stored during a private browsing session, such as cookies and history, but they were unaware of the data stored in Flash Player local storage.” The updated version of Flash essentially solves the issue of having this sort of data retained on your PC. For the technical details about this new feature, check out Xu’s post here.