istartedsomething

Just as I’m about to leave for Mobile World Congress, an interesting video caught my attention that seems to be more timely than ever considering Microsoft’s upcoming announcements about its future mobile strategy.

The video by Barton Smith, a designer from Australia of all places, appears to be a prototype UI for a conceptual “Locus OS” which is described as a “location-based operating system”. What makes it special is that it appears to be Microsoft branded, however without any background information I can’t say for certain if this was commissioned by Microsoft or not.

The video itself presents some very interesting concepts, the main focus of which is a multiple “desktop” arrangement that is location-aware – giving you flexibility in the widgets and applications you see based on your location and what you might be doing. Although some elements of the UX appear inspired by the iPhone, Palm Pre and Android, the designer points out that this was created in 2008 making many of the ideas original at the time. Nevertheless, definitely worth a look.

Without a doubt, Microsoft has set its eyes on the consumer mobile space this year. Unless you’ve been hiding under an iPhone, you might have noticed excitement has been building around the mobile event of the year, Mobile World Congress 2010 where Microsoft is expected to reveal the much anticipated Windows Mobile 7 platform, among other things.

Join Tom Warren from Neowin.net and I as we will attempt to capture the live Ballmer and co. experience for all of you using the magic of capturing light and the English language in a group liveblog of the scheduled Microsoft Press Conference at MWC 2010.

Please check back on Monday, 15th of February from 3-4pm Central European Time (UTC+1) (find out when that is in your local timezone here). Alternatively for the organized among us, download the iCal.

Disclosure: I am attending Mobile World Congress as a guest of Microsoft Australia.

When faced with a buggy piece of software, most users probably work-around the problems in silence, others might voice the issue at the developers, but there’s also a growing minority who whip out their development tools and attempt to fix it themselves.

In the case of the broken Adobe Reader 9.0 PDF preview and thumbnail handler on 64-bits versions of Windows 7 and Windows Vista, Leo Davidson did just that.

For the past two years, Adobe has neglected a simple issue with Adobe Reader that broke the default and extremely useful file thumbnail and file preview features in Vista and 7 under 64-bit. The problem also extends onto other applications that use the preview APIs such as Office Outlook, throwing out the window what would have been an elegant and streamlined PDF viewing experience, especially since you can scroll within the PDF without awakening the beast that is Adobe Reader.

After some detective work by Leo, not only did he pinpoint the root cause of both the preview and thumbnail issues, but today released a dead-simple fix in a neat executable package that fixes both problems faster than you can say “what the hell Adobe”.

Something big must be brewing in Windows Mobile land because apparently it will be such a revelation Microsoft can’t even explain it all in one day, let alone one event.

Moments ago, Microsoft sent out a press release detailing the February schedule for upcoming events for the financial analysts and investors community.

Whilst usually I couldn’t care less, what poked my interest was that Microsoft is scheduling not one but two Windows Mobile-related events in a matter of just seven (7) days – one immediately after their press conference at Mobile World Congress and another a week later.

Microsoft financial analyst briefing at the 2010 Mobile World Congress
Monday, Feb. 15, 2010
7 p.m. CET/ 10 a.m. PST
Andy Lees, senior vice president, Mobile Communication Business

Windows Mobile financial analyst conference call
Monday, Feb. 22, 2010
8 a.m. PST
Andy Lees, senior vice president, Mobile Communication Business

In contrast to the previous year where they announced Windows Mobile 6.5, there was only one event and that was the briefing at MWC. The next person to suggest Windows Mobile 7 is delayed and they are only showing off WM 6.5.3 (a.k.a. 6.6) will get slapped.

Coinciding with the scheduled Zune.net maintenance today, a new Zune software update was also released (version 4.2.202.0 for those playing along at home). What might appear as just a regular software update is actually hiding a very big secret. The elusive “Zune Phone” is pretty much confirmed.

As some of you might know, an .INF file is essential component of a driver package responsible for identifying the driver and associating it with compatible USB hardware IDs, and in this case, the Zune.inf file is responsible for associating devices with the Zune driver.

New to this version of the driver which was actually generated on October 20, 2009 are several lines which pretty much speak for themselves.

[Microsoft.NTx86]
%Zune.DeviceDesc% = ZuneMTPZUSB, USB\MS_COMP_MTPZ
%Zune.DeviceDesc% = ZuneMTPZUSB, USB\VID_045E&PID_0710
%Zune.DeviceDesc% = ZuneMTPZUSB, USB\VID_045E&PID_063E
%Phone.DeviceDesc% = ZuneMTPZUSB, USB\VID_045E&PID_0640
%Phone.DeviceDesc% = ZuneMTPZUSB, USB\VID_045E&PID_0641
%Phone.DeviceDesc% = ZuneMTPZUSB, USB\VID_045E&PID_0642
%ZuneIp.DeviceDesc% = ZuneMTPZIP, umb\urn:microsoft-com:device:mtpz:1

; Localizable strings
Msft = “Microsoft”
Zune.DeviceDesc = “Zune”
…
Phone.DeviceDesc = “Phone”

Moreover, just as how the current three generation Zunes are represented by three different IDs, there are three unique class IDs and specifically Product IDs (PID) that identify three potential “Zune Phone” models (not storage capacities) off the bat. My bet is that they’re not just capacity variants (since various Zune capacities are all grouped under the same PID), but three actual hardware SKUs.

A timely coincidence before Mobile World Congress? I think not.

Update: Whilst it is possible there might be system-wide Zune integration into Windows Mobile 7, this particular driver references specific hardware IDs that are locked to a vendor (Microsoft) and product which under USB body regulations cannot be masked, thus this has to be Microsoft devices. “Pink” anyone?

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If you’ve been watching Australian TV lately (I haven’t) then you might have noticed a subtle new Windows 7 advertising campaign custom tailored for the Australian Open broadcast on Channel 7.

Over the next two weeks during the tournament, Microsoft is sponsoring action replays, multi-angle replays and head-to-head profiles that will illustrate how Aero Snap – the Windows 7 feature that allows you to easily dock two windows side-by-side can be practically used.

Even though it looks a little bit cheesy from the video sample above, I think it does a decent job at illustrating a pretty useful feature to an audience that probably wouldn’t otherwise know about it.

Just thinking out loud, what might have been an even cooler advertising campaign is that if they had all the tennis matches played during the day as buttons in the taskbar, hover over them to see live thumbnail previews and then click on them to switch between the feeds.

On a related note, I find it mildly amusing that the live scores are available on Bing in the United States, but not in Bing Australia, where it is held. Google Australia however gets it right.