istartedsomething

At the European Windows 7 launch event earlier today, Microsoft showed off this promotional teaser with a count-up of all the previous releases of Windows eventually reaching number seven of course.

To be perfectly clear, I’m no advocate of the “Windows 7 is actually 6.1″ nonsense, but one has to point out that a Windows release is clearly missing from this video’s timeline. Yes, that would be Windows Me.

Cool video otherwise

Windows Mobile 6.5.1 screenshots courtesy Patrick/OSNN.net

Most of you probably know by now that Windows Mobile 6.5 is not the be all end all Microsoft mobile operating system. However, what you might not know is that Microsoft has already up its sleeves another revision of Windows Mobile 6 – unofficially dubbed by the enthusiast community as 6.5.1 – that’s faster, sleeker, more touch-friendly and in my opinion, a much better upgrade than 6.5.

Those familiar with the Windows Phone modding scene might have seen since late August, builds numbered 23xxx and up started surfacing on the web. Those brave enough to have installed these builds began noticing a slew of updates to the user-experience of Windows Mobile that is arguably necessary but missing from WM6.5.

For example, the “Start button” and “Close” button have all been moved to the more accessible lower toolbar, freeing up the entire top row for status icons which is now thinner. Tapping on this row now expands a tray-like widget with large icons that provide quick access to system notifications and settings.

On the UI side, controls including buttons, checkboxes, radio buttons and the like have all been remastered, finally replacing the Windows 3.1-like graphics with modernized anti-aliased equivalents. Tabs have also been replace with a new “pivot” control that sits at the top of the screen where users can flick and toggle between.

Finally, even more recent builds include a new contacts application that is much more touch-friendly with larger buttons (albeit with a few bugs).

With all these changes and more already implemented and polished, I have to wonder why faced with inevitable criticism that WM6.5 is not enough of an improvement Microsoft didn’t hold off until all these changes were implemented for the official Windows Phone relaunch.

Until Windows Mobile 7, this is probably as good as it’s going to get on Windows Mobile 6. If you too are feeling a little adventurous, take a look over at XDA-developers forums to see if there’s a 6.5.1 ROM for your device already.

If you don’t already spend countless hours of the day browsing Reddit, it’s never too late to start. What I think sets Reddit apart from other similar communities is the discussion-only sections. More recently, a new section dubbed “IAmA” – short for “I am a…ask me anything” – has taken off by storm by allowing interesting and sometimes notable people (under the cover of anonymity if they wish) to answer random questions from complete strangers.

As dubious as this may sound, it actually works quite well and have since brought under the spotlight award-winning musicians, hackers, descendants of Nazis, 9/11 firefighters, lottery millionaires and of course, the most interesting of them all, Microsoft developers.

So far, three anonymous Microsofties have already stepped forward to answer several hundred questions in total. One worked on Windows Vista and Windows 7 (and will also be working on Windows 8), another is a 10-year Office veteran, and the latest is a junior Windows developer who wrote two lines of code that shipped in Windows 7.

Like most anonymous postings, what’s valuable is the honest insight into the politics, technicalities and thought process behind the scenes at Microsoft. Here’s just a slice of some of the most interesting responses I’ve come across so far.

“One more question: how much info does Microsoft have on us?” (#)

Almost none. Any data that gets collected (including data from WGA and elsewhere) is EXTENSIVELY filtered for PII (Personally Identifiable Information). If any data ever got through to somewhere it didn’t belong, like an email address, social security number, or credit card number, we would consider that to be a very serious bug and would place a very high priority on making sure we never recieved that data again.

In general, any data that we collect from users (and this includes our advertising) is impossible to link back to a unique person. I’ve worked with our privacy and legal teams on this stuff before, and they are deadly serious about it.

“Are you guys even thinking about the next os? or are you more focused on continuing to improve this one, update, service packs, etc?” (#)

Planning for “Windows 8″ (the next version) has consumed all of our time for the past few months. It’s amazing to see how much work goes into just planning the OS.

Do you get to see other peoples code? I mean: is there some kind of version control used for the entire Windows branch, or is it more like: “I code my stuff and use compiled objects for the stuff I don’t need to know about”? (#)

Anyone who is working on windows can see the entire windows source base. Technically, anyone with access can compile the entire OS down to an ISO. Realistically almost no one does because it takes a ridiculous amount of time to do.

“The [Windows 7] leaks seem obviously intentional . . . otherwise we’d see leaks of other major software all the time, which we don’t — not even other Microsoft software. Please explain how I’m missing the point — why is there “not a lot we can do”?” (#)

Most other major software doesn’t have nearly as many people working on the project or with access to daily builds. Last time I checked we have something like 6000 people and even more that have access to the builds. I’d guess that 10,000 people have access to our builds. Any time you have that many people with access to something… It’s going to leak.

But yeah, there are probably some positive benefits to it. We’re definitely not leaking intentionally (and if we are, they certainly haven’t told me about it).

If you like what you’re seeing, head over to the original discussions to read lots more. Of course, if there’s also something on your mind you want to ask you can also submit a question. Hopefully these guys (and others) are still around to respond to them.

A couple of weeks ago some very interesting Windows news flew by under the radars that I think deserves much more credit than it received, considering how much we rely on the web and the impact this has on making it safer.

In the September 2009 update to the Windows Root Certificate Program, Microsoft has added to the list of trusted root certificate authorities StartCom Ltd, notably its first member who issues amongst others free SSL digital certificates.

What this means in practice is that out-of-the-box in Windows 7 and if installed as an optional patch under Windows Vista and XP, free digital certificates issued by StartCom will be inherently trusted by the operating system and its applications.

Besides simple identification, one other benefit delivered by digital certificates is the ability to transparently encrypt and secure the connection to a server via HTTPS and this is what makes what Microsoft did so notable.

Up and until now the digital certificates market has been dominated by large corporations who charge quite a pretty penny for the privilege, limiting the use of HTTPS. Unfortunately at the same time due to the nature of digital certificates and the chain of trust, a limited number of root certificate authorities (CA) in operating systems such as Windows has limited the adoption of free digital certificates as offered by some companies like StartCom. Granted Firefox and Safari has supported many of the certificate authorities issuing free certificates for some time, Microsoft has not, until now.

With StartCom as a Windows root CA, web developers now have a practical free alternative for digital certificates if they wish to secure their websites or web services that by default works with Internet Explorer and other Windows applications.

Not only is this great for developers but even more so users who can look forward to more websites that encrypt the data they send to and receive from – reducing the risks of sniffing and man-in-the-middle vulnerabilities, especially when using wireless and public networks.