The core & features

All modern smartphone OS like iOS 5 & Android ICS 4.0.x support Multicore processors ground up. However, WIndows Phone 7.x is still lying in dark with no support for dual ormulticore processors. Windows Phone 8 will change this, by endorsing a same kernel as Windows 8. Windows Phone 8 would also support NFC, and full device encryption. Microsoft will also implement a “tap to share” capability, to enable easy sharing of content between phones, desktops, laptops, and tablets.

Windows Phone 8 is codenamed “Apollo” and will support processors with up to four cores, four different (and unspecified) screen resolutions, NFC for contactless payment, and removable microSD storage.

Data Management

Coming on-par with iOS & Android, Windows Phone 8 will now include full device encryption, based on the same technology as desktop Windows’ BitLocker encryption. WP8 Apollo will sport richer support for Exchange ActiveSync policies, and Systems Center inventorying and management. There will also be greater support for private deployment of custom line-of-business applications.

Inheriting Windows 8

Under the bonnet, lot of features would be inherited from Windows 8 desktop OS: networking stacks, security subsystems, and multimedia support, web browser i.e. Internet Explorer 10. To further improve web experience on WP8 devices,  Microsoft plans to use server-side compression and proxying to reduce the amount of data needed to load webpages by a claimed 30 percent.

Apps & compatibility

WP8 would provide full backward compatibility for apps designed for WP7. The “most” code will be portable between the desktop and the phone. We would expect this to mean that Metro-style applications written using Windows 8′s WinRT will be readily portable to WP8 with minor modifications.

Windows 8 copies Android’s Intent based sharing to communicate with other apps, nicely renaming the concept to “contracts” that enables applications to communicate with each other in certain standard ways. Of course, it comes to Windows Phone 8 too.

WP8 also include a monitor for per app data metrics, similar to that of Android ICS & Windows 8 “Data Smart”.

Music, VoIP, Cloud Integration

You will also get the latest Microsoft’s acquisition, Skype integrated well into the WP8. Skype would be integrated directly to phone’s dialer, like Google Voice on Android. Hardware OEMs will have more control over the camera application, enabling features such as smile detection and burst shooting.

As of today, Windows Phone 7 uses the desktop Zune client to sync music and video; this will be dropped in favor of cloud by using SkyDrive, just like iCloud on iOS5, or Google cloud on Android.

You will be  able to listen to your music collection on a new Windows Phone 8 handset without ever having to pair it to the PC, over the SkyDrive. This syncing will also extend to the Xbox.

WP8 would finally bring Windows Phones upto the level of iOS 5, Android 4.0 ICS, only year later. Lets hope Microsoft doesn’t get there late, this time.

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The video begins with a business woman visiting Johannesburg and having the audio around her translated in real time thanks to some futuristic glasses. Then she pulls out her PDA / smartphone, which is nothing but a flexible card what appears to be all OLED. Video walks us through some vivid personalized experiences and touch computing on every surface.

Microsoft believes that most of the technology in the video exists in some form or another today. “All of the ideas in the video are based on real technology, Some of the capabilities, such as speech recognition, real time collaboration and data visualization already exist today. Others are not yet available in specific products, but represent active research and development happening at Microsoft and other companies.”

See the concept as we gear up for the future:

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Microsoft researchers have come up with a way to make devices sensitive to touch input through fabric — for silencing a phone or even entering text without taking the device out of a pocket or bag.

PocketTouch uses a custom sensor on the back of a smartphone that can detect multitouch gestures even through heavy fleece or a jacket pocket. The The first prototype is complete and we would see a demonstration sometime soon.

Microsoft uses “orientation-defining unlock gesture” that essentially tells the device which way is up, thereby removing the problem where device can be in a different orientation inside pockets. Grid of touch sensors can detect finger strokes through cloth and hence make it possible to have a specific unlock gesture that reorientates the screen each time you use it – avoiding the need to flip your phone upside down before using the interface.

OmniTouch

OmniTouch makes any surface touch compatible. OmniTouch uses a a pico projector and a depth camera (like Kinect) to let people interact with programs projected onto their skin or other surfaces. Users can define the size and location of their own interfaces, or let the system decide the best choice of display.

The researcher calls it a “mega Kinect hack” and an extension of his previous device which could only work on skin. While the prototype device is quite bulky, soon it would be possible to reduce the size of the equipment to the size of matchbox.

Both systems are being presented this week at the User Interface Software and Technology symposium in Santa Barbara, California.

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With Windows 8, Microsoft would set certain guidelines to OEMs and PC manufacturers. All Windows 8 machines will need to be have the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) instead of the venerable BIOS firmware layer. BIOS has been pretty much the sole firmware interface for PCs for a long time.

The EFI system has slowly been making headway in recent years, and right now EFI firmware is compatible with Windows supporting the GUID Partition Table (GPT), OS X/Intel, and Linux 2.6 and beyond machines. EFI is seen as a better hardware/software interface than BIOS, since it is platform-agnostic, runs in 32- or 64-bit mode, and GPT machines can handle boot partitions of up to 9.4 zettabytes. (That’s 9.5 billion terabytes.)

Linux supports UEFI, thats is not a problem. The problem is Microsoft‘s other requirement for any Windows 8-certified client: the system must support secure booting. This hardened boot means that “all firmware and software in the boot process must be signed by a trusted Certificate Authority (CA)”.

By locking, Microsoft intends to prevent injection of malware onto Windows PCs, which looks like a justified claim. Linux bootloaders are EFI-ready but none of them are signed, hence they would just not work on PCs.

Bootloader Unlocking?

So what, we would Unlock the bootloader, like we did on Android phones and iPhone. No, it won’t be that easy. If all parts of the chain need to have a CA signature, then swapping out a machine’s signed EFI layer with, say, an unsigned BIOS or EFI would not work. Matthew Garrett from Redhat notes:

“Microsoft requires that machines conforming to the Windows 8 logo program and running a client version of Windows 8 ship with secure boot enabled. The two alternatives here are for Windows to be signed with a Microsoft key and for the public part of that key to be included with all systems, or alternatively for each OEM to include their own key and sign the pre-installed versions of Windows. The second approach would make it impossible to run boxed copies of Windows on Windows logo hardware, and also impossible to install new versions of Windows unless your OEM provided a new signed copy. The former seems more likely.”

So what about Signing Linux Bootloader Distros?

“Firstly, we’d need a non-GPL bootloader. Grub 2 is released under the GPLv3, which explicitly requires that we provide the signing keys. Grub is under GPLv2 which lacks the explicit requirement for keys, but it could be argued that the requirement for the scripts used to control compilation includes that. It’s a grey area, and exploiting it would be a pretty good show of bad faith. Secondly, in the near future the design of the kernel will mean that the kernel itself is part of the bootloader. This means that kernels will also have to be signed. Making it impossible for users or developers to build their own kernels is not practical. Finally, if we self-sign, it’s still necessary to get our keys included by ever OEM.”

What can be done?

We jsut have to rely on Manufacturers & OEMs so that they would include an option in their UEFI firmware to disable the secure booting feature.

Microsoft has finally found a way to tackle Linux, and someone out there has to make the extra effort to save it from the vicious Monopoly!

Update: Microsoft finally clarifies, it could be disabled via BIOS.

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Metro UI

The initial response to the tablet is sure positive but if don’t like Metro UI, you would hate this. Microsoft is calling Windows  8 a post-post-PC device, which in other words means a post-Tablet tablet.

Microsoft is  trying to unify the User interface across PCs, mobiles and Tablets and Windows 8 is their first step towards it. Like Apple, Microsoft has inspired its tablet and PC devices from the mobile interface, making it easier than ever. Windows 8 borrows largely from its mobile kin, Window Phone 7, bringing its signature live tiles to tablets and PCs, and from what we’ve seen it does so effortlessly.

Samsung’s prototype is claimed to have a all day battery life, but can run all PC applications like Photoshop, Excel and Outlook. You can connect upto two external monitors, without hiccups.
Update: You can download Windows 8 developer preview now.
The Samsung Tablet Hardware Specifications:

The Series 7 sports following specifications:

• a bright (400 nit), 11.6-inch capacitive panel (1366 x 768 resolution),
• CPU: Intel’s 1.6GHz Core i5-2467M CPU,
• GPU: Integrated Intel graphics,
• 64GB SSD
• 4GB of RAM.
• 2 megapixel camera and a light sensor on front, and 3 MP rear.
• Connectivity: 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, USB 2.0 port and a micro HDMI port.

The Windows 8 – The OS Feel
Hardware sure looks competitive with any Android Tablet out there in the market. But we can’t be certain that Win8 tablet will boast the same level of wow factor once these begin hitting the market at some point next year (Q2 2012?). What also concerns is whether a full fledged OS (windows 7++) will need a better horsepower.  Of course Windows 8 is a Full desktop OS unlike the iPad or Honeycomb Android tablet.

Windows 8 Handson Video

Not the whole experience is smooth at this point fo time and 1.6ghz trying to run Photoshop can sure be a painful thing. But what is worth applauding here that Microsoft has managed to trim the fat surrounding Win8 in order for it to run shockingly well on a tablet.

But the real question is: By the time NVIDIA’s Tegra 4 and hexacore CPUs hit the tablet market, Windows 8 would still run on dual cores.

OS Customization
You can do all the customizations you could do on a Metro UI Windows Phone 7. You can customize lock screen and choose between standard password, PIN, or picture password.

Live tiles are same from WP7 world, nothing fancier. Navigation in Windows 8 OS is a left-to-right affair, as oppose to up and down, and is indeed very smooth. Heavy apps really brings the tablet to ground level but the launcher is never slow.

Along that right edge reside a series of five “charms,” as they’ve been unfortunately named: Search, Share, Start, Devices and Settings. If you’re in an app, you can use the share charm to Tweet your latest Facebook update, or Facebook your favorite recipe. It’s another point at which it becomes apparent that this is a desktop OS with a mobile mind.

Full-screen apps
All apps run in fullscreen mode. If you swipe from the left, you can navigate through other open apps, even snapping them in place for a split-screen view. The right side contains the hidden charms, while the bottom and top are reserved for app-specific controls.

Apps & Desktop
It all nails down to apps. It would run Windows apps, thats sure a big win. It would also run WP7 apps, unaltered but they face same problem as android mobile apps on honeycomb tablets.

The normal desktop view is actually a Tile, which one touched displays the conventional Windows 7 desktop, which will play host to your more serious applications like Excel and Photoshop, is treated just like your Twitter client and RSS feed. It’s an app like any other on the Start page, but in reality it’s an entirely different user interface.

Verdict

Apple created a Post-PC tablet and then brought the features back to the Mac. Microsoft is taking the idea further, giving tablets power of  desktop apps, without giving the hardware enough boost. The whole thing, in our opinion, would depend on how great the hardware is that ships with it. Everything else looks good.

Related: Windows 9 Features & improvements

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Microsoft is gathering data from Windows Phone 7 handsets that connect to wi-fi networks, along with cars that go around sniffing out hotspots, and logging it all here. I don’t know why by anyone can get access to the data. Cnet did a self test of various MAC address of its Windows devices and found themselves with complete location history.

How it Works: iPhone and Android devices automatically change their Wi-Fi MAC address when acting as an access point. Android devices appear to choose a MAC address beginning with 02:1A.

Google’s database doesn’t include the MAC address 02:1A:11:F2:12:FF. But Microsoft’s does, and reports that it is located in the Embassy of Montenegro on New Hampshire Avenue in Washington, D.C.

Ugly Part: Since you might have used your smartphone’s Tether Wifi hotspot,  its highly possible that your data has been captured by Microsoft and available to public. If an attacker knows your MAC address, he already knows your mobile activity on the map. Story doesn’t end here, Microsoft still doesn’t comment on whether they collect additional data on the WP7 devices  like the devices connected to the network. What this means is that they might have also captured all phones, laptops connected to those Wifi networks. So If you’ve ever connected to a Wifi (which you often do), your location might be already public to everyone.

Microsoft’s statement:

“To provide location-based services, Microsoft collects publicly broadcast cell tower IDs and MAC addresses of Wi-Fi access points via both user devices and managed driving. If a user chooses to use their smartphone or mobile device as a Wi-Fi access point, their MAC address may also be included as a part of our service. However, since mobile devices typically move from one place to another they are not helpful in providing location. Once we determine that a device is not in a fixed location, we remove it from our list of active MAC addresses.”

Ugliest part of the whole story is that  there’s no way to “Opt-out”, you can’t prevent your MAC address from being added.

How to check if your location is Public or not

Go to this website and enter your mac address, if you see your location info, go and fight with them.

Update: 31st July – Microsoft seemed to have fixed the problem [via]

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Microsoft claims that Windows 8 is a “reimagining of Windows, from the chip to the interface”. Windows 8 is designed to work with computers, mobile devices with any form factor from handheld to tablets.

Windows 8 is believed to be Fast, fluid and dynamic, the experience has been transformed while keeping the power, flexibility and connectivity of Windows intact.

Key features of Windows 8:

• Fast launching of apps from a tile-based Start screen, which replaces the Windows Start menu with a customizable, scalable full-screen view of apps.
• Live tiles with notifications, showing always up-to-date information from your apps.
• Fluid, natural switching between running apps.
• Convenient ability to snap and resize an app to the side of the screen, so you can really multitask using the capabilities of Windows.
• Web-connected and Web-powered apps built using HTML5 and JavaScript that have access to the full power of the PC.
• Fully touch-optimized browsing, with all the power of hardware-accelerated Internet Explorer 10.

Windows 8 would ship with some native full touchscreen support apps and there would be a marketplace to get more.

Microsoft believes that with Windows 8, there would be no compromises in UI no matter if you use mouse or touch input.

Windows 8 would also be  running on System on a Chip (SoC) processors (based on ARM), Tablets are just around the corner.

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Note: This thread would be updated as the event happens, don’t forget to check back:

• Threads: You can toggle between messages, chat up, and Windows Live Messenger, all in the same conversation

• Groups: Contact groups Tiles custom Live turns to see the latest statuses and quickly send a message to an email or instant message to the entire group, directly from the Start screen

• Better integration with social networks: Twitter and LinkedIn contacts are integrated into the card and can include up Mango check-in, also have available one nine facial detection software that makes it easy tagging your photos or posting them on the Internet

• Linked inbox: More email accounts in a secure inbox, conversations are organized so you can view the most recent mail

• Hands-free messaging: Built-in speech-to-text and text-to-speech, which allows writing messages and chat hands-free

• Connect App: By connecting and integrating applications on their search results in Windows Phone Hubs, including Music and Videos and Pictures, applications are visible when and where needed.

• Improved Live Tiles: You can get updated information without requiring applications to be open. Live Tiles are now more dynamic and can store more information.

• Multitasking: Applications can be rotated quickly and at the same time, others may run in the background, while retaining the performance and battery duration

• Internet Explorer 9: The power of a PC browser-based IE9 support for HTML5 and support for hardware acceleration

• Recognize local (Local Scout). Providing local results and recommendations for nearby restaurants, shops and suggested activities, present in a user-friendly guide

• Bing for Windows Phone: More ways to search the Internet, location based searches, including Bing Vision, Voice and Music Search, so that decision making is easier

• Quick Cards: When searching for a product, movie, event or place we provide a summary and relevant applications

Standby for more updates on WP7 as event proceeds.

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We love to see Microsoft Research’s Future vision with their occasional demos. Their latest idea revolves around Future Home Vision, a playground to demonstrate the potential of the future homes.

Microsoft has taken its surface technology and has integrated it into real life. Previous versions of surface were way too commercial to be used at normal user’s homes. From charging plates to connected surfaces that talk even to your wrist watch, its all pretty cool.

Watch the Future home Vision from the Microsoft Capmus Tours

It might look little fancy today but it would sure be invading our homes over the next decade. Those interactive wallpapers sure would come usefull tomorrow, you wont need one side facing TVs or computer screen any longer. And if Super AMOLED plus technology goes further, you wont need windows to see the scenic beauty.

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Many of us believe that “Windows upgrade” is buggy and doesn’t work well when you upgrade from older to newer version. We have often recommended a clean install but this video is here to prove every one wrong — A Man uses VMware to emulate old hardware and install DOS to Windows 1.0 and then upgrade it to all the subsequent versions, all the way upto Windows 7. And surprisingly, it worked.

The adventurous guy didn’t include the Windows ME, a big failure. The journey  is documented as a 10 minute video examining the upgrade process a Great recall for all Windows versions.

Twenty Years of Backward compatibility

Before starting systematic upgrades, The Secret of Monkey Island and Doom II were installed to test DOS functionality in each version of Windows.

The results of the experiment are pretty amazing–the games worked in every version of Windows but Vista, which had clumsy DOS support, and problematic everywhere. Twenty years of backwards compatibility? Whoa!

As far as installation times are concerned, they peaked  with Windows 98 and Vista–So we conclude, its possible to upgrade from Windows 1 to Windows 7 without much trouble.

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Windows 8 would get architectural changes, lots of new Features, improvements.

WinRumors claims that Microsoft’s Windows 8 Milestone 2 build has been finalized, and Milestone 3 is on the horizon. After Milestone 3 is done, its just matter of days that we would start seeing Windows 8 beta being seeded to BETA testers and floating on torrents, just like windows 7. The windows 8 beta could arrive as early as summer 2011.

Microsoft compiled 6.2.7947.0.winmain_win8m2_escrow.110218-1608 on Friday, 18th feb 2011. Things are progressing secretly, even inside the company. So far, the leaked information states some recent Windows 8 builds:

6.2.7925.0.winmain_win8m2.110207-1736
6.2.7926.0.winmain_win8m2.110209-1755
6.2.7927.0.winmain_win8m2.110210-1740
6.2.7928.0.winmain_win8m2.110214-1825
6.2.7929.0.winmain_win8m2.110215-1802
6.2.7930.0.winmain_win8m2.110217-1825

Microsoft is also working on an ARM-compatible version of Windows (for tablets), its is actually possible that we might get to see a Tablet version first followed by desktop version. Its evident that Microsoft is struggling to enter the Tablet market, and so far every attempt looks vague.

Windows 8 Milestones, Timelines

What’s interesting to me is how closely this roadmap snippet seems to be mirroring the timelines and build information from a few sites and sources claiming access to leaked Win 8 builds. On February 21, there were reports that Microsoft was just about done with Win 8 Milestone 2. On the roadmap above, final M2 build candidate is slated to arrive on February 23. And according to the roadmap above, the coding for Milestone 3 (M3) is due to start a week from today, on February 28.

There has been evidence that supports “Windows 8 on Tablets“, and we hope to see them floating in the market as early as early 2012. Again, they will be entering the Tablet market late (just like WP7 in smartphones), but we’ve to see how good it gets.

In any case, if Microsoft does follow history and deliver a Win 8 Beta 1, Beta 2 and Release Candidate before RTMing, Windows 8 is looking like a mid-2012 RTM.

Windows 8 has more love for the Cloud, better user interface, more virtualization & networking improvements, core performance improvements,

Full list of Windows 8 Features, Improvements.

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Microsoft has announced a brand new Microsoft Surface at CES 2011 featuring all new windows 7 based surface that runs on a regular desktop config and is much thinner, and portable than before. “. The absence of the cameras, makes it thinner. One of the most amazing things about the new Microsoft Surface is its “Pixel sense“, a technology that lets the large surface screen to see things placed over it.

Microsoft Surface 2 Demo at CES 2011

The SUR40 comes equipped with pedestals and mounts in order to maneuver and position the 40-inch, 4-inch-thick, 1080p screen and make it less of Microsoft Surface 2 and more of Microsoft Computer Monitor 2. The device sports a 2.9 AMD Athlon II X2 processor and a Radeon HD 6700M graphics card, runs Windows 7, and has Windows Phone 7 support. The Samsung SUR40 also employs the use of Gorilla Glass, a type of glass that can withstand more abuse than regular glass.

The SUR40 costs a cool (uncool) $7,600 at the moment, which is hilariously cheaper than the $12,500 original.

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Knowing that Microsoft has grown up to live upto smartphone industry with Windows Phone 7, lets take a look at how well did it do on its first day as compared to any iPhone or Android.

Micrsofot managed to sell 40,000 WP7 devices on its day1 launch in the U.S. If you are under the impression that this is quiet a number, let see how does it compare with iPhones, Androids. Google said last month that it was selling 200,000 Android phones a day. And Apple has said that its iOS sales rate was 270,000 a day.

WP7 was launched on monday, which experts believe is the worst day to launch a new product, when compared to weekends. Beyond the timing, Microsoft may have confused consumers with too many models. Microsoft introduced nine Windows 7 phones at its October press event. “In the phone world, our surveys show that there should be a choice between A or B.” May be it confused buyers more than helping them.

Apart from that there are loads of reasons why most buyers are holding themselves back– The good & Bad of Windows Phone 7:

1. Existing smartphone users won’t switch
2. The Wait for Apps: do you really want to limit youself to 2000 apps as compared to richer apps on iOS, Android?
3. Time to Mature: If took Apple & google 2+ years to prepare a Robust Mobile OS, what is your bet for Microsoft?
4. No Copy Paste, No Multitasking: Welcome to year 2007

So what do we forecast? What can be predicted?

It’s early in the game. Not every product surges right out of the starting blocks. The first Android phone was not a big seller at T-Mobile. A better time to judge Windows Phone 7 will be Christmas, the black friday.

Industry evangelists do forecast that eventually WP7 would gain a share which would become 3rd largest after iOS & Android. How much time will it take? To be honest atleast a year. don’t expect any big growth till the WP7 platform matures with more apps, better platform support.

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We already know quite a lot about Windows Phone 7 but little was known about the OS Internals until someone got hold of Microsoft’s Documents of Windows Phone 7.

Meanwhile, Watch Microsoft Windows Phone 7 Launch Event Live

Update: Nine WP7 phones available at launch from HTC, Dell, Samsung, and Dell

The final integration of Windows Phone 7 with OEM partners’ hardware, software, and networks is underway, the work of WP7 internal engineering team is largely complete.

Microsoft claims that Windows Phone 7 is the most thoroughly tested mobile platform Microsoft has ever released.  The nightly testing automation included as many as 10,000 devices, daily. And after half million hours of fully automated test passes, they are ready.

Windows Phone 7 brings a whole new experience to smartphones by presenting new intuitive Hubs that are nothing but Live feeds from various Social networks, media.

A Look at Windows Phone  7 Architecture

System & Kernel: Windows Phone 7 is based on Windows CE 6.0. CE 6.0 had been around for a while but was never used with Windows Mobile 6.5. CE 6.0 is a leap ahead of other windows CE.

The shell and application platform reside in user space, while the kernel, drivers, file systems, network, graphics/rendering, and the phone update system run in kernel space. Since we’re talking a 32bit operating system, it can only address 4GB of memory – 2GB for processes, 2GB for the kernel.

The mandated processor will be an ARMv7 design. Multi-touch, FM Tuner, Wi-Fi, GPS, and camera are also mandated. The default screen resolution is 800×480 pixels, but developers can go as low as 480×320 (the resolution of the current iPhone).

Connectivity: Bluetooth 3.0 and 4.0 support is noticeably absent, though the phone will support the widespread Bluetooth 2.1 standard. Microsoft hopefully plans an update at some point to add support for later versions of the wireless communication standard, but there’s no specific details at this point.

Graphics: Windows Phone 7 leverages Direct3D from DirectX 11 for full blown 3D graphics on the mobile. Why is it powerful? It’s exact Desktop replica of DirectX 11, not any trimmed down version. But the scenario is different than the desktop, Phone OEMs will have to write the 2D and 3D drivers for their hardware and Microsoft will deliver the framework.

FileSystems: Windows Phone 7 supports two file-systems: IMGFS and TexFAT. IMGFS holds the actual system and operating system files and has been defacto in windows mobile phones since long. TexFAT is an extended version of the FAT file system capable of addressing files larger than 4GB, and is used to store “user files”. However, Microsoft has opted for a unified storage approach, which means that applications and users can not distinguish between files in local storage or on a memory card.

Is The Time Right?

Microsoft is entering the race late at a time when iPhone and Android have captured most of the market and still growing Rapidly. Will WP7 makeup for the delay ?

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Often we navigate into streets and find it hard to recognize the Buildings with the immersive  the 360 environment. Microsoft Research wants to change that. Street Slide, a research project, aggregates all the photos from 360 degree bubbles and stitches neighboring images into long panoramas. The Result — You can see the full stretch of road along one street (like a filmstrip) that you can now pan across. However, this doesn’t stop you from zooming into individual positions to get the traditional 360 degree view, but the ability to zoom out and scan one stretch of street offers a level of freedom that makes exploration enjoyable and useful.

Watching says more than reading:

Street Slide is one of the implementations of Microsoft’s Seadragon technology they’re already using in Bing Maps Beta, along with an extension of its Photosynth collaborative geo-tagging photo project.

It’s great to see Microsoft Innovating after all these bad years. After all, its been long since they last used “Utility” over “Visual gimmick” to promote a product. Let’s hope that Street Slide will get the opportunity to move beyond the research paper domain and actually turn into a Bing Maps feature.

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Since those old days, I simply couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that Microsoft’s Windows-based servers still exist in the market having a share as large as 20% where Linux was 65+%. Sooner I realized, easier it became to grasp  that I wasn’t  the only one troubled with it.

Java may not still be the best Web (internet) programming language but there’s always win of Open standards like PHP  because of the ease of programming. But, Java still is the weapon of choice in the Enterprise Business market.

JavaWorld has come up with a trailer for a mock movie called “Java 4-ever,” where a young man is born in a Microsoft fan .Net-obsessed family and due to some inevitable consequences falls in love with Java and Open Source. Featuring in the movie are mock characters “William Windows”, “Mona Lisa Harddrive,”, “Scala Johansson”, “Eddie Larrison” and “Lenny Linux”

I wish this movie was for Real!

It comes in a nice, shiny black frame, and just by looking at it you can tell that it’s a lot more angular, and in a good way. On the hardware side, there are no upgrades to core system except for educed size and power consumption. Also, the new system comes with a 250GB hard drive, as well as built-in 802.11n WiFi connectivity.

Price is set to $299, same as the older Xbox 360, but its now much more affordable considering the 2 new inbuilt addons. However, most exciting part would be the new Xbox Kinect controller that makes you involved in the game, sports, Fitness games which are both fun and Utility, its awesome!

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What is Xbox Kinect?

Last year, Microsoft showcased first previews of the  new “controller-free” experience on the xbox 360. SThe controller is quiet similar to both Nintendo’s Wii controller and the Playstation Eye. Kinect will employ the player’s bodies, voices, and even facial expressions to interact with their Xbox 360 games: You are the controller!

Kinect is basically Microsoft’s response to the Nintendo Wii, and PS3 Move. With Kinect, Microsoft has eliminated the need of controller. Simply stated, it is an add-on for Xbox 360 that uses a sensor, containing cameras and microphones, to enable you to interact with the system through gestures, spoken commands and other objects.

Now that Official word is available from Microsoft, here’s a preview:

Kinect is getting a large number of games for racing, sports, a dance game, and even a Star Wars game from LucasArts and Disney studios:

• Kinectimals: A virtual ‘big cat’ trainer that lets you train and play with 20 different feline members of the animal kingdom, including tigers, lions, and cheetah.
• Kinect Sports: Microsoft’s answer to Wii Sports, Kinect Sports features table tennis, boxing, bowling, soccer, beach volleyball, and track and field; all controlled using your body.
• Joyride: This one looks to be a kart-style racer—grip your hands on an imaginary steering wheel and use your foot for the gas and brakes.
• Kinect Adventures: This game combines a river raft simulator (recently seen on YouTube) and obstacle course for up to four players. Rafting works in pairs, with players working together and moving in the same direction to steer. Jumping will also grant access to secret areas.
• Dance Central: Developed by MTV games, this is a motion-controlled dance-off.
• Disney and Lucasarts have also announced that classic Disney and Star Wars characters will be appearing in upcoming Kinect games

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On the phone, Android’s a real competitor. On the larger-screen devices, who knows. I don’t know that these Android-based things will matter. But I don’t know that they won’t either…I don’t really understand why Google has to have two different operating systems…Chrome? It’s like two, two, two operating systems — but they’re not in one! You want to know about Chrome, talk to them. So why do two? Why not focus on one? Having two OSes is confusing. You need coherence.

See who is talking about Coherence, The company that has nearly 18 different variations of its operating systems. Google might be wrong, who knows, so far we haven’t seen them going wrong Big time. Of course Wave and Buzz were like most unpopular apps of all times, but they still have innovation underneath.

Steve on Tablets

Responding to Steve Job’s comments Tuesday night that tablets like the iPad will replace personal computers, Ballmer said more and more people will be using PCs in the years to come, but that PCs are going to keep changing, with new form factors, as well as touch screens and onscreen keyboards.

Nothing people are doing on a PC is going to get less relevant, declared Ballmer, though some things will move to alternative devices. But many people will prefer a general purpose device to a lot of individual devices. He said people will continue to want general-purpose devices (such as PCs) as well as devices they can carry in their pockets. But devices like the new tablets really are “personal computers,” just in new form factors.

On tablets, Ballmer said there will be more of them running Windows with existing applications and some additions. “We have a lot of work to do,” he admitted. There will be a lot of competition around that, but Microsoft and its partners will drive innovation with both Windows and probably Windows Phone.

Its hard to not to stress that our hardware industry is innovating around Android: from cars to set-top boxes to televisions, Android is taking over.

Microsoft needs to face it, Google and apple have literally kicked them out of mobile business. Not just phones, Apple’s new category Tablets is one place where Microsoft haven’t even started (and will not till early 2011). And believe it or not, Tablet (especiallyiPad-like) devices are the futures of Personal computing.

Just as Linux took away growth opportunities from Sun Microsystems in the server arena, the Android OS (a Linux variant) will prove to be Microsoft’s Windows 7 for tablets.

Adding to that, Ray Ozzie, the Chief Software Architect at Microsoft said:

On the Android vs. Chrome issue…Android is a bet on the past; Chrome is a bet on the future. When you install an app you’re targeting a device. When you use Chrome, you’re looking at a cloud-based future.

Calling chrome a thing of future makes sense, but I heard this for the first time “Android is the thing of the past”. The future is all about ease of use new Personal computers will bring. The underlying computer OS details would be things for geeks and abstract to normal users as modern mobile OS change the way we  interact with computers.

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The Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7 was first introduced last May as a series of 6 applications that were designed to showcase Windows Touch in Windows 7 and to help people learn touch gestures. The features were limited to OEMs with devices having multitouch. But now the Touch pack allows users to use it with any 3rd party touchscreens.

The Touch Pack is a set of six multi-touch consists of 3 casual games, and 3 Microsoft Surface applications that have been created for Windows 7.

Download: Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7

What’s Inside Touch Pack

1. Microsoft Surface Globe uses the Virtual Earth 3D engine to display a 3D  Earth. Using multi-touch, you can navigate to different regions, get local information, and “pin” your favorite locations. You can even “fly” around 3D models of buildings in some cities.

2. Microsoft Surface Collage: A photo collage app that arranges photos in the way you want.

3. Microsoft Surface Lagoon is a screensaver that you can interact with using multi-touch.

4. Microsoft Blackboard, A puzzle game of physics that uses nifty machine on a virtual blackboard. Use gestures to rotate and resize gears, fans, seesaws and more to move balloons and balls toward the light bulbs – and victory.

Other Games:

5. Microsoft Rebound

6. Microsoft Garden Pond

The apps gives you basic multitotuch experience on Windows 7 but clearly shows how immature this platform is as far as Multitouch is concerned when compared to a native device like iPad. This is the reason why HP’s Slate is a bad idea.

But would multitouch apps appear on Windows 7 Marketplace? We’ll have to wait to see it.

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The Guide contains a lot of information each one of you ahd been waiting to hear about.

System & Kernel: Windows Phone 7 on Windows CE 6.0.  CE 6.0 had been around for a while but was never used with Windows Mobile 6.5. CE 6.0 is a leap ahead of other windows CE.

The shell and application platform reside in user space, while the kernel, drivers, file systems, network, graphics/rendering, and the phone update system run in kernel space. Since we’re talking a 32bit operating system, it can only address 4GB of memory – 2GB for processes, 2GB for the kernel.

The mandated processor will be an ARMv7 design.  Multi-touch, FM Tuner, Wi-Fi, GPS, and camera are also mandated.  The default screen resolution is 800×480 pixels, but developers can go as low as 480×320 (the resolution of the current iPhone).

Connectivity: Bluetooth 3.0 and 4.0 support is noticeably absent, though the phone will support the widespread Bluetooth 2.1 standard.  Microsoft hopefully plans an update at some point to add support for later versions of the wireless communication standard, but there’s no specific details at this point.

Graphics: Windows Phone 7 leverages Direct3D from DirectX 11 for full blown 3D graphics on the mobile. Why is it powerful? It’s exact Desktop replica of DirectX 11, not any trimmed down version. But the scenario is different than the desktop, Phone OEMs will have to write the 2D and 3D drivers for their hardware and Microsoft will deliver the framework.

FileSystems: Windows Phone 7 supports two file-systems: IMGFS and TexFAT. IMGFS  holds the actual system and operating system files and has been defacto in windows mobile phones since long. TexFAT is an extended version of the FAT file system capable of addressing files larger than 4GB, and is used to store “user files”. However, Microsoft has opted for a unified storage approach, which means that applications and users can not distinguish between files in local storage or on a memory card.

The Guide also details the level of control OEMs and carriers would have over the device.They would no longer have control to change everything (like HTC did on HD2) but may alter some limited stuff which includes: connection icons and carrier logo, wallpapers, and change the boot screen, bookmarks, change the default search engine (yes), and install a maximum of 6 applications in the ROM. These applications must be free – no trial software. Apart from that they can add new items to the home menu but cannot delete any of the existing ones.

Software Updates: Updates must be approved by and go through Microsoft’s update service. Like android, small updates will be OTA (over-the-air),  but larger updates will use the Zune software and a USB cable with a windows PC.

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Silverlight 4 now lets developers write apps that access your webcam, microphone, and even provide local recording features out of the box. Flash has supported them for years, but Adobe is now seeing downfall thanks to Apple.

So what that means is a typical Silverlight 4 app will be able to capture and edit voice or video and allow you to store the video locally or publish online at youtube, or even attach it to an email. This is something Flash was never designed to do.

Silverlight 4 also brings hardware-accelerated (GPU) video decoding, that makes 1080p H.264 playback possible even on an Intel Atom-based netbook that runs Nvidia’s ION GPU. Adobe announced similar feature in it’s Flash 10.1.

Apart from that, Silverlight 4 also includes support for adaptive streaming, DRM, and DVR-like capabilities.

Trusted Silverlight apps can now read and write files to local system, access attached peripherals.Various localization enhancements that include bidirectional text, right-to-left support, and complex scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew and Thai, as well as 30 new languages, seems like a big deal.

Silverlight Beyond Computers

The Silverlight platform would soon be seen across a number of gadgets like set-top boxes, internet TVs (aka connected TVs), Blu-ray players, and DVRs, etc.

With Silverlight now installed on nearly 60 percent of all connected devices around the world, I see good prospects for Microsoft to take over the lost share of Flash. And if it works better than Flash on Mac OS, there’s a one in a hundred chance that Apple considers making it a choice for RIA on iPhone, iPad.

The launch event and some demos are available Developer Tools Newsroom.

Download: www.microsoft.com/getsilverlight [Windows & Mac OS]

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Looking back at Mac OS X

Today, Apple’s Mac OS X is nine years old. Released on March 24, 2001, Cheetah was the very first iteration of Mac OS X, bearing the 10.0 version number. In case you don’t know, the X in “Mac OS X” stands for the Roman  “10.”Since then, it has become an important part of Apple’s history.

Apple’s Mac OS X is a Unix-based (BSD to be precise) graphical operating system, built on technologies developed at NeXT between the second half of the 1980s and Apple’s purchase of the company in late 1996. Mac OS X v10.5 “Leopard” first got it’s support to run on Intel hardware, since then Apple’s marketshare jumped to what is seen today (around 5.12%).

A list of all Mac OS X versions and their subsequent release dates:

10.0 Cheetah – March 24, 2001;
10.1 Puma – September 25, 2001;
10.2 Jaguar – August 24, 2002;
10.3 Panther – October 24, 2003;
10.4 Tiger – April 29, 2005;
10.4 Intel Tiger – January 10, 2006;
10.5 Leopard – October 26, 2007;
10.6 Snow Leopard – August 28, 2009.

The current version of Snow  Leopard is 10.6.2 and release of 10.6.3 is evident.

Microsoft’s History

In 1975, Harvard dropout, Bill Gates and his high school friend Paul Allen set up a tiny business to write software for a new microcomputer called the Altair 8800. Their first product is the Altair BASIC language. At some point during that year, the company is called Micro-soft, and then MicroSoft, before it is ultimately named Microsoft.

From those modest beginnings, that company went on to help give birth to an entire industry, change the way we live and work, and become one of the largest software companies on the planet, creating countless millionaires — and several billionaires — along the way.

Over the Last few years Microsoft built Windows taking it journey from v3.1 to current version: Windows 7, the most successful windows ever.

And Today, Microsoft owns products for almost all Business, consumers, industries needs.

Further Reading: An opinionated look back at the good, the bad and the ugly of Microsoft’s 35-year history[Computer world]

P.S. I always wonder why only droup-outs turn-out to be so successful?

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