Exciting times at MIX 10 where Microsoft took the Las Vegas stage in order to show off a lot of the applications that will soon be hitting the streets with Windows Phone 7 Series.
Because Silverlight 4 and the XNA Framework have been baked into the Windows Phone platform this unleashes quite a bit of power to the developers who, judging by the demos, have jumped at the chance of showing what can be done on modern smartphones.
The usual run-of-the-mill apps were present; such as Twitter client Seesmic, location-based social network Foursquare, music identification service Shazam and the Associated Press but the ones that made me sit up and take notice were Netflix and the slickness of Windows Mobile 7 Series love of gaming!
Netflix is quite a popular video rental service and most of its mobile apps are focused on accessing and modifying the user’s list of movies. Now, Netflix can be used to stream your choice of flicks on the likes of the Nintendo Wii right through to TiVo but thanks to the lovely Silverlight you can sling those films right onto Windows Phone 7 Series devices to watch as you go
Even though rumour has it that the iPhone may grab this before Microsoft gets it out the display of gaming on Windows Phone 7 Series handsets was pretty impressive.
The Harvest was demoed and what was highlighted was that this game could be played on a Windows Phone, PC, or Xbox 360 and no matter which platform you choose as your arena you can unlock achievements, increase your gamer score, access leaderboards, and connect to your friends over Live.
Microsoft’s Charlie Kindel said that “Developers and designers can now build their code once and optimize it to take advantage of the unique capabilities of the phone, Web, PC or Xbox 360. Due to common shared libraries, controls and runtimes across these many screens and the cloud, developers now have the opportunity to reach over 1 billion customers,”
Barcelona’s MWC has been buzzing as to what Microsoft was going to bring to the stand.
Even though the Project Pink hasn’t been officially outed yet the Windows Phone 7 Series has.
“Smart design and truly integrated experiences” is how the big M describes it.
What is cool is the Xbox LIVE games and Zune music and video marketplaces that will drop content directly to your Windows Phones.
Microsoft already has partners building phones with Windows Phone 7 Series inside, in Europe the first to confirm its involvement is Orange, which says it’ll be making handsets with all of Microsoft’s new gaming and media skills inside, as well as Orange TV and Orange Navigation services.
The eagle-eyed amongst you will have spotted those ‘Live Tiles’ that replace the usual shortcuts on the homescreen on the Windows Phone 7 Series. These clever tiles actually update to show content from the web automatically.
Microsoft’s LT’s lets you create a Tile for a friend and then you’ll automatically see that person’s latest pictures and posts, just by glancing at that Start Screen (stalk you much?).
Windows Live is integrated as is Facebook so there’s no excuse as to why you don’t know what your ex had for lunch.
Windows Phone 7 Series is rocking the multitouch so now WinMo is going toe-to-toe with Apple’s iPhone.
Anyone making a handset and wants it to run Windows Phone 7 Series will have to include a real button to that takes the user straight to Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
Microsoft says that Bing is getting cleverer and on the Windows Phone 7 Series it will deliver “intent-specific results”. This means that the results will be more tuned to the things you type in – which might/might not be embarrassing depending on what you usually type about.
Another new feature is Windows Phone 7 Series’ hubs. The hub themes cover: People, Pictures, Games, Music + Video, Marketplace and Office.
They’re kinda like homescreens for specific areas.
The ‘People‘ hub is where you’ll find your contacts. The first screen sorts your most popular friends (those that you’ve contacted most recently) in a mosaic of photos. Just swipe through to the next screen to see all your mates, then a list of their recent status updates in Windows Live, Facebook and an as yet unknown number of other similar services.
The ‘Music + Video‘ hub syncs music from your PC using the Zune software – people of the UK may be confused by this (click here) as we’ve never seen a Zune – but imagine iPhone and iTunes but more Microsofty.
The ‘Pictures‘ hub pulls in photos from the phone’s camera, from online photo-sharing services including Facebook and perhaps Flickr, and galleries you’ve synced from your PC.
The ‘Office‘ hub is exactly what you’d expect from a Windows phone. Here you’ll find support for OneNote, Office docs and SharePoint.
Most interesting is the ‘Games‘ hub, which offers the “Xbox LIVE experience on a phone,” says Microsoft. It includes Xbox LIVE games, Spotlight feed and the ability to see friends’ avatarsr, achievements and gamer profile. You’ll be able to buy games and earn gamer points. The best bit has to be the possiblity of interacting with proper Xbox or PC games.
If you cast your mind back to the start of the month you may remember my review of TC Electronic’s RH450 and RS210 bass rig that I bought.
I love my new rig and now understand what all the fuss was about.
I’m now fortunate enough to own TC Electronic’s new state of the art audio interface [...]
The Zune / Xbox Phone rumours had quietened down for a while but now Katherine Egbert, an anylist with Jefferies & Company, has said that Microsoft is getting ready to bust out a phone based on Windows Mobile 7.
This would make the job offer make sense as well don’t you think?
“Our recent industry checks [...]
Zune coming to UK?
Yeah – that’s what I thought when I was told this.
I reckoned that these very shores were going to get a taste of the MP3 player that was designed to take on Apple’s iPod.
Ok, so almost four years later the Zune only owns 2% of the US MP3 market – a [...]
The Nokia 5530 XpressMusic Illuvial, Nokia 6700 Illuvial and the Nokia 6303 Illuvial are being flung into the Christmas market and I’m guessing that they’re aimed squarely at the lovely ladies
This guess is purely based on the knowledge that there Illuvial editions are coloured in shades of purple and pink, with themed wallpapers, “floral [...]
For those of you that follow me on Twitter you will have seen my twinterview with Sony’s Tim Page, Senior Technology Marketing Manager for TV’s.
For you guys that missed it we managed to cover what Sony is doing for people with disabilities, their plans for 3D televisions (possibly without needing 3D glasses) and whether there’s [...]
This is an ideal situation for anyone in a band.
Electro-muso, Calvin Harris teamed up with Sony Music UK and created the Humanthesizer.
With the help of Bare conductive body ink the team converted 15 lovely bikini-clad ladies into a giant Arduino-powered synth capable of playing Harris’s track “Ready For The Weekend” through Max/MSP and Ableton Live.
The way the [...]
Hmmmm……..Microsoft officially outed the Zune HD a week ago – that’s old news now.
But the Amazon product listing under the Technical Details section is talking about Xbox Live integration – That’s new news!
Did I miss that in the actual Microsoft press release?
Integration with the Xbox LIVE network gives you access to millions of videos, TV shows, and [...]
It’s official: Bing.com is Microsoft’s new Web search.
Instead of handing you with a list of links, Bing is designed to work out what you were thinking and organise your results into handy categories.
Features include best match, page previews viewed by hovering over links, and instant answers – which provides quick results in the body of [...]
It seems that Google Street View UK is up and running.
Found this out by accident this morning – but hey!
Now the rest of the world can ”drive” around blighty just as we’ve been able to do with the US of A
We know that those Google street cars have been cruising around but now we can see [...]
Tired of Google Lattitude and Google Maps even with the public transport add-on?
How does Google Mars sound to ya?
Well, Google is now officially showing live updates from the surface of the waring red planet.
Google issued this statement today: “We are entering uncharted territory.”
Users can access the images from the Themis camera from onboard the Mars [...]
Remember when I reported about this odd luggage that is actually powered?
Well, there’s to be a smaller and cheaper version coming to an airport lounge near you!
As you know the handle design places 85% of the bags weight over the wheels and those wheels are powered via a motor that uses flat technology to assist [...]
Remember when I said that invites for testing the Quake Live closed Beta were being sent out?
Well, now QUAKE LIVE will be available to the general public as an open beta on Tuesday, February 24th!
That means Monday morning (U.S. central time) beta.quakelive.com will go down for about 36 hours and then opening to the public at www.quakelive.com on Tuesday [...]
Has luggage ever made you think that it could be cool?
To be honest there has been moments but, it’s rarelybeen something that I thought about bothering these hallowed pages with.
But now there’s a new generation of PA carry-on that may be worth a closer look.
PA stands for power assisted and Live Luggage’s PA bags are [...]
Wanna play Quake for free anywhere as long as the puter has a browser?
Well, Quake Live just happens to be a free in-browser version of Quake!
Invitations to the service, previously named Quake Zero, are being sent out as I type and users are directed to beta.quakelive.com
This is a whole new deal in gaming!
Instead of charging gamers a monthly access fee [...]
This has been around for a while but required you to JailBreak your iPhone.
But Orb has just gone official, with its own app for the handset finally getting the thumbs up from Apple.
In an announcement CEO Joe Costello said:
“We released a version of OrbLive in May, but this was before the Apple SDK and [...]
Good ol’ Auntie Beeb!
After bringing us the joy of the iPlayer the Beeb is going to be showing content from BBC One and BBC live online.
From the 27th November web visitors will be able to watch shows including Never Mind The Buzzcocks (fab!), EastEnders (never mind eh?) and Heroes (Yatta!) as they are broadcast.
BBC Three, [...]
If you are serious about Xbox gaming then keeping tabs on your ‘friends’ becomes essential.
How much practise are they getting in? What’s their kill/spawn ratio like? How much time do they spend online? All this becomes quite important.
Now you can check things like this whilst you’re wondering home back from the take-away.
iXboxLive is an unofficial application which was launched [...]
Well, thankfully, it seems my job as a bass player is safe, for now.
Techdirt are waving the human flag.
There has been a study of how people’s brains reacted to music that was played by human musicians vs. computers.
The upshot is that our brains respond more to the music from musicians. FOR THE WIN!!! [...]
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