Mobility Site » Microsoft

Microsoft Rethinks Family Guy Tie-In

Zealot — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 06:33:27 +0000

Well, here’s another shocker. After looking over the script and attending the actual taping of "Family Guy Presents: Seth and Alex’s Almost Live Comedy Show" starring Seth MacFarlane and Alex Borstein, Microsoft pulled out of their somewhat controversial (and heavily mocked) sponsorship of the show. This sponsorship was to include no commercials, but include marketing spots for Win 7 worked right into the show itself. The show will go on Nov 8th, but Fox is looking for a new sponsor.

Says Microsoft…

"We initially chose to participate in the Seth and Alex variety show based on the audience composition and creative humor of ‘Family Guy,’ but after reviewing an early version of the variety show, it became clear that the content was not a fit with the Windows brand.”

So what content “didn’t fit with the Windows brand”? Well…

(...) Read the rest of Microsoft Rethinks Family Guy Tie-In (133 words)

If you like what you are reading, please consider clicking one of the social networking icons to share the link love. Try a RT by clicking the Twitter icon above. Thanks for reading Mobilitysite!

Pink in Peril

Zealot — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 07:56:12 +0000

Gizmodo, the site that broke the “leaks” about Microsoft’s “Pink” project phones a couple weeks ago, has now become rumor central about the possible (probable? predestined?) demise of Microsoft’s supposed attempt to be more involved in phone hardware. A project that seemed a bit dubious and ill-conceived for Microsoft when first rumored seems even more so after recent events with the Sidekick.

You see, Pink was allegedly based on and built around the contributions of former staffers of Sidekick developer Danger, who brought their smartphone and UI know-how to Redmond when Microsoft bought the company a couple years ago. However, now the recent destruction of Sidekick’s Cloud based data, and thusly of Sidekick it seems, is being blamed (rightly I have a feeling) on Microsoft’s neglect. What does this bode for Pink (assuming it even exists of course)?

(...) Read the rest of Pink in Peril (303 words)

If you like what you are reading, please consider clicking one of the social networking icons to share the link love. Try a RT by clicking the Twitter icon above. Thanks for reading Mobilitysite!

Deja Vu All Over Again: Motorola Making Microsoft’s Mistake

Zealot — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:32:44 +0000

I find it very ironic that Motorola, in completely scorning Windows Mobile and embracing Android with their dying breath as a handset maker, is doing the same thing to Android that Microsoft allowed to happen to WinMo. Namely they are ruining any chance for developers to make a single app for the OS, forcing them to make apps on a device by device basis, just as happened to Windows Mobile. Of course this is only one of the problems that Microsoft has had to deal with in their Mobile OS (even Steve Ballmer admits that)…but development chaos is certainly not the smallest.

In Motorola’s recent announcement concerning Ecosystem partners, they made clear that these third party software producers, such as QuickOffice and Quickplay Media aren’t making apps for Android, they are making apps for the Motorola Cliq and it’s MotoBlur environment…and that is a very bad thing for Android as an operating system.

(...) Read the rest of Deja Vu All Over Again: Motorola Making Microsoft’s Mistake (344 words)

If you like what you are reading, please consider clicking one of the social networking icons to share the link love. Try a RT by clicking the Twitter icon above. Thanks for reading Mobilitysite!

Robbie Bach Introduces Windows Phone

Jack Cook — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:07:41 +0000

Here is a video shown during Robbie Bach’s opening remarks at the Microsoft E&D Open House, 2009

---
Related Articles at Mobility Site:

If you like what you are reading, please consider clicking one of the social networking icons to share the link love. Try a RT by clicking the Twitter icon above. Thanks for reading Mobilitysite!

Microsoft AV Released

ctitanic — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:02:00 +0000

I have been so busy that I had not posted anything about the release of Microsoft Security Essentials. I beta tested the product, no bad. The best thing is that it’s free and you don’t have to provide an email to download it or register anything and it does not expire after a year. These are good points, believe it or know. Every time you provide your email you are getting more spam, more chances of getting spywares, etc, etc.

---
Related Articles at Mobility Site:

If you like what you are reading, please consider clicking one of the social networking icons to share the link love. Try a RT by clicking the Twitter icon above. Thanks for reading Mobilitysite!

Ballmer Does the Numbers

Zealot — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 07:57:04 +0000

In an exclusive interview with Michael Arrington today, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer explained why Microsoft was staying out of the handset business….

So I think you can have an Apple in the phone business, or a RIM, and they can do very well, but when 1.3 billion phones a year are all smart, the software that’s gonna be most popular in those phones is gonna be software that’s sold by somebody who doesn’t make their own phone. And, we don’t want to cross the chasm in the short run and lose the war in the long run and that’s why we think the software play is the right play for us for high volume, even though some of the guys in the market today with vertically oriented solutions may do just fine.

That makes sense to me, especially when you consider that Windows has almost always left the matters of hardware to their partners (such as having Sharp making the new Pink phones) and been proven right to do so. People complain about their size now, but imagine how monolithic the company would be if the actually manufactured every PC that runs Windows? Would any government need to wait a second before slapping them with ever anti-trust law in the books? Apple and other companies only get away with making both software and hardware due to the fact that they have much smaller markets shares…though regulators have begun looking closely at Apple and the iPhone.

Clearly Microsoft continues to view their mobile offerings as just an extension of their core desktop/notebook business and I think that is a good thing. Time and time again Microsoft has said that they feel the transfer between phone and PC should be seamless and invisible, while Apple seems focused on making a closed mobile environment that begins and ends with the iPhone. I really look forward to seeing how closely Windows 7 and Windows Mobile 7 interact.

---
Related Articles at Mobility Site:

If you like what you are reading, please consider clicking one of the social networking icons to share the link love. Try a RT by clicking the Twitter icon above. Thanks for reading Mobilitysite!

Courier, the Miniature Surface Zune Tablet Emerges!

Zealot — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 06:04:06 +0000

…and it is GORGEOUS!!!

All the rumours were spot on. For all the times I have wanted to feed my hat to the fanbois at 9to5Mac, it is now off to them… they really nailed this one and it is a BIGGIE! This dual 7 inch multitouch screen folding book-style beauty is indeed called Courier, it is a late model prototype shepherded at Microsoft by the dead sexy J Allard and currently awaiting a manufacturing partner and it is being deliberately leaked exclusively to Gizmodo. What’s more, Giz says they will have several days of leaks to pass along in which they are promising to delve deep into the incredibly attractive (but still frustratingly vapourish) device.

Here is a bit of what Gizmodo’s mysterious Courier source, The Paperboy, has to say in the first post…

The Courier user experience presented here is almost the exact opposite of what everyone expects the Apple tablet to be, a kung fu eagle claw to Apple’s tiger style. It’s complex: Two screens, a mashup of a pen-dominated interface with several types of multitouch finger gestures, and multiple graphically complex themes, modes and applications. (Our favorite UI bit? The hinge doubles as a "pocket" to hold items you want move from one page to another.) Microsoft’s tablet heritage is digital ink-oriented, and this interface, while unlike anything we’ve seen before, clearly draws from that, its work with the Surface touch computer and even the Zune HD.

This could be ginormous, mindbendingly giant asteroid HUGE…or it could still come to less than nothing and become one of the great “what ifs” of the mobile computing industry leaving a smoking crater where Microsoft’s resurgent reputation once was. Flip a coin.

Stay tuned…and by the way, cancel my Apple Tablet preorder. The giant iPod thing now looks so last year. See all that Gizmodo has to say about the Courier thus far, along with more pics HERE.

---
Related Articles at Mobility Site:

If you like what you are reading, please consider clicking one of the social networking icons to share the link love. Try a RT by clicking the Twitter icon above. Thanks for reading Mobilitysite!

The Miniature Surface Zune Tablet?

Zealot — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 06:47:00 +0000

OK, forget the Giant iPod Netbook Thingie (aka the Apple Tablet), supposedly due to be announced some time real soon by Apple for release in 2010…the last 24 hours the internet has been a seething cauldron of rumours concerning the Miniature Surface Zune Tablet (at least that is what I am calling it).

A couple days ago the old Pink whispers began appearing again. Pink is the supposed code name for some top secret Microsoft Mobile device and is often mentioned by Microsoft Swamis Mary-Jo Foley and Paul Thurrott and has changed form a good deal over the months. According to Foley, Pink is no longer the Zune Phone or a set of mobile services or a type of search technology (as previous rumors have all suggested). Instead it is once again a phone (or two phones as suggested on 9to5Mac of all places) to be Microsoft branded and designed, built by a third party and based on Windows 7 with certain Zune software elements baked in, utilizing Danger’s Sidekick technology.

OK, that is all well and good…but we have been hearing variations on that old saw for ages…the OTHER part of this rumour cauldron is the hot part.

(...) Read the rest of The Miniature Surface Zune Tablet? (635 words)

If you like what you are reading, please consider clicking one of the social networking icons to share the link love. Try a RT by clicking the Twitter icon above. Thanks for reading Mobilitysite!

Could the ZuneHD be the last Zune device, despite sales?

Adam Stafford — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 15:54:53 +0000

Now that we have the ZuneHD selling out, will there be any more to fill the shelves and homes? Not exactly consider the future of Microsoft plans to introduce one more Zune device then exit the arena and return Windows Mobile focus. Microsoft is planning to aggressively get back into the mobile device market but not to market a ZunePhone as we often hoped for in the past. After my recent email with an insider at Microsoft a few questions have been cleared up and confirmed.

(...) Read the rest of Could the ZuneHD be the last Zune device, despite sales? (492 words)

If you like what you are reading, please consider clicking one of the social networking icons to share the link love. Try a RT by clicking the Twitter icon above. Thanks for reading Mobilitysite!

The Tide Continues to Turn…”I’m a PC”

Zealot — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 21:40:23 +0000

The New York Times this weekend is showing Microsoft yet more love and running a feature article about the way that Microsoft has been restoring it’s image. Specifically, the NYT sees the turning point as having been Microsoft’s embracing of the “I’m a PC “sneer from Apple and making it into a mark of distinction…and a key point in their new advertising campaigns

Admit it all you Windows users, when you saw the ad below for the first time, didn’t you feel a little rush of pride?

In the article, Microsoft is given a very sympathetic spin as the recent ad war between Cupertino and Redmond is looked at and declared, for the first time, a draw. The article also paints Apple as a painfully cool, “hipper then thou” outfit micromanaged by Steve Jobs, right down to the details of the ads. This follows the current trend which no longer seems to view Apple as sacred.

For example…

Surprisingly, Microsoft, which has never been known for running cool ads, has landed some punches. Shortly after the Microsoft campaign started, Apple unleashed commercials that mocked its competitor as spending money on advertising when it should have been fixing Vista, its much-maligned operating system.

“It got Apple’s attention, didn’t it?” says Robert X. Cringely, host of PBS’s NerdTV.

FOR years, Microsoft was the stodgy market leader. It sold 90 percent of the world’s operating system software, and generally left the advertising to Dell, H.P. and other hardware makers who licensed Windows. The only time Microsoft hawked its most recognizable brand on television was when the latest version of the software hit the shelves. Then the company flooded the airwaves with commercials full of loud music and swirling imagery saying that the new version of Windows is out — and that it’s awesome!

Apple is the classic smaller insurgent. Its share for desktops and laptops in the United States is just over 8 percent. Every time Apple grabs another point of market share from Microsoft’s partners, its stock price climbs. And one way that Apple has tried to gain share is by running clever ads that ridicule everything Microsoft stands for.

After so many years, I for one am thrilled to see the media worm has turned…and is taking a bite out of Apple for once. Apple is still being given credit as the innovative, creative company it is, but people are finally seeing more of the merits of Microsoft, it seems.

Read the entire article HERE.

---
Related Articles at Mobility Site:

If you like what you are reading, please consider clicking one of the social networking icons to share the link love. Try a RT by clicking the Twitter icon above. Thanks for reading Mobilitysite!

“Hello From Seattle”

Sam Hobson — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:42:57 +0000

Like all the Zunes before it, the Zune HD will also have Microsoft’s short message “Hello from Seattle” on it. What makes it different from the others is that it has the text on the side of the device instead of on the back with all the other technical info.

I never saw anything like that when I had an iPod, but supposedly they did have a “Designed by Apple in California” message on it. Not as casual as “Hello from Seattle” though.

I just recently noticed the text on my Zune 120. I failed to notice it, though, when I had my Zune 30.

via Zune Thoughts

---
Related Articles at Mobility Site:

If you like what you are reading, please consider clicking one of the social networking icons to share the link love. Try a RT by clicking the Twitter icon above. Thanks for reading Mobilitysite!

Windows Phone to Go Both Ways?

Zealot — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 09:02:08 +0000

Digitimes is reporting that despite Steve Ballmer’s recent comments mocking Google’s double-headed Android/Chrome mobile strategy, Microsoft itself will try a dual platform approach when it rolls out Windows Phone (Windows Mobile 6.5 and after), so as to better address the changing mobile OS industry.

Windows Mobile 6.5, rechristened Windows Phone, is supposed to be launched in October of this year, but there is already a touch-friendly upgrade slated for February of 2010 according to sources familiar with Microsoft’s roadmap. Then, breaking previous policy for Microsoft’s mobile releases, 6.5 will not be phased out and replaced by 7 when the highly touted new version sees the light of day in Q4/10.

Instead of EOLing it, Microsoft will simply drop the price of 6.5, allowing it to compete with budget smartphones running Android while the new version 7 stands as the feature-packed premium version to take on the iPhone.

While it makes sense to have different phone OS for different needs, I fear Microsoft further confusing consumers with two similar smartphone systems, each with different capabilities. Remember the mess that WinMo Classic, Standard and Professional caused? With an ever more competitive market for smartphones, that kind of brand dissolution is not a good thing and could likely further weaken Microsoft’s already shaky market position.

But then, missteps in mobile branding is Microsoft all over….hopefully the Wizard has a brain for them at last.

---
Related Articles at Mobility Site:

If you like what you are reading, please consider clicking one of the social networking icons to share the link love. Try a RT by clicking the Twitter icon above. Thanks for reading Mobilitysite!

Microsoft Confirms: Sept 15 is Zune HD Day!

Zealot — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 09:39:58 +0000

Ina Fried, author of the excellent Beyond Binary column at cnet is reporting that Microsoft has confirmed everything we already know about the Zune HD and some very cool details that we don’t, or at least didn’t until they announced them.

Yes, the 16G (black) Zune HD will cost $219.99 and the 32G (platinum) version will cost $289.99.
Yes, both will be available in stores on September 15.
Yes, preorders are beginning now or very soon from the Microsoft Store, Best Buy, Amazon and other outlets.

So what’s new? Well, apparently special editions will be available from the release date at Zuneoriginals.net, featuring the Zune HD in five custom colors with a choice of 10 engravings by guest artists on the back.

On top of that, Betanews is reporting that there will be a special Zune HD demo tour which will hit select stores in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C on August 22 and 23. Any lucky reader who hits one of those demos, feel free to snag some pictures and video and email them into me here at MobilitySite (zealot@mobilitymail.com). Yes, we’ll publish your scoop, credit you and make hot squeaky noises of praise.

Still want more? Fine, then check out an excellent preview of the Zune HD interface and web browser (based on IE8 not PIE) by Ben Patterson at Yahoo Tech.

Where does the line form, again? I gotta get out my sleeping bag.

(Photo Credit: Yahoo Tech)

---
Related Articles at Mobility Site:

If you like what you are reading, please consider clicking one of the social networking icons to share the link love. Try a RT by clicking the Twitter icon above. Thanks for reading Mobilitysite!

Zune HD – Standby for Preorder

Zealot — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:24:01 +0000

Well, it is getting more official by the day. Amazon now has a portal page for Zune HD preorders. The links aren’t live yet, but with the leaked release date of Sept 8th just around the corner, I expect (hope?) they will be active soon.

The prices, $219.99 for the 16G and and $289.99 for the 32G look good, and undercut the iPod Touch nicely ($299 for 16G and $399 for the 32G). Of course we all know Apple has some surprises for us coming up, but even if they slash the iPod Touch prices and add cameras as rumored, the Zune HD still looks like a winner. Good price point, nice feature set, slick interface. sexy styling and a lot of positive buzz both on the blogs and from the public….what’s not to like?

I would still love to see a 64G model and some details on non-US releases, but still…I think this is going to be a VERY successful launch for Microsoft.

---
Related Articles at Mobility Site:

If you like what you are reading, please consider clicking one of the social networking icons to share the link love. Try a RT by clicking the Twitter icon above. Thanks for reading Mobilitysite!

Zune HD Interface Demoed

Zealot — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 20:47:23 +0000

We all knew that the Zune HD was demoed in front of the beautiful people and geek A-listers at GDGT’s recent launch party in San Francisco, only no one had managed to released any video of the event….

Until now.

Behold the Zune HD in all it’s phonecamed glory, showing menu scrolling, music selection and video playback. The interface looks smooth and stable with clever and intuitive animations, highly responsive, lightning fast and razor sharp.

I cannot wait to get my hands on one of these bad boys.

(Source: Engadget)

---
Related Articles at Mobility Site:

If you like what you are reading, please consider clicking one of the social networking icons to share the link love. Try a RT by clicking the Twitter icon above. Thanks for reading Mobilitysite!