Speed Launch
This is a little application coming from Microsoft Office Labs.
This is the first community prototype from Office Labs. Community prototypes are projects Microsoft employees work on in their spare time. Speed Launch’s goal is to let you get to the stuff you use faster and with less frustration.
Vídeo: Introduction to Speed Launch
I have not tested it yet but according to this Spanish site, it uses 30 MB of RAM.
Next-Gen Office Standard Approved
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) has given Microsoft permission to publish the Office Open XML (OOXML) specification. Appeals against accepting OOXML as an international standard from four countries (Brazil, India, South Africa, and Venezuela) were rejected.
The official name of the OOXML specification is ISO/IEC DIS 29500 and it is expected to be published within the next few weeks after final processing assuming there are no further appeals against the decision.
What does this mean to Joe or Judy Laptop? Read on after the jump.
Is WM the Next Palm?
Last week in his personal blog, WebIS founder Alex Kac had some thoughts on the current state of the Windows Mobile OS. In a nutshell, he feels it is going down the same fractured, haphazard development route that the Palm OS did. A sleek, standardized OS is being replaced by a kludgy patchwork that requires a different proprietary install for each device, playing havoc with the feature sets and application interoperability.
A few years ago Palm was at the top of its game and had thousands of applications. But quickly developers started leaving and going to the more stable Windows Mobile. It had little to do with the operating system or zen of Palm or whatever. It had to do with the fact that the OS was becoming fragmented and becoming difficult to deal with as each device that came out broke this or that. You no longer were writing software for the Palm, but instead for the Palm Zire, or the III or whatnot. Each device had a custom PalmOS that required some custom coding for.
Mostly due to HTC, Windows Mobile is slowly going that same way. In the past we could write to the Windows Mobile spec and mostly everything worked on any device. Now HTC is doing so much custom stuff and breaking so many things its ridiculous. Palm is no better. They write their add-on software without regard to third party developers. They take customizable registry entries and turn them into static ones. They break APIs. They provide broken drivers. The list goes on.
As the man responsible for such well known and successful mobile apps as Pocket Informant, interoperability is a big deal for Mr. Kac and rightly so. He needs to know that the user will get the same look and feel no matter what device he/she is using, since if PI looks like crap on a device, the user won’t blame the hardware, they’ll blame the software. Interoperability should also be an issue of great importance to power users, as we tend to use multiple mobile devices, changing to suit the task and our whims/caprices. We expect an application we love or depend on to run on all the devices powered by that OS, and sometimes even across operating systems as well. As competition intensifies and hardware manufacturers (Mr. Kac mentions HTC in his post but I feel it is a problem for all vendors to a greater or lessor degree) use their leverage more and more to force the software platform to be tweaked for their hardware, rather then making hardware that fully utilizes the standard platform, more and more applications will need to be customized per device. For the developer, this drives up the cost of an application in terms of both resource and money. For consumers it leads to uncertainty, frustration, and as the developers pass their higher costs onto us, more expensive software.
Third party applications were the gem in Palm’s crown before it just became too much of a pain to develop for the OS, as opposed to the more streamlined, standards oriented WM. Now, under pressure from Apple and soon Android, will Windows Mobile suffer the same fate, paying the cost for two many implementation corners cut to make hardware release dates?
Plug and Play is a cornerstone of the Windows OS for a reason. I know just recently, I switched to a desktop (temporarily) from a laptop and was thrilled to note my vast array of peripherals slowly install themselves after I plugged them into the new unit. No fuss, no bother, I was up and running in 15 minutes of intense, automated driver action. It is IMPERITIVE that the Plug and Play philosophy remain strong in Windows Mobile. The more the OS caters to each device at the cost of the standard user experience, the closer it gets to the Sargasso Sea of Mobile OS that Palm is currently floating in.
Good News for J Allard…and Us
J Allard, the Microsoft architect primarily responsible for the user experience in many of Microsoft’s most successful products, such as the Xbox 360 and the Zune has been rewarded for his hard work and success with a new job, Chief Experience Officer and Chief Technology Officer, Entertainment and Devices Division.
In addition to a more impressive sounding title and I am sure a much nicer office, this means that J can bring his considerable talents and expertise to bear on such products as Windows Mobile. A short quote from his corporate bio shows that he has both the technical chops and the UI skills to do the job.
A 15-year veteran of Microsoft, Allard previously managed the technical development of the Xbox game console and Zune media player, and launched the Zune portable entertainment devices and services business. Allard helped shape the company’s Internet strategy, has shipped over 30 products at Microsoft and was a founding member of the Xbox, Windows NT and TCP/IP product families.
I am sure J will be able to put his own unique stamp on Windows Mobile 7 and really help the OS take the next step in development. This is good news for all of us who work with Windows Mobile devices. I look forward to seeing what he comes up with as CTO, for WinMo, Zune and many other products.
Congratulations J on this well earned promotion, and good luck from MobilitySite.
Android, WinMo 7 Devices in the Next 6 Months?
Meraj Chhaya over at PhoneReport had a very interesting sit down with Kevin Chen, a general manager at HTC during the Touch Diamond release in South Africa.
First of all, Mr. Chen stated that HTC is going to have an Android based device released before the end of 2008 but refused to give out any details of the nature of the device or clues about what features to expect. Both the date and the reticence is pretty consistent with all I have heard about Android thus far. Google is clearly hoping to pull a Steve Jobs-style rabbit out of their hat when they finally release, only without all the leaks. This one frankly goes into my “believe it when I see it” file, especially as I have a feeling that Android’s release will end up being something of a non event…more like Symbian then iPhone and therefore not sexy enough to catch the US consumer market’s attention.
The big news, as far as I am concerned, is that Chen has stated that HTC WILL have a Windows Mobile 7 device out in Q1 of 2009. This is consistent with the leaked HTC roadmap saying a WinMo device will be announced by the end of 2008. Of course, no details about the device but HTC devices are the hottest WinMo phones in Europe and Asia bar none, so expect something impressive with a definite ready-for-business feel to it.
Do I believe it? Yes, I do. Q1 09 would be the perfect time for Windows to shake things up with a major step forward in Mobile Software. The 3G iPhone buzz will have died down and the next iPhone feeding frenzy will be a few months away at least, so the stage will be Window’s to take. Also, if ANYONE is going to come out with a hot, early WinMo 7 device, it will be HTC.
I am excited to see what they come up with for this major milestone in the WinMo roadmap.
Origami Experience 2 just released
Microsoft has just released Origami Experience 2, the popular software within the UMPC owners. The software which can be downloaded here, includes a new functionality called Now that helps users to quickly access many other functions.
There are two new options that I love very much: Password, a new password screen for Windows that uses pictures, and a "tile" that allow me to check animated pictures posted on the web. I use this tile linked to a Weather Radar image of South Florida.
Memo From Microsoft’s Kevin Johnson
Many of you are probably following the "Microsoft trying to buy Yahoo process" and so do I. Well, it seems that that’s not going to happen, and a proof of that is this memo from Kevin Johnson published at Wall Street Journal Web site.
I wanted to take an opportunity to provide my thoughts and perspective on the conclusion of our discussions with Yahoo!, and its announcement of a commercial agreement with Google.
People Moving Business Awards - Nominations being accepted now!
The 2008 People Moving Business Awards and they are accepting nominations NOW!
The awards are open to all organizations large and small, from both public and private sector and we are looking for organizations that are really making the most of mobile technologies to boost both productivity and employee satisfaction.
There are a number of Award Categories so please nominate yourself or your Organization for the most appropriate!
Check out the Awards categories after the break and make your nomination!
Why Developers need to know about SQL Server Compact Edition (SQL CE)?
Posted by Diego Samuilov on 06/6/08 in Business, Development, Laptops, Microsoft, Operating Systems, Pocket PC Phones, PocketPC, Software, Tablet PC, Ultra Mobiles, Windows Mobile 6, Windows Mobile 6.1, Windows Mobile 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP
So you are a developer who works on applications that run on the desktop; or you are a project manager who has only heard of SQL Server Compact Edition… In any case, if you have hardly heard of SQL Server CE, or you are assuming that SQL Server CE runs only on portable devices, then you should read on to learn about some new powerful options available for your environment of choice.
Well, SQL Server CE in not only intended for devices who run on the Windows CE platform (Windows Mobile, Xbox 360 and many others among then) but also for PCs running XP and Vista:
WHAT? You didn’t know? Never mind, keep reading then…
While SQL Server comes in many flavors, SQL Server Express is not the smallest of them all. Yes, it’s free and it can run in your desktop if you want it… but do you really want to run a SQL Server on your desktop? Is that the smallest you can go?
Microsoft Silences Critics At Last?
The super-geniuses at Microsoft have come up with a new way to deal with a very very troublesome problem associated with mobile devices: namely how to shut them up. We have all had to deal with phones ringing in the theater, shutterbugs snapping away in museums where photos are not allowed, annoying strangers fighting on the phone while you try to sleep next door and all manners of impositions caused by a lack of phone etiquette.
Apparently, Microsoft has decided the ubiquitous requests to turn off cellphones or refrain from photography just ain’t cutting it and have proposed a patent on a system called DMP or Device Manners Policy.
Gates and Ballmer at D6
There is nothing to say, the videos tell it all! I really enjoyed them and hope you do too!
via CNET News.com
Multi Touch in Windows 7
Windows 7 will offer Tablet PC support and even more, it will offer multi-touch support!
Video: Multi-Touch in Windows 7
James needs Vista but he likes OS X
James from JKonTheRun has published a very interesting article about two of the most important Operating System in the market: Vista and Mac OS X. Let me start by saying that the reason why we have this kind of article is because we have what we can in Vista.
The situation with Vista is quite a different matter because it is the operating system that is running most of the computers I use. It is running four computers in my office right now and I depend on it to get work done. I don’t blame Microsoft when I have hardware problems because they don’t make hardware and it would be silly to do so. But I do blame them quite fairly when the OS doesn’t do what I need it to do especially when I believe it is something that it should do properly My heavy usage of Vista-running PCs exposes me to a lot of situations when Vista drives me crazy. I’m not going to get into specifics here because that’s not the purpose of this article but it is a hard, cold fact that every single day something happens on one of my PCs that makes me angry at Vista. That’s a terrible thing to say about any product but it’s absolutely true. At least once a day I end up saying “I hate Vista” because I’m trying to do something and Vista gets in my way to get it done.
Three weeks ago I would not understand why James is complaining about Vista all the time. Three weeks ago I was lucky enough to be using Vista in a machine where the maker did a wonderful job developing all the drivers for that machine, I’m talking about my Samsung Q1. Beside the fact that Vista was not the faster OS for that machine, everything was super stable on it and I never had any problems at all. I only ran one time into a device - a webcam- where I could not make it work because of the drivers but I was able to returned it and buy a new one Vista compatible.
Superfetch, leave it on or turn it off?
Posted by ctitanic on 05/19/08 in Microsoft, Subnotebooks, UMPC, Ultra Mobiles, Windows Vista, miniTablet PC
Let me start this short article by quoting what’s the definition of Superfetch according to Microsoft:
Windows SuperFetch enables programs and files to load much faster than they would on Windows XP–based PCs.
When you’re not actively using your computer, background tasks—including automatic backup programs and antivirus scans—run when they will least disturb you. These background tasks can take up system memory space that your programs had been using. On Windows XP–based PCs, this can slow progress to a crawl when you attempt to resume work.
SuperFetch monitors which applications you use the most and preloads these into your system memory so they’ll be ready when you need them. Windows Vista also runs background programs, like disk defragmenting and Windows Defender, at low priority so that they can do their job but your work always comes first.
So, from this you can easily guess that this feature was designed to increase your system performance. Then, why if you look around the web you will find as many posts and articles recommending to turn it off as articles saying that it should be left on? The answer is Simple, because it does not work well in all the different hardware configurations available in the market.
Windows Live Search Update/More Screen Shots
Posted by Doug Smith on 05/18/08 in GPS, Microsoft, Software
I posted this on TiltSite.com and did not notice that Jack had posted about it on MobilitySite also. But I decided to leave it up because of the extra screen shots I took. Check em’ out after the break!
Back on April 8th I posted (CLICK HERE) that Windows Live Search announced at the CTIA that an update was coming, and almost a month and a half later it hits and it’s pretty cool I must say! Here are the updates:
- Map your friends: Grabs addresses from your contact list, puts them on the map, and provides directions.
- View Virtual Earth collections: Lets you check out maps of locations/events shared by members of the community.
- Web search: Launch web search directly from the client to find web pages, product price comparisons and reviews, news, images, etc.
- Weather: Check the current weather, or a 4 day forecast.
I can say I love WLS. I used it today navigating my way around Manhattan New York! It worked flawlessly and got me to my Destination, “The London” and lunch with my Boss at Gordon Ramsey’s Restaurant! (And YES it was awesome!)
Click after the break for a ton of pictures from the install and screen shots!
You can get it here at http://wls.live.com
