The idea is that you can take the same concept as the original Microsoft Tags and overlay them on pictures. You can also replace the triangles with dots.

The result is a whole new set of marketing opportunities for your brand as you incorporate a tag into a picture or logo. Time to get those creative juices flowing.

In fact Microsoft is running a competition – called the Tag Slaps Design Contest – to see who can create the coolest custom tag.

Here’s the overview from the contest page:

The Tag Slaps Design Contest challenges you to create an original customized Tag and creative concept for an accompanying mobile experience. Your entry should include a working customized Tag that leads to a mobile web site, as well as a creative concept for a mobile site. The mobile site experience concept should engage your customer and encourage them to take an action such as signing up for a service, getting more information about your product, downloading a special offer or an application, and more.

Here’s a typical original tag:

And here’s a few examples of custom tags:

The contest opens on 4 May 2009 and judging will take place from 22 June.

Don’t get too excited about any big prizes though – this is just for the glory of winning. The winner gets recognition on the tag site, Facebook, Twitter, and select media articles.

(via Neowin)

Here’s the ‘conversation view’ (in OWA):

Here’s the ‘mute button’ to take yourself out of a conversation:

Here’s the tips that help people stopping doing really stupid stuff:

And here’s a few more:

And here’s the voicemail preview:

There’s further discussion on Zack Whittaker’s blog (from his April 18 post).

Times are tough. Interesting then, that announcing a drop in revenue last week resulted in an increase in stock price.

I’m no stock analyst and I’m not going to event try to understand the numbers, but I do think there is an underlying confidence in Microsoft at the moment.

I suspect there’s a few reasons for this. First, and perhaps this is just me, I’ve seen a lot less hype from Microsoft in the last 6 months. The days of flashy launch events seem to have died down (replaced perhaps by better advertising campaigns) and the company is focussing on delivering quality products. The Microsoft PR machine has played its Windows 7 cards very carefully so far, and it seems to be paying off. The sentiment for Windows 7 is very positive.

Much will depend on the success of Windows 7 later this year, and as I’ve mentioned before, it is my belief that Windows 7 will be the release that is looked back on in years to come as the even that saved Microsoft.

And the number of releases lately is very encouraging. SQL Server, SharePoint, Office, Vista all getting hype-low, quality-high updates (Service Packs); BizTalk and IE getting released; new technologies such as Silverlight 3, and Exchange 2010 Beta getting announced (these last two with perhaps with a little more hype than the others, but with restraint none the less).

As Joe notes, this is a time for Microsoft to be pushing out the updates and pre-release so that when the economy turns around and companies start opening their wallets again, there won’t be such a long lead time to adoption.

As you may know I’ve long been a Microsoft fan-boi but that hasn’t stopped me taking shots where I think they deserve it (example). But that said, the Microsoft I’m seeing today is undoubtedly on a very strong foundation (lay-offs and netbook pressures withstanding) in most areas. I will say however that I think they are weak on the mobile and browser fronts and will lose entirely there.

In terms of the result, Chris Liddell (Microsoft CFO) doesn’t talk up it up too much, although he does look for some light in their cost cutting measures. Overall, the down results won’t be turning around in a hurry (from Microsoft PressPass):

“While market conditions remained weak during the quarter, I was pleased with the organization’s ability to offset revenue pressures with the swift implementation of cost-savings initiatives,” said Chris Liddell, chief financial officer at Microsoft. “We expect the weakness to continue through at least the next quarter.”

You’ll note that in general Microsoft hasn’t attempted to spin its bad news. Bad news is bad news.

But overall, I think the news and outlook for Microsoft is good.

This video from CNET is a wonderful demonstration from Microsoft’s Brian Goldfarb where he shows two Open Stream enabled applications. The first, a Silverlight app allows beautiful interaction with a friend’s stream, especially their photos. The speed and UX is impressive. Even more so when noting it was put together in under 72 hours. Brian notes that the applications and their source code will be made available in the next few weeks. Also check out the Silverlight blog for more details.

The second app from Brian is a WPF app that allows rich interaction via the meta data that accompanies the steam. Using links between friends and photos, users can visualise their relationships in news ways. Very impressive.

Microsoft shows off Facebook Open Stream API demos from Rafe Needleman on Vimeo.

(via Neowin)

Office 2007 SP2

Office 2007 continues to improve with a substantial list of enhancements and fixes.

Whilst every product in the Office suite has received attention, the major focus (as we’ve mentioned previously) will likely be place on Outlook. The team have worked hard to improve the performance of Outlook, both in start-up and shutdown.

You can download Office 2007 SP2 here.

WSS/MOSS SP2

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) get a nice update (via the SharePoint Team blog).

This release provides performance and interoperability improvements as well as a check for upgrade potential to SharePoint 2010 (due in the next year or two – nothing like being prepared

Download links are on this Knowledge Base article.

By the way, when you are on the SharePoint blog take a look at the little hover panels when hovering over a link – it’ll tell you which links are the most popular outgoing.

Kinda neat – I’d like to know what the key interest in these posts is – my suspicion was that deployment advice would be, but it doesn’t appear that way.

Vista SP2 (and Windows 2008 SP2)

Here’s the key benefits as noted by The Windows Blog:

• Windows Search 4.0 for faster and improved relevancy in searches
• Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack supporting the most recent specification for Bluetooth Technology
• Ability to record data on to Blu-Ray media natively in Windows Vista
• Adds Windows Connect Now (WCN) to simplify Wi-Fi Configuration
• Windows Vista SP2 enables the exFAT file system to support UTC timestamps, which allows correct file synchronization across time zones

As well as all the updates since SP1 rolled in. There’s a full rundown on TechNet.

For those who aren’t familiar with it, BizTalk is Microsoft’s platform for enterprise integration (here’s a quick overview). Basically, if you want to connect systems together then BizTalk is your facilitator. Think SOA and interoperability… EDI systems are a typical example implementation.

Here’s the list of new features in BizTalk 2009 (from the Microsoft PressPass announcement):

The BizTalk Server 2009 release delivers the following:

• Simple, cost-effective service-oriented architecture (SOA) connectivity. With new and updated connectors, BizTalk Server 2009 advances interoperability by providing more than 25 industry adapters that make it easier for customers to connect critical business applications such as SAP, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel and Oracle E-Business Suite.
• Increased developer productivity. BizTalk Server enhances the first-class developer experience provided within Visual Studio 2008 by offering new integrated capabilities including visual debugging, unit testing and access to code artifacts. As a result, BizTalk Server helps democratize and simplify sophisticated integration projects, enabling a broader set of developers to rapidly deliver more standards-based and scalable business applications.
• Better visibility into data and activities. Enhanced Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) capabilities reduce the complexity associated with trusted data collection and simplify access to data.
• Take advantage of the benefits of virtualization. With BizTalk Server 2009 running on Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V technology, businesses can take advantage of the benefits that virtualization provides, including cost savings, production server consolidation and business continuity management.
• Simple RFID solutions. RFID capabilities reduce the need for complicated custom coding for disparate device types. Now, businesses can easily extend RFID capabilities to mobile environments and experience the benefits from updated standards such as Tag Data Translation (TDT), EPC Information Services Standard (EPCIS) and Low Level Reader Protocol (LLRP).
• Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) made easier. BizTalk Server can now participate in the full application development life cycle by including new project management, testing and deployment capabilities that extend ALM capabilities already delivered through Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008. As a result, customers experience faster time to solution with improved quality.

The improvements include better integration with the 2008 stack (Windows 2008 Server, Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008) as well as use in virtualized environments (using Hyper-V). In fact its worth pointing to the entire Microsoft Application Platform. I’ve been involved in BizTalk projects in previous companies, and whilst it had a steep learning curve, BizTalk always proved itself to be a rock solid technology.

It’s one of those products that tends to be used widely (90% of Fortune 100 companies for example, according to Microsoft), and yet no one really knows about it. It’s products like BizTalk that often get overlooked by analysts, and yet to me are powerful indicators of Microsoft’s underlying strength across multiple sectors.

I’ll be downloading it straight away, as will millions of others I’m sure. What’ll be interesting is to see the download performance. In the past I’ve been really impressed with Microsoft’s infrastructure (or more correctly their infrastructure partner’s) ability to provide excellent download performance even with huge spikes. There’s been a few hiccups, for example I remember downloading Visual Studio 2008 was a long process during the first day or so, but in general the user experience has been exceptional. I wonder how the Windows 7 RC release will cope.

One of these days I’d love to meet with an IT guru who sets up these kinds of infrastructures and get a proper understanding. I think it is amazing what IT manages to deliver, usually based on protocols and underlying methods that are decades old and never in their wildest dreams expected to be deliver the kind of traffic they do these days.

A week later on May 11 Windows Mobile 6.5 might be released (or perhaps not).

But before those releases we’ll have Office 2007 SP2 available on 28 April.

And of course the Exchange 2010 Beta was released this past week.

I wonder if you’ve considered how insidious email is? Have you pondered the limiting effects of email on company collaboration for example.

• Notifications of updates to company intranets, issue tracking platforms and release procedures are often delivered via email.
• Reminders of workflow progress, forum responses and blog comments are all email reliant.
• We even have voicemail delivered to us via email these days.

We take the time and effort to introduce new communication mechanisms into the enterprise, but then repress them with email as the main notifier. That’s really inefficient.

Far from being made irrelevant via new collaboration tools, email use is actually increasing.

Meetings

Speaking of inefficient, let’s consider meetings. In my experience there’s only one thing more unproductive than email, and that’s meetings. We spend so much time (mostly inefficiently) in meetings. But why are there so many meetings? I suggest its because of email. Consider how easy it is to call a meeting nowadays – its a simple email request. I’d like to see the correlation between the number of meetings people attend, and the ease at which meeting organization has been allowed via email requests over the last decade. I’ll wager that the rise of the unproductive meeting is another side effect of email .

And is it perhaps fitting that many people now spend time in meetings going through their email…

Microsoft’s Email Strategy

No surprise then that an email ‘platform’ is still a big money maker for Microsoft. Exchange – which granted is much more than just email – is a key strategy for the company, fitting in with its overall Unified Communications initiatives.

So, can Microsoft improve the efficiency of email? The news of Exchange 2010 being released later this year (beta available here) could be the start of an answer.

The feature list includes the support for ‘conversations’ (which I assume is similar to GMail’s much loved feature) and ‘email mute’ functionality to ignore certain email threads. MailTips will help you avoid the ‘Reply to All’ occurrences. All good improvements.

Next Wave

It doesn’t stop there. Exchange 2010 is also providing additional deployment options (you can mix both on-premises and partner capabilities) and archiving tools (as they address growing compliance requirements).

And then there’s the fact that Exchange 2010 is the first in the ‘next wave’. Here’s what the Microsoft PressPass announcement describes:

The next wave, which includes Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft Visio 2010 and Microsoft Project 2010, is designed to give people a consistent experience across devices, making it easier to create and edit documents and collaborate from any location.

This is good right? Reduce the barriers to entry with consistent UI**. That should give some gains.

This all sounds good.

But sadly, its missed the main need…

The result

You can see what is happening here right? The next version of Exchange isn’t about improving the efficiency of email and combating all its side-effects. It’s not about reducing email or the time we spend consuming it. Sadly the reverse is true.

The result of all these improvements is that far from being reduced email is now being integrated into more and more of our lives, both business and personal. The inefficiency of email is hardly addressed, whilst its ubiquitousness gets yet another big push.

Corporate existence has been condemned to an even richer integration with inefficiency.

When will Email jump the shark? Answer: Never.

[**Aside: what about cross-product as well as cross-device UI consistency? This is something Adam Cogan has been lamenting (example) for many years – the fact that many Microsoft products have a completely different UI, so when you use Office it is different to SharePoint which is different to CRM which is different to Visual Studio which is different to the Live Essentials products and so on.]

Which all goes to show that Microsoft’s decision to compete for (and worse, win!) the advertising rights to the show might actually be a good thing. Thanks to this post from LiveSide I learned that Microsoft went all out on winning this deal (yes, I’m resisting all fishing related terms) to the point of integrating SMS and video game sweepstakes with web site plastering of ads (on both MSN and Fox Sports pages).

Here’s what the VP of Marketing at Discovery said:

“Microsoft just came in like rock stars on this,” Donna Murphy, the Discovery Channel’s vice president of marketing strategy, said in an interview. “They were the first ones to really blow it out in every direction.”

The interesting thing in all this (besides the spell binding show of course) is that Microsoft is pushing the boundaries of advertising. And perhaps this is where the future opportunities are. Instead of just going head to head on Search advertising with its competitors, Microsoft is leveraging a number of its platforms. This will transform the industry pretty quickly. It won’t be long before a promotion is saturated across all platforms – combining business, personal and leisure activities via desktop, mobile, entertainment (consoles) and online. Prepare to be immersed. And can you think of any company that can really compete with Microsoft across all these channels simultaneously? Google may be entering the mobile market but they don’t have an entertainment console channel.

One of the key points that Microsoft mention is that this ability to work together across their divisions is a relatively new ability. Keith Lorizio (an ad VP at Microsoft) notes that separate teams handled these disparate channels, but they now have the ability to work together efficiently.

This is the start of something big.

You simply head over to Live Search Maps and click on 3D. You’ll be prompted to install the control if you don’t have it already.

But before we go on, a quick gripe first.

After a seamless install experience, here’s the final dialog. Yes, its one of those ‘let me fuck with your existing settings’ dialogs. I guess I don’t really mind being given the option, but please don’t tick them on by default. Microsoft, it’s just cheap wins and it lowers you into the realm of all those other shitty companies that do this kind of thing. Please stop it.

But once it is installed, it all works very nicely.

Sadly Sydney doesn’t seem to have made the 3D cut yet, so here’s what the Sydney Opera House (or Sydney Opera Center if you’re Hugh Jackman ) looks like:

(The little globe in the bottom left will have a building on (see below) if there are details.)

But other areas are rendering nicely. Here’s Times Square in New York (I thought I’d check if the Virgin Megastore showed )

Oh, and I like how the globe fills up to indicate progress in the rendering:

The Soul Solutions post has an an impressive image of the Statue of Liberty which renders really nicely, much more so than say this view of the Microsoft campus in Seattle:

There’s a few options too, including some terrain view improvements. But be careful with the Options dialog. It can easily fall behind the other windows (eg if you are taking a screen shot) and then you wonder why Live Search won’t respond anymore. You’ll need to minimise windows one by one until you find it. Hopefully the VE team can fix this little quirk in due course.

The control runs in both IE and Firefox, but Chrome wasn’t supported in my experience.

All in all, I like it. Very cool.

See also the Virtual Earth 3D Team Blog.

If much of the Twitter buzz is true then the RC will be released on April 10. What a wonderful way to spend the long weekend (Australia has a 4 day weekend starting Friday), reformatting my machine and loading on the latest. Yes, it’s a sad thing that some of us look forward to these activities. On a side note I’ve been cleaning up an XP machine for my brother this week – ahhh what memories – and I think I’d die if I had to go back to that for any more than a few hours. But I digress, back to Windows 7…

The Hotfix mentions ‘legit and trusted sources’ which was picked up in forums and made its way onto blogs.

There’s all kinds of talk about different builds (7077, 7079, 7100 and even 7105) which I find completely boring, so perhaps I’m not that geeky after all (note to self: need to take some more of my geek pills).

Meanwhile there’s also advice on how to upgrade from the beta to the RC (in short, don’t), assuming it hasn’t been blocked, plus the ability to downgrade to Vista or XP.

Finally, there’s been a dubious report on IT Pro acceptance of Windows 7, and the usual playing-devils-advocate stance from Joe Wilcox (who I happen to totally agree with on this one – I mean how can you take seriously a poll of only 66 people!).

Rumours are rumours, so take them with a grain of salt. But if per chance the RC does make it out this weekend, there’s going to be a lot of happy people.

The release is predominantly a bug fix release (you can view the full list of fixes here). There’s nothing really new in the product itself, although install (via slipstreaming) and uninstall (granular rollback via Control Panel) are improved. There’s also a ClickOnce version of Report Builder 2.0.

So, in summary, not very exciting right? Well, no. In my opinion this is another example of Microsoft focussing on quality. I’m pleased to see this practice becoming more of the norm in the last year or so. Instead of pushing in all kinds of new features, they are concentrating on making what is already a very high quality release, even better.

In some ways you could say that SP1 is aimed at improving the IT Pro experience, rather than the Developer experience. Installing Service Packs for SQL Server is one of the scariest procedures for IT Administrators (more so than OS patches in most cases) so it is right that Microsoft is reducing the barriers to upgrade. Back in the SQL Server 2000 days, any Service Pack install was a precarious thing – that’s why so many were caught when the Slammer worm hit. SQL Server 2005 improved the process, but we still saw the service packs introduce brand new functionality.

SQL Server 2008 SP1 with its minimal footprint change, and singular focus on just fixing bugs is a good move. Applying the Service Pack still needs to be a carefully planned exercise of course, but it is much more manageable than in previous releases.

Figures suggest that SQL Server 2008 itself has been downloaded more than 3 millions times since last August. So adoption is high. Keeping quality high will only improve that confidence further.

You may be wondering where Microsoft Surface fits in with Health care. Consider for a moment how people normally interact with their doctor. Probably the same way they have for decades. But then consider this (from the HIMSS schedule):

A trend in healthcare that has emerged over the past decade is the evolution of patient-centered medicine. Patient-centered care is the movement to empower individuals to become medical decision makers who take an active role in their own care. New information systems such as patient portals and personal health records facilitate this transformation. We describe the development of a prototype application for the Microsoft Surface platform designed to promote a patient-centered approach within the context of a physician-patient interaction.

Health care is changing.  

Need more convincing that Surface (and technologies like it) will play a significant role in patient interaction? Watch this video (or see below) with Tim Huckaby from January. In it he demonstrates how a doctor and patient can interact using Surface:

And that’s only one of the many scenarios possible. Microsoft plan to present 4 at the conference, including Rehabilitation (using Surface to promote motor control) and Virtual Clinic (giving the patient an overview of the process before consultation) as well as the patient consultation scenarios.

This is just the beginning.

The question that remains in my mind however, is who would actually use web slices? I’ve heard the ebay example enough times and can probably accept that. But other uses? I’m still wondering. In any case, having a slice from my blog probably isn’t high on anyone’s list

The video is available in HD which is always good for code samples. I think these kinds of videos are really useful and 3 minutes is a good length for us time poor attention deficient geeks. See also the Microsoft How Do I sites for more videos along these lines.)

Go check it out here or watch it below: 

(I’m not sure of the etiquette of embedding someone else’s video in your own site, but since it has embedding allowed on YouTube I figure it’s OK. And anyway, it’s all about getting the message out right?)

Thanks for the great vid Michael.

So, it  must be time to re-stoke some other rumours – how about the Windows 7 release date rumours again. This time the suggestion is for a September RTM according to today’s Windows 7 Center post.

Note, this is a little later than the June/July RTM timeframe rumoured in February, but only by a few months.

Remember, there’s a difference between RTM (Release to Manufacturing) and Launch. RTM is when you can download it (ie via MSDN), and the launch usually happens a few months later (although this is not always the case – SQL Server 2008 for example was launched long before actual release).

Personally I can’t wait for the release. I’ve been using the Beta since January and love it. So, for me the sooner the better. But I understand Microsoft has a lot riding on this. The groundswell for Windows 7 has been very positive, so Microsoft won’t want to damage that with a premature release. Rock solid quality and a wonderful user experience are what’s needed. And I think they’ll deliver. Just this week it has been good to see Dell publishing some very positive Windows 7 results on their systems (thanks to Neowin for the link).

From what I’ve seen of Windows 7 so far, coupled with the favourable response it is getting in just about all sectors, I think Microsoft has a winner on their hands. In years to come I suspect analysts will look back at Windows 7 and point to it as the release that saved Microsoft.

For all we know, the passing Office-for-iPhone comment may just be the ravings of a bumbling Microsoft president. Or April Fools gag (given the timing). Or just a reference to Safari support. But me thinks not. My Nostra-craigus prediction is that Mary Jo is on the right path, and Silverlight will be a key component.

I’ll be taking the advice of Stephen Elop (said Microsoft president) to ‘keep watching’

Here’s the graph based on usage from weeks 4 to 13 this year (we are currently in week 14 as I write this). The green arrow is where Firefox has just overtaken IE. The red arrow down the bottom is pointing at the uptake of IE8 (only small admittedly, but a lot higher than Chrome for example). As Alan Lee rightly pointed out this morning, combined IE still has the edge over Firefox – but probably not for long when you consider the trend up of FF and the trend down of IE7. It’ll be interesting to see the trend of IE8 uptake over the coming weeks.

Looking at worldwide usage however, its a different story. IE7 is still way out in front. But even worse, IE6 is in a solid third place just below Firefox.

The real question though, is who cares?

In fact, why do the vendors even care? What real competitive advantage is browser share giving Microsoft? What additional revenue streams? In many cases all it provides is a soft target for anti-competitive attacks. There’s little value in controlling the browser these days, surely the value is in controlling what content resides in the browser.

Lately I’ve been a little harsh on Microsoft for their mis-guided (in my opinion) browser strategy. But now I’m starting to understand why. They don’t really care. And nor should they. So whilst the masses are clamouring to add their IE9 wish list items, I suspect Microsoft are just content to get a stable browser bedded in and get back to making money.

Take web browsing speed for example. Someone applies a patch to IE8 that they are informed will speed it up. They think it does. And they ‘experience’ faster browsing. In reality nothing has changed. Only their perception has.

Why mention this? Because it reiterates that perception is often more important than reality.

Vista has a perception of being slow, unstable, insecure, whatever. And people hate it with a passion. But the ‘Mojave’ experiment last year demonstrated (not at all scientifically of course) that perception is often far removed from reality.

Windows 7 to benefit

And now we see the perception shifting in Microsoft’s favour. Windows 7 is being touted as a wonderful operating system – so far the majority of reports are singing its praises. The ‘operating system that Vista should have been’ even.

As the world becomes more crowd driven via social media, the importance of perception becomes paramount.

For those interest I covered some of the Surface developments on my personal blog here back in January. Last year August de los Reyes (he’s the Principal Experience Architect behind the Surface) spoke at Web Directions about the approach Microsoft are taking with Surface. His interview with Sitepoint back in October gives a good overview of where Surface is headed, in particular the embracing of emotion.

Little surprise then that kids are a captive audience. Get children working cooperatively on education tasks and you’ve got a winning combination. 

Quietly, quietly

Microsoft has been quietly pushing Surface, and making it available in more countries is just part of the plan. The Surface is a sleeper, and it won’t start making a big impact until late this year (in my opinion). It’s funny how Microsoft often gets accused of being behind the 8 ball when it comes to things like touch and user interface. But keep in mind that Surface has been around for years now. It’s effect on the technology landscape has been underappreciated.

With only a few hurdles left to remove (ie the whopping $15K price tag for starters, the difficulty of getting access to the Surface SDK for developers for another), there’s plenty of opportunity awaiting those brave enough to jump on board.

Make sure you check out some of the videos on YouTube for examples of what is possible. And the Surface blog for the latest news.

Here’s how to purchase one if you are really keen.

The selection process, rating system, easy download and general look’n’feel are all good… just like they should be when you’re playing catchup to another vendor who shipped months ago. Oh well, at least they are trying.

And speaking of trying, it sound like they are listening to feedback. They’re now allowing free upgrades for the lifecycle of the application. They’re also offering a money-back guarantee on any apps you download. A nice touch in my opinion.

Back on March 14 over on my personal blog I lamented the ‘charge the developer’ mentality that seemed to be pervading this initiative, and I agree with Long’s thoughts along those lines also. So I’m happy to see improvements from the Mobile team.

Here’s the comments from the PressPass announcement:

In addition, people will be able to return an application after purchase within 24 hours for a full refund. Microsoft also announced today that developers will now be able to deliver updates to their applications for free* throughout the application lifecycle.

Another interesting note form the press piece is how many companies have signed on to be a part of the program, including Facebook, EA Mobile, Netflix and MySpace (who we covered separately earlier today).

Windows Live for Mobile

And on April 2 the Windows Live for Mobile suite will be available for free download. Here’s the details:

Microsoft also announced that Windows Live for Mobile will be available for free download this week for customers in 25 languages. Windows Live for Mobile is the company’s mobile suite of Internet services designed specifically to take advantage of the Windows Mobile platform. It includes mobile versions of Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Contacts, Windows Live Spaces, Microsoft Live Search and enhanced photo upload capabilities. Customers who have Windows Mobile 6.x phones can visit http://wl.windowsmobile.com on April 2 to download the suite.

Things are certainly starting to get exciting (for a change) in the Windows Mobile space. Please, let it continue.

Reading the Microsoft PressPass post you come away with the distinct impression that TomTom were in the wrong and Microsoft have helped them see the error of their ways. But that’s the spin I guess. Who’s to know what the full intricacies were, I’m just glad to see that Microsoft can put its attention back on making stuff better, as opposed to stopping other people use their stuff.

Here’s part of what the Microsoft IP lawyer said:

We were able to work with TomTom to develop a patent agreement that addresses their needs and ours in a pragmatic way. When addressing IP infringement issues, there are two possible paths: securing patent coverage or not using the technology at issue. Through this agreement, TomTom is choosing a combination of both paths to meet the unique needs of its business, and we are glad to help them do so.

From the MySpace Developer Platform Wiki:

Using Silverlight and the MySpace Open Platform, Developers can rapidly create and deliver sophisticated MySpace applications that provide streaming video, graphics and audio to a variety of platforms and devices.

The MySpace Silverlight SDK is available here.

Windows Mobile

But the Microsoft love doesn’t end there. Later this summer (whatever that means) MySpace will be releasing a Windows Mobile app for managing MySpace details, including Profile Management and Messaging friends.

These are good developments for both Microsoft and MySpace. MySpace is starting to lose traction in the social networking arena, and have a few more interesting integrations such as these can’t hurt. Microsoft also stands to benefit of course. Whilst having a Mobile app might not seem the biggest achievement (after all there’s an iPhone app for just everything these days), the penetration of Silverlight into yet another area is good to see.

Personally I think Silverlight is going to be unstoppable and will dominate the browser in a few short years. Windows Mobile on the other hand has a very shaky future. At least Microsoft are hiring more talent to boost the platform.

Case in point: Microsoft. Although they had to initiate some layoffs earlier this year, that hasn’t stopped them hiring in important areas. As The Standard reports, there are currently 466 job openings in Seattle alone. Interestingly there were numerous roles in Windows Mobile (34 by my count) and Live Search (31). This is good news since those two areas are particularly weak in the Microsoft stable.

Some roles however have been around for a while, like this one for a Programming Writer dating back to March last year.

(via Steven Bink)

There’s a huge batch of performance improvements coming in Office 2007 SP2, especially for Outlook users. This Microsoft Outlook Support article details the enhancements.

Gains in general performance, storage algorithms and user interface are top of the list. As are a ton of bug fixes. Even just focussing on the startup process has seen dividends. Here’s a comment from the team:

Our approach to optimizing the startup process is fairly straight-forward. We analyzed all the tasks Outlook queues and improved the boot time by removing a few operations that were considered unnecessary, and by better orchestrating the execution of the necessary tasks.

One of the key items I noticed was the improved shutdown performance. Life can be frustrating when you are running for a meeting and need to shutdown. Waiting a few minutes (yes a few minutes feels like an eternity when you are in a rush) for Outlook to disappear from Task Manager so you can shutdown Windows can be a hassle. This fix alone will be reason to apply the update.

The improvements are coming SP2 later this year, although you can request to download just these Outlook updates via the support site.

All-in-all this looks very positive.

Thanks to SBTUG news for the link.

This adds further weight to a July release of Windows 7, noted back in February on the Windows 7 Center site.

I’ve been using the 7000 build since January and just love it. I can’t wait for the RC.

Unveiled last week, this PressPass piece indicates that Microsoft will be sharing 70% of sales revenue with developers for any Windows Mobile 6.5 applications sold through Windows Marketplace for Mobile. (Note: 70% is the same as Apple shares on their AppStore)

Put another way, Microsoft is charging you 30% of your sale, for giving you the opportunity to make your app available via Marketplace for Mobile. This seems high to me. Of course, having access to a huge international market is fantastic (and well worth the 30% commission I’m sure), and the promised feedback to developers on whether their apps meet certification requirements is extremely valuable.

But in a catch-up strategy (which Microsoft is definitely in), and with established channels such as Handango already in play (although to be fair they charge a whopping 40%), I was hoping for something spectacular from Microsoft.

Microsoft may still have significant market share in the mobile space, but it is eroding, and thus the success of endeavours like Marketplace for Mobile is vital for the platform. Microsoft needs to be attracting amazing mobile developers and encouraging the development of amazing mobile apps.

Ideally we’d be seeing Microsoft offering 95% share, with weekly competitions, awards for exceptional apps (as judged by their certification committee), special promotions of quality apps, etc.

Obviously there is significant infrastructure (and thus costs) required to facilitate the Mobile Marketplace, but extracting this from developers is not the way to proceed.

No, in this catch-up-to-the-iPhone-App-Store climate, Microsoft needs to view Mobile Marketplace as a marketing expense, not a monetization strategy.

Aside: In some ways this reminds me of the mistake Microsoft made with the early versions of its developer tools for Office (VSTO).  Initial versions required special ISV partnerships, followed by versions charged at a hefty license fee. Not until recent years has VSTO become part of the Visual Studio install, and even now it still has some hurdles, since it is only included in the Professional Version and above. IMO, putting the VSTO tooling in the Express versions is long overdue, but that’s a topic for another post…

Perhaps you missed this little gem: Photosynth Map Explore.

I hope not, because I think it represents an interesting insight into the future of location.

A little while back I was underwhelmed with Photosynth, but I did look forward to improvements with location being tied in. Photosynth Map Explore is the answer. It’s early days, but the potential here is huge. I love it.

I was, and still am, looking forward to every photo being geo-tagged and angle coded. But here’s the obvious tipping point I missed. At some point we’ll get to a point where we have enough geo-tagged photos that we’ll be able to go in reverse. We’ll be able to upload an older photo, and with technology like Photosynth, be able to reverse calculate where it was taken.

You can see where I’m heading right? With enough photos catalogued in a site like the Photosynth Map Explore site, we’ll be able to slot in a photo and have it tell us where the photo was taken.

And the beautiful thing… every new photo that gets reverse located, adds further to the overall database, and makes the coverage even better.

The possibilities are endless. We haven’t even discussed the overlaying of timestamp data on the coverage. You’ll be able to reverse not only a location, but perhaps even the time it was taken (as landmarks, seasons and other characteristics change). And then the obvious step is to be able to do this for any frame in a video.

I’m actually pretty excited about this. And intrigued. Just as Google Maps and Live Maps has brought national security considerations into the conversation (and with just satelite imagery), imagine how potentially disruptive technology like this could be. 

Find out more about Photosynth here.

(For a good overview read the LiveSide post.)