Artificial ignorance

[Update: Added links to some others from the team who’ve blogged about Windows Phone 7 Series.]

It’s been so very interesting to read all the press leading up to today. Some speculation, some hype, some rumor. Today, we’re announcing Windows Phone 7 Series – a different kind of phone operating system.

The genesis

The Windows Phone 7 Series was built fundamentally with the end-user, the consumer, in mind. The Windows Phone team is committed to building an operating system, which handset manufacturers integrate, and carriers sell to end-users. In the past, somewhere along the way, it may have appeared that our immediate end-users were the handset manufacturers – our end-user is the consumer. While we still want to enable innovation in the hardware space, we also want end-users to benefit from a consistent and brilliant software experience from the phone. Continue reading

I’m glad to announce a beta version of the Foursquare app for Windows phones – WinMoSquare.

Prerequisites

The app is only available for touch screen Windows phones today. The .NET Compact Framework v3.5 is a pre-requisite for you to be able to run the application on the phone. You’d also need a phone that runs either Windows Mobile 6.1 or a Windows Mobile 6.5.

Get me them goods

You can get the goods by emailing admin@touchality.com or submitting your email address in this webform: http://touchality.com/WinMoSquare/

Futures Continue reading

[Update 2/21/2010: TwtMyCard has been deadpooled :( Both Kevin and I love the concept and the promise of what TwtMyCard can deliver, but the cost of hosting the app deters our from keeping the project alive. We still love you.]

At SXSW this year, I noticed a few trends –

• everyone was exchanging business cards with everyone else,
• by hour 2 of being at the event on any given day, people would run out of business cards,
• by the end of each day, I’d have my pockets full of other people’s business cards, and,
• almost everyone I met was on twitter.

I make a conscious effort to convert physical business cards to contacts on Outlook. I really really do. But when you have over 150 business cards that you’ve collected over a week, you are limited in terms of what you can do with those cards. Continue reading

At a BarCamp a couple of years ago, I heard Tara Hunt speak about Social Capital (more about Tara and ‘Whuffie’ here). It was the first time I’d tried to associate and quantify social worthiness (in my sort of layman’s interpretation) or social standing or capital with a human being. Tara’s talk, and consequently being friends with her, helped me understand the concept a lot better.

Switching gears… I attended Startup2Startup this evening, an event Dave McClure puts together every month. The title of this month’s talk was CeWebrity DeathMatch: Jason Calacanis vs Guy Kawasaki on “Is Apple Becoming Big Brother?” This obviously interested me a lot, given my new role on Windows Mobile, the recent issues that have surfaced with Google Voice on the iPhone etc. The conversation this evening jumped around quite significantly, but a few things Guy Kawsaaki said, especially about Dan’l Lewin and Microsoft, really stood out:

Disclosure : I used to (indirectly) work in Dan’l Lewin’s organization on BizSpark till about 2 weeks ago. Continue reading

Today we are announcing the availability of Windows phones at retail stores worldwide on October 6, 2009. The new phones will be the first to feature Windows Mobile 6.5, the latest version of our mobile phone software, and will deliver new customer experiences through an improved, easy-to-use user interface, better browsing capabilities and access to valuable services, including Windows Marketplace for Mobile and Microsoft My Phone.

Mobile partners from around the globe are committed to updating or expanding their portfolios to include phones with Windows Mobile 6.5.

• In North America: Mobile operators AT&T, Bell Mobility, Sprint, TELUS and Verizon Wireless, and phone manufacturers HP, HTC Corp., LG Electronics, Samsung and Toshiba Corp.
• In Europe: Mobile operators Orange, Deutsche Telekom AG and Vodafone Group Plc, and phone manufacturers Acer, HTC, LG Electronics, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba
• In Latin America: Mobile operator TIM Brazil, and phone manufacturers HTC, LG Electronics and Samsung
• In Asia Pacific: Mobile operators NTT DoCoMo Inc., SoftBank Mobile Corp., SK Telecom, Telstra and WILLCOM Inc., and phone manufacturers Acer Inc., HTC, LG Electronics, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba

Continue reading