February 16th, 2010
I’d rather be in Barcelona.
My parter in crime is wrapping up a vacation in Italy, and I’m stuck with a cold in Chicago, day dreaming of Spain. Beaches, food, nightlife, culture- and Mobile World Congress! It’s that time of the year, so let Jack galavant through the canals and little rustic eateries- I’m going to order delivery tapas and slack off catch up with the latest scoop on all things mobile.
- The big news- Windows 7 Phone Series looks interesting (dare I say “awesome”). It’s practically hard to look really “innovative” in the phone space these days. Touch screens, app stores, twitter clients- these glass slabs are starting to all look the same. While I appreciate the little touches of Palm’s task card web os, stick it across from a Droid and my mom would probably still call both of them iphones. So when Microsoft drops something that looks like this:
I’m going to notice. The flat interface is striking, and the concepts of “Live Tiles” are particularly intriguing (it’s always annoyed me that the weather icon on the iphone is always 73 and sunny, when in fact it’s 29 and grey, and clock icon perpetually reads 10:15, though I’m staring at it at 12:25). The only question I have is what happens once “regular” developers start putting stuff on the platform. I assume there will be a robust dev environment- it is windows after all- but it’s obvious this (very slick) look came from a very focused and creative team (I think I read the designer was from nike?). Your average dev house may not have a creative director from Puma’s Swedish office, so it’ll be interesting to see how they translate into this awesome new world. Either way, it’s good to see Microsoft back in this game in a big way.
In smaller news, but somewhat related to the point of the blog, Gizmodo is reporting that the interface to the Turtle and Pure sidekick killers is built in Silverlight. Neat. I always hated the Sidekick hardware, but the software was kind of cool. These look more awesome on both counts.
In non-hardware news, I did get a chuckle out of the “Super Team” of two-dozen telcos (plus smasung, LG, and Sony) trying to desperately get in on the App action. Notice anyone missing there? Apple, Microsoft, Google, Palm, and RIM. The platform makers. This is going to end well, i”m sure :)
I don’t think the Verizons and Att’s of the world have fully come to terms with the fact we pay to use their pipes and nothing else. I suppose I’d long for the days when I could control what went on people’s phones while making sure I got a decent cut of every transaction taking place on the device ($3 ringtones!), but guess what dudes? That train left the station. Be happy you still get to charge me out the nose to use the tracks.
Alright. Jack will be back with some nerdy stuff next week. Until then, you should go check out all the cool stuff coming out of Barcelona!