Hasta La Gadget!

It’s not quite “take this job and shove it,” but Microsoft’s soon to be former chief software Ray Ozzie had some strong words about the future of the PC and Microsoft in a new memo titled “Dawn of a New Day.”

Ozzie posted the memo on his personal blog with the date October 28th. Clearly the Microsoft executive has been sent back from the near future to tell us all about the future of the industry.

Ozzie wrote of a disconnect between the software giant’s take on the computer and the views he believes average users hold,

For the most part, we’ve grown to perceive of ‘computing’ as being equated with specific familiar ‘artifacts’ such as the ‘computer’, the ‘program’ that’s installed on a computer, and the ‘files’ that are stored on that computer’s ‘desktop’. For the majority of users, the PC is largely indistinguishable even from the ‘browser’ or ‘Internet.’

Ozzie added that users have already “begun to move away” from concepts like PCs, CD software, and desktops.

“We’re moving toward a world of 1) cloud-based continuous services that connect us all and do our bidding, and 2) appliance-like connected devices enabling us to interact with those cloud-based services,” he wrote. “[T]hose who build and deploy application fabrics targeting connected devices understand how challenging it can be to simply & reliably just ‘sync’ or ‘stream’. To achieve these seemingly simple objectives will require dramatic innovation in human interface, hardware, software and services.”

And then, there were three. Apple’s Find my iPhone introduced a rather compelling idea — one that involves locating your phone by tapping into the GPS lock that it was holding onto in someone else’s arms. A few weeks back, Big Red announced a similar service for VZW-branded BlackBerry, webOS and Android phones, and now that Windows Phone 7 is making its red carpet reveal, we’re learning that Microsoft’s newest mobile OS has similar functionality baked in. The feature is teased in a new Microsoft video that shows off the cloud functions of WP7, which also demonstrates the phone staying in sync with contacts added on the PC, playing Xbox LIVE with friends and shooting an image on the phone just moments before viewing it on a Windows 7 laptop. We’re hoping to get a better idea of how the handset recovery system works (and how much it’ll cost) a bit later in the day, but for now that aforementioned video is embedded just past the break.

Update: AT&T has affirmed that this feature will be completely free of charge for WP7 handsets purchased from it. We’re still waiting to hear if it’ll be free across all carriers / countries.

[Thanks, JagsLive]

Continue reading Windows Phone 7’s ‘Find My Phone’ feature teased in Microsoft video

Windows Phone 7’s ‘Find My Phone’ feature teased in Microsoft video originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Oct 2010 09:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Digital Inspiration’s Amit Agarwal has a clever Dropbox-based solution for printing documents from a smartphone or tablet, whether your printer’s down the hall or thousands of miles away. The idea is so simple, you’ll be amazed you haven’t thought to try it yourself.

Dropbox is a popular utility that allows users to sync and share files on different computers. Native Dropbox applications are available for most smartphone platforms, giving you mobile access to all your files, and many mobile applications are now integrating Dropbox for remote syncing and storage. You can also add files to your Dropbox account via e-mail or the web.

In this solution, use any of those means to get the file you want printed into a shared Dropbox folder — call it “PrintQueue” — that you’ve set up for this purpose. Your print-capable computer uses a script to monitor “PrintQueue,” automatically print its documents and then move them to a different folder. (Agarwal calls this second folder “logs”; I’d call it “Completed Jobs”). If you’re a clever hacker, you could even add scripts to send a remote notification that the print job has been completed.

For Windows, Agarwal has a downloadable VBS script that will set this up for you; as he notes, there are different scripting solutions for Mac OS X or Linux too.

Once you’ve got this rigged, the immediate use case is to send a document wirelessly from a smartphone or tablet to a local printer. And it is kind of magical to stand there and watch the whole process unfold, as in the video above.

But think beyond that. Suddenly, your printer is capable of networking with any computer, anywhere — with any phone, anywhere — that you approve and authorize. This is potentially so much better than hooking up a computer to a wireless router or navigating the virtual bureaucracy of an office printer network. It’s way better than a fax machine.

This could be one future of social networking and file sharing: Instead of big, ad-cluttered feeds that push photos, status updates and Farmville notifications or anonymous networks that chop files into bits and reassemble them, imagine friends and acquaintances broadcasting to each other, wheels within wheels, each with different levels and fields of access. Designating someone a “friend” might not be worth very much in this cockeyed world, but automatic remote access to someone’s printer still means something.

Print Files from any Mobile Phone using Dropbox [Digital Inspiration] via Gizmodo

“Hey you, get off of my cloud?” That was the other guys. George Harrison, meanwhile, sang about being stuck inside a cloud and being on cloud nine and John Lennon encouraged people to put their head in the clouds at least once that I can think of, off the top of my head. Now it’s Paul McCartney’s turn.

The former Beatle’s company, McCartney Productions Ltd., has struck a deal with Hewlett-Packard to digitize a collection of his paintings, films, images, and videos. HP will create a content management system for the material, some of which will be opened up to fans. Other pieces, meanwhile, will remain private for the fireman himself.

The McCartney deal is the first of its kind for HP.

Apple has always sucked at the internet. With Ping and the new Apple TV, Apple sucks a little bit less at it. But Apple could be good at it. More »