Hasta La Gadget!

If you’re both ready and set, then you’ll be pleased to know that Microsoft has major Windows Mobile goings-on to discuss tomorrow at 9AM ET (3PM here in Spain). What does that really mean? Well based on the torrent of circumstantial (and actual) evidence we’ve seen, it looks like the big M is set to deliver its most important piece of mobile news in years: Windows Mobile 7. Or, Windows Phone 7 Series… or whatever it is they’re calling it these days. Regardless, it looks like a new era for Redmond’s smartphone platform, and we’ll be there covering the whole thing minute-by-minute… as only Engadget can.

If you’re as curious as we are about Microsoft’s plans, the event kicks off on Monday, February 15 at the times below. And here’s the URL to park your browser at to see the action take place:

04:00AM – Hawaii
06:00AM – Pacific
07:00AM – Mountain
08:00AM – Central
09:00AM – Eastern
02:00PM – London
03:00PM – Paris
11:00PM – Tokyo

Microsoft’s Windows Phone event at MWC kicks off tomorrow at 9AM ET originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 14 Feb 2010 21:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you ever needed a reason to go Linux, here you go. The noise surrounding this patently obscure Windows XP bug / patch fiasco has just reached a fever pitch, and now we’ve got engineers within Redmond scratching their heads, too. As the story goes, Microsoft recently patched a security hole that took care of an antediluvian DOS vulnerability, and in doing so, some users began to see BSODs and endless reboots. Today, we’ve learned that the patch has been yanked, and Microsoft is suggesting that malware is to blame. But here’s the skinny — the patch simply disturbed the malware, which called a specific kernel code that directs your PC to keel over; in other words, any application that calls that same code could theoretically leave your machine in dire straits. And that, friends, probably explains the software giant’s following quote:

“In our continuing investigation in to the restart issues related to MS10-015 that a limited number of customers are experiencing, we have determined that malware on the system can cause the behavior. We are not yet ruling out other potential causes at this time and are still investigating.“

Rock, meet hard place.

Windows XP patch fiasco gets even crazier, Microsoft now scrambling for solutions originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 13 Feb 2010 00:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Former Apple evangelist and professional self promoter Guy Kawasaki spent Friday morning at Macworld Expo helping developers pimp their software. While he was at it, he managed to deliver some obligatory jabs to Microsoft and Google.

“Back then the Mac division was the largest collection of egomaniacs,” said Kawasaki, reflecting on his past job evangelizing the Mac platform. “But that record has been broken by Google.”

From 1983 to 1987, Kawasaki was Apple’s Mac evangelist, who reached out to software developers to convince them to develop applications for the Macintosh back when the platform had a diminutive install base. To attract developers to the platform, he’d often publicize hot software to show off the capabilities of the Mac.

Reviving his old role as a software promoter, Kawasaki on Friday featured app demonstrations by several developers. The key appearances were Twitter creator Jack Dorsey (below), former Apple engineer Bill Atkinson and Microsoft Bing manager Florian Voss.

Dorsey’s new startup Square revolves around a platform that enables anyone to perform a credit card transaction. The Square magnetic stripe reader plugs into any computer or phone with a 3.5-mm headphone jack, and the Square software transmits payments to Square’s database, which eventually wires the money to a bank account.

“Everybody becomes a merchant,” Dorsey said.

The credit card reader could come useful for people selling items on Craigslist or for charities asking for donations. Both the app and the accessory will be free; the Square system charges merchants fees depending on the cards used. (See Mat Honan’s review of Square published earlier this week.)

Microsoft’s Voss showed off the new Bing app for iPhone, which enables users to perform Bing searches with voice commands. Kawasaki complimented the Bing app’s beauty, but not without slipping in a Microsoft diss.

“I never thought I’d hear a Microsoft employee extolling the virtues of beautiful applications,” he said, to which Voss retorted, “I never thought I’d hear an Apple evangelist say a Microsoft product looks beautiful.”

The two enjoyed a bitter laugh.

Apple veteran Atkinson demoed his $5 app PhotoCard, which allows users to create postcards using their own images or Atkinson’s photographs. You’d use the app to design the postcard and send off the request to a local print shop, which will physically produce the postcard and mail it out to your recipient through the U.S. postal service. You’d pay for prints inside the app with credits purchased through PayPal.

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

The WSJ has confirmed that Mic will introduce their newest mobile phone OS on Monday at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona. WinMo 6.5 is dead; long live Windows Phone 7.

The announcement will almost certainly come during Steve Ballmer’s Windows Phone press conference, scheduled for 3pm local time. According to the WSJ, Windows Phone 7 will have an entirely new user interface that closely resembles that of Zune. This backs up what we’d heard from a tipster last month.

Apparently, Windows Phone 7 will look to fix the mistakes of WinMos past by working more closely with OEMs:

With Windows Mobile 7, similarly, Microsoft has gotten more involved in hardware design by creating detailed plans for a small number of handset “chassis” on top of which hardware manufactures can build their devices, people familiar with the effort said. The idea behind the plan, these people said, is to limit the wild variation in quality of Windows phones and to make it easier for independent application developers to write software that runs well on them.

One of those devices to run off of Windows Phone 7 is expected to be Microsoft’s Project Pink/Zune phone, although that handset’s considered unlikely to be part of next week’s announcement.

It’s still going to be some time before we see any Windows Phone 7 devices on the market, but it’s good to see Microsoft getting in gear to replace the inexcusable WinMo 6.5. [WSJ]

Wondering why your PC has been infested with malware, random popups, intermittent shut downs and all sorts of other atypical garbage since the day you installed that downloaded copy of Windows 7? In case you aren’t capable of determining that your copy of Windows isn’t genuine (as in, you didn’t buy it from a legitimate source), Microsoft is about to lend you a serious hand. In the “coming days,” the software behemoth will be pushing out a new update for Windows Activation Technologies, which will look for over “70 known and potentially dangerous activation exploits.” It sounds as if the update is intended to alert folks who purchased complete PCs from the back of their local White Van that they may have gotten ripped off, but either way, we’re not particularly stoked about having yet another item running in the background, consuming system resources and telling us that we’ve been naughty. Thankfully it’s a voluntary update, but keep your eyes peeled if you don’t want to okay the installation accidentally.

[Thanks, Troy]

Windows 7 Activation Technologies Update coming down the pike, will tell you things you (should) already know originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Feb 2010 20:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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