Hasta La Gadget!

The Windows Mobile world got shook up a little earlier this month when Microsoft’s VP of Marketing for WinMo said that the company was looking to cut back on the total number phones out there in order to “be more focused,” but it now looks like that may not entirely be the case. According to TamsPPC, a spokesperson from Microsoft Austria has relayed the message that while Microsoft’s stepped-up efforts to work with its partners may well result in fewer phones, “the implication in The New York Times that Microsoft will limit the number of Windows Mobile devices is not accurate.” So, it seems that Microsoft isn’t exactly throwing a firm number out there, but it also seems like it won’t be too upset if fewer substandard phones make it to market.

Filed under: Cellphones

Microsoft spokesperson clarifies report of limiting number of WinMo phones originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Jan 2009 14:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For the legions of helpless Windows Mobile users, the Pre is just the latest in an endless, corrosive barrage of ego-draining next-gen phones. But living with Windows Mobile doesn’t have to be so bad.

Work rules, lame carriers, prohibitive contracts—whatever the reason you’re shacked up with a WinMo phone, you’ve been through the same experience. You toil with the layers of menus, hidden device settings, poor browsing and crashy, inconsistent performance. Surrounded by fancy, shiny phones with even fancier, shinier OSes, you’re even getting a bit jealous, and feel like you have a genuinely last-gen device. Well, as Windows Mobile enthusiasts (who are out there in droves) will tell you, it’s not that terrible. With the right apps you can get quite a lot of utility and—yes—enjoyment out of your aging phone.

For God’s sake, get a new browser
Internet Explorer Mobile, even in its latest incarnation, has rarely been described as “good.” In fact, it’s pretty much the complete opposite. No worries though—Windows Mobile, through third parties, has the broadest and most versatile collection of browsers of any of its competitors.

Opera Mini/Mobile: A Java-based browser, Opera Mini is a free download that will immediately give your phone a new lease on life. Fancy this: Now, with your phone, you can visit actual websites, rendered to a reasonable degree of accuracy! OH MY GOD!

There’s also Opera Mobile, a native app with a few more advanced features, which has recently shifted its emphasis to a relatively narrow set of touchscreen devices (mostly from HTC and Samsung), on which it performs as a reasonable counterpart to Safari Mobile or Chrome Mobile. It’s free when it’s in beta, but will cost you for long term use.

Both browsers Opera Mini routes content through Opera’s servers for optimization and compression, which can occasionally break formatting. Update: Opera Mobile runs independently of Opera’s servers, though there is noticeable compression performed—presumably locally—on some images.

Skyfire: This upstart company has produced a phenomenal browser, dedicated to bringing a full desktop browsing experience to Windows Mobile phones. This powerhouse app is now available to the public, and lives up to most of its claims.

Skyfire routes web content through its servers like Opera Mini does, but with a greater emphasis on exact page reproduction. For the end user, that means fully optimized streaming Flash video, which will allow you to watch everything from Hulu to Megaporn—all automatically transcoded into a lower, EDGE or 3G-appropriate bitrate. Skyfire works wonderfully on most WinMo phones, touchscreen or not, but its version for VGA-resolution phones needs better visuals.

TorchMobile Iris: This is another browser that claims to bring the “desktop experience” to your phone, and for the most part it does, assuming your phone has a touchscreen. It got its start on the LG Dare, where it performed relatively well. In short, this WebKit-based browser render quite well, but it’s not terribly fast and the navigation paradigm isn’t the most intuitive of the lot. But! It’s free and it’s not Mobile IE, and for this I am grateful.

Give your old phone a new look
This is where Windows Mobile feels the most out of date; its interface is a classic example of design by committee, only this time the committee was made up primarily of the visionaries responsible for Windows Bob, Windows ME, Windows Vista and possibly the Pontiac Aztec. The solution? Skin it.

PointUI: About a year ago, our own Jason Chen raved about PointUI, and not much has changed—it’s still fantastic. This layer, not unlike those designed by HTC, Samsung and Sony to mask WinMo, will provide pretty, finger-friendly navigation to a touchscreen Windows Mobile phone. It looks like the project is on temporary hiatus, but the app is still available here.

SPB Mobile Shell: This one isn’t free ($30, actually) but does provide a fairly complete conversion. It reaches deeper into layers of the interface than PointUI does, is a bit more friendly for QWERTY-based phones and offers a load of user skins.

ThrottleLauncher: HTC’s TouchFlo 3D is a wonderful Windows Mobile shell, but unfortunately can be difficult to port due to its 3D acceleration requirement. ThrottleLauncher is a TF3D replacement, which works on most Windows Mobile touchscreen phones. It looks like TF3D, and offers skins to look like Android, iPhone OS and others. There are a fair number of bugs present, but they’re tolerable.

Fill out your app list:
Most of those things that modern smartphones have—the swank maps, the messaging services, the productivity apps—you can have too. They may not be as polished, but they work very, very well.

Google Apps: Aside from plethora of mobile web apps offered by Google, there are a few native ones as well. Google Maps is a must-download, and provides almost all of the functionality of its iPhone/G1 brother, including GPS integration. Google Mail provides a nice, speedy interface for your Gmail account, offering relief from Windows Mobile’s occasionally frustrating mail app, and allowing for relatively easy switching between accounts.

Skype: Here’s an area where Windows Mobile generally trumps all others OSes—voice over IP. The native Skype app is lovely, functioning well over Wi-Fi and cellular data connections, provided your carrier allows the latter.

Palringo: Palringo is a multiprotocol IM app, which enables messaging on many networks at once in a single program. AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ—they’re all there. Like any decent IM app it works with the WinMo notification system and runs in the background, so you can be constantly apprised of your new messages, just like those smug BlackBerry users. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that in the area of messaging, Windows Mobile shines. Similar, also good: Fring.

TCPMP Media Player: Its development has been discontinued, but the app is perfectly usable as is. What is it? It’s a barebones media player that’ll handle almost any codec, audio or video, that you throw at it. In other words, you can encode video for mobile consumption however you like, something that can’t be said of most other OSes (cough*Apple*cough).

Pocket Scrobbler: An unofficial client for the fantastic Last.fm internet radio/social network service, this app will handily stream endless, personally catered internet radio over a cellular data connection or Wi-Fi. Windows Mobile actually has a distinct advantage with this type of programs: the ability to run apps in the background!

Dealzmodo Hacks are intended to help you sustain your crippling gadget addiction through tighter times. If you come across any on your own that are particularly useful, send it to our tips line (Subject: Dealzmodo Hack). Check back every other Thursday for free DIY tricks to breathe new life into hardware that you already own.

We woke up this morning to find somebody other than Steve Jobs at the helm of Apple and Palm reigning supreme as the new darling of the tech industry. Unfortunately, it’s not the tech bubble year of 1996 — it’s the recession plagued start to 2009. So it’s no surprise to hear that Google, Seagate, and Microsoft are all looking to slash operating costs in a quest to remain buoyant. Google (yes, the invincible Google) just laid off 100 recruiters while announcing the closure of a few satellite engineering offices — a move that will certainly see the loss of at least a few of the 70 or so affected engineers who are unwilling or unable to relocate. Meanwhile Seagate is swinging the axe deep with an announced 6% cut (2,950 people) to its global workforce coupled with executive pay cuts by as much as 25%. And according to sources over at The Wall Street Journal, Microsoft is scouring its books for cost savings but is hoping to avoid layoffs. Nevertheless, cuts could be announced as early as next Thursday’s earnings call. Hey sock-puppet, how ’bout a dance? We could use some levity right about now.

Read — Google recruiters
Read — Google engineering
Read — Microsoft mulls cuts
Read — Seagate slashes

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Google and Seagate cut staff while Microsoft weighs options originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Jan 2009 03:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Windows 7 is the largest OS beta test ever. If you followed our guide you’re already snapping, peeking and poking around in it. But did you read the fine print before you clicked install?

The fine print we’re talking about is Microsoft’s Pre-Release Software License Terms for Windows 7 Beta, commonly referred to as a license agreement. It’s a long scrolling list of text, the kind you usually skip during installation as you hammer the install button and get the party started. Trouble is, beta agreements are very different than final-release software agreements, and this text isn’t available on Microsoft’s website (but now it’s available on Giz).

Assuming you didn’t read it, we read it for you, and can now explain the contract between you and Microsoft that dictates how you use the software, what happens when it expires, what information they can scoop for you and sets the price for your firstborn in trade. Kidding about that last part, but pay attention:

You’re Sending Data to Microsoft
Windows 7 is a beta product, which means it’s in a testing phase—you’re the tester. The whole point is for Microsoft to discover and squash any bugs that pop up, and maybe polish some of the user experience along the way if anything sticks out. Guess what? To do that, Microsoft needs to collect your data. Some of this data scooping is turned on by default, beaming information back to the mothership without needing to warn you that it’s doing so. Common information includes your IP address, OS version, hardware ID—device manufacturer, name and version—that kind of thing.

The Windows 7 beta automatically sends error reports back to Microsoft. These “might unintentionally contain personal information. For example, a report that contains a snapshot of computer memory might include your name. Part of a document you were working on could be included as well.” That sounds kinda dicey if you’re Jack Bauer or the keepers of the Coca-Cola formula. But Microsoft says it doesn’t use the info to figure out who you are, so no worries if you’re just paranoid Microsoft is trying to hunt you down for some reason. Also flicked on by default is the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP), which “sends anonymous information about your hardware and how you use this software to Microsoft.”

Microsoft lays out what kind of information is transmitted by every major feature in detail here, including when the feature does it, how Microsoft uses it and if you’ve actually got a choice about sending the info. (Activation, no choice or control there, but Gadgets and network connectivity monitoring, yes.)

Sometimes Microsoft doesn’t tell you when this on-by-default reporting telemetry can be turned off, but bear in mind that if you have to hack too far into the system to shut it off yourself, you may be violating the agreement by not using the software in the intended manner. As it’s put so bluntly: “You may not work around any technical limitations in the software.”

Generally speaking, Microsoft is clear that it won’t share the info it gleans with the entire world, but they do reserve the right to “share it with others, such as hardware and software vendors” in order “to improve how their products run with this software.” So like Dell and Quicken might be going through your crash reports and seeing what kind of computer you use. But you want their stuff to work with Windows, right?

It’s More Like a Rental
This has been well-publicized, but in case you didn’t know, the Windows 7 beta is a time bomb that will self-destruct on August 1, and might take your data down with it: “The software will stop running on August 1, 2009. You may not receive any other notice. You may not be able to access data used with the software when it stops running.” (Another excellent reason to dual boot.) It’s possible they could extend the length of the trial, but since all expectations are that the final Windows 7 is gonna ship by July, expect that Aug. 1 lock down to happen.

Did you think Windows 7 was a free ride and you own your very own copy now? Shnope. Microsoft is very clear here: “The software is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to use the software.”

Part of the terms here—of Microsoft still owning Windows 7 and you owning approximately dick—are that you can’t tell anyone benchmark results unless you get Microsoft to okay it first. You also can’t reverse engineer Windows 7, “work around any technical limitations in the software” or use it to host your own server.

Oh, and if Windows 7 wipes out the indie film you’ve been working on for two years, blows up your mega-super-computer that cost you $20,000 to put together or otherwise completely screws up your life, Microsoft will only cover five bucks. Max.

It’s for Testing Only
You can install and use as many copies as you like, but Microsoft says “You may not use the software in a live operating environment unless Microsoft permits you to do so under another agreement.” So no using Windows 7, for like, reals. And you can only use it with one virtualization environment per device—so no doubling up Parallels and Fusion either, you rule-breaker you.

You Are Not Permitted to Circumvent Validation.
Well. Okay then. And yes, it’s gonna keep checking “from time to time” that it’s valid software. If Microsoft sends out an update to the validation software, odds are, they aren’t going to tell you about it either—it can be downloaded and installed without telling you—meaning you can’t turn it off.

Did We Mention This Is a Beta?
Hey guys? Windows 7 “may not work the way a final version of the software will. We may change it for the final, commercial version. We also may not release a commercial version.” That would do lovely things to Microsoft’s stock, eh?

Conclusion
If you want the really long version, here’s the text of the full agreement. Here’s the short version: Microsoft owns Windows 7, it’s beaming back information to the mothership that you may or may not able be able to turn off, and you’re totally on your own, sucker. Enjoy Windows 7!

Something you still wanna know? Send any questions about Windows, Ballmy, or the McRib to tips@gizmodo.com, with “Giz Explains” in the subject line.

Microsoft has pushed out its first patch for the Windows 7 public beta. The update saves your MP3s from a rather nasty bug that trims seconds off any song that’s been edited, either by you or via automatic updates from Windows Media Player. If you’ve got afflicted files, there’s a chance they’re salvageable via properties window, according to the patch notes — and if not, then here’s hoping you backed up your library. Additionally, a new update has gone out to Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and Server 2003 / 2008 that fixes some vulnerabilities in the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. Beta users won’t get their fix until the next public release, explains Microsoft Security Response Team’s Christopher Budd, since it’s only considered a “moderate” risk for the new OS.

Read – Microsoft issues first Windows 7 beta patch
Read – Patch notes / how to fix afflicted MP3s
Read – Security update

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Windows 7 beta update saves your MP3s, all other versions get security patch originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Jan 2009 07:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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