Hasta La Gadget!

Update: Read our hands-on with the new Windows Phone 7 Series.

Microsoft on Monday announced its next-generation mobile operating system Windows Phone 7 Series, which will bring together the Zune multimedia experience and Xbox Live gaming to mobile phones worldwide.

Manufacturers have already begun building phones featuring Windows Phone 7 Series with plans for release by the 2010 holiday season, according to Microsoft. Manufacturers on board include Dell, Garmin, Asus, HTC, Hewlett-Packard, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba.

Carrier partners include AT&T, T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange, SFR, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telstra, and Vodafone.

Microsoft did not announce its own phone hardware. However, the software giant is working more closely than it has in the past with manufacturing partners in the design process of their phone hardware. For example, each Windows 7 Series phone will include a dedicated hardware button to access Microsoft’s Bing search tool with one click.

“In a crowded market filled with phones that look the same and do the same things, I challenged the team to deliver a different kind of mobile experience,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft, in a press statement. “Windows Phone 7 Series marks a turning point toward phones that truly reflect the speed of people’s lives and their need to connect to other people and all kinds of seamless experiences.”

Similar to the Zune HD’s interface, the Windows Phone 7 Series main screen is organized into six “Hubs” (categories) containing different sets of features:  People, Pictures, Games, Music + Video, Marketplace and Office.

The People hub includes tools to make posting status updates, photos and videos on social networking sites (such as Facebook and Windows Live) a one-step process.

The Pictures hub keeps a user’s videos and photos all in one place, where they can also be immediately posted on a social networking site.

The Games section will provide access to the Xbox Live experience. With Xbox Live integration, Windows Phone 7 Series users will be able to download and play games sold through Microsoft’s online store, Xbox Live Marketplace, which currently serves about 300 titles. Windows Phone 7 users will also be able to view their Xbox Live profiles, avatars and game achievements on their phones. (The addition of Xbox Live to Microsoft’s mobile OS may come as a surprise, but the software giant as early as 2007 announced its plans to incorporate the Xbox Live experience into phones as part of its “Live Anywhere” program.)

For Music + Video, Microsoft is integrating its Zune player software into Windows Phone 7 Series, which will enable Windows Phone 7 Series customers to sync and play content downloaded through the Zune Marketplace store. Windows Phone 7 Series devices will also include a built-in FM radio and Zune Social to share their music recommendations with other users.

The Office hub will contain productivity tools: Office, OneNote and SharePoint Workspace, enabling users to read, edit and share documents. This section also includes Outlook Mobile for managing e-mail, appointments, contacts and tasks.

At the press conference, Ballmer was vague about the Marketplace hub, which will serve downloadable third-party apps and games. Microsoft did not disclose whether Windows Phone 7 Series would have access to apps and games sold through the Zune Marketplace. The company said it plans to share details about the Windows Phone 7 Series Marketplace and its development platform during the Microsoft MIX developer conference in March.

“Windows phones are very differentiated with the new UI,” said Michael Gartenberg, vice president and tech strategist of Interpet. “They don’t look to act like another iPhone clone. The integration of other Microsoft services such as Zune and especially Xbox will help drive a message that there’s more to mobile than apps, and that integrative services matter a lot as well. Finally, the breakdown of app silos into an integrated story will help, and Microsoft explains why different can be better.”

Microsoft’s new, rebranded mobile OS is the software giant’s effort to regain its edge in the mobile space. The software giant had a head start in mobile beginning with Windows CE, its pocket PC OS, in 1996, which serves as the foundation for the Windows Mobile OS shipping on smartphones today. However, while Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android devices are gaining market share and rising in popularity, they’ve left Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS in the dust. Windows Mobile lost nearly a third of its smartphone market share between 2008 and 2009, according to research firm Gartner. Windows Mobile had 11 percent of the global smartphone market in the third quarter of 2008, according to Gartner, and in the third quarter of 2009 Windows Mobile’s market share plummeted to 7.9 percent.

Analysts and developers told Wired.com in November 2009 that Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS failed to appeal to the mainstream because its apps focused on enterprise users rather than consumers. Also, from a programmer’s perspective the platform was difficult to develop apps for due to segmentation of the hardware ecosystem for Windows Mobile smartphones. Because Windows Mobile ships on several different manufacturers’ hardware, including phones made by HTC, LG and Samsung, developers have to code an app for several phones with different UI styles, buttons and screen sizes — a daunting task when compared to coding one app for Apple’s iPhone platform.

It remains to be seen to what extent Windows Phone 7 Series will compensate for its predecessor’s weaknesses — though the emphasis of personal media and social networking, along with the additions of Xbox gaming and Zune functionality, will likely shift the new platform’s focus toward consumers. Also, because Microsoft is now more involved in the design process of Windows Phone 7 Series hardware (as shown by the Bing button and built-in FM tuner included with all Windows Phone 7 Series phones), it may become easier for developers to code software for the new platform.

“Microsoft hasn’t been in nearly as bad shape as many have believed, but this refresh takes them to the next level in terms of mobile platforms and does so in a way that differentiates them from the rest of the market,” Gartenberg said. “Their challenge now is to execute, continue to tell the rest of the story and begin to expand their market share as these devices come to market.”

A live webcast of the Windows Phone 7 Series announcement will be viewable at Microsoft’s website 3 p.m. CET (6 a.m. PDT) on Monday. Wired.com’s Charlie Sorrel will be reporting live from Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, Spain. He’ll post more details as he receives them, so stay tuned.

See Also:

• How Microsoft Blew It With Windows Mobile
• Bandwagon Watch: App Store for Windows Mobile Launched
• Kinoma Play Cleans Up Windows Mobile Smartphones

Vodafone in the UK has introduced a range of SIM-only tariffs. Hands up if you can guess why. Yes, you at the back there, speak up. That’s right. The iPhone. A gold star for you.

In the UK, you can now get an iPhone from pretty much any carrier, which is good news for new customers. If you already have an iPhone, though, a new handset is little incentive to switch, so Vodafone’s new plans make a lot of sense. There is of course a confusion of different rates and options, but it boils down to this: All plans except the cheapest £10 ($15) per-month option have unlimited texts. Paying anything above £20 also gets you 500MB of data, and you will only be on-contract for thirty days.

Choose to sign up for a year and £25-per-month also gets you a gig of data and 900 minutes of talking. There are more variations, but they’re almost all the same as these.

Those are pretty good deals, although not as good as the almost unlimited data you get from UK telco O2 even on the pay-as-you-go iPhone plan. This is what happens when the market is opened up to competition.

What this also hints at is the future for the iPad. In the US there is already an AT&T deal in place, but as the iPad will come unlocked, we imagine pretty much every GSM provider in the world will be offering up SIM-only, data-only plans. And those plans should be a lot easier to understand: Price and bandwidth limits are about the only differences that count. Here’s hoping there’s a price war.

SIM only plans [Vodafone]

Incontrovertibly, This American Life is one of the most popular radio programs in the United States. And its iPhone app, which delivers unlimited access to the show’s entire archive, is sure to please fans.

The $3 app can stream every This American Life episode all the way back to 1995. That’s a sweet deal, because each archived episode normally costs a buck apiece to download through iTunes. And if you do wish to store an episode in your audio library, you can still choose to buy it for a dollar through the app.

Ira Glass has churned out a heck of a lot of content in his 15 years hosting the show, so the main challenge is going to be remembering and finding the episode you’re in the mood for. Fortunately the app includes the ability to search not just by keyword, but also by contributor. So if you’re looking for that episode where John Hodgman speaks, for example, you can look up his name to find the episode easily.

The iPhone app also offers the option to listen to a free live stream of the latest episode as it’s being aired by WBEZ. You can even enable push notifications to remind you when an episode is about to air.

As for the This American Life TV show, you can’t watch entire episodes, but you can view sample clips. (We’re sure most people are going to want the app for the audio anyway.)

The biggest drag about the app is it can’t run in the background, because Apple won’t allow background processing for third-party apps. That means you must close the This American Life app and interrupt listening whenever you need to do something else with your iPhone like check your e-mail. This app actually inspired me to download the free “Backgrounder” app for jailbroken (i.e. hacked) iPhones through the underground Cydia app store. That allows apps to run in the background — but it’s worth noting that if you leave background processing on, you kill your battery pretty fast.

The This American Life iPhone app is available for download through the iTunes App Store.

A hat tip to Jacqui Cheng of Ars Technica, whose review of this app brought it to my attention.

This American Life Download Link [iTunes]

See Also:

• iPhone App Enables Dogs to Be Emo on Twitter
• Wired’s 20 Favorite iPhone Apps of 2009
• The Top iPhone Apps of 2009: Apple’s Picks and Yours

Apple has posted a news bulletin for iPhone developers, informing them they may not use the phone’s geolocation features primarily for delivering targeted ads.

What that means is if you’re playing a game that doesn’t use geolocation for gameplay, and all it’s doing is tracking your location to serve location-based ads, it’ll get rejected. (Many media outlets have reported that Apple has banned location-based ads altogether, which is not the case.)

Apple’s news bulletin reads:

The Core Location framework allows you to build applications which know where your users are and can deliver information based on their location, such as local weather, nearby restaurants, ATMs, and other location-based information.

If you build your application with features based on a user’s location, make sure these features provide beneficial information. If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store.

Many apps currently serve location-based ads through AdMob, an advertising firm recently acquired by Google. Apple’s new rule implies apps using AdMob ads will get rejected if geolocation is not part of the software’s functionality.

In a statement provided to Wired.com, an Apple spokeswoman said the move was for the benefit of the consumer.

“The Core Location framework allows developers to deliver information to customers based on their location,” an Apple spokeswoman said. “This should be done with the customer’s permission and for a purpose that is directly beneficial to the customer.”

Many, however, have been quick to conclude that the regulation is a move for Quattro Wireless, a mobile advertising company Apple purchased in January, to gain a leg up in mobile advertising against Google’s recently acquired mobile ad firm AdMob. It’s conceivable that Apple could indeed be improving the mobile ad experience for customers, the Core Location regulation could also be an effort to deter developers from serving ads with AdMob.

My friend Matt Buchanan of Gizmodo argues, “It’s not to protect you.”

“It’s not too much of a stretch to see Apple’s ad platform in the future being the best way to deliver ads in apps, which might offer perks like, say, location-based targeted advertising, or more dynamic ads than you can do now on an iPhone,” Buchanan writes. “It’s also not crazy to think Apple’s way is going to be the only way to get some of those features, like location-based ads.”

Updated 12:30 p.m. PDT with a statement from Apple.

Photo: Fr3d.org/Flickr

A new app invites you to command your iPhone in the same way that Captain Kirk addressed the Enterprise’s computer.

Siri's visual interface displays a transcription of what you say, then hands the data off to an appropriate web service or search engine.

Siri, an artificial intelligence-based voice-recognition startup, launched an iPhone app incorporating its technology on Friday. With the app running, you can address requests to your phone verbally, asking it things like, “Will it rain today?” or “Where is a good place for pizza nearby?” and “I’d like a table for two at Il Fornaio tomorrow night at 7.” The Siri app parses the sound, interprets the request, and hands it off to an appropriate web service, such as OpenTable, Yelp, CitySearch, and so on. It displays the results onscreen as it goes, giving you a chance to correct or adjust your request via onscreen taps.

It’s the most sophisticated voice recognition to appear on a smartphone yet. While Google’s Nexus One offers voice transcription capabilities — so you can speak to enter text into a web form, for instance — the Nexus One doesn’t actually interpret what you’re saying.

The voice recognition and interpretation abilities built into Siri have their origins in artificial intelligence research at SRI, a legendary Silicon Valley R&D lab that was also the birthplace of the mouse and of the graphical user interface. Spun out of SRI in 2007, Siri garnered a lot of attention for its ambitious plans to develop a virtual personal assistant. Actually bringing the product to market has taken quite a bit longer than expected.

In a demo shown to Wired.com, Siri responded quickly to spoken requests, answering questions about restaurants, directions and the weather with relative ease. It’s well-integrated with about 20 different web information services, and Siri representatives say that their application programming interface will allow many others to connect in the future.

From our initial testing on an iPhone 3GS, the app was zippy and smooth. Siri understood broad requests like “Find Chinese food nearby” and more specific ones like “Find Nearest Chase bank.” Impressive, and much more efficient than searching for businesses in the Yelp iPhone app.

The Siri app is free, and the company says it has no plans to charge end-users; the goal is to make money from referring customers to services via affiliate fees.

Siri is available for download in the iTunes App Store. It requires an iPhone 3GS, because it relies on that phone’s faster processing power, but Siri representatives say a version compatible with the older iPhone 3G is in the works.

See a video of Siri in action, below.

Download Link [iTunes]