Earlier this week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Microsoft took the stage and finally announced a product that people in the mobile space have been waiting for for a long time: Windows Mobile 7, or more appropriately (since Microsoft re-dubbed the product a couple of months ago “Windows Phone,”) Windows Phone 7 Series. Windows Phone 7 will be Microsoft’s new mobile operating system, replacing the aging and unattractive Windows Mobile 6.5 that’s the mainstay of a number of enterprise-class and tech-savvy smartphones currently on the market.

Faced with stiff competition in the smartphone space from companies like Apple and Google, Microsoft was forced to come to the table with something strong or risk falling even father behind in the smartphone space – a slip that likely would have met with their downfall in the mobile marketplace. Microsoft’s Windows Mobile has never been a particularly strong OS, and the bulk of its functionality came from the fact that because it’s a Microsoft product and Exchange is also a Microsoft product, the only competition for it on the corporate side has been RIM’s BlackBerry, which unseated Windows Mobile in a huge way. Now, Windows Mobile looks dated, aged, and reminds us of an era when it’s major competition was the old Palm OS (not to be confused with Palm’s WebOS, which is on its new smartphones.)

Windows Phone 7 on the other hand, looks incredible. It’s been updated, it looks modern, it looks sleek, it’s got integration with your social networks and services, it’s got a stunning touch-screen interface, and it brings in two of Microsoft’s most successful properties to the mobile space: Zune and XBox Live. That’s right – your music and your Windows Phone 7 Series device will sync with Zune marketplace and you can snag your music from there, and your mobile gaming experience will be integrated with XBox Live. This alone proves that Microsoft means business and is rolling up its sleeves in the mobile space again.

But it’ll take more than rolled up sleeves and determination to make people abandon their iPhones and G1s for a Windows Phone 7 device.

Before we dive into why, here’s a hands-on video with Windows Phone 7 by my friend Sascha Segan at PC Magazine, who was out at the Mobile World Congress and got to see a live demo of the new operating system:

Continue reading Spinning Gears :: Thoughts on Windows Phone 7…

VIdeo game console manufacturers, set-top box makers, and even television manufacturers are all clawing to get their hands on a partnership with Netflix or Blockbuster Online so buyers can do what they obviously want to do; stream audio and video straight to their HDTVs.

The rationale is simple – streaming Netflix and Blockbuster Online over broadband to the home has become a huge part of both companies’ business models, and clearly video on demand is the future of rented movies and material. Even Netflix’s CEO said that they expect their physical disc-mailing business to decline over the next several years as their streaming business soars.

So clearly the general public is happier with paying for temporary access to video content, whether they pay Netflix or Blockbuster Online to send them DVD or Blu-Ray discs straight to their homes, where they watch them and then return them in a mailer or they get the content streamed directly to their XBox 360 or their Boxee Box or their HTPC. We’re all comfortable with the concept that we pay a monthly fee to watch as many movies as we can stand or the mail can deliver to us, and when we’re finished watching or we send it back, the movie’s gone forever unless we want to watch it again. When we cancel our accounts with Netflix or Blockbuster Online, our access to that content is gone forever.

So, then, why isn’t the same for subscription music services? The Zune Marketplace, Rhapsody, Napster, all of those services operate using exactly the same business model, if not more generous than the video services’ are. The Zune Marketplace, for example, gives you a number of credits you can spend monthly to download and permanently own the songs you really like, instead of losing access to them if you ever terminate your account. Netflix doesn’t say every month “you’ve been such a great customer, why don’t you keep these movies from your queue, go ahead, take them,” but in order for a service like the Zune Marketplace to survive, they have to.

Why are we so okay with essentially leasing our movies from Netflix and Blockbuster Online, but we’re not okay with leasing our music from Zune Marketplace and Rhapsody in the exact same way? I have a couple of ideas, but it mostly has to do with history and perception – not functionality. Let’s dive in.

Continue reading Spinning Gears :: Why Are Rented Movies Okay but Rented Music Not?…

So Facebook has announced a number of changes to its privacy policy – turns out the whole “networks” thing, which most people used as their high school, middle school, city or town, or workplace, were ambiguous ways that people were allowing others they may not have intended to have access to their profiles to get access to those profiles. It’s not so much closing a loophole as it is the advancement of a privacy policy that Facebook has been working on for a long long time.

In a blog post at Facebook, founder Mark Zuckerberg noted that these are only part of the changes – privacy settings will be simplified so you only allow access to one of three groups: friends, friends and their friends, or everyone. While everyone is talking about how this change will streamline privacy settings and change the way you allow people to access your profile and the information on it, and how it’s removing the concept of “networks” as an outmoded way of creating an artificial sphere of influence (Zuckerberg correctly points out it’s clearly a holdover from when Facebook was organized by participating schools), there’s a couple of things – namely how the new privacy settings will allow you to choose who sees what as you post it – that I think are worth talking about.

Let’s dive in behind the jump.

Continue reading Spinning Gears :: Facebook Privacy Changes May Actually Make It Useful…

I’ve been mulling over this column for a long long time, and it’s pretty difficult to write, but some recent developments have really thrust the topic forward. Let me give you the breakdown first: there’s a problem with Linux: it’s just not ready for prime time. As much as Ubuntu users will cry the opposite, and while admittedly they have the most robust and close to prime time version of Linux for the desktop available, it’s just not there yet – it’s not an OS that anyone would seriously install on a system for the average user. The fact is that virtually every distribution of Linux is still too bulky, too difficult to administer and manage, too quirky, and too poorly supported.

This isn’t news in and of itself; the Linux community has been struggling under its own weight for years now, with half of it complaining that if you can’t figure out how to manage and administer Linux distros on your own then you have no right using it (the elitists), and the other half begging and pleading with the rest of the community to build a version of Linux for the desktop that can actually get some traction with everyday people and some support from software developers other than ones who want to port Windows apps to it (the populists). This schism is at the heart of the problem, and it always has been.

But lately, there’s been a dramatic shift in the Linux landscape, and it hasn’t had to do with this schism – it’s been in the way that other companies have gotten behind customized distributions of Linux for selected platforms and really put their weight behind advancing them, each in their own specific way. The big news? They’re (almost) skipping entirely over desktop Linux in favor of mobile platforms.

Let’s dive into this a bit more behind the jump.

Continue reading Spinning Gears: The Linux “Problem,” and How Apple and Google Are Solving It…

I’ve often wondered what steampunk would look like if it (and we, as I’m more than a fan of steampunk, I wholeheartedly embrace it as a subculture) had more opporutnities for perspective outside of victorian-era Europe. Of course the euro-centricity of steampunk is natural; the idea stemmed from the wonder of what the past, present, and possibly future would look like if the industrial revolution had been built on steam and steam-powered technologies instead of the dominance of coal-fired and gas-powered technologies that we adopted instead. If steam still powered our cars and massive airships still roamed the skies, for example. The very idea comes from the technologies prevalent in Europe during the Edwardian and Victorian eras.

That being said, it’s not like Europe was the only part of the world to play with steam-powered technologies, and if that rose to prominence in Europe, I’d be curious to see what some of the other prevailing regional technologies could have arisen in other parts of the world without the same influence of Europeans at the same time periods. In other words, what would a steampunk-style Asia look like? Or Africa? Maybe South America? What would a steampunk Incan or Aztec city look like? How about a steampunk (or equivalent technology) Masai tribe? What about a steampunk Japan (we got a brief glimpse in a skit in the collection of Anime shorts called Robot Carnival where a steam-powered, wooden giant “robot” built for a Japanese festival faces off against a western steam-powered invading robot come to crash the ceremonies.

Videos and more thoughts behind the jump:

Continue reading Spinning Gears: What Would Steampunk Look Like Outside of Europe?…

David Pogue took some heat on last week’s This Week in Tech (TWiT) with Leo Laporte and John C. Dvorak (the generally out-of-touch-but-entertaining-anyway crankmaster himself) over being actually bubbly and happy about some of the good products he’s reviewed. When he finds a good product, he’ll laud it with praise, and when he finds a bad one he actually offers constructive criticism about the product. Pogue makes no secret of the fact that he has a fondness for Apple products, but sees flaws in them like anyone else would, and lives a cross-platform life – much like yours truly, on all of those counts.

Maybe that’s why I can relate to him to a certain extent. I also do product write-ups and reviews for a number of online publications and pride myself on being as impartial as I can be and honest about my opinions about a product. If Apple releases a stinker, I like to think that I’m able to call them out for doing so instead of sweeping it under the rug, for example. Similarly, if I’m reviewing a new gadget or product and it’s just horrible to configure and use, I’ll call that out in my review. By the same token, if I get my hands on something and it’s absolutely fabulous and I love it, I’m going to be bubbly and happy about it and suggest that other people try it as well.

I don’t have nearly the clout that David Pogue does, but after the crankiness and general jadedness I heard from some of the other panelists on that episode of TWiT, I had to stop and say to myself: what’s wrong with being happy when you find a good product? What’s wrong with championing good services as well as calling out the bad ones? Have we as an industry of technology writers and geeks and people passionate about tech become so incredibly jaded that we can’t even enjoy the good products and services when they’re available to us?

Let’s dive into that a little bit more after the jump.

Continue reading Spinning Gears :: What’s Wrong with Good Reviews? (or, Why Snark is the Mind-Killer)…

I make no qualms about how much I love Twitter (you can follow me at @halophoenix), even love Plurk (I’m halophoenix there also), but hate Facebook with a passion. Why? It’s all about the way you use your social networks – or the way your social networks use you.

This is also the answer to a question a friend of mine (a friend in more ways than social networking, which is worthwhile to point out) put to her Livejournal followers a few weeks back. She asked, in a nutshell, whether the proliferation of social networks and ways to connect and communicate with people like Facebook and Twitter and even long-form blogging and community blogging like Livejournal is a way for people to share their lives with people, connect with friends and loved ones that they truly want to stay in touch with, or whether it’s little more than a new, technologically-based way for people to stroke their own egos and put on a “my life is better than yours” show for their so-called friends to see.

The answer really is that it’s both, and which one you experience depends highly on you and the type of community you decide to keep on all of those services. While I can’t claim that it’s entirely dependent on you and that you have complete control over what your social networks look like, you do have control over who you let into your social circles and who you exclude: who gets in behind the velvet rope and who doesn’t.

Full disclosure (and some personal examples) behind the jump.

Continue reading Spinning Gears: Social Networking: Reconnecting, Preening, or Just Depressing?…

Government officials reported earlier today that a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack was directed at the Web sites of several US government agencies, and that the attacks likely started after July 4th. Officials have also been able to determine that the attack likely originated from North Korea, and that a botnet of likely over 50,000 infected systems were used to take part in the attack. Here’s the official word:

A botnet composed of about 50,000 infected computers has been waging a war against U.S. government Web sites and causing headaches for businesses in the U.S. and South Korea.

The attack started Saturday, and security experts have credited it with knocking the Web site of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) offline for parts of Monday and Tuesday. Several other government Web sites have also been targeted, including the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT).

With that out of the way, many government agencies have been reporting the issue as a major incident, calling it “complex” and “sophisticated,” and it’s kind of disturbing that we’ve learned so little from the greater virus incidents earlier in the decade to use those adjectives to describe this. The attacks have been on-going, and definitely have utilized a modestly sized botnet, but this type of work indicates a potency and level of effort that I think we’ve come to expect from North Korea in other regards: good for getting our attention, but not for much else.

DDoS attacks are relatively harmless when the target doesn’t drive revenue from its Web site or services, and are fairly easy to orchestrate. Additionally, there’s no indication that the North Koreans were responsible for amassing the botnet, were hijacking someone else’s, or perhaps worst of all (but most likely) were customers of a hacker-for-hire ring, some of which are known to sell or rent their botnets to anyone with some spare cash.

There will likely be calls for the US government to strengthen its cybersecurity posture after these attacks, and while I invite any money being invested in technology security, disaster recovery, and business continuity by any organization, I hope logic wins the day against fear.

There’s been a whole world of commotion in the smartphone market these days. Even teen-aimed mobile devices like LG’s enV3 (which the commercial claims is “app friendly,” somehow) are looking more and more like smartphones – you can download applications that make it easier to stay in touch with your friends, surf the Web, get your e-mail, and all in all distract you more while you drive. (texting while driving is a whole other column)

But no one’s scrambling for the enV3, no one’s scrambling for the Samsung Trance. No one’s lining up to get the Blackberry Storm – even though it’s one of these new breed of smartphones. What are people lining up for? The iPhone in just about every iteration it’s been released, and surprising new devices like the Palm Pre and the G1. The G1, the Pre, and the iPhone prove a remarkable point: the smartphone isn’t the realm of the businessperson anymore, and even professionals want more from a smartphone than just the ability to get their corporate e-mail on the go.

The United States, in all target markets, is learning a lesson that people in other markets have either known or also been learning for years: we need better smartphones. The iPhone, the Palm Pre, and the G1 are proof of this – people want phones that bring true Web browsing to their mobile fingertips, and not the type of terrifyingly ugly Web experience that typically comes on devices like your standard clamshell mobile phone.

But it goes beyond this – people don’t just want them, they’re willing to jump ship from their current carriers, even if they have no complaints, and pay large amounts of money for expensive data plans in order to get them. They’re also willing to line up in front of mobile phone stores around the country to get them on the first possible day they can get them.

Continue reading Spinning Gears :: The iPhone, G1, and Palm Pre Prove It: The US Needs Better Smartphones…

A good friend noted how quiet her friends list at Livejournal had been recently, and remarked that they had all headed to sites like Facebook and Twitter, where they can post quick updates on their activities more recently and with fewer characters. With the ability to keep people up to date on every aspect of their lives at any time, she mused, does that spell the end for services like Livejournal, Blogger, or even the traditional long-form blog? Why would anyone want to write paragraphs about their lives or their activities when they could simply post to Twitter in 140 characters on the spot from any mobile device they chose?

She’s got a point – with the rapid and meteoric growth of Twitter and even the venerable Facebook falling in line behind it and trying to adopt a more “microblogging meets social networking” position (as shown by its most recent redesign-the one that looks a lot like Twitter) it makes sense that people are still managing to stay in touch, just without quite as many words.

Being someone who’s hopelessly addicted to Twitter myself (you can follow me at @halophoenix) but also who loves to blog, I say she’s wrong…but she’s also right. It’s not so simple as to presume long-form blogging is dead in favor of 140-character news; although there’s a definite and very real trend towards bite-size news and snack-sized culture. We can absorb a lot in 140 characters, and sometimes it’s all we need, but sometimes we need more: a lot more. Get more below the jump:

Continue reading Spinning Gears :: Is Blogging Dead in the Age of Twitter?…