What’s exciting about Windows Phone 7

Windows Phone 7- What you should know.

[Gizmodo]

 

Let’s just get it out of the way: Windows Phone 7 is the most exciting thing to happen to phones in a long time.

There are a million reasons why Windows Phone 7 matters. It’s the most important PC company in the world, battered, bruised and badly lagging, coming back to the next generation of PCs, after crashing on a bunch of rocks and abandoning ship. It’s potentially the most tectonic shift in mobile since the launch of iPhone and Android. It’s Microsoft starting over and betting massively on its future. It’s a very different kind of Microsoft product. It could be the beginning of something truly great.

Windows Phone 7 is the most aggressively different, fresh approach to a phone interface since the iPhone. Everything is superflat and two dimensional. Ultra-basic squares, primary colors and lists. Fonts are gigantic and clean, white text on an almost universally black void. It’s fluid. This spartan nature is emblematic of the entire OS, for better and for worse. You don’t get a lot of choices; there are no custom ringtones, for instance. It just is how it is. And while it looks and feels very different in some regards, it’s still uncanny just how deeply inspired Windows Phone is by the iPhone in its philosophy, versus anything else Microsoft or anybody else has made.

The interface is oriented around three core concepts:

• Hubs Essentially panoramic apps that span multiple screens. Ironically, what really proves the Hub concept works are the third-party apps that use it. It works perfectly with Twitter, Netflix, Foursquare and Facebook, swiping over a screen to get to mentions, or to see your friends checkins.
• Live Tiles These are the home screen’s icons, and they update with fresh info like email counts. But the Tiles don’t do quite enough to function as full-fledged widgets—the weather Tile, for instance, doesn’t show the weather.
• The App Bar a semi-persistent menu/taskbar that hides deeper actions—like starting a new email or switching tabs in Internet Explorer. It’s a necessarily evil, given how radically Microsoft has reduced the onscreen UI.

Windows Phone strikes the best balance of any smartphone between web-oriented and local storage, using the cloud for info like contacts and apps, tying itself to a PC (or Mac, with a basic client) only for big updates, music and video syncing. Contacts from Facebook and Google beam in, sync and integrate perfectly. Finding your lost phone, photo uploading and note syncing is built-in, automatic and free.

The core OS is very, very good, if embryonic in some ways, much like the original iPhone. It’s really up to the apps to make Windows Phone usable. Microsoft won’t have 250,000 at launch, but true to their word, it seems like they’ll have a lot of what’s needed, with the early launch apps feeling great. That said, it’s still way too tricky to find things, especially given there ain’t that much in the store yet. It could be the best platform launch yet.

 

The most polished UI this side of the iPhone: It just feels amazing, even if it is missing some things like copy and paste (coming next year, supposedly). A nearly perfect melange of Microsoft services—Bing (Maps and Search), Zune, Xbox Live, Office—in a cohesive, logical and typically beautiful way. (Though the more tied into Microsoft you are, the better experience you’ll have, like Google and Android.) Native apps are almost gratuitously tasty eye candy. The keyboard is boss. Outlook mail app looks and works fantastically. Zune streams over the air. Even IE doesn’t suck, though anything that renders poorly in desktop IE will also do so on the phone.

Remember how iTunes wasn’t so bad, and then Apple kept pinning on feature after feature, bloating it into a massive, disgusting corpus? Yeah, well, the Zune desktop client is slowly meeting the same fate now that’s it used to sync your phone and as the browser for the app marketplace.

And in pursuit of a stark aesthetic, there’s a radical reduction of elements on a WP7 screen: The home screen, for example, only fits eight tiles at once. So to get to something else, you’ve gotta swipe a mile or two. (The iPhone gives you access to 20 items; Android 2.2, up to 19.) No universal search to call up apps. No singular email app: Every email account creates its own tile, which sucks when real estate is so valuable. Browsing for apps is the single most painful experience of Windows Phone. Stumbling upon Netflix felt like a happy accident after 10 minutes of flipping through apps to see what was new. Loading app lists takes forever, and it’s the one time the phone ever becomes totally nonresponsive. Annoying “Resuming…” screen pops up any time you lock the phone with an app open and then turn the screen back on. Sometimes the whole app reloads. It’s highly annoying, like hitting a speed bump in a Ferrari. No multi-tasking.

Windows Phone 7 is really great. A solid foundation, it’s elegant and joyful. True, a lot of that greatness is potential. But if anybody can follow through on their platform, it’s Microsoft. Should you buy this instead of an iPhone or Android phone though? In six months, after the ecosystem has filled out, the answer will be more clear. But right now, Window Phone is definitely an option. Considering where Microsoft was just a year ago, that’s saying a hell of a lot.

 

The Samsung Focus

 

Put bluntly, the Samsung Focus is the first Windows Phone that matters. But how good is it?

Specs
Samsung Focus i917 specs
Price: $199 w/ a 2-year contract on AT&T
Screen: 4-inch Super AMOLED, 800×480 resolution
Processor and RAM: 1GHZ Snapdragon QSD8250
Storage: 8GB internal (expandable, sort of)
Camera: 5 megapixel stills, 720p video recording, LED flash

Nine phones are impregnated with Windows Phone 7 at launch, and they’re a remarkably uniform bunch. Most are recycled, reconfigured hand-me-down iterations of past models. It borders on inbreeding. Microsoft’s tight control of Windows Phone hardware and virtual obliteration of custom software means it’s that much harder for phones to stand out. But Samsung’s Focus is the most eye-catching. It’s the thinnest and lightest Windows Phone, and its Super AMOLED display is the best screen too. If you’re going to get a Windows Phone, this is the one to stare at the hardest (even though we hear they’re going to be in short supply).

Samsung’s incredibly rich, deeply contrast-y and saturated Super AMOLED screen is a perfect visual delivery mechanism for Windows Phone 7‘s black backgrounds and loud, basic colors. The size—4 inches—and resolution—800×480—are just right, even if it doesn’t match the titanic 4.3-inch HD7 or the iPhone’s 960×640 display. The touch response, tuned by Microsoft’s deep testing for Windows Phone hardware, is top notch, especially paired with the WP7′s second-to-iPhone keyboard.

The five-megapixel camera is good, particularly when there’s a decent amount of light. It’s quick fast to boot with the dedicated hardware button—but the image results are mildly unpredictable. Microsoft allows phone makers to expose a fairly lengthy number of settings in the app, which Samsung has chosen to do—everything from sharpness to ISO to contrast—but all of the settings, except for resolution, reset every time the camera app’s closed. The 720p video fares less well. It’s grainy and a bit choppy with motion. (You can catch full res photos and a video here.)

It chugs through Windows Phone 7′s graphics and intense games stutter free, once things are running. With frequent reloads as apps aggressively put themselves to sleep, it’s hard to know how much the software is limiting itself at this point instead of letting the hardware push it all the way. On the same token, without truly comparing it to a handful of other Windows Phones, it’s hard to know how much things like battery life are in the realm of hardware. (It was less than I liked, well under a day’s use, with push email and data turned on.)

I really can’t tell you frantically enough how magically the Super AMOLED screen complements Windows Phone 7′s interface. It’s like dark chocolate peanut butter cups topped with blowjobs.

It’s fast. The Windows Phone 7 interface, as frenetically flippy as it can be, never chugs. Same goes for more graphically intense games, even if the load times are longish, bordering on angst-inducing.

The subtly angled back, which echoes a Nighthawk stealth bomber, hints at more daring design ambitions lurking at Samsung. I’d like to see what the crazy engineers at Samsung could really do.

Samsung and AT&T’s added apps, while both minimal and blissfully uninstallable, are actually good, thanks to the solid framework Windows Phone has provided them. A pretty nice U-Verse app for AT&T customers, and Samsung’s Now news & weather app fills a hole in the default Windows Phone app lineup.

It does what it’s supposed to: Humbly bends over on its hands and knees to serve as an altar holding up the largely fantastic software, Windows Phone 7.

The glossy plastic and fake chrome isn’t just tacky, it makes a phone loaded with high-end technology feel cheap, like a high-end call girl wearing pleather pants. Unfortunately, it’s something of an pandemic for Samsung phones, which I would love 10,000x more if they just felt nicer.

The GPS lock on Maps was indecisive and bouncy. Normally it’d be hard to tell if it’s a software or hardware problem, but it’s not the first Samsung phone of this ilk to have GPS problems. Was never really thrilled with the call quality, either.

Capacitive buttons for the Windows, back and search key are a terrible idea. I can’t tell you how many times I was flung out of a game of Rocket Riot to the home screen by accidentally tapping the Windows key.

If you’re going to get a Windows Phone that isn’t the HD7, this is the one to get, thanks to the display, if nothing else.

iPhone 4

Steve Jobs re-revealed iPhone 4, telling us about the remaining details. Here’s the exhaustive guide to all the features of the new iPhone 4.

The design

The hardware design hasn’t changed from the one we already knew about. It uses the same materials as the prototype: Black glass and stainless steel rim. It fits with the rest of the Apple product line, from the hard edges to the Dieter-Ramsesque utilitarianism of the iMac and the iPad.

The black glass is aluminosilicate glass. Apple claims this glass is “chemically strengthened to be 20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic.” According to them, this makes it more scratch resistant and durable than the previous generation.

The size is smaller than the previous generation: 34% thinner than the iPhone 3GS. Although it is 3 grams heavier. According to Apple, it’s the thinnest smartphone ever. It has split buttons for volume, unlike the current iPhone 3GS, all made in stainless steel.

The stainless steel rim
The stainless steel rim gives the structure to the iPhone, and acts as part of the antenna for 3G and Wi-Fi. In theory, this will greatly increase the reception abilities of the new iPhone 4.

Physical size
The iPhone 4 is 4.5 x 2.31 inches, and 0.37 inches thick. It weighs 4.8 ounces (137 grams).

The hardware

The new big brain
It has an Apple A4 chip inside, just like the iPad. Inside the A4 there are a few interconnected chips: A Cortex-A8 main processor unit—the main brain—paired with a PowerVR SGX 535, which handles the high definition graphics of the new iPhone. These are directly connected with each other and two low-power 128MB DDR SDRAM chips. Since all these components are in the same chip, Apple claims the iPhone 4 can process data more quickly while consuming less battery than before.

The A4 also consumes less power because its sub-components can be switched on and off when they are not needed, shaving watts whenever it’s possible.

Battery life
The battery is 16% bigger than the current one. Coupled with the A4 processor and new display, it results in a longer battery life: Apple claims 40% more talk time. Here are their figures:

• Talk over 3G: 7 hours.
• Browsing over 3G: 6 hours.
• Browsing over Wi-Fi: 10 hours.
• Video: 10 hours.
• Music: 40 hours.
• Stand-by: 300 hours.

The display
The 3.5-inch multitouch screen has a resolution of 960 × 640 pixels. Apple calls is the Retina Display, and it has four times as many pixels as the current iPhone 3GS’ display. The screen has 326 pixel per inch resolution, a higher definition than your typical magazine, a quality that shows in the screenshot.

Apple claims that this IPS-based display—the same technology as used in the iPad—also has 800-to-1 contrast ratio which is four times better than the 3GS, with a higher viewing angle.

The apps will take automatic advantage of the increased relative resolution, which mean they will be a lot sharper for text, 3D graphics, and vectorial art. However, developers will need to include higher resolution bitmap images to make the app look perfect.

Like the iPhone 3GS and the iPad, the display has an oleophobic layer that makes it easier to clean.

The main camera
The new iPhone has a bigger sensor for the main camera. It’s backlit and has bigger lenses too. Instead of having a higher resolution, however, the sensor maintains the same 5 megapixel count. They are bigger dots, however, so it has a higher ISO—or sensitivity to light. That means that you would be able to take better photos and video in low light conditions, and your pictures will look a lot better.

The camera also has a LED-based flash, which works both for photographs and video. To focus, both for photographs and video—you just need to tap on the screen.

The video conferencing camera
In the front, there’s a video conference camera, with standard VGA resolution. This camera will be used with third-party applications, as well as Apple’s own video conference solution.

Gyroscope
The new iPhone 4 has a gyroscope built-in. This means that it can track movement with a very high precision, much higher than the built-in accelerometers in the previous iPhones. It’s 3-axis, so it’s capable of detecting pitch, roll, and yaw. Couple with the accelerometer, you have 6-axis motion sensing.

Other
• Like the iPad 3GS, the new iPhone uses the new micro-SIM standard.
• It has an additional microphone on the top used for noise cancelation.

The software

iOS4
The new iPhone 4 comes with iOS 4, a new moniker for the iPhone OS. The biggest new feature is, of course, selective multi-tasking, Apple’s way to multitask some application features without consuming too many resources and battery power.

The new iOS 4 supports Apple’s Retina display using resolution independence. This means that applications will automatically get scaled for the new resolution, but looking sharper, not pixelated. That includes typography, 2D vector graphics, and 3D graphics. However, developers will have to include higher resolution images for buttons or other screen controls (something that many have already, since this was already exposed in the last WWDC).

Video calling
However, the biggest feature of the new iPhone 4 is probably video calling, thanks to its front camera. Apple calls it FaceTime, and it works iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 over Wi-Fi—at least for 2010. Apple claims that in the future it will be available over 3G.

The iPhone 4 can use both cameras for video calling, so you can broadcast what is in front of you to another iPhone 4.

iMovie for iPhone
The new iPhone 4 will be able to use a new editing software from Apple: iMovie for iPhone. It comes with 1,500 new features.

The new iMovie for iPhone works on even 720p high definition. You can use it to cut the video clips, add automatic Ken Burns effects for still images and a music soundtrack taken from your iPhone’s tunes. After you are done with your movie, you can export it to 360p, 520p, and 720p.

It’s a separate application, however, it doesn’t come built-in with the iPhone 4.

iBooks
iBooks will also be available for the new iOS4. Apple claims that the new iPhone 4′s 325 pixel-per-inch display will make the books perfectly readable. It will use the same controls as the iBooks application in the iPad.

Price and availability

The Phone 4 will be available in black or white on June 24, and will cost $199 and $299 for 16 and 32GB if you are a new user or you are eligible for an upgrade.

If you are an existing iPhone user, the early upgrade will cost you $399 and $499. Without contract, the iPhone 4 is $599 and $699.

Apple, Antennagate, and Why It’s Time to Move On

“There’s an awful lot of hoopla about that iPhone antenna.” Why yes, there is. And while there’s much to criticize about Apple’s response, we’re glad to see they’ve stopped pretending the problem doesn’t exist.

Apple spent most of the time last week defending the iPhone 4‘s antenna, using both data and rhetoric that was impressive in its scope.

Defense No. 1: Life Sucks

Apple’s primary defense is that every phone‘s reception sucks when you hold it. The company line from the very beginning: “Gripping any mobile phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for every wireless phone.”

Apple showed this “fact of life” using three non-iPhones in particular: the BlackBerry Bold 9700, HTC Droid Eris and Samsung’s Omnia 2. The phones are death gripped; the bars plummet.

It’s true, you can readily demonstrate attenuation on a lot of phones. Just the handful of phones at my place, where I have mediocre coverage, show that. Gripping the Nexus One on the bottom causes a bar to drop; the BlackBerry Bold 9700 drops three bars, precisely as demoed by Apple; neither the Droid X nor the Evo drop any bars held with a normal death. (You have to hold the very top of the Droid X or Evo to knock off a bar.) The iPhone 4, upgraded to 4.0.1, touched in the single weak spot, drops 2 bars.

The difference is that the other phones, with the exception of the Nexus One, require a grip—your hand has to wrap around where the antenna is located to cause noticeable attenuation, while touching the iPhone 4 at a single point disrupts the signal. (As RIM and Nokia were quick to reply when Apple singled them out.)

Which is exactly what Ryan Block asked Apple’s Bob Mansfield about at the post-conference Q&A:

Q: How does touching the corner with a single finger seem to cause this issue? It’s not just a grip, it can just happen by touching a single finger.

A: Your body is a pretty effective signal absorber. When you make contact with that phone, its performance in contact with you is less than its freespace performance. It’s a way to attenuate the signal by some amount.

Then why would cases, which you wrap your hand around, be a working solution to the problem? As an engineer told us, the fact that bumpers are the solution shows that the real problem has to do with skin contact with the iPhone 4′s antenna—not attenuation simply from signals passing through your body. Rather, he suggests, it seems like the antenna’s impedance is changing as a result of the skin contact, so it’s possible that a thin electrically non-conductive coating could solve the problem. (Perhaps this is why Steve promised to re-evaluate the issue in September.) That’s why the other phones don’t have a signal loss from attenuation that’s quite as profound.

It’s also why Steve Jobs offered his own “pet theory”: that not enough cases have been sold for the iPhone 4. That seems a little silly, as the iPhone 3G and 3GS didn’t have a single weak point, affected by skin contact.

Defense 2: Everything Is Just Great

The iPhone 4 is using “a very advanced new antenna system.” In fact, Steve says it “is a more advanced antenna than ever has shipped on a smartphone before.” And, later he says, “looking at the data, we don’t think we have a problem.” What data is that?

Well, they’ve spent $100 million on a very fancy facility with 17 different antenna characterization chambers to test phones.

Only 0.55 percent of all iPhone 4 users have called AppleCare about the antenna or reception. (This includes Genius Bar visits, apparently.) That’s around 16,500 complaints, out of 3 million iPhones sold. “Historically for us, this is not a large number,” Steve says. (What is a large number then? A normal number? He does not say.)

For comparison, HTC says that the Droid Eris—one of the phones Apple used to show that attenuation screws every phone—has fielded reception or antenna complaints from just 0.016 percent of all users. (It’s possible that it’s harder to find where to complain about the Eris.) Oh, and the return rate for the iPhone 4 is just 1.7 percent, versus 6 percent for the iPhone 3GS. Happy campers!

But then there’s this: “I can tell you since we’re being totally transparent, that even though we believe the iPhone 4 antenna is superior to that of the iPhone 3GS, I must report to you that the iPhone 4 drops more calls per 100 than iPhone 3GS.” The rate of iPhone 4 dropped calls is less than 1 additional dropped call per 100 than the iPhone 3GS.

That number is fuzzier than it seems, too. Converting that to a percentage, less than 1 additional percent could be anywhere from .01 percent to .99 percent. Presumably, Steve would use the smallest number possible—something like less than one half of one percent. So let’s round up to one percent. Adding another percent to 100,000 dropped calls is an additional 1,000 dropped calls. Or, put a more damning way, and flipping back to the way Steve framed it, if the iPhone 3GS dropped 1 out of every 100 calls, the iPhone 4 could drop up to 1.9 out of every 100 calls—it’s possible we’re talking a nearly double dropped call rate.

Still, it’s a pretty curious thing. Shouldn’t the iPhone 4′s “very advanced antenna” result in fewer dropped calls, not more, especially if it’s superior?

Defense 3: We Made a Little Mistake, We’re Being Exploited, But Now Everything Is Fixed

If you want to boil it all down, Steve says, “The heart of the problem is: Smartphones have weak spots. We made ours extremely visible. Some took advantage of that to demonstrate it. It was very easily demonstrable. We screwed up on displaying too many bars and made that demonstration more theatrical than it needed to be.”

Apple says they’ve been incorrectly displaying the bars, so they’ve fixed it. “We screwed up on our algorithm…Our choice is to put the correct algorithm in, which we’ve just done.” It’s true, they have corrected a real issue, as Anandtech beautifully shows. The iPhone’s signal bars painted a much rosier picture of the signal situation than reality, and the compressed dynamic range of the bars made them only slightly more accurate than licking your finger and sticking it in the wind. They’re now far more meaningful and evenly distributed indicators of signal than they’ve been for the last two years. But why didn’t Apple do this sooner, if it was so terribly wrong?

Well, originally it made the iPhone’s reception look better, that’s why. It stretches credulity to super-spandex levels to think it slipped by Apple’s engineers for years, undetected. (After all, they’re making the most advanced antennas in any smartphone, with $100 million testing facilities. They didn’t notice the iPhone used a juiced signal indicator?) The flipside of pumping the bars, what came back to bite Apple, was that the signal drops looked worse than they actually were.

There’s a weird subtext about transparency and victimization through all of this, too. A sense of, “See what happens when we’re transparent?” Apple’s not known for being very open, so it’s interesting that when Steve talks about the pains they’re taking to be transparent more than a couple times—”we went through a lot of trouble to put this beautiful line in the steel” to mark the weak spot—it’s interspersed with comments like the one above and “When people are criticizing us, we take it really personally. Maybe we should have a wall of PR people keeping us away from all that.” As a journalist, this is laughable: Apple has one of the most opaque and impregnable walls of PR people in the industry. Apple’s silence, enforced by PR staff who will clam up at the slightest hint of someone going off-message, are legendary.

That’s why you’ll never get a straight-up apology from Apple. They’re smart enough to know that would open the door to a class action suit and too proud to throw themselves on their sword over a single irritating-if-minor issue. It’s just not their style and never will be while Jobs is in charge.

Defense 4: It’s a Little Problem

See all those numbers? It’s a little problem. We work hard. We love you. We make great stuff. We’re giving out free cases. Stop talking about this. Steve says, “We’ve been working really, really hard for the last 22 days to try to understand what the real problem is, so that when we solve it, we actually solve it, rather than just putting a bandaid on it.”

This elides the fact that cases are a bandaid. Almost literally—it’s a piece of material affixed at top a gaping hole in the phone. There is a problem when people’s skin comes into contact with the weak spot on the phone. On every single iPhone 4.

The Upshot

So! There is a problem with a particular point on the iPhone 4′s external antenna. When you touch that single point with bare skin, you lose signal strength—around 24dB, to precise. The old method of displaying signal bars did made it look worse, because of the way it compressed the dynamic range. The free cases will help—significantly, according to Anandtech’s numbers, but it’s not a permanent fix. The vast majority of the time, it does offer better reception.

Apple’s done the right thing, for now, by fixing the iPhone’s signal display, which might be the best of any smartphone—even if it’s a little ridiculous that this is what it took for that to happen. And the free cases do ameliorate the antenna problem, even if they don’t fix its cause. Maybe, as Jean-Louis Gassee suggested, it should’ve been framed as a tradeoff from the very beginning. Informed consumers, radical transparency, crisis averted. Everyone would’ve talked about how much they love their iPhone anyway from the very beginning.

The iPhone 4 is a fantastic phone—among the best yet made—and the antenna issue may dent its crown, but doesn’t dethrone it.

iPad and Windows Phone 7 Series

These two new gadgets promise to change the industry. On one hand we have the iPad, bridging the gap between Phones and laptops in a super-cool Apple-esque way. I’ll probably spend more time on my iPad seeing movies, listening to music, or working or browsing the net than on any computer.

Then we have Windows Phone 7 Series which is even cooler. The whole platform feels like it is out of the future, way ahead of the iPhone. Not just that, its promise to introduce cross-platform gaming is awesome. Imagine playing a game on your PC, XBOX and phone carrying on your progress.

AMAZING.

Microsoft’s Cross-Platform Gaming makes my mouth water

Whoa. During the keynote presentation at TechEd Middle East in Dubai, Microsoft’s Eric Rudder played the same Indiana Jones-ish game on a Windows computer, a Windows Phone 7 phone, and an Xbox 360. Gaming is about to get real ubiquitous.

Not only is the game itself playable on all three platforms, but the session is maintained when you move from device to device: if you’re playing on your Xbox and have to run out the door, you’ll be on the same level when you fire it up on your Windows Phone 7 Series phone. Basically, you’ll never have an excuse not to be gaming.

I’m sure this is very exciting to some of you and a little scary to others. Regardless of its potential for crippling your productivity and taking out your social life at the knees, it’s pretty amazing stuff. Presumably we will be seeing more cool tidbits like this in the next few weeks when MIX and CTIA roll around. [Engadget]

Windows Phone 7: An iPhone of the Future?

It’s astounding that until this moment, three years after the iPhone, the biggest software company in the world basically didn’t compete in mobile. Windows Phone 7 Series is more than the Microsoft smartphone we’ve been waiting for. Everything’s different now.

Today, at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Microsoft is publicly previewing Windows Phone 7 for the first time. The brand new, totally fresh operating system will appear in phones this year, but not until the holidays. All of the major wireless carriers and every likely hardware maker are backing it, and they’d be stupid not to. It’s awesome. We’ve got a serious hands on for you to check out, but here is everything that you need to know:

The name—Windows Phone 7 Series—is a mouthful, and unfortunately, the epitome of Microsoft’s worst naming instincts, belying the simple fact that it’s the most groundbreaking phone since the iPhone. It’s the phone Microsoft should’ve made three years ago. In the same way that the Windows 7 desktop OS was nearly everything people hoped it would be, Windows Phone 7 is almost everything anyone could’ve dreamed of in a phone, let alone a Microsoft phone. It changes everything. Why? Now that Microsoft has filled in its gaping chasm of suck with a meaningful phone effort, the three most significant companies in desktop computing—Apple, Google and Microsoft—now stand to occupy the same positions in mobile. Phones are officially computers that happen to fit in your pocket.

Windows Phone 7 is also something completely new for Microsoft: A total break from the past. Windows Mobile isn’t just dead, the body’s been dumped, buried and paved over by a rainbow brick road.

The Interface

It’s different. The face of Windows Phone 7 is not a rectangular grid of thumbnail-sized glossy-looking icons, arranged in a pattern of 4×4 or so, like basically every other phone. No, instead, an oversized set of bright, superflat squares fill the screen. The pop of the primary colors and exaggerated flatness produces a kind of cutting-edge crispness that feels both incredibly modern and playful. Text is big, and beautiful. The result is a feat no phone has performed before: Making the iPhone’s interface feel staid.

If you want to know what it feels like, the Zune HD provides a taste: Interface elements that run off the screen; beautiful, oversized text and graphics; flipping, panning, scrolling, zooming from screen to screen; broken hearts. Some people might think it’s gratuitous, but I think it feels natural and just…fun. There’s an incredible sense of joie de vivre that’s just not in any other phone. It makes you wish that this was aesthetic direction all of Microsoft was going in. Another, sorta similar interface, in terms of data presentation, is this Android Slidescreen app, which gives you a bunch of info up top.

Windows Phone 7 is connected in the same sense as Palm’s webOS and Android, with live, real-time data seamlessly integrated, though it’s even smoother and more natural. Live tiles on the Start screen, which you can totally customize, are updated dynamically with fresh content, like weather, or if you’ve pinned a person to your Start screen, their latest status updates and photos.

The meat of the phone is organized around a set of hubs: People, Pictures, Games, Music + Video, Marketplace, and Office. They’re kind of like uber-applications, in a sense. Massive panoramas with multiple screens that are each kind of like individual apps. People, for instance, isn’t just your contacts, but it’s also where social networking happens, with a real-time stream of updates pulled in from like Facebook and Windows Live. (No Twitter support announced yet, it appears—a kind of serious deficiency, but one we’re sure will be remedied by ship date.)

As another example, Music + Video is essentially the entirety of Zune HD’s software, tucked inside of Windows Phone 7.

A piece of interface that’s shockingly not there: A desktop syncing app. If anyone would be expected to tie their phone to a desktop, you’d think it’d be Microsoft, but they’re actually moving forward here. All of your contacts and info sync over the air. The only thing you’ll be syncing through your computer is music and videos, which is mercifully done via the Zune desktop client.

Hello, Connected World

The People hub might be the best social networking implementation yet on a phone: It’s a single place to see all of your friends’ status updates from multiple services in a single stream, and to update your own Facebook and Windows Live status. Needs. Twitter support. Badly. But you have neat things going on, like the aforementioned Live tiles—if you really like someone or want to stalk them hardcore, you can make them a tile on your Start screen, which will update in realtime with whatever they’re posting, and pull down their photos from whatever service. There’s also your very own profile page, where you can scan your current social state and post updates to multiple services simultaneously.

All of your contacts are synced and backed up over-the-air, Android and webOS style, and can be pulled from multiple sources, like Windows Live, Exchange, etc. Makes certain other phones seem a little antiquated with their out-of-the-box Contacts situation.

Holy Crap! The Zune Phone!

Microsoft’s vision of Zune is finally clear with Windows Phone 7. It’s an app, just like iPod is on the iPhone, though the Zune Marketplace is integrated with it into the music + video hub, not separated into its own little application. It’s just like the Zune HD, so you can check out our review of that to see what it’s like. But you get third-party stuff like Pandora, too, built-in here. Oh, and worth mentioning, there will be an FM radio in every phone (more on that in a bit).

Pictures is a little different though, and gets its very own hub. That’s because it’s intensely connected—you can share photos and video with social networks straight from the hub, and via the cloud, they’re kept in sync with your PC and web galleries. The latest photos your friends post also show up here. Of course, you get around with multitouch zoom and zip-zip scrolling stuff.

.

Xbox, on a Phone

I’ll admit, I very nearly needed to change my pants when I saw the Xbox tile on the phone for the first time. Obviously, you’re not going to be playing Halo 3 on your smartphone (at least not this year), but yes, Xbox Live on a phone! It’s tied to your Live profile, and there are achievements and gamer points for the games you can play on your phone, which will be tied to games back on your Xbox 360.

If Microsoft’s got an ace-in-hole with Windows Phone 7, it’s Xbox Live. Gamers have talked about a portable Xbox for years—this is the most logical way to do it. The N-Gage was ahead of its time. (Okay, and it sucked.) The DS and PSP are the past. The iPhone showed us that the future of mobile gaming was going to be on your phone, and now that just got a lot more interesting. The potential’s there, and hopefully the games will be plentiful and awesome enough to meet it.

Browser and Email

Yes, the browser is Internet Exploder. And yes, the rumor’s true: It won’t be as fast as Mobile Safari. Not to start. But it’s not bad! Hey, least it’s got multitouch powers right out of the box. Naturally, you’ve got multiple browser windows, and you can pin web pages to the Start screen, like any other decent mobile browser.

The Outlook email app makes me question how people read email on a BlackBerry. It is stunning. I never thought I’d call a mail app “stunning,” but, well, it kind of is. It’s the best looking mobile mail app around. Text is huge. Gorgeous. Ultrareadable. Of course, it’s got Exchange support too.

Apps, Office and Marketplace

Remember what I said earlier about Windows Mobile being dead? So are all the apps. They won’t work on WP7. Sorry Windows Mobile developers, it’s for the best. Deep down, we all knew a clean break was the only way Windows Phone wasn’t going to suck total balls.

Apps will have some standardized interface elements, like the app bar on the bottom for common commands. But here’s a question: Will they multitask? Um, that depends on your definition of multitasking! When we asked Joe Belfiore, the guy running Windows Phone, he alluded to live tiles and feeds as some ofthe ways that third-parties will be able to “bring value to the user, even when their apps aren’t running.” Which sounds to us like a big ol’ “shnope,” but we’ll see more next month at Microsoft’s developer event MIX.

The Marketplace is where you’ll buy apps. Since we’ve got like 6 months ’til Windows Phone 7 launches and people should be excited to develop for it, hopefully there’ll be plenty of stuff to buy there on day one.

Naturally, Bing and Bing Maps are built into the phone as the default search and maps services. They’re nice, smartly contextual, and very location-oriented. Bing’s also used for universal search on the phone, via a dedicated Bing button. (There is no search but Bing search, BTW.) Bing Maps is multitouchable, with pinch-to-zoom. It’s rich, with built-in listings with reviews and clever ways of searching for stuff. And yeah, Office! It’s connected to that cloud thing, for OTA syncing and such. Business people should be happy.

Hardware and Partnahs

Another way the old Windows Mobile is dead is how Microsoft’s handling partners and hardware situation. With Windows Mobile, a phonemaker handed Microsoft their monies, and Microsoft tossed them a software kit, and that was that. Which is why a lot of Windows Mobile phones felt and ran like crap. And why it took HTC like two years to produce the HD2, the most genuinely usable rendition of Windows Mobile ever.

Microsoft’s not building their own phones, but they’re going to be picky, to say the least, with Windows Phone 7. Ballmer phrases it as “taking more accountability” for people’s experiences. There’s a strict set of minimum hardware requirements: a capacitive, multitouchable screen with at least four points of touch; accelerometer; 5-megapixel camera; FM radio; and the like. There are serious benchmarks that have to be met. And only chosen OEMs get to build the phones now, not like before, when anybody with $20 could get a license. The OEMs that Microsoft’s announcing they’re working with at launch are: Qualcomm, LG, Samsung, Garmin Asus, HTC, HP, Dell, Sony Ericsson, and Toshiba. AT&T’s their “premiere partner” in the US (dammit). (Take note people! Premiere does not mean exclusive!)

Every phone will have a Bing (search) button and a Start button. Custom skins, like the minor miracles HTC worked, are now banned. The message to hardware makers is clear: It’s a Windows Phone, you’re just putting it together. Basically, phonemakers get to decide the shape of the phone, and whether or not there’s a keyboard.

One other word on hardware, in a manner of speaking. Hardware it won’t work with? Macs. Which is kind of stupid to us—a lot of the people Microsoft wants to use Windows Phone 7, like college students, have been going Mac in droves. You wanna lure them back Microsoft? Let them use your phone with any OS.

The Big Picture

Windows Phone 7 Series is, from what we’ve seen, exactly what Microsoft’s phone should be. It’s actually good. It brings together a bunch of different Microsoft services—Zune, Xbox, Bing—in a way that actually makes sense and just works. But there’s a real, lingering question: Are they too late? The first Windows Phone 7 Series…phone—goddamn that is a stupid name—won’t hit until the end of this year. That’s more than three years after the iPhone, two years after Android, hell, even a year after Palm, the industry’s sickly but persistent dwarf.

History is on Microsoft’s side here—we know what happened the last time Apple had a massive head start. (Update: To be clear, in computing.) Microsoft is, if nothing else, incredibly patient. Remember the first Xbox? Back when it was crazy that Microsoft was getting into videogames? It’s cost them about a billion dollars and taken nearly 10 years, but now, with Xbox Live, Project Natal and their massive software ecosystem, they arguably have the most impressive gaming console you can buy. That was a pet project. Now, mobile is the future of computing. What do you think Microsoft will sink into that?

The mobile picture is now officially a three-way dance: Apple, Google, and Microsoft. The same people who dominate desktop computing. Everybody else is screwed. Former Palm CEO Ed Colligan famously said a few years ago: “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” That’s precisely what’s just happened. Phones are the new PCs. PC guys are the new phone guys.

[Gizmodo]

iPad

So Apple has opened pre-orders for the amazing new iPad, and its probably going to get off to a great start. The iPad has been critisized a lot as simply a blown up iPhone, but no one who has actually played with it has given any bad reviews. So we’re forced to believe that it is going to revolutionalize technology, as Steve Jobs has finally released his tablet.

From Gizmodo:

From the realm of sci-fi to Steve Jobs’ stage: The iPad is official. What is it? What can it do? How does it work? Here’s everything you need to know about Apple’s newest creation, all in one place.

It’s almost impossible to overstate the buzz leading up to this device. Immediately after the death of the Newton, rumors began trickling out about a followup from Apple; in the last five years, speculation and scraps of evidence about an Apple tablet have been a fixture in the tech media; in the last year, the rumors were unavoidable. Today, Apple’s tablet has finally arrived, and we’ve got the full rundown—from specs, features, content and price to what it’s like to actually use one.

The Hardware

• Size and shape: The screen’s aspect ratio makes it seem a bit squat, but this is intended to be a bi-directional tabl—err, Pad. The bezel is a little fat, but otherwise, this thing is basically a clean slab of pure display. It’s just .5 inches thick, which is a hair thicker than the iPhone 3GS, and measures 9.56 x 7.47 inches. Final weigh-in is 1.5 pounds without 3G, and 1.6 with. Says Mark, who’s actually held one:

Imagine, if you will, a super light unibody MacBook Pro that’s smaller, thinner and way, way, way lighter. Or, from a slightly different perspective, think about a bigger iPhone that’s been built with unibody construction.

• The screen: The tablet’s multitouch screen measures in at 9.7 inches, meaning that it’s got a significantly smaller footprint than the smallest MacBook, but a much larger screen than the iPhone. (That’s 9.7 inches diagonal, from screen corner to screen corner.) The screen’s resolution is a dense 1024 x 768.

The guts: It’s a half-inch thick—just a hair thicker than the iPhone, for reference—and weighs 1.5 pounds. It’s powered by a 1GHz Apple ARM A4 chip, and has 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of flash storage. From the looks of it, Apple finally got some use out of that PA Semi purchase, and built their own mobile processor, but that’s no totally clear yet. It’s also loaded with 802.11 n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, a 30-pin iPod connector, a speaker, a microphone, an accelerometer and a compass. Video output runs through and iPhone-type composite adapter at up to 576p and through a dock-to-VGA adapter at up to 1024 x 768. No HDMI, no DVI—not even a Mini DisplayPort.

3G is optional, and costs more, not less. Along with 3G, the upgraded models include A-GPS. (More on this below)

Oh, and there isn’t a rear-facing camera, nor is there a front-facing camera. This tablet is totally camera-less, which seems a bit odd.

• The battery: Apple’s making some bold claims about battery life: ten hours for constant use, with a one-month standby rating. Ten hours of constant use includes video viewing, so you could conceivable watch about six feature films before this thing dies.

• How you hold it: You can hold it two different ways, and the software will adapt to both. Portrait mode seems like the primay mode, a la the iPhone while landscape mode—better for movies and perhaps magazine content—is a secondary mode. The Apple decal is oriented for portrait mode, so basically, just get ready for a whole bunch of HEY IT’S A GIANT IPHONE!! jokes.

Connectivity

Some models have Wi-Fi exclusively, while some have 3G as well. It’s with AT&T, and costs either $15 a month for 250MB of data, or $30 for unlimited data. With the plan, you get access to AT&T’s Wi-Fi hotspots as well. Best of all, it’s a prepaid service—no contract. You can activate it from the iPad any time, and cancel whenever you want. This sounds like a fantastic deal, until you consider how it’s probably going to brutalize AT&T’s already terrible 3G coverage.

The iPad itself is unlocked, so you can conceivably use it with any Micro SIM card . But what the hell is a Micro SIM card? For one, it’s not the same kind of SIM that’s in your iPhone, so don’t expect to just pop that in and surf for free. It’s a totally different standard, and the iPad’s the only device that uses it right now. Even if, say, T-Mobile released a Micro SIM card, the iPad can’t connect to its 1700MHz 3G network.

The Software

• The OS: The operating system on the tablet is based on iPhone OS, which is in turn loosely based on OS X. In other words, it’s got the same guts as the iPhone, as well as a somewhat similar interface. What this means in practical terms is that the UI is modal; you can only display one app at a time, and there aren’t windows, per se. There’s a new set of standard UI tools as well, including a pull-down menu, situated at the top left of most apps.

• The homescreen: It’s like a mixture between the iPhone and OS X: it uses the iPhone launcher/apps metaphor, but has an OS X-style shiny dock. It feels very spread out compared to the iPhone’s homescreen, though I suspect this is necessary to keep things from getting too overwhelming. For our full walkthrough of the new OS, check here.

• The keyboard: Input comes by way of an onscreen keyboard, almost exactly like the iPhone’s. Typing on it is apparently a “dream,” because it’s “almost lifesize”. Steve wasn’t typing with his thumbs, but with his fingers, as if it were an actual laptop keyboard. Navigation throughout the rest of the OS is optimized for one hand, though.

• The browser: The browser is essential an upscaled version of Safari Mobile, with a familiar, finger-friendly title bar and not much else. It rotates by command of the accelerometer. From the looks of it, it doesn’t have Flash support, but we’ll have to confirm.UPDATE: Yup, none at all. You can get away with that kind of thing on the iPhone, sort of, but on a 10-inch tablet it’s a glaring omission.

• Email: Mail again takes its visual cues from the iPhone, but with a lot more decoration: you can preview your mailbox from any message with a pull-down menu, and preview any message from within the mailbox, with a pop-up window.

• Music: The music player is even more hybridized, styled like a mix between the iPhone’s iPod interface and full-fledged desktop iTunes. Interestingly, Cover Flow seems to have more or less died off.

• Maps: This one may be the most direct conversion from the iPhone, with a very similar interface through and through. It includes Street View, too.

• Photos: The photo library app looks a lot like iPhoto, only adapted for multitouch finger input.

• Video: YouTube is available by way of an app, iPhone-style, which can play videos in 720p HD. iTunes video content plays back in a dedicated app, just like on the iPhone, and can also play back in HD. Movie codec support is otherwise the same as the iPhone, which is to say pretty limited.

• Calendar and contacts: The calendar app is desktop-like, until you open contacts and calendars, which look a lot like actual contact books and organizers. They’re beautiful, and dare I say a bit Courier-like.

Apps

• iPhone apps: This thing runs them! The iPad runs iPhone apps right out of the App Store, with no modification, but they’re either relegated to the center of the screen or in “pixel double” mode, which just blows them up crudely. Any apps you’ve purchased for your iPhone can be synced, for free, to your iPad.

• New apps: The iPhone app SDK has already been expanded for tablet development, including a whole new set of UI elements and expanded resolution support. The raw iPhone app compatibility is just a temporary measure, it seems—any developer who wants their app to run on the tablet will develop for the tablet. Some of the early examples of adapted apps, like Brushes, are spectacular. More on the SDK here.
Apple’s pushing gaming on this thing right out of the box, demoing everything from FPS N.O.V.A to Need for Speed. It’s presumably running these games at HD, so the rendering power in this thing is no joke.

• Ebooks: Apple’s also opened an ebook store to accompany the iPad, in the mold of iTunes. It’s called iBooks.
It offers books in ePub format, and makes reading on a Kindle seem about as stodgy as, you know, paper. To be clear, though, this is just Apple’s solution—unless they’re explicitly banned from the iPad, you should be able to download your Kindle app as well.

This store doesn’t sell magazines or newspapers, which’ll be relegated to regular app status. At this point, whether or not the tablet helps them out is in their hands.

• iWork: Apple’ also designed a whole new iWork suite just for the tablet, which implies that this thing is as much for media creation as it is for consumption. There’s a new version of Keynote designed just for the iPad, as well as new version of Pages, (word processor), and Numbers, which is the spreadsheet app. Here’s what Keynote looks like: 
The interfaces are obviously designed strictly for touch input, but from the looks of it can handle every function that the old, mouse-centric version could, plus a few more. And man, they’re so much prettier. Each app costs $10, and you can get them all for $30.

• File storage: Unlike the iPhone, the iPad does seem to have some shared storage aside from the photo roll. The newly released SDK reveals that when you connect an iPad to a PC or Mac, part of it—a partition, maybe?—mounts as a shared documents folder.

Accessories

Right away, Apple’s offering three main official accessories: a book-style case, a regular dock and a keyboard dock. (Ha!)

The book cover doubles as a stand, so you can prop the iPad up in a few different ways. The keyboard dock hooks up with the iPad when it’s in portrait mode, so you can type longer documents, charge, or both. The iPad will also support Apple’s Bluetooth keyboards.

The iPad’s only really got one accessory port, and it takes an iPod dock connector. Apple’s solution for this? Adapters! So many adapters. There’s a Dock Connector to VGA adapter, a USB camera adapter (which gives you one plain USB connection, though it apparently only works for importing photos), a USB to SD adapter, and an included USB power adapter, which lets you charge by AC or USB. It’s essentially just an iPhone charger with a bigger brick.

UPDATE: We have prices:

the Keyboard dock costs $70, the case costs $40, the SD/USB connection kit costs $30 and the VGA display adapter costs $30 (1024×768 only)

What It’s Like to Use

It’s hefty. Substantial. Easy to grip. Fast. Beautiful. Rigid. Starkly designed. The glass is a little rubbery but it could be my sweaty hands. And it’s fasssstttt.

Our detailed impressions in our hands on, right here.

Price and Release Date

The iPad ships worldwide in 60 days, but only in Wi-Fi versions. The 3G version will be another 30 days after that. Here are the prices:

Without 3G:

• $499: 16GB
• $599: 32GB
• $699: 64GB

With 3G:

• $629: 16GB
• $729: 32GB
• $829: 64GB

Apple will ship all the iPads in 60 days—the end of March—to America, and just the Wi-Fi models internationally. It’ll be another 30 days beyond that for 3G models to be available outside our shores; Apple says they’re still working on carrier deals.

3G comes by way of AT&T, who’s offering the service without contract, for $15 a month (250MB of data) or $30 a month (unlimited). That’s why, unlike the iPhone, the iPad is actually cheaper off-contract.

Over to Apple:



All of the built-in apps on iPad were designed from the ground up to take advantage of the large Multi-Touch screen and advanced capabilities of iPad. And they work in any orientation. So you can do things with these apps that you can’t do on any other device.

Safari

iPad is the best way to experience the web. View whole pages in portrait or landscape on the large Multi-Touch screen. And let your fingers do the surfing. Learn more

Mail

There’s nothing like the Mail app on iPad. With a split-screen view and expansive onscreen keyboard, it lets you see and touch your email in ways you never could before. Learn more

Photos

A vivid LED-backlit IPS display makes viewing photos on iPad extraordinary. Open albums with a tap. Flip through your pictures one by one. Or play a slideshow and share your photos. Learn more

Videos

The 9.7-inch high-resolution screen makes iPad perfect for watching HD movies, TV shows, podcasts, music videos, and more.Learn more

Keynote

Create a presentation with custom graphic styles, elegantly designed themes, stunning animations and effects, and powerful new features designed just for iPad. Learn more

Pages

Pages has everything you need to put your words into beautiful documents. Including Apple-designed templates and easy-to-use formatting tools. Learn more

Numbers

Numbers includes over 250 easy-to-use functions, an intelligent keyboard, flexible tables, and eye-catching charts. So you can create compelling spreadsheets in just a few taps. Learn more

Best way to surf Hulu from outside US..

If you afraid of insecurity of surfing on the internet. We would like to recommend you to a trusted Virtual Private Network(VPN) which you can surf with the US and UK identity. This service is provided by HideIp VPN

HideIp VPN main features:
1. No logs are kept.
2. High speed internet connection is provided
3. Encrypts and compresses all traffic including Email, IRC, FTP, DNS, VOIP, and IM
4. Bypasses the ISP’s traffic shaping.
5. Your IP is hidden while using HideIPVPN.com.
6. Works on multiple platforms such as Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac, Linux, etc.
7. Ease of control. Easy to install, config and use

Free HideIpVPN account
HideIp VPN offers about 100 free accounts per month. However, these free account are taken up just within the first half hour of the month. It is better for you to subscribe to its affordable Premium Service which include
A. Offers complete privacy and anonymity by using OpenVPN
B. It is more secure and stable than PPTP
C. Unique and Dedicated IP addresses
D. Anonymous The United States and United Kingdoms IP addresses!

Get yourself Windows 7 RTM

Well, for all of you out there who are a little late on the scene, ’cause Win 7 RTM leaked came out ages ago, and now want a hassle free way to download and hacktivate Windows 7……..here’s the guide:

1.Download the iso

Download 32-bit (x86) Windows 7 Ultimate RTM English Retail DVD ISO Image

File Name: 7600.16385.090713-1255_x86fre_client_en-us_Retail_Ultimate-GRMCULFRER_EN_DVD.iso
Size: 2501894144 bytes
CRC: C1C20F76
MD5: D0B8B407E8A3D4B75EE9C10147266B89
SHA-1: 5395DC4B38F7BDB1E005FF414DEEDFDB16DBF610

Torrent: t2041806.torrent orMICROSOFT.WINDOWS.7.ULTIMATE.7600.16385.RTM.X86.RETAIL.ENGLISH.DVD-ZUKO.torrent (mininova or ThePirateBay)

Download 64-bit (x64) Windows 7 Ultimate RTM English Retail DVD ISO Image

File Name: 7600.16385.090713-1255_x64fre_client_en-us_Retail_Ultimate-GRMCULXFRER_EN_DVD.iso
Size: 3224686592 bytes
CRC: 1F1257CA
MD5: F43D22E4FB07BF617D573ACD8785C028
SHA-1: 326327CC2FF9F05379F5058C41BE6BC5E004BAA7

Torrent: t2041850.torrent orMICROSOFT.WINDOWS.7.ULTIMATE.7600.16385.RTM.X64.RETAIL.ENGLISH.DVD-ZUKO.torrent (mininova or The Pirate Bay)

Note: The file sizes, MD5, SHA-1 and CRC checksum hash values of ISO images have confirmed to match official record, so the ISO images is indeed a real original Windows 7 RTM ISO. And also the leaked Windows 7 Ultimate RTM ISO will install Ultimate edition by default.

2.Burn/Extract the iso

Now, you can either burn the iso to a dvd and do a custom install, or extract the contents of the iso using winrar/winzip etc. and run the installation from your hard drive,  but that can only be an upgrade. If you’re upgrading from the RC or Beta, you’ll have to extract the files, go to “Sources” folder, and open cversion.ini in notepad and change MinClient = “*” to say 7000. Save the file and run your upgrade. Or just do a clean install.

3.Hacktivate it

Now, till recently there were many activators for the RTM, but now all the keys they use have been blacklisted. If you can find an activator that still works, tell us, otherwise, use Timernuke. This stops Windows from asking you to activate, and keeps you permanantly in the 30 day activation period……….at least as far as windows is concerned.

What TimerNuke does is that when executed, it stops and changes the startup type of sppsvc (Software Protection), sppuinotify (SPP Notification Service) and SLUINotify (SL UI Notification Service) services to disable. Then, the TimerNuke simply takes ownership and full control permissions on the following files, before backing them up and finally deleting them away.

%SYSPATH%\SLLUA.exe
%SYSPATH%\sppsvc.exe
%SYSPATH%\SLUI.exe
%SYSPATH%\sppuinotify.dll
%SYSPATH%\SLUINotify.dll

Download TimerNukeSetup.zip (mirror) TimerNukeSetup.zip or download fromMDL Forum.

Current Version: 1.0.5.0 Final 1.0.5.0 BETA

Once the Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 is been nuked and cracked with TimerNuke, Windows will stop asking user to activate. The activation status and product ID becomes not available or unknown. Hence, the Windows may run forever without activation permanently.

As an added bonus, the crack may also remove expiry date timebomb of beta and RC releases of Windows 7, although the TimerNuke crack does not specifically target to remove the time bomb. Who would want to use beta build when RTM build is released anyway?

Update:

Just found 2 good activators:

Windows 7 Loader v1.6.8 (x86 & x64)

Features

• Maintain your own list of serials, future or current (comes with allot of preset keys)
• Automatically finds an available drive letter (if required)
• Installer and uninstaller built in as standard
• Checks your Windows version and build before install
• Automatically finds your active boot partition
• Works on all languages
• Works alongside hidden partitions
• Works on Windows 7, Vista and Server 2008 editions
• Support for bios modded users
• Argument support for silent installs
• You can use this tool to activate your Windows 7/Vista ISO by editing setupcomplete.cmd
• Improves Windows 7 boot time on a Mac (Compared to other loaders)

Whats the goal of this program?
To activate you in a clean and simple way without putting a load of buttons and checkboxes on your screen and expecting you to know what to do. It’s all about keeping it simple!

What makes this different from every other loader out at the moment?
It’s not a batch file and all commands are made within the application, it has great error handling and doesn’t try to find the active partition based on size (which every other loader is doing at the moment).

So whats the advantages and why should you care?
With me building this loader as an application I can access system details and create declares for many of the functions. This means anyone that uses this loader should have a greater chance of success!

Whats the differences between each loader option?
Hover your mouse over each option to see 

Ok so how do I run it?
In general you simply press Install!

I activated Windows 7 and now I want to activate Windows Vista, why isn’t it working?
Use the uninstall option while on Windows 7 and reboot into Windows Vista. Next install your selected cert/slic in Windows Vista and then reboot back to Windows 7 and click install.

Activation failed, now what?
Try again with the older loader option enabled, maybe that might just work for you.

Application integrity checking?
Hover your mouse over the green or red icon towards the bottom right of the window to see the information.

I should note that even if the icon is green someone might have found a way around it so it’s worth checking that the applications path is always the same as the location from where you launched the application. You should also check that the MD5 matches the MD5 found online.

Changes since 1.5.4

• 1.6.5 — Improved profile matchups (for matching a SLIC, certificate and serial)
• 1.6.5 — Added activation checking for Windows 7, Vista and Server 2008
• 1.6.5 — Added tokens checking for Windows 7 (alerts the user, repair is manual so that later on down the line this loader will never frankenbuild your system itself!)
• 1.6.5 — Added error handling should UAC fail to elevate the application
• 1.6.5 — Added Asus SLIC, certificate and Home Premium serial
• 1.6.5 — Added new GRLDR beta 0.93 from zsmin
• 1.6.6 — Fixed activation checking for non-english systems (This release is just to address confusion as to if a system is activated or not)
• 1.6.7 — Fixed Windows Vista activation status
• 1.6.7 — Added Windows 7 Enterprise editions as a supported OS, although you will need to wait for OEM SLP keys to leak

Latest

• 1.6.8 — Added application integrity checking. This is a new feature which will display you with information about how the application was launched when the mouse is hovered over the green or red icon. It’s goal is to inform you if you are running an untouched version of the application or one that could have been modified in some way by a script kiddie. Of course green is the best result, if it’s red then be cautious as someone’s likely binded a trojan!

MD5: d60a30aa18af3ecb0d3297c8e7d774d7
SHA1: 0dbdc707571312e120070a19fe4a3cfeb091fb2d

Download links
mediafire.com
filedropper.com
2shared.com

One More:

It’s finally ready 

Activates:
All editions of Vista
Standard, Enterprise and Small Business Server editions of server 2008
Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate and Enterprise editions of 7

New features:
newest zsmin loader (dells and macs supported)
home premium, pro, ultimate and enterprise support
activation repair mode (fixes toolkit 1.8 etc.)
SLIC auto detection
automatically finds 7 partition even in non SLIC mode (recovery menu)
ignores floppies and cds when searching for bootmgr
no autoplay message
full uninstaller
Does not deactivate Vista
automatic install/uninstall detection

(I changed a logo to distinguish between core2duo and core2quad)

NOTE:
For enterprise to activate, set your timezone to UTC +3. Once it is done set it back again 

2ND NOTE:
If ran on an unsupported edition, it will install the cert + loader, so you can add the key later 

Screenshot:

Download:
http://www.filedropper.com/loader161d

Congrats, you’re now running Windows 7 RTM!

To all Pirates…

The following is a guest post by Cameron Banga.

Dear Pirates:
About an hour ago, I was searching the web for reviews and information on my first iPhone application, Battery Go!, which was released last Sunday to the App Store. While shifting my eyes over the Google search results, I came across a startling link which I’ll explain in a second.

Before I get to the rest of this tale, let me give you a little history on who I am so that you can better understand my side to this story. Back in May, two friends and I decided to spend the entire summer working as a team on an application for the iPhone. We pretty much had absolutely no experience going into the adventure, spending 60ish hours a week reading, watching videos, playing with code, and gaining as much knowledge as possible in order to complete an application. We put together the concept for Battery Go!, did some coding, and released into the App Store. Over our first 48 hours in the store, we rocketed up to the list of top 100 paid applications in the store and currently sit at spot 75 or so. It’s been one of the proudest moments of my life and I can’t wait to see where the app winds up when all is said and done. The idea that three kids with no programming knowledge can program and release such a successful application in less than two months is absolutely absurd, and I must thank Apple greatly for giving me the opportunity.

Anyways, let’s rewind and go back to the previous paragraph where I was searching Google. So, I’m clicking around links, minding my own business, when I come upon a site which offers pirated iPhone applications. I’m not going to offer up a link here, but I’m sure you can find it on your own if you search hard enough. After poking around for a couple seconds I entered in a CAPTCHA, pressed the submit button, and before I knew it an .ipa file with Battery Go! was sitting on my desktop.

So here’s the point in the story where my emotions start to go all in a whirl, pretty much to a point I can’t really describe through words. First, I kinda felt a whole lot of anger. I mean, how could that idiot take my work and steal it, giving me nothing for each illicit download. Then I started to think like the 21-year old product of the Napster generation I am, seeing piracy as a part of life just like taxes. After that I almost had a sense of flattery, thinking it was kinda cool that some guy across the globe found interest in pirating my app and making it available to the world.

It wasn’t until I saw the amount of times our app has been pirated that I actually began to truly take this piracy to heart. The pirated file was placed online about five hours ago and as of right now, about 3714 people have stolen a copy of Battery Go! That’s not a huge amount by pirating standards, but enough to catch my eye none the less.

Now I know what you’re saying, “Hey man, we pirate because we hate the man. We wouldn’t have bought your app anyways. I pirate because I’m broke.” I know I’ve heard it all since before Napster and know very well that I’m not going to convince you to change your ways, but just hear me out for a second.

I don’t want to condone music, video game, or movie piracy, but you’re not hurting billion dollar giants like the MPAA or RIAA in this situation. Instead, you’re hurting me and my two college buddies. We’ve all given up any income from a job this summer, eaten Uncrustables or dollar menu food practically every meal, ignored our family, slept on couches after 15 hour work days, and practically given every aspect of our life away to this application for the last two months in hopes of chasing a some far’fetched dream. Then just when we see some glimmer of hope for success, you come along and put up a pirated copy of my application on some portal and have now taken 3816 (there goes another 100 or downloads in the ten minutes it took me to write two paragraphs) copies of Battery Go! from me.

I know that not every pirated copy translates to a sale, I know that piracy is a fact of life, I know that you probably don’t agree with what I’m saying. But let’s put this into perspective for a second with some math. So, right now we’ve had 3875 copies pirated (that number just keeps going up haha). Right now, we’re charging $0.99 per copy and make 70% of all revenue after Apple takes their administrative fees. That means we have a grand total of $2712.50 lost through piracy thus far. We have a three man team, so divide that number by three and you have $904.16 which you have taken from me directly. That’s pretty much more money than I’ve ever made in a month throughout my entire life and it was just taken from me in less than 5 hours. If you want, you can keep tacking on a couple extra dollars here and there as you scroll down and read the rest of this article because we’re at 3997 pirated downloads right now and who knows what that number will be by the time you read this.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to guilt trip you into making a purchase. I understand that I’m not going to get that out of you and that’s totally fine with me. I’m part of this digital generation just like you are and I realize that piracy is a part of life which any business needs to learn to deal with if they want to ever be successful. However, I do want you to just think about my perspective and what it would be like if you were eating PB&J for 4 out of 5 meals just to save cash because you’re not making a dime through a 2 month development process and you don’t have a financially stable company to provide some cash upfront to help you cover expenses. Just realize that piracy doesn’t just hurt the big guy like Apple, the MPAA, or the RIAA. It hurts the college kid like myself who is counting on this kind of thing to provide rent and the occasional pizza.

So if by chance I’ve changed your mind and you realize that you can make a significant detrimental impact in my life through pirating my app, how can you help me out and maybe pay me back? Well, you could start by buying a copy of Battery Go! for the iPhone. However, that would be way beyond what I could ever ask from you and I don’t expect it. If you really want to help me out and you don’t want to give me a measley $0.99, you could always be a huge help and just spread the word about my application. No seriously, that would be the best thing in the world you could do. Write a blog post and review Battery Go!. Take some time out of your day to tweet about the app and include a link (preferably to the legitimate iTunes file). E-mail along to a friend and tell them how useful you think Battery Go! is. If you see one of your friends using an iPhone, tell them about this cool app that helps you see how much talk time you have left on your current charge. Digg up this article and help pass it along other social networks like Reddit or Stumbleupon. If possible, just do something just to help raise awareness that piracy does hurt the little guy like me. Again, I won’t be upset with you or hold any grudge against you if you’ve taken a copy of my product. I just want you to understand that I’ve given up a lot and put in a ton of hours so that you can enjoy an app like Battery Go!, and I would love for you to help spread the word to those law abiding citizens who may actually give me the dollar.

In conclusion, I’m not upset with you all of you internet pirates in the world. I just want you to see and comprehend that a fellow human who works hard just like you, and not some huge greedy corporate giant, is really suffering because of your decision to pirate my software. Don’t feel bad, don’t mail me a $0.99 check, don’t even think twice about your decision. Just help spread the word about this article or my app Battery Go!, and then I’ll go back to work making innovative software in hopes that there is justice in the world and I will receive some sort of reward for my hard work and dedication.

Thanks for your time Pirates, hope we can talk again soon. XOXO
-Cameron Banga

PS, upon completing this post, we’ve lost 4163 potential downloads to piracy.

If you feel like buying a legitimate copy of Battery Go!, click here to make a purchase from the iTunes App Store.

If you haven’t yet, please Digg our story and help spread the word on app piracy.
More about the Author: I’m Cameron Banga, marketing director for CollegeKidApp.com. When I’m not building iPhone apps, I’m a 21 year old college student from Indiana, USA. I’m a huge soccer fan, and right now am spending about 16 hours a day promoting Battery Go!

Microsoft Security Essentials

It leaked last week, but it didn’t take long for Microsoft to follow up with a legitimate download for interested testers: the download page for Microsoft Security Essentials (formerly Moro) is now live.

You’ll need to sign in with your Connect account or register for a new one to gain access to the download – for now. There will no doubt be hundreds of happy seeders sharing the Beta on torrent trackers later today.

Microsoft had originally slated only 75,000 spots for beta testers, though they have since announced that the number will be increased to accomodate demand. Interest will likely be high considering the generally positive reviews SE has generated since we first got our hands on it.

We’ve got a big gallery of screenshots of SE in action, including it detecting the trojan that I *ahem* intentionally left on my machine so I could test the program fully. I’ve been very happy so far with SE’s level of protection and low impact on system performance.

Via:Download Squad

In case you need a mirror:

Vista and Windows 7 x86
Vista and Windows 7 x64
XP x86