“Verizon may finally be preparing to start offering a Windows Phone 7 smartphone, following months of rumors about the launch date.”

Is it finally happening? It appears so. Verizon has launched a discussion forum specifically for Windows Phone. Unfortunately, the exact date that Verizon will be launching their first Windows Phone device still remains up in the air.

So, other than Verizon customers now having a new venue where they could speak to each other about how long Verizon is taking, there isn’t anything definitive.

“Itai Almog, pictured second from left, was the guy who led the development effort on the engineering side. He works just down the hall from me. In addition its scientific smarts, the keyboard is also packed full of time-saving shortcuts.”

Itai, one of the engineers of the Windows Phone 7 keyboard, has listed his top seven favorite keyboard tips in a blog post on the Windows Team Blog by Michael Stroh.

1. Type fast and trust the keyboard to correct you.

2. Double-tap Space at the end of a sentence to add a period and capitalize the start of the next sentence.

3. Tap & hold various keys to reveal hidden menus. The period key is especially handy.

4. Boost your speed: Tap the Shift or Numbers/Symbols key, slide your finger to the character you want, and then release. Saves you a tap.

5. In the suggestion bar, tap “+” to teach the phone a new word.

6. To undo auto-correction: tap the word, then tap the first candidate (the original word) in the suggestion bar.

7. Multilingual? Go to Settings>Keyboard to select other keyboard languages.

“Fat fingers and compact smartphone screens just aren’t a good match. Combine a few key misses with a well-meaning auto-correction feature and it’s no wonder that “I ate the hummus” turns into “I ate the humans.” But Windows Phone 7 users find that their keyboards seem to have a better knack for knowing what they intend to type-or even what they intend to say.”

If you have used a Windows Phone 7 device, you will undoubtedly be amazed by the on screen keyboard and its knack of guessing what you want to type. Douglas Gantenbein has posted an article about their concepts and thought process that ultimately resulted in the Windows Phone 7 keyboard.

Google have a video below explaining more detail on how it will work.  This will be launching on the Nexus S first with other Android 2.3 devices later on.

Sometimes, the expressions on a person’s face can mean much more than what they say. To help you stay in touch with your friends and family, we’re launching Google Talk with video and voice chat for Android phones.

You can now video or voice chat with your friends, family and colleagues right from your Android phone, whether they’re on their compatible Android tablet or phone, or using Gmail with Google Talk on their computer. You can make calls over a 3G or 4G data network (if your carrier supports it) or over Wi-Fi

In your Google Talk friends list, a video or voice chat button will appear next to your contacts and you can simply touch the button to connect with them. Any text chats from the person you’re talking with will be overlaid on your phone’s screen so you can read them without having to leave the video. And, if you need to check something else, the video pauses automatically so you can go back to your phone’s home screen or another app. The audio will keep going even though the video has paused. Check out how this works:

Google Talk with video and voice chat will gradually roll out to Nexus S devices in the next few weeks as part of the Android 2.3.4 over-the-air update and will launch on other Android 2.3+ devices in the future. To learn more about

Full story

Google Rolling Out Video Chat is original content from Coolsmartphone.com

Office files on your computer can also be opened directly from your Windows Phone. Hann File Transporter also includes a media player and an image/text/html viewer for viewing files stored locally and directly off Hann Portable Server.
Links – Hann File Transporter – Zune Link

Full story

Hann File Transporter – Upload and download files to Windows Phone is original content from Coolsmartphone.com

The US launch of Windows Phone 7 is on Monday, and AT&T stores around the country are gearing up for the release. The display seems to showcase not only the operating system, but the Xbox 360 as well. This is great since one of Microsoft’s strengths is the strong ecosystem. Only one more day until users around the country find out for themselves!

“Earning Xbox Live achievements on the toilet? Awesome. Being able to play online multiplayer games with my other Xbox Live friends and earning achievements while on the toilet? That would be even awesomer. Right now, Windows Phone’s link to Xbox Live is only medium satisfying, but the potential for amazing things is eyeball-explodingly obvious. Full-on Xbox Live multiplayer. Xbox Live Arcade games that you start playing on your Xbox and then pick up waiting in line at Starbucks, like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Earning items in a Fable Windows Phone game to use in Fable IV. Truly ubiquitous Xbox gaming, so even the most atrophied addicts can leave the house and still get their game on. Windows Phone should be the portable Xbox. (And it should be a remote for your Xbox too.)”

There’s no shortage of ways that Microsoft can improve Windows Phone 7 – despite the version number, it’s really 1.0 software, and has lots of growth required before it’s on even footing with rival platforms that have 3-5 years of growth behind them. There are some interesting things on this list, though some of them are kind of odd – would you really power off your phone in the middle of a game instead of exiting the game, then powering it off? The author of this piece is complaining about how it takes a few seconds to resume a game that’s behind the lock screen when he powers the phone back on – I’ll have to try the same thing on my iPod Touch to see how iOS handles it…

Link – Youku.com

Credit – Phil

Read on and add your comments. Follow us on twitter too.

“Dell is shifting 25,000 of its employees, or one-quarter of its work force, from Research in Motion’s BlackBerry to its own Windows Phone 7-powered Venue Pro. The company is still in discussions with T-Mobile USA, the carrier for the Venue Pro, for buying voice and data in bulk.”

Yea yea yea, it’s all nice and good that Dell is switching en masse to Windows Phone 7. However the article contains a line that I’ve been wondering when the heck we’d see for years now: “The company says that the switch will save money (as it will no longer need to pay for RIM’s services)”. Wow, you mean it’s cheaper when you don’t have to pay for RIM’s servers to push mail to you? You mean, actually rely on technology present in Windows Mobile since Windows Mobile 5?!? And you don’t even get the added benefit of periodic worldwide outages due to some server in RIM’s headquarters going crazy?

Needless to say, in my opinion, the real story here is a company waking up and realizing they can get everything they want out of Microsoft’s product lines, without the bloat and extra charges inherent to Blackberry. First doesn’t mean best, and unless RIM realizes that, Blackberry is going to be in trouble over the next few years.

“Dell is shifting 25,000 of its employees, or one-quarter of its work force, from Research in Motion’s BlackBerry to its own Windows Phone 7-powered Venue Pro. The company is still in discussions with T-Mobile USA, the carrier for the Venue Pro, for buying voice and data in bulk.”

Yea yea yea, it’s all nice and good that Dell is switching en masse to Windows Phone 7. However the article contains a line that I’ve been wondering when the heck we’d see for years now: “The company says that the switch will save money (as it will no longer need to pay for RIM’s services)”. Wow, you mean it’s cheaper when you don’t have to pay for RIM’s servers to push mail to you? You mean, actually rely on technology present in Windows Mobile since Windows Mobile 5?!? And you don’t even get the added benefit of periodic worldwide outages due to some server in RIM’s headquarters going crazy?

Needless to say, in my opinion, the real story here is a company waking up and realizing they can get everything they want out of Microsoft’s product lines, without the bloat and extra charges inherent to Blackberry. First doesn’t mean best, and unless RIM realizes that, Blackberry is going to be in trouble over the next few years.