“Look at your phone. Now back to me. Now back to your phone. Now back to me. Sadly, your phone isn’t a Windows Phone 7 but starting from next week it could be. An obscure YouTube video featuring Isaiah Mustafa of Old Spice Guy fame tweeted by Microsoft Australia employees is apparently the internal teaser to an Australian marketing campaign for Windows Phone 7 down under, most likely to coincide with the availability of WP7 devices on October 21.”

Clever to use someone that has a high degree of “Hey, I know that guy from those commercials!”, but I personally found the video to be completely uninspired and lacking, well, everything. Goes to show you that a good ad campaign takes great writing, directing, set design, special effects, and acting. The actor can’t do it all alone!

“Look at your phone. Now back to me. Now back to your phone. Now back to me. Sadly, your phone isn’t a Windows Phone 7 but starting from next week it could be. An obscure YouTube video featuring Isaiah Mustafa of Old Spice Guy fame tweeted by Microsoft Australia employees is apparently the internal teaser to an Australian marketing campaign for Windows Phone 7 down under, most likely to coincide with the availability of WP7 devices on October 21.”

Clever to use someone that has a high degree of “Hey, I know that guy from those commercials!”, but I personally found the video to be completely uninspired and lacking, well, everything. Goes to show you that a good ad campaign takes great writing, directing, set design, special effects, and acting. The actor can’t do it all alone!

“Look at your phone. Now back to me. Now back to your phone. Now back to me. Sadly, your phone isn’t a Windows Phone 7 but starting from next week it could be. An obscure YouTube video featuring Isaiah Mustafa of Old Spice Guy fame tweeted by Microsoft Australia employees is apparently the internal teaser to an Australian marketing campaign for Windows Phone 7 down under, most likely to coincide with the availability of WP7 devices on October 21.”

Clever to use someone that has a high degree of “Hey, I know that guy from those commercials!”, but I personally found the video to be completely uninspired and lacking, well, everything. Goes to show you that a good ad campaign takes great writing, directing, set design, special effects, and acting. The actor can’t do it all alone!

Microsoft officially launched Windows Phone 7 Series (previously referred to as Windows Mobile 7, Windows Phone 7, or even Photon) on Monday, dropping the gauntlet on what will shape up to be a mighty mobile battle come Christmas.

A whole new OS

Windows Phone 7 Series Phones, as the new devices will be officially known (yikes), will be a complete departure from the Windows Mobile devices we are all familiar with and feature a brand-new, possibly revolutionary UI. The Start menu? Gone. Touch elements designed for six-year-old fingers? Gone. In fact, Microsoft’s new OS is aiming to change the mobile phone paradigm by shifting away from an app-centric model to an experience or task-based system that groups your personal data, social networking streams, location-based services, and media sources into what Microsoft calls ‘hubs’ (more later)

Reflecting their determination to re-define the relationship between end-user and their phone, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced at the Barcelona 2010 Mobile World Congress:

“In a crowded market, filled with phones that look the same and do the same things, I challenged the team to deliver a different kind of mobile experience. Windows Phone 7 marks a turning point toward phones that truly relfect the speed of people’s lives and their need to connect to other people and all kinds of seamless experiences.”

Joe Belfiore, vice president of Windows Phone, said it was time to stop thinking about mobile phones like PCs:

“A phone is not a PC, it’s a smaller, more intimate device,” he said. “Too many phones are made to look like PCs. We wanted to come up with a user design that was different, that moved beyond the metaphor of the PC.”

Live Tiles

This ain’t your daddy’s Windows Phone. Microsoft has taken advantage of the fact that it is so late with this product to properly think out how people use their mobile devices. They have no doubt heard for years now about how un-finger-friendly Windows Mobile is and how counter-intuitive it can seem compared to its competition. They’ve seen people complain about icon overload and the app-to-app routine on the iPhone (one app for Facebook, one app for twittering, one app for YouTube, etc); The result? Live Tiles.

The new home screen on WP7 devices will consist of several vertically-scrollable live tiles. The main screen shows 5 live tiles: Internet Explorer, Phone, Text, People. Each of these boxes is “live” and auto-updates with real-time information from all of your various info sources. So when your friend updates his Facebook page, that update shows on the Friends tile. If you miss a phone call, the Phone tile updates to show the number of missed calls, and your most recent photos fade in and out in the Pictures tile.

Hubs

Clicking on any of these main live tiles will bring up the corresponding Hub. There are a bunch of default hubs that will ship with WP7: People, Games, Xbox Live, Pictures, Music & Video (with support for more than just Zune accounts), Zune, Office (with support for multiple exchange accounts), and of course the Marketplace. These hubs pull in data from all of your various sources and present it in a task-oriented manner, rather than using a separate app for each service you use.

For example, the above pic shows the People hub. The first screen you will see when you click on the People tile is the ‘Recent’ screen. Scrolling right will give you all of your peeps, scrolling right again will show you the What’s New tab, which lists all of your friends’ most recent social media updates,

Similarly, when you tap on the Music and Video tile, up pops the Zune menu. Scrolling to the right brings up your History, continuing to scroll brings up the “What’s New” tab, and then Apps that are music or video related. Hubs create an easy way to browse all of your data – both on-device and online – by topic or experience. Very cool.

X-Box and Zune Integration

While Microsoft’s mobile lately may have missed the mark, they have had remarkable success with their X-Box and Zune line. The X-Box model has been a decade in the making and Microsoft has earned a very respectable share of a competitive market – something it needs to do with WP7. The Zune HD was released last year to terrific reviews and great critical, if not commercial, success.

Microsoft is finally taking advantage of these successful platforms and fully integrating X-Box Live and Zune with Windows Phone 7 Series devices. Mobile gaming might be limited initially, but expect this to be a major component and battle ground in the coming year or two, and Microsoft (for once) has a clear advantage over rivals like Palm and Apple here.

As for Zune integration, you can almost thank the Zune for the new UI. Internally at Microsoft, the UI for the Zune HD was referred to as Metro; the same name they use to discuss the Windows Phone 7 Series interface. Beyond that, expect to see complete integration with the Zune service and any Zunes you might have lying around.

Manufacturers and Carriers

Just as with Windows Mobile, Microsoft has lined up a top-notch list of manufactures who are eager to start putting out Windows Phone 7 Series devices. The list includes longtime Windows Mobile supporters HTC, LG, Samsung and Toshiba, as well as Garmin-Asus, on-the-fence Sony Ericsson, and even Dell.

Unlike with Windows Mobile, however, and this is absolutely critical, Microsoft has imposed a Chassis requirement for all WP7 devices. This means that all WP7 phones will need have a minimum hardware spec that – so far – includes several mandatory hardware buttons (home, search and back), CPU and screen size/resolution requirements, plus an accelerometer, GPS, camera and other goodies.

This Chassis system should help maintain a good user experience and avoid manufacturers putting out shoddy hardware that gives Windows Phone 7 devices a bad rap.

Carriers will include all of the Big Four US carriers: AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon – as well as Deutsche Telekom, Orange, SFR, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Telstra, and Vodafone. Rogers and Telus haven’t made any comment yet.

WP7: Do or Die for Microsoft

By most accounts, it’s do or die time for Microsoft. For whatever reason, most likely because they simply underestimated the growth of the smartphone/mobile market, Microsoft hasn’t taken the mobile space very seriously for the past four or five years… despite being one of the first out of the gate.

By the time the first Windows Phone 7 Series device hits the market, we’ll be looking at a new iPhone, a new version of Google’s Android, and an updated webOS from Palm… very serious competition for Windows Phones. If Microsoft blunders, they might just miss the last train out of the desktop station.

Here is the full list of improvements in this version:

CorePlayer Platform: Version 1.3.6 build 7427 (20090910):

• FIX: ShoutCast/ICY metadata reading on slow connection (fix async reading of the metadata)
• FIX: Format recognization problems (fix async reading of the probe)
• FIX: Symbian: fix the special character te xt entry
• FIX: Windows: Playlist mode display
• FIX: OS X: audio/video Sync issues when the AudioQueue output was selected
• ADD: Snow Leopard Support
• ADD: Option to keep playback running when leaving fullscreen
• ADD: One click fullscreen function
• ADD: OS X: UI speed improvement
• ADD: OS X: ALAC Apple Lossless decoding on Mac OS X 10.5/10.6 (Leopard)
• ADD: OS X: DTS decoding on Mac OS X 10.5/10.6 (Leopard) when Perian is installed
• ADD: WinCE: Windows Mobile 6.5 icon
• CHG: update to the FLAC 1.2.1 library, supports bitdepths other than 16 bits (96/24)

The screenshot shows a great looking UI with finger-friendly icons for all the touchies out there, and they’ve specifically improved integration with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. They seem to have fine-tuned it for the Samsung Omnia, but it should work nicely on any WinMo device.

Check out Qik’s website to see it it in action, register and download the app.

In the beginning, there was an awesome media player for Windows Mobile called ‘BetaPlayer‘. It could handle all kinds of audio and video codecs that the mobile version of Windows Media Player couldn’t. Eventually BetaPlayer turned into TCPMP (The Core Pocket Media Player), a freeware media app. And it was truly awesome. Then, all of a sudden, TCPMP dropped support for files downloaded from iTunes for legal reasons, and TCPMP became a little less useful. From this, the commercial CorePlayer was born. CorePlayer allows developers to collect some revenue and pay licensing fees for proprietary codec support.

I’ve been using CorePlayer for quite some time now and I love it. It does everything I want it to do: movies, video clips, audio files, YouTube, podcasts, JPGs, FLV files… and tonnes more.

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QUICKLIST:

System/OS/Device Requirements: Pocket PC 2000, Pocket PC 2002, Pocket PC 2003, Pocket PC 2003 SE, WM5, WM6, WM6.1
Price: $29.95 ( 20% off for the month of November with coupon code “WMCoolOpen”!) Free trial also available.
Company: CoreCodec, Inc.
Download: Available at our store for only $29.95!

KEY FEATURES:

• YouTube support, with built-in browse and search
• BlueTooth Stereo (A2DP) and Remote Control (AVRCP) support
• Programmable Hotkeys
• Supports over 15 Languages
• Media library (Manage your RSS Feeds, playlists, podcasts, bookmarks)
• Podcast Support (Standard and Enhanced)
• Streaming support (HTTP, UDP, RTP, RTSP, RTCP, SDP, Unicast, Multicast)
• IPTV/DVB-H/DVB-SH Ready
• Audio: MP3, WMA, AAC, MKA, WAV, OGG, Speex, WAVPACK, FLAC, MPC, AMR, GSM, ADPCM, ALaw, MuLaw, MIDI
• Video: WMV, CoreAVC� (H.264), AVCHD, MKV, MPEG-1, MPEG-4 part 2 (ASP), DivX, XviD, MJPEG, MSVIDEO1
• Images: JPG (420, 422, 440), BMP, PNG, GIF, TIFF
• Containers: FLV, Matroska�, ASX, ASF, TS, PS, M2TS, 3GPP, MOV, AVI, MPEG-4, NSV
• GPU support: Intel 2700g, ATI Imageon, Qualcomm QTv
• CoreUI / Universal Skins (Custom interface)

VERDICT:

There are a number of ways to watch YouTube videos on your mobile phone, but CorePlayer is the coolest and easiest way I’ve found, hands down. It uses minimal memory, runs very smoothly, the mp3 player shows album art, allows both mp3 and aac equalizer usage, and it can play back 700×600 DivX avi files without dropping any frams which is very cool.

The only problem I actually encountered with it was that the download did not include a help file, which would have been very useful. But there are plenty of resources online that provide help and CoreCodec themselves offer an email helpline to those in need. So it’s not all bad news on the help front.

RATING: (out of 5)

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Now here’s a use for Windows Live Search that we can all appreciate – helping you find the lowest priced gasoline in your area. Sweet!

The above video, courtesy of windowsmobilevideos (YouTube), demonstrates how you can save money with Windows Live Search. Thanks, guys! Keep up the great videos.

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With the year drawing to a close, it’s time to pull out the best that WindowsMobile Cool had to offer our readers this year in the way of comprehensive guides on everything from personalizing your WinMo phone to using your phone as a wireless modem.

Let’s take a look at WindowsMobile Cool’s most popular how-to guides of 2008:

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1. How-to: Setup, configure, and personalize your device – a comprehensive guide – Configuring your device involves making some one-time settings that personalize the device for your use. It’s super easy! Check out this in-depth how-to on setting up, configuring, and personalizing your Windows Mobile handset and get started now!

2. How-to: Get Wikipedia on your phone without an internet connection – Being a history graduate (go on, make your nerd jokes now), I pride myself as being the Queen of Trivial Knowledge – but even I need a refresher now and again. If I’m lucky enough to be sitting by a computer (which I’ll admit is quite often) the internet has almost every answer I could possibly need in seconds thanks to Wikipedia. But what if I’m not in front of my computer? Here’s the perfect solution: Wikipedia… on your Windows Mobile phone! I know what you’re thinking. Data. Data is expensive! And Wikipedia is full of images and links and then you have to worry about having the right browser to view it in properly… grah! So here it is…

3. How-to: In case of theft, enable ’self-destruct’ mode – So you just bought a brand new WinMo phone. Does the idea of some thief getting their grubby little hands on your new baby and all its private information (text messages, contacts, credit card numbers, private emails) make you absolutely sick? This walk-through will help you protect yourself against information theft by showing you how to turn your Windows Mobile device into a self-destructing data safe.

4. How-to: Getting Internet Sharing to work on your AT&T Fuze, Sprint Touch Pro, HTC Touch Diamond, and Samsung Epix – This one allows you to ‘enable’ (read: re-enable) Internet Sharing on your HTC Touch Diamond, Sprint Touch Pro, AT&T Fuze (Touch Pro) and the Samsung Epix! Now, this is a registry key edit so use at your own risk as we’re never 100% sure of how these things will turn out sometimes.. but if you’re desperate for Internet Sharing (or brave and up for a challenge) try out this trick…

5. How-to: Watch Digital TV on your Windows Mobile phone – This really cool compact accessory for your phone is called MOBio (MOB View) and it’s made by a company out of Shanghai called Permian. MOBio (MOB View) is an SDIO Interface Mobile Digital TV receiver which uses Bluetooth to provide digital TV services.

6. How-to: Get the YouTube app on your Vodafone HTC Touch Pro – If you’ve purchased a Vodafone HTC Touch Pro, one of the first things you’ll notice is that there is no YouTube application — but with this guide, you’ll have it in no time!

7. How-to: Stop ActiveSync from eating your valuable system resources (and your money!)

8. How-to: Internet Sharing – love between a laptop and a Windows Mobile phone – This how-to was born on a day that I had a bit of a scramble to find a reliable internet connection in order to bring my readers the latest Windows Mobile news so I decided it was a good time to use WinMo’s Internet Sharing application. If you haven’t tried this out – I suggest you do! It’s very easy and works better than you expect it will, I assure you.

9. How-to: Turn your favourite mp3 into a ringtone – A little birdy told me that putting a ringtone on their phone is one of the first things new phone owners look to do. So today, for your auditory pleasure, I’ll show you how to put a ringtone on your Windows Mobile device! You’ll be glad to hear that it’s actually dead simple!

10. How-to: Sync your Windows Mobile device with your Mac – Are you a Windows Mobile user… but a Mac user as well? Well, it’s not impossible to sync up these two devices – in fact, it’s very easy! This tutorial will walk you through installing, setting up and using SyncMate to sync your Windows Mobile device with your Mac.

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Did you know that thanks to Skyfire and its Flash capabilities, you can now watch SNL, hulu.com, YouTube.com, Dig Your Own Grave, and Video Fantastica on your Windows Mobile phone?

And I’ll let you in on a little secret too — Outside of the USA and tired of seeing that awful message: “This content is not viewable outside of the USA”? Well it appears that you won’t get that message if you’re on your Windows Mobile phone!

Trust me, this Canadian girl can’t get enough of Hulu.com now!
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