“CEO Steve Ballmer on Thursday told financial analysts they should temper their expectations when it comes to sales prospects for Windows Phone 7, seen by many as Microsoft’s last chance to become a player in the Apple- and RIM-dominated U.S. smartphone space. ‘A number of you had a chance to kind of ask me a question … which is how are we going to do,’ Ballmer told

German site magnus.de has a pretty awesome and comprehensive four-part walk-through of Windows Phone 7. The first part is embedded above, which shows off some of the underlying concepts and what a hub is. If you want to check out the other three parts, simply read on…OK, here’s part 2 (People Hub):

And 3 (Office Hub)…

And 4 (Zune stuff, voice command, Bing), Enjoy!

This was originally posted… Continue reading

“With the Windows Phone Developer Tools in Beta and Windows Phone 7 in ,now is the time for you to build Windows Phone 7 apps in earnest. We have refreshed our developer documentation to help you build those apps, and we have two, new design-focused documents to help you make them look beautiful. First up, the UI Design and Interaction Guide for Windows Phone 7 v2.0 has

Over the past few days numerous sites have published their thoughts on the Windows Phone Technical Preview, and while some have been pretty negative, on the whole, most have been pretty positive (e.g., Paul Thurrott calls it “Rock Solid“, Matthew Miller calls it “Extremely stable and fluid“, Daniel Dumas believes it has made “Major, major improvements” and even… Continue reading

“Continuing our meeting focus on preparing for Windows Phone 7 development, I will be presenting “Silverlight UI Tips and Tricks for Windows Phone Developers” – In our previous presentation on Windows Phone 7 development for Compact Framework developers, be were introduced to the essentials surrounding UI development with Silverlight and Visual Studio 2010. The logical “next step” in the learning process is to enhance our user interfaces

“I think Microsoft created an OS that was completely different from all other competitors, and thats was not not an easy task. The whole concept is different. I like it.”

The quote and the title come from commenter vinod1978 at Gizmodo, where they have one of several Windows Phone 7 first-looks that you’ll see posted around the net (and on here) today. Windows… Continue reading

Since most of my public updates on Mandate, my novel, have come in the form of quick Twitter posts and status updates, I figured I’d actually write down some more than 140 characters to let everyone know where I’m at. And while I’m at it, I’m going to let slip a few things that no one knows yet about the novel as it reaches it’s halfway point.First of all, Mandate’s… Continue reading

“Join us on July 20 2010 at 8.00 am PDT (What time is this in my region?) for an three-hour Office Live Meeting broadcast. Windows Phone 7 promises to be an amazing mobile phone operating system given its innovative user interface and functionality, as well as its great development platform upon which you can quickly and easily build games and applications. This course is organized into four

“The term “Beta” is understood to mean that things are close to being finished. Well, that’s what we mean anyway. This Beta release represents the near final version of the tools for building applications and games for Windows Phone 7. Since the initial CTP release of the tools just this March, the Windows Phone Developer Tool CTP has been widely embraced by the community, and they have

If you’re not horribly busy in the next few minutes, you may want to start streaming Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner conference. Or you may want to wait until tomorrow and catch the session where Andy Lees will be discussing Windows Phone 7! Rumors have also swirled around that we may see some Win Phone news today at the 2 PM… Continue reading