When Kinect was re-announced at Day 0 of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), Microsoft released no pricing for the Xbox 360 addon. Now, in addition to GameStop, Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart are all taking the liberty of pricing $150 for the device without any hesitation. Even though it’s not an official pricing, and even taking into consideration that pre-order prices can change, it sure makes the dreaded $149 MSRP look very real.
One of the selling points of Windows 7 when it came out was the irresistible touch pack, a suite of applications designed for multi-touch, which only just came out as an optional user download. Before today, only OEMs had access to the suite, deciding whether they wanted to include the pack with their PC. There were leaks, but there no official release to the general public. You still will need a touch screen, not a mouse for the free apps to work. The pack is divided as three games and three Microsoft Surface apps, designed for Windows 7.
The download is a whopping (but understandable) 240MB, and is available at the Microsoft download site.
What you see above is the Earth Hour style of Bing…which is today’s pictures only with lights off. Quoting ourselves from two posts ago, “it’s nice that Microsoft wants to spread the cause of saving the environment, but for those who did their research will know that it will use more energyto show black on flat panel screen that it does for other colors.”
Bing has announced yesterday that it will turn off the lights on their search site by making it darker, similar to what Google did 2008. It’s nice that Microsoft wants to spread the cause of saving the environment, but for those who did their research will know that it will use more energyto show black on flat panel screen that it does for other colors. Microsoft does note this by saying that “While a darker version of our page doesn’t save any energy over the regular version, we wanted to do our part to help spread the word“, but they add insult to injury by not removing the black until 9:30am Pacific tomorrow. This goes great for their company image, but why do the opposite of what you actually want represent?
The image above is Bing’s image for the day, but not what they will use for Earth Hour. The Earth Hour site will be shown at 8:30pm Eastern time.
Early adopters, get ready – Walmart has begun to sell the HTC HD2 on T-Mobile a couple days early. The phone is scheduled to officially launch in the United States on Wednesday for $199 with a two year contract. People not dismayed about Microsoft confirming that there will not be an Windows Phone 7 Series upgrade have already posted unboxing videos on YouTube detailing the phone in all its goodness.
For Microsoft, Internet Explorer was a flop in recent days compared to its rivals – Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox (among others). However, its dreaded slow speeds and no support for modern web standards made it frustrating for web developers and users alike. Microsoft is now taking the same approach to browsing as they did to mobile OSes in Windows Phone 7 – starting over. With support for HTML5, h.264 video, embedded audio, and CSS3, and scalable vector graphics, Microsoft is throwing themselves back into the game with IE9.
For Internet Explorer users, many have noticed that the browser’s CSS compatibility was scare, and now with Internet Explorer 9, they’re at least trying to improve that.
Internet Explorer 9 also comes up ridiculously faster than Opera 10.10 and Internet Explorer in the SunSpider benchmark test, a tool which determines the performance of JavaScript on the browser. Many web-apps today, including Gmail and Facebook will run (and load) quicker with a lower score in terms of milliseconds. In the benchmark graph above, IE9 comes within reach of Safari and Chrome’s 350-ish range in SunSpider. Internet Explorer 9 also didn’t get anywhere near perfecting the Acid3 test – scoring a mere 55/100 compared to other browsers getting 100/100 on the test. Microsoft also added DirectX video acceleration to Internet Explorer 9, which applies not only to CSS3 rendering and SVG graphics, but text rendering as well.
It was also noted that Microsoft’s Hachamovitch said that Internet Explorer 9 will not support Windows XP. Sure it’s a completely clean break, but Microsoft just made the remaining Windows XP loyalist furious. Those users can still install a later version of Windows or use a virtual machine.
MIX 2010 started, and one thing quickly grabbed everyone’s eye: Windows Phone 7 Series Marketplace, and it’s sexy. Besides from its charming good looks, it has support for ad supported content, operator billing, and credit card charges. There’s also a try before you buy option similar to what Android has to offer, but developers get to pick the terms and the fine detailed things, like time of trial. The UI looks identical to rest of the well-polished OS and has a panoramic view where the user can see categories and titles, as well as get more information on their app that they’re seeking, including pricing, screenshots, reviews, and ratings.
Who are among the first to launch their apps for Windows Phone 7 Series? Well, these guys:
AWS Convergence Technologies, WeatherBug, Citrix Systems Inc., Clarity Consulting Inc., Cypress Consulting, EA Mobile, Fandango Inc., Foursquare Labs Inc., frog design inc., Glu Mobile Inc., Graphic.ly, Hudson Entertainment Inc., IdentityMine Inc., IMDb.com Inc., Larva Labs, Match.com LLC, Matchbox Mobile Ltd., Microsoft Game Studios, Namco Networks America Inc., Oberon Media Inc., Pageonce Inc., Pandora Media Inc., Photobucket Inc., PopCap Games Inc., Seesmic, Shazam Entertainment Ltd., Sling Media, SPB Software Inc., stimulant, TeleCommunications Systems Inc., Touchality LLC and Vertigo Software Inc
A nice, smooth set of first developers, but unless the platform gets lots of good apps quickly, it won’t be going anywhere. One of the biggest selling points on the iPhone is apps, over 140,000 of them. When a consumer is deciding whether to buy a WP7S phone or iPhone, one thing that they’ll think over is apps. Since apps extend what the phone can do, the consumer might be attracted more to the iPhone if the app catalog is as skimpy as the Zune HD’s catalog.
Oh, and it’s the only way to install apps on your Windows Phone.
We’ll know more soon, and keep checking back for the latest.
Those with Windows Mobile 6.x wishing they jumped on the mobile bandwagon later when Windows Phone 7 Series comes out, all is not lost. Someone going by the name of LeSScro made a theme for existing phones, and for a theme, it looks impressive to say the least. This user interface skin includes Xbox Live (supposedly), and can make old phones look young again. Video to ease your jealousy over an unreleased mobile OS after the page break.
Zune HD users can rejoice today, knowing that there’s now a Facebook app for their platform. Hopefully nothing is censored this time around, unlike the Twitter app, but users are reporting problems installing the software or using the app itself. I don’t have a Zune, so I don’t care. More pictures after the break.
When Kinect was re-announced at Day 0 of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), Microsoft released no pricing for the Xbox 360 addon. Now, in addition to GameStop, Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart are all taking the liberty of pricing $150 for the device without any hesitation. Even though it’s not an official pricing, and even taking into consideration that pre-order prices can change, it sure makes the dreaded $149 MSRP look very real.
