Microsoft’s Office Mobile 2010 productivity suite has just left beta phase and it’s now available for download over the Marketplace. You can get the new Office Mobile on your WM 6.5 handset if you already have an older version of the suite, so this is basically a free update.

Office Mobile 2010 brings new versions of OneNote, Excel, PowerPoint and SharePoint Workspace on your mobile device. The new software comes with a new interface design, focused on touch interaction and support for PowerPoint presentation editing straight from the phone. There’s also a new conversation view for Outlook 2010 Mobile e-mails, that reminds us of the desktop version of Office 2010.
PowerPoint Mobile 2010 now lets you read presentation notes from the handset, as your slides will be displayed on a laptop or PC and you can use this software to move slides. More info about the features of Office Mobile 2010 can be found here.
[via wmpoweruser]

 

We should say “happy late birthday”, because apparently we missed April 19th, the date when Microsoft introduced the Pocket PC in 2000. This huge announcement was made during a small gathering in Grand Central Station, New York City. This move was made to counter Palm’s products, at the time leading the PDA market.

On that important day, Microsoft launched a bunch of devices, together with its partners: the Casio EM500, the HP Jornada 545 & 548, the Symbol Technologies PPT2700, and the Compaq iPAQ. The last of them was possibly the most important Pocket PC and the hottest, with its slim design and support for Compact Flash or PCMCIA cards.
Inside the product you could find a “fast” ARM CPU and a very good display at the front. The device was pretty rare, so its price even reached $1,000 on eBay. The release of the Pocket PC was amazing, if you consider that the portable gadget was able to play games, show maps, it supported books, location services and relied on a great platform.
The iPAQ was considered the starting point for future devices and even future platforms, like Windows Mobile. Pocket PC redefined the idea of a mobile Office, with email and much needed business apps, plus games and media features. Well, the ancestor of smartphones is 10… what will we celebrate in 10 years?
[via Engadget]

 

When a man loves a woman very, very much and he’s not really thinking of repercussions and the state their relationship might be in a few months down the road, he sends her pictures of his netherparts via his cell phone. This act, friends, has come into the mainstream lately with its very own buzzword: sexting.

Sexting can be a pretty bad thing, primarily because it’s purportedly becoming more common amongst the highschool crowd, where relationships move fast and end faster.

Today, Consumer Reports is calling out Microsoft, saying one of their ads for the Kin “comes uncomfortably close to advocating sexting.”

The ad in question is embedded below. It’s totally safe for work, unless your work has something against hipsters and their sleepy-time music. The specific bit they’re talking about comes right after the 30 second mark.

 

After some brief info regarding the Project Pink phones leaked a couple of days ago, we can see the actual Pink Turtle handset caught on camera. Apparently, Microsoft’s handsets should be announced on Monday, but till then we’ve got the blurry leak pictured below and shown in the video at the end of the article.

In case you can’t make out the device shown here, there’s a clear photo of the render showing the Turtle Phone at the end of the video below. The author of the video seems pretty sure that the device will run Windows Mobile 7, making it the first WP 7 handset announced officially. Plus, we learn that it’s a very responsive phone and that’s where the details stop.
All in all, the slider should be appealing for teens looking to replace their Sidekicks with something upgraded. We’re looking forward to see the Microsoft Pure phone leaked too.

 

The Windows Phone 7 apps are already getting the hype of their life, even if the WP Marketplace isn’t even launched yet, so the App Store should start feeling a little competition about now. We’ve recently learned that a bunch of Microsoft employees working on Windows Phone 7 are leaving the team and starting companies that make apps FOR the platform.

Leading the new wave of departures is Microsoft Program Manager Mel Sampat, one of the people responsible with the Windows Mobile blog and the Calendar interface in WP 7. He left MS and founded mist labs, a company that will help big firms port their iPhone apps over to Windows Phone 7, while also making a couple of new software as well.
It’s also likely that mist labs will make apps for other platforms, too. Mel Sampat is accompanied by 6 more former Microsoft employees, who want a piece of the upcoming profit pie. How much time do you think it’ll take for the Windows Phone Marketplace to reach the level of the Apple App Store?

 

Believe it or not, the iPhone is so popular that it even breached the Microsoft core, so many employees of the Redmond giant own and use one. However, many of them are “closet iPhone users”. Using such a handset is, of course, accompanied by risks, as shown by Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer who snatched the iPhone from one of the employees, just as he was taking his superior’s photo.
Ballmer pretend to stomp on the handset and it was all a cool joke, in front of thousand of employees, but still a reminder of Microsoft’s aggressiveness on the market. Meanwhile, Apple CEO Steve Jobs sent an email asking about the use of his handset at Microsoft, but the spokespersons declined to comment on this matter.
The thing is that there are quite a bunch of iPhone owners in the MS campus, from the Seattle suburb. Among the many users there’s J. Allard, the man responsible with the Xbox game console and its creation, plus the chief experience officer for the entertainment and devices division. The figures also confirm this passion for iPhones: nearly 10,000 users accessed the MS employee email system in 2009.
This accounts for 10% of the company’s global work force, quite an impressive feat for a rival, don’t you think? While some MS officials discourage the employees from using this handset, others say that it helps them understand the competition better. As shown in the WSJ article here, this is just like a Coca Cola employee drinking Pepsi while at work…
What do you think about this unofficial “ban” on Apple technology at Microsoft?