Last week came word that Microsoft had to delay the release of XP SP3 and Vista SP1 due to some complications with the Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System.

Well, it looks like the issues have been worked out temporarily and the service packs will now be available again via Windows Update. Microsoft developed a filter that will prohibit machines running Dynamics RMS from installing either of the two updates. Microsoft is still working on a fix that will resolve the issue completely.

Via News.com

Microsoft announced that it is withdrawing its bid to acquire Yahoo! after the two could not settle on a price. More info and the text of a letter to Yahoo! from Steve Ballmer can be found here and more info here.

I may be wrong on this, but I think the HTC Shift is the only UMPC currently shipping with the new Origami Experience 2.0. I’ve had a chance to get my hands on a pre-release copy and will be reporting in soon. OE 2.0 will be made available in the future for public download.

But in the meantime if you want to know a bit more about OE 2.0 you might want to check out Jenn’s post on Pocketables. She’s inserted some pictures in her post that lays out the 10 page mini-manual that comes with the HTC Shift. 

Intriguingly, after walking through the manual, she closes her post with this comment:

So that's Origami Experience 2.0. It's a nice finger-friendly interface, to be sure, but I never use it. The Shift's 7-inch screen makes navigating Vista easy (no need for Origami Central then) and Origami Now essentially duplicates the function of SnapVUE, which doesn't rely on Vista and has stellar battery life (about 2 days). If it had been an option on my Shift, I wouldn't have chosen it. But that's just me.

Hat tip to jkOnTheRun

Interesting little meme on Twitter this morning started by Robert Scoble with this Tweet:

My Microsoft Office trial is over. I am not spending $450 just to get Outlook. Gmail and Google Calendar win this game: big time

That prompted quite a few others to chirp in and say that with the exception of Outlook and OneNote they’ve moved to other solutions, mostly on the web.

How about you? Are you still using Microsoft Office applications and if so which ones? I know I still use Word and Excel quite a bit because the functionality I need isn’t there yet in online solutions.

Don’t forget you can follow GottaBeMobile.com on Twitter.

We are all familiar with the Pen Flick Gestures in Vista. What about hover-based gestures that get activated without the need to press the pen to the screen? How could technology like this helping you with your Tablet PC experience? Take it a step further - what about capacitive-touch based hover gestures? How about multi-touch hover-based gestures?

Here is a video and PDF paper by Microsoft Research's Ken Hinckley and Tovi Grossman exploring the idea of hover-based gestures.

Hold the train. Just as news was starting to spread that Microsoft was about to release XP Service Pack 3, comes word of yet another delay. According to CNet’s News.com:

The software maker said there is a "compatibility issue" between the XP service pack and Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System, a retail chain management program for small and midsize businesses.

Microsoft finalized the code for Windows XP SP3 last week and had planned to make it broadly available starting Tuesday.

"In order to make sure customers have the best possible experience, we have decided to delay releasing Windows XP SP3 to Windows Update and Microsoft Download Center," the company said in a statement.

The glitch also exists between Microsoft Dynamics RMS and Windows Vista Service Pack 1, though that product has already been broadly released. Microsoft started pushing out Vista SP1 last week via Automatic Updates.

This will be a game changer on many different levels. How the game changes and what it will all mean is still to be determined, but make no mistake the game is about to change.

Last night Ray Ozzie, the inheritor of Bill Gates’ title of Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect,  put his stamp on Microsoft’s future roadmap by unveiling the long awaited plans for what is being called Live Mesh.

There is much we still don’t know about Live Mesh, and I’m sure in the next few months we’ll learn quite a bit as The Mesh moves from private preview to larger beta testing, but here is what we know now.

Live Mesh is a new Windows Live platform for syncing files, and soon applicatinos as well, across different devices. At first glance you might think that this is just another syncing method, but it promises to be so much more.

Essentially you set up a virtual desktop online. You then connect different devices to it and move any data into a Mesh folder on that virtual desktop and it is instantly available across all devices. Naturally the preview and, I imagine the beta, is only available for Windows platforms right now, but a Mac Client is promised for the future as well. Of course there is a web interface for this which makes those platform agnosticians among us a little happier. A mobile verison is also promised for this year. The vision is that any device from comptuers to handhelds, to the Xbox, to digital picture frames could eventually be connected.

There is also a social network component built into this as well (like everything these days) including a Facebook like news feed. Because of the use of RSS and ATOM, the Mesh Operating Environment will create a url for jsut about anything making it available for subscriptions in any number of other tools.

This is just a quick summary of things I’ve learned in reading about this and I’m sure there is much, much more. But here’s an analogy from my recent experience. I’ve been using (and loving) the new EverNote Beta that allows me to sync and have my data available across all the platforms I use. Live Mesh promises much more than that certainly, but what I enjoy most is the freedom that EverNote gives me when I’m mobile to grab whatever I need on whatever device I have. Live Mesh looks like it will not only offer me that kind of mobile freedom, but much more as well. The opportunites it offers to developers will also have an amazing impact on how we work on our devices and in the cloud.

Here’s a link to a video on Channel 10.

Here’s a link to the Mesh Team’s blog.

10 Things To Know about Microsoft’s Live Mesh

While meeting with Microsoft Research's Ken Hinckley last week, we spent a good amount of time talking about gestures. He demoed a prototype application, called Scriboli, that took advantage of a multi-stroke gesture, allowing copy and move all in one stroke.

The videos below demo that functionality, as well as explores the idea of a dedicated button for one hand while writing with the other (which I absolutely love, btw). Whatever you wanted to know about gestures can be learned in these two videos, as well as in this research paper (PDF) authored by Ken, Patrick Baudisch, Gonzalo Ramos, and Francois Guimbretiere.

You'll be amazed the level of analysis that goes into gesture design.

Mickey Segal loves his mobile computers. Unfortunately, Microsoft's recent switch from Outlook Express / Windows Mail to Windows Live Mail is frustrating him as he frequently uses computers that are 800 x 600 resolution. Take a look at the following areas that are frustrating Mickey, each of which could be easily addressed by providing users with options or by dynamically detecting screen resolutions:

• Toolbars: The toolbars have buttons that take up a lot of space.  Most notably there buttons of little relevance on a day to day basis such as "Windows Live sign-in" and a button to change the color scheme. As in Internet Explorer 7 and 8 there is no way to get rid of these buttons in order to use the toolbar space for other functionality. This hogging of space is a particular problem since there is no longer a "selective text on right" option to save icon space on the toolbar. The functionality that fit well in Outlook Express and Windows Mail at 800 x 600 just doesn't fit using Windows Live Mail, dramatically reducing the usability.
• Accounts on the Folder Pane: Each email account has its own entry in the folder pane. Although one can consolidate recent messages using "Quick views" you are still stuck with two lines used for every email account, pushing your storage folders off the screen. Although you can move these accounts to the bottom of the folder pane, when you restart the program your customization is gone and the accounts are all back on top of your storage folders, pushing them off screen.
• Button on the Folder Pane: There is an "Add an e-mail account" button taking up folder pane space and it appears there is no way to get rid of the button. This has priority over other material in the folder pane, for example, forcing the storage folders off screen.

It seems that one division of Microsoft is pushing mobile computing using small screens, and another division is undermining this by keeping users from fitting a lot of functionality onto a small screen. 

Ed Bott has a great article on ZDNet on dealing with some of the headaches that get blamed on Vista when the root cause may in fact be CRAPWARE or lack of up-to-date drivers. He chronicles his experience in helping out a friend start from scratch on a new Sony Vaio that had been relegated to closet after the performance lagged beyond frustration. Ed walks through a number of steps he took along the way and the lessons learned along the way and the article is well worth a read.

Of course it raises the inevitable questions about CRAPWARE and OOBE. Sure, I realize that installing Trialware and such helps OEMs cut the price on new machines, but at what cost to the end user? And as the thesis of Ed’s article points to, it also takes a very, very high toll on Vista and Microsoft’s reputation as well. You’d think somewhere along the line, someone would see this and begin to restore some sanity to the madness, instead of backing users into restoring a new machine from scratch.

This is billed as a “Stupid Internal Microsoft Vista SP1 Video.” Whether it is internal or not, (gosh, I hope not) it is pretty darn funny and worth a few laughs on a Monday night. Srpingstein fans, try not to wretch too much.

Via spiderwebwoman on Twitter.

I posted up our N-Trig interview on Thursday and wanted to pass along my own thoughts on what N-Trig's Mr. Lenny Englehardt had to say. Since I had the opportunity to speak with Mr.  Englehardt, I had the benefit of hearing repeated comments, voice inflection, and coming away with an overall impression. I think the question / answer summary I posted captures the essence of the interview quite well. Overall, I came away with the impression that N-Trig is very frustrated with Microsoft in terms of marketing ( or lack thereof ) and not talking about its superior multi-touch solutions ( (N-Trig's ), palm rejection technology as implemented in Vista, is not that impressed with Vista, and is quite thankful that Apple is generating and talking about their great multi touch products. N-Trig has become quite the beneficiary of Apple's successes.

More detail:

• I think it is a good sign that N-Trig sees a market need for capacitive touch and pen in the 7 - 8.9" small form factor. He knows a lot about what OEMs are doing, and his statement is a good sign
• A focus on the 7" to 17" market for laptops has huge implications for bringing ink and multi-touch to more folks.
• When asked about Vista and the iPhone, I found Mr. Englehardt's replies quite telling and wonder how common his feelings are with other manufactures building Microsoft-based solutions - Redmond marketing nowhere to be seen, wishing Microsoft would do more to point out that what Apple is doing on the touchpad, N-Trig and Microsoft is doing to the screen; and thanking Apple for generating great multi-touch products ( notice he didn't thank Microsoft ):

Great steps for pen and touch, not enough traction in their own software apps like Outlook, PowerPoint etc.. Vista as an OS is not a very user friendly product, way too many crashes, hangs etc. They don’t seem to be keen to scrub it and flush out all the issues. If they would push ink in their own apps and to ISV’s it would be great. The average consumer and enterprise user still doesn’t  know that Microsoft has touch and ink capabilities built into Vista, while everyone knows how the iPhone and MacBook Air work. Redmond marketing is nowhere to be seen.

also....

As mentioned above, we thank Apple for the efforts in generating great multi touch products. We wish Microsoft would do more and point out that what Apple is doing on the touch pad, we are doing on the screen.

• I also found his above statements on Vista to be quite the indictment, especially for a company working so closely with the inner workings of Vista.
• Mr. Englehardt is quite frustrated with Microsoft and their palm rejection technology in Vista, saying "Our expectation was that Microsoft would do more with handling dual-mode, and basically ignore all inputs when writing" and "We will work to improve palm rejection in dual-mode regardless of what Microsoft has in store for future versions of Windows.  We are enhancing palm rejection on our own, independent of Microsoft. Improvements will be ready sooner than one might expect..stay tuned."  Wow.....
• As someone working closely with human interaction technologies, he doesn't see the market need for a UMPC, especially when someone has a good phone and a Tablet PC. I've seen the same thing in my own experience: a Tablet PC plus the iPhone is providing me with everything I need. If I only had a desktop, though, the UMPC would be a good solution. As more people are moving to mobile computers, is the UMPC getting squeezed out? Is this where we will see the phone technology ( like the iPhone ) continue to improve, thus negate the real need for UMPC? The iPhone, for me, has the been the Origami device originally described by Microsoft - a device that I go back in to the house to get.
• Pen only or touch only solutions is not their playing field. It is the combination of pen and touch that N-Trig is focusing on, and that is a good thing for the Tablet PC space.

I’ve been meaning to link to this for awhile, but it kept passing me by. So, with apologies to Ed Bott and Media Center Show Podcast host, Ian Dixon, here’s a link to a great chat between the two on what to expect (and not expect) in Vista Service Pack 1. Well worth a listen to if you haven’t made the jump to SP1 yet.

By the way, I haven’t made that jump yet. I’ve been just too busy of late to make the commitment.

Everyone is always looking for the perfect email solution and there are many out there, but I don’t think anyone has discovered a perfect one yet, especially for those of us who rely on mutliple devices. Sure a hosted exchange solution can work, or you can use GMail’s iMap solution. But there has to be some better way to tie all of that together between the desktop and the cloud.

Well, Cemaphore Systems may not solve all of the woes, but it is aiming to tie GMail and Outlook together, according to an article in The New York Times. Supposedly a new service, MailShadow for Google Apps, will allow users to automatically sync email, calendar, and address books between Microsoft’s Outlook and GMail. This is done through a secure backup (Cemaphore Systems specializes in e-mail backup services). MailShadow launched today in Beta. (Naturally.)

The interesting bit of news here, is that apparently this could allow users to ditch Exchange and still use Outlook as their email interface. Of course this is yet another move, albeit by a third party, in the continuing battle between Microsoft and Google for the Enterprise sector and the hearts and minds of email users everywhere with dreams of the cloud.

Microsoft may be moving full steam ahead on Silverlight, but they have also licensed Adobe’s Flash Lite, along with Adobe’s Adobe Reader LE software for the Windows Mobile platform. Interesting that Steve Jobs recently stated that Adobe’s Flash lite isn’t good enough for the iPhone.

Via InfoWorld

James Kendrick over at jkOnTheRun has been posting his experiences on his new Fujitsu P1620. As a P1610 owner, I've been interested to read about the similarities and differences in the platforms. James ran into a problem on the P1620 with the touch screen going dead and unresponsive. After realizing that the P1620 uses a USB touch screen digitizer, he went into the device properties and disabled "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power." As he rightly acknowledges, there is no reason why the touch screen should ever be allowed to turn off. That's just silly. Uncheck the box, and voila - problem solved. Read James' post for the full details.

I have run into this same problem with other USB based devices in systems, so if you have a feature that seems to die intermittently, check to see if it has this setting in the device properties in Device Manager.

via jkOnTheRun

There was a post yesterday on the IEBlog talking about some of the changes in the new version of Internet Explorer 8.  There are quite a few changes that I feel would be useful, but one that I don't agree with..

Why take away my inline auto complete?

We’ve cut the inline auto complete feature in the Address Bar in IE8. This option was disabled by default in IE7 and has been removed from the Address Bar in IE8. However the advanced option that controls the behavior will still exist, because other parts of Windows will still use this functionality if the user chooses to enable it – just not the Address Bar.

I use that all the time - Firefox has this ability - and I believe in the release notes it says it's enhanced...  Is it time to make the switch for good???  If they take away my auto complete, it might be...

Vista Capable became a phrase in flux with the release of Microsoft’s new operating system last year. Lack of drivers, graphics issues, things that didn’t work, and all sorts of headaches were cropping up daily. I criticized Asus and Microsoft for sticking a Vista Capable sticker on the Asus R2H at the time.

Well, now there is a class action lawsuit afoot that is challenging the entire Vista Capable designation on behalf of consumers. The lawsuit has been given sanction and is going forward. It turns out there are some pretty damaging emails from Microsoft employees about this. The New York Times is running a story on this today that contains some of the info, and also points to the internal Microsoft squabbling that occured in the run up to the difficulties. Most damaging are emails that make it look like Microsoft fudged things to help Intel meet some earnings targets with the decidely not Vista Capable 915 chipset.

Who knows how this will play out, but it ain’t gonna be pretty.

I updated the earlier post with this info, but this is worth another post on its own. The Beta of Internet Explorer 8 is now available. (Download at this link.) Keep in mind this is a Beta and targeted at developers.

I’ve downloaded it am running it in a virtual machine at the moment with no issues to report so far. Though I don’t have much time for testing it out.

Everybody into the cloud. It sure seems like it today. On the heels of the Google Gears announcment, Microsoft is announcing that the Office Live Workspace Beta is now live worldwide (albeit in English only). Users can share and access their data online and Microsoft is rolling out several new features.

Office Live Workspace lets people organize documents and projects online and work on them from almost any computer. People can save more than 1,000 Microsoft Office documents to one place online,* and access and share them via the Web. They can view and comment on documents in the browser as well as create simple Web lists and Web notes, and share documents in real time through integration with Microsoft SharedView.

Microsoft has also added several new features to Office Live Workspace, based in part on feedback from early beta participants:

• Activity panel. A new activity panel shows all the activity in a workspace at a glance.
  
• Notifications. People can now receive e-mail notifications about changes made to their workspaces or documents.
  
• Direct links. People can now bookmark their workspace or a workspace item via a unique URL in a browser window.
  
• Multi-file upload. People can now upload several files simultaneously by simply dragging and dropping from their desktop.
  
• Improved sharing. New sharing functionality includes an easier user interface and auto-completion of e-mail addresses.

Check out more or sing up for the beta here.