The Windows Blog

Windows Phone designer is named one of country’s most creative

Michael Stroh — Wed, 16 May 2012 19:20:00 GMT

The June issue of Fast Company carries the magazine’s latest picks for its annual 100 Most Creative People in Business, which celebrates “innovators who dare to think differently.” This year one of our own made the coveted list: Windows Phone designer Jeff Fong. Check out his write-up.

Fong, 43, joined the Windows Phone design team three years ago and has been one of the leading thinkers behind Windows Phone’s signature look and the set of underlying design principles known as “Metro."

Trained as an illustrator at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., Fong says he always had an interest in combining traditional media with technology. In 1993 he won an internship at Microsoft and was assigned to work on two of the company’s early multimedia efforts aimed at kids—Creative Writer and Fine Artist. He hasn’t looked back since.

Over the years Fong has worked on everything from an interactive gardening guide to Windows Media Center and the Zune music player, two other Microsoft products often praised for their fresh and distinctive designs. After the company made the decision to reboot its smartphone effort, Fong was tapped to help lead a team to define the look and feel of what would become Windows Phone, turning to airport and subway signage as one source of inspiration.

I caught up with Fong last week for a quick Q&A on Windows Phone and design.

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The design of Windows Phone—and its influence on other high-profile Microsoft products like Windows 8—has been getting a lot of attention lately, including stories in Bloomberg Businessweek and the New York Times. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak also recently gushed about his “beautiful” new Windows Phone. Some folks seem genuinely surprised that Microsoft could design something like this. Are you?

A lot of people come with preconceived notions about Microsoft. There’s always been good design here. But I think the stuff that we’ve done previously has been mostly expected. The thing we did with Windows Phone is we came out with a design that is unexpected. It’s not like anything else you see out there. That change in direction is the thing that’s bringing the attention I think.

What is the “Metro” design philosophy? Can you boil it down into a sentence or two?

Without going deep into the principles, we wanted to find a way to present content in the most clear, direct, and honest way possible. Really that’s the heart of it.

It’s certainly a big break from the look and design of other smartphones I see out there.

There’s a tendency to make things look kind of pretty. And the way you make things look pretty is by adding decorative elements like drop shadows, reflections, glassy surfaces, and things like that. To me, it’s a distraction. One of my favorite examples is when you go to a museum, a lot of times the frame of the painting actually feels more important than the painting itself. It’s the same idea here: When you start adding other things on top of the content, it’s actually taking your attention away from it. Stripping away complexity is really relevant today in our very busy lives. I want information to be presented in a way that’s really easy for you to consume.

You spent a bunch of time working on Windows Media Center, a popular Windows desktop feature designed for connecting PCs to TVs. Was it difficult going from a big screen to a small one?

The thing I like about what we’re doing now is having touch surfaces for direct interaction, versus TV and a remote control. There’s a lot more nuance in that interaction, and we spend a lot of time thinking about the gestures and how the UI [user interface] responds. There’s something kind of magical when you touch something and it just responds.

Speaking of responding, people often mention how much they like the subtle animations found throughout Windows Phone. Are those just for decoration?

It’s storytelling. We’re taking you on a journey from Start. Motion brings a sense of depth and life and makes you feel like the phone is responding to you. We also use motion to enhance your perception of speed. For example, we often start with an initial fast motion and then we slow it down, so what you notice more, mentally, is that initial burst of speed. It makes our software feel really responsive to our customers, and I think that’s delightful.

I saw a report last week arguing smartphones may be the fastest spreading technology in history. How will the Windows Phone I carry in my pocket 10 years from now be different?

I don’t know, and I think that’s what makes it so fun. [laughs] But I think the biggest shift that’s happened over the last few years is how connected everything is and I don’t think we’ve pushed the limits of that connectedness, whether it’s technology-to-technology or person-to-person. I think there’s a lot of really interesting opportunities to explore.

Where do you draw inspiration from when you get stuck on a design problem?

Right now the thing that really fascinates me is architecture. I see a lot of parallels between what we do and how an architect thinks about a space. And the other thing that’s really an inspiration is the great designers we have in this studio. We have just awesome designers here. When all else fails, we have a brainstorming session. There’s nothing like just talking to other really smart, amazing people to get past a mental block.

What will you be doing in 10 years?

The great things about Microsoft is there’s always some new technology to work on. Since I’ve been here, I went from floppy disks to CD-ROMs to the web to TV to devices to phones. There’s no way 10 years ago I would’ve been able to say I’m going to be working on smartphones. To me the fun part is just combining technology with design to bring really amazing consumer experiences.

Now Recruiting for Weyland Industries: Internet Explorer Partners with Fox for “Prometheus” Movie

Ryan Gavin — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:22:36 GMT

NOW HIRING. In preparation for the upcoming film Prometheus (in theaters on June 8), Weyland Industries is accepting applicants to join the crew of the Project Prometheus spaceship. Today, the Internet Explorer team is proud to announce our partnership with Fox Studios to create the Project Prometheus Training Center — designed entirely in HTML5 — giving fans the chance to demonstrate they are capable of being a crew member on the Prometheus ship.

The Training Center hosts a series of online physical and cognitive assessments that will test your ability to be a functioning member of the Project Prometheus team, including testing emotional and intelligence quotients, spatial relations, agility, and even your ability to withstand 46 G’s. The top performers will be featured, and every day we will highlight one “Elite Applicant” that has top performing test results across all five assessments. We know there are Prometheus fans that can’t wait for the summer blockbuster release (those of us on the IE team included!), and we think the Training Center provides fans a fun way to jump into the world of Weyland Industries and Project Prometheus.

The HTML5 experience leans heavily upon jQuery for the UI and controls, and the team even created a special 3D library for the Spatial Relations and Prefrontal Cortex Assessments to import features such as 3D models, lighting, hit testing and camera rotation. The code library will be available for download on our Internet Explorer channel on GitHub in the coming weeks.

“By partnering with the Internet Explorer team, we were able to create an online experience that makes visitors part of the Prometheus experience. The HTML5 and hardware accelerated capabilities of Internet Explorer 9 gave us the power we needed to provide amazingly realistic mental and physical challenges that bring the Training Center to life,” said Ira Rubenstein, EVP Digital at Twentieth Century Fox.

Since the introduction of Internet Explorer 9, one of our big focuses on the IE team has been to create rich and compelling online experiences showcasing the power of HTML5. From our launch of the popular game Cut the Rope, to creating interactive music videos, and highlighting futuristic graphic novels with Brandon Generator, we’re continuously looking to drive the web forward and push the envelope with regards to what can be developed in HTML5. Working with Fox on the Project Prometheus Training Center gave us the opportunity to build our interactive HTML5 content on top of the rich narrative from the Prometheus movie.

We built the Project Prometheus assessments so you can use any futuristic browser you like – though “Weyland Industries recommends” using the latest version of Internet Explorer. When using Internet Explorer 9, you will have the opportunity to participate in preferred candidate assessments reserved exclusively for IE users. These preferred assessments will boost your overall score, giving you a competitive edge to place in the top scoring percentile of those who are accepted to Project Prometheus.

Do you have what it takes to keep your head at 46 G’s? Good luck!

Ryan Gavin, General Manager, Internet Explorer

Look What is New With Lenovo: Introducing the Latest Laptops in the ThinkPad Line

Leigha Anderson — Tue, 15 May 2012 18:11:52 GMT

Today, Lenovo is announcing updates to their line of laptops that are built to handle all the work that you can throw at them. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon is a leader in the business category of Ultrabooks and the ThinkPad Classic L, X, T, and W Series laptops have all had refreshes that build upon the performance, great battery life, and productivity that Lenovo’s laptops are known for.

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon weighs less than three pounds and beats Ultrabook specifications. Lenovo understands that it can be a hassle to wait for your laptop battery to charge, so they armed this Ultrabook with Lenovo RapidCharge which charges up to 80% battery in just 30 minutes. With built in 3G you have the ability to access the web from practically anywhere without being tethered to your Wi-Fi network. This laptop is a great choice for business pros who are out and about or travel frequently because it won’t break your back when being toted around in your bag and you have 24/7 access to the internet, email, and corporate networks.

The ThinkPad Classic L, X, T, and W have all been privy to some solid upgrades that are representative of the quality and care that are trademark Lenovo. Purchase one of these laptops and you will reap the benefits of your choice of the latest 3rd Generation Intel Core Processor and Lenovo Enhanced Experience 3.0 with RapidBoot technology on selected models. This innovative work from Lenovo will boot your laptop up to 40 percent faster than a typical Windows 7 computer. If web conferencing is a large component of your 9-5, then make sure you check out the advanced video and calling features.

Pictured below: Lenovo ThinkPad X230

If you are looking to take one of these laptops to the next level make sure you investigate adding a Solid State Drive (SSD). All of these ThinkPad models have the option to include a 250GB self-encrypting SSD. This is a great storage solution if you want extra protection for sensitive files and increased performance and reliability than the alternative Hard Disk Drive.

Lenovo will start to roll out these laptops for purchase in June. Lenovo was gracious enough to send me the gorgeous light and small ThinkPad X230 to take for a test drive, so stay tuned because I will be sharing my impressions in a future blog post. This will be my first hands on experience with a Lenovo (many of my coworkers have them), so I am anxious to be able to join club of Lenovo enthusiasts.

Now in Marketplace: the AboutOne family organizer

Michael Stroh — Tue, 15 May 2012 17:24:00 GMT

Life in a modern-day family practically requires a master’s degree in management. Talk about information overload: There are doctor’s appointments, class parties, mom’s nights out, piano lessons, details of the Disney vacation, and all kinds of other stuff to track.

Enter AboutOne, a family organizer that offers a way to corral the chaos. Download it now

The free app—currently exclusive to Windows Phone—is designed to be a one-stop family organizer and a companion to AboutOne’s web service. The app makes it easy to store notes, kids artwork, store receipts, health stats, emergency info, and all kinds of other domestic paperwork and data so it’s organized and available whenever you need it. Another nice touch: the app is password-protected in case you ever lose your phone.

I’m only scratching the surface of all the features and scenarios where AboutOne comes in handy. The AboutOne blog has more of the scoop.

Tech Tuesday Live Twitter Chat – Lenovo - #winchat

Brandon LeBlanc — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:18:27 GMT

Kristina is out this week on (well-deserved) vacation so I’m stepping in to post about today’s Tech Tuesday Live Twitter Chat! Kristina has been really enjoying her Tangerine-colored Lenovo IdeaPad U300s – which she blogged about here. She says it is one of the best PCs she has ever used because it feels specifically made just for her hands and is very durable. Matter a fact - she mentioned she spilled a cup of water on her U300s on a plane to Brussels on Friday. And the U300s is working fine. Kristina’s IdeaPad U300s brings me to today’s Tech Tuesday Live Twitter Chat guest: Lenovo.

Lenovo will be talking about a variety of their great product offerings today during the chat. Whether it’s their tough ThinkPad X1 or their new U310 IdeaPad, they offer a range of great PCs that suit the needs of a variety of discerning customers. If you really want thin and light PCs, then you are in luck.

During today’s chat, we’ll be giving away the Lenovo IdeaPad U310 weighing in at under 2 lbs., super slim and with up to 8 hours of battery life – it’s a great PC for someone looking for style and functionality.

To participate in the Tech Tuesday Live Twitter Chat:

Join us from 12-1 PT (3-4 ET) on Twitter
Follow the hashtag #winchat
Follow @windows, @kristinalibby, @brandonleblanc, @daniellaycock, and @windowsblog to make sure you get the whole picture.
Answer Q1-Q5 to be eligible for the grand prize. Full legal terms and conditions here.

Note we will only be talking about the outlined topic each week and we will not be answering questions outside those topics. Questions for this week may include: How much does the Lenovo U310 weigh? Where can I purchase this PC model? How much memory does it have?

Now in Marketplace: LinkedIn 1.0

Michael Stroh — Mon, 14 May 2012 16:12:00 GMT

The official LinkedIn app for Windows Phone just hit Marketplace. Download it now

The free app lets you tap all the most popular features of the popular business social network. Search for jobs, see real-time updates from your connections, stay up-to-date with LinkedIn professional groups, and follow company and industry news.

LinkedIn also makes great use of Windows Phone-only features: Live Tile notifications let you know about new messages, invitations, and LinkedIn Today updates. You can also stay on top of selected professional groups by pinning them as a secondary Live Tile.

The LinkedIn blog has more on the app.

New Dell TV Campaign Featuring Internet Explorer

Ryan Gavin — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:10:19 GMT

This Sunday, Dell launched a new TV commercial in the US, and we’re excited that they’ve chosen to feature Internet Explorer. The ad does a nice job highlighting just how central the PC and the web have become in our family lives – bringing folks together to enjoy a game like Cut the Rope, view photos, or listen to music as a family.

Dell has always been a great partner and we’re honored that they have chosen to recommend IE along with some beautiful Dell PC’s.

“Surfing the web is the number one thing people do on their Dell PCs, so we want to ensure they have the best experience possible,” said Alastair MacPhail, marketing director at Dell. “We love how Internet Explorer offers a fast, fluid and safe browsing experience for our customers and think it helps people get straight to the sites they love.”

We hope you enjoy the spot!

-Ryan Gavin, General Manager, Internet Explorer

The Wrap: Samsung Omnia M, sunny Lumia news, et tu Siri?

Michael Stroh — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:12:00 GMT

Here are my favorite Windows Phone stories of the week. What about you? Drop me a comment and let me know what’s on your mind.

Samsung launching Omnia M in Europe

Samsung has been busy lately. On Monday they unveiled the Focus 2, a $50 Windows Phone headed to AT&T on May 20 (check out Ben Rudolph’s hands-on review of this slick-looking phone). But it wasn’t Samsung’s final Windows Phone surprise this week.

Today the company also announced the Omnia M, a new Windows Phone initially headed for Europe. The Omnia M sports a four-inch AMOLED display and a “minimalist, compact” design. As CNET reports, it also comes with some neat social features including Family Story, a cloud-based service that lets families swap messages, videos, and photos, and ChatON, a cross-platform chat and messaging app.

Can you see me now?

Cell phone call quality understandably gets a lot of attention from engineers and shoppers alike. But the reality is that many people these days spend more time looking at their smartphone than talking on it. That raises the question: Which smartphone screen is easiest on the eyes, especially outdoors?

The folks at DisplayMate Technologies, a firm specializing in measuring and calibrating display screens, decided to investigate. Their conclusion? As The Verge reported this week, the Nokia Lumia 900’s screen was the most legible in strong indirect sunlight, edging out the iPhone 4, Samsung Galaxy S, and other popular models. Chalk it up to Nokia’s ClearBlack Display technology. If you’re curious how that works, check out this nice explainer on Nokia Conversations, the company’s official blog.

Looking for the perfect Mom’s Day gift? Try Windows Phone, says People

Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Graduation Day are all just around the corner, and you know what that means: Yep, it’s gift guide season. And we’ve noticed that Windows Phone is showing up on many of them. People magazine featured Nokia’s Lumia 900—a phone mom-to-be Kourtney Kardashian has taken a shine to—in its Mother’s Day gift guide. Family Circle, meanwhile, recommended the Lumia 710 as the perfect choice for dads and grads. Playboy magazine this month also singled out Windows Phone and the Lumia 900 as one of its hot buys of the spring—but you’ll have to go look that one up yourself.

Hot apps: Gerbil Physics, Home Depot, iStunt 2, WeeMee, SniperBoy

Microsoft’s Laura Foy yesterday posted her latest Marketplace favorites—including the Xbox LIVE title iStunt 2, my current addiction. Take a look.

New apps on the way for Lumia phones

Here’s one more reason to pick up one of Nokia’s award-winning Lumia handsets: The company announced this week that a slew of hot new apps are on the way for the phone, including Angry Birds Space. Nokia Conversations has the full story on the title lineup, some of which will be exclusive to the phone. Which ones are you most excited about?

And finally: Et tu Siri?

Last month Apple’s beloved co-founder Steve “Woz” Wozniak heaped praise on Windows Phone, calling his new cyan Nokia Lumia 900 “beautiful” and his second-favorite phone after his iPhone (c’mon, what did you expect the guy to say?).

Well, now the iPhone itself has weighed in. As WMPowerUser reports today, if you ask Siri, the iPhone’s built-in “intelligent personal assistant,” what the best cell phone ever is, this is her data-driven reply.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Kristina Libby — Fri, 11 May 2012 12:53:35 GMT

Every week, I meet a lot of inspiring women in my job – both people who I work with and people who I meet along the way because of what I do. Just this past week we hosted a variety of workshops around the country and some very cool inspiring journalists and bloggers touched me with their stories. They shared what they do from running a family to managing a business but what struck me was the impact these women make in their communities at large.

One such woman, Leticia Barr of Tech Savvy Mama went to Haiti last year to assist other women in giving them the tools to voice their stories. This November she’ll return to teach and mentor on the blogging tools which allow their voices to travel even further (#bloggers4haiti). Meanwhile in Minneapolis, I connected with moms like Mimi Baker of Woven By Words who is raising four children, working full time and still finds time for a daily blog that connects her with the community. She does it all while looking stunning, I might add.

Mother’s Day Workshop in DC

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Over the last few weeks to celebrate mom’s and the women who inspire us -- we’ve shared a few fun tips around how to create free gifts from mom for Mother’s Day. You can create a fast digital card in Paint like the one below. Check out our Facebook page for a step by step how to. Then you can even go one step further and create a digital photo album for Mom, like this one, by taking your Paint image and adding other great images for your mom in a SkyDrive folder. You may also want to create a fun video of favorite clips and images using Windows Live Movie Maker.

Who inspires you? For me it’s these women and of course my mom. So, why not stop for a moment and say: Thanks to the Moms and the women that we know who inspire us.

The possibilities are endless- so go ahead, get creative and mostly don’t forget to #saythankstomom.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Memory Profiling - The Heap Summary View

Pratap Lakshman — Thu, 10 May 2012 16:24:11 GMT

In an earlier post we looked at how we can gain broad insight into an application scenario’s memory characteristics and how the graph and markers drew our attention to ranges of execution for further analyses. Recall that in the memory leak diagnosis case we chose to analyze only the time range over which we observed the increase in memory usage. Indeed, that is a key first step to the analysis: filtering the memory activity data by a time range. The Heap Summary view is the result of such filtering, and represents the population of the heap during the chosen time range.

Heap Summary View

The Heap Summary view presents, in tabular form, a demographic analysis of the population of the heap.

In human population demographics, data collection happens through a census as well as through a continuous update to registries that track births, deaths, migration of place of residence and the like. The data collection in the case of heap population demographics is no different. “Births” map to allocations, “deaths” map to objects’ memory collected by the GC, and “migration of place of residence” maps to the migration of objects between the Gen0 region of the heap and the Gen1 region. A census of the heap at the start of time range identifies all incumbent objects (i.e. that were in existence). Births, deaths, and migrations are updated continuously, and a final census at the end of the time range identifies all the objects that were retained. In order to have a consistent terminology, we refer to the incumbent objects at the start as objects that were “retained” at the start.

Managed Silverlight Visual elements (i.e. objects that go into the Silverlight visual tree) are not just plain old managed objects. These might be facades with backing native-implementations holding native memory and during the course of execution might create and hold on to texture memory. Casual use of such elements in code can even lead to subtle leaks. From this perspective, subsequent analysis can be made easier if Silverlight Visual elements were tracked and reported separately from plain old managed objects. And this is precisely how they are tracked and reported through the Heap Summary view. Continuing with the demographic analogy, such classification has precedent in social demographics where human populations have been classified on ethnicity.

Armed with this context, let us study the following Heap Summary view from the memory leak diagnosis case:

The shaded region across the graph and markers indicates the time range used as the filer.

The census at the start reports 5576 instances of managed type objects accounting for about 283 KB and 26 instances of Silverlight Visual elements accounting for about 13 KB. In terms of incumbency the plain old managed objects dominate.

The churn happening within the selected time range is reported as 10615 instances allocated (births) and 11590 instances collected (deaths), accounting for about 23 MB each. The counts and sizes are somewhat balanced and cancel each other out to an extent. And this is borne out by the census at the end for the managed objects; the census at the end reports 4601 instances of managed type objects accounting for about 223 KB, which is just a little lower than what we had at the start. However, it also reports 69 instances of Silverlight Visual elements accounting for about 4 MB now (up from 13KB at the start).

When we correlate this table with the graph, our suspicion is drawn towards the Silverlight visuals. Why did their count go up, and why are they accounting for so much more memory? Within the filtered time range, memory usage has been steadily increasing too. Could we be leaking memory? Could we be leaking some part of visual tree itself? And there even seem to be images being loaded along the way; might we be leaking their texture memory too? We wonder.

Clearly, the next lead to follow is to get more visibility into what are those “Retained Silverlight Visuals at End”.

Summary

The Heap Summary view presents, in tabular form, a demographic analysis of the population of the heap. Interpreting the data in the table and correlating it with the graph and markers by itself can be used to make educated guesses at what could potentially be the problem, but equally importantly it serves to inform the next step in the performance investigation, as we shall see.

Six Tips to Make SkyDrive your Cloud Backpack

Anand Babu — Thu, 10 May 2012 16:00:00 GMT

Earlier this year, we shared a few tips for students to work together with SkyDrive and Office on important projects—without compromising formatting or features. We heard great feedback and we look forward to sharing winners from our Collaboration Challenge soon!

Increasingly, we see students and teachers use services like SkyDrive to store everything in one place for easy sharing and access anywhere on campus. We call this your “cloud backpack”. In this post, Mark Grimaldi on the SkyDrive product marketing team will share a few tips to use SkyDrive this way.

- Anand Babu, Group Product Marketer, SkyDrive

If you’re a student, it’s the same routine every day. You gather everything you need—your notebook for class, binder full of handouts, readings or homework assignments, textbooks, laptop, smartphone and maybe even your tablet. And of course your power adapters. Then you stuff it all into your backpack—everything you think you might need throughout the day—because you may not be back home until it’s time for bed.

Surely, there must be a better way to have everything you might need without hauling it around with you everywhere you go.

Well, there is. With SkyDrive, you get a “cloud backpack” where you can store, create and access all of your documents, notes, photos or files from anywhere. Our new SkyDrive at School page shows how anyone can get started with a cloud backpack, but we wanted to share a few extra tips to help you go “all in.”

Tip #1: Upgrade your notebook and put it in the cloud

OneNote 2010 is a powerful note-taking application that’s great for school. With OneNote, you can organize your notes by your classes, instantly search through them, draw graphs or diagrams, and even record your lectures. If you’re not using OneNote yet, check out these tips on the OneNote Blog to get started.

To make OneNote even more useful for you, connect it to SkyDrive and try these suggestions:

Study from anywhere

By saving your notebook on SkyDrive, you can access it from any computer (even a Mac!) using the OneNote Web App. You can also study on-the-go since OneNote is also available on pretty much every mobile device.

To save your OneNote notebook to SkyDrive, just click File and then Share to save it on the web.

Copy things to OneNote

Whether for class or a research project, you can send printouts, screenshots or web clippings right to OneNote to stay organized.

Find a helpful website for your research paper? Just highlight what you want from Internet Explorer and right click Send to OneNote 2010 to insert it into your notebook. You can send a whole webpage, a paragraph or image. OneNote will even show where you copied the content from so you can easily cite and reference it later.

Have a PDF or some other file from your professor? You can Print directly to your OneNote notebook and save it next to your notes from the same lecture.

To take a snapshot of anything on your screen, press Windows + S on your keyboard. You can also drop and drag an entire file into OneNote from your desktop.

By default, OneNote always asks where you want new notes to go. You can set a default preference by clicking File, Options, and then Send to OneNote. If you select a notebook that’s synced to SkyDrive, you can rest assured that anything you send to OneNote will be available anywhere, automatically.

Share your notes with classmates without a photocopier

With all of your notes in the cloud, you can easily share them with your friends and classmates. From SkyDrive.com, just right click your notebook and select Share.

If you want, you can even give them access to your notebook so that they can add their own notes. Now everyone can work together in the same notebook, and studying for finals just got a little easier.

Tip #2: Never be without your important files

Odds are, you’re either working on an important project right now or will be shortly. Well, SkyDrive can help keep you more organized and make sure that you’re never without the files that you need.

When you install SkyDrive for Windows or Mac, you get a SkyDrive folder on your computer. Everything you save or copy there is automatically synced to your SkyDrive. So move your spreadsheets, downloaded articles, and everything else you’ve gathered. No matter what happens to your computer, you can easily get to your stuff from any web browser.

Tip #3: Work with Office anywhere

SkyDrive does more than store your files. It also works with free Office Web Apps so you can view, edit and print from any web browser.

If you’re working on a Word document on your laptop at the library and your battery dies, you can easily pick up right where you left off just by logging into SkyDrive.com at the computer lab. If you get inspired on the bus ride back home, you can update your document using the Office Hub on your Windows Phone. You can rest assured that your formatting remains intact.

Any changes you make will be waiting to sync when you plug in your computer back at your dorm room.

What’s more, SkyDrive also keeps track of the various versions of your Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. So don’t worry about renaming your files V1, V2… V14a. Just work in the documents saved in your SkyDrive folder and SkyDrive will take care of the rest.

Tip #4: Never leave something at home again

You’ve been there before. You’re at the computer lab ready to print out your paper and you forgot your USB drive. Or you’re away from your computer and you realize you didn’t email your TA your homework assignment. Or maybe you’ve just met someone at a company you’d like to work for and you want to send them your résumé, but you won’t be home for hours.

These aren’t a problem anymore. Even if you forget to put something in your SkyDrive folder—or never thought you’d need it there—you can still access it from any computer. SkyDrive for Windows lets you fetch any file on your personal computer (as long as it’s online) from SkyDrive.com.

Once you find that paper to print, you can click Copy to SkyDrive and use Word Web App to view, print and share.

Tip #5: Scan papers to SkyDrive using your phone

From handouts to class readings, old notes or recent assignments, you have so much paper to carry around and keep organized. Why not scan and upload everything to SkyDrive?

Use a smartphone app like Handyscan for Windows Phone (shown below) or Docscan for iPhone to create PDF versions of all of your handouts, homework, or even lecture notes from your friends. You can save the files directly to SkyDrive and they’ll be synced across your devices.

If you want to do more – like add comments or keep scans alongside class notes, you can import PDFs and other files into OneNote.

Tip #6: Access files on the go

USB drives are easily left behind. Emailing yourself documents makes it easy to lose track of the latest version or crowds your inbox.

With SkyDrive, you can access everything, all around campus, from any web browser. You can also use the SkyDrive app for Windows Phone, iPhone and iPad, or Android apps—no matter where you are.

Bringing a cloud backpack to every student and teacher

While we hope these tips are helpful, we know it will take some time before everyone upgrades to a “cloud backpack”. Here are a few ways you can help:

If you are a teacher, share class materials or class notes directly using SkyDrive. You can also provide feedback on assignments and papers through shared documents.

If you are a developer, use our APIs to integrate SkyDrive into applications that students use and love.

And if you are a student, what tips did we miss? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter how you’re using a cloud backpack today. We can help spread the word!

Mark Grimaldi,
Product Marketing Manager, SkyDrive

Hot from HP: New PC Offerings for Business

Leigha Anderson — Thu, 10 May 2012 14:50:23 GMT

HP has announced their new lineup of Ultrabooks, notebooks, desktops, displays and thin clients that are all built for business. These PCs are designed to handle the specific needs and challenges facing businesses today, and in the future. I have a sweet spot in my heart for small business owners (my mom has owned her small business since 1995), so I know it’s important to have great PCs and these two new models by HP are perfect for the busy small business professional.

HP wants to help small businesses become more efficient, tech savvy and successful. One important step in this mission is the debut of their new HP ProBook s-series. This laptop line offers the durability and connectivity needed for work day in and day out.

The ProBook s-series is available in four sizes: 13.3-, 14- or 15.6-inch diagonal HD display or a 17.3-inch diagonal HD+ display. A no compromise PC, it is equipped with a media card reader, HDMI, and USB 3.0 ports in all models. HP DuraFinish keeps the aluminum casing smudge-resistant and wear-resistant for an always new appearance. The ProBook s-series also has great HD video conferencing capabilities for those businesses that want to reach people in Sacramento or Shanghai.

The HP EliteBook 2170p is the ultimate travel companion for small business professionals. With its 11.6-inch diagonal HD display it can easily fit into bags or backpacks, plus is has a backlit keyboard for typing away in dimly lit planes or hotel rooms. Staying connected is easy even without WiFi thanks to the optional integrated HP Mobile Broadband featuring 3G and 4G LTE, which allows for easy access to the internet, email, and networks.

If you are looking for ways to add a little life to your small business or to put a smile on your employee’s face then look no further than these stunners from HP. They offer business grade features, coupled with striking designs that make them ideal laptops at work or at home. These PCs are perfect for the small business professional who wants great performance and even better style.

Move to the Head of the Class with Hot New PCs from HP: The ENVY Ultrabook and ENVY SpectreXT

Leigha Anderson — Wed, 09 May 2012 22:32:20 GMT

Thinking about what to buy the graduate this June? Today, HP has announced a flock of new PCs and devices just in time for graduation. I love them all, but picked the ENVY Ultrabook and ENVY Spectre^XT because they have some great features for students working on summer internship or getting ready to head to school in the fall. Having just graduated from college last June, I know durability and portability are very important, but so is rocking a PC that looks great.

The new ENVY Ultrabook is a stunner in black and built to handle the four (or sometimes five) grinding years of college without breaking a sweat. The 15.6” version is a mere 19.8 mm thin and weighs around four pounds; I can almost guarantee that it will be easier to throw in your backpack than your Biology textbook.

Speaking from experience, I can attest to how difficult finding a good study spot in the library can be (especially during finals week), let alone finding an outlet to charge your laptop. The ENVY Ultrabook offers up to nine hours of battery life, meaning that you can be on campus from 8 to 5 without having to go hunting for power. Having great study music is a must have and the ENVY packs Beats Audio.

Are you anxious to get your hands on to this striking PC? The good news is that you will not have to wait long. The ENVY Ultrabook is available today starting at just $749 for the 14 inch and $799 for the 15.6 inch.

Having to wait for your PC to start up at the beginning of class can be a hassle; especially you’re your professor launches into their lecture the moment class starts. The ENVY Spectre^XT promises super-fast startup and shutdown times, so you will the first one out the door after class, and ready to go right when the next class starts.

The ENVY Spectre^XTshed the Gorilla Glass (a prominent feature on its predecessor, the ENVY 14 Spectre) and opted for a sleek brushed-metal body. This beauty is 14.5 mm thin and a feathery 3.07 pounds, making it ideal for students who are on the go all the time (AKA all students). Are you wondering if it has Beats Audio like the ENVY Ultrabook? Not to worry, HP has you covered because the Spectre^XT comes with Beats Audio as well.

Starting at $999 the Spectre^XT will hit store shelves sometime in June—stay tuned for the actual date it will launch.

Throughout college your PC becomes your best friend and lifeline to family and friends. It was my social link to stay connected to my family and friends across the country via Skype and Facebook (good thing the ENVY and Spectre^XT have built in webcams), but it is also the tool that you must have to aid in earning your degree. A PC is more than a back to school essential—it is a tool to unlock your future! For more information on these PCs check out HP ENVY Laptops and make sure you buy a PC that best fits your needs and your life.

Sweet Basil Shares Her Thoughts on Photo Sending in Hotmail

Kristina Libby — Wed, 09 May 2012 21:28:02 GMT

Carrian is the foodie behind Sweet Basil, the food blog. Sweet Basil is all about getting everyone back into the kitchen where good food is approachable and where friends and family can build healthy and happy relationships. Carrian has been writing Sweet Basil for about three years and is a wife, and mother to two girls. Carrian enjoys spending her time seeing new places, trying new restaurants, and just relaxing with the family.

Tell me, why do you hate emailing photos? I have multiple reasons – the time it takes me to search through my photos to select the correct ones, attach them one-by-one only to be told that my email is too big after only three pictures, and then have to wait an hour while the email is sent. And then I have to repeat the process.

As a mother of two children, a food blogger, wife, and human being, I just do not have the time to sit at the computer and wait to send an email with pictures of what's happening in our neck of the woods to 15 friends and family members that live far away. Or, for example, if you’re planning an event such as a wedding or baby shower and you’re trying so share your ideas and “look” of the event with other people. Tasks like these take too long.

I love, love, love the photo sharing capabilities on Microsoft SkyDrive. They are wonderful. I love how easy it is for me to just drag and drop my photos into SkyDrive directly from my pictures folder. You don’t have to use an attachment box that comes up where you have to remember the crazy photo sequence number, unless that is not an issue for you. You see, I'm a bit lazy when it comes to labeling each picture. If they are photos of family and friends, I don't label the photos. However, I always label food just in case I forget what the dish was.

Instead, you just open SkyDrive, open your pictures folder, select all of the photos you want to use, and drag them into your photo folder in SkyDrive. Doesn’t that sound easy? Then, all I have to do is quickly (if I choose and sometimes I choose not to out of pure laziness) label my new photo folder and then share it with all of my friends and family members. It’s as easy as sending them a link in an email.

So, here's my last example. The pictures are not great. They were taken on my phone, but now that I've done this once you better believe I have plans to surprise my husband with a new version every Christmas. Anyway, this year I took photos of my girls saying, "We Love You" but in a pretty darn cute way. I stuck them on a tiny chunk of wood and my hubs has it hanging at his desk at work. I was able to quickly show the rest of the family what I was doing using SkyDrive. I'm excited for next year and to take real photos instead of the phone in a last minute moment of inspiration.

I know I never would have shared these cute little images with the family if I hadn't been able to do it in literally less than a minute thanks to the help of SkyDrive…lovely, quite lovely.

Tech Tuesday Live Twitter Chat – Samsung #winchat

Kristina Libby — Tue, 08 May 2012 16:32:28 GMT

I love the new line of light and thin PCs that are on the market lately. As someone who always seems to be on the go, it is great to find beautiful, durable PCs that can slip into my purse without adding any weight and that last all day long. Samsung has a great collection of ultra-portable PCs that are perfect for the busy traveler like me, or the person who just wants an awesome PC.

Samsungtweets is joining us during this week’s Tech Tuesday #winchat to discuss just that and to giveaway a Samsung Series 5 Ultrabook™. This PC is a no compromise experience with a built in disc drive in the 14” model, the fast performance of a solid state drive with the massive storage of a hard disk drive and its ultra-sleek in one technologically advanced package. Not only that but this PC has plenty of connective ports, a full size memory card reader and boots in just 20 seconds while waking from sleep in 2 seconds. Finally, it has Wireless Display (WiDi) technology that lets this PC sync with a big screen tv via an adapter. Honestly, what more could you ask for?

To participate in the Tech Tuesday Live Twitter Chat:

Join us from 12-1 PT (3-4 ET) on Twitter
Follow the hashtag #winchat
Follow @windows, @kristinalibby, @brandonleblanc, @daniellaycock, and @windowsblog to make sure you get the whole picture.
Answer Q1-Q5 to be eligible for the grand prize. Full legal terms and conditions here.

Note we will only be talking about the outlined topic each week and we will not be answering questions outside those topics. Questions for this week may include: How much does the Samsung Series 5 Ultrabook weigh? Where can I purchase this PC model? How much memory does it have?

Smoked by Windows Phone by the numbers (and new ads!)

Ben Rudolph — Tue, 08 May 2012 16:21:21 GMT

When I kicked off Smoked by Windows Phone at CES in January, I did it with one thing in mind – show the world that Windows Phone is simply faster at the everyday stuff that people do on their smartphones. Since then we’ve seen it in the Microsoft Stores, run by fans, and hosted by Microsoft teams all over the world.

The big takeaway from Smoked is that it’s about showing what Windows Phone can do, not telling people what Windows Phone can do. So rather than write a really long, wordy blog post, I thought that it would be cool to post some of our awesomest (yes, I *still* claim that’s a word) results from around the world.

8,000,000+

The total number of views of Smoked by Windows Phone videos since it kicked off in January.

2

YouTube top 5 most viewed lists in which Smoked videos appeared (“Most Popular from Around the Web – All Categories”, and we’re still in the top 5 on Science & Technology)

95%

Percentage of viewers who liked Smoked videos on YouTube.

36

The number of countries running Smoked by Windows Phone.. Some of my favorites include Hong Kong’s game-show style event, Indonesia’s 50-person mall takeover, Nokia India’s “Blown Away by Lumia”, and the UK’s massive “Dare to Live” campaign that is spanning retail, advertising, the web, and of course, in-person challenges.

50,000+

This represents the number of smartphones that have been Smoked by Windows Phone since CES. A big part of this is the “$1000 Windows Phone Challenge” that the Microsoft Stores have been running since March. Here’s how Windows Phone has fared in-store so far:

98%

Windows Phone’s global win percentage. This includes everything from CES through today.

100,000,000+

The estimated number of people who’ve seen, participated in, or read about Smoked by Windows Phone worldwide. This includes stuff like social and media impressions from our videos and ad buy, as well as media coverage social shares, tweets, and Facebook posts. That’s a LOT of people checking out Windows Phone!

Why stop there if things are going so well? Today we’re introducing a new set of Smoked by Windows Phone ads that you’ll start seeing across your favorite sites. If you’re in a hurry and want to see them all right now, hit our “Faster than Windows Phone?” YouTube playlist. Here’s a sample:

A big thank you to everyone around the world who’s supported Smoked by Windows Phone! None of this would have happened without you (ok, maybe CES, but you know what I mean … ). Everyone on the Windows Phone team is grateful for your support.

Remember to like Windows Phone on Facebook & follow Windows Phone on Twitter. And if you have a Windows Phone (or PC) question or just want to say hi, you can follow me, too!

Scrappin’ Michele – Getting Fit with the Help of SkyDrive!

Kristina Libby — Mon, 07 May 2012 17:13:45 GMT

For the last 16 years, Michele has been helping women find support online for their hobbies and healthy lifestyles. Michele is a mom of 4, CEO of Mom Geek Media and creator of ScrapsofMyGeekLife.com, a blog offering daily commentary, advice, reviews and shared experiences of how her real life and the digital domain connect. She can be found on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest. Michelle is also the inspiration behind my recent attempt at training for a half marathon and losing a bit of weight. Her connection with technology and her tip that tracking leads to success led me to create a SkyDrive folder with an Microsoft Excel spreadsheet used to monitor my distances, weight and times for running. I now access the spreadsheet everywhere from my PC to my Windows Phone and think it’s the best weight loss trick I’ve ever been taught. Thanks Michelle!

Finding the Right Motivation to Run

As a gadget addict, I have found that any time I can find a “tech” way to do something, it makes the task a lot more fun. Reading books is fun. But when I can create a spreadsheet to track all the books I've read and come up with the total number of pages I read every year, now THAT is exciting.

A few years ago, I decided that my family needed to start living a healthier lifestyle. As the Mom of the family, everyone takes the lead from me, so I needed to start with me. For months, I struggled with making the changes, even the small ones. Motivating myself to move more and eat better wasn't easy. That is until I found a “tech” solution.

Running, Tech Style

A friend showed me how he used a combination of Nike+ and a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to track all of his runs. He could look back at the past five years and see all of his runs with their ups and downs. Best of all, he could see how far he had come. I was hooked. I needed to run.

I went out and bought all the Nike+ gear I needed and created my Excel spreadsheet on my Sony VAIO PC that I received as part of the Windows Champions program. With that power group, I created a very simple spreadsheet that tracks my distance and time and stored it on SkyDrive so that I can track it anywhere whether I’m running and glancing down on my phone or entering in my times on my PCs.

From that information, I can create any charts or calculations I need for determining the fastest distance run, my time over time training, etc. while on my Windows 7 PC. When I start to feel like I'm going nowhere with my running, I look at my half marathon training numbers.

Yes, I said half marathon. I went from hating running to completing a half marathon and it all started because I found a way to make running fun for me....”tech” style! When I look at those numbers on my Windows 7 PC or on my phone, I get really excited about running and really proud of what I have accomplished.

This month, I am beginning my training for my second half marathon. My goal is to finish with a better time, so I am comparing my training each week. In the end, I plan to make some pretty charts comparing both races and I will create a scrapbook page and include the charts.

I encourage you to get moving using this combination too! Here are my 7 simple steps to success keeping fit with SkyDrive:

Sign into Skydrive.com with your username and password
Create an Excel spreadsheet
Add columns for date, weight, time, distance run or whatever data point matter to you
Add a row in the bottom to auto-sum the relevant data
Enter in your times, weight, or distance every day
Keep track of your results while on the go with the SkyDrive app for Windows Phone or by going to SkyDrive.com in the mobile internet browser.

Get excited about your success!

Meet the Samsung Focus 2: LTE and beautiful design for only $49.99

Ben Rudolph — Mon, 07 May 2012 13:37:49 GMT

One of the most popular Windows Phone devices of all time is the original Samsung Focus, and for good reason - it was fast, sleek, had a killer Super AMOLED screen, and got great battery life. Since then, Samsung’s released two really great devices in the small-but-sturdy Focus Flash and the thinner-than-a-pencil Focus S. And today they’re following up on those with the brand new Samsung Focus 2, which goes on sale starting May 20^th for only $49.99 (with a two-year service agreement) on AT&T’s lightning fast 4G LTE network.

Samsung was cool enough to get me a Focus 2 about a week ago and having used it around the office, I can tell you that it’s a worthy successor to the original Focus. Whereas the original Focus was long and lean, the Focus 2 is a bit shorter and feels a bit squatter. That may sound like a step backwards in design, but its most definitely not; Samsung has done a great job making the phone really ergonomic and is comfortable to hold, and pocket-friendly to boot. Typing is where the design really shines through, as the curved edges mean no “hotspots” on your hands and helps you avoid cramping fingers (especially if you have big hands like me).

To see what I mean, I took some shots of the original Focus next to the Focus 2:

Spec-wise not a ton has changed from the original Focus, but there are some very notable upgrades. You still get a 4” Super AMOLED display, 5MP camera (which takes VERY good pictures, even better than the original Focus) and 8GB of onboard storage (non-expandable). The Focus 2 also comes with a front-facing VGA camera and, as you can see from the pictures, is available in a beautiful pearl white.

And of course, the Focus 2 works on AT&T’s brand new LTE network. I didn’t get a chance to use the LTE network with my loaner Focus 2 as we don’t yet have LTE here in Redmond; but, having just come from LA where I was able to use LTE on some of my other Windows Phones, I can say that I’m really impressed with the speed it delivers. If you’re used to 3G, you’re going to be blown away by what LTE can do.

If you’re looking for a value-priced phone that gets you top-level features, the Samsung Focus 2 is a great choice. Go check one out starting May 20^th at your local AT&T store!

Remember to like Windows Phone on Facebook & follow Windows Phone on Twitter. And if you have a Windows Phone (or PC) question or just want to say hi, follow me too.

Spending time in the UK with my Sony VAIO SA

Leigha Anderson — Fri, 04 May 2012 22:42:24 GMT

I wrote this blog post a few weeks ago while on a trip to the UK. Enjoy!

Greetings from a Eurostar train traveling from London to Paris at 300 KPH. I have been in London for the past few days visiting the Microsoft UK offices and on this trip I have been spending a lot of quality time with my Sony VAIO SA laptop.

When you travel frequently or are on the go a lot for work - it is critical to have a PC that has enough (or even more) energy than you do. Finding the perfect PC that is optimized for business, yet beautifully designed can prove challenging, but the Sony VIAO SA hits the mark. Pay close attention if you are a small business owner because I think the VAIO SA is an excellent choice, especially if you are looking for a sleek laptop packed with business grade horsepower.

Here are some great Sony VAIO SA moments from my past and present travels:

My 6.5 hour flight from Seattle to Atlanta was a breeze with my VAIO SA and the VAIO Extended Sheet Battery. Prior to working at Microsoft, I was unaware that the Sony VAIO S Series and VAIO Z Series have the option to attach a sheet battery to the bottom of the PC. This awesome feature provided me with a whopping 14 hours of battery life and a new perspective of how productive you can be on an airplane. I was able to crank out all of the work that I needed to get done, and wireless on the plane allowed me to stay online the whole way, preventing the typical slough of emails from flooding my phone upon arrival. Good news: airplanes are now a spot to get a lot of stuff done, bad news: I don’t always get to watch movies (this is a big bummer because watching movies on the VAIO SA with its LED display is great) and read Vogue.

The Microsoft offices I just visited were about 45 minutes by train outside of London. When I am far from my hotel, I feel like I have to be prepared for anything that could come my way and that means I have to pack a fair amount of belongings. If you have a heavy laptop this can only make matters trickier. My Sony VAIO SA only weighs 3.8 pounds so I can easily throw it in my Longchomp bag (I strive to be fashionable and work in the tech industry) along with my camera, scarf, wallet, water bottle, and all the other random things I carry throughout the day.

It is a common perception is that work laptops are not always the most attractive, but my VAIO SA is exactly the opposite. It is thin, light and sleek, while providing the same comprehensive security features that is a requirement for business today. For example, the VAIO SA has a TPM (Trusted Platform Module) chip that keeps your hard drive safe and secure even if your laptop is lost or stolen.

If you are a small business owner and the Sony VAIO SA has peaked your interest, you should check out the new Sony for Business website. They are currently running a fabulous offer to celebrate entrepreneurship where you can save 5% by bundling a VAIO PC with select accessories and an Extended Service Plan. This is a fabulous deal because the VAIO S comes with Windows 7 Professional and accessories you need when you are working in your office or on the road.

My train is now slowing down for the arrival into Paris and even though I have another one and a half hours of battery life left I am going to close down shop and look out the window for the last few minutes. I am super passionate about my VAIO SA, as I believe it is a laptop that shines when it comes to business and style. Remarkable things should be shared, and I feel that my VAIO SA is just that, very remarkable.

Mingle with Windows Phone experts, snag an Xbox 360 Star Wars bundle

Michael Stroh — Thu, 03 May 2012 22:33:06 GMT

If you’ve been too busy to attend one of the “Behind the Tile” Windows Phone events that I wrote about a few weeks ago, now’s a good time to clear your calendar: the list of door prizes is growing (who says it doesn’t pay to procrastinate?).

Attendees now have a shot at winning a new Nokia Lumia 900 or an Xbox 360 Limited Edition Kinect Star Wars bundle.

To jog your memory, Behind the Tiles is an exclusive, hands-on look at Windows Phone and Nokia’s new flagship phones, hosted by some of our experts. I’ve heard they’re a blast and a fun way to meet other Windows Phone fans.

Only a few slots and dates remain—here's the latest schedule—so grab yours today. To register, visit the Behind the Tiles site and enter the registration code MSCUST when prompted.

Windows Phone sponsors Kentucky Derby favorite “Hansen”

Michael Stroh — Thu, 03 May 2012 17:56:00 GMT

[updated 5.15.12 with list of Twitter contest winners-.ed]

The Kentucky Derby—first leg of the famous Triple Crown of horse racing—takes place Saturday in Louisville. The Derby is always a thrill to watch (it’s not called the “The Most Exciting Two Minutes In Sports” for nothing). But one of the unique things about this year’s race is the beautifully different white thoroughbred named Hansen.

Just like Windows Phone, Hansen really stands out from the pack—he’s the only white horse in the field and one of a handful to run in any Derby. As sportswriter Frank Deford said this week, “most eyes will unavoidably be upon him.” One look at him and it’s easy to see why. (Here he is winning the 2011 Grey Goose Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.)

Hansen will be ridden by award-winning jockey Ramon Dominguez, and we’re looking forward to seeing Windows Phone on his silks!

To celebrate the Derby, we’re also launching a Twitter contest today and giving away two new white (natch) Lumia 900s. To enter, you’ll need to follow @WindowsPhone, then send us a tweet using the hashtag #TrifectaTweet with the horses you think will win, place, and show in the Derby (that’s first, second, and third place, by the way.) The contest ends Saturday at 5 p.m. Pacific, and you must be a U.S. resident 18 or over to enter. See the official sweepstakes rules for all the details.

NBC kicks off its Derby coverage at 5 p.m. Eastern time. Post time is 6:24 p.m. Eastern. See kentuckyderby.com for more info.

We hope you’ll tune in this weekend and root Hansen to the Winner’s Circle! (And feel free to mix up a Mint Julep, the traditional Derby companion beverage, using the Cocktail Flow app in Marketplace.)

Photo credit: Adam Coglianese

Update:

…And here are the lucky winners of white Nokia Lumia 900s from our Derby Twitter contest. Congrats, fellas!

The web Marketplace launches in 22 new countries

Mazhar Mohammed — Wed, 02 May 2012 23:17:12 GMT

I’m happy to announce that nearly two dozen new online stores for Windows Phone apps and games went live around the world this afternoon.

The new web Marketplaces are available in Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Croatia, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela, UAE, Bahrain, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kazakhstan, Israel, Thailand, and Vietnam.

In case you haven’t tried it yet, browsing and buying apps on the web Marketplace is an easy and convenient alternative to your phone. If you’re new to Windows Phone, here’s a quick tutorial on how it works.

I also wanted to tell you about another initiative just getting underway that’s designed to make Marketplace easier to use. Some of you have told us that when you search for apps by keyword or name, you don’t always see the results you’re expecting. To help address that, this week we’ve started reviewing the keywords that developers assign to their apps and removing ones that aren’t relevant. You can learn more about this cleanup effort in Todd Brix’s post on the developer blog.

It will take us at least several weeks to complete our review, but our expectation is that you should start seeing more relevant search results when it’s done, particularly for popular apps.

Finally, just a friendly reminder that soon we’ll begin requiring Windows Phone 7.5 to buy, download, or update apps from Marketplace. As I explained recently, this new requirement is part of a larger Marketplace improvement effort. You’ll find a handy checklist and instructions for updating your phone on Update central, our comprehensive how-to and troubleshooting resource.

Talk to you soon.

Delivering Rich Mobile Web Experiences in Windows Phone 7.5 (ESPN.com Case Study)

Amin Lakhani — Wed, 02 May 2012 16:09:42 GMT

The Windows Phone Browser team has a goal of delivering the best web browsing experience on a smartphone. This goal has many components within our team: from the UI of the browser, compatibility with a wide array of website layouts, and of course buttery-smooth rendering performance. However, even if we execute flawlessly on our end, we are missing a crucial piece - delivering a great web experience is fundamentally a partnership between our team and web developers. Achieving this goal means working together to ensure that your content and services are delightful for users to consume on Windows Phone.

We understand that web development resources are always limited as you keep up with the increasing traffic from mobile devices, and the elusive "write once, run everywhere" promise of web development has not perfectly materialized. However, with IE9 for Windows Phone 7.5, we took a big step in the direction of this promise. By sharing a codebase with IE9 for the PC, we achieved identical support for new web standards and pushed the envelope on real-world performance with industry-leading hardware acceleration. We wanted to hear about developing for IE9 on WP7.5 from web developers directly, so we decided to collect some feedback and share it on the blog.

ESPN.com recently deployed their premium web experience to Windows Phone, and we thought it would be great to hear what they had to say about developing for IE9 on Windows Phone. As a side note, ESPN started looking into supporting Windows Phone because of a simple request I made on their support page. Lots of folks on my team are sports fans and were asking me about the site's experience on WP7.5, so I just dropped ESPN a note like any user would. The message was quickly routed to the mobile site team; I have immense respect for ESPN’s responsiveness and the system they have place to address user feedback. Here's what Mike Marrone, technical lead, had to say about developing for IE9 on WP7.5:

Overall, it was an easy process. We support only WP7.5 and IE9 thanks to its very good CSS3/HTML5 support. We are in a convenient position of having an existing legacy mobile site that older devices can fallback to. Honestly, development for WP7.5 boiled down to a fairly basic process - IE9 on the PC, being nearly the same browser, was a great dev tool to get most of the way there before final QA on actual devices.

Some other more specific development notes:

The "display: box" CSS style is not supported on WP7.5. We use this in carousel experiences to transition elements left or right 100% of the viewport without having to programmatically determine the viewport size (which means the browser automatically updates the positioning upon device rotation, etc.). On WP7.5, we actually used a better alternative thanks to it being the only browser that currently supports the CSS "vw" unit (VERY useful).
[Amin] See here and here for more information on vw units.

The bulk of our CSS differences between WP7.5 and other supported devices was with gradients. WP7.5 has an easy fallback with filters so it was not a big development issue.
[Amin] See here for information on using Gradient Filters in IE9.

JavaScript touch events would be a nice addition.
[Amin] We hear you, stay tuned!

We look forward to your continued great progress in mobile.

As you can imagine, this was music to our ears! We often use IE on the PC to investigate bugs, and it was great to hear that the tools work well for web development outside of our offices too. We appreciate the feedback (it will inform our plans for future releases) and welcome additional feedback through the comments below.

IE9 on Windows Phone is set up to support rich web experiences with great performance, and often all it takes is updating user-agent logic and using standards based (as opposed to vendor prefixed) HTML & CSS. ESPN invested a reasonable level of resources to do that and delivered a delightful experience to its users. I've definitely started to see the site pinned to Start around here, and I wouldn't be surprised if our senior managers are secretly checking ESPN during meetings.

Here's a before (left) and after (right) screenshot of the ESPN.com experience on Windows Phone 7.5. We want to say thanks to ESPN, and we look forward to seeing more rich experiences light up!

Special thanks to Krys Krycinski, Mike Marrone, and James Ballow at ESPN.

Amin Lakhani
Program Manager, Windows Phone

New blog for Windows 8 app developers

Brandon LeBlanc — Tue, 01 May 2012 21:33:02 GMT

I am posting this on behalf of Ian LeGrow, Partner Group Program Manager here in Windows.

As you may have heard, we now have a new Windows 8 app developer blog to help you build Metro style apps on our new Windows 8 platform.

In the new blog, we share our learning and converse with you as you enter the new world of Windows Metro style app development. The blog complements the Windows Dev Center and community forums, and you’ll see a lot of pointers to content and samples to help you get going. We talk about our experiences building the platform and building apps, pitfalls to avoid, tips and tricks, why we made certain choices in the platform, and anything else we can pass along to help you create amazing apps.

Developers, testers, and program managers from the Windows development team are posting to this blog regularly from now through the release of Windows 8 and beyond. We already have several great posts that you can check out for info on topics ranging from using the Live SDK in your apps to async patterns to ways to improve the performance of your apps, and much more.

Come join us in the conversation on the Windows 8 app developer blog. We hope to see you there.

Continued Growth for Internet Explorer 9 on Windows 7

Roger Capriotti — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:43:56 GMT

Spring is in the air, and April proved to be another great month for the IE team. In our continued efforts to support the HTML5 platform, we partnered with teen music artist Jasmine Villegas to launch an interactive music video, and also launched an online throwback to arcade games, based on the popular Marshmallow People online video series.

With a new month brings new usage share data to report. As always, we look to Net Applications for the most current data given the depth and quality of their methodology as we focus on our core metric: IE9 growth on Windows 7.

I’m pleased to note that we continue to see IE9 growth on Windows 7 continuing, hitting 35.5% worldwide as of the end of April. The data is particularly encouraging for users and developers in the US, with IE9 growing 4 points of share on Windows 7, hitting 52.9% usage share in April.

Source: Net Applications, April 29, 2012 (daily). Latest mainline browsers compared with exception of Firefox, as Firefox 12 just released on April 24^th.

This continues to be great news for consumers and developers alike who can benefit from the richer web experiences and standards support in IE9.

If you haven’t yet made the move to Internet Explorer 9 on Windows 7, try it by visiting www.beautyoftheweb.com.

Roger Capriotti
Director, Internet Explorer Product Marketing