Start Screen Live Tile support allows the Live Tiles for Wi-Fi and Mobile Data to display the current state of those radios through a green or red square in the upper right corner, just like the tiles on the Network Dashboard screen. This support comes with a caveat though: in order for this feature to work reliably, the user must only use Network Dashboard to access the settings screen for Wi-Fi and Mobile Data. If the user uses the main Settings menu of Windows Phone to change Wi-Fi or Mobile Data radio state, the Live Tiles will be out of sync until Network Dashboard is run again.

There is a new Settings screen in Network Dashboard with a toggle for enabling and disabling the Start Screen Live Tile feature. An additional change is that the long-press context menu for pinning tiles now is aware of whether the user has already pinned the tile and will offer an option of unpinning if a tile already exists.

Providing there are no issues found during the certification process, I hope that version 1.1 will be in the Marketplace in a couple of days.

Network Dashboard provides a quick and easy way to see the current status of your Wi-Fi and Mobile Data features as well as one tap access to configuration options for Wi-Fi, Mobile Data, Bluetooth and Airplane Mode. There is an included status indicator for overall network availability as well.

Network Dashboard uses tiles that work like the tiles on your Windows Phone start screen to provide a vibrant, active interface. The tiles are live and provide realtime status of your Wi-Fi and Mobile Data systems. Unfortunately, Windows Phone Mango doesn’t provide the ability to determine if Bluetooth or Airplane Mode are enabled, but Network Dashboard provides one tap access to the settings for these two features.

One of the best features of Network Dashboard is the ability to pin any one of the four tiles to your start screen, giving you one tap access to the configuration option of your choice. Simply tap and hold the tile you wish to pin and select the pin to start menu option that appears.

Network Dashboard is only available to Windows Phones running version 7.5 (Mango).

Current Version: 1.0

Current Status: Available in the Marketplace

Price: FREE

By purchasing Skype, Microsoft can integrate it into all their products (including their business-focused Lync) and have a built-in user base and user mind-share. It will sell more products because people who already use Skype will consider purchasing an Xbox, Windows Phone, etc. because they’ll realize that they can use Skype to connect to all their friends and family by using it.

Additionally, when the LTE networks really start to come online and become the primary network being used by the operators, Microsoft will have a big hammer to swing as the owner of the most prevalent VOIP technology with the largest existing userbase. They can license that technology to the carriers for use as their VOIP technology that will be riding on top of LTE (and future networks).

All in all a very smart move in my opinion. It’s likely not a huge direct revenue generator, but a revenue enabler across their whole range of products and services.

Here are the pictures:

Pictures from MIX11 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Oh, and I also captured a short video clip:

The party on Wednesday night was rockin’!

You have to understand what you’re getting, though. In this post I’m going to outline some of the things that I like followed by some of the things that I don’t. Hopefully this will help you determine if a Windows 7-based slate like the Asus Eee Slate is right for you.

What I Like

Rather than jumping right into the negative things, I thought I’d tell you about the things I like about the Eee Slate:

• The Touchscreen: It’s awesome. It’s very responsive to both finger and pen input. Yes, that’s right … I said PEN input. I know some people don’t think that pen input is needed, but in my world it’s an absolute must. I’m an avid OneNote user and being able to use a pen to scribble notes and drawings is a dream. Additionally, since the Slate contains a Wacom digitizer, the pen is pressure sensitive, which makes sketching really nice.
• The Keyboard: The included bluetooth keyboard is very nice. It’s compact and has a great feel to it, which makes sense since it’s actually a Microsoft Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 6000 without the separate number pad.
• Performance: The Slate is very fast. With an i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and a 64GB Solid State Drive (SSD), it runs Windows 7 fluidly.
• Windows 7: In general, I love Windows 7. As a tablet operating system, however, it leaves a bit to be desired (which I’ll cover in the What I Don’t Like section). On the upside, it’s not nearly as bad as many would make it out to be. The pen input and handwriting recognition is awesome. The on-screen keyboard is serviceable, at least for hunt and pecking. I can’t imagine trying to touch-type on it for long missives, though.
• The Aero Flip 3D Button: The Eee Slate has a dedicated hardware button that engages the Aero Flip 3D task changer (the same as the Windows key + Tab combination on a keyboard does except that it’s “sticky” … it goes into the mode for a couple of seconds to allow you to cycle through without holding the button down). It’s an extremely convenient way to cycle through open programs.

What I Don’t Like:

Now that I’ve given you some of the things I like, here’s a few that are not so great:

• Windows 7: I know, I know.  I already said that I like Windows 7.  I do. But for use on a tablet pc, it has some downsides. First and foremost, most programs for Windows are not designed with touch input in mind. Microsoft has done a decent job of making the built-in Windows elements touch friendly enough, but third party programs often do not size their input boxes, checkboxes, buttons, etc. appropriately for touch based input. Some programs do not handle touch-based scrolling properly either. In general, the desktop operating system paradigm is not perfect for a completely touch-based device, but it’s workable until Windows 8 arrives next year.
• Reported Battery Life: Keep in mind that I’ve only had the Eee Slate for a day, so I haven’t had a chance to really test the battery performance. I’m not going to speak to real-world usage because of that, though other users have reported 3.5-4 hours of battery life, depending upon usage. The quoted battery life is 4.5 hours. I understand the reason behind it. The Eee Slate has a full-fledged i5 processor in it instead of a slightly scaled up mobile phone processor. That doesn’t mean that I don’t wish we had magical battery technology that let us get 20 hours on a system like this.
• Screen Rotation: I have a couple of gripes here. One is that it takes about 2 seconds to switch orientation, during which you are treated to a completely black screen. I’m not sure if this is a Windows thing, a video driver thing or a hardware thing. Whichever, it’s annoying. The second is that many applications really don’t handle the rotation very well.  If you are using a browser window in landscape mode not maximized, for instance, and then change to portrait mode, it will scale the window down appropriately. That’s great. However, if you then change back to landscape mode, the browser will not scale back up to the width that it was before. In general I find that running windows non-maximized is very frustrating on a slate. I wish that Windows 7 had a setting that you could turn on that would just force all windows to open in maximized mode all the time.

In general, the hardware is great. Windows 7 as a tablet OS is workable, though not great. If you understand what you’re getting going into a slate like this and it fits your needs, you’ll find that you love this device.

• Windows 7 isn’t as bad as everyone thinks for using on a tablet, though there are some areas where it’s just not as easy to use as it should be
• There’s some interesting work being done on tablet-y UIs for Windows 7, but they are a bit difficult to find on the net.  I’ll likely be posting about them as I come across them.
• The Eee Slate is a really nice PC in terms of specs, but it’s a little heavy and unweildy due to its larger size.  Definitely not for one-handed operation.

I’ll post more as I use it some more.

A combination of a bit of scope creep (more features are being added than I planned for the first release), real life and other projects have combined to make MCM’s first version behind schedule. I won’t give an updated release date because, to be honest, I’m not sure at this point. I will say, however, that I am still working on the project plan to have it out as soon as possible.

As a bit of background on the scope creep aspect, I will say this: I had not planned to fully add Remote Potato support into the first version but I’ve decided that it’s necessary to really get the best experience out of the app. This has, of course, added additional development time to the project. Additionally, there has been more back-end web development work necessary to support some of the meta-data used in the app than I had originally planned.

I haven’t had time to grab new screenshots or video lately… I’ve been busy coding instead. But, I’ll try to get some here in the next couple of weeks so you all can see the latest changes (and see the progress that’s been made).

For those that haven’t seen the new interface yet (where have you been?), here’s a quick video intro:

I’m not going to go very in depth in this post because many other sites have covered what we know with extreme depth and clarity.  If you’re looking for an in depth article with very good analysis, see this Engadget article.  For my part, I’m simply going to cover things from my personal perspective, picking out the things that I really like or things that I think will really apply to my life.

Introducing Hubs

One of the new concepts in Windows Phone 7 Series is the idea of “hubs.”  These are areas of the phone that bring together features and functionality that are related to a specific concept into one easy to understand user interface.  The hubs are essentially a widescreen view into a particular area of the phone and your phone screen shows you a “window” into that view.  You can scroll left and right to move around the whole page:

I really like this interface and the metaphor it represents. It makes the device feel more expansive, as if there’s a bigger device hidden in an extra-dimensional pocket behind the phone screen.  If you look at the Pictures Hub, you’ll also notice the What’s New section, which brings in new pictures from web services such as Facebook.  I presume that other photo-related web services such as Flickr will also be available as options.  It’s interesting to note that the galleries available for display on the phone also incorporate online galleries, so the walls between what you have on your phone and what is available online clearly are being torn down.  Instead of having to go to two separate locations or apps on your phone to view pictures they are all viewable from one easy to use location.

It’s a Phone; It’s a Zune; It’s Both

I have owned a Zune HD since they day they launched.  I owned a Zune 80GB second generation before that.  I love my Zune.  I love the Zune Pass music subscription service.

What I don’t love is having to carry a separate phone and Zune.  Thankfully, Windows Phone 7 Series will ship with the full Zune software experience embedded in it.  Not only do you get all the features and functionality of the Zune in Windows Phone 7, but you actually get a pretty close reproduction of the user interface of the Zune HD software as well, which is great.

As you can see in the picture above, the far right side of the Music and Video Hub appears to feature a place for music and video related applications.  Windows Phone 7 Series will reportedly have a Pandora application available at launch that will plug in to this Hub.

Final Thoughts and What We’re Still Waiting On

I won’t go into details on some of the other areas of the OS that Microsoft showed off, but I’ll touch on a few points.  While they didn’t give much detail, the Office and Exchange integration looks great.  Seeing as I use my phone for both business and personal use, that’s important to me.  The Xbox gaming integration looks really interesting, but we’ll have to see how that plays out with game developers.  I really like the social networking integration into the core phone experience, rather than through a separate application.  It’s a very people-centric phone, which seems to make sense to me.

As I’m sure you can tell, I am really looking forward to the launch of Windows Phone 7 Series.  From everything we know so far it is exactly what I was hoping Microsoft would do with its mobile platform and strategy.  Of course, it is still early and there are a lot of details that we just don’t know yet.  Microsoft will be announcing and discussing a lot of the technical and development details at the MIX 10 conference next month, which I think will clear up a lot of the unanswered questions.  I’m pretty convinced at this point that I’ll be getting a Windows Phone 7 device later this year, but I will reserve final judgement until I see the information presented at MIX.