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.

My previous obsession on the Xbox 360 was Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (COD4), so it makes sense that when Call of Duty: World at War (COD:WW) came out, I picked it up immediately. My comments in this post are going to be regarding the multiplayer play, as this is what I primarily play.

While I truly love Call of Duty 4, there were a few things that needed some tweaking in the game.  One of the biggest issues was the “assist” point system in multiplayer.  If you hit an enemy and another player on your team finishes him off, you get an assist.  In COD4 you received the same number of points for that assist regardless of if you did the most damage to him or only hit him once.  In COD:WW, they’ve adjusted this mechanism to give assists a sliding scale of points based on damage, a good solution to an annoying issue.

There are various other changes in COD:WW that make it a better game from a multiplayer standpoint.  The maps are more finely detailed in both appearance and layout.  They’ve included the ability to drive tanks on some of the maps, which adds a completely new element to the game that’s pretty interesting.  I’m glad they limited to only certain maps and didn’t completely overwhelm the game with vehicles.

Some of the gripes I had with COD4 still remain in COD:WW.  There are a lot of times during multiplayer play that it seems to go a bit out of sync. I’m not talking about lag.  I’m talking about an opponent killing you while you’re putting a clip of rounds into him and then the replay video showing him shooting you while you’re looking a different direction or just coming around the corner.

Sometimes those issues get really frustrating when you’re having a bad day, but all in all the game is extremely fun to play.  I’m sure I’ll be playing it for quite a while until something new with great multiplayer comes along.  If you have any thoughts on new Xbox 360 multiplayer games coming out I should be on the lookout for, let me know!