[See post to watch Flash video]

It turns out 2019 is getting closer every day. At the moment, Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie is doing the rounds at a number of prestigious colleges in the States showing off Microsoft’s vision for technology to solve the world’s biggest problems. Of course, one must use the latest in natural user interfaces for this task.

A feature of this year’s tour appears to be a next-generation computer – one that docks and undocks from a transparent glass display and allows for not only pen and voice input as you’d come to expect from natural user interfaces, but also incorporates touchless gestures and eye-tracking to interact with the information at hand.

Personally I’ve never seen eye-tracking used as an input before, but after seeing this demo, it makes so much sense to skim vasts amounts of information with your eye.

I’ll let these two videos do the rest of the talking.

No doubt with any fancy prototype it’s usually very difficult to distinguish just how much of the demo is real and how much of it is simulated – either by timers or remote-control, but knowing Microsoft Research and what they’re capable of, I’m willing to bet it’s all real.

On a related note, it appears now Microsoft’s new vision is a glass-display on every desk. Time to get in the window cleaning business perhaps?

If you have a reasonably new laptop with an Intel WiFi chipset then I have some good news. A set of new Intel WiFi drivers made available just a couple weeks ago, version 13.0.0.107 if you’re playing along, finally adds the necessary driver-level support for the new native Virtual WiFi technology in Windows 7.

After downloading and installing the drivers (32-bit here, 64-bit here), assuming your WiFi chipset supports the functionality (which I can verify the 5300 can but 3945 cannot), a new “Wireless Network Connection” with the adapter name “Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport” will automatically appear in your network connections.

Recently, the internet has been abuzz with a new software called Connectify which interacts with this Windows 7 Virtual WiFi technology, but it appears their intention is to sell this application once its finalized. Personally I find it ludicrous that someone would charge for what is essential a wrapper to some functionality already baked into Windows.

To set up and use Virtual WiFi in Windows 7, without paying a buck, just follow these three simple steps:

• Open an elevated command line with administrative privileges and type
  netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=Test key=password
  replacing the name and password with your own preference.
• Start the adapter by
  netsh wlan start hostednetwork
• Share an existing connection to it by going to the “Properties” of a connection, selecting the “Sharing” tab and enabling ICS and choosing the corresponding Virtual WiFi adapter.

Of course this functionality isn’t that useful day-to-day, but a powerful usage scenario for this internet sharing functionality via Virtual WiFi will be when you’re at an airport or hotel which limits your connection to a single wireless adapter. Not only would this save you playing switcheroo with the hotspot, but it might also save you paying for multiple connections if you’re traveling with somebody else.

Announced today, Microsoft has signed on a third-party, Bsquare, to be the first and currently exclusive distributor for Windows Mobile licenses worldwide.

Until just recently, Microsoft has had full control of Windows Mobile licensing to OEMs like HTC who would purchase them to ship with their mobile phones. Instead, it appears Microsoft has relinquished this right entirely to Bsquare, who will on top of just selling licenses, also provide reference designs, communication stacks, technical support, training, testing and the like to OEMs. Apparently 30 existing Windows Mobile partners have already made the switch as their contracts with Microsoft ended.

Whilst I won’t pretend to have a crystal clear idea of the implications of this, I do see two sides of the coin covered slightly in mud.

On one hand, delegating the responsibility to what could be potentially many license distributors might fuel competition in the ecosystem to develop higher quality devices as testing and certification improves. This would also allow Microsoft to focus solely on the task of developing the operating system and not spend as much time supporting the relationship with each OEM.

On the other hand, adding a third-party between device OEMs and Microsoft might result in even longer delays in the process a new OS is developed and is available on devices as the updates won’t trickle down just one layer but two. In fact, this probably explains why Microsoft has been clamping down on modified ROMs lately – built with newer leaked builds of Windows Mobile – as they no longer hold that right to distribute the code.

I just have a feeling this isn’t going to end well.

Furthering the barrage of Windows 7 promotions on Australia’s television network Nine, the operating system made a special appearance on the Australian wanna-be-version of “The Apprentice” TV show this evening as part of a competition for the contestants to design a television advertisements.

If you’ve missed the thrilling hour of egos and tension, then be glad Microsoft didn’t go with either of the campaigns pitched which to be fair was conceptualized, directed and edited in just a single day.

On a related note, Nine in collaboration with Microsoft is hosting a competition on the show’s website to give away a Windows 7 Sony Vaio X-series laptop and Sony 10mp digital camera.

Unfortunately to enter you will have to put on a thinking cap and come up with your own idea for a Windows 7 ad. It’s stated in the terms and conditions entries will be judged on creativity, humor and originality, so don’t bother with “Windows 7 was my idea”. Entries close Sunday, 29 November.

A trademark application filed earlier this month has quietly revealed a new logo for Microsoft’s online content brand MSN and, presumably, also its many regional subsidiaries.

Unfortunately with only a black and white preview to work with, it’s not fair to judge the new logo just yet but its obvious it still retains the now iconic butterfly which was actually not that well received when it debuted in early 2000. And like many recent logo redesigns, this too seems to be all about simplifying the elements with the body of the butterfly removed and wings rounded off to roughly stretched ellipses.

Ever since parts of MSN was (painfully) rebranded under Windows Live, the brand has lost some of its meaning and mojo. I can only hope with this new logo will also come a refresh of the entire brand that clears the slate on what they do and where they’re heading.

Update: Thanks to an anonymous Microsofty commentor, a full color version of the logo with a new lowercase font as well has been posted in all of its Web 2.0 glory above.

Update 2: The new logo along with the new website is now for public preview at http://www.msn.com/preview.aspx.

It’s been a while since I watched live TV and historically Microsoft has not had much of a presence on Australian TV which is why it came as bit of a shock to me a few minutes ago to find myself watching a locally produced and tailored Bing ad. As it turns out, there’s even a whole series of them.

The other six Bing ads in the series of seven are 15 second spots entirely dedicated to showing off unique features of the Bing search engine – including hover preview, hot spots, instant answers, infinite scroll, video previews and related searches. These ads are a stark contrast to the US-based Bing ads which I had originally criticized for not showing enough of the product. I like these a lot better.

The entire series is embedded below for your viewing pleasure.

In the latest episode of the “30 Rock“, the TV show apparently synonymous with product placements and especially Apple products, a black laptop computer with a standout white Windows logo branding makes a brief but comical appearance.

According to Will who sent in the screencaps from the episode, the laptop was used to design a new “super microwave” as a money-making scheme for General Electric, however by the end of the design process the product had evolved into more or less a car with four doors, wheels and a radio. A divergence only possible on a PC I’d imagine.

A brief shot from the front view of the laptop identifies the laptop as a Lenovo ThinkPad W500.

As the official Windows 7 launch is set in motion, a bunch of new content is being released online to support the wider public availability. To kick things off, a handful of new first-party theme pack have been released on Windows.com, but with a twist.

In addition to a number of new international themes released featuring photographs from different regions of the world, 14 sponsored themes are also available for download with wallpapers sourced from various notable brands. They range from movies to sports cars, video games and even refreshment beverages (from both Coke and Pepsi!).

As time goes on, I’d expect more companies to jump on this opportunity as an easy and fun way to promote their products and brand. Music label EMI has already planned a whole site dedicated to branded Windows 7 theme packs.

The wraps have been lifted off the Windows 7 global advertising campaign and apparently Windows 7 was totally my idea. The New York Times has a video clip of one of the ads in the series produced by Crispin Porter + Bogusky and the message is quite simple – Windows 7 is everything customers wanted. And what did we want? Less waiting. Less clutter. Less clicks. Faster. Easier. Leaner. Meaner. Safer. Cleaner. Simplerrrrrr. And Microsoft apso-frickin-lutely agreed.

Also as a fun fact, one of Microsoft employees featured in the video is Chaitanya Sareen, a program manager on the team responsible for developing the new Windows 7 taskbar.

Update: More ads in the series embedded below.

Pretty cool ad campaign I must admit.

If you’ve been hoping Windows Mobile 7 will bring unification to the user experience of the Windows Phones ecosystem then you should give up and go home immediately.

A recent Microsoft job advertisement signals that the Windows Mobile team will not only support the layer of custom interfaces on most Windows Phones today at an OEM level but will even help create custom interfaces for individual operators comes Windows Mobile 7.

The final responsibility of our group will be working with mobile operators to deliver a unique windows mobile experience that seamlessly integrates the mobile operator’s services (such as voicemail services, video-on-demand services, and navigation services for instance). Microsoft experimented with this back in 2007 with the introduction of the T-Mobile Shadow. That was a great success and with WM7 we will be expanding this effort to more operators. Because of this we will be working heavily on creating custom user interfaces, so passion around UI and graphics programming is a must.

The T-Mobile Shadow was one of the first documented cases where Microsoft not only worked with the operator to design new hardware but actually created a custom-tailored interface in-house to promote some operator-specific services and functionality. Obviously it must have worked out pretty great for T-Mobile and Microsoft they want to do it again with even more operators.

In my opinion, this practice has both advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, every OEM and operator in the ecosystem wants to differentiate their product and this allows them an easy way to do so without resorting to changing the hardware which is more expensive. At the same time however it also means the same device across operators and all devices under the Windows Phone brand will have even less in common – adding more complexity to an already diluted ecosystem.

My fear with such customizations is that eventually the “Windows Phone” will water down to mean nothing more than “Windows Embedded” means for embedded devices – sure it runs Windows CE but you wouldn’t be able to tell (like the Zune HD) and wouldn’t care less. Sure consumers might not care either but it doesn’t make much of a brand if it’s everything and anything.

Update: Hat tip to MobileTechWorld for noticing this 3 months ago.