Technologizer

Joystiq’s Alexander Sliwinski reports a credible rumor: Come this spring, Microsoft will allow Xbox 360 owners to install and download games onto external USB storage. He’s got photo documentation supposedly written by a senior Microsoft engineer and confirmation from two anonymous sources to prove it.

The documents say you’ll be able to store Xbox Live Arcade games,  downloadable content, full-scale Games on Demand and title updates on up to two connected storage devices at a time. Installing disc-based games to USB drives is also a possibility, but you’ll still need a disc in the tray, just like when you install a game to the hard drive now.

I still think the 120 GB hard drive on current Xbox 360 models is enough, but the earliest Xbox 360 models, which had 20 GB drives, can feel the squeeze. Microsoft gets a lot of heat for the price of its memory cards ($30 for 512 MB) and replacement hard drives ($130 for 120 GB), so this rumor will make Xbox 360 owners happy if it comes to fruition. This would definitely bolster the appeal of the $200 Xbox 360 Arcade, which lacks a hard drive. Joystiq says hard drives will be partitioned for 16 GB of storage maximum, but a 16 GB USB stick for $40 is still a better deal than Microsoft’s memory cards.

The question, of course, is why? I doubt we’ll ever hear an official explanation, but my best guess is that this has something to do with Datel’s antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft. Until last November, Datel sold unofficial memory cards, which stored more data at a better cost-per-megabyte than Microsoft’s official products. Microsoft banned unauthorized storage products from the Xbox 360, and Datel claimed the console maker was being anti-competitive.

Maybe it’s wacky to assume that Datel’s lawsuit has anything to do with this, but the addition of USB storage would certainly take a bite out of Datel’s argument.

Supposedly pictured here is the motherboard for the Xbox 360’s next revision, which hardware aficionados have pinned as evidence of a console redesign.

The photos, which appeared on Chinese message board A9VG, are noteworthy for a couple reasons, as pointed out by Gamespot: It’s a smaller motherboard than ever before, it combines computer and graphics processors on a single chip and it has a SATA interface port instead of Microsoft’s proprietary hard drive port, suggesting that storage will be housed inside the console.

Put all this together with different shapes, sizes and screw locations, and you’ve got a compelling case for the Xbox 360 Slim — if the photos are real, of course.

Brushing aside idle speculation from analysts and, ahem, bloggers, this is not the first actual rumor of a slimmer Xbox 360. In 2008, TG Daily reported that after Microsoft brought its 65 nm “Jasper” chips into production that year, a 45 nm process would be next in line. The rumor held that Microsoft would release a redesigned console, with GPU and CPU on a single chip, in 2009. Obviously, the timing didn’t pan out, but the rest of the report just got a new lease on life.

Technical details aside, a redesign wouldn’t be a surprise this year, with Microsoft planning to release its motion-sensing camera, codenamed Project Natal, during the holiday season. With that extra peripheral taking up space on TV stands, new console buyers could use the extra room. Besides, the Xbox 360 is starting to look a little bulky next to the PS3 Slim.

If Microsoft is planning to launch a slimmer Xbox 360, don’t expect to hear anything official until just before the console goes on sale. In the meantime, do expect the usual fuzzy product shots and cryptic claims from anonymous sources.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 Series OS may not look much like the iPhone, but the platforms have a number of philosophical similarities. Including the fact that only Microsoft’s only own apps will be allowed to run in the background. (At least at first: Microsoft, unlike Apple, says it intends to let third-party programs multitask eventually.)

On Monday, Novell will demonstrate new technology that will allow Microsoft Xbox 360 games to be translated into iPhone apps. It also has the capability to be used to create Android games, potentially taking some Xbox games to the mobile masses.

Novell, a Microsoft frenemy, is making it possible for you to play Xbox games on other devices now, while Microsoft, which created the platform, will leave you waiting for Windows Phone 7 handsets, due late this year. For whatever reason, Microsoft has chosen to be less than aggressive in supporting two extremely popular smartphone platforms despite obvious consumer demand.

It is worth noting that Microsoft has partnered with Nokia to port Silverlight, a .NET technology, to Symbian phones. But there has been no word about porting Xbox games to Symbian. Thankfully, the Mono team has taken up the slack where Microsoft decides it isn’t going to play.

The iPhone app that Novell created is an open source derivative of an Indiana Jones games that Microsoft is showing off running on Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox. The game is built using Microsoft’s XNA framework, which is based upon its .NET Framework.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 will run XNA 4.0 games, enabling developers of those games to reuse their investment and programming skills for Windows Phone handsets.

Novell is supporting XNA in its MonoTouch technology, which enables developers to translate .NET applications into native code on the iPhone. It has also done something similar for Android, but that solution is in its early stages of development (rumor is Microsoft may be porting Silverlight). Who wants to wager that Novell will bring Xbox games to Android before Microsoft finishes Windows Phone 7?

Interestingly, Microsoft supports the Mono effort. I can vouch that it has a strong relationship with the Mono team, and it views Mono as an insurance policy to protect customers’ .NET and Silverlight investments. Does Novell benefit from that arrangement? Sure. It’s like Microsoft’s pilot fish; it gets the business that Microsoft doesn’t want.

However, Microsoft is losing developer mind share as more and more apps are created specifically for Android and iPhone. Will a broad library of indy Xbox games be enough to differentiate Windows Phone from the rest of the pack? That remains to be seen – we’re not talking Halo.

Windows 7 SP1 timing questions.

iTunes LPs: not so popular?

HP slate: a sneak peek.

HP sues Taiwanese cartridge maker.

Sobees Twitter client gets upgrade.

Firefox to stop Flash crashes.

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Few people understand Microsoft better than Tandy Trower, who worked at the company from 1981-2009. Trower was the product manager who ultimately shipped Windows 1.0, an endeavor that some advised him was a path toward a ruined career. Four product managers had already tried and failed to ship Windows before him, and he initially thought that he was being assigned an impossible task. In this follow-up to yesterday’s story on the future of Windows, Trower recounts the inside story of his experience in transforming Windows from vaporware into a product that has left an unmistakable imprint on the world, 25 years after it was first released.

Thanks to GUIdebook for letting us borrow many of the Windows images in this story.

–David Worthington

Microsoft staffers talk MS-DOS 2.0 with the editors of PC World in late 1982 or early 1983. Windows 1.0 wouldn’t ship for almost another two years. From left: Microsoft’s Chris Larson, PC World’s Steve Cook, Bill Gates, Tandy Trower, and founding PC World editor Andrew Fluegelman.
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Microsoft took a bold step today by letting gamers include their sexual orientation in their Xbox Live nicknames, or Gamertags.

Previously, Microsoft deemed the words “gay,” “straight,” “lesbian,” “bi” and “transgender” to be unacceptable, fearing that players would use them in a derogatory way. Those fears are justified to anyone who spends a few hours playing Modern Warfare 2 or Halo 3. Anonymity does some revolting things to human behavior.

Players’ Gamertags can now include all the words mentioned above, but the service’s updated code of conduct strictly limits the terminology to those five words only. Marc Whitten, Xbox Live’s general manager, explained Microsoft’s reasoning in an open letter:

Under our previous policy, some of these expressions of self-identification were not allowed in Gamertags or profiles to prevent the use of these terms as insults or slurs. However we have since heard feedback from our customers that while the spirit of this approach was genuine, it inadvertently excluded a part of our Xbox LIVE community.

It took a while to get here. In 2008, a player named theGAYERgamer made his case public after Microsoft banned his Gamertag. In late February, a player claimed her account was suspended because her profile said she is a lesbian. This prompted a blog post from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, among other responses, so I’m guessing Microsoft finally felt there was enough pressure to make some policy changes.

Whitten promised that the code of conduct will be enforced more stringently to prevent misuse of the terms. That probably entails taking a closer look at Gamertags to make sure they’re not being used as insults. But the real hard part will be monitoring players’ responses to these nicknames. Hopefully Xbox Live’s moderators can do a better job of booting people who toss around homophobic, ethnic and racial slurs without fear of repercussion.

Remember “Courier,” the cool Microsoft dual-screen concept tablet which Gizmodo uncovered last September? It’s back. This time, it’s Engadget that’s published Courier imagery, including a photo and new screens and videos.

Until now, there’s been no evidence that Courier was anything more than a slick idea that might or might not ever turn into a product–sort of like Apple’s Knowledge Navigator from 1987. But Engadget’s source talked about details that, if true, mean that Courier is indeed in the works. It’s supposedly based on Nvidia’s Tegra 2 processor and will show up in the third or fourth quarter of this year.

If so, neat–but for now, Courier doesn’t feel very tangible. The videos are animations that look like they were done in Flash; the screens don’t look real; even the photograph might be a mockup of some sort. Until Microsoft says something or more solid materials leak out, it’s tough to know what to think.

I’m a fan of genuinely new ideas in user interfaces, and Courier is full of them. I’m intrigued, however, by the fact that the whole idea seems to center around the idea that folks want to create handwritten digital notes. That was also the theory behind the Tablet PC, a product which Microsoft thought would come to dominate the notebook market–but which never really took off.

I remain skeptical about there being a critical mass of people who want to take notes with a stylus and then look at their own handwriting forever after. Of course Courier, in concept form, looks to be about a hundred times more elegant than the Tablet PC, so maybe it could be the breakthrough that the Tablet turned out not to be. I hope we get the chance to find out…

Is Microsoft planning to introduce Microsoft-branded phones? Project “Pink” is a rumor that’s been floating around for months, and at this point it’s not that interesting a question. But here’s the latest scuttlebutt, courtesy of Gizmodo: A Sidekick-like Microsoft “social networking” phone will be coming to Verizon Wireless in April. It won’t be running Windows Phone 7 Series, or at least not Windows Phone 7 Series in the form that Microsoft has been talking about.

Maybe that’s Microsoft’s strategy for entering the phone business without ticking off its hardware partners: Use a different flavor of OS for its own phones, and restrict itself to a fairly narrow slice of the market…

It’s a PC convention that dates to the 1980s: Press the F1 key, and you’ll pull up online help. Except Microsoft is now warning Windows XP users to ignore any Web site that asks them to press F1.

As Gregg Keizer is reporting over at Computerworld, a Polish researcher has discovered an XP (and Windows 2000) vulnerability that would let a Web page trick an unsuspecting user into pressing F1 and thereby launching a malicious program disguised as a Windows Help file. Microsoft has published an advisory recommending that users not press F1, and explaining how to disable Help altogether.

It’s a way more fascinating security hole than your average exploit, since it could let a bad guy make trouble for a Windows user at the particularly vulnerable moment when that person is seeking help. But it’s a sobering argument in favor of choosing a modern operating system–be it Windows 7 or Snow Leopard or Ubuntu–over a creaky old one that dates to the start of the last decade.

Last week, Microsoft brought some of the east coast press up to speed on its 3D motion-tracking camera for the Xbox 360, codenamed Project Natal. It was essentially the same demonstration presented at E3 last year, but Russ Frushtick of MTV Multiplayer used the occasion to time Project Natal’s responsiveness with a stopwatch.

The lag between movement and action on the screen floated around a tenth of a second. That’s not huge, but it’s enough to notice. Microsoft could improve Natal’s response time before it’s released this holiday season, but Frushtick notes that even Hollywood motion capture cameras aren’t lag free.

The report ties in nicely with a think piece by Kotaku’s Brian Crecente, who compares motion control to the uncanny valley — a theory in robotics that the more a robot resembles a human, the more people are repulsed by the resemblance. The uncanny valley has also been used to describe eerily realistic video game characters.

Crecente argued that Natal is so accurate at tracking motion, its flaws are hard to ignore. Compared to the Wii’s “good enough” approach, which still captures the essence of motion control, Microsoft could stumble despite having a technologically superior product. Even with the Wii’s MotionPlus accessory that attaches to the Wii Remote to make it more accurate, games have avoided ”one-to-one” controls — where your actions are duplicated precisely on the screen — because they’re too realistic, diluting the fantasy of play.

That issue of fantasy versus reality is bound to come up as game developers experiment with motion control, not just for Project Natal, but for the Wii MotionPlus and the Playstation 3’s upcoming motion-sensing wand. I’m reminded of Tony Hawk: Ride, a game that used a skateboard-shaped peripheral, but flopped because it too closely duplicated the frustration of learning to skate.

If developers try to create lifelike simulations with Natal, they’ll fail if there are any flaws in the technology, such as lag. But if they can somehow translate motion into a more idealized version of itself (e.g., your sloppy karate kicks gain black belt form on the screen), Natal could be a hit.

Why IE 6 won’t die.

Microsoft’s Windows 7 challenge: developers.

Coming: Sony consumer 3D cameras.

More on Chinese hacker attacks.

InfoWorld blogger’s secret double identity.

Another Twitter phishing scam surfaces.

The Internet: making us brainier?

The best software for netbooks.

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TheStreet.com’s Scott Moritz has an exciting exclusive: Northeast Securities analyst Ashok Kumar has learned that Microsoft is working on a Microsoft-branded phone based on its Windows Phone 7 Series OS. It’ll be manufactured by HTC Asus, and software problems have postponed its release into 2011.

The story would seem to give new life to old rumors about a Microsoft phone, code-named project “Pink.” Except…Scott Moritz stories headlined as”exclusives”–usually crediting Kumar for the scoop–have a crummy track record of exclusively revealing stuff that turns out to be true. When I see them, my instinctive response is skepticism, not bland acceptance of anything in the story as gospel.

Shall we recap?

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Last November, Microsoft announced an add-on for Outlook called the Social Connector. At first, it only worked with new social networking features in the company’s SharePoint 2010 intranet platform. On Tuesday, it got interesting even for Outlook users who aren’t on SharePoint, as Microsoft and LinkedIn announced LinkedIn for Outlook, which uses the Social Connector to weave together the Outlook and LinkedIn experiences. (Microsoft says that similar features for Facebook and MySpace are on their way.)

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Windows Phone 7 Series superguide.

The FCC’s National Broadband Plan.

Apple fixes busted Macbook drives.

Microsoft’s anti-Google YouTube videos.

Adobe CTO on Flash, iPad.

The Canadians: disgruntled over Buzz.

Use Buzz on WebOS phones.

You can’t force-feed users.

Redbox delays Warner DVD releases.

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I’ve given up making fun of Microsoft’s product-naming habits–oddly-clunky, frequently-changing monikers are just part of what makes Microsoft Microsoft. The company knows its branding practices are fodder for humor (here’s a famous self-parodying video it made) and yet it doesn’t change them. Either it likes it this way, or can’t help itself, or both.

But as I mulled over Windows Phone 7 Series–which looks neat–I was moved to try and document the many names Microsoft has given its mobile version of Windows and devices that ran it. It’s not easy, in part because there have been times when the OS and the devices had different names, and times when they shared branding. And Microsoft has wavered between playing up the notion of a distinct mobile version of Windows and treating Windows as one universal platform. But here’s a quick chronology of everything I remember.

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