Work(ing Title)

Of the thousands of Microsoft bloggers, few are more thoroughly entertaining than Steve Clayton: Geek In Disguise. While executing his day job as the CTO of Microsoft UK, Mr. Clayton produces a stream of thoughtful, entertaining, and refreshingly brief posts. A couple from today have been cunningly titled cool site #1 and cool site #2.

Just to be difficult, let’s start with site numero uno: http://startdoingmore.com, which has been designed to highlight the experiences that are possible with Windows Mobile 6 software. The site showcases hardware as well, but mostly focuses on the sort of things that can be accomplished with our mobile tools.

He also posted a link to http://zunejourney.net, which has been launched alongside the next wave of Zune devices (which are only ten days away). The art direction on the site is simply stunning, and you’ll spend more time than you thought possible flying around to explore every corner of the Zune universe.

The brilliant bit of coincidence here is that both of these sites were developed by a creative firm here in San Francisco, and a close friend of mine, whose birthday is today, has a hand in building both. How’s that for fondest wishes?

It has become clear that the new fighting ground for voice recognition is search on mobile phones. Developing an application that has great user experience, and can be deployed onto a variety of handsets across a number of carriers…you may as well start working on turning lead into gold.

Both Microsoft and Google have woken up to the value of leveraging the voice user interface for their local search offerings (it’s what the bloody phone was designed for anyway). Live Search 411 and GOOG-411 have been put through their paces, and the results of the Ars Technica review are very promising for the humans.

While Google’s service was less quirky slightly faster, the functionality of Microsoft’s won their hearts:

"Microsoft’s LiveSearch411 is the perfect service for anyone traveling or planning to travel, and I highly recommend it. I also loved that it remembered my last search, because I’ve been disconnected or had to redial 411 countless times in the past. Further, it offered to share my results with another phone user, which is a great option for those traveling in groups that are trying to reach the same destination from different cars or starting locations. LiveSearch411 was also able to find destinations in low-population and obscure areas, which is probably when 411 is needed most during a road trip."

The U.S. International Trade Commission ruled yesterday that the manufacture of a Qualcomm chipset infringes on the intellectual property of Broadcom. As a result of this, U.S. Customs officials have been ordered to block the import of mobile phones featuring the offending chip.

Sascha Segan of PC Magazine makes it clear how ridiculous the Qualcomm ban is:

Every single one of these cases needs to go into mandatory arbitration. Kids, if you can’t work it out yourselves, it’s time for the teacher to divide the cookies. But the “teacher” here seems to have decided, instead, that because three idiots got into a brawl, nobody in the entire school building can have cookies. That isn’t justice.

The rest of Sascha’s article is far and away the best read I’ve had this week. He is absolutely spot-on and brings the mandatory measure of spite to his coverage, reminding everyone just how absurd the behavior of this industry is.

It’s going to take a while before anyone starts to defend the rights of the millions of pieces of China in the mobile industry’s shop. The regulating shopkeepers seem perfectly content with having their customers start brawls with each other with seemingly zero regard for us, the delicate cups and bowls.

For those of you who find yourselves sick/tired/disgusted/suicidal about your existing mobile phone and service, you know I’ll never steer you wrong. That slick little phone I’ve been carrying round for the past couple months just had a baby brother. Welcome the Helio Heat into your hearts, as I promise you won’t be unhappy.

Heat comes in gold and onyx, and features a super slick electrostatic keys on the phone’s face. That means they are both touch sensitive and partially invisible! That’s right, when it sits idle on the cafe table next to your keys/espresso/handgun, the keys don’t even appear! And don’t worry, you’ve got four different levels of touch sensitivity to choose from, so you’re sure to find the sweet spot.

You’ll also be packing a gorgeous 2-inch display, 1.3MP camera, Bluetooth (with stereo music), and the ultra-convenient GPS-enabled Google Maps. Oh and let’s not forget MySpace mobile for all your social butterflies. Heat has been built by Samsung exclusively for Helio and it’ll certainly turn heads and get you that materialistic adoration we all crave.

Click any of the photos for their extreme-closeup. If you’re in the market, you can buy Heat from Helio online now. Pick up an All-In membership (don’t sweat all those voice minutes–talk is dead) and get on the Helio train. You won’t be disappointed.

I love a good Apple rumor as much as the next geek, but this one is just a bit too stinky. The Appleinsider article published on the rumored Apple mobile phone this morning at 11:00 EST. An excerpt from the article:

…Shaw Wu told clients in a research note on Tuesday. “We believe this smart phone has been in development for over 12 months and has overcome substantial challenges including design, interference, battery life and other technical glitches.”

Now enter TheStreet.com and Senior Writer Scott Moritz. This TheStreet.com article was posted at 13:06 EDT, and features the following quote:

“We believe this smart phone has been in development for over 12 months and has overcome substantial challenges including design, interference, battery life, and other technical glitches. As we have seen in the smart phone space, it is very difficult to produce a converged product of high quality,” [Peter] Lin writes.

First off, how exactly does TheStreet.com occupy a different ribbon of the 4th dimension from Appleinsider?

Aside from these two sites and their war on time, MacNN and ArsTechnica have both published similar articles featuring some collection of the names Peter Lin and Albert Wu.

Is anyone here checking their facts? I mean it’s obvious there aren’t any real facts to check, but come on people this is just bananas.