New Gadgets

Remember in November last year, Microsoft announced that it would be developing a new version of the Kinect that’s been designed for computers running Windows? Well, we finally have a release date for when the gadget will arrive. Today at Microsoft’s final CES Keynote, the company announced that the Kinect for Windows will be available starting on February 1st, and will have a suggested retail price of $249. 12 countries will get the new Kinect first – the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand and Spain and United Kingdom.

The Kinect SDK (software development kit) will continue to be free, and it will get updates from Microsoft over time. The Kinect for Windows computers will feature some differences such as a shorter USB cable, and the ability for the camera to track objects as close as 50cm in front of it without losing accuracy or precision – which makes using the Kinect on a desktop computer a more viable option. Anybody planning on picking one up?

Nokia has recently launched their Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone devices in markets other than the US, so how are they holding up? Well, according to Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop, the response to these new Windows Phones from Nokia have been pretty good so far.

“The reaction is remarkably positive,” Elop said in Barcelona at a conference organized by Morgan Stanley yesterday. “We need to introduce the experience to consumers to get them to try it because we know once they try it they will like it.”

Stephen Elop also predicts that demand for Windows Phone devices will start to pick up once Microsoft begins rolling out their Windows 8 platform, which will also feature the trademarked tile system that many Windows Phone users have come to know. Granted Windows Phone devices aren’t as powerful in terms of hardware compared to Android and the iPhone, but given that Nokia is a well established brand for mobile phones, coupled with Microsoft’s backing and funding for marketing, it would be very disappointing to see Nokia and Windows Phone flop.

We know that AT&T and Nokia are in talks about bringing Nokia’s Windows Phone devices to the US next year, so hopefully with the possibility of 4G LTE connectivity on Windows Phone devices will make adoption of the platform and handsets more favorable in the US. In the meantime you can check out our review of the Nokia Lumia 800 here.

It was a sad day when we learned that Microsoft was discontinuing its work on the Courier, a dual-display tablet that had tech fans buzzing. According to a report on Wednesday from DigiTimes, however, the company is still hard at work on a tablet. The Redmond-based software company is said to be cooperating with Texas Instruments and multiple Taiwan-based manufacturers in an attempt to push a Microsoft-branded Windows 8 tablet out to market by the end of 2012.

Outside of the Xbox gaming console, Microsoft has not had much luck with consumer hardware in recent years. The company’s line of Zune media players were never widely adopted and its KIN line of messaging phones were cancelled shortly after their release before later returning to Verizon shelves with barely any fanfare. DigiTimes’ sources suggest those failures won’t stop the company from trying, however, and the buzzing tablet space is an obvious next point of attack.

The once-thought delayed HTC Trophy for Verizon may still be coming based on a leak reportedly pulled from Verizon’s site. Microsoft staff are now being given a new promotion building on the old one. Those who bought a Trophy would receive at least a $100 credit per line, Phone Arena was shown; those who bought it before April 1 would have the entire price reimbursed by Microsoft.

The bundle would also give a leather case and a power charger to any new phone adopter.

Some rumors had suggested the phone wouldn’t arrive until June, although it’s not clear the date had been moved up. The April cutoff regardless points to a major step closer to launch that month and that there wouldn’t be long to wait.

The Trophy on Verizon would be fundamentally the same as the GSM version but would add dual-mode CDMA/GSM support and the NoDo update giving copy-and-paste text support out of the box. A 3.8-inch screen, a 1GHz Snapdragon and a five-megapixel camera will carry forward.

If you are after this phone and want to know more about it read the full HTC Trophy review.

The Touch Mouse’s multi-touch technology puts you control with graceful slips and slides across the surface of the mouse, rather than clunky points and clicks.

Touch Mouse transforms the way you work with Windows, so you can flick to quickly scroll and pan or gesture to zoom, navigate, and manipulate content.
Because the Touch Mouse features BlueTrack Technology, it works better than virtually any other mouse on just about any surface–the sofa cushion, glossy counter top, rough wood bench-you name it! Connect wirelessly through the USB Nano transceiver for an incredible 30-foot range.

Price: $79.95

Amnesia? Alzheimer’s? Memory Loss? Bad hangover? Suffer no more once you hang this ViCon Motion Systems built camera around your neck.

Originally an initiative by Mircosoft  with the help of university researchers, the Sensecam is a mini-recorder meant to help people suffering from short term memory loss. Now that the technology has become market ready, production has been licensed to ViCon Motion, who will build a multitude of these 94gram gadgets that have 2GB of memory.

Renamed the ViCon Revue, the wide angle lens on the automatic recorder takes three photos every minute which is then transferred to a PC with the requisite software via mini-USB. Though the target market for this gadget are the elderly, we imagine the ViCon Revue becoming a must-have accessory for narcissists of every stripe—you know, the kind of people who post nonstop about their mundane existence on Twitter?

Beyond narcissists, the ViCon Revue also appears doomed to become the tool of an introspective artist who wants to do Andy Warhol one better by recording several years of their life on this thing and making a movie from it.

Last, the ViCon Revue is also great for parties. If you wake up the next morning clueless as to what exactly transpired the night before, your ViCon Revue was taking pictures the whole time.

The ViCon Revue sells for a hefty $775.

Le Arc Touch Mouse, she is real. There are two unique bits to this thing: The ability to bend the mouse up when in use, and the touch strip that replaces a traditional scroll wheel. It costs $70.

I’ve only gotten to play around with it for a day, but so far it’s actually a pretty good mouse for a “compact” or “travel” mouse. It’s similar to the original Arc Mouse in that it’s curved and small and is meant for travelers who must have a mouse, no matter where they are. It has a small magnetic area on the back so you can attach your USB dongle.

When you want to pack up and go home, just bend the end of the mouse up so it flattens out. While you’re down there, avoid looking straight into the blue light.

The touch strip

The most interesting bit is the touch strip, which is completely touch sensitive, and mimics a scroll wheel quite well. Flick up to scroll fast, or smoothly go up to scroll up slowly. Just like a normal wheel, after you flick, you can put your finger down on the strip again to stop the scrolling. Oh, and the best part is that there’s a little speaker inside the mouse that reproduces the scroll clicking sound! It’s not only functionally useful, it’s super cool.

You can also program the buttons—there are three areas—to act as buttons, say, for middle clicking, or page up, or navigating back, or activating the Windows 7 flip. Basically, use it as a customizable button.

The left and right mouse buttons are pretty standard, even if they’re kind of tough to depress unless you click near the tip.

So far, the Arc Touch Mouse shows promise as both a travel mouse and a mouse you’d use every day, because of the cool touch functions. We’ll see if that holds true. The mouse ships in early December.

We’ll be honest — before today, we had never heard of Simon Aldous, but it sure seems as if he’s trying hard to get his name out there. Mr. Aldous, a group manager at Microsoft, recently sat down for a rather lengthy talk with PCR. Most of the back-and-forth revolved around receiving input from partners and other mildly boring topics, but one particular Q&A was pointed directly at the outfit’s newest operating system. When asked if Windows 7 was “really a much more agile operating system,” Simon made a deliberate decision to say the following:

“One of the things that people say an awful lot about the Apple Mac is that the OS is fantastic, that it’s very graphical and easy to use. What we’ve tried to do with Windows 7 – whether it’s traditional format or in a touch format – is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics.”

Of course, he followed that up by slamming OS X’s general stability, noting that Vista’s core technology — on which Win7 is built — is “far more stable than the current Mac platform.” We know we’re opening up a giant can here, but… um, thoughts?

Update: Microsoft has issued its response, and it’s none too happy, and apparently the Microsoft employee in question was “not involved in any aspect of designing Windows 7.” From the official Windows Blog: ” I hate to say this about one of our own, but his comments were inaccurate and uninformed.” We imagine there were lots of frowny faces around the office today.

On Wednesday, Microsoft lost a lawsuit to ship phones with an internet connection, which began against Alcatel-Lucent. International Trade Commission justified Alcatel-Lucent on charges of violating four patents of cable technology, changing the previous decision of the guilt of the company in the violation of at least one patent. In case of litigation loss, Alcatel-Lucent will have to pay a penalty, which would lead the company to bankruptcy.

Alcatel-Lucent announces itself rehabilitated, but Microsoft “is sorry” about the results and hopes to get more data. The company representative David Bauemaster does not indicate whether Microsoft will appeal.
Like Alcatel-Lucent, Microsoft, in the past few years, have filed many other lawsuits against each other, accusing of deliberately violating patents, and most of them came from Alcatel-Lucent.

My Phone – a free service that allows users of Windows Mobile to maintain an online backup of the contents of their phones. It was released in February but only now became available for all devices operating on the platform of Windows Mobile. All you need is an account data of Windows Live.

Every day My Phone can maintain a copy of all data of your WinMo device – from contacts to the media content. Of course, there is a limit of 200 MB, but for the most essential information of the places with more than enough.

Copy of the contents can be later re-installed on your phone or, in case you lost it, on a new one. Using this service in future , you can even change the theme, ringtone or basic settings directly via the web interface.

The developers promise that, over time, My Phone will be integrated into many of Windows Live, such as contacts, photos, calendar and more.
It is possible that My Phone is even included in the operating system Windows 7.