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.

At the European Windows 7 launch event earlier today, Microsoft showed off this promotional teaser with a count-up of all the previous releases of Windows eventually reaching number seven of course.

To be perfectly clear, I’m no advocate of the “Windows 7 is actually 6.1” nonsense, but one has to point out that a Windows release is clearly missing from this video’s timeline. Yes, that would be Windows Me.

Cool video otherwise 🙂

Windows Mobile 6.5.1 screenshots courtesy Patrick/OSNN.net

Most of you probably know by now that Windows Mobile 6.5 is not the be all end all Microsoft mobile operating system. However, what you might not know is that Microsoft has already up its sleeves another revision of Windows Mobile 6 – unofficially dubbed by the enthusiast community as 6.5.1 – that’s faster, sleeker, more touch-friendly and in my opinion, a much better upgrade than 6.5.

Those familiar with the Windows Phone modding scene might have seen since late August, builds numbered 23xxx and up started surfacing on the web. Those brave enough to have installed these builds began noticing a slew of updates to the user-experience of Windows Mobile that is arguably necessary but missing from WM6.5.

For example, the “Start button” and “Close” button have all been moved to the more accessible lower toolbar, freeing up the entire top row for status icons which is now thinner. Tapping on this row now expands a tray-like widget with large icons that provide quick access to system notifications and settings.

On the UI side, controls including buttons, checkboxes, radio buttons and the like have all been remastered, finally replacing the Windows 3.1-like graphics with modernized anti-aliased equivalents. Tabs have also been replace with a new “pivot” control that sits at the top of the screen where users can flick and toggle between.

Finally, even more recent builds include a new contacts application that is much more touch-friendly with larger buttons (albeit with a few bugs).

With all these changes and more already implemented and polished, I have to wonder why faced with inevitable criticism that WM6.5 is not enough of an improvement Microsoft didn’t hold off until all these changes were implemented for the official Windows Phone relaunch.

Until Windows Mobile 7, this is probably as good as it’s going to get on Windows Mobile 6. If you too are feeling a little adventurous, take a look over at XDA-developers forums to see if there’s a 6.5.1 ROM for your device already.