Stephen Chapman is one of those people who know every pixel of Windows inside out, inverted and flipped horizontally. If you think I’m a Microsoft snoop, he might as well be snoop dog. I wouldn’t doubt if he knew more about the design of Windows than the Windows chief Sinofsky himself. Which is why his new blog, uxevangelist.net is the Microsoft user experience blog to read.

Stephen is known to provide some of the best insights into the development of Windows over the course of “Longhorn”. Before contributing to the UX enthusiast community AeroXP, he wrote a blog called UX.Evolutions which some of you might be familiar with. It was later abandoned, but in its heydays, it was the best insight into all things user experience-related about Longhorn.

If you’re not already convinced, just check out some of the rare Microsoft concepts he’s posted to his Flickr account.

MSX (Microsoft Design) was pretty serious about Aero Glass.

A Vista taskbar mockup with alternate styling. I still reckon this one looks better than RTM.

A Vista start menu mockup with slightly different styling. Nice detail in the reflection of the user icon.

Now go check out the rest of his gallery and blog yourself.

Some people might call me a patent scavenger, but I prefer the term “opportunist”. I sift through dozens of new Microsoft patents every week so you don’t have to. And trust me, I’m doing you a favor. A recent set of patents filed by Microsoft reveals a pretty innovative idea that I think is worth realizing. Whilst the patents refer to it indirectly, it doesn’t take a lot to fill in the blanks. They call it “metapaper“, I call it “paper Outlook”.

Personal information manager (PIM) software like Outlook to schedule events, manage tasks, contacts and communication can be extremely helpful. In fact so helpful people often carry devices such as laptops with them just to have access to this information. Sometimes this can be an inconvenience in certain locations. Which is why some people will print out their schedule and tasks list to take with them instead. This is where these patents come in.

By utilizing a printer and scanner, metapaper enables a new way to interact with PIM software. Instead of just an output with your schedule and to-dos, the paper also becomes an input.

The main difference between your current Outlook printout and metapaper is a printed indicia in the corner of the page, as shown by the datamatrix barcode (1103). Now when you annotate this page and scan it back to your computer, the printer will automatically recognize the identifier and send the contents to your PIM software for OCR processing. The example above has a new appointment (1403) and task (1405) annotated which will be automatically added to the user’s schedule.

Whilst this example is as far as the patent goes to describe the functionality available, I can easily imagine a few more. For example, you could complete tasks by annotating a tick next to the task, or even a strikethrough. You should also be able to reschedule events by drawing an arrow from the event to a new day. There’s also plenty of uses for this technology beyond just PIM software, like tracking changes in Word.

In addition, the patent also describes new capabilities on printers, specifically wireless printers, where it can request print jobs instead of just receiving them. Instead of dealing with the software on the computer, the user could instead press a button on the printer for a predetermined print job which the printer will then request from the computer. Theoretically, multiple users should be able to print a range of preconfiguered metapapers (ex. weekly, monthly schedule) from the one device.

Paper-less office? Hold that thought. 😉

It’s rare for a week to go by without a few interesting Microsoft job advertisements. One of which posted last week provides a pretty good idea at how the next version of Windows will improve the wireless networking experience.

Vista was about making Wi-Fi connections as seamless, manageable and secure as wired networks.

The next Windows version is really about taking Wireless networking to the next level by enabling new complete end to end scenarios and experiences that are going to change how windows PCs interact with each other and other devices and nodes over a wireless network.

As a part of the Windows Networking Ecosystem Technologies team, you will be working on scenarios around virtualizing Wireless to allow connections to multiple networks simultaneously. You will be working on enabling new windows to windows connectivity paths within a wireless network to improve wireless throughput and latency. You will be working on wireless-only office and mesh networking scenarios that will make setup and management of wireless networks quick and inexpensive with the goal to reduce TCO for centrally controlled and secured deployments by improving manageability, performance and reliability.

As a part of this work, you will be working closely on existing and in-works wireless standards such as IEEE 802.11s, 802.11k, 802.11r, 802.11w. This position will provide you the unique opportunity of working on core wireless areas as well as collaborating with several other key Windows technologies to deliver a complete functional end to end scenario. The work will be in both the Windows kernel and user space.

Whilst wireless meshing is an exciting feature to look forward to, I think the killer feature will be virtualizing wireless adapters. Currently, one wireless adapter can only connect to one wireless network. Connecting to many networks simultaneously could open up a range of opportunities beyond just performance enhancements.

For example, if you were to set up an ad-hoc computer-to-computer connection right now, you’d have to give up your current infrastructure (computer-to-router) connection. That means you’ll most likely lost internet connection as both users are only connected to each other. With virtualized adapters, you would be able to allocate one to your ad-hoc network, and another to keep your existing connection.

That together with wireless meshing technology, this could eliminate wireless dead-spots altogether. Because each wireless client could also become a repeater for the wireless signal (ad-hoc), like ripples in a pond the wireless signal will expand as long as users are within range of each other even if they’re well outside the original access point’s range.

By the rate I’m promoting these job ads, I should really ask for a job referral commission. 🙂

You would think a company will try to sell as many of its products as possible for maximum profit. But no, not Microsoft. Not with the Zune. Not only will Microsoft not sell Zunes in Australia, but they actually discourage anyone from buying one through a reseller in case you really wanted one. That kind of enthusiasm is unacceptable. At the same time, iPods are selling better than hotcakes, owning up to 80% market share in Australia. The same probably applies to much of the world, you know, in countries outside of the United States. Yeah, there’s a handful of those.

Speaking of iPods, in 2001, Apple launched the first generation iPod worldwide on a global release date. That is, in at least 26 countries with official Apple stores plus retailer partners in countries without Apple presence. For a much smaller company back then, they certainly understood the concept of a global marketplace. It’d be damn hard today to find a country which won’t sell you an iPod, even when there’s no iTunes store.

The ridiculous reason why Microsoft won’t sell its Zune anywhere outside of the United States, not even beloved Canada, is because of the lack of regional music stores. If you were to ask me, I think that’s a stupid business decision based on ‘glass-is-half-empty’ reasoning and it’s actually hurting the brand in the long-run.

Believe it or not, Australia didn’t have an iTunes music store until late 2005 – 4 years after the introduction of the iPod. But that didn’t stop anyone from buying an iPod and loading their own content onto it for the first four years. The fact is they sold iPods and made money without a music store. Apple only made more money with the iTunes store.

You might say well, “music might be pretty important in a music player”, but the Zune is not just a music player. Music is only one of the six features of the Zune. The others being video, sharing, pictures, radio and podcasts. All of which have an abundance of content in this or any developed country.

Even music is plentiful if you think about it – peer-to-peer, DRM-free MP3s and free from indie-artists.

I have plenty of recorded TV shows (both legitimate and not-so-legitimate), movies, cute cat videos, radio stations, podcasts and vidcasts I’d love to listen and watch on a Zune.

In fact, I hardly listened to any mainstream music on my previous media player. It was all freely available content that is compatible with any media player, including the Zune.

You could argue the same for the iPhone, the phone service is kind of essential but otherwise a great device, so why is it too a US-only device? The difference here is that Apple is proactively working to get the iPhone into other markets. In a matter of 3 months, they’ve already established partnerships in Europe and Canada. The Zune team on the other hand haven’t managed one in a matter of 12 months as of next week. It’s not like Microsoft doesn’t have a worldwide presence and might have a hard time negotiating with music labels. But it’s because they’re not trying.

Consumers are not hopeless without some sort of integrated music store. Sure, a music store will make the integrated experience much richer, and probably sell more devices, but I believe the device on its own is worth buying. That’s how they sold MP3 players before the iPod and if I recall correctly, people still bought them.

I should point out though the Zune is not impossible to get in Australia. There’s a handful of them sold new on eBay, through a few online retailers and as well as the trusty Microsoft Australia employee. But that’s not to say there’s no risk. Even though Microsoft has said they’ll refund any defective devices in Australia, there’s no guarantee of warranty or support when required.

I’ve even gone as far as asking Zune’s public relations to buy a review unit. They didn’t even bother to respond. Frankly, I’m sick of waiting. My next alternative is an iPod Touch and I’m sure Apple will be glad to profit from me.

Jailbreak, anyone? 🙂

I wish I knew either. Whilst you’re in a state of trance, check out the M.C. Escher Zune Journey website.

Voice is arguably as unique as our fingerprints. Voice is not only produced by the voice box, but is also shaped by the throat, tongue, lips, teeth, chest and head. Put that together with ascents and dialects and you have quite a challenge understanding spoken language. Now not only can Windows on the PC comprehend 8 languages, but so can Windows on the mobile phone, or at least one anyway.

Recently the Live Search for Mobile team introduced voice input in their application for Windows Mobiles. And it works remarkably well according to some early responses. Check out this quick demo by Microsoft’s speech-guru Rob Chambers.

Update: Interestingly enough, the speech recognition doesn’t actually occur on the mobile device itself. Instead as explained on the Speech team blog, “the phone takes your speech input, sends it to a server, the server does it’s recognition magic, and sends the results back to the phone.”

One of the people behind the technology and implementation is Oliver Scholz, Program Manager in the Speech Components Group, who not surprisingly also worked on the speech recognition technology in Windows Vista. I had the opportunity to ask him some quick questions.

When and why as the decision made to build voice recognition into a Live Search for Mobile?

Is the technology based on the speech-recognition in Windows Vista?

What were some of the challenges of building such a complex system for a mobile device?

Are there any major differences in quality compared to the PC?

Are there plans to enable it to work with other languages?

What’s the next step? More features? Better accuracy?

I find it interesting voice recognition is built into an application and not the mobile OS. Will Win Mobile 7 provide voice support on a platform level?

Whilst the technology is not there yet for dictation or system-wide speech recognition, but imagine how much easier and safer a mobile phone could be hands-free when you’re driving. Late to a meeting? Dictate a message, and SMS it to someone without even touching a button.