Sometimes the deadpool contains a few unpolished gems too. Thanks to a tip from Stephen Chapman of MSFTKitchen, we now have a concept image of what might have been the packaging and boxart for the ill-fated Microsoft wireless webcam product cleverly branded Sputnik.

Although it’s not very productive to speculate on dead projects, I think this project missed an opportunity to evolve the webcams industry once and for all. A simple addition of some flash storage would have resulted in a webcam-pocketcam hybrid that would make it much more appealing than Cisco’s popular Flip camera.

Just imagine, at home the device automatically recognizes the WiFi network and syncs any stored video recordings to the home PC. Docked on the monitor, it acts like any other webcam for use in Windows Live Messenger or Skype and charges its batteries. When removed, its redirects the conversation to its speakers so you can continue the conversation anywhere around the home.

Out of the home, it’s a slim form factor and ease of use makes it the perfect portable camcorder to quickly record minute-long memories. A built in mini USB dongle makes it easy to plug into any laptop to access the recordings or use as a travel webcam.

Of course, Microsoft can do nothing and give Apple FaceTime a free pass.

It wasn’t that long ago the pixels were inside Photoshop.

Moments ago, we’ve just pushed out the 30th update to MetroTwit which among many bug fixes also adds 140proof integration. Similar to Echofon on Mac and UberSocial on Blackberry, we’re now serving a single user-tailored advertisement in the client.

As most of you may know, we (David Golden, Winston Pang and I) currently develop MetroTwit on a casual basis because we’re passionate about creating fun, usable and well-designed software experience.

We’re experimenting with this ad-supported model because we wanted to maintain the ability for anyone to want to freely try our software and at the same time build incentives for us to deliver even more, quicker. At the same time, working within the bounds of Twitter’s terms of service.

It’s not our intention to annoy anyone so we’ve even made it very easy for users to hide the ad in 45 minute blocks (clarification: you can hide it for unlimited number of times). We did this because 140proof wisely serves ads based on interests gathered from the tweet stream, which means there might actually be something of interest. Of course we look forward to feedback on all this.

Having said that, we know we’re far from perfect. We have many issues, largely tied to the performance of WPF, yet to resolve, and many useful features to add like multi-account support and streaming. Unfortunately, as independent and hobby developers (without multimillion dollar funding), these things take much longer than some would like, including myself.

We understand you have a plethora of choices with Twitter clients and I would understand if some of you may want to switch. If you’re interested in another Metro-inspired Twitter client, check out the open source MahTweets project by a fellow Aussie.

I appreciate all the support we’ve received in the past 9 months and look forward to continuing refining our vision for the Windows Twitter client you’ll love to use.

Update: The popular response has been that users want a paid ad-free version which we are of course seriously considering. Just to make it clear, this is the type of feedback we were after in the first place. It was our intention to hear the most important people, our users, what they wanted given the context of the situation and we’re getting lots of interesting responses.

Today, Microsoft Australia is filling the music void on Windows Phone 7 in Australia by putting their support behind a companion mobile application for Getmusic.com.au, a third-party music marketplace service by Universal Music Australia.

The free application allows users to browse, preview and download DRM-free songs from over 300 artists signed with the Universal Music Group which includes Lady Gaga, Black Eyed Peas, U2, Eminem and Justin Bieber. In addition to just music, users can also view purchases by friends, read entertainment news, buy merchandise and enter competitions within the application.

Unfortunately due to WP7’s API limitations, the purchasing experience is not anywhere near as convenient as the native Zune marketplace would otherwise be. Besides having to set up yet another billing account, the app isn’t actually able to download the music to the library so users won’t be able seamlessly play the songs in the Music + Videos hub.

Instead, users will be emailed an MP3 download link for every purchase which they can save to their PC’s library to sync with the Zune client. Oh what fun.

If you’ve been holding your breathe for Zune’s music service in Australia, at this point it’s probably more productive to watch paint dry, while your face turns purple.

Dying for copy and paste on your Windows Phone 7? It appears some OEM service centers have begun flashing phones with newer firmware and Windows Phone 7 ROM containing copy & paste functionality. Although this might sound like NoDo, it actually isn’t.

One xda-developers user “lonely2k5” who had his Samsung Omnia 7’s speaker replaced under warranty has received an unexpected surprise update to his phone. He reports that his phone is now sporting a KA1 firmware with an OS build of 7.0.7355.

Of course those familiar with build strings would know this is not the NoDo build that will be pushed out via the update, it being build 7389. Bizarrely, this user may have received an interim developmental build somewhere between RTM and NoDo. Considering how stubborn the WP7 update architecture appears to be, it’s questionable if official updates will work on his phone in the future.

Given the problems some Samsung owners ran into when applying the pre-NoDo update, it just might not be a bad idea to preemptively send your phone in for servicing. Who knows, you might get an in-development Mango build.

Once again, Microsoft may have implemented the technology first, but Apple has turned it into a compelling end-user experience. Credit where credit is due for both parties.

The feature in question is Volume Shadow Copy which some of you might know of as “Previous Versions” introduced to the file properties dialog since Windows Vista. Even fewer of you might have even used it to recover an old file. If not, I don’t blame you since it’s neither well exposed and easy to use.

After OS X Lion is released in approximately a few months, it’s my guess many folds more users are going to love “Versions”. Why? Because even if they don’t need to recover a file, they’re going to enjoy the visual spectacle of traveling through time with their documents.

“Function over form” comes to mind with Microsoft’s approach with a traditional list control. Some might argue Apple’s is “form over function” but if you consider both the visuals of the preview and the timeline, you’d understand that the form is the function in this case. And the space background? It’s pretty.

Note: The UI for Versions is not unlike Time Machine introduced in Leopard, however that feature required an external drive to function, thus it was a backup feature.

I think Windows MultiPoint Server is one of the most interesting small product groups at Microsoft right now. They have an innovative solution built on top of Windows Server that does a superb job at reducing the complexities of their technology with potentially huge implications for multiseat computing in the long term.

Exactly a year after their first release, the team just announced their new version, Windows MultiPoint Server 2011, was released to manufacturing today. The new release adds an array of management and collaboration features along with support for LAN-connected and traditional RDP clients, however one particular feature stands out from all the rest, “split screen”.

What split screen enables is the ability to allow an additional user with their own keyboard and mice to share one screen with another user, side-by-side like in a game. Obviously this isn’t an ideal way to use a PC, but it is a great way to make the most of available resources in an environment where the budget never seems to be enough.

Check out the demo of split screen at the BETT education trade show last month.