Since most people probably don’t come across a Microsoft Surface very often (hopefully that will change with the new Surface), it’s easy to miss some of the cool applications and games being developed for it, like the one above, The Jelly Reef.

Designed by a group of final year Dutch arts students, the project was commissioned as multiplayer game for the lobby of the Dutch Game Garden, a game development center. The premise of the game is to use your fingers to manipulate the flow of water which carries jellyfishes across the underwater terrain, avoiding obstacles and harm on the way. The mellow look and feel of the game easily makes it one of the cutest Surface games I’ve seen.

If you’re interested in how they put the game together, one of the project’s members is putting together a series of blog posts about developing the game. Also, if you ever get the chance to play with a Surface like the ones at the Microsoft campus, be sure to check out some of the neat games on it. Although I can’t remember the name of it Galactic Alliance, I highly recommend the 4-player cooperative tower-defence style space shooter.

An image posted by Engadget today portrayed to be concepts of an upcoming Nokia Windows Phone 7 device should be taken with a grain of salt. From afar, it’s easy to be captivated by the elegant industrial design, but a closer look reveals a glaring mistake that results in one of two possibilities, the more likely of which is that it’s a fake not an final design.

The mistake is actually quite obvious once you see it. There are too many tiles on the home screen. Due to Microsoft’s specification of the screen resolution (and indirectly aspect ratio), only slightly less than 4 tiles should be visible. The Nokia concept contradicts this by showing even fraction of the fifth (with the top of the tiles lining up with the arrow). This would only be possible if the display proportions are not the same.

Although it’s still possible this concept may still be authorized by Nokia, it just means that this is not a very realistic representation of the phone. Sloppy, as some might put it. The real phone should either a little fatter or shorter.

The other less likely but more frightening possibility is that this is real and would actually mark the beginning of Windows Phone 7’s fragmentation. For everyone’s sake I hope it’s the former.

Update: This concept photo plus another newer one still showing the extra tile is being shown off by Nokia at Mobile World Congress 2011.

My argument remains that this does not look like a “rough” design. Most of the elements appear to be designed to specification, thus if these concepts are accurate would be very concerning for the Windows Phone 7 ecosystem. Does fragmentation begin at screen resolution?

The newly relaunched Microsoft Signature brand has made the huge leap across the Pacific Ocean tonight as the first bloat-free and performance-optimized PC is now available on sale exclusively from the Australian online Microsoft Store.

The back-to-school “Student PC offer”, although available to anyone for purchase, is a Dell XPS 14 laptop with Windows 7 Ultimate and Office Home and Student 2010. What you lack in ability to customize the specifications, Microsoft makes up for with a sizable 34% discount off the recommended retail price – worth a cool $500.

The PC’s secret sauce of course is Microsoft Signature, an effort by the company’s OEM group to improve the out-of-box experience by primarily reducing the number of pre-loaded third party application. Although it’s unfortunate that the PC ecosystem has come to this point where a “standard” PC experience is so poor, Microsoft needs to intervene, at least there’s a choice.

If you do choose to take up on nice offer, hurry as it’s only available while stocks last.

I love a good idea. What I love more is sharing and talking about ideas with friends. What I’ve found though is that doing that is actually very hard.

Twitter although simple is too short. Emails although ubiquitous are too complex. Instant messaging although convenient is too narrow. Facebook although social is too broad. And so on.

Since my original attempt at a solution didn’t work out so well, I decided to take a whole new direction with a new version which sparked in my head last night. This new version of Here’s an idea only took a day to put together, not because I’m some sort of wizard in disguise, but because it’s simple to the core, the way it should be.

Drawing inspiration from photo sharing websites, GitHub Gist, Reddit and Notepad, the new site is designed to be an easy, fast and private way to share ideas, thoughts, or anything that fits in a text field. And if you choose to share it, the page serves as a central point of feedback.

I look forward to hearing what people think of it.

Look what just landed in my inbox. Of all the spam emails Hotmail should filter, I would have thought those spoofing “Hotmail Team” would be right up there. Hold on while I verify my account. It’s obviously important.

Whilst I’ve completely given up on the new design of Bing Maps (expert testimonial one and two), Microsoft deserves credit for some interesting mapping innovations like Street Slide. A recent patent applications reveals yet another interesting spin on street-level imagery that might make them far easier to explore.

As mapping has evolved, satellite imagery has become a common tool to identify structures of a unfamiliar places, however unless your common method of transport is flight, looking at buildings from the top is not the best representation what you might see when traveling. More recently, street-side imagery like Google Street View has become far more relevant, however they are harder to navigate in larger areas.

As per usual, Microsoft’s idea combines the best of both.

In the most basic sense, it projects street-side imagery besides both sides of street markings on a traditional map. Add this to your ever-growing list of “why didn’t I think of that”.

Combined with some post-processing on the street-side imagery to remove the sky and roads using 3D spatial data of just the buildings, you’re left with a clean projection of how the sides of a street would look laid out besides it on the map.

Although I don’t think this solution will replace either satellite imagery or street-views, but it offers a good middle-ground between the two extremes. Until then you’ll have to drag that yellow guy around a bit longer.