A new and upcoming graphics design initiative called “The Noun Project” is going to make a lot of Windows Phone 7 designers and developers very happy.

The project’s mission is to collect, organize and make available an extensive library of free pictograms/icons for common nouns and concepts that make up the universal visual language, which also happens to be a major theme in Microsoft’s Metro design style. The best part, all icons are guaranteed to be free.

Still in it’s early stages, the website currently offers a solid set of 500+ icons. Unfortunately searching and categories are still being developed so it makes finding icons somewhat difficult in the meantime, but nevertheless fun to browse. They also plan to accept third-party contributions and host competitions to continue growing their collection.

The website’s creator is currently accepting community funding on Kickstarter.com. If you pledge $30 or more, you even get a free shirt printed with up to 3 icons of your choice.

There’s a fun report making the rounds that the Chrome OS notebook, specifically the Cr-48, doesn’t have the ability for caps lock, the cornerstone of many intellectually provocative and well mannered comments across the web.

Whilst it is true the keyboard button where the caps lock is usually has been replaced by a search button (a smart move for a company with a search engine), Google actually gives users the option to switch its functionality back to caps lock. Hopefully, the obnoxious won’t figure that out.

When it comes to unusual marketing ideas, Microsoft Australia are the top of their game. With Isaiah Mustafa, ten-grand treasure hunt and nine-year-old milk under their belt, their next challenge is to help organize a $20,000 wedding for a couple who signed up for the “Marry Me Microsoft” competition.

Today marks the first out of the five week challenge where Mark, the groom, must live and breathe the “Windows + Cloud” lifestyle using only a Windows 7 PC, Office 2010 and Windows Live – notably SkyDrive. If that wasn’t hard enough, he’s also confined to a special “bachelor bubble” in the heart of Sydney so he can only interact with others electronically.

No doubts Mike is going to need some help and Microsoft Australia is offering anyone who tweets “My wedding tip is” to @Windows7AU with the #MMMicrosoft hashtag a chance to win a HTC Mozart Windows Phone 7 each day.

It’s one thing to use Windows + Cloud for family photos and holiday plans, but it’s a whole different ball game when your marriage might depend on it. With that, good luck to Mike.

It looks like some of the alleged $400 million marketing budget for Windows Phone 7 went into making several ice blocks for a guerilla marketing campaign in Paris, France to coincide with the worldwide launch.

Although my French is limited to “Je ne parle pas français”, it appears the marketers handed out flyers to strangers on a busy street who then had to have a unique barcode scanned to check if they’ve won a phone. However, they’re not walking away with a free phone without a bit of effort there was a different way to win that involved a bit more effort.

The highlight of the campaign is where and specifically what the prize was wrapped in – ice. A huge block of it, with the phone frozen in the middle. The winners had to figure out a way to break the ice. Some used street furniture to their advantage, others employed tools with fierce force. All in all, lots of fun.

Video embedded below. Action starts around 1:35.

I would be lying if I said I didn’t think some people would get the wrong idea about ChevronWP7, which is why we went into great lengths to emphasis it is just an unlocking tool and even outlined our position on application piracy. What I didn’t think is that people would actually accuse us of advocating piracy itself.

One post in particular, “My Thoughts On ‘ChevronWP7′” by Michael B. McLaughlin is riddled with so many false allegations that begs a response. Although this post will be replying to excerpts of his writing directly, I hope this will help clear the air for others as well.

“ChevronWP7” is a “jail-breaking” thing
…
“Jailbreaking” is just a euphemism for “helping criminals steal from developers who depend on the software they write to help pay their rent, feed their kids, buy clothes, and meet the other ordinary expenses one incurs in life”.

First of all, the common understanding of a jailbreak is gaining root access to a device that otherwise has a limited API, which I might add was recently ruled a legal practice with the support of the EFF. Misrepresenting jailbreaking for application piracy is a far stretch of the truth.

I really don’t care what your motives are. The fact remains that you have created a tool, the sole purpose of which is to circumvent the security restrictions of the phone.

Personally I think my motives are pretty important in the context of this issue and that is to help develop a community of Windows Phone 7 homebrew developers and users.

Nevertheless, the sole purpose of the tool is also quite simple – to enable anyone to sideload an unpublished application to their Windows Phone 7 device.

I must emphasize the ability to sideload and run unpublished applications is a supported functionality of all Windows Phone 7 devices. Although not enabled by default, it’s a behavior embedded into the design of the operating system itself. That’s all ChevronWP7 does.

You say that the tool can’t be used to illegally load apps from the marketplace. How should we know? Because you say so?
…
Anyone who thinks that doesn’t hasten the arrival of pirated apps is deluding themselves. You’ve moved the ball forward on that. You. Not someone else. The fact that someone else might have done it eventually anyway doesn’t make it any less harmful and doesn’t make it “OK” that you did it.

We say this because none of our efforts has any effect or influence on what would be necessary for application piracy. Microsoft has implemented what we understand to be sufficient anti-piracy protection on all applications published on the Marketplace and it’s not our intention to break them.

Of course someone out there could be attempting to break that protection, but our tool and efforts does not aide them since it makes no modifications to the operating system’s security mechanisms.

Just to play devil’s advocate, even if the protection is compromised, we would support Microsoft hardening its anti-piracy mechanisms for published applications since it should not have any impact on any homebrew efforts outside of the Marketplace.

Do whatever it takes to help yourself get to sleep at night. Because being a celebrity is totally worth being a sociopath without any concern for your fellow human beings. Isn’t it?

As someone who tries to be a compassionate and considerate person and member of society, this is extremely offensive.

Microsoft banning you would simply be them sticking up for us. It’s their call how to deal with this abominable act of yours, of course. But don’t harbor any illusions that developers would universally support you. This developer, at least, most certainly would not.

I fully intend to pursue my goal to enhance the Windows Phone 7 experience for myself and anyone else who understands the nature of our work. It’s a shame Michael doesn’t feel the same way.

Update: The first homebrew Windows Phone 7 application that enables custom ringtones has just been released.

Update 2: We have a new blog post “Pursuing the future of homebrew on Windows Phone 7“.

After many long hours of Skype banter over the past week, we’ve finally opened Pandora’s box.

Today, together with Rafael Rivera and Chris Walsh, we’re releasing an elegantly simple tool to allow any user to unlock any retail Windows Phone 7 device for application side-loading (without having a WP7 marketplace registration account which costs US$99/year).

You can find the download and keep track of any further homebrew developments on the official ChevronWP7 group blog.

As I advocated previously, I believe having broader access to a device is both important to developers who might want to push the boundaries of what is “permitted” by just the public APIs, and users who may want to further customize and tweak their device (e.g. ringtones, custom theme colors, hardware search button, WiFi hotspot).

Windows Phone 7 homebrew developers, start your engines.

Update: If anyone was concerned about piracy, please read “Our stance on piracy” post.

Update 2: I have another followup post clearing up some further false allegations surrounding ChevronWP7 and piracy.

Update 3: We have a new blog post “Pursuing the future of homebrew on Windows Phone 7“.