At last Monday’s Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, Microsoft took the wraps off their next generation Windows operating system for their mobile division dubbed Windows Phone 7 Series. Ever since the wildly popular iPhone OS hit the scene in June 2007, Microsoft has been sitting on the edge of its seat, waiting to retaliate with an interface that is finger-touch friendly. As pundits continued to flake on the Redmond-based company’s Windows Mobile 6.5x variations, their market share continued to slide. A comScore survey conducted late last year revealed that the Windows Mobile smartphone OS market share had fallen to third place, while the iPhone advanced to second place, and RIM’s BlackBerry continued to reign supreme.

Windows Mobile phones, much like BlackBerries, have long been known for their enterprise usage and hardly for their ability to integrate music, video and other web-centric social services such as Facebook and Twitter effectively. While the iPhone has helped push developers in the right direction, few have even approached the friendliness and ease of use that has made the iPhone shine.

With Windows Phone 7 Series, Microsoft plans to rewrite their mobile history. Building on the success of their entertainment divisions that include the Xbox 360 and Zune HD, Windows Phone 7 Series looks to be the culmination of the best of both of those spectacular products. The result is a product that, like the iPhone, merges all the growing connections that we have come to require in our digital lives.

When the Zune HD launched last September, few picked it up and even fewer knew how well thought out the user interface was. As every company has tried to emulate the iPhone’s UI, Microsoft put a pop culture spin on the Zune HD UI, combining post-modern menus that run off the screen with slickly animated navigation screens, giving the device a futuristic feel with an emphasis on “textual” menus instead of a confusing mess of icons like those on the Apple product. Throw in a web browser that works nearly as well as Mobile Safari, plus a beautifully thin yet “rugged-looking” industrial design, and the Zune HD should have hit the iPod touch right on the mark, maiming it. But it didn’t. The Zune HD is an example of where great ideas fail to become the de facto standard.

Windows Phone 7 Series sports a UI that is very similar to the Zune HD. Gone are the hierarchical windows and drop down menus that are clunky and make for difficult navigation. In it are flat colored squares devoid of excessive decorations, simply displaying relevant information such as unread e-mails, missed calls, updates on Xbox Live (WP7 has Xbox Live integration), Facebook notifications, etc. All of it is there on the main screen AND on the unlocked screen (Apple, take note of this for iPhone OS 4.0!).

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Last year when Barack Obama was swept into executive power, one of his main priorities was to create a national healthcare plan and digitize medical records to improve efficiency, saving billions of dollars a year in the process. While his grand plans have been somewhat foiled by a lack of bipartisanship, universal healthcare remains at the forefront of his objectives for this year.

Obama isn’t the only one ballyhooing about the health industry. It seems that everyone wants in on the game, hoping to latch onto its increasing momentum.

Ever since the dawn of the Wii, video game console makers have been trying to transform the health industry with their cheap systems and technologies. The latest company to seriously consider using their video game consoles for non-entertainment purposes is reported to be Microsoft.

There’s no doubt that Microsoft’s Xbox 360 behemoth is a hit, especially amongst “core-gamers,” with lifetime sales at 39 million units. But, is it even a system that can be considered for medical purposes? The Xbox 360 won’t be a replacement for an X-ray scanner anytime soon, but in terms of using it as a low-cost PC to access and display electronic medical records and other health information, the idea piques my interest. Desney Tan, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research says that Microsoft is exploring the potential that the Xbox 360 could have on the health industry, with technologies such as Project Natal’s controller-less input. Following Nintendo’s approach, Natal could be used for rehabilitation.

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By now, just about everyone and their grandma knows about the whole Google versus China fiasco. News that big can’t be quelled; I’ll bet even the technology averse Amish know all about it.

What a lot of people don’t know is that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 (IE 6) played a role in helping hackers attack Google and essentially start up this entire debate on internet freedom. McAfee security experts discovered the attacks on Google, allegedly made from within the Chinese government, were made possible by security vulnerabilities in IE 6. The attacks on Google are now dubbed “Operation Aurora”. The code for the attacks was released to the public on Friday, January 15th.

According to McAfee, the security hole in IE 6 works by tricking a user into visiting a malicious website which then compromises their entire operating system, relinquishing control to an attacker lying in wait. Microsoft was notified and confirmed that the exploit was extremely dangerous.

Since last Thursday, January 21st, Microsoft has issued security patches for all versions of Internet Explorer, but the damage has already been done. In an interesting public relations stunt, they’re advising consumers to upgrade to Windows Vista or 7 as Aurora remains a bigger threat to computers running Windows 2000 or XP. Vista and Windows 7 have security patches that the other two do not. Microsoft has advised users to ditch the ancient IE 6 that is still installed on many machines.

If Microsoft telling you to give up on IE 6 and upgrade to IE 7 or IE 8 doesn’t phase you, then maybe information security organizations in Germany and France will. Officials from both countries have publicly advised all users to ditch IE 6.

Developers for open source web browsers must be cheering because it’s no longer a question of whether IE sucks or not. The answer is an overwhelming “IE SUCKS”.

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