Occasionally Microsoft comes up with an interesting peripheral product such as the SideWinder Mouse and sems to have done it again with its Arc Mouse. As well as looking unlike any other mouse with its elegant arc shape, it can be folded in half for packing.

Two colours are available: red and black and the arc mouse will retail for $60.

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Microsoft has launched the Wireless Mouse Laser 7000, a new rechargeable mouse with an striking ergonomic design. Some users will be disappointed by the small number of buttons and the frictionless scroll wheel but the rechargeable feature and its accuracy makes it worth consideration.

As noted above the Laser Mouse 7000 has a disappointingly small number of buttons. This includes left and right click buttons and the scroll wheel which is also clickable like a button. On the left side we find back and forward browser navigation button.

The scroll wheel does not ‘click’ as it is turned and offers little resistance so it is easy to accidentally scroll while trying to click with it. The navigation buttons are hard to reach but left and right button positioning is just fine.

The Laser 7000 uses ‘High Definition Laser Technology’ which seems to enable pinpoint accuracy.

A single AAA NiMH 1000mAH battery is necessary to power the mouse and comes included in the package. Also included is an AC powered dock. Microsoft recommends charging for seven hours to reach a full charge. A neat feature is the fact that if you are traveling and cannot use the dock you can replace the rechargeable battery with standard AAAs.

Basic use of the Wireless 7000 mouse is compatible with the following operating systems:

• Windows XP/Vista
• Mac OS X Leopard
• Linux Ubuntu

However the forward/backward buttons fail to work in Leopard and Ubuntu. On installing Microsoft’s IntelliPoint software Windows users can customize the mouse buttons extensively.

Generally the 7000 is an accurate, customizable if simple mouse of dubious build quality. It is currently retailing for around $70 but can be found as low as $40 plus taxes if you search hard enough.

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It’s been eight months since the launch of Apple’s iPhone and at last it’s getting enterprise e-mail announced today by Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller at the iPhone SDK special event. The list of enhancements was impressive and as expected included Microsoft Exchange support.

Here’s a list of the enhancements:

• Push e-mail
• Push calendars
• Push contacts
• Global address lists
• Cisco IPsec PVN
• Certificates and identities
• WPA2/802.1x
• Enforced security policies
• Device configuration
• Remote wipe, in case the iPhone is lost or stolen

Following much press speculation Apple has licensed Exchange ActiveSync from Microsoft which will be built in to the phone itself. This will allow the iPhone to connect out of the box to ME servers for secure push e-mail, contacts, calendars and global address lists.

These upgrades will be available in the iPhone 2.0 software upgrade due to make its appearance in June 2008.

After paying an initial setup fee of $99 developers will be able to sell their applications in the App Store, and will be able to set their own price. They’ll receive 70% of sales revenue, Apple retains 30% for credit card, hosting and marketing services.

Scott Forstall, vice president of iPhone software summarized:

“Starting today, we are opening up same native APIs and tools that we use internally to build all our iPhone applications. This means third-party developers can build native iPhone applications using the same (tools) that we do.

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Apple is expected to announce some “significant business-oriented software support for the iPhone on March 6th” at its iPhone press release event. The iPhone has had limited success in the enterprise sector due largely to its lack of business-orientated software and it is anticipated that this gap will be bridged next week.

IBM has already announced that it will launch Lotus Notes email for iPhone so it would be logical for Apple to bring IBM into the fold of ‘blessed’ and supported software. Bringing in Microsoft Exchange would take the iPhone’s business credentials to another level.

Shaw Wu, an American Technology Research analyst says:

“If true, this will prove key in having more enterprises and SMB adopt iPhone as their mobile platform. What isn’t as clear to us is how Apple will accomplish this, whether this is from internal development, third-parties including Microsoft with its ActiveSync technology, or Research in Motion Blackberry Connect or a combination of two or more.”

Recent ChangeWave surveys have shown that enterprise Apple iPhone users are more satisfied with their phones than RIM Blackberry users. It will be interesting to see how these figures are effected once the iPhone is exposed to a much larger and perhaps more demanding enterprise market.

ChangeWave says:

“Nearly three-in-five (59%) of Apple’s business customers say their company is Very Satisfied with the iPhone.”

“RIM (maker of the Blackberry) ranks second with a Very Satisfied rating of 47%, though we note this represents an unusually large 8-pt decline from the previous survey.”

We’ll see next week whether survey figures translate into Apple seizing perhaps its best enterprise market opportunity in a decade.

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In what appears to be a gesture of contrition Microsoft is offering a free game “Undertow” to gamers unable to access their gaming service. Problems experienced included:

• Unreliable connections
• Being kicked of games
• Inability to log in

You may have experienced the above if you were playing multiplayer games such as Call of Duty or Halo in the last few days of 2007, though these seem to have been sorted out now.

Until Sunday 27th January 11:59 pm PST (Monday 7.59 am GMT) Silver and Gold members can download Undertow for XBox Live for free — a saving of 800 MS Points ($10).

Undertow is an underwater race game in a 2D environment (although the images are 3D-modeled) in which you must fight or shoot opponents in order to reach a number of base-locations scattered around the course. Three race courses are included and your class can be upgraded at the end of every game in which you score points.

A nice little distraction until you get bored with it but no compensation for not being able to play Halo!

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This is the case of the PS3 that wasn’t. The Amycall phone has nothing to do with Sony’s Playstation 3 or the much-hyped PSPhone although it does boast the triangle, circle, square and cross buttons.

The Amycall PS3 can expect a number of ready buyers for this product:

• Samsung’s legal department (owns the name ‘Anycall’)
• Sony’s legal department (‘PS3′)
• Microsoft’s lawyers (runs Windows Mobile software)
• Nintendo’s legal boys (runs Nintendo emulation software)

It also comes with a 2MP phone and a feature which simulates your choice of background noise so that you can pretend your at the railway station when you’re actually at your favorite bar. Very useful if you’re on the run from an army of vicious international lawyers!

From an original article by Feelphones.

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Microsoft received much praise when it released the SideWinder Gaming mouse. Not surprising with t feature set like this:

• 2000 DPI maximum sensitivity,
• on-the-fly DPI switching
• extensive macro recording.

The SideWinder also raised some eyebrows with its odd button arrangements, vertically aligned thumb controls and its ‘unique’ look. So lets look at some of these other issues that make the SideWinder less of a success than it could have been…

It should be born in mind that we all hold a mouse in different ways and, for that matter, we all have different sized hands so your millage may vary from the opinions expressed here.

The sideWinder is a large mouse and necessitates resting the weight of the arm on the bottom part of the arm itself and the part of the hand where it meets the wrist and moving the mouse by swiveling the hand at the wrist. The whole of the surface of the hand will be in contact with the mouse because of its size and it’s bulbous shape so finger-tip control is not on the cards.

The buttons have a mushy vague feel. The thumb buttons are not compromised by their vertical alignment no-matter how odd it makes them seem but they lack precision and responsiveness.

The mouse glides across the mouse mat surface on five runners which are interchangeable with plastic, half Teflon and full Teflon alternatives. You can also utilize a set of different weights including a 5g weight and three 10g weights. You can place up to three of these weights in the mouse at a time in the side drawer mechanism bringing the weight of the device from 126g to 131g, 136g, 141g, 146g, 151g or 156g.

Below the scroll wheel are three DPI switches allowing the user to change the sensitivity of the mouse on the fly. The default resolution settings are 800, 1,000 and 1600 DPI but each of these is re-definable to values from 200 to 2,000 DPI using the Intellipoint software. This means that you can change sensitivity very quickly which is helpful in first person shooter games.

The SideWinder has many useful features but is let down by some very annoying design faults and oversights. The size and shape of the device make it a suitable control device for people of hands of a specific size and mouse handling tendencies for which the many technological features fail to compensate.

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Microsoft seems to be aiming directly at Blackberry with the launch of its server-based utility for managing Windows Mobile devices. The launch took place as CEO Steve Ballmer was giving his keynote address at the CTIA wireless conference in San Francisco.

The utility is called System Center Mobile Device Manager and represents Microsoft’s first foray into the enterprise market for mobile e-mail which it has long coveted and which RIM has had virtually to itself up to now with a 70% market share.

The new software allows mobile devices to be managed remotely much like a network of PCs. It also allows mobile professionals to connect to a company VPN using their mobile device.

Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg told Reuters:

“The IT folks, the same as it was in the PC environment, don’t want to roll out 10,000 devices. They want to roll out one device 10,000 times. Microsoft is hoping to replicate the success and the model of the PC.”

According to Microsoft the system will be available in the first half of 2008 and this is rumoured to coincide with the launch of an upgrade to Windows Mobile.

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Microsoft has yet to establish for itself a reputation for not making billions from the ideas of others but judging from a US patent filing last July it looks as if the Redmond technology giant may have thrown caution to the wind and had an idea!

The patent is titled “Extensible filtered lists for mobile device user interface” and contains some diagrams. Now before you look at these please make sure you have nothing in your mouth first — I’d hate you to have to clean your monitor in order to see the other half of this post.

Now doesn’t that look a little familiar? Not got it yet? Here’s a clue:

And that’s not all. Here’s Microsoft’s totally-new-and-not-copied-of-anyone-else design for a voicemail interface:

And here’s something similar from … another technology company:

It looks like those nasty people at Apple may have stolen these ideas from right under Microsoft’s nose!

Bad luck, Microsoft!

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