A step in the Windows Phone direction

After owning five iPhones spanning three distinct generations, I recently made the jump to Windows Phone 7 in the form of the Nokia Lumia 800. The decision to abandon a great phone and years of procuring just the right apps wasn’t easy. The iPhone truly did revolutionise in the way we use our mobile phones. But once an innovator is now quite stagnant in offering a handful of features to the phone and OS every generation.

Microsoft has skilfully created a fresh & stylish yet very utilitarian mobile operating system. Windows Phone 7 and its Metro design language has brought some excitement back into my daily mobile experience in just a week of using it. Some recognition must be given to Nokia for making such a beautiful piece of hardware to compliment the OS.

The New Task Manager

One of the stand out features of Windows 8 that hasn’t got much attention is the updated Task Manager. It displays a wealth of useful information laid out logically and in a very aesthetically pleasing way. Some of this functionality existed in previous versions of Windows but was not nearly as accessible.

I am very impressed with Windows 8′s new dual approach of supporting novice and power-users alike. A good example of this can be seen on the initial launch of Task Manager where it is launched in a minimal state and can be expanded easily to the full fledged manager. Some of these exciting features and more can be seen in the new Windows 8 Developer Preview or you can follow the Building Windows 8 blog from Microsoft.

Control multiple PC’s with one mouse & keyboard

There has always been a very effective way to control all your PC’s across multiple operating systems by the use of Synergy. Until now there has not been any serious competition in this field.

Today Microsoft has introduced it’s alternative named Mouse Without Borders. This further develops the Synergy idea by allowing files to be dragged across the multiple PC’s. Unfortunately it is currently only available for Windows. Definitely worth taking Mouse Without Borders for a spin.

Windows 8, a preview

One of the things previewed today at the D9 conference was an early version of Windows 8 demonstrated by Steven Sinofsky. Looks like a giant Windows Phone? Well they seem to have finally incorporated the Metro UI into the next version of Windows.

Here’s a detailed look at what’s in store:

UPDATE: The full Windows 8 demo from the D9 conference is now available.

Make websites pinnable with IE9 and Windows 7

With the introduction of IE9 for Windows 7, pinning your favourite websites onto the taskbar has never been easier. An idea taken originally from Google Chrome has been further developed to integrate some of the new taskbar features from Windows 7.

BuildMyPinnedSite.com offers a comprehensive step-by-step guide to integrate these great new taskbar features onto your websites very quickly. It is highly recommended for anyone developing websites.

MetroTwit, the Twitter client for Windows

From its inception last year, MetroTwit has matured into a fully featured Twitter client. It is in part designed and developed by Long Zheng of istartedsomething.com fame. The interface is inspired by Microsoft’s Metro design language which in turn makes it a joy to read tweets.  It is by far the best Twitter client I have used on Windows and with development speeding ahead it is likely to remain the Twitter client of choice.