Microsoft Kin One and Two review

source: engadget.com
Make no mistake: the Kin One and Two are coming into the world as the black sheep of the phone industry, and Microsoft would have it no other way. Straddling the fence somewhere between a dedicated smartphone and high-spec featurephone, they've been tricky to understand since the day they were first leaked (even Microsoft seemed unsure of what the devices meant until very recently).

Billed as a Gen-Y (the "upload generation") social networking tool -- and sold in advertisements as the gateway to the time of your young, freewheeling life -- the Kin phones have admittedly been something of head-scratcher to those of us in the gadget world. Built atop a core similar (but not identical) to the Windows Phone 7 devices coming later this year, manufactured by Sharp, and tied into partnerships with Verizon and Vodafone, the phones dangerously preempt Microsoft's reemergence into the smartphone market. Hell, they're even called Windows Phones. But the One and Two aren't like any Windows Phones you've ever seen. With stripped-down interfaces, deep social networking integration, and a focus on very particular type of user, Microsoft is aiming for something altogether different with Kin. So do these devices deliver on that unique, social experience that Redmond has been selling, or does this experiment fall flat? We've taken both handsets for a spin, and we've got all the answers in our full review... so read on to find out!

Kin One and Two review

Hardware

The Kin One and Two should look a little familiar -- they come off like mutated cousins of the Palm Pre. The One is short and squat, sort of disc shaped, with a smaller display that slides down into the center of the handset; the Two, meanwhile, is a larger, elongated device with a wide landscape keyboard. Both devices feature capacitive touchscreen displays (a 2.6-inch, 320 x 240 QVGA screen on the One and a 3.4-inch, 480 x 320 HVGA version for the Two) with thick, plastic coatings. Around the sides, the phones both feature the same compliment of buttons: volume rockers, a dedicated camera key, a sleep / power button, plus a "back" button on the lower faces of the devices. The phones use a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, take micro-USB cables, and have cameras equipped with LED flashes on their backs.



From an industrial design standpoint, there isn't a lot that's laudable here -- but there's also not too much to complain about. As we said, the designs themselves don't feel tremendously original, but the company is ripping off good material. The One has a little more character than the Two, largely due to its uncommon size and use of the rarely-seen portrait slider mechanism. It's also got a little color highlight (well, white) around the screen when it's closed, giving it a kind of 60's Formica countertop feel that we like. Both handsets do seem a little iffy on the build quality; the slider mechanisms feel fine, but there are lots of open spaces and notches that make the devices seem less rugged than we would prefer -- the Pre and the G1 have that same problem. On the Two, the display is coated with a thicker plastic element that almost melts around the edges, giving it a dipped-in-shellac appearance that's refreshingly retro.



Both phones have slide-out hardware keyboards -- a welcome sight. The One seemed a bit mushier to our thumbs, and the extreme curve of the keyboard made typing a little more of a challenge. The Two has a much clickier and pleasant keyboard, though the narrowness of the keys might be troubling for users with larger hands. The keyboards were both usable, but we do take issue with the lettering, which is difficult to read because it runs off of the sides of the individual keys. Also, the special characters are quite difficult to see, and on the software side, there is zero text correction or prediction, even for simple words like "isn't." You're on your own here.



In your hand, both devices feel light but not without substance, and the matte material used on the backing is pleasant enough to the touch. Neither one of these phones is going to stop you in your tracks when you see it, but the designs are also quite approachable and likable, so points go to Microsoft on that.

Internals

Both the One and the Two sport the Tegra APX2600 CPU -- the same as in the Zune HD, so you've got plenty of horsepower -- and have 256MB of DDR RAM on-board. The One has a paltry 4GB of storage for your pics, music, and video, while the Two ups the game to 8GB... which still isn't hugely competitive. Neither of the devices support microSD, so if you were planning on some memory expansion, look elsewhere. The devices have light and proximity sensors, an accelerometer, and GPS chips inside, along with 802.11b/g, EvDO Rev. A, and Bluetooth 2.1 (which supports A2DP and AVRCP profiles). In our testing, we didn't see any remarkable performance out of the Tegra chips, though we'd bet dollars to donuts that they're running a little less hot so the phones can suck a little more life out of these batteries (1240 mAh for the One, and 1390 mAh for the Two). Overall, you won't be shocked by the performance or specs of these devices, but you shouldn't feel cheated either -- the Kins are fairly modern phones as far as the guts are concerned.

Displays

The Kin One and Two don't have particularly notable displays, though they get the job done well enough. Thanks to the light sensors in the phones, when you first boot up you'll find yourself in auto brightness mode, which for us was way, way too dim. Digging down we eventually found a way to switch to manual settings (more on that in a little bit). The display on the One was about as squashed as you'd expect it to feel. Luckily for Microsoft, there's not a lot of content being pushed at any one time, but we still felt like we were squinting every time we had to try to make out text on the screen. It's not just low resolution -- the pixel density doesn't seem too tight either. On the Two things felt a little better. Again, the Kin UI doesn't really need a lot of space, but it's nice to have more room, especially when it comes to dealing with email. Both of the displays seemed a bit washed out to us, and colors weren't quite as vibrant as we would have liked.



The touch sensitivity of the screens seemed up to snuff with their smartphone contemporaries. We did experience a few moments of sluggishness or unresponsiveness, though we're certain that that has a lot more to do with the software than the hardware. Pinch-to-zoom and other familiar gestures (like lots of swiping) generally went off without a hitch; touch response was definitely improved from when we'd first played with the phones, and it gives us hope that the Windows Phone 7 experience will be even better. The Kin displays work and look fine for the most part, but we didn't walk away feeling stunned by the screens.

Camera

Now Microsoft has been making a big deal out of the cameras on these phones, having equipped the One with a 5 megapixel shooter, and the Two with an 8 megapixel version that does... wait for it... 720p video. Why HD video might be important to the teen audience the company seems to be trying to appeal to here is anyone's guess, but we digress. We want to stress that the Kin ads show off a lot of heavy camera use, so we get the impression that the company intends picture taking to be a big part of how Kin users utilize their phones. So how are these memory-capturing tools when put to the test? Honestly... not very good. For starters, just the act of trying to take a photo with the hardware buttons on these phones is really quite uncomfortable; somehow, both the One and Two seem to force your hand into a position where you're blocking the lens with a finger or two. Once you do get a grip you like, pressing that button yields inconsistent results. On the One, it's usually good for taking a picture after a firm press, but sometimes there's no reaction at all, while on the Two, it tends to focus in and out and then never snap a photo. We had to press unreasonably hard on the key, and the results were usually marred by the movement of the camera... which was a result of pressing too hard.

Kin Two camera shots

Once we could get the phones to snap a picture, the results were mixed at best. With the flash on or set to auto, the pictures ended up almost universally blown out, sometimes just revealing themselves on review as a white blur. Both the One and Two are equipped with autofocus lenses, though the One seemed to struggle much less with focusing in on subjects. On the other hand, its images looked more washed out to us. To sum up, taking still photos with both Kin devices was a frustrating, unrewarding affair that yielded more bad than good. Perhaps if the speed gets cranked up and that flash can be tamed in a future revision, the results may improve -- but for now, the moment you'll be capturing the most is just after something really good happened. Or just a flash of light.

On the video front, things did look a little bit up, especially in the case of the Kin Two. As we mentioned, it's capable of shooting 720p video, and what we saw wasn't completely cringe-worthy. Still, there is some nasty compression going on (which you have no control over), but on a bright day, we captured some pretty handsome shots which seemed well balanced as far as colors were concerned. The One and Two have image stabilization, but it wasn't exactly cranking on overdrive, and we had some really, really troubling wind noise (as you can hear on the video). Besides those minor problems, you can safely leave the Flip at home if you've got the Two in your pocket... just know that you can't up HD video to the Kin Studio -- you have to sync them with Zune on your PC, which goes firmly against Microsoft's mantra with these products that everything you capture is instantly whisked into the cloud. More on that in a moment.

Sound quality / Speakerphone

So we'll just be straight with you here -- we didn't get the overwhelming impression that Microsoft expects you to be talking a lot on these phones. If the literature, ads, and general functionality of the One and Two tell us anything, it's that phone calls are dead, and everyone is Facebooking like it's going out of style. Whether or not that attitude had any impact on the quality of the earpiece or speakerphone here is anyone's guess... but they certainly align perfectly, in that the sound quality of the phone seems like an afterthought. The earpiece itself was decent enough, but we thought the speakerphone left quite a bit to be desired. The Kin certainly isn't the only phone out there with poor speakerphone sound though, so this really didn't come as much of a shock to us.

Software

Okay, this is the big fish. The Kin wasn't designed for early adopters of the most cutting edge hardware -- that's obvious. What it was designed to do, however, was work really well doing a couple of key tasks, most of them centered around social networking, photos and video, and some overarching concept of capturing your mobile / digital life in a whole new and easy manner. Lofty goals indeed for a product like this, and unfortunately for everyone, Microsoft misses the mark by a long shot. It's not even close.



The user interface of the Kin is laid out in a deceptively simple manner. When you first boot the phone, you're asked for a username and password and then taken to your home screen. Let's talk for a moment about that login process: you may think that the Kin, like most modern phones, would be asking you for a preexisting username and password from something like Gmail or Yahoo! so that you can pull in your email account and perhaps contacts. It certainly seems like that's what's happening when you first turn the phone on -- however, that's not the score. What's actually happening is that you're creating a Windows Live account, one which the phone uses to sync your Studio data back and forth with. You actually are never given the opportunity to add a Gmail or Yahoo! account for anything but plain vanilla email (unlike with webOS, Android, or the iPhone). Therefore, if you're a user of one of these wildly popular services, your only hope for adding your contacts is dumping a .csv file from your account, then uploading that to your Live account, then praying that somehow the magical contact fairy makes your dreams a reality. We're still waiting for our Live account to sync those contacts to our phone or Studio.



Now, back to the main phone operation. The home screen (or screens, rather) consist of three panels which you gesture left or right to get into and out of. In the center is the "Loop," where you see Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, and RSS updates; off to the right you have your favorite contacts, basically a grid of people you like talking to; on the left is your "apps" page, which contains links to your camera, browser, email, and so on. So far so good, right? In addition to your three main pages, you've got a little clock in the right hand corner at all times, as well as a "recent" tab in the left corner -- both bring up pop-up menus, the latter giving you quick access to recent applications, and the former showing you the phone's battery life status and network connections. Oh, and down in the middle of the phone is a little dot called the "Spot" -- let's try and explain what that does.

The Spot is meant to be a point on the device where you can drag all manner of content, and then share that content with friends. For instance, you might want to send a text message to a group of friends. Easy: just drag their faces onto the Spot, then click on it. You'll be taken to a page where you can send an email or an MMS or SMS message. Simple enough. You can also do more complex actions, like drag a Facebook or Twitter message, a URL, and a photo into this area, then drag your friends into the Spot and send them an email -- only an email -- with all that content. It seems like a good idea, but in practice, it makes very little sense. A video demo shown on the Kin site offers a scenario where you might drag a concert venue, a band's MySpace page, a few photos you've taken, and a friend's status update to the Spot and then send an email about going to show... but no one really works like that, and the Kin UI doesn't make it any more logical. It's actually a really cumbersome way to communicate -- dragging one abstract thing towards another abstract thing doesn't make more sense than deciding to send an email, typing a few addresses, and throwing some pictures or links into the message... it just doesn't. You can't share those kind of mixed messages on Facebook or Twitter or MySpace either -- it's strictly for email. The more complex your combos get, the harder it is to get them out. One thing we couldn't do with the Spot was share music (or even a link or snippet) from the Zune app. We wanted to drag a song to the Spot, but there is no Spot in the Zune player! So much for "the social," right?



But the obtuseness of this user experience doesn't stop with the Spot -- it permeates the entire interface as though decisions about how things should work were made almost arbitrarily, without anyone stopping to test them in the real world. The Twitter implementation is a great example of that. You can add your Twitter account to the phone and see updates from people you follow, and you can update your status from the top of the Loop... but that's all you can do. You can't retweet something, you can't send a direct message, you can't go to single person's feed to see all their updates, and you can't even open a link in a Twitter message from the Loop! To do something as simple as look at an image someone has tweeted, you must first click on the tweet, then click "open in browser," then wait for the tweet to load on twitter.com, then finally click the link to see the image or URL. It's a shocking omission for a phone which claims to be about nothing but social networking.



The basic premise of the Loop also presented problems. The idea is that you can quickly glance at all of your friends' updates and respond to them quickly, but it soon becomes a daunting task just trying to understand who is saying what. The average Facebook user has 130 friends (we tested with accounts of over 700 and 200), Twitter adds noise to the mix, MySpace compounds it... and the phone only updates every 15 non-user-adjustable minutes. Sometimes less! What happens is that you can't really keep track of any conversations, and your friends (or in our case, lots of people you don't really know) become less about their individual voices, and more about random shouts in a big crowded room. The Kin might be more appropriately called the Facebook or MySpace phone, since it seems to want to play nice with those two sites more than anything, but even when trying to comment on something on Facebook, upload a picture, or update our status, we ran into frustrating timeouts and stalls that made us want to throw the phone across the room. Overall, it's just a deeply, deeply frustrating and inconsistent experience.

Beyond the social networking aspects of the phone, we also take issue with the browser, which is abysmally slow and buggy (it consistently crashed while trying to load any complex web pages like Engadget), and the email client, which seemed to have trouble displaying even the most rudimentary HTML messages. The only real saving grace on the software side is the Zune app, which is identical to the Zune HD interface, but allows you to download music and movies over the air (yes, even over 3G), which is almost worth the price of admission. Almost, but not quite. We had some Zune issues too, like the aforementioned lack of the Spot, the fact that it only displays in portrait mode (except searches, which then forces you to do some weird rotating back and forth), and a situation with certain albums we tried to download which were "computer only" -- meaning it didn't matter if we had a Zune Pass or not. We wish we had more to say on the "other" parts of the phone, but there's just not much there. No app store, no IM client, no games, no calendar... not even visual voicemail or some carrier-hitched GPS app. Teens still play games, don't they? Microsoft says that down the road the Windows Phone and Kin ecosystems will merge, yielding software for these devices... but they may be a long wait from what we can tell.



While using the One and Two we found ourselves consistently confused or surprised by how many bad little interface problems there are. Not only does the phone make it hard to do simple tasks -- and not only are the social networking features poorly implemented -- but the handsets are often sluggish, hiccupy, and downright crash-prone. We were told by the devices on more than one occasion that we needed to restart (while performing basic tasks), and often it would just throw us a blank screen while we waited for the device to come back from whatever tragic internal situation was occurring. It would be wonderful to say more good about the phone's UI -- but we just can't.

The Studio

One aspect of this family of devices that does show a lot of promise is the Kin Studio -- essentially an online repository of all of your SMS and MMS messages, call logs, photos, videos (non-HD, one minute long clips), contacts, RSS feeds, as well as your social networking service updates. The Studio interface is all handled by Silverlight, so it's fairly robust. We can definitely see a future where not only is your phone kept backed up in this fashion, but you also have access to voicemail, email, your music and video collection, and other bits of content you want to keep accessible (something like Dropbox, but integrated). It's a great start, but of course it's hindered by the devices themselves -- it's hard to become invested in the ecosystem of the Kin phones when their actual performance is so off-putting. It should also be noted that the syncing process takes a bit of time, and you never really know when your content will be available, which is a rather annoying aspect of the whole experience we hope Microsoft corrects. You should have some control over when and how you send your photos and video to the cloud.

Battery life

Microsoft told us that its goal was for users to be able to take off for a weekend road trip with these things and leave their chargers behind. We didn't have a long time to test battery life, but in our experience both the One and the Two held up fairly well under heavy use. In particular, the One was left off the charger quite a bit, yet still managed to go for more than two days with sporadic use. We'll chalk the better performance up to that heavily controlled sync schedule (once every 15 minutes at the most).

Pricing / Wrap-up

When we first saw the Kin phones, the editors at Engadget (and lots of other folks in the industry) said that price would be the big question when it came to these phones. If they really were destined for the hands of tweens and teens, then they would have to be offered at a price that was attractive to their parents, which means something decidedly below the standard smartphone deal: a device for $100 or $200, plus a pricey data plan. There seemed to be a general sentiment that if Verizon and Microsoft could partner on something that hit a lower price point for the devices coupled with a bargain-rate data package, they just might have a foot in the door, despite the obvious limitations of the device.



Even if that were true -- if a great price could cancel out the faults of these phones (which it can't) -- Microsoft and Verizon have failed there as well. The One and Two are being offered for $49.99 and $99.99 respectively after a $100 mail-in rebate... and they must be coupled with a standard Verizon smartphone plan, which clocks in at $29.99 a month. We were frankly shocked when we heard the pricing schemes (you also need a voice plan, of course, which will set you back another $39.99 monthly). To offer what is clearly so much less than a smartphone with a smartphone data plan is insulting to consumers, and doubly insulting considering who it looks like these phones are aimed at. If you're going to shell out this kind of money each month, it would be foolish to even consider these devices given the much, much better options out there. Even counting out the iPhone or similar devices on other carriers (many of which are rather attractive), just take a look at the offerings on Verizon right now. You could get a Pre Plus -- an immeasurably better phone with much of the social networking integration of the Kin devices -- for $29 coupled with a smartphone and voice plan. Or you could spend a little more upfront and get a BlackBerry Tour 9630, Droid, Incredible, or Droid Eris -- all much, much better phones with excellent social networking options. The list really goes on -- and again, if you were a teenager or young adult with all of these great options laid out before you, the idea of choosing this severely limited device which doesn't do a single thing better than even the most basic Android device is kind of crazy. Microsoft has hinted that it wants to shake up the text-centric featurephone market with Kin, but guess what? You categorically cannot even fathom to do that when you're charging for smartphone data. It's insulting to suggest otherwise.



And that about sums it up -- there are much better choices for much less money on the market, and Microsoft hasn't demonstrated to us why you would choose this phone over those. You could argue that the 720p video recording is a hook, but our results weren't that outstanding, and we don't know anyone who needs HD video on a phone so desperately that they're willing to overlook all of these faults. In the end, we're left with two orphan devices -- phones that feel like they should have been killed before they made it to market, but somehow slipped through. It's clear to us from conversations we've had with Microsoft that there are people at the company with good ideas about what phones should and shouldn't do, but we don't feel the Kin is representative of those ideas. The execution (or lack thereof) on these products makes us legitimately concerned about what the company will do with Windows Phone 7. We can only hope that the similarities between those devices and the Kin handsets don't stretch much further than the "Windows Phone" label, because in our estimation, Kin is one side of the family that needs to be disowned... quickly.
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Internet Explorer 9: A Platform Preview

source: extremetech.com
At the Mix developer conference today in Las Vegas, Microsoft launched preview code for the most critical element of its upcoming Internet Explorer 9 Web browser: the underlying rendering engine.

Key goals for the new browser engine are few and simple: improved speed and support for new Web standards, particularly HTML5 and SVG (the World Wide Web Consortium (WC3) organization, to which Microsoft contributes test code and other resources, oversees both).

IE9 isn't an full-fledged Web browser yet; so far, it's merely the rendering subsystems wrapped in a simple user interface that does nothing more than allow Web address entry and provide developer tools. IE9's director Dean Hachamovitch told a select group of reporters (myself and PCMag Editor-in-Chief Lance Ulanoff among them) last week at its Redmond, Washington, campus that big changes were also coming to the browser's user interface, but that this release was aimed at giving developers a target for their Web site code.

Internet Explorer has been something of an object of derision among browsers when it comes to speed, and particularly in JavaScript performance. SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark results are often cited as an indication of this, but Microsoft has long maintained that it's put development efforts in other parts of the pipeline needed to render Web pages, such as layout and display. This newest version of Internet Explorer addresses both JavaScript and other speed bottlenecks.

Speed Through GPU Acceleration

Because much of what a browser does involves rendering graphical images and drawing them to the display, it seems logical that such operations would be performed on the hardware optimized for them: the video card. Current browsers, however, only use the CPU for these operations. IE9 moves graphics processing to the GPU.

IE9 will be able to take advantage of both high-end gamers' powerhouse video cards and the more modest models found in low-powered machines. Though JavaScript performance plays a role in Web browser performance (as we'll discuss below), there are other factors as well: too—networking, HTML parsing, CSS, data collections, DOM, COM marshalling, layout, and display rendering. The IE dev team has profiled the most common performance patterns among thousands of the world's most popular sites and found that rendering actually accounted for a bigger part of the pipeline than JavaScript. Clearly, handling the display rendering steps in the GPU will have a significant positive impact on Web performance.

JavaScript Speed through Compilation on a Second Core

Browsers handle JavaScript through on-the-fly interpretation which, just like human language interpretation, requires steps between the code and the execution on the CPU. To be fair, what Firefox, Chrome, and Opera use is a bit better than straight-up interpretation: They use a JIT (just-in-time) compiler for some JavaScript, which delivers a palpable speed boost over interpreting the code.

But IE9 will go beyond the JIT idea by taking advantage of the fact that nearly all PCs bought in the last few years have, in effect, more than one CPU—they're dual- or quad-core machines these days (and Intel just released the first six-core CPU), and can run up to twice as many threads. Multicore CPUs use one core to render the JavaScript the old way and the second to actually compile it to run directly in machine code on the hardware, with no translation required. Any programmer knows that the speed difference between interpreted and compiled code is enormous, so it follows that in some cases the performance gain will be game-changing.

Jason Weber, the Principal Program Manager lead for Internet Explorer, showed a demo of spinning 3D icons that dramatically illustrated the difference both JavaScript compilation and GPU acceleration can make. As icons were added and spun faster, all current browsers topped out the CPU (or "pegged" it) and the spinning demo slowed down to a painful 5 frames per second or fewer, with a dozen icons spinning slowly. But spinning and zooming 256 icon globes at warp speed in IE9 left the primary CPU core with processing time to burn. Said Weber, "We're only using a quarter of the first core of the CPU. This is enabling developers to create a completely new class of applications on the Web."

click on image for full view

The SunSpider benchmark only tests one element of browser performance, and it actually doesn't even test some of the most frequently used JavaScript commands. Microsoft has set up a test of the most frequently used ones on the test site for the new browser platform and, though engineers were quick to deny the term "benchmark" for these, the results were impressive. For these top 15 JavaScript actions, IE9 came out twice as fast as the current SunSpider-leading Opera browser. Of course, we'll need to do our own tests to validate Microsoft's results—and we will—but it made for an effective demonstration nonetheless.

click on image for full view

IE has a history of frustrating developers because of the need to fork parallel code, especially for earlier versions. Hachamovitch wanted to send the message that sites should just deliver one code base for all browsers that adhere to real standards. This comes back to what has been a programmer's Holy Grail for years: the concept of write-once, run-anywhere. One of the recurring themes at the press preview was IE9's goal of "browser interoperability."

IE hasn't been alone in needing its own special code. Firefox has had the "-moz" prefix for some commands that only work in that browser; and Webkit, too, has required a "-Webkit" prefix for some. Microsoft Program Manager Tony Ross demonstrated how a simple two lines of code to get rounded corners on a rectangle quickly grew far more cumbersome when all the alternate code for these different browsers was added. "Ultimately, running the same markup and having complete interoperability is a two-way street: There's the part that the browser has to play, and the part developers have to play. We encourage them to detect for capabilities rather than for browsers."

Ross and other Microsoft engineers have been extremely active in the W3C, the official standards body of the Internet. Though tests like Acid3 have purported to indicate support for "standards," it turns out that many of the capabilities it tests aren't official W3C specs. Hachamovitch did note that "as we support more of the markup that Web sites are using, our Acid score will go up." But he went on to decry the test's claim to represent true standards: "As standards and browsers change, you see a lot of variance." That said, the new IE9 browser engine's Acid3 score is up from 20 to 55 out of 100 on the test, and that could still go up when we see beta.

click on image for full view

A couple of specific HTML5 features that the IE9 platform will support are the video and audio markup tags. And where Firefox hopes content providers will switch to the open-source Ogg formats, IE9 will support industry standard MPEG-4 and H.264 for video and AAC and MP3 for audio.

New Support for SVG

Sure, you can offer a PDF download for complex content like floor plans and org charts, but why not make these decipherable right inside the webpage? SVG allows just that. SVG is a W3C standard for animated, interactive graphics based on paths rather than bitmaps. No matter how much you zoom in on an SVG image, edges remain razor sharp—unlike bitmapped image formats such as JPEG, which show degradation as you enlarge them. This holds true for text, too; that's key for the org chart example mentioned above.

In fact, John Hrvatin, Senior Program Manager Lead, Internet Explorer, told the press group that IE9 is the first browser that natively supports SVG inline with HTML; previously, XHTML was required. SVG is the descendent of VML, which came out of the Visio drawing tool. Other browsers use SVG for the popular map sites, while until version 9, IE uses VML.

Said Visio veteran and now Internet Explorer Partner Program Manager Ted Johnson, "SVG is a huge standard. We're not doing all of it in the first release, but we're doing a tremendous amount of it. When we ship, we're going to be covering all the way through what we consider 'static SVG.' Filter effects, animation, and fonts won't be included. A lot of these are still in flux. What's exciting about SVG is that you can easily see the markup in view source alongside its graphical result in the browser."

Will Microsoft Get It Right with IE9?

After years of criticism about IE's lack of support for standards and slower Web page loading than that of its competitors, it looks like Microsoft is taking some concrete, drastic steps to address these issues. Only time will tell, but Hachamovitch's plea to developers to stop coding separately for Internet Explorer is a good sign, as are the rendering speed initiatives. Taking advantage of today's ubiquitous multiple cores in the CPU and discrete graphics hardware is both radical and logical, and could completely change the game when it comes to page-rendering speed. It will be interesting to see if other browser makers take the gauntlet and implement these techniques.

One factor, though, is IE9's release schedule. Microsoft reps were completely noncommittal about when the browser would be released, in either a beta or final version. Given the frequency with which we see new editions of Firefox and Google Chrome, it's conceivable that another browser could come out with hardware acceleration before anyone gets a chance to use IE9.

For now, you can take the platform for a test drive by visiting ie.microsoft.com/testdrive in your current browser.
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Mobile World Congress 2010, Microsoft Unveils Windows Phone 7 Series

For two long years, Microsoft has left its Windows Mobile platform on the version six. At this year's Mobile World Congress, the Redmond company has decided to take on the lucky number seven with the introduction of its updated mobile operating system. And for some of us, it's time to shed our old ways and remember this: we are now looking at not Windows Mobile 7, but what shall be known as Windows Phone 7 Series.

Just a few months ago, Microsoft revealed its Windows Mobile 6.5 update. Back then, the Windows Phone branding has already been set in place, and updates were soon made available for various Windows Mobile devices over the months.

Ready. Set. For Windows Phone 7 Series, having it ready and setting it out for the masses might be a while more.

At this year's Mobile World Congress, Microsoft is looking at its largest crowd ever for its Windows Phone 7 Series announcement.

At the Microsoft press conference, Steve Ballmer was on-site to officially unveil the company's new Windows Phone 7 Series. To put it simply, we are looking at a whole new experience on this updated OS.

Unlike its earlier iterations, Windows Phone 7 Series will be holding a tighter reign, looking to unify the user experience across a variety of devices. In essence, Ballmer states, "With hardware vendors, we raise the bar with more consistency in hardware platform." On a similar note, Microsoft isn't able to confirm that WM6.X phones that satisfy those requirements will be upgradeable. However, every 7 Series device will be upgradeable with improvements and features delivered with subsequent 7 Series releases.

To give you a better idea of what to expect, here's a list of features found on Windows Phone 7 Series.

• Dedicated hardware button for Bing search

• Integration to Xbox LIVE games

• Dynamic live tiles showing real-time content updates

• User interface similar to Zune

• Specific pages within Windows Phone known as hub - Peope, Pictures, Games, Music + Video, Marketplace, Office

Windows Phone 7 Series - Interface

Before we move on to the various hubs, we take a look at the main screen. The lock screen is retained, albeit slightly different with a slide up unlocking motion instead. Once the phone is unlocked, a series of "live tiles" are presented. Named as live for the fact that it retrieves data on a real-time basis, these individual tiles will reflect the latest changes in the people hub.

Think of the home screen as an extension to what you'll see on the hubs (which we'll talk about soon). Whatever is being updated on your hubs, will be reflected on the "live tiles". Of course, you'll have to assign specific tiles to pull data feeds from your contacts. As Joe Belfiore, Vice President of Windows Phone puts it, customization will also be a key component in the Windows Phone 7 Series.

"Live tiles" includes the most recent updates to the happenings around you, including communications, people via your social networking sites and updates on your XBox Live account.

Windows Phone 7 Series - Hubs

Windows Phone 7 Series, as mentioned earlier, will be focusing on six specific hubs. But as seen during the press conference, social networking will be the key to the mobile OS. Belfiore also highlights that the experience is all about bringing together discrete sources of data into one easy to access location.

The new OS is essentially a new experience, going back and revisiting how the company designed the user interface, and coming up with a new experience. More importantly, the aim of the mobile OS is to focus on the individual and their tasks, to help organize information and applications
for easy access. In this case, the mobile OS aptly splits the most common activities on a smartphone into six different, yet interconnected nodes known as hubs. We start off with the hub that gives an insight to the aesthetics of Windows Phone 7 Series - Music+Videos

Music+Video hub - a chip off the Zune HD interface and concept.

Perhaps the biggest clue of how the new Windows 7 Phone Series interface looks like is via this hub, Music+Video. Sporting exactly the same interface as you have come to know on Microsoft's Zune HD, we see a striking resemblance and consistency of the interface across the other hubs. Furthermore, each Windows Phone 7 Series device will be able to synchronize multimedia content via the Zune software. During the demonstration, we were shown how a Windows Phone fires up the Zune software upon connecting it to a PC. What really matters here is the consistency of the interface, thus giving one a more intuitive user interface to familiarize with.

People

People hub - full integration of your contacts across social networking sites.

As mentioned, social networking is going to play a major role in how one communicates on the move. Within the People hub, the people that you have most recently contacted will definitely be the first to appear when you access the hub. Beyond that, any updates related to the folks in your contacts will be listed in the What's New page. This includes more than your usual messages and call history; it also pulls the latest updates from sites such as Facebook and list it on the People hub.

Pictures

Pictures hub - synchronizing your images over-the-air.

Likewise, the Pictures hub will also be well connected to the web, giving you a list of updates for your social networking sites. But it's not simply an image uploading or downloading portal; the Pictures hub works seamlessly with Windows Live services and synchronizes images from both ends. This is just another example of the integration of Microsoft's cloud services with future smartphones running the mobile OS.

Office

Office hub - enhanced productivity suite on your Windows Phone.

With a Windows Phone, you definitely can't miss out a productivity option, and in this case, an Office hub. The usual suspects are available on the Office hub, such as Word, Excel and Powerpoint. To highlight the importance of over-the-air services, Windows Phone 7 Series will also support Microsoft Office's SharePoint, allowing you to download documents straight to your Windows Phone via the server.

Games

Games hub - enjoying games on the go with Xbox Live integration.

Another important aspect of the Windows Phone 7 Series is the integration of your Xbox Live account onto a supported Windows Phone. The Games hub is going beyond your Xbox Live avatar, giving you access to a wide variety of games available on the Xbox Live service. And this, ties up to the next point, which wasn't shown during the demonstration.

Marketplace

Apps. While it seems like Microsoft is falling far behind on the apps ecosystem, it is making an attempt to regain ground in this aspect. As we see it, this will be a double-edged sword. While it might be a great way to fully integrate everything onto a Windows Phone, there is still no confirmation on whether apps side-loading will be available on the new Windows Phone 7 Series. Nonetheless, Microsoft is making headway with developers and bringing them into the apps equation with the Marketplace, and it's still anybody's game when it comes to the apps delivery.


Availabilty

According to Microsoft, Windows Phone 7 Series has a large pool of partners from around the world making plans to include the new mobile OS in their devices. For now, the list of manufacturers include Dell, Garmin-Asus, HTC Corp., HP, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Qualcomm Inc. The first phones will be available by the year-end holiday season of 2010.

At the end of the press conference, the question was once again posed to Microsoft: will Flash be supported on Windows Phone 7 Series? The answer is once again, no. Ballmer, however, did announce to the crowd that they have no violent objections to having Flash on Windows Phones. We could take a pinch of salt with that comment, but there's still nary a word on Flash support. Just yet, that is.

Hands-on with Windows Phone 7 Series

We managed to get some hands-on time with a prototype unit running the Windows Phone 7 Series. While it is still in the early stages and there's still quite some time for the OS to reach retail units, we were duly impressed. The interface was intuitive, and transitions across the various hubs were seamless. Tiles were adequately sized, giving our thumbs ample room to work with. As mentioned, we should be expecting devices powered by Windows Phone 7 Series by the end of 2010. In the meantime, if you like to see how the OS performs, here are a few shots of it in action.

At first glance, the Windows Phone 7 Series lock screen is just a wallpaper. Slide your fingers up (and enter an unlocking password if required), and you're ready to go.

The home screen houses dynamic data, with live feeds reaching the tiles as listed here.

According to Microsoft, you can add as many live tiles as you wish on the home screen. Tiles can be rearranged according to each tiles' usage priority.

Microsoft's search engine, Bing, plays a critical role in Windows Phone 7 Series. More data will be populated on the Bing server, which will be included on Windows Phone 7 Series during its eventual rollout.

Windows Live will be the key to all your social networking sites, with full integration into the Windows 7 Phone Series.

Videos




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MyFord Touch proves that the shape of things to come is awesome

source: autoblog.com
Ford has updated its Sync technology and made it the basis for a new driver interface and dashboard design called myFord Touch that it is rolling out at this week's Consumer Electronics Show.

MyFord Touch – Click above for high-res image gallery

Ford began its MyFord Touch presentation with a simple question: "People line up for iPhones – why not cars?" What is it about certain pieces of technology that makes them a "must have"? And since the iPhone is really just a merger of two things we already have (a cell phone and PC), is it possible to blend something into a car that will get 'em lining up around the block? Quite obviously, Ford's hoping the answer is yes.

MyFord Touch – and if you buy a Lincoln, MyLincoln Touch – is a piece of driver connect technology like SYNC, only much more advanced. In fact, you can think of MyFord as SYNC 2.0. Or, you could, if not for the fact that there already is a SYNC 2.0. Regardless, in-car technology can do myriad of things these days, and Ford thinks it's found a way to group and display all of a vehicle's functionality in a logical, intuitive and useful way. Sadly, Ford is internally calling this "simplexity," as in making the complex simple. Or, as we wrote in our notes, "barf." Thankfully, the public will know it as MyFord Touch.

Ford wants you to think of MyFord Touch as an electronic Swiss Army knife. Physically speaking, here's what you get: A large, eight-inch touchscreen display in the center stack, two 4.2-inch LCD screens to the right and left of an analog speedometer (the exact same screens you'll find in the Fusion Hybrid) and two steering wheel-mounted five-way button controls. Using Ford's award-winning HMI (human-machine interface) setup, MyFord Touch seeks to allow a driver to control in-car technology through either voice, touch or the wheel-mounted controllers. As Ford termed it, VUI (voice user interface), TUI (touch user interface) and GUI (graphic user interface).

While that might sounds a touch (no pun) complex, it isn't. How's that possible? Grouping. Ford has gone ahead and broken down all of the possible non-driving-related tasks into four groups: Phone, Climate, Navigation and Entertainment. Is Ford 100 percent accurate with their groupings? Like in submarine warfare, close enough. Not only are there the four groups, but Ford also chose a color for each group. That last part is more important than it might first seem and here's why...

As far as the large, eight-inch touchscreen goes, its four corners each contain a button for one of the four groupings. Phone is brown, Navigation is green, Entertainment is purple and Climate is blue. We haven't had a chance to play with MyFord Touch yet, but we understand that the system is quite customizable. Don't like that shade green? Think Climate should be red and not blue? Not a problem.

Returning to the two 4.2-inch LCD screens, the one to the left contains all your usual mileage and fuel information: trip computer, radar cruise control distance indicator, vehicle information and even a tachometer, if you like. In other words, information directly related to operating the car. The screen on the right however, displays information from the four MyFord Touch groupings. The idea is that after a little practice, you will be able to know which group you're looking at simply based on color – you won't have to read anything – and your eyes will spend more time on the road. A noble goal, for certain.

Going with that mantra and/or old Doors song, the five-way thumb controls (up, down, left, right, click) keep your hands on the wheel. The left controller is for the left screen, and (shockingly) the right is for the right one. Of course, even better than using a touchscreen or working wheel buttons is using your own voice. Ford assured us that the voice recognition system shipping with MyFord Touch is much more conversational than the VR system currently shipping with SYNC. Instead of talking your way through a series of menus (SYNC asks you what source you want, for example iPod, then asks you what track or artist), MyFord Touch should just require you say, "Play 'John the Fisherman' by Primus" and be done with it. Emphasis on should.

Here's a couple nifty details, and please keep in mind that we didn't get to play with MyFord Touch – yet (expect a video coming soon from CES). Users will be able to take all of their MyFord Touch settings with them from vehicle to vehicle – just plug in an SD card or flash drive and you're good to go drive another MyFord Touch-equipped car. Your color scheme, your radio presets, your music tags, your seat position – whatever – all go with you. It will even welcome you by name, no matter the car. With the music tags, MyFord and MyLincoln Touch are the first systems that allow you to tag songs on the fly. Ford didn't go into great details on this, but we imagine you could would be able to hear something on the radio, tag it, and then let MyFord Touch search for it. This could be especially cool with the SYNC app that let's you listen to internet radio.

The first vehicle this new system will be available on is the 2011 Lincoln MKX, which will debut at next week's Detroit Auto Show. As such, we'll be looking at MyLincoln Touch as opposed to MyFord. Differences? Not really, but the two come standard with different colors (MyLincoln's are yellow for Communication/Phone, green for Navigation, red for Entertainment and blue for Climate). Shouldn't the colors be identical? Probably, but they are customizable and portable, so it doesn't really matter. After the MKX, look for this technology in the refreshed 2011 Ford Edge and then the all-new 2011 Ford Focus. Eventually, 80 percent of all Fords will be available with MyFord or MyLincoln Touch. Just speculating here, but we wonder if the 20 percent not getting the good stuff is Mercury...

Besides all the little details, the big picture we took away from the MyFord Touch is Ford is seriousness. These people knew going halfway wouldn't be good enough. The screens are beautiful. Before seeing MyFord Touch, we already thought that Ford had the best navigation/entertainment stuff in the industry (SYNC is really, really good – especially with Sirius Travel Link). MyFord Touch brings Ford a generation (or two) beyond the competition. In other words, no one could even compete with Ford's old stuff. How on earth will they manage against MyFord Touch?

Official Press Release
FORD INTRODUCES SIGNATURE INTERIOR EXPERIENCE: MYFORD TOUCH DRIVER CONNECT TECHNOLOGY

• New MyFord™ driver connect technology blends Ford signature in-vehicle features into a cohesive experience, featuring intuitive controls, more voice activation and interface personalization
• MyFord Touch™ interface includes dual 4.2-inch LCD screens with corresponding five-way button steering wheel controls and an 8-inch touch screen all controlled by simplified SYNC® voice commands
• Intuitive driver connect technology provides access to ever-expanding in-vehicle functionality while minimizing driver distraction and improving interior aesthetics
• MyFord driver connect technology launches this year on 2011 Ford Edge and goes global with availability on 2012 Ford Focus. MyLincoln Touch will be standard equipment on new Lincolns beginning with 2011 Lincoln MKX

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 7, 2010 – Ford introduced a smarter, safer, simpler system to connect drivers with in-car technologies and their digital lives today at the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

Building on its leadership with the award-winning SYNC device connectivity system, Ford has combined a variety of technologies into one powerful, intuitive connected driver experience called MyFord, which will begin rolling out on vehicles this year.

"MyFord delivers a premium interior experience that will help consumers fall in love with their vehicles again," said Derrick Kuzak, Ford group vice president, Global Product Development. "It integrates all our signature features so customers will know exactly what they're going to get in any Ford vehicle they may find themselves driving, no matter where they are in the world."

This new in-vehicle connectivity experience replaces many of the traditional vehicle buttons, knobs and gauges. With more voice commands, clear, crisp LCD screens that can be customized and five-way buttons like those on cell phones and MP3 players, drivers can choose which information is front and center through a button click, voice command or touch-screen tap.

Driven by trends
Ford decided to undertake a sweeping and ambitious redesign of the automotive interface after studying consumer electronics trends and the many new ways in which drivers were using technology inside their Ford vehicles.

Recent years have seen a massive expansion in the variety of in-car communications, navigation and infotainment technologies consumers regularly use. The expectations of average drivers have outgrown the traditional "button/knob/gauge" interface used in cars for the past 100 years, as most consumer and household electronics have moved to colorful digital displays and multi-function touch-sensitive buttons.

Consumers are insisting on simpler interfaces even as they're demanding more in-car connectivity, more options and more information – a dilemma known as "simplexity." Plus, the pace of advancement is expected to continue unabated, posing a new opportunity for drivers and engineers alike.

"As we began developing MyFord's capability, we saw this groundswell of new technology, new functionality and incredible capability opening up to consumers," said Mark Fields, Ford's president of The Americas. "It was readily apparent that unless we devised an intuitive interface to help drivers manage these capabilities, they could detract – and possibly distract – from the driving experience."
For example, prior to SYNC, drivers often were required to either leave behind their communications, digital information and favorite music while on the road or split their attention between driving and selecting songs, making phone calls or using the navigation system.

Influenced – and powered – by SYNC
When launched, Ford SYNC, developed with Microsoft, helped provide a seamless transition – and seamless flow of information and entertainment – from the moment drivers entered their vehicles to the moment they got out. As Ford began to develop additional SYNC capabilities and add other signature content, the company realized it was redefining the interior environment and ownership experience.

"With MyFord driver connect technology, we realized we weren't necessarily competing with other automakers, but we were really redefining how customers interacted with their cars," said Jim Buczkowski, Ford director of Electronics and Electrical Systems Engineering. "We had to look very closely at the evolution of hand-held devices in terms of user interface, connectivity, productivity and entertainment applications. Our goal is to set the benchmark for the automotive user interface, just as we've done for device connectivity with SYNC."

Accommodating all types of drivers, all types of vehicles
In the initial planning stages of redesigning the interior experience, Ford collaborated with IDEO, a world leader in helping consumers connect with technology. As a result, the company identified four key attributes of successful interfaces:
Be attentive: Use controls, screens and other interfaces with which most users already are comfortable and familiar.
Be approachable: Create an attractive environment with rich graphics, vibrant colors and buttons/screens that are appealing to the eye and the touch, and consistent with what consumers expect from certain functions.
Be clear: Rather than an imposing cluster of buttons, switches and dials, create a clean-looking interface, with controls that fall readily to hand and displays that are exactly where users expect to find them. Provide maximum control without the driver's hands ever leaving the steering wheel.

Be connected: For technophiles? Let drivers display all the information they want in the way they want it. For technophobes? Make sure basic controls, like radio and HVAC settings, still are accessible via familiar stack-mounted controls, so users don't have to learn a host of new commands to operate the vehicle.

"The driving experience is not just about getting from A to B," explained J Mays, Ford group vice president of Design. "It's about the approach to the car, how it responds to you when you get in, and how it responds to you while you drive. It's the anticipation, the welcome and the continuing conversation. Keeping these principles in mind helped us ensure we made decisions for the right reasons."

A global future for MyFord driver connect technology
As a signature offering, and one with the potential to help reduce driver distraction, Ford knew widely offering MyFord driver connect technology was a priority from the start.

"Democratization of technology is a key aspect of our product plan," Kuzak said. "With MyFord, we didn't want to create an upscale electronics package and just put it on our highest-end vehicles. This technology will be available across our full range of vehicles: From our affordable small cars to the ultimate Lincoln, we're going to make a premium, appealing and intuitive experience available to everyone."

MyFord also will be expanded across world markets. As new and refreshed models continue to arrive, nearly all Ford passenger vehicles will be outfitted with MyFord driver connect technology. There will be minor variations across car lines, but the interface will be instantly recognizable in Ford vehicles around the globe.

MyFord will arrive later this year on the redesigned 2011 Ford Edge and Lincoln MKX crossovers, before appearing on the all-new 2012 Ford Focus for global markets. By 2015, approximately 80 percent of Ford's North American models are expected to have MyFord driver connect technology, with similar percentages predicted for the world market.

"We've developed an environment that will make every Ford vehicle feel like a Ford," said Kuzak. "Across the country, across the globe, all of our products will have the same type of feel, making them instantly comfortable to the drivers who know and love them, and MyFord will become a key part of the joy of owning and driving a Ford product."

About Microsoft Auto 4.1

Enriching the in-vehicle experience with an industry-leading platform for communication, entertainment, navigation, and connected services.

Microsoft® Auto 4.1 is the newest generation of embedded operating system from Microsoft designed specifically for developing state-of-the-art in-vehicle infotainment systems. Microsoft Auto is a standardized, industry proven platform for developing communication, entertainment, and service enabled location based solutions. This release includes a large set of integrated, fully tested, and flexible middleware components, as well as hundreds of components available with the latest version of Windows® Embedded CE 6.0 R3, allowing Microsoft Auto based systems to scale across a broad range of automotive makes and models. Leveraging the rich tools and broad Microsoft® partner ecosystem, suppliers can reduce their development costs and speed their time to market.

Highlights of Microsoft Auto 4.1

Microsoft Auto 4.1 builds on the industry-proven 4.0 platform. This release extends Bluetooth wireless technology support and media player functionality. It includes a large set of integrated, tested, and flexible middleware components, as well as hundreds of components available with Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3, enabling Microsoft Auto–based systems to scale across a broad range of automotive makes and models. Capitalizing on these tools and on the broad Microsoft partner ecosystem, manufacturers and suppliers can reduce development costs and speed time to market while extending customers’ lifestyles into the vehicles they drive.

Microsoft Auto is based on a vision to: “enrich the in-vehicle experience for drivers and passengers by bringing an industry leading platform software and services for communication, entertainment, navigation and information services to the mass market”. Some of the new features in Microsoft Auto 4.1 include:

• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR

• Secure Simple Pairing Support

• Calendar download from mobile phone

• Technology Preview of upcoming support for DLNA media device integration

• Multi-application access to media index

• iPhone/iPod Touch Firmware 3.x support

• Message Access Profile (MAP) 1.0
  

Please take a look at the technical datasheet to find out more about Microsoft Auto 4.1.

Enrich the in-vehicle experience for drivers and passengers

The technology in Microsoft Auto is designed to enable easy to use, appropriate and relevant experiences for the front and rear seat, facing drivers and passengers alike. To stay relevant, the platform provides update capabilities to ensure state of the art support with modern consumer electronic devices through device updates, service content, and improving the time to market for automakers.

An industry leading platform and services

Microsoft Auto is a robust, extensible software platform to help deliver more reliable and cost effective in-car infotainment systems. Our goal is to reduce the cost, risk, and time to market of Telematics and infotainment solution development, by providing a platform with integrated communication, entertainment, and navigation service features, and the tools capable of creating unique solutions that help automakers and suppliers set them apart from the competition.

For Communication, Entertainment, Navigation and Information

The integrated components in Microsoft Auto help carmakers and Tier 1 suppliers connect drivers with a wide range of devices, services and technology, including hands-free Bluetooth phone communication, media and mobile device integration, rich content through connected services and state-of-the-art graphical capabilities and high-fidelity digital entertainment. What’s more, these technologies are not delivered in silos, separated from each other as individual components, but rather integrated to provide a seamless experience for customers. However, Microsoft Auto does not define or require a specific human-machine interface (HMI) or HMI technology. The end result is a complete, state of the art infotainment system that matches the look and feel of your target customer.

To the mass market

Our platform enables suppliers to create devices at a lower per-device cost, as well as lower design and engineering cost. It provides the ability to get to market faster through the use of standardized components and partners. Combined, these allow automakers to bring features once found only in luxury vehicles to consumers of any vehicle across all model lines.

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How to sue Microsoft - and win. WHaTT?!!

source:cnn.com
For a tiny Toronto software manufacturer nestled in the city's grimy garment district, winning a $290 million court judgment against Microsoft is more than simply a long-awaited victory. "It's a battle cry for the entrepreneur and every small company," trumpets Loudon Owen, i4i's chairman, just hours after learning of the U.S. federal appeals court's decision.

i4i Chairman Loudon Owen and founder Michael Vulpe

That cry was closer to a whimper two years ago when i4i, a 30-person document collaboration firm, sued Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500), claiming it violated a patent with features found in Word 2003 and Word 2007. The offending technology lets users edit XML, a computer programming language that customizes the way a document's contents are interpreted and displayed.

In August 2009, a Texas jury agreed with i4i, ordering Microsoft to pay $290 million in damages and stop selling Word in the U.S. Although Microsoft appealed that decision, a federal appeals court upheld the judgment on Tuesday, issuing an injunction that bars Microsoft from selling versions of Word that contain the offending patent technology. The court's ruling takes effect on Jan. 11, 2010.

i4i's legal victory is being touted as a modern-day tale of David and Goliath. So how does a tiny software outfit in Canada defeat one of the world's best-known corporate behemoths?

Underdogs, take note. Here's a road map for waging war against a giant -- and winning.

Protect your property. Despite applying for a U.S. patent in 1994, i4i wasn't issued the patent -- No. 5,787,449 -- until 1998. Owen says that the time-consuming process is a necessary evil in today's ultra-competitive climate.

"It doesn't come easy, it doesn't come cheap and it's not simple," he says. "But there are very valid remedies [for infringement] if you file your patents and protect your intellectual property upfront."

Prepare your case. When it comes to taking on a company the size and stature of Microsoft, don't expect legal eagles to bang down your door.

Instead, Owen says, "we assembled the [patent infringement] claim, the background and the history in an extraordinarily detailed, analytical way. We prepared the case as best we could independently before meeting with leading counsel and luminaries in the industry."

Don't lose track of your day job. A much-ballyhooed, two-year legal battle against Microsoft can significantly distract employees and completely consume a company's top brass.

To keep operations up and running, Michel Vulpe, i4i's chief technology officer and founder, kept employees informed of the case's progress, "but not mired in details." The company laid plans at the start to guard against letting its legal proceedings encroach on operational activities. That meant frequently reassuring clients about i4i's future and quelling employee concerns.

Pick your battleground. i4i's decision to have its case heard in a U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas -- where neither i4i nor Microsoft has its headquarters -- prompted many legal and tech pundits to cry foul.

"Typically, the court in Tyler, Texas, is one that a lot of companies seek out for high-tech cases," says Tim Hickernell, an analyst with Info-Tech Research Group in London, Canada. "The perception is that folks in Tyler aren't very technically oriented."

In fact, 358 of the 2,866 cases related to copyrights, patents and trademarks were filed in the district in 2008, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

However, the Washington federal appeals court's upholding of the ruling this week "removes any perception that the Tyler jury didn't know what it was doing," says Hickernell.

"It's absolutely a complete and utter vindication of the judgment," says Owen.

Be prepared to pay the price. Two years spent in and out of courts across the U.S. cost i4i $10 million in legal fees. That doesn't account for the legal battle's considerable toll on the company's ability to focus on product development, marketing, and innovation -- activities that are primary drivers for a small business.

"[A lawsuit] is a complete and utter commitment," says Owen. "It's not something to be taken lightly. The deposition process, the cross-examination, the whole series of allegations -- it's a very tough process to go through."

In response to the ruling in favor of i4i, Microsoft said in a statement that it's "considering our legal options, which could include a request for a rehearing by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals."

In the meantime, Vulpe says, "We're still sitting. We'll be jumping when the Maple Leafs win a game."

Or maybe when a check for $290 million arrives in the mail. Read More..