Whilst the Xbox One design and feature list is extensive I can’t help but think that stealing the Surface design would have been a unified brand sort of idea but nonetheless I like the look of the thing a lot.

What’s It All About?

For those not in the know the new Xbox has an extensive and varied feature list and is so much more than just a Game box:

• Skype. Yes finally Skype has arrived on Xbox. Wait for those big screen group Skype video calls with all your henchmen as you plot your next campaign for global domination (or just a call to Mum, Dad and all the family).

…with thanks to Youtube user AustinPowers900 for the clip

• Integration with TV set-top boxes
• Live television and Blue-ray DVD’s as well as your friends trending entertainment
• Yes the UI is brand consistent with a strong hat tip to Metro oops, New Windows UI and Windows Phone’s awesome Zune desktop app.

• Kinect remains an integral and strong part of the Xbox experience and those of you who are frequent visitors know that I believe Kinect should be onboard every Microsoft device. By the look of things the Xbox One Kinect is a superhero in its own right.

• Games are going to be a strong part of Xbox obviously and this section alone deserves its own post. I’m not going to reinvent the wheel when you can read all about it on NeoWin. Suffice it to say that if you are a gamer Xbox One should be making you drool right now.
• Multiple Operating Systems for management of the Entertainment Center or Games.
• Hybrid TV and Gaming: it seems that the boffins took a leaf out of SyFy‘s groundbreaking Defiance, a TV Show that combines with a massive online multiplayer gaming experience. Remedy’s Quantum Leak will go one step further by having what happens in the game interact with a TV Show inside the game itself.
• Snap is essentially multitasking or running more than one app on Xbox One concurrently
• Voice control: run Entertainment functions with your voice and switch between them.
• All this and more…

The Warptest POV

All in all Xbox One is a powerhouse in terms of features and technical spec. It is poised to dominate the household entertainment market and Microsoft have addressed user concerns by ensuring that it is not always on or connected to the Internet full-time.

A Twitter and Facebook friend today expressed concern that as usual much of the added value of Xbox One would be lost as it was America-centric i.e. revolving around services like Netflix and Hulu. We got into this discussion and I referenced one of my posts from May 2010 about the need for disruption in the international TV industry; I believe it’s early days but I have high hopes.

We have already seen incredible social Startups like Stevie who are bringing new ideas to the table and Amazon, yes Amazon who have both movie viewing from the cloud but also have founded their own TV studio and are creating their own shows and movies to be viewed online. All this adds up to different facets of disruption but facets that are somewhat more acceptable to the established order than pirate sharing.

IMHO the Xbox One adds up to a potentially disruptive technology in its own right that will stimulate further growth and innovation in the field of entertainment. In its FAQs Microsoft explains that they are working towards solutions that will not limit these services to America only. I’m really interested to see what the Developers out there are going to do with it too.

One thing’s for sure it’s going to be entertaining. Don’t you think?

The post Xbox One It’s Not About Gaming It’s About Disruption appeared first on Warptest.

Microsoft has a beautifully designed product line and right now, after going hands-on at Microsoft’s Build 2012 event, only Asus has tempted me with their Windows 8 touch enabled alternatives. In fact I defy you to go hands-on with the Surface and not be impressed by the look and feel from materials to UX.

Even so I haven’t made the leap and bought a Surface yet. If I was going to buy one of the existing alternatives it would have to be the Surface Pro and I’m a sucker for larger hard drives but I’m hesitating and not just because of budgetary concerns.

What Am I Waiting For?

The truth is my 14″ Dell Laptop is still working and as important as it is to me to actively use new technology like touch enabled Windows tablets or laptops I can get a quick fix for now at the local computer stores.

The real reason though is that I (like many others) am speculating that it’s worth the wait to see newer and smaller Windows 8 Pro Tablets arrive on the scene. Even Acer whose CEO, JT Wang ripped into Microsoft last August over Windows 8 and Surface is fully onboard with smaller Windows Tablets. Earlier this month Amazon accidentally leaked an out of stock Acer Iconia W3 8.1 inch Windows Tablet.

The expectation is that a slew of 7 to 10 inch Windows Tablets are coming later this year.

What Is It Good For?

In a nutshell ask anyone with a pocket tablet like the iPad Mini or a Nexus. Which brings us to an important question, which mini Tablet would I choose?

The Warptest POV

I’m expecting (and I have no hard evidence to support this) to see amongst these a mini Surface Tablet and that would be my choice. The question though is will it be a pure Tablet or a Phablet? More important, if there is a mini Surface Phablet which flavor of Windows will it run?

Can we expect a full blown Windows 8 Pro Phab with phone functionality built in? I asked Microsoft if there was phone functionality coded into Windows 8 Pro or RT via Twitter but didn’t get an answer yet.

Perhaps the only conceivable alternative for me would be if Asus made a version of their Padphone with Windows onboard.

Regardless of which of these we get to see I’m hoping the boffins at Redmond work hard to find competitive prices for these devices.

What do you think?

The post The Surface I’m Waiting For appeared first on Warptest.

Yesterday Facebook was featured in two major stories:

Firstly the blogosphere went wild over the news that they are once again in advanced negotiations for the purchase of Israeli social traffic navigation startup Waze.

Secondly they announced new features being added to Facebook Home on Android and hitting 1 million downloads.

Yes there is a connection…

It hasn’t taken that long a time for Facebook Home to get to their 1 million downloads but not everyone is pleased to have Facebook takeover the start screen of their Smartphone. For those not clued in Facebook Home is just that, a Facebook Start Screen when you turn on your Smartphone. Right now it’s on Android and Microsoft were fast to point out that Windows Phone did this from the get-go anyhow.

If they manages to acquire Waze they have an incredible and much needed popular App with a huge user base to build into the next iteration of Facebook Home.

The Missing Link

To truly realize the ROI of buying Waze it can’t just sit there; there needs to be some degree of intelligent automated behavior. Facebook Home needs to react to environmental changes in the physical world around the phone.

Zuck and team should be taking a long, hard look at Israeli Startup IFTTT who wrote the rulebook on this for web applications and Microsoft (specifically the Israel R&D division) who released an Android App called on{X} last year. This is a rule based App that detects a condition and responds with the appropriate rule running.

In Facebook Home’s case what’s needed would be something like this use case:

If Accelerometer or GPS detect motion > footspeed then activate Waze from Facebook Home.

Warptest POV

Whatever the truth is about Facebook acquiring Waze, I definitely wish Waze good luck and hope that Facebook realize that simply trying to dominate the Start Screen real estate on Smartphones is not a mobile strategy. It’s firing the first salvo.

What do you think Facebook will do on mobile next?

The post The Key To Facebook Mobile Strategy Is… appeared first on Warptest.

#Trending is the first unofficial Twitter Music App and it’s on Windows Phone. Amazingly the App Developer also made it Windows 7.x compliant so double hat-tip from me.

#Trending comes in the usual two App flavors, paid and free. So far I’ve been using the free version. I had read it doesn’t work in all regions and was pleasantly surprised to see I could use it in Israel.

What Does #Trending Give You?

#Trending puts the music that is trending on the new / coming soon Twitter Music service on your Windows Phone.

When I go to the link for Twitter Music I get the Coming Soon screen so it’s tough to test how well the App delivers but it works for me and I get a rapidly built queue of music through my phone.

#Trending plays a 30 second sample of the song, enough to decide if you like it. The really nice feature on Windows Phone is the ability to turn this into a ringtone. The App Developer does request,

“Please make sure you have purchased the content before setting as ringtone from windows phone music store.”

If you decide to make an In-App purchase then #Trending makes a Marketplace Search for the artist and music you chose.

The Warptest POV

What’s not to like? The App works well and whilst it doesn’t cache the next song for when you go places without reception it also is very easy on battery life; I used it on and off during the day on my HTC Titan the rest of the time it was running in the background.

I’m interested to see how Twitter Music will work, for now I’m giving #Trending a recommend.

The post #Trending Launches Twitter Music On What Phone? appeared first on Warptest.

Mine is a Windows Phone 7 and I have been wrestling with this post for over a week.

Over the last weeks I have seen some amazing new Apps appear on the Windows Store only to see they were all exclusively for Windows Phone 8. It’s not so much denying me these apps that annoys me it’s the bloody-minded stupidity of whoever at Microsoft is in charge of growing Windows Phone adoption.

Let Me Explain…

I could simply be one of the loyal Microsoft consumers who spent their hard earned cash on Windows Phone 7 only to discover that we were being shunted aside for Windows Phone 8 but I love my phone.

Whilst it is frustrating and bothersome to see incredible apps like Facebook Beta (developed by Microsoft), Star Trek Into Darkness and a slew of others marked as not compatible with my phone

What gets me is the short-sightedness:

• Apple’s iOS6 is compatible with: iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod Touch 4^th Gen, iPad 2
  Android 4.2 is compatible with a remarkable variety of older phones including the Samsung Galaxy SII
  

Why is this relevant? Because unlike Windows Phone 8, Google and Apple realized the importance of not tying success completely to hardware specifications.

Market Shares Flushed Down The Drain

Microsoft often cites web use statistics company Netmarketshare so I went to see what they could tell me about market share by version in mobile. Mobile OS share by version was not comprehensive but when I looked at current stats for “Mobile Browser Share by Version” this is what I saw: -

*IE9.0 Mobile runs on Windows Phone 7.x ; IE10 Mobile runs on Windows Phone 8
Data from Netmarketshare.com current to April 2013.

Based on this Windows Phone 7.x has 2 ½ times as much market share as Windows Phone 8 ?!??

The Warptest POV…

If the key to platform growth is through App adoption and you want App Developers to create Apps for your platform then why would you block all those Windows Phone 7 consumers from downloading and installing your Apps?

I went to Twitter to see what some of the Developers who are creating Apps for Windows Phone had to say.

The answer I got (arguably) was “easier to develop for Windows Phone 8 and more in-App features available”.

One other person told me “It’s all about Lock Screen – app interaction.” Windows Phone 8 was designed to share a common code base with Windows 8 but in addition the Lock Screen was to allow Apps to interact and display dynamic, real-time data. Needless to say this was a feature not included in the Windows Phone 7.8 upgrade.

I had an epiphany over coffee. I had been discussing the pros and cons of branching software for a project I was testing and it occurred that if the Windows Store can detect your phone version then why is there no IF..THEN..ELSE to allow the Store to provide the correct version for your phone?

Of course this would require developing an additional branch of your App, one where features for Windows Phone 8 like Lock Screen are not available but let’s face it, Microsoft who develop Apps like the new Facebook Beta aren’t doing this. If they aren’t setting the gold standard why should anyone else do it? Is it even easy to do this in the latest Windows Phone SDK? (The link is to a basic explanation of versions on MSDN)

Then I stumbled across an article published April 22^nd 2013 on “How to target multiple versions with your app for Windows Phone“, again written on MSDN. This is an excellent article that explains all the options for doing this. So why isn’t this being done or even encouraged?

It seems that some bright spark in Sales and Marketing feels it more appropriate to give a swift kick in the collective family jewels of Windows Phone 7.x consumers than to find a solid strategy for encouraging multi-version targeting of Apps. Clearly they believe that these loyal early adopters will eventually break down and upgrade to Windows Phone 8.

At the end of the day my next Smartphone will probably be a Windows Phone 9 or Blue but I hope that in the meanwhile Steve Ballmer decides that this marketing policy is an act of lunacy and he doesn’t want to write off the potentially larger market share of Windows Phone 7.x consumers. My advice Steve,

1. Ship whoever came up with this to Microsoft North Pole. What were they thinking?
2. Find a constructive way and incentivize Windows Phone 7.x consumers to upgrade. You are offering discounts for Windows XP to Windows 8 upgrades, why not here?

One might extend the Star Trek analogy and say that Windows Phone 8 is The Next Generation, which I guess would make Windows Phone 7 the Original Star Trek with Kirk and crew in all their glory.

The post Windows Phone Made Me Yell “Khaaaan!” appeared first on Warptest.

For all the frantic stories about a drastic slowdown in PC sales so far in 2013.

By providing a tool for maintaining a stable and more robust PC that can boot at optimal speed, Soluto has possibly extended the usable life of many PCs that otherwise frustrated owners might have replaced. However, the slowdown may only be until Windows XP reaches end of support next year.

All grown up …

The awesomely good App for managing your PC frustrations is all grown up and going into the workplace.

Soluto‘s CEO sent an email out to registered users and no doubt this accompanied a conventional and social media blitz.

The PC management and maintenance App that makes keeping your PC speedy and stable a doddle is to quote Soluto CEO, Tomer Dvir,

“…launched our new service for IT managers in small businesses and IT service providers.

The new service includes some awesome new features such as remote access, chat, asset management and extended reports, and can really help IT pros to become more productive and provide a better service.”

For The Uninitiated…

Soluto has been through a couple of major iterations. Originally Soluto was a client application, installed on your PC that allowed you to: -

• Reduce boot time by pausing or delaying unnecessary items that run at Startup.
• Receive real-time notification when an application crash occurs / recurs and offer information on the problem.
• Manage browser add-ons and remove those slowing down your browser.
• Add applications on your PC that Soluto does not recognize to its PC Genome (By adding this information Soluto applied a neat crowdsourcing solution to creating a comprehensive knowledge-base and thus the user who adds the app pays it forward to other users also using that software).

Next big iteration Soluto went to the web and it allowed management of those features on your or 4 other PCs via the web interface and all for free. In addition Soluto added the feature of (popular) 3^rd Party Software update by remote.

The Warptest POV

I have been using Soluto since the earliest version came out. The move into the business market is eminently logical. It was either that or form a strategic alliance with OEMs to deliver Soluto pre-installed on PCs or branch out into the Smartphone/Tablet markets.

Soluto is not just incredibly functional and replaces a couple of other tools that IT professionals may be using but it comes in what may be the most eye-catching and user friendly UI you have ever seen. The free consumer product seems to be among one of the best tested I have seen in a long time and in all my time using Soluto I have only twice reported issues to their Support who responded promptly.

The pricing for Soluto for up to 10 users is incredible value for money and to my knowledge they were one of the first Windows 8 Apps released so they have you covered for all currently supported PC Operating Systems.

If you are an SMB and want to reduce antacid consumption, swearathons and the like in your IT department then I would be seriously considering making the jump to a more efficient way of managing your work PCs.

Finally, if you are interested in signing up for Soluto then click here

Disclosure: hitting this link will take you to Soluto’s site but is also part of a competition they are running. Soluto will award an iPad Mini for the user with the most sign ups. So you can help yourself and help me too.

The post Soluto May Be Why PC Sales Are Slowing appeared first on Warptest.

Like it says below, “How do you envision your product success?”

So if your product is in development and you are either uncertain how to give it the testing it deserves or you don’t have the resources then drop me a line.

Don’t let your software, web site, web or mobile app fail for lack of optimal testing.

The post Are you testing? appeared first on Warptest.

Vine launched with much fanfare as a shareable micro-video app with expectations of rapidly becoming the next big thing for iOS.

Subsequently they added embed functionality and job postings on the Vine site seem to indicate that an Android version is coming soon.

Love it, or Hate it?

The sentiments have been mixed on Vine from what I’ve read online. As you know I’m a Windows Phone user so my daily access other than for testing is limited with iOS but from what I’m seeing some love the medium and others positively loath it.

Where Have We Seen it So Far?

The mainstream use cases are limited but an outstanding example was new movie The Wolverine, based on the popular Marvel Comics character. Below is an incredible first look mini-trailer made with Vine showing Hugh Jackman reprising this role.

Subsequently we saw Bryan Singer post a Vine from the set of the new X-Men movie showing preparations for shooting and some familiar faces from previous X-movies.

 The Warptest POV

Video is a tricky thing. Not everyone has it on their website and not everyone does it well. There are a lot of factors that can mess things up but Vine minimizes some of these risks by dealing in snapshots which minimizes all that pesky post-processing.

In a way this is a natural extension of micro-blogging and the 140 Characters of Twitter and as it is a new app we are still at the stage of “I’m eating my sandwich” / “Having a shower” stage that Tweeps indulged in back in the day.

The fact is that whilst movies can use Vine nicely we are still at the discovery stage for using this app as a mainstream tool for engagement. To those who hate it I would suggest you remember the bet posed to Ernest Hemingway; tell a story in 6 words:

“For sale: baby shoes, never used.”

If Hemingway was around today wouldn’t he be using Vine to tell his stories? One thing is for sure, I’m looking forward to installing the Windows Phone Vine App when it eventually launches.

The post Vine, Hate It? Not Wolverine, Bub. appeared first on Warptest.

I talked about Microsoft’s efforts to put the seemingly Unkillable Internet Explorer 6 out to pasture.

As hard to kill as IE6 has been, the combination of Windows XP and Office 2003 have defied every attempt of Microsoft to kill it: again even John McLane isn’t this durable.

With thanks to IMDB

Our Sequel…

Windows XP may well be the most popular OS in the world still holding 40% market share on computers worldwide which is ironic because when I read many of the blogs (professional or otherwise) panning Windows 8 it reminds me of early sentiment for XP before SP2.

That aside, what does it mean when we say Microsoft are trying to kill it?

First off if you are running a Windows XP PC at home or at work it is not going to stop working.

What it does mean for both Windows XP and Office 2003 is an end to support from Microsoft.

This means not just technical support for daily issues encountered using them but more importantly no more patches and updates.

Ramifications…

In exactly 363 days from today, 8^th April 2014 every single one of these Windows XP / Office 2003 computers will become a ticking security time bomb. The next black hat hacker to find an exploit will do so knowing there will be no Windows Update released to fix it.

Many of these individuals and companies stuck with Windows XP and or Office 2003 for a variety of reasons:-

• A desire to save the money it will cost them to upgrade.
• Due to concerns about hardware like printers, scanners or networked storage that may also be obsolete.
• Due to concerns about legacy software running on XP not working in Windows 8.
• The fear of having to learn to use Windows 8 / Office 2013 is outside their comfort zone.

But can we expect Microsoft to roll some form of update to Windows Servers / Vista / 7 / 8 to detect and counter these unprotected Windows XP PC’s?

Please note this dialog box is a speculative mock-up.

Keep Calm and …

The gut reaction at this point is something between a swearing jag at Microsoft and panic at what to do next.

Microsoft have taken a bold move to sweeten the bitter pill of upgrading hardware, OS and software with various special offers via this webpage.

The Warptest POV

If you are a business and haven’t upgraded since Windows XP or Office 2003 then I’m basically gob-smacked. The math is simple though; let’s say you started a savings plan at your bank on October 25^th 2001 (the date XP was released and you last upgraded).

• October 25^th 2001 until April 8^th 2014 = 137 months
• If you saved $5.00 per Windows XP PC being used / month in your bank account then (even without interest)
• You have $685.00 per PC saved for upgrading to Windows 8 PC’s with Office 2013 / Office 365.

If you weren’t forward thinking about a planned upgrade of your IT infrastructure then you may want to have a rather tough chat with your CIO about all this.

My recommendation is start planning your upgrade now. You have 363 days left to do so. I was involved in the upgrade of 300+ Windows 95 to Windows XP PC’s when I worked at Israel Electric Corporation so if you have concerns feel free to contact me. As to making the leap here are a couple of links to get you started with respect to Windows 8 upgrades (1 and 2) and Office 2013.

In a nutshell, you may not be happy over the cash outlay but once you have made the leap the ROI in terms of security and productivity will leave you scratching your head puzzled why you didn’t do this sooner. Get cracking then!

The post Die Hard 2 – Windows XP and Office 2003 appeared first on Warptest.

Today I have a meaningful tip for your WordPress blog.

We all love Jetpack right? Of course we do. Jetpack is your one stop shop for managing your blog dashboard and it only gets better with each release.

Jetpack has a whole slew of features to make your WordPress life easier but I’m going to focus on Stats for today.

Jetpack Stats

One of the really nice things about Jetpack is it gives you statistics that give you a nice outline of what’s working to draw traffic to your blog.

You get a nice bar chart and basic metrics which for those intimidated by Google Analytics and Bing Webmaster Tools are a good starting point until you can learn either or both of those and how to turn the extensive information there into actionable intelligence.

Sometimes it’s also about feeling good…

Seeing which posts on a given day are getting how many views, web sources and links clicked is great and when a post has that halo effect and the numbers really start climbing you feel validated in terms of your writing and technical knowhow.

The point isn’t simply an Ego Boost though, it’s about learning what works and what doesn’t and applying those lessons onwards to bring your message to the people.

With thanks to Cadbury’s Chocolate …

http://www.cadbury.co.uk/products/Boost-2393?p=2393

What’s missing?

The one statistic that I couldn’t easily find or produce without some scripted / automated intervention was total number of views per post.

I didn’t want to have to jump through hoops or hear the Mission Impossible theme every time I wanted to track this metric but it wasn’t there at the click of a mouse.

Courtesy of the Amazing Lindsey Stirling and The Piano Guys via YouTube.com

Warptest POV

(Here is a tip within a tip:) 99% of the time if you see a problem then someone else is also feeling your pain. Sometimes this means the solution is already out there waiting to be discovered, at best you have someone to collaborate with on solving the problem.

In this case, most WordPress problems have solutions waiting to be found by searching through Plugins; I found my solution in the Jetpack Post Statistics Link which according to the Developer has one limitation “…only if the post appears in the top 10 posts for the day.”

Let’s face it though, your best work should be your most recent, certainly in terms of lessons learned (about content writing, SEO etc.)

In a nutshell, this plugin delivers nicely. Well played HomeDev.

So WordPressers, I hope this helps you out and if there is anything you would like to see in another Tip of the Day then drop me line either in the post Comments or you can get me on Twitter as @jonathanross

The post Smoking Hot Tip: WordPress Stats and Ego Boosts appeared first on Warptest.