We’re by 2 days of hurdles at the South Coast and Mission Viejo Microsoft Stores, and Windows Phone is sporting a 37-0 jot down opposite a little of the most appropriate smartphones in the business.  We’ve taken on the iPhone 3G, 4 and 4s, along with a outrageous spectrum of Android phones together with the DROID Charge, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Samsung Galaxy S and S II, HTC EVO 4G and EVO 3D, LG Thrill, Samsung Fascinate, HTC MyTouch 4G, LG Optimus V, HTC Sensation, Motorola Atrix and more.

Today you hang up the debate at the San Diego Microsoft Store, where we’ll be display because Windows Phone is simply faster at the things which genuine people do on their phones from 1-7pm.  Come by and contend hi – or try your fitness in the plea – if you’re in town. 

And remember, be certain to follow me on Twitter for real-time updates on the action!

19-0!

That was Windows Phone’s jot down opposite the foe in the $ 100 plea which we hosted yesterday at the South Coast Microsoft Store.  It was a good day of hurdles – we took on iPhone 4 and 4s’s and a horde of the ultimate Android inclination similar to the Samsung Galaxy Skyrocket, Samsung Galaxy S II, Galaxy Nexus, LG Thrill, HTC Evo 4G, Motorola Atrix, Samsung Fascinate, and some-more – and opposite all of them, Windows Phone was simply faster at the bland things which genuine people similar to we and me do on the smartphones. 

All in all, a unequivocally fun day.  We met a lot of cold people, handed out a garland of phones and overwhelming "Smoked by Windows Phone” T-shirts, and welcomed a garland of latest members of the Windows Phone family.

Today we’re bringing the $ 100 plea to the Microsoft Store in Mission Viejo.  My organisation and I will be there from about 1-7pm. If you’re circuitously gloss up your smartphone skills, assign your battery, and see if we can win $ 100!

  And as always, be certain to follow me on Twitter for real-time updates on the movement and for a heads up on where we’ll be next.

19-0!

That was Windows Phone’s jot down opposite the foe in the $ 100 plea which we hosted yesterday at the South Coast Microsoft Store.  It was a good day of hurdles – we took on iPhone 4 and 4s’s and a horde of the ultimate Android inclination similar to the Samsung Galaxy Skyrocket, Samsung Galaxy S II, Galaxy Nexus, LG Thrill, HTC Evo 4G, Motorola Atrix, Samsung Fascinate, and some-more – and opposite all of them, Windows Phone was simply faster at the bland things which genuine people similar to we and me do on the smartphones. 

All in all, a unequivocally fun day.  We met a lot of cold people, handed out a garland of phones and overwhelming "Smoked by Windows Phone” T-shirts, and welcomed a garland of latest members of the Windows Phone family.

Today we’re bringing the $ 100 plea to the Microsoft Store in Mission Viejo.  My organisation and I will be there from about 1-7pm. If you’re circuitously gloss up your smartphone skills, assign your battery, and see if we can win $ 100!

  And as always, be certain to follow me on Twitter for real-time updates on the movement and for a heads up on where we’ll be next.

Ah, California…

Land of sun, sand, movie stars, good vineyards. And starting today, Smoked by Windows Phone!

We took over CES 2012 in Las Vegas, and right away we’re bringing the $ 100 plea to Microsoft Stores opposite southern California.  We’re kicking things off  currently at the South Coast Plaza Microsoft Store in Costa Mesa, CA.  My organisation and I will be there from 2pm to 8pm.   Here’s how to get there if you’re internal and wish to come contend hi or take the challenge:

You know the understanding by now.  If your phone can kick Windows Phone in a head-to-head speed plea on a usual charge which genuine people do each day on their smartphones and we get $ 100 cash, right on the spot. If your phone loses…

Be certain to follow me on Twitter for real-time updates on the movement and for a heads up on where we’ll be next.  See we in Sunny California!

 GLOBAL - Could we set up a overpass by environment a tiny sliders on your smartphone and watchful 2 seconds for a rarely formidable calculation? This organisation operative for an NGO in El Salvador did. 

The Ranger supercomputer is the 17^th fastest in the world. It’s a Texas computational mega-beast with 62,976 processor cores reaching a rise opening of 580 teraflops, mental recall of 123 terabytes and hoop storage of 1.73 petabytes.

Computer speed is routinely totalled by researchers in the series of floating-point operations per second (flops). Ranger has a rise opening of subsequent to to 5.8 x 10^14 flops.

By comparison, smartphones do about 100 megaflops = 10^8 flops. So, we could contend which Ranger is 5.8 million times faster. 

With energy identical to which it’s tough to hold we could perform the same calculations on a smartphone with identical spec to a Nokia Lumia 800 or N9 as on a supercomputer – though researchers in the US have finished only that.  

 A organisation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard have been about to have known a at large accessible app which can yield real-time and arguable simulations to the same problems – from a smartphone anywhere on the planet.  

That’s never been some-more relevant: Last year sales of smartphones overtook personal computers for the initial time. A inform by Canalys showed which in 2011 the series of smartphones shipped grew by  a large 62.7% – with 488 million smartphones compared to only 415 million PCs.  

Sarah Perez on Techcrunch responded to the figures, asking “When will the post-PC epoch arrive? It only did.” Remember your child isn’t starting to get a desktop, she combined – they’re removing a tablet, or a phone since “smartphones have been PCs, too. The many affordable ones.”

The destiny of computing might be a tiny some-more difficult than that, though in hint we’ll be we do some-more of what we used to do on a mechanism – on the phones instead.

With apps identical to the a single grown at MIT which could meant necessary engineering and infrastructure – identical to structure bridges – could be finished some-more simply accessible on building a whole sites, and to communities in the building world. The app could additionally be used for landmine detection, and last the optimal figure for buildings.

 One of the plan leaders, David Knezevic, said:

“Smartphones have been the latest limit in computational engineering.”  

Knezevic, who is right away at Harvard, initial grown the app as a post-doctoral join forces with in automatic engineering at MIT, operative in the lab of Professor Anthony Patera.

 “At the impulse all of this work is finished on desktops, or supercomputers,” Knezevic said. “Its time consuming, and unequivocally expensive.”

The investigate organisation used the Ranger supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center to beget a tiny “reduced model” which was eliminated to a intelligent phone.

This kind of indication rebate has been used before; in Oct we wrote about the organisation of Danish scientists who have grown the world’s initial mobile brain scanner regulating a Nokia smartphone.  

In this case, Knezevic believes the proceed of the MIT organisation is renowned by severe “error bounds” combined regulating mathematical theories devised in Professor Patera’s labs. This tells a user the operation of probable solutions, and estimates accuracy.

 For Knezevic the hardest partial of the plan was building those mathematical algorithms: “It took a decade of work in the MIT investigate group.”

 The app uses a operation of parameters which have been set by the user to pull interpretation from the strange supercomputer simulation.  By relocating the slider bars on the intelligent phone, someone who wants to set up a overpass can guess stresses by becoming opposite the firmness of the material, or the density of the pylons.

The outcome is a 3D visualization, grown at MIT by Phuong Huynh. Huynh, who is creatively from Vietnam, said: “What was unequivocally severe is which a intelligent phone doesn’t have a lot of memory, so we indispensable to work out how to remove only the interpretation indispensable to emanate what is visual. In alternative words, for the visualization, we don’t need to work all the interpretation relating to what is inside – only what is on screen.”

It all began as a brainstorming session, according to Huynh. That event  turned in to a investigate plan – and is right away shortly to be grown some-more at large as an app on opposite smartphone platforms. Knezevic can’t exhibit some-more yet, though expects full sum will be voiced inside of the subsequent couple of months.

It will be the end of years of work branch the many formidable calculations in to something simple, and user friendly. When we insist which it can solve, in a second, a complaint which would take 2 hours on a supercomputer, Knezevic says which people, “instantly assimilate what it is all about.”

Knezevic adds which it is critical to recollect which the strange simulations will still be generated on a supercomputer. Smarter smartphones don’t have computers surplus – a new essay in WIRED  by Robert McMillan highlighted the work of Wu Feng from Virginia Tech in creation not as large supercomputers which can work as commercial operation desktops, whilst Jason Perlow forked out on Zdnet that ‘post-PC’ substantially equates to larger formation in between smartphones, tablets, table tops and clouded cover computing.   

If the inlet of those relations have nonetheless to evolve, everybody agrees which the destiny will yield a some-more integrated, and mobile, knowledge  - with tiny inclination on condition that genuine answers to large problems.

GLOBAL - This time subsequent year, we could be a millionaire diversion developer – with the right thought and a small assistance from a male called Aaron Reed.

The module operative –  from at Neumont University nearby Salt Lake City, Utah –
has created a book on building games for Windows Phones and he reckons the total routine is flattering easy.

To set up games for Xbox 360 and Windows Phone, we need to sense Microsoft’s XNA 4.0 growth framework. And this book claims we can sense that—even if we have no knowledge of building games. There’s additionally copiousness of assistance from Microsoft at the Xbox developer site (above).

Says Aaron: “For the initial time in history, developers can write games for PC, a subsequent era console similar to the Xbox 360 and a subsequent era smartphone similar to Windows Phone all with the same formula base.

“The gaming attention is sepulchral and continues to grow. With hardware advances being done every day and the pull toward mobile inclination apropos some-more absolute and interactive, the attention is as sparkling as ever.”

Beginners will find multiform XNA pass concepts tough to sense though the book, called  Learning XNA 4.0 (O’Reilly Media), walks we by any step.

Each section takes the form of a lesson, finish with diagrams, examples and exercises. There have been additionally tests to check which we get any theatre of the program.

You can sense growth from 2D existence to 3D cameras and effects, have a demeanour at high-level shader denunciation (HLSL) and set up 3 games regulating 2D, 3D, and multiplayer techniques.

OK, it competence not have we a millionaire, though it could assistance we get a latest job.

The Interactive Design Association (IxDA) only voiced the winners of the initial annual Interaction Award—and we’re anxious which Windows Phone 7.5 has picked a single up. Here’s the central endowment citation.

My friend Steve Clayton over on the always-fascinating Next at Microsoft blog additionally reported the IxDA news—and enclosed a YouTube video value checking out. As Steve notes, it’s not the initial large pattern esteem the mobile handling complement has taken home.

Windows Phone is off to a good begin this year. Nokia’s beautiful Lumia 900 prisoner the desired Best of CES 2012 endowment for smartphones final month. There’s additionally been a flurry of good reviews and press lately.

And only think—it’s only February.

The Interactive Design Association (IxDA) only voiced the winners of the initial annual Interaction Award—and we’re anxious which Windows Phone 7.5 has picked a single up. Here’s the central endowment citation.

My friend Steve Clayton over on the always-fascinating Next at Microsoft blog additionally reported the IxDA news—and enclosed a YouTube video value checking out. As Steve notes, it’s not the initial large pattern esteem the mobile handling complement has taken home.

Windows Phone is off to a good begin this year. Nokia’s beautiful Lumia 900 prisoner the desired Best of CES 2012 endowment for smartphones final month. There’s additionally been a flurry of good reviews and press lately.

And only think—it’s only February.

Microsoft is a immeasurable place, and I’m all the time stumbling opposite engaging things alternative folks around the association have been operative on or meditative about.

Case in point: A post currently from Josh Henretig of Microsoft’s Environmental Sustainability team. 

Josh not long ago combed Marketplace seeking for planet-friendly apps and apps which can assistance foster immature thinking. Even if this isn’t things we consider about often, I gamble you’ll still find a integrate engaging apps value downloading. He’s found apps for saving gas, apps for environmental news, apps for recycling info—even an app for stating someone who dumps paint down the charge drain. Only caveat: Some of these apps have been accessible only in sure countries. Check out his list.

Some people write apps for fun. Others for cash.

Then there’s Wilson To, a 25-year-old University of California grad tyro who’s building an app to spin a Windows Phone in to a arms opposite disease. His target: malaria, that kills thousands of immature young kids in sub-Saharan Africa any year.

Today Microsoft awarded To and 3 alternative tyro groups operative on life-altering tech projects $ 75,000 to assistance them commercialize their work or take it to the subsequent theatre of development.

The awards, voiced this sunrise at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, have been partial of the initial Imagine Cup Grants program—a latest three-year, $ 3 million appendage of the company’s renouned Imagine Cup tyro record competition, right away in the 10th year.

All of the winning projects voiced currently have been impressive—just take a demeanour at the Imagine Cup blog and you’ll see what I mean. One Croatian group used Kinect to assistance kids with intelligent palsy.  Combining Windows and a Wii-mote, a group from Jordan done it probable for people who have been inept to operate a mechanism and phone.

But, as we competence expect, the 2 winning projects involving Windows Phones quite held my eye.

The initial comes from Falcon Dev, a tyro group formed in Ecuador that’s operative on creation a Windows Phone interpret debate in to pointer denunciation for kids who have been conference impaired, something they’ve already completed on a Windows PC. The plan is called SkillBox—but we have to see the video to conclude how cold it unequivocally is.

And in the future there’s the Lifelens plan led by Wilson To.  Using a done to order app and a little lens scrounged from an aged CD player, he and his group have done it probable for a Windows Phone to diagnose malaria from a dump of blood. (The appendage lens can increase red red red red blood cells 350 times.) Watch the video next or check out this new Forbes press review for specifics. There have been already poor and correct red red red red blood tests for malaria available. But the group thinks a tech-based exam still has advantages: Lifelens is being written to map reliable cases and broadcast real-time formula to open illness workers, potentially assisting them lane malaria cases some-more effectively.

Next stairs for To and company: a snap-on box containing the micro-lens. They’re additionally formulation to control some-more lab tests this summer, followed by margin contrast someday later. As Business Week reported final year, To in the future hopes to have his app able of noticing alternative blood-borne scourges, such as sickle cell anemia.

“Malaria is only the beginning,” he told the magazine.