Its impressive to have two touchscreens in a single device but I’m not sure if it will really be of much use…if only this was a bit smaller and had a Courier UI.

After going to John Lewis I had a quick look in the O2 and Orange shops to see what devices they had in them. Windows Phones was barely present in the O2 store but Orange were all over the OS, as expected as they are the premium partner. The front of the store only had Windows Phones in the windows and quite a few posters. I then went into HMV and ended up in the small in-store Orange shop there where I got speaking to the rep. I found out that if someone buys a Windows Phone from the Orange store inside of HMV then they will get a 3 month free Zune Pass. I was shocked. This is great news but not something I had heard about at all.

My advice then is that if you or someone you know is thinking of getting a Windows Phone then buy it from the Orange outlet in any HMV as Orange seem to have the best tariffs, best devices and offer a 3 month Zune Pass. What more does one want?

Have you found out any other good incentives to buy a Windows Phone in a specific place?

This new site dedicated to Streetside in the UK seems to be a direct response to the controversy caused by Google when it has its car roaming around the UK taking pictures. Microsoft have a hotline people can ring to find out where the cars currently are and there is a page showing where the Streetside teams are planning to take pictures. The company will also only be taking Streetside images for popular destinations and not every street. There are good and bad points to this strategy and I’d imagine that over time that more areas are covered.

Streetside is currently available for some US cities and it’s a rather impressive piece of tech offering 3D perspectives and a more fluid experience than Google’s Streetview. Bing Maps also provides that apps that allow for other features to be experienced such as viewing geotagged photos over the Streetside images. There have also been previews of other Map Apps that allowing real-time videos to be placed over the correct points within Streetside and for Streetside to go inside buildings.

In addition to this news it would appear that over the next year Microsoft are looking to bring new Streetside photos to 4 more US cities: Dallas, Miami, New York and San Francisco.

Microsoft do not take these photos themselves but partner with Navteq, a Nokia owned mapping company. It will be interesting to see if the Microsoft/Nokia partnership leads to more collaboration for Bing Maps. Microsoft Research have previously shown off an idea of showing the information provided by Streetside in a 2D map, I wonder though if we will ever see this in Bing Maps. This news follows more good news for Bing which in the US now has over 30%.

Are you glad that Microsoft are bringing Streetside to more than just the US markets or do you think its an invasion of privacy?

This news is significant for Microsoft and its users in the UK because one of the two VoD providers is, surprisingly, MSN Video Player. I knew this service existed but I doubt many people in the UK do and I doubt they would class it alongside SeeSaw.com. The BBC say that the MSN Video Player is a “new partner” and this seems to continue a long run of the BBC partnering with Microsoft for iPlayer related features (in the summer WL Messenger was announced to be coming to the iPlayer, however we are still waiting).

This should boost MSN Video Player’s prominence in the UK considerably and I imagine will get the service many more visitors than it currently does. It will be interesting to see what kind of impact this partnership has on the MSN Video Player and for the MSN site over the coming months and years.

You can see how the content from the MSN Video Player is shown on the iPlayer below.

Don’t forget that the iPlayer works very well with IE9.

Here is a list of where the Windows Phone 7 demos will be taking place:

• Basildon: 1 – 3 South Gunnells, SS14 1HP
• Birmingham High Street: 79/84 High Street, B4 7TE
• Bournemouth: 30/32 Commercial Road, BH2 5LP
• Bristol Cabot Circus: Broadmead Shopping Centre, BS1 3BA
• Cheltenham: 146 High Street, GL50 1EN
• Derby: 6 Albion Street, DE1 2PR
• Eastbourne: 118 Terminus Road, BN21 3AJ
• Exeter: St Stephens House,High Street, EX4 3LN
• Gloucester: 2/4 Northgate Street, GL1 1SE
• Hanley: The Potteries, Churchway, The Potteries Shopping Centre, ST1 1PS
• Ipswich: 33 Tavern Street, IP1 3AG
• Lakeside: Lakeside Shopping Centre, Thurrock, RM20 3FB
• Leeds: 4 Commercial Street, LS1 6AL
• Leeds: The White Rose Shopping Centre, LS11 8LU
• Leicester: 14/16 Gallowtree Gate, LE1 1DA
• Leicester: Fosse Shopping Park, LE19 1HX
• Liverpool: 1 Parker Street, Clayton Square Shopping Centre, L1 1DJ
• Liverpool: Paradise Place, Liverpool One, L1 8BQ
• London Canary Wharf: Cabot Place, E14 5AX
• London Ealing: Ealing Broadway Shopping Centre, W5 5JY
• London Hounslow: Treaty Centre, TW3 1ES
• London Islington: Parkfield Street, N1 Shopping Centre, N1 0PS
• London Walthamstow: 29 The Mall, E17 7JR
• London Westfield London Shopping Centre: Ariel Way, W12 7GE
• Luton: Arndale Centre, LU1 2TJ
• Manchester: Arndale Centre, New Cannon Street Mall, M4 3AQ
• Merry Hill: Upper Mall, Merry Hill Shopping Centre, DY5 1SS
• Merry Hill: Upper Mall, Merry Hill Shopping Centre, DY5 1SS
• Milton Keynes: Silbury Arcade, MK9 3AG
• Milton Keynes: 62 Midsummer Arcade, MK9 3BA
• Newcastle: 9b Douglas Way, Eldon Square Shopping Centre, NE1 7XW
• Nottingham: 10 – 12 Lister Gate, NG1 7DD
• Nottingham: 118 The Victoria Centre, NG1 3QD
• Oxford: 42 Cornmarket Street, OX1 3HA
• Portsmouth: Cascades Centre, PO1 4RJ
• Reading: 87 Broad Street, RG21 2AP
• Romford: The Liberty, RM1 3RL
• Sheffield: 35 The Arcade, Meadowhall Shopping Centre, S9 1EP
• Shrewsbury: 36/37 Pride Hill, Castle Street, Hinckley, LE10 1DA
• Southend: 99 High Street, SS1 1HS
• Stafford: 4/7 Gaolgate Street, ST16 2BG
• Stockport: Mersey Way, SK1 1PL
• Swansea: 803 Oxford Street, SA1 3AF
• Swindon: 3 Canal Walk, Brunel Centre, SN1 1LD
• Telford: 132 New Street, Telford Shopping Centre, TF3 4BP
• Uxbridge: The Chimes Shopping Centre, UB8 1GA

You can find out more about Windows Phone 7 and its Demo Days on their Facebook page.

Anyone thinking of find out more about Windows Phone 7? If I was planning to be out Christmas shopping today then I know I would definitely pop into one of the Orange shops for a demo.

The entire Zune infrastructure and content now appears to be available but just not linked to properly. Things like Zune Social are also available in the UK.

Since the article was published on Neowin I have been contacted by a few people confirming that they do have access to new zune.net functionality in their region and that new music features have gone live on the Xbox 360 in the last few hours. I have also been told it is possible to purchase a Zune Pass and access as much music as is wanted through the Xbox 360 or Zune.net. It is not yet possible to stream the Zune Pass content through the PC Software as Microsoft have not yet released the updated version that will allow this functionality around the world.

Now on to Monday’s announcement. There will be a main launch event in the New York but there will also be one in London. I am obviously very happy about the London event as I will be going to it but I am curious as to why there will be two events apparently announcing the same thing. OK, so the UK has different carriers than the US so there will be different tariffs and devices for sale, but why then aren’t all countries holding major Windows Phone 7 events. It could be that London is being used to make announcements for the whole of Europe and not just the UK, but it doesn’t make much sense for Asian or Australian/New Zealand Windows Phone 7 announcements to be made there too.

Another interesting this to note is that the London event will start 30 minutes before the main New York event. I think that is odd. Surely Microsoft want to have the major announcements for Windows Phone made in New York where the majority of the heavy weight media will be. So what could the London event announce before the New York event starts? International Zune availability of course.

This could explain why there is a Windows Phone 7 event outside of the US starting before the main US event. It only makes sense to announce Zune’s international launch outside of the US seeing as its been an US exclusive service up until now. This would then allow for the NYC event to have the major announcements for WP7 but allowing the UK’s Press (as “innovation leaders”) to have a hand on with the devices launching in Britain and Europe.

With Microsoft hoping Zune will do well because of integration with Windows Phone 7 and other devices which in tern will help sales of Windows Phone 7 with its great media playback and integration with Zune. It makes a lot of sense, to me at least, that Microsoft would be keen to announce Zune availability along side (or just before) the major Windows Phone announcements.

Do you think that there might be more to the London event than just Windows Phone 7? There has certainly been a great amount of excitement from within Microsoft about Monday and I’m not sure just a release date is enough to generate that much excitement.

First off my brother and I entered the gallery and were taken past some very large Microsoft branded boards into a large, atmospheric room with free food and drink and two large Windows Phone 7 screens. Obviously I was drawn to the screens and we were promptly given a demo by the marketer of what Windows Phone 7 will be able to do. My brother was very impressed saying that the OS Q”is like other smart phones but featuring the very best bits” and even “feels more personal than other phones”. He is an iPhone user and I asked him if he would consider a Windows Phone 7 device as his next phone, he said yes.

Next up we were given a guided tour of the various rooms Microsoft had set up to showcase their products, the first room was for Windows, Windows Live and Office. The room was full of new all-in-one PCs and notebooks, all looked stunning. I wasn’t too interested in the new version of Office after having used it for months now but my brother was impressed with some of the new image editing features and the Office Web Apps. After that we had a look at Windows 7 and its media playback capabilities with Sky Player and MSN Video Player both built into Windows Media Center. Following Windows 7 was a demo of Windows Live, specifically Messenger and Photo Gallery in which the new social features with Facebook were demoed in Messenger and Photo Fuse were demoed in Photo Gallery.

Following the previous day’s announcement by Microsoft that Windows Phone 7 will automatically upload photos to SkyDrive I thought I should ask if Windows Live Sync will feature on Windows Phone 7. It won’t. The reason for Windows Phone 7 to not feature Windows Live Sync at the current time is because people use Sync to keep whole folders updated across PCs, its unlikely all the content of these folders is required on a mobile device and will in fact be too large for the device and would be too much of a demand on the networks. However, its obviously possible to access photos from social networks, Office documents from the cloud, etc from the respective hubs on the mobile OS. The representative who I was speaking too said that perhaps in the future Windows Live Sync would feature on Windows Phone 7 but at this point in time there will be unbranded mechanisms for uploading content to SkyDrive. This I find encouraging that Microsoft know how Sync is likely to be used from things such as Live Mesh and so perhaps will have an excellent implementation of Sync for mobile devices in the future that is kind on storage and networks.

In the same room as all the Windows PCs and the various pieces of software being demoed was a sushi-like bar with various accessories from Microsoft Hardware rotating around it. There was much of real interesting on the table, however I did find the Microsoft Arc keyboard to be smaller than I expected and looked very nice.

The next room my brother and I went into was a gaming room, we were shown a demo of Fable III and were able later to play on it. Not owning an Xbox myself (but I really want one) or ever having played Fable II I am sure a lot of what I was told went straight over my head, but I enjoyed the little piece of the game I was able to play. At the other end of the room was a big area dedicated to a game you might have heard of, Halo Reach. Unfortunately there was very little to do other than watch a video of the game, it does look good.

Out of this game room we went and into the room I had been waiting for, the Kinect room. We were shown how to play the various games on Kinect with the first being bowling. I scored very poorly on Bowling, that might have more to do with me being poor at it in the physical world as opposed to any problems with Kinect though, and I didn’t appear to be much better at the mine cart, dodging game on Kinect Adventures. However, my fortunes improved when playing Kinect Joy Ride where I came a more respectable 5th (out of 8). From there I went on to beat my brother in the hurdles game coming 1st, I was very surprised at that, he is much more athletic than I am.

I was already sold on the idea of Kinect and its top of my Christmas list, but there is something really quite magical (eww, sounds very Apple-y) abut controlling actions on a screen with no physical contact of any kind with something. I am really looking forward to having this at home and if you get a chance to play with Kinect then do, you wont regret it.

Here’s my brother playing Joy Ride.

A few people I spoke to at the event about their experience with Kinect said they thought there were some serious problems with latency. I, however, didn’t find there to be much of a problem with latency, what I did find though was that it was easy for Kinect to get confused if there was someone in the periphery of its detection area. Oddly, it could easily handle two people standing in front of it just not if there was someone half in its field of view, I just hope everyone has large enough living rooms for this accessory.

After playing with Kinect my brother and I returned to some of the other rooms to check out a few more things and have a few more plays on Kinect; Joy Ride is a great game. After this we grabbed some food and shortly after left, as we did we were presented with a gift from Microsoft. The gift was Christmas stocking, fitting for the title of the event, with a Christmas cracker, small Christmas cake, Santa Claus hat and a memory stick with information about all the products. Its a great gift for the Microsoft fan that I am and I will be sure to use the stocking on December 24th.

It was a great day and I came away feeling that very confident that Microsoft are looking to have a very good Christmas period indeed.

What this partnerships for MSN is “a mouth-watering mix of Sainsbury’s recipes, great in-store offers, cooking tips and advice for all tastes and budgets, seasonal food ideas, help with planning events and ideas for special occasions, great drinks ideas and lots more”. There are some other useful benefits for MSN’s food portal including “tips on the best wines around” and “video recipes from the Sainsbury’s ‘Try Team’”.

It sounds like the benefit for Sainsbury is to have an online magazine-like site to compliment their physical magazine but without the costs of running it themselves. There will also be a greater prominence on the MSN UK homepage for their food supplement which will be additional advertising for Sainsbury’s.

I can see this site being useful especially with ways to gets some deals from shopping in Sainsbury’s and I am very glad that this isn’t a partnership with the likes of Asda and Morrisons. There’s no mention on how long this partnership will last but I will guess its here until at least the autumn.

One thing I have found interesting in the information about the new partnership is this “question”:

Any plans for more deals like this?

We hope so! This kind of project gives MSN UK the chance to engage our users with great food and drink content. We are confident that our users will love this new section and return again and again over the course of the campaign.

Perhaps MSN UK will have some more partnerships soon with well known companies, it could be interesting. Well I can’t sit here and blog all day, I have some recipes to try out…ok maybe not right now but perhaps some time over the summer I will, those strawberries and chocolate above look yummy.

Microsoft have also been providing students in the UK a chance to win 4 different entertainment experience starting with a trip to the movies for the lucky student and 3 mates and improving to the 4th prize which has now been unlocked, a trip to New York City. This competition is still open to UK students at the Windows Access All Areas Facebook page.

But still there is more to this campaign for people in the UK, anyone who “likes” Windows Access All Areas on Facebook or follows WindowsAAA on Twitter can win copies of Windows 7, DVD box sets etc by entering small competitions. They run these competitions very regularly so you would do well to like and follow these guys and win some goodies. They also share lots of entertaining news and videos on these accounts which I have found to be very interesting and funny.

They seem to have much more planned for the summer too promising a “another little summer bag of surprises coming your way” soon. I am really looking forward to what else these guys have planned to give away and its a great way to get more people to like Windows 7 and Microsoft.

You can “like” Windows Access All Areas on Facebook and follow them on Twitter at @WindowsAAA.

There are five different synths of the house of the various areas, like the garden, bedroom etc. If you want to check them out they are over at the new MSN UK site.

I am glad its the last series of Big Brother, well until someone else buys the rights to it and I am glad to see Photosynth being used for such a high profile event in the UK, this might increase interest in the excellent product from Microsoft.

Microsoft have a Bing map which you can follow where the Bing Ice Cream van will be during the month.

I think this is a pretty good way to increase interest in Bing and should prove a very popular way to get more users, who doesn’t like free ice creams?

Edit: And now you can add your support for the summer and Bing’s free ice creams with this new Twibbon.