Judie: We can’t be in Barcelona for Mobile World Congress, but thanks to the generosity of Scott Rockfeld at Microsoft, we can show you some screenshots of Windows Mobile 6.5, which is officially being unveiled at the show. Rather than post just one person’s thoughts, we decided that this would be a good time to give impressions from several very opinionated people.

Bear in mind that these are judgments based on what is shown specifically in the screenshots, and that we recognize there are likely features present which may not be evident by the pictures shown.

Let’s start with the newly designed Home screen…

Judie: Hmmm…this should look familiar to anyone with a Zune. I like the use of lowercase letters, but I wonder if it will seem too informal to business users. I also like the immediate information given by the numbered notations on email.

Christopher Gavula: I like the new look overall.  I’m a big fan of usable interfaces and I felt the old WM learning curve was a bit high.   I really think MS is headed in the right direction with this redesign.   As I mentioned – I like this look, but I wish the numbers for calls/emails/etc. stood out a bit more.  Maybe making them a different color from the other text?  I agree, the “feel” is friendlier – more casual.  I don’t know how this will sit with the business set, but it should sit well with consumers.

Chris Spera: Exactly, Chris… From a consumer point of view, this is pretty nice, but I’m a business/professional user, and I want my meeting schedule on my home page. I want to pull the device, turn it on, and see what meeting is next.  If this doesn’t do that, I’m not gonna be a huge fan.

Wayne: Reminds me of a Zune. As I’m looking at the first image I’m wondering what’s going to be under the hood. Is this more attractive home screen just a coat of paint? I’ve got $10 that say’s this glossy opening screen is the most noticeable improvement to the OS upgrade.

Doug: I really like the fact that Microsoft has gone back to the drawing board and completely started from scratch.  This constant tweaking of a 10 year old design was getting old.  I also really like that they did not fall into the trap of copying the iPhone.  The great thing here is that it is completely finger friendly, but does not resemble the iPhone at all.   In fact, I love the fact that they are essentially incorporating something like the Zune interface.  I have been saying for some time that it really makes no sense for the Zune to be a seperate device from Windows Mobile.  I hope this marks a merging of the two.

I do agree with Chris though.  I am one of those people who really likes my calendar to smack me in the face when I turn on my device.  What I hope is that there will be some kind of popout.  So, tapping calendar would just expand that entry on your homescreen to display additional information about your upcoming appointment (which is what appears to be occurring with the clock in this first picture).

Judie: Right Doug. I think that tapping each entry will either cause other options to pop out or take you right to the application, but they will stay collapsed unless tapped. If that’s the case, so far so good…

Clinton: I really, really like this interface change. This really makes it quick and easy to get to the information that is important to me. This could very well be the source of the “Zune Phone” we’ve been hearing over the last few months. I like the Zune, so I guess it’s no surprise that I like this as well.

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A week or two ago during the Christmas to New Years span,Viacom and Time Warner had a dispute that’s now resolved.  However, as things usually do happen on our team member list, things go into another topic.  Wayne kicked it off with this message:

Wayne Schulz: In 5 years the concept of a cable tv box is going to be quaint. The vast majority will come via on-line. This the foreshadowing.

I thought….hmm….is that really true?  Other team members chimed in:

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The holidays are about to be in full swing, and after enjoying the good meals and time spent catching up, one of our favorite family activities is to watch a holiday movie…or three! I polled the team to ask what their top favorite holiday movies were, and these were the results.

Some are classics and immediately recognizable favorites. Some? Not so much. So in no particular order, here are our favorites:

Joel – mmm….hard one….but….

1. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation – I AM Clark W. Griswold!

warning for language

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Judie: Here’s how it all started. I got a press release from Kevin Doel regarding FlipSide, a new Windows Mobile MP3 Player which features “”Swooshing” Album Art as Part of Acclaimed Visual Interface.”

FlipSide, the MP3 player from Electric Pocket that has had BlackBerry users buzzing, is now available to users of Windows Mobile devices such as the Treo 700xw, Mogul, Ace, and Blackjack. The feature that has made FlipSide such an instant hit among BlackBerry users is its iPhone-like interface that allows users to visually “swoosh” through their music quickly and easily.

Navigating through music and selecting tunes is a simple process with FlipSide: scroll through the Album Covers, or flick through them using your finger on the screen, then click on the navigation button to open up a vertical list of the tracks. The spacebar is used to start, pause and skip songs, while the navigation button is used to scroll either left or right to either fast forward or rewind within a song.

While FlipSide comes with the features expected of any MP3 player, the feature that gets the most buzz is the attractive user interface that makes FlipSide both visually enjoyable and very easy to use. Its ability to “swoosh” through the full-color cover art of an entire music collection within seconds using the navigation control button makes FlipSide stand-out as both a simple and fun MP3 player. FlipSide downloads and displays the cover art of each album and even links to FlipSide Extras to provide biographies of the artists, recommendations for similar artists and more.

FlipSide for Windows Mobile plays music stored on memory cards in MP3 & WMA formats. FlipSide retails for $19.95 and a free trial download is available now from the FlipSide website at http://flipside.fm.

As I’ll usually do when I get a product announcement, I forwarded this release to the team to see if anyone might be interested in covering the item or reviewing the product…and then their emails started rolling in. It wasn’t long before we had another full blown GearChat Roundtable on our hands.

Sit tight; this one was a doozy…

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Once again, the Gear Diary Team invites you to listen in behind the scenes, while we talk about social networking. We also invite you to continue the conversation in the comments section…

Wayne: Isn’t it about time for a post on the use of Twitter? I see Judie and Joel on there. Anyone else? I find that FriendFeed is a pretty useful tool to keep up on what people are doing. I think techmeme overhyped it a little, but I enjoy seeing in one place what people are writing about, and especially when they post photos and YouTubes.

Do you think this is a passing fad? A lot of this seems pretty “early adopterish”. I know the blogging kings are all over it — but I’m not sure if it has “legs” beyond these hardcore folks that are connected 24×7 to a computer and more open to these faddish ideas.

Will the general public put up with what to many might be an invasion of privacy? Don’t know the answer.

I’m finding that it’s almost a replacement for social bookmark sites like Digg or Delicious, since you are filtering out people who you don’t know and other spammy submissions. It’s also a great way to track favorite writers and online friends.

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Wayne: I’m not sure if this will work for everyone or if it’s just allowing me in because I’m already into the Evernote beta (I think it’s an open URL because one of my friends was able to download directly). UPDATE: Some users are not able to get into the beta via the link shown at the end of this post – if you have trouble – leave a note in the comments and I’ll forward you an invite from my account.

Instead of applying for the Evernote Beta (which is just a marketing gimmick imho) — keep reading and I have a link that I found which seems to get you into the beta without having to wait for an invite.

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Once again, we invite you to eavesdrop on our email conversations…

Wayne: R.I.P. … the Internet slays another print publication…

Mitchell: I was a subscriber to PC World for about 5 years, and then I realised that I was paying for a magazine with content that I had read weeks earlier on the internet.

It really is inevitable I suppose, tech magazines just can’t stay ahead of the game with online news sites getting information out hours after release. They have to wait a whole month…

Clinton: This is the same problem that many tech magazines face. Granted, most have a much smaller circulation than PC World, but the net result is the same: very few subscribers but a massive uptick in online “subscribers”. Amongst us Gear Diary types, I’d be shocked if many of these magazines were still printing this time next year.

Mitchell: Yeah I have the same thought each time I receive various magazines I have subscribed to, they just feel out of date. They have to know the end is coming as well.

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Judie: I have alluded in the past to the fact that Gear Diary Team emails can be quite entertaining as well as enlightening. Sometimes we talk about meaningless subjects – like the press release that came through today for NBA Jersey air fresheners. Other times, we talk about things that we aren’t ready to put into an article, but that are on our mind.

Today Wayne kicked off just such an email which many of us soon chimed in on, and I thought it would be fun to let you all peek in on some of the stuff we talk about behind the scenes. Grab a cup of coffee (or tea), and come join our conversation…

Wayne: Did you guys see this writeoff — $ 29 BILLION — and bleeding 1 million + customers per QUARTER….

Is there any way that Sprint can remain independent? About the closest match now would seem to be Verizon who uses the same CDMA technology.

IMHO, aside from the technical problems, these guys really lost it with the Nextel acquisition. There simply was not any synergy between the technologies. They bought one of the most profitable niche players and literally destroyed them.

Now you could debate whether Nextel could stand along with their iDEN technology — but geez — $29 BILLION writedown….WOW

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