Bad news for anyone expecting to use HTML 5 on a Windows Phone 7 OS device. At a recent press conference, Microsoft's Frank Prengel stated that there are currently no "concrete" plans for HTML 5 support in the OS. There are plans for Flash support from Adobe, but that won’t happen until about 6 months after WinPho 7 has been released.

This came up during a demonstration of WinPho 7′s new hybrid IE 7/8 browser, which uses hardware acceleration for text scaling and other processes. The bigger question here is not when the OS is used in a phone, but rather how it will impact the current tablet computing craze. If Microsoft doesn’t support the new evolving web standard, that could be a major stumbling block for early adopters.

Yesterday the big news was of course Android surging past the iPhone to become the top selling mobile platform in the U.S. What many, including ourselves, missed though was what was happening at the other end of the scale. The 'sick man' of the mobile OS world, Windows Mobile, was quietly staggering on, but had dipped to single figures, just 9% market share in the last quarter. There are two main reasons for this, both as obvious as each other really. On the one hand you have the likes of Android and iOS tearing up the asphalt with new customers and grabbing all the headlines, and on the other hand you have the fact that Microsoft has effectively abandoned WinMo in favour of its new OS Win Phone 7. Windows Mobile has been cast out like a sick member of the heard to die, or be eaten by the wolves. It's also worth mentioning that Nielsen's figures don't take into account corporate customers, which, if they were included, would probably see WinMo riding just a little higher. At any rate it's one more sign that this relic of the past has had its time and must give way to the future.

Windows Phone 7 has generally been received warmly from the few interactions with it that have been made public. Not everyone has taken to it though and that camp have another thing to add to their list of reasons for thinking Win Phone 7 will be a bit of a damp squib. It seems that HTML emails are playing as nicely on Win Phone 7 as they did on the old Windows Mobile paltform. That is to say not very nicely at all. The sticking point comes with images, which Win Phone 7 apparently doesn't download automatically. Sure you can select to download them yourself, but it is a bit annoying to have to do it every time, especially given that both Android and iOS allow automatic image downloads in HTML emails. It's all allegedly to do with security so this doesn't look like something that is going to change before the official launch later this year.

It's been how what, three years since Windows Mobile 6 hit the scene? The wait for version 7 is nearing an end. Microsoft's COO Kevin Turner spilled the beans that Windows Phone 7 will arrive in the October November 2010

Redmond's new hope to regain some footing in the mobile market (after the KIN project flopped badly) is Windows Phone 7 a pretty drastic departure from the 6.x line. Mr. Turner says that WP7 phones will not like any other we’ve seen from Microsoft and that it’s a good thing.

It is a good thing indeed, but will it be enough, remains to be seen. Apparently Europe will get Windows Phone 7 devices first, some time in October, and then the US in November.

In that time plenty of droids will have received the Android 2.2 Froyo update (some HTCs are getting it right now), even Symbian^3 may have debuted with the Nokia N8 (we’ll have to wait and see what kind of reception this one gets too). And Apple released four new OS versions starting from about the time WinMo 6 launched.

There are some quite interesting devices running Windows Phone 7 on the way, but by the time they come out competing OSes will have some serious lead.

An SLR Camera instrumented with our image deblurring attachment that uses inertial measurement sensors and the input image in an "aided blind-deconvolution" algorithm to automatically deblur images with spatially-varying blurs (first two images). A blurry input image (third image) and the result of our method (fourth image).

Abstract

We present a deblurring algorithm that uses a hardware attachment coupled with a natural image prior to deblur images from consumer cameras. Our approach uses a combination of inexpensive gyroscopes and accelerometers in an energy optimization framework to estimate a blur function from the camera’s acceleration and angular velocity during an exposure. We solve for the camera motion at a high sampling rate during an exposure and infer the latent image using a joint optimization. Our method is completely automatic, handles per-pixel, spatially-varying blur, and out-performs the current leading image-based methods. Our experiments show that it handles large kernels – up to at least 100 pixels, with a typical size of 30 pixels. We also present a method to perform “ground-truth” measurements of camera motion blur. We use this method to validate our hardware and deconvolution approach. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that uses 6 DOF inertial sensors for dense, per-pixel spatially-varying image deblurring and the first work to gather dense ground-truth measurements for camera-shake blur.

Examples

Automatically Deblurred using data from the Sensor Attachment (images are blinking between the blurred image and our deblurred result)

While discussing the move to Microsoft's next great hope in the mobile space, the Redmond COO told the world that the transition is expected to happen in the October timeframe across Europe, and in the November timeframe in the US. This is the most explicit anyone from Microsoft has been about the likely launch date for Windows Phone 7, and sets up the intriguing potentiality of Europeans getting to savor the goodness of the brand new OS ahead of their US brethren. See Kevin dishing the info on video after the break.

If you think Street View is awesome, you've got to check Microsoft's Street Slide. Virtual sightseeing (and even window shopping) will from now on be a lot more fun. Check out the video demo inside.

Street View is my favorite Google Maps feature but that doesn’t mean that I’ve missed its flaws. Moving along the street (virtually) happens by moving from one 360-degree photographic bubble to another. While you’re in a bubble you can hardly see what’s in the next. And zooming in doesn’t help much either so you need to move to the next bubble – step by step, click by click.

That might not only ruin all the fun but can also be quite disorienting.

Well, the guys over at Microsoft Research seem to have found the solution for that. They have just demonstrated the Street Slide. The new technology stitches bubbles into a large strip that allows you to easily zoom in and out and move along the street facades.

What you actually get is a multi-perspective street slide panorama. Above and below the strip there is additional information (such as street names and signs, building numbers, store names, even a mini-map) which helps you find what you’re looking for a lot easier than before.

And here comes the video demonstrating the impressive Street Slide:

Microsoft in a bid to revive its flagging mobile phone strategy, is to introduce a new line of handsets with social networking capabilities aimed at the younger market. 

The new mobile phones will be on sale in the US some time in April according to information reported in theWall Street Journal. They are based on a Microsoft development project code-named “Pink” and made available through a partnership with Verizon Wireless, owned by Verizon Communications Inc and the Vodafone Group PLC. 

Microsoft has scheduled a press event for the 12 April in San Francisco, which has prompted speculation that the company will reveal its new Pink range. Coupled with the slogan: “It’s time to share”, this would fit the profile of the new social-oriented phones. 

The new development shows that Microsoft is becoming more focused on the hardware aspect of the mobile phone business in order to satisfy consumers’ need for greater sophistication in handsets. 

It is Microsoft itself that has designed the software, hardware and online services for the Pink mobile phones, while Sharp of Japan are responsible for their manufacture. 

Microsoft need a handset that can show off the abilities for its new Windows Phone 7 Series, if they are to gain ground against Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Nexus One. Pink could be the handset range to flex the muscles of Windows Phone 7 Series and truly give Apple and Google something to think about. 

However, given the immense success of the iPad which sold 300,000 units last week, Microsoft's press announcement could well be for its Courier e-tablet, which is also waiting in the wings. 

No big surprise here, but HP Personal Systems Group VP Todd Bradley just flat-out confirmed to CNBC that HP will not be making any Windows Phone 7 devices, preferring instead to focus on the newly-acquired webOS for its line of smartphones. Here's the entire exchange:

Q: Can you make webOS successful with developers when you're selling Windows Phone 7, maybe Android or Linux at the same time?

A: We continue to be Microsoft's biggest customer, and we continue to believe we will drive innovation with Microsoft. At the same time, I think it's clear to say, that we're very focused on the customer, and giving the customer the experience that's important to them. We won't do -- will not do a Linux / Android phone. We won't do a Microsoft phone.

Q: So no Windows Phone 7?

A: We will continue to more broadly deliver the webOS-based phones that are in the market today, and Jon and his team have driven a strong roadmap for the future.

Q: So does that mean you're going webOS only for phones?

A: For smartphones it does. Our intent is to focus those resources and really make webOS the best OS it can be.

You'll remember that yesterday Microsoft was being uber generous by providing all its 90,000 employees around the world with a free Windows Phone 7 device... well you know the old saying, nothing in life is free. TechFlash has a hold of what they are saying is an internal memo from Microsoft. The memo basically says that Microsoft expects its employees, (you know, the ones getting the free phones) to "evangelize" the product at every possible opportunity. Ok so that's not unreasonable, especially if they're working for the company that makes the OS powering the phone. However, there's a bit more to it because Microsoft are also expecting their employees to set aside some spare time to develop apps for the platform, and yes I did indeed type 'spare time'. How much 'sapre time' Microsoft employees have, and whether they will want to use it developing apps remains to be seen. Still a free phone is not so bad, even if you do have to look busy using it.