Microsoft has been pilloried/lampooned by many for botching their attempts at mobile at nearly every turn. They had been lapped by Apple and Google multiple times yet shown little direction. When they had great concepts like the Courier tablet, they got scrapped.

And when they finally introduced Windows Phone 7 they got kudos for the snappy Metro UI, Office & Xbox integration and smart market positioning. But when the OS was released last year it lacked many features that were in iOS and Android and the updates to fix them seemed far in the future.

Well the much awaited release is called Mango and it looks pretty sweet. Unfortunately it’s not coming any time soon — the Mango update won’t be ready to be picked until the fall.

There are more than 500 new features in Mango (unfortunately tethering is not one of them).  Microsoft just released a new video (below) featuring Joe Belfiore, Corporate Vice President of the Windows Phone team highlighting some of the new features. On balance there’s some pretty impressive stuff here, particularly the performance of the IE9 web browser which leverages hardware acceleration to provide better rendering performance than a dual-core Android device, iPhone and Blackberry Torch.

One of the other things they’re trying to accomplish is to reduce the amount of typing that users need to do to get to the information they want (keeping with the “get in, get out and back to your life” positioning).

The best example of this approach is a hyper-local service powered by Bing called Local Scout – and is something that travel companies should pay attention to.  Based on location from the phone, with the touch of one button you’re presented with suggestions of where to eat, stay and play in the area. The Local Scout demo begins at about the 2:28 mark.

Of course all the news pales in comparison to the successful raid by a group of Navy Seals that ended in the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Unlike Rashard Mendhenhall, I have no ambivalent feelings about it.

So on with the other things that happened in the tech and travel sectors:

1. There was a lot of over-reaction to the Amazon EC2 that pulled down Foursquare, Quora and Reddit and other sites last week. But it’s awful easy to put the blame solely on the cloud provider or attribute it to the concept of cloud computing in general. But I agree with Adron Hall’s take: “If you’re site is down because of a single point of failure that is your bad architectural design, plain and simple.”
2. Gaming the system. Great phrase. Now SERKO’s introducing gaming into their booking tool to reward users for staying in compliance with company travel policies.
3. For all the negative reviews that the Blackberry PlayBook got (deservedly so for rushing an incomplete product to market), the sales of the first Android Honeycomb-based tablet, the Motorola XOOM, have been…let’s say “disappointing”. Or terrible. You pick the adjective you feel more comfortable with.
4. Price fixing is such a loaded term. Rate parity is a common goal for hoteliers and many other retail sectors. But is it illegal? It looks like we’ll find out soon as the UK’s Office of Fair Trading is looking into the matter. Tnooz obtained a series of emails that shed’s some light on what’s going on.
5. Developers determine whether a platform is successful or not. And right now things don’t look good for Windows Phone7 and Blackberry.
6. I always thought that airline retailing was a little strange (maybe a lot). It’s one of the few retail products that doesn’t use a discount/margin mechanism to compensate its channel for their effort and increase the profitability to the supplier for direct sales. At least I’m no longer alone. Forrester’s Henry Harteveldt made the suggestion that the airline industry look as a traditional retail model during his keynote at the Open Travel Advisory Forum. Here are some other highlights of Henry’s speech.
7. Everybody knew that Symbian was toast in the age of the smartphone. Nokia knew and so they put their efforts into MeeGo as the next generation OS.  That was until they realized it was going nowhere too. So they crafted a deal to license Microsoft to bet the future on Windows Phone7. But perhaps the people at Accenture didn’t get the memo. Because they just acquired (paid?) the Symbian technology from Nokia – and the 3,000 people who were working on it.  And now Accenture says it will play a key role in their mobility services. Maybe it’s just me, but it sounds like someone buying a quill factory to compete with digital publishers. More likely than not, it’s so that Accenture can extend the ‘life’ of their existing Symbian professional services business that they bought from Nokia in 2009. So if it cost them nothing great.  Or maybe they know something we don’t.
8. Tnooz reports that Expedia is making big bets on their new technology platform. What’s most curious about the announcement is that there are few clues to what that technology really is (except for the drag on earnings that the cost of development was). However, the results at Hotels.com, attributed to the new platform, inspire some confidence. But this quote from Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi almost makes me laugh: “We will be surprised if it doesn’t work.” Most people expect their plans to work and are surprised when they don’t. I’m sure the guys at Nokia felt the same way
9. To the delight of many users, Yahoo has sold Delicious, the popular social bookmarking technology to some of the founders of YouTube. Did you panic and transfer all your bookmarks to a different platform when Yahoo first announced they were shuttering Delicious?
10. Luxury vacation rental and trip management service Inspirato picks up $11M in funding.

A lot of big news last week from Microsoft, Oracle and IBM agree on the future of Java, the iPad is coming to Verizon and notes from Amadeus Horizons 2010 in San Francisco.

1. Oracle and IBM team up to provide a unified future for Java. Should be good for the developer community for sure. But maybe not so much for Google with respect to the Java patent infringement suit concerning the Android mobile OS. Altimeter Group’s Ray Wang breaks it down.
2. Bing search goes social with Facebook integration.  Microsoft and Facebook announced a new partnership that brings Facebook “Like” and OpenGraph profile search to Bing using “Instant Personalization”.  I expect this will have a big impact for travel, especially for hotel, restaurant and tour/activity search and portends a big challenge for companies like TripAdvisor. And not for nothing, it’s definitely another shot across the bow at Google from both Microsoft and Facebook.
3. Microsoft “Launches” Windows Phone 7…phones to actually follow in a few weeks. While many seem to like the Metro UI, few seem to think it has a chance to succeed. Scoble says all WP7 has going for it is Office integration and that’s not enough. Mary-Jo Foley says Microsoft’s real target for WP7 is feature phone owners. But most feature phones are free or close to it. The initial price with contract for the WP7 devices is $199. This will be a tough road to hoe.
4. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Spirit Airlines’ “edgy” marketing sure gets results.
5. The iPad is coming to Verizon and the iPhone won’t be far behind. Only a few more months and I’m free of my Pre!
6. Amadeus completed its bi-annual Airline IT conference, Horizons 2010. Tnooz’s Dennis Schaal recaps the first day. On the second day the highlight was a terrific talk about the future of technology in travel by Forrester analyst Henry Harteveldt.
7. The worst kept secret is out: Amadeus officially puts Opodo up for sale…er, is “evaluating strategic alternatives” with JP Morgan.
8. A terrific look at the private sale model by Matt Zito.
9. Is there such a thing as too much Cloud Security? Cisco’s Christopher Hoff poses the question.
10. IDC Staranalyst Michael Fauscette keeps the great posts coming. This time he suggests a couple of important fixes to remove barriers to creating a collaborative, social enterprise

UPDATE (8/27/10): TechCrunch is now reporting that DeutscheBank telecoms analyst Jonathan Goldberg estimates that Microsoft will spend $400M for the marketing launch of Windows Phone 7 on top of the monies paid to developers and handset makers. Goldberg says “This is make-or-break for them. They need to do whatever it takes to stay in the game.”

Since three-quarters of the people on the Internet don’t know who HennyYoungman is, I hope a few people stuck around after reading the headline.

There’s been a lot of discussion around Microsoft’s potential for success with Windows Phone7, which will be launching sometime this fall (the final developer tools will be available for download on September 16th). I was talking yesterday with a mobile developer friend about iPhone v. Android, what his impressions were of the Torch. Then the conversation turned to Microsoft Phone7.

I commented that — notwithstanding the unique and interesting UI, the importance of integration with Microsoft apps in the Enterprise and the allure of mobile XBOX for consumers — I thought they were going to have a tough climb (amongst many reasons) given that they want to earn revenue from the handset makers for licensing the OS  while Google gives away Android for free, whilst Apple and RIM offer their own branded devices.

But he told me that not only is Microsoft offering to pay developers to build apps in advance of the launch (a standard operating procedure for Microsoft product launches, yet worlds different than the organic efforts that have made the Apple and Android ecosystems so vibrant), but that he heard that Microsoft has had to give beaucoup bucks to handset makers as inducements to build the phones (hence, the “take my Mobile OS, please” headline)! I guess not entirely surprising as the leading smartphone makers have either committed to Android in a big way or are supporting their own OS plans (can you hear the Symbian death rattle) and/or dreams (see Bada, Samsung).  Heck, arguably their biggest licensee was Palm and now they don’t exist and HP’s going to use WebOS to try to bury Microsoft’s mobile efforts even deeper.

This may be in fact what it takes to get Phone 7 off the ground, but I’d love to hear how the conversation goes when Microsoft comes back and starts asking for license revenues.

So what do you think? Does Windows Phone 7 have a chance? Are you planning to buy one? Are you planning to develop apps for it?

Let’s see what came up:

1. Forrester analyst John Rymer’s take on Oracle’s Cloud strategy. And for a bonus, a slightly different interpretation by fellow Forrester analyst Stefan Reid.
2. Dion Hinchcliffe, ZDnet: The Facebook imperative for enterprise software.  Hinchliffe is great. Longish articles at times, but good insight. Riffing off Benioff’s recent proclamation that enterprise software should look like Facebook (not sure I want my enterprise software UI changing every 3 months), he asks important questions like “Should Enterprises be Social” and has a Top 5 list of why IT should be social (I certainly won’t limit to IT).  But I think that social is critical for organizations, particularly global organizations, who want to innovate.  R&D has gone global and the best way to harness that is to make sure those teams are social with each other, collaborating and sharing.
3. David Linthicum: Cloud Provider Roulette.  Bottom line: If you are evaluating cloud computing technology today, you have to consider that your choice could be bought up this year or next. That means you need to make sure your legal agreements are rock-solid and spell out what happens if your provider is acquired
4. Wyndham Hacked for Third Time. Not good. Wyndham please talk to me about security testing.  Related article noting that recent research shows that the hospitality industry is hit hardest by hackers, with the natural focus on payment card information.
5. Tnooz: Will Priceline come back to the field?  The concentration of revenue in the OTA (online travel agency) business is pretty staggering.  It’s the Pareto Principle on steroids.
6. Tnooz: TripIt maps employee travel with TripIt groups.  Pretty cool way to keep tabs on the organization. Would be very helpful in case of a crisis and there was a need to know/get in contact with employees at a moments notice.
7. Daring Fireball: Thoughts on Windows Phone 7 by John Gruber (not related, but I’d be somewhat glad if people confused him with me. Would certainly help me get gigs on the speaking circuit)
8. Keeping in the iPad theme this TechCrunch article on Apple’s HTC patent Lawsuit indicates that the real focus of Apple’s ire is (spoiler alert) Google’s Android OS (ok, not really a spoiler).
9. Three theories why Google pushed Buzz out the door.  What’s more interesting to me is that it seems that the Buzz experience is vastly different on an Android device, with all it’s location-based goodness, than on a web client. Is this really targeted more at Foursquare than Twitter?
10. And last but not least: Ballmer’s really committing Microsoft to the Cloud. Yet somehow I still don’t quite believe it.