UK telecommunications regulator, Ofcom has kicked off a rather impressive exploration of "white space" frequencies. Google joins Microsoft, Spectrum Bridge, BT and many other organisations to test a variety of white space applications over the next six months. These include rural broadband delivery, HDTV broadcasting, traffic management, early flood assessments and more.

So what exactly are white spaces? They're parts of the frequency band that aren't actively being used by digital TV or wireless systems. Creating a centralised database of white space usage will enable Ofcom and other agencies to approve devices that connect to said database, select and available frequency and regulate power levels to avoid interference.

Making use of airwaves that are currently unused would open up new possibilities for a number of applications, which participating organisations are collaborating to work towards perfecting. What roles are Google and Microsoft playing in the spectrum exploration? The former is a database provider, while Redmond will look to help provide free broadband access in Glasgow Scotland, an area where broadband is particularly poor.

As well as helping out the Glaswegians, Microsoft will also set up a network of sensors for detecting atmospheric conditions and relay them to a live map. It's possible to solve issues mentioned already and more due to the low frequency, which makes itself attractive due to the range, speed and ability to overcome obstacles (hills, walls, trees, etc).

The white spaces will also be utilised to meet the UK's growing demand that's currently being placed on wireless infrastructure. Ofcom states that we could be looking at a solution to connect up to 50 billion devices that are forecast to be wirelessly connected to the internet by 2020. Cool stuff, we'll look forward to seeing some of the results.

Head on over to the Ofcom website for more details.

Source: Ofcom, via: SlashGear

If you thought re-living the excitement of Microsoft’s Windows 95 game, Hover! would require a time machine – you are wrong. The famous game of the 1990s is now available to play directly in your web browser as a promotion for Internet Explorer.

Hover! was originally included with all Windows 95 installation disks. The objective of the game is to capture more flags than your artificial done opponents. The player can collect a variety of powers including the ability to jump, spawn walls, or cloak pod.

If you want to have some fun with a blast to the past, you can download Hover! by clicking here. The game has been optimized and designed specifically for Internet Explorer, but does work perfectly within Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.

What are your favorite games from previous versions of Windows? My favorite game continues to be 3D Pinball – Space Cadet, which was originally included in Microsoft Plus! For Windows 95.

Source: ABC News

MetroTalk is our go-to app for all things Google Voice, a service which we need due to having so many phones and SIM cards (plus that free text messaging is a nice bonus). Earlier this week we saw Google make some API changes, resulting in a critical login failure for this and other Google Voice clients on Windows Phone.

Version 3.2 just went live in the Store and we can verify that it is indeed up and working just as expected. The new version also has a few bug fixes in there to make it quite a worthy update.

3.2 changelog

• Critical: Connectivity errors which had made the app unusable now been resolved
• Bug fix: Conversations with the same contact no longer breaks into multiple threads
• Bug fix: The background update agent no longer gets disabled randomly
• Various other fixes and updates

That third fix is quite vital too as we have seen the app fail to get updates a few times recently (but when combined with the Lumia 920s firmware bug, it was hard to separate).

Google Voice, not to be confused with Google’s messenger app Chat, was originally a private service called Grand Central, but was bought by Google in 2007. It’s goal was to give one phone number to users that can then call all of their phones—LAN or cell—in one go. In practice that means when we have our three Windows Phones on us (Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T), all three devices will ring simultaneously. In addition, users can text message anyone for free since this messages are routed over data, not cellular.

It's also a bit fun since you can make outgoing calls with a different phone number and even pick your locale (ours is D.C.). It's great for protecting privacy as you can always ditch your Google Voice number and protect your real numbers from people you don't trust.

Although Google won’t give us any official apps, we’re lucky to have MetroTalk as it not only fills the gap, but does it very well too.

Pick up MetroTalk here in the Windows Phone Store. Thanks, Dino F., for the tip! 

Popular security provider AVG has announced and released an update for its Family Safety app, which now supports Windows Phone 8. If you've not already used the app before, it's been available on Windows Phone 7 since last year, providing a protective solution for those who have children surfing the web on mobile devices. It's a free app that acts as a web browser, blocking known threats using the AVG Linkscanner technology. Anything relating to violence, drugs, weapons, pornography and more is blocked.

Since Microsoft has launched Kid's Corner in Windows Phone 8, AVG has taken the opportunity to fine-tune its offering for use in the child-friendly zone. The AVG Family Safety browser can be added by parents to the Kid's Corner, opening up a safer environment for the little ones to browse. Building off its Windows Phone 7.5 app, AVG has added numerous new features. Those who already have an AVG Family Safety account and use the PC suite (found on the AVG website) can customise the app by:

• Easily managing the list of allowed and blocked sites
• Monitoring the online activity of the different users and devices
• Blocking social networks and other sites (per individual login for each child)

It's a highly rated app and we can certainly see how the protection can be utilised by parents for peace of mind. The ability to expand the functionality beyond the Windows Phone by loading up the Family Safety suite on the PC is a nice touch. Monitoring exactly what children get up to on the web is another way of keeping them safe by blocking suspicious websites and / or known threats. Unfortunately the browser is limited to only featuring favourites and history, you'll find no tabs support here.

The security provider came under fire when it launched its scanning suite for Windows Phone back in 2011, but thankfully this app is more useful and actually helps protect consumers.

You can download AVG Family Safety 8 from the Windows Phone store. Thanks, Er. Akshat, for the tip!

A lot of you who are big fans of messaging app WhatsApp- a popular, cross-platfrom, instant messaging application for smartphones. If you’re holding a mobile device, odds are there is a Whatsapp application available for it. The company launched in 2009 and quickly did to SMS what Skype did to international calling on landlines (at least that’s what Wikiepedia is telling me). So here’s fairly big news for the app. Google is attempting to acquire it for one billion dollars.

WhatsApp is currently negotiating prices with Google according to an inside source of Digital Trends. The deal started four to five weeks ago. Right now WhatsApp is apparently playing hardball and vying for a higher price, which is “close to 1 billion right now”.

It’s becoming clearer that integrated communication services are going to become integral to all the competing ecosystems out there. Microsoft is positioning Skype to be the foundation for communication across their devices and services, Apple has iMessage, and Google has Google Talk, but looks to be expanding their reach with this potential acquisition of WhatsApp.

So why would Google spend around 1 billion dollars for an app that most of you might use for free? Good question, some obvious answers jump out. While Google could easily use their existing services to mimic the functionality of WhatsApp, it doesn’t have immediate access to the user base. That’s what Google is getting by buying WhatsApp, all the users. Additionally there is something called ‘Google Babble’ that is going to help combine the different communication services Google has under one product. WhatsApp would help target the mobile segment of their future plans.

What does this mean for Windows Phone users? Nothing at the moment. We’re still waiting to get the next version of WhatsApp that will bring new smiles, a quicker app, and more. But beyond that we don’t see what Google or WhatsApp would gain by ignoring their Windows Phone app. Although this is Google, so don’t hold your breath if updates to WhatsApp slowdown in the coming months following an acquisition.

Share your thoughts and armchair analysis below!

And if you don't have WhatsApp, download it from the Windows Phone Store here.

Source: Digital Trends

Although we're fans of Zune (or LastFM) on our Windows Phone, on occasion we get the request for a Google Music (music.google.com/) client. While we're not holding our breath for an official app from Google anytime soon, there's no reason why devs can't do it on their own.

For those who don't know, Google allows you to upload your entire music library to the cloud and gives you the ability to stream anywhere. It's not actually a bad idea as it allows you to backup your collection, free up hard disk space and easily download it again when needed. The service is free for your first 20,000 songs which should get your started (though uploading 20K songs may take some time). [Side note: We're really hoping Microsoft takes SkyDrive + Zune in this direction for Windows Phone 8 and the desktop OS].

Today, Gooroovster is now available on the Windows Phone Marketplace. The app goes for $3.99 which is on the high side but there is of course a free trial. The app has been in private beta for weeks though and initial feedback for the app has been very high, making this seemingly a great solution for those with Google Music as their primary music resource. (Beta testers will be getting one final update very soon to match the released version--kudos to the dev for that).

Allowing you stream via the Zune music player under lockscreen/background and access your entire library, the app is exactly what many have asked for as it even has a very Metro UI. For that, we're giving it our seal of approval.

Give Gooroovster a shot here in the Marketplace and submit feedback and requests via the UserVoice forum.

While we've had Google Buzz available to us for quite some time via the mobile Google Maps application, the website was never fully optimized for mobile use (it was for the iPhone and Android).

Now if you browse over to buzz.google.com, you can login and see all your updates that way, sort of like a web-Twitter feed.

There's still no dedicated feed program for Google Buzz on Windows Mobile (that we know of), but then again since we're sort of creeped out by the whole thing and prefer Twitter, that's okay.

Read more here: Google Mobile Blog

In what is sure to be a technical discussion on the pros//cons of using certain protocols, specifically -webkit-text-size-adjust, in the new IE Mobile Browser for Windows Phone 7, Microsoft's developers have done a retraction due to feedback from the community.

Basically, the issue resolved around how to handle text in in a page with an associated caption and there were ramifications for going with the -webkit- CSS property instead of just the -ms- prefixed one.

The team has now decided to not go with the -webkit- and instead only use the -ms- one. We suppose if you're a web page programmer this means something to you and we're hope you're pleased. We're just glad MS is listening to the developer community, who after all have to use these tools.

Now any of our savvy readers care to explain it in layman's terms?

[via IE for Windows Phone team Weblog]

So a lot has come out in the last 72 hours about Microsoft's KIN project. Some of us get it, a lot of us don't, most of us still have many questions.

One interesting article, written by Microsoft itself, addresses the design process behind KIN. Although we can see inspiration coming from the same roots as Windows Phone 7, that is Zune (which in turn was inspired by Windows Media Device Center), a lot of KIN comes from a different source: magazines.

Read more after the break ...

As it turns out, Microsoft had another program entitled "Muse" that predated "Pink." Muse was a research project where essentially the big, out of touch corporation tries to figure out what the "kids" want these day in a phone. It basically involved them interacting with, interviewing and investigating the habits and wants of some 2,000 volunteers. What they found out was obvious: social networking plays a big part behind usage habits these days, what with "Twit My Face" being the top three services, hence the concentration in KIN.

The term "full bleed" is used to describe the layout. In printing, this style refers to printing from one edge to the other without traditional boarders and that the print runs right to the edge, without stopping short of it. Microsoft's designers decided that magazines offered the best metaphor for what the wanted to replicate--basically that all of your close contacts have a "story." The magazine with a 'full bleed' layout stuck out the most as it concentrated on the content, therefore it was chosen. As Pioneer Studios creative director Jon Friedman notes:

"No chrome" was an expression we first heard with Windows Phone 7. It means no menus, scrollbars, etc., essentially everything that made up previous Microsoft UI layout. It too became a purposeful design decision. Combined with the magazine metaphor, social networking and full bleed and voila, you have KIN.

While the success of KIN remains to be seen and there are many hurdles for Microsoft to overcome yet, one thing is becoming clear between the designs of KIN and Windows Phone 7: style. This may sound silly, but up till this point, Microsoft has steered relatively clear of any sense of UI philosophy, leaving that to their competitors like Palm, Apple and even HTC.

At least in that area, Microsoft now seems to get it and that's a good thing.

If you already skinned your Windows desktop to look like Metro using Rainmeter, might as well complete the look and skin Firefox now too.

Although 'Metro 1.0' adds a little WP7 flare to your browser, don't expect anything drastic as skinning is sort of minimal. Still, it adds that little extra touch to the whole Metro themed PC and it's free, so why not?

We suppose copying is the highest form of flattery, so seeing as many in the design world want to emulate Metro's look is a good thing (remember all the iPhone skins years ago?).

Now if we can just get a skin for Chrome...

[via Download Squad]

Remember NetFront?  Made by Access, they were the original must-have browser on Windows Mobile, going back years ago when Mobile Internet Explorer was even worse (and called PIE).  (See the v3.5 review as a refresher).

While Opera Mobile and Skyfire have mainly taken the lead, it seems Access is making an attempt to woo us back, releasing NetFront 4.0 "Concept Version".  We imagine the concept part makes this a beta, so not everything will be peachy.

The big thang that Access is pushing is their new JavaScript engine, which is suppose to be way faster than....the one in version 3.5.  So how this racks up to Opera Mobile and Skyfire is anyone's guess at this point, though we'll take a look soon enough.

Our initial opinion of 4.0?  Meh.

Read their full press release and info here.  Go through the download process here.

And look for a full review from George, coming up next week.  In the meantime, why not comment on your experience with 4.0?

If you're hip and cool, you'll use your MS Tag app to just download directly to your phone, see below.

[thanks John Kreuzer!]

(Ed Note: Malatesta, who has used IE6 on the Sprint Treo Pro, chimes in with his thoughts on the recent question of what it means that it comes on the CDMA Treo Pro on WM 6.1 but no upgrade path will be available for others.  I have just received a review unit of the Sprint Treo Pro which may include some improvements over the original ROM - stay tuned for that. In the meantime, Mal tells us "what we need to know" and it's not what you might expect. --Dieter)

Microsoft has revealed details on the much-hyped Internet Explorer Mobile 6 (IEM6), which is also making its official debut within the next 2 weeks with the Sprint Treo Pro (no word on Alltel’s version).

To recap what we know and has happened so far with IE6, lets go down memory lane:

• March/April ’08: Adobe licenses Flash Lite to MS for future version of IEM; Announced at CTIA
• Nov. ’08: WMExperts gets screenshots of IEM6 on Treo Pro; Microsoft announces (again) IEM6 at Tech•Ed EMEA
• Dec. ’08: IEM6 gets cooked into ROMs
• Feb. ’09: An even newer version of IEM6 for WM6.5 is demoed at MWC; leaked a few days later
• March ’09: Sprint Treo Pro to be first official device with IEM6

Yes folks, that was one year in the making for what is arguable a very marginal update. Now in fairness to Microsoft, there are actually a ton of changes to the internal code of IEM6. But for the end-user, it remains to be seen if these changes are significant.

Read on to catch up on Microsoft's latest browser and our hands-on opinion!

The big news of course is the incorporation of Adobe’s Flash Lite 3.1 into the browser. Finally you can now go to Mobile YouTube and watch embedded videos right in your browser (see it in action above). Having used IEM6 when I had the Sprint Treo Pro, I can tell you this feature for m.youtube is actually a lot of fun and it works very well.

However, not all Flash sites work so hot with the new browser. In fact, some don’t work at all (error: your version of Flash Lite is not compatible) or when it does work, it is scaled so huge as to not be viewable nor manageable (over at Ruotsalainen’s excellent blog, you can see his results from various streaming sites—not pretty).

Some other additions were H.264, Website Meta language support, better “touch optimized” navigation, AJAX and noticeably absent from the final version, no Silverlight support.

Oh, did we also mention the mouse cursor? IEM6 is now like Skyfire: you have a mouse cursor to move over the screen as opposed to the older “link hopping” option, which is now gone. Ugh.

The other big news was the announcement by MS back on November that an upgrade-path to IEM6 will NOT be happening for a few reasons, including the need for a 400 mhz-plus processor, certain memory requirements and the unwieldy installation just did not make a simple .cab file installation possible. That is why people have had to “cook” a version into ROM in order to use it.

Now comes word from MS that it basically “refreshed” WM6.1 with a new AKU build (v1.4; older WM6.1 was basically AKU 1.0) to accommodate their new browser. (There are some other notable changes in AKU 1.4 not related to the browser, like changes in the Outlook menu system, too.)

Personal Experience: Careful what you ask for

As previously mentioned, I had the opportunity to use IEM6 for 30 days. Full disclosure: I actually really like using IEM5 on my previous devices for viewing mobile sites—it’s right quick and doesn’t take too long to load (for full sites, I prefer Opera Mini or Skyfire), so I’m not hater on IEM.

Having said that, IEM6 is flat out terrible mostly for UI reasons but also for slow performance ones too. For one, they abandoned the “single column” view whereby the browser stacks everything so only scrolling vertically is required. With IEM6 you pretty much have to scroll vertically and horizontally no matter what the site, including mobile-formatted ones.

No surprise, it is also slower to load, what with having to load Flash Lite 3.1 every time. Actual speed of rendering was not noticeably different and a real pet peeve: when you hit “Stop” it doesn’t actually stop the page from loading, at least not within a realistic amount of time. The browser still hangs and chokes on large sites and the overall feels is just worse in comparison to IEM5 (though the new download screen is a bit nicer).

Sure Mobile YouTube works well, but honestly there are much better solutions for streaming that or any other sites (e.g. Kinoma Play, Core Player) and unless you are a YouTube nut, it’s just not a big deal. In short, streaming Flash is still a pain and not at all an enjoyable experience.

I’ll leave the final word on this with Ruotsalainen, who said this about IEM6 recently:

In conclusion, perhaps in WM6.5 IEM6 (which is a newer build) will perform and be much better than the current version, in fact we can give them the benefit of the doubt (see a video of it in action here). But if you are pining over the current IEM6, in short don’t. It’s not very good and I’m happy to be back to the older version.

Sorry, Microsoft.

The lads over at Opera Labs have released a tech preview of Opera Mobile 9.5 that also has support for Google Gears.

Put in their words:

Read more about it here, and then head on over for the download.

Normally we're all about leaks. We love getting our hands on the latest and greatest phones, operating systems and software before anyone else, being a guinea pig, and then sharing the results with you.

This is not one of those times.

We first noticed a leaked version of Mozilla's Fennec browser floating around the Internets on Thursday. And the early consensus was that it's nowhere near ready for prime time and is definitely not the beta we're expecting on the Touch Pro in the coming days. Our guess? The code's been compiled but certainly wasn't intended for mass consumption. So we let it go, but kept our eyes on it. But that hasn't stopped other brave souls from trying it. So, after the break, we bring you a video from Pocketnow of a browser that doesn't yet work.

Why are we getting our registry entries in a twist over this? For one, our excitement for Fennec has grown as we've waited. With all the power we're used to in Firefox with bookmarks, add-ons and Mozilla Weave, this could be the first mobile browser to really give Safari on the iPhone a run for its money (with apologies to Skyfire and the Opera 9.5 beta — ya know we've got love for ya). Ask us what our top gripes about Windows Mobile are, and a proper browser will always be in the Top 5. And that's why we'd prefer to put Fennec through its paces once the real beta build is released. Even then, it will be a beta, so there undoubtedly will be some niggles. So, Mozilla, take your time. Let's get this right.

In the meantime, instead of loading some half-baked version on your phone, we suggest trying the desktop emlator instead.

Gizmodo.com has been busy testing browsers on Windows Mobile devices asking the question,

We explained a little while ago a few of the reasons why we're looking forward to seeing Firefox Mobile, aka Fennec. Now, it's time to start playing.

Mozilla has posted "an early developer release of the mobile version of Firefox, for testing purposes only." [via Gizmodo]

And test, we shall.

Fennec still is only actually running on a Nokia 810. But you can get a taste of it now on your desktop or laptop computer. The full version of WMExperts.com loaded without a hitch (minus Flash, of course), and I got 90 out of 100 on the Acid3 test, which is in line with those early shots we saw. Yeah, it's a release candidate on a desktop PC, but we're still starting to get goosebumps.

Check out Mozilla's alpha release page here, then get your download on, be you a Windows, Mac or Linux OS.

Edit: Wait a minute. ... Flash is (kind of) implemented? They're expecting full-on add-on support? This is looking better by the minute. Unless you're running a non-touchscreen device.

Back before Opera Mobile became an everyday alternative to Internet Explorer, and long before we'd ever heard of Skyfire (go get it now!), there lived a little beta named Deepfish.

This little guy was going to swim the deepest, darkest Internet oceans as no mobile browser had before - rendering full Web pages on your Windows Mobile device. That's pretty standard stuff these days with the Opera 9.5 and Skyfire betas, but we were pretty excited at the time.

But the number of Deepfish beta testers was pretty limited, and it largely fell off everyone's radar. Witness: Microsoft put the gaff to Deepfish more than a month ago, and we're all just now noticing. [via]

Meanwhile, The Unwired earlier this week took IE 6 for a spin. (See a pic above.) Again, chances are you'll be completely comfortable with Opera or Skyfire by the time this is released, but it's release is important nonetheless, given that it's supposed to tide us over until the delayed Windows Mobile 7 is launched in the second half of next year.

There's an incredible amount of crunchy, mobile browser goodness to be found in this AdMob PDF [via]. They've taken statistics for all of the ads they've served worldwide to mobile browsers for July 2008 and compiled them up for us to gobble down.

Interesting stuff abounds: Indonesia's mobile browser usage growth was literally off the charts last month. Nokia's still way WAY far ahead whether you're looking at dumbphones or smartphones. The PalmOS has a browser and it gets used (who knew?). RIM's been making big gains with web browsing. For all the noise and bluster about off-the-charts iPhone browser usage, it still clocks in with less than 1/3 of Windows Mobile's usage. Of those WinMo players, HTC leads with a commanding 47%, followed up by Samsung, HP, and Motorola. We could go on.

Alright, we will: add up all the smartphone makers (except Nokia) and you're still only looking at five percent of the worldwide browser share. So there's plenty of room for all of this to change -- especially because it looks like the worldwide number two mobile browser right now is Openwave, the RAZR's browser. That's the competition. The mind reels.