I meant to get this post up last week but because I was scrambling to get caught back up on homework after last week's trip to MIX 2010, it didn't happen.  Anyway, I have some very interesting tidbits from MIX that I thought I would pass along.  If you listened to this week's podcast, you likely already have heard most of them.  Anyway, here we go!

With Zune's functionality being a part of the Windows Phone 7 Series devices all the way down to using the same software to sync, I sought out to find out if the Zune still has a future.  The best answer I got came from Todd Brix, Senior Director for Mobile Platform Services Product Management at Microsoft.  Although I don't have the direct quote at this time, I was told that the Zune still has a future and that a new Zune device would be coming out in the relatively near future.  Zune HD 2 perhaps?  Who knows.

During my conversation with Brix, I also asked about what kind of developer restrictions there would be for the Windows Phone 7 Series devices.  Full details should be out in the spring, but I did get the answer that there would be no porn allowed and apps often used for illegal activity would most likely not make it into the app store as well.  So much for having a bittorrent client on the phone.  The approval process is being set up to be very transparent so developers know what is going on at all times and if an app is rejected, why it was rejected.  To me, this sounds like they want to be like Apple, just a little more transparent about why apps are rejected.

Speaking of the phone, the browser on the phone will be based on IE 7.   Also, I was told over a breakfast conversation by a Microsoft employee attending the event that pretty much all of the storage on the device other than your multimedia will be in the cloud as there will be no database on the phone like SQL-Lite or anything.  There were whispers that a 3rd party might bring something like that to the phone but the phone itself will only support storing information on the cloud out of the box.  Personally, I see this as a rather large drawback because you won't be able to access a lot of your data if you can't get on the network compared to something like the Android OS where SQL-Lite is part of the OS developers can store your information locally on your phone instead of only up to the cloud.

Speaking of the cloud, I got a chance to sit down with one of the PMs from the Internet Explorer team and got to have a fascinating discussion with them regarding everything from IE's market share numbers to how they handle reported vulnerabilities.  I found it somewhat interesting that market share, especially the amount of the market that other browsers have didn't seem to worry them at all.  As far as they are concerned, IE 8 has around 30% of the market share which is more than any other browser and they are proud of that.  As far as IE 9 goes, my conversation took place the day before the announcement so I am a little short on juicy details other than that I was told that it would be out when they are satisfied it is done and not before then since you can't rush something like a browser, especially when security is among the most important aspects.

I think that is pretty much all of the news that I found interesting that is getting little or no press, but if I think of more, I will definitely post it.

From the blogs I read and the people I talk to, most think that both Blu-ray and HD-DVD are useful primarily for movies and thats it. That is far from true. Much like DVD followed the CD has the primary way of transferring large amounts of data whether it be media files or software such as operating systems, office suites and more, HD-DVD or Blu-Ray will succeed the DVD. With HD-DVD about to lose the movie war, I feel it should pull out and focus on trying to become the successor of the DVD in the computer environment.

With HD-DVD being the cheaper of the two high density disks, it would be easier to take the spot from DVD. While HD-DVD may not have the capacity of Blu-ray, which is a big drawback, it could still fill the storage needs of the majority of people. With game developers and software developers pushing the dvd to its limit, HD-DVD would be a substantial storage increase allowing for more content for a small cost increase. It would give developers plenty of space to work with until the next generation of media becomes available.

Not only would such a move benefit companies, but it would also be a great consumer benefit as well. Even though external hard drives have become affordable for the masses, many still prefer to keep hard drive backups as well as media backups on disk. With a higher capacity disk, many will be able to decrease the size of their dvd and hard drive backup collections. One could reduce their home movie collection to a disk or two instead of many disks which take up valuable shelf space.

With Blu-ray about to win the high-def format war, to survive HD-DVD backers must pull out and focus on the computer market. Without a new strategy and market to target, the HD-DVD can live, but without a major change, it will become another dead format sooner rather than later.

-Jeremy "pcnerd37" Bray