I can only imagine what it must have been like at 6pm CST on Microsoft’s main campus in Redmond, WA.  I’m picturing alot of long faces and cursing/throwing of chairs.  But not at building 117.  There, Microsoft is hard-at-work building their own rival to Apple’s latest toy.  On NBC’s Today show this morning, they took a tour of building 117 and got a sneak peek at what exactly Microsoft has in mind for an iPhone competitor.

The tour provided a quick glimpse at a potential new interface for the device (pictured to your left) and details about what Microsoft aims to provide with it, including: enhanced Office-functionality (beyond that of what we can see in today’s Smartphones,) GPS functionality (including being able to receive e-coupons as you drive/walk past a building’s location,) and the implementation of the MS Research Labs project “Lincoln.”

Lincoln, announced earlier this year, enables you to take a picture of an object using your phone’s camera and immediately locate that item online for purchase.  In the tour, NBC took a snapshot of the movie Babel on DVD which brought back immediate results from an Amazon-esque online store.

The crew also touched on another of Microsoft’s Research projects: Surface.  Placing the mobile phone on the Surface display, the crew was able to drop photos from the Surface PC onto the phone just by gliding their finger.

It’s not clear when we can expect this new mobile device but we can probably say that there’s definitely quite a bit of Red Bull flowing through building 117.

Update: I neglected to mention yesterday that the Microsoft TechNet blog hyperlinked at the beginning of the article (with the words “Microsoft is hard-at-work”) is claiming that there’s a big surprise coming on Wednesday for iPhone users.  Exchange integration, perhaps?

“And watch this space for more excitement about the iPhone! :) Guaranteed you’ll love your iPhone even more starting next Wednesday… ;)

Want to guess what it is???”

You’ll know as soon as we know.

…the iPhone will be released tomorrow at 6:00PM PST.  I’m sure we would have forgotten if we hadn’t read the official press release from Apple reminding us.

*cough*

Update: The iPhone is here.  Read up on all the coverage via Google News.

Update 2: iTunes v7.3 has also been officially released.  Download it now: http://www.filehippo.com/download_itunes/?2877

Are you or someone you know interested in starting their own small business?  (Hey, who isn’t these days?)  Well, Microsoft launched a new site this week, startupcenter.com, to ease you through the process.  By teaming up with FedEx, Bank of America, MasterCard and StartupNation.com, Microsoft aims to provide a site with resources to answer questions you might have about your new business venture. “How can I write a business plan?”  “How do I establish a ‘brand?’”  “Where do I get the money for all of this?”  Microsoft and its new site aim to answer these questions and more.

One of the partners of this site, StartupNation.com, already provides a wealth of knowledge on the subject but by teaming up with Microsoft and its other partners, that knowledge is multiplied with sound financial and operating advice as well as complimentary tools from Microsoft to help you along the way.

We’re curious to hear your opinion, though.  Think the site might be able to help you out?  Drop us a line in the comments area.

The Official Google Docs & Spreadsheets blog just announced, moments ago, that we can all expect to see a brand new version of the online productivity application released tomorrow.

From MizPee.com:

1. Start up your mobile browser and go to www.mizpee.com. Click “Find toilet”

2. Input your location, then click “Find”.

3. Browse the list of results.

Welcome, my friends, to that great big series of tubes we like to call the World Wide Web.

Today, Dell launched a new offline application to aid with any problems you might be having with your Dell PC: the Dell Support Center.  The software automatically identifies your “Service Tag Number, PC Model Number, Express Service Code, as well as your Warranty Information” and provides you with support options for your computer such as drivers & downloads, training, tutorials, Knowledge Base articles.  The program also provides you with options for contacting Dell Technical Support including live chat, phone and E-mail.  Owners of Dell laptops and PCs will undoubtedly find this to be a useful application and you can find it here: www.dell.com/supportcenter.  If you’re interested, there’s also a video of the tool in action via the official Dell blog.

“We share Roam4Free’s opinion that Dell should probably be advertising this a bit more than they are now…meaning, something more than a vague, barely informative post on the company’s blog.”

Before we begin, Microsoft’s Silverlight, for those of you who don’t know, is a “cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of Microsoft .NET–based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.“  Silverlight is aimed squarely at competing with Adobe’s Flash player/application/framework and was a big hit at this year’s MIX07 conference.

If you are familiar with Silverlight, however, and are anxious to get started with it, Ian Moulster at his MSDN blog has an interesting video tutorial on streaming video using Silverlight technology.  In his own words, Ian developed the video for those who might find themselves in the following scenario:

“…you have a video file on your hard drive and you want to get it up on the web and streaming. You want a high bitrate, no advertising, no third party branding, and need to have the ability to scale to a large number of users. And of course you don’t want to incur big bandwidth charges from your ISP if your video is really popular.”

If this sounds intriguing and you have some useful and/or useless video there on your desktop, read the blog entry from Ian and then check out the video.  You can even create an account at silverlight.live.com and get 4GB to store your new streaming media.

By the way, in order to view Ian’s video, you need to have the Silverlight browser plug-in installed.  You honestly didn’t think you were going to get to view it without the plug-in did you?  Download it here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=86008.

Gotta Be Mobile is reporting that they’ve received official confirmation from sources at Hewlett-Packard that the HP 2710p Tablet PC will be replacing the existing tc4400 line.  The magnificent new Tablet PC entry offers the following:

• 12.1-inch diagonal widescreen Illumi-Lite display provides for a lighter and more energy efficient notebook, providing improved battery life, compared to past generation Tablet PC’s. The chemically-strengthened glass top provides improved durability and a superior writing experience. An optional outdoor display panel improves viewability in sunlight; providing more contrast and less reflections;

• Video and web conferencing, video-enhanced instant messaging, and VoIP, made easy with dual-microphone array and optional integrated camera. Even capture business card images and automatically convert them to text;

• Mix and match your notebook, HP 2700 Ultra-Slim Expansion Base with integrated DVD+/-RW drive, and HP 2700 Ultra-Slim Battery to meet your personal productivity needs. Even take your expansion base with you on the road

…and then some.

HP had previously stated that the notebook is slated for a July release.

Apple today released the public beta of its’ Safari Web browser.  The unique aspect of today’s release, as you might have guessed from this post’s title, is that a Windows version of the beta was released as well.  With the exception of the Quicktime/iTunes combo, this, as far as I can recall, is the only other software application that Apple has released for the Windows platform in recent history.

Safari, of course, is just the latest in a long, long, long line of Windows-based Web browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Flock.  So, why does Apple think you should use it on your XP/Vista machine?  Speed.  As far as I can tell, this seems to be the only major difference between Safari and its’ many other competitors.  As an example, Apple claims that Safari “loads pages up to 2 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2.“  We did a test here and noticed that some of the pages we were pulling up in Safari were, in fact, coming up faster than they were in Firefox.

However, being able to pull up cnn.com 200 milliseconds faster (that’s 0.2 seconds, people) doesn’t seem to be worth giving up the plethora of Firefox extensions that are available to me.  Nor do I feel that it’s worth giving up my beloved Ctrl+Enter, Shift+Enter and Ctrl+Shift+Enter shortcuts for entering addresses.*  Other than the speed factor, Safari also includes everything we’ve come to expect from a modern browser including tabbed browsing, a pop-up blocker, and even something Microsoft has YET to comprehend: inline search.  Again, Firefox has it covered there as well.

I might also add that this beta release includes some graphic display issues (ironic, huh?) that one might not expect from a public beta; perhaps an alpha release, but not a beta, and certainly not from Apple - a company known for smooth graphics in its’ apps and OS.  Of course, this is a very minor issue and shouldn’t prevent you from giving the browser a test if you’ve been wanting to.

*While in Firefox, type in “google” in the address bar.  Instead of hitting “enter,” try the combinations I referred to instead.  Hitting “Ctrl+Enter” will automatically add the “http://” and “.com” to your address and take you to the page.  “Shift+Enter” adds the same prefix but takes you to the “.net” TLD.  And, as you might presume, “Ctrl+Shift+Enter” would take you to Google’s philanthropic site located at the “.org” TLD.

Update: Apple also previewed the latest version of the Mac OS X OS, Leopard at WWDC which boasts over 300 new features including:

“…a new Desktop and Dock with Stacks, an intuitive new way to organize files; an updated Finder featuring Cover Flow™ and a new way to easily browse and share files between multiple Macs; Quick Look, a new way to rapidly preview most files without opening an application; Time Machine, a new way to easily and automatically back up and restore lost files or a complete Mac®; Spaces, a powerful new feature to create groups of applications and instantly switch between them; and enhanced iChat and Mail applications, which easily allow users to communicate even more creatively.”

Check out the complete press release at Apple.com: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/06/11leopard.html.