Information Madness

Microsoft apparently has no intention of letting its failure with Kin keep it out of the smartphone market. The Microsoft Menlo project, which is a 4.1" capacitive touchscreen prototype, was recently spotted running on what could very well be Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R2. The prototype is being used for location-based services, with a GPS-aware Silverlight app called Greenfield running on top of the underlying Menlo code; that is designed to guide users back to saved positions, such as wherever their car is parked.

The phone, which has been described in a research paper called "User Experiences with Activity-Based Navigation on Mobile Devices" (via ZDNet) is very unlikely to be anything like the failed Kin though.

Integration with Windows Phone 7 is very unlikely given that the latter is based on Windows Embedded CE 7 and will be launched within months.

However, Foley is of the view that rather coming out with its own handset, Microsoft is working on a new mobile OS which would be compatible with numbers of processors.

Microsoft announced in June that it was pulling the plug on its social-focused Kin phone less than two months after the product hit the market.