Microsoft

We've seen slides and videos of Microsoft's Courier dual-screen booklet in action, but nothing has quite explained how all of these things actually work. This document explains Courier's interface, gestures, and features more in-depth than ever before.

This story originally appeared on Gizmodo.

Although Microsoft isn't making its own PCs, the software maker is taking an active role in customizing just what goes on the computers it sells through its online and retail stores.

In its new role as PC retailer, Microsoft is loading computers with what it's calling its Microsoft Signature experience--a collection of Microsoft products, including the complete Windows Live suite, Security Essentials antivirus product, Zune jukebox, and Bing 3D Maps software, as well as Adobe's Flash and Acrobat Reader products. Internet Explorer 8 is the browser, with Bing as its default search provider.

The computers are being sold at Microsoft's two retail stores--the Scottsdale, Ariz., store that opened last week and the Mission Viejo, Calif., outlet that is opening later on Thursday. The software giant is also selling PCs throughout the U.S. via its online Microsoft Store.

The goal of the Signature effort is to give customers what Microsoft feels is the best software experience they can have on a PC.

"Signature gives them a PC that is ready to run," Microsoft retail unit chief technology strategist Kevin Eagan said in an interview. "We think we're really unlocking the potential of Windows 7."

Microsoft isn't completely deciding what goes on the system. Computer makers can also add software that takes advantage of particular hardware features, but it's not allowing any trialware or "crapware."

"Much like other retailers would define (what goes on their PCs), we do the same working closely with our (computer maker) partners," Eagan said.

As part of the in-store experience, Microsoft staffers will also help customers install other software they might want--even competitor's products, such as Apple's iTunes. They can also change their browser or default search provider before they leave the store, Eagan said.

"We want to give customers what they are asking for, so they leave store 100 percent satisfied," Eagan said.

Eagan said Microsoft is just taking advantage of the customization options that other retailers also have available to them and said the company doesn't anticipate any regulatory concerns.

"We're absolutely confident that what we've done is added another choice for customers," he said. "We think expanded choice is good for customers."

Those who already have a PC, but live near one of Microsoft's stores, can bring in their PC and have the Microsoft Security Essentials software added at no charge.

Microsoft has begun the process of restoring data to Sidekick owners who have been without it since a massive outage began at the beginning of the month, the software giant said Tuesday.

In a statement, Microsoft said it has posted a tool to T-Mobile's Web site that allows Sidekick owners to restore their address book.

Although it initially feared that much data might be lost, Microsoft said last week that it expected to be able to recover most, if not all, of the information. However, the company also said that the process of bringing back the data will go beyond this week.

Here is the full statement:

The Danger/Microsoft team continues to work around the clock and has completed its latest round of rigorous tests. We are now ready to make the first phase of the content restoration process available to you, starting with personal contacts.

This data restoration effort is only necessary for the minority of customers who lost data from their Sidekick devices.

Beginning today, log into the My T-Mobile website, where there will be a recovery tool to restore contacts you may have lost during the recent service outage. This tool will enable you to view the contacts you had on your device as of October 1. With a few clicks and a confirmation, you will be able to restore these contacts to your Sidekick. If you have recreated some of the same contacts on your Sidekick since October 1, you can choose to keep both sets of contacts, merge them, or just keep the set of contacts now on your device. You may also edit any partial or complete duplicates on your Sidekick after restoration.

We continue to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to restore your data. We're making solid progress on the next phase in this restoration process, including your photographs, notes, to-do lists, marketplace data and high scores.

We appreciate your ongoing patience.

Microsoft on Monday apologized for the length of time it is taking to restore missing data to T-Mobile Sidekicks. The company said it expects to begin restoring data this week, but added that bringing back all data will take longer than that.

In a note on its Web site, Microsoft said that the reason for the delay is that the company wants to make sure that it doesn't risk messing up data as it restores information to users' phones.

"The Danger/Microsoft team is continuing to work around the clock on the data restoration proces," Microsoft said. "We apologize that this is taking so long, but we want to make sure we are doing everything possible to maintain the integrity of your data."

A significant number of Sidekick owners have been without their data since the beginning of the month, when Sidekick data service became interrupted amid a massive outage. At one point, Microsoft feared much of the data was lost, but the company said early last week that things were looking better and later added that it expected to be able to bring back most, if not all, of the data.

"We continue to make steady progress, and we hope to be able to begin restoring personal contacts for affected users this week, with the remainder of the content (photographs, notes, to-do-lists, marketplace data, and high scores) shortly thereafter," Microsoft said.

When the T-Mobile Sidekick started having data problems two weeks ago, it was a big pain for nearly all of the company's roughly 800,000 subscribers. But it became particularly rough for the many deaf people who have been among the Sidekick's most loyal fan base.

"It was severely limiting and made me very dependent on others," Carla McCraw, a Web designer from San Antonio, Texas, said in an e-mail interview. "This loss of independence was very stressful on me."

McCraw said she relies on her Sidekick to manage everyday tasks, from keeping up with closures at her son's day care to whether soccer practice will be rained out.

"It was extremely frustrating, not being able to know, and my mother had to call the soccer coach and day care, making me feel extremely inadequate," she said. "I had to rely on the Internet through (alternative services such as) Yahoo and Facebook to let my friends know my Sidekick was down."

The good news, for both deaf and hearing users, is that Microsoft and T-Mobile appear to be making headway at restoring much of the data that, at one time, appeared gone permanently.

But even an outage can be a big deal for those that use the Sidekick as something of a communications lifeline.

"As the outage went on, I became concerned about how my deaf teenage son would be able to communicate in an emergency," Jamie Berke, an About.com guide based in the Washington metro area, said in an e-mail.

"I know he is not the only one," said Berke, who is also deaf. "The outage probably meant that thousands of deaf children who depend on their Sidekicks to communicate with parents were unable to communicate in the event of an emergency. Plus, I myself, would have been unable to communicate in an emergency."

The Sidekick became an early favorite in deaf circles because of its good keyboard, then-state-of-the-art instant-messaging abilities, and ability to connect to relay services. T-Mobile improved things further by adding a data-only option so that deaf users weren't paying for voice minutes they didn't use.

Because the Sidekick didn't evolve as fast as other smartphones, many users--deaf and hearing alike--moved to the BlackBerry and other devices. And after their recent experiences, many of the remaining Sidekick users in the deaf community have said they are considering jumping ship, once their T-Mobile contracts end.

"I am going to look into Sprint's BlackBerry, which more and more deaf people are taking up, and have complimented, and (said) that it is a lot more reliable," McCraw said.

Lisa Gault, a deaf Sidekick owner in Katy, Texas, said she in an e-mail interview that she relies on the Sidekick as a means to stay in touch with her family.

"It's a way for the school to get a hold of me, if something were to occur with my son who is (not deaf)," Gault said.

Gault said that even short of an emergency, it is a problem not to get her e-mail for an extended period.

"It's annoying, as my friends think I'm ignoring them, when in reality, I didn't get the e-mails yet," Gault said. "It really put the deaf community at more of a disadvantage--more so than for hearing people, since we're so reliant on e-mail (devices) to keep in touch."

A prolonged outage for users of T-Mobile's Sidekick device gets even worse as Microsoft's Danger unit says that their lost Sidekick data may be gone forever.

Deaf users sound off on Sidekick outage

Recent problems with the smartphone, long popular in the deaf community, leave many users frustrated and sizing up alternatives.
(Posted in Beyond Binary by Ina Fried)
October 15, 2009 4:00 AM PDT

Microsoft: We've recovered most Sidekick data

In a letter to customers, the software maker said that it thinks only a minority of customers will end up losing any data.
(Posted in Beyond Binary by Ina Fried)
October 15, 2009 1:00 AM PDT

Lawsuits filed over Sidekick outages

Various legal actions claim negligence on the part of Microsoft and T-Mobile led to the recent cell phone woes.
(Posted in Beyond Binary by Ina Fried)
October 14, 2009 4:04 PM PDT

Sidekick's lesson: We learn by failing

The Sidekick outage shows that management hasn't caught up with the cloud, not that network storage is unreliable.
(Posted in Rafe's Radar by Rafe Needleman)
October 12, 2009 10:32 PM PDT

Unanswered questions loom large in Sidekick fiasco

Microsoft and Danger remain largely silent as to both what led to a massive data loss as well as what it plans to do to try to make things right, not to mention what this will all mean for the future of the device.
(Posted in Beyond Binary by Ina Fried)
October 12, 2009 4:39 PM PDT

T-Mobile says Sidekick data may yet return

The wireless carrier says "recent efforts indicate the prospects of recovering some lost content may now be possible." Those who suffer permanent data loss will get $100.
(Posted in Beyond Binary by Ina Fried)
October 12, 2009 6:01 PM PDT

T-Mobile halts sales of Sidekick

Amid a massive failure that led to data loss for owners of the the gadgets, the wireless carrier stops selling new devices online and at its stores.
(Posted in Beyond Binary by Ina Fried)
October 12, 2009 10:11 AM PDT

Sidekick users share their horror stories

In the wake of a massive data loss, tales of woe are coming in from those whose devices have suffered a wicked case of amnesia.
(Posted in Beyond Binary by Ina Fried)
October 12, 2009 9:29 AM PDT

Sidekick outage casts cloud over Microsoft

Although Microsoft inherited Danger's service, this week's massive failure could call into question the broader reliability of depending on keeping data in Redmond's cloud.
(Posted in Beyond Binary by Ina Fried)
October 10, 2009 3:26 PM PDT

Missing Sidekick data may be gone for good

T-Mobile issues apology to users, saying whatever contacts, calendar info, and other data that are currently missing from their Sidekicks are likely to be lost forever.
(Posted in Crave by Matt Hickey)
October 10, 2009 1:40 PM PDT

Major outage hits T-Mobile Sidekick users

Outage that began Friday knocked out data service. Microsoft, whose Danger subsidiary powers the Sidekick service, says it has restored service for "critical applications."
(Posted in Beyond Binary by Ina Fried)
October 6, 2009 11:57 AM PDT

Microsoft said Thursday that it believes it has recovered most of the Sidekick data that it initially feared might have been permanently lost.

"We are pleased to report that we have recovered most, if not all, customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage," corporate vice president Roz Ho said in a letter to customers."We plan to begin restoring users' personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan. We will then continue to work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible."

On Wednesday, at least two lawsuits were filed against Microsoft and T-Mobile over the Sidekick outages, which began at the beginning of the month with data service interruptions and have left many users without access to their address books.

Microsoft had said on Saturday that it believed all data that was not on users' phones was probably permanently lost. However, by Monday it was sounding more optimisitic it could recover the data.

Here's the full text of the letter:

Dear T-Mobile Sidekick customers,

On behalf of Microsoft, I want to apologize for the recent problems with the Sidekick service and give you an update on the steps we have taken to resolve these problems.

We are pleased to report that we have recovered most, if not all, customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage. We plan to begin restoring users' personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan. We will then continue to work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible.

We now believe that data loss affected a minority of Sidekick users. If your Sidekick account was among those affected, please continue to log into the T-Mobile Sidekick forum at http://www.t-mobile.com/sidekick for the latest updates about when data restoration will begin, and any steps you may need to take. We will work with T-Mobile to post the next update on data restoration timing no later than Saturday.

We have determined that the outage was caused by a system failure that created data loss in the core database and the back-up. We rebuilt the system component by component, recovering data along the way. This careful process has taken a significant amount of time, but was necessary to preserve the integrity of the data. We will continue working closely with T-Mobile to restore user data as quickly as possible. We are eager to deliver the level of reliable service that our incredibly loyal customers have become accustomed to, and we are taking immediate steps to help ensure this does not happen again. Specifically, we have made changes to improve the overall stability of the Sidekick Service and initiated a more resilient backup process to ensure that the integrity of our database backups is maintained.

Once again, we apologize for this situation and the inconvenience that it has created. Please know that we are working all-out to resolve this situation and restore the reliability of the service.

Sincerely,

Roz Ho

Corporate Vice President

Premium Mobile Experiences, Microsoft Corporation

Update 10:10 a.m.: Amended letter to include Microsoft's final wording of letter, which said it believes it has recovered "most, if not all" data.

It was only a matter of time, but the T-Mobile Sidekick issue has now spilled over to the courthouse.

A number of lawsuits have been filed, including two filed in federal court in Northern California on Wednesday that allege both negligence and false claims on the part of Microsoft and T-Mobile.

The suits come amid a massive outage of the service that powers the Sidekick, which has hampered data service since early this month and left many users without access to their calendars, address books, and other information. At one point, Microsoft and T-Mobile indicated that any data not yet recovered was probably lost permanently, however the companies said Monday that they were more optimistic about being able to bring back users' information.

One suit, filed on behalf of a Bakersfield, Calif., man "and all others similarly situated" charges that, among other things, Microsoft and Danger failed to use reasonable care in handling Sidekick owners data and that the Sidekick was falsely advertised. That suit seeks monetary damages as well as an order requiring the companies to fix the Sidekicks and service or offer a full refund.

"T-Mobile and its service providers ought to have been more careful the use of backup technology and policies to prevent such data loss" said Ira P. Rothken, an attorney working on that case. "We are hopeful that T-Mobile and the rest of the defendants will do the right thing, use this as an opportunity to redesign the system as a new standard for cloud computing storage, and provide full compensation for the data loss."

Another suit, filed on behalf of Maureen Thompson "and all others similarly situated" seeks unspecified damages for Thompson and others who have lost data as a result of the recent Sidekick problems.

According to her lawyer, Thompson owns a Sidekick used primarily by her daughter, an aspiring model, singer, and songwriter who used her Sidekick to store personal and business contacts, appointments, and even irreplaceable song lyrics not stored anywhere else. The lawyer said that Thompson bought the device "primarily because T-Mobile promised that any data would be protected and available no matter what happened to the phone."

"T-Mobile's initial efforts to reimburse Sidekick users are a step in the right direction, but fail to sufficiently compensate Sidekick users for this disastrous loss of data," Thompson attorney Jay Edelson said in a statement. "T-Mobile and Microsoft promised to safeguard the most important data their customers possess and then apparently failed to follow even the most basic data protection principles. What they did is unthinkable in this day and age."

In that lawsuit, Thompson's lawyers argue why the outage of the Sidekick was particularly devastating, noting the device's cloud-based architecture in which the primary copy of the data is stored, not on the devices, but on servers operated by Microsoft's Danger unit.

"Further complicating the data loss is the fact that Sidekicks, unlike iPhones, BlackBerrys and other smartphones, are not designed to sync locally with a user's personal computer without additional software and hardware," the suit states. "This means that most users were not able to backup their data locally, but were encouraged and required to rely on Microsoft/Danger."

Microsoft declined to comment on the lawsuit, but, a representative said on Wednesday that the company is "obviously very sorry for the inconvenience that this situation has caused Sidekick users, and we are working around the clock in an effort to recover and restore the data for any affected users. While it is still too early to say for sure, we announced on Monday that our engineering teams were increasingly optimistic."

For its part, T-Mobile said in a statement that it "does not comment on pending litigation."

"We are focused on helping our Sidekick customers recover from this recent service disruption and are continuing to support Microsoft's ongoing efforts to address and resolve the Danger platform issues," the company said.

T-Mobile has halted sales of the Sidekick amid the ongoing issues.

Programmers have mostly overcome a crucial hurdle to releasing a beta version of Chrome for the Mac, printing support, but several Windows 7 features won't make the cut for the present 4.x version of Chrome.

The Mac printing support is now added, according to the Google browser's issue-tracking system, though there are "minor remaining issues" and the new features aren't yet distributed with the software.

Google has cited Mac printing support as one holding back a Mac version of the browser. Mac support is important for the company's ambitions to spread the browser and its fast-Web philosophy to mainstream users. The Linux version, while less mainstream now, also is important since it's the foundation of Google's Chrome OS project to build a browser-based operating system for Netbooks.

But on the Windows side of the shop, a number of planned features to support Windows 7 were pushed back to the next version Chrome on Wednesday. That includes support for showing thumbnails of open tabs on the task bar, showing "jump lists" for quick actions such as links recently or frequently visited pages, pinning thumbnails to the task bar, and overlaying a download progress status bar on the Chrome icon.

The present beta and stable releases that Google issued Monday, Chrome version 3.0.195.27 (download for Windows only), are members of the 3.x family. The developer preview is in the 4.x family (download for Windows or Mac OS X). The Windows 7 features had been slated for the 4.x series, but now are planned for version 5, according to the issue-tracking system.

The change doesn't indicate the features have retreated into the distant future, though; Chrome version numbers change relatively rapidly, as evidenced by the move to version 4 in just over a year.

Also pushed back to the 5.x series is built-in support for discovering when Web pages have RSS feeds, one of Chrome's most-requested features. Its absence is ameliorated by a Chrome sample extension for RSS, though.

Extensions remain a work in progress. New ones are arriving steadily, and existing extensions such as Lastpass for filling in passwords and forms and AdSweep for blocking ads is progressing. But Google recently switched interfaces, dropping the use of a toolstrip across the bottom of the browser with pop-up "moles" in favor of browser actions, small icons along the top of the browser.