Today in an 8,000+ word epic on Windows on ARM, Steven Sinofsky finally lifted the curtains on some of what we can expect from Windows 8 running on ARM architectures, which he says will be available in the same time frame as the general availability of Windows 8.

Included in the blog post is a video showing off Windows on ARM (which is available only as a downloadable .wmv, but conveniently uploaded to YouTube by Tom Warren of The Verge:

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

In the video, we get a quick look at not only the new “Live” Metro style apps like Mail and Calendar:

(nice and clean!)

…but also a peek at how Office 15 will look, also very clean:

We’ve seen some of this before, of course, but it’s nice to get a peek at what’s to come, and it gets us itching to play with the “Consumer Preview” when it launches on February 29th!

LiveSide.net

Windows 8 for ARM-based processors will come with a version of Microsoft Office 15 when it is made available on ARM-based hardware at the same time as the X86 version is released. Read more…

Neowin.net

Windows 8 Metro-based apps will be able to add web content into those apps with no performance hits, compared to iOS apps that use Safari-based web content, according to a new blog post from Microsoft Read more…

Neowin.net

Metro style apps in Windows 8 have all the performance benefits of IE10 when showing Web content. In Metro style apps, Web content is always JIT compiled and hardware-accelerated. Other platforms do not provide the same level of performance in apps. For example, Cocoa apps on iOS offer significantly worse JavaScript performance (via the UIWebView control) than the same content running in Safari. These Cocoa apps do not enjoy JIT compilation, and these apps cannot show and use Web content the same way the browser on the system can:

Testing configuration: http://www.webkit.org/perf/sunspider/sunspider.html.
iPad: 1st Gen, iOS 5.0.1.
Windows 8: Developer Preview, Dell Optiplex 745, 64-bit OS.
Kindle Fire v1.

Why is this important?

Many applications embed HTML to provide a richer and always up to date experience for consumers. For example, the developer of a restaurant guide app might want to include a live map showing the locations of the list of restaurants the user is choosing from. If you write an app on iOS, common actions like panning and zooming the map will run twice as slow in an app compared with Safari.

Anyone writing a Metro style app for Windows 8 can easily include Web content in their app. In an HTML or XAML app, just include an <iframe> element or a WebView control to get the full benefit of IE 10 performance. To see a sample HTML app that demonstrates this, check out the “Building Your First Metro Style App Using Javascript” hands-on lab at http://www.buildwindows.com/Labs.

Figure 1: HTML Content from Bing Maps in an HTML Metro Style App

With Metro style apps, it’s easy to integrate many existing Web services seamlessly into your app. It’s also possible to build new services for your app that let you deliver dynamic HTML content without having to update your application.

When you include Web content in your Metro style app, your app gets all the performance benefits of IE10 automatically without any additional or special work. JavaScript code continues to run fast with JIT compilation, and your app will automatically use GPU to accelerate HTML graphics.

—Andy Zeigler, Senior Program Manager, Internet Explorer

IEBlog

The Windows 8 blog has posted up a new entry that describes how Microsoft is trying to gain better battery life for PCs by making Windows 8 applications more energy efficient. Read more…

Neowin.net

Facebook is getting ready to launch ads, or “sponsored stories”, in the news feeds of its various mobile apps within a matter of weeks, according to a new report. Read more…

Neowin.net

Combine the gargantuan information flows from the web available to us everywhere with the small screen and processing power of a smartphone and you get a pretty evident bottleneck. Who among us hasn’t quickly thumbed from one app to another ahead of a client visit trying to get as much relevant information as possible in the few minutes before a business meeting?

For those who lack the foresight to prepare in advance, or professionals such as doctors who have a tablet or handset and a need for variety of information on the devices, CoreMobile, a startup out of Santa Clara, Calif. wants to help. The company, which was founded two years ago and is a member of the Cirtix startup Accelerator, makes software running online that uses a phone’s location, a caller or even a calendar event to derive context and then deliver a multi-app view of relevant information on one screens.

CoreMobile wants to cram all these apps into one screen

I have no idea if this is the way we’ll access information in the near future — although Chandra Shekhar Tekwani the company’s CEO is excited that almost 300 paying enterprise customers are already using the beta product — but it’s certainly worth thinking about how to cram a large amount of information from different sources onto a small screen.

This is both a UI issue (how people access and interact with a lot of information in a small screen without being overwhelmed), but also a technical one. For example, how does one prioritize or manage API calls to ensure that a paying customers gets access to a feed of data that might be one or two hops away from the original app? As we enter a mobile first world, CoreMobile and other companies trying to deliver business-level applications on mobile devices that could offer us a glimpse of a connected future, one unconnected to the PC, but constrained by its own unique shortcomings.

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Apple has removed a number of apps from its iOS app store that have names that are similar to well known apps such as Tiny Bird, Cut the Birds and Temple Jump. Read more…

Neowin.net

A Microsoft employee confirmed cross-compatibility of Windows Phone 7 apps to Windows Phone 8 when it launches, quashing any doubts about the future of Windows Phone. Read more…

Neowin.net

Yahoo is cleaning house on the mobile product side, announcing Friday that it is “decommissioning” a long list of mobile apps.

Apps that will no longer be supported include winners like Yahoo! Meme and Yahoo Mim (say what?), as well as some more general mobile apps like Yahoo Answers for Android and Yahoo Deals for iPhone. Unfortunately, Yahoo! Sketch-a-search, which I didn’t even know was a thing before today, is also getting the axe. (You can see the full list on the official announcement.)

Somewhat paradoxically, Yahoo is pitching its non-support of these apps as part of its “mobile first” mindset. But for anyone paying attention, this could be part of a big step forward for Yahoo as it transitions under new CEO Scott Thompson.

Over at Google, CEO Larry Page calls this strategy putting more wood behind fewer arrows. For a company like Yahoo, which has been somewhat stymied by a lack of innovation, it makes sense to kill off products that consumers aren’t using and double down on those linked to its core properties, like Yahoo Mail, Messenger and Flickr, as well as applications like IntoNow where it can introduce disruptive new technology.

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