France

The sales for Kinect for the Xbox 360 have been amazing with 18 million sold this last year. The end result has been countless hours of incredible fun with family and friends dancing and playing sports in the confines of their living rooms. Kinect has also opened the door for developers and businesses to create new and innovative experiences through natural user interface (NUI) on the PC. The explosion of imaginative ideas that can be done with Kinect is something we call the Kinect Effect.

Everyone I know in the United States is already starting to feel maxed out on holiday. There are tons of things to do: buy a turkey, buy presents, plan festive seasonal parties, get a New Year’s Eve plan in place, take family photos and the list goes on. So, we thought maybe there is one thing we can do this year to decrease all the things on your plate – we’ll take your family photos (if you live in the US, Canada or France) and we’ll do it while you are already on the move.

Hi everyone. The rollout of Windows Phone 7.5 continues, and we’re seeing solid uptake globally. 

Today we’ve added a new handset to the delivery pool: the Omnia 7 on SFR in France. Otherwise, there are no other changes to report. We’re still distributing the update to 50 percent of eligible customers. Thanks again for installing the update quickly and using all the new capabilities of Windows Phone 7.5. Your global adoption, use, and feedback is helping us make delivery decisions.

HTC just unveiled two new Windows Phones that will be landing in stores around the world later this year, running our latest version of Windows Phone. A lot of people ask me via Twitter “what phone are you using now”. I’m delighted to say in rotating through various phones and helping our partners finish them with high quality, I’ve spent quite a bit of time carrying one of the prototypes of these HTC phones and it’s terrific. For those of you who haven’t read the press details—here’s a quick recap.

Today we’re releasing the next version of the Zune software. As one of the Zune program managers, I wanted to provide a brief look at what’s new in the 4.8 release, which you can download here. To update your current version, click Settings > Software > General, and then click Check For Updates.

Hi everybody. Yesterday we resumed delivering updates to Omnia 7 owners with SFR in France. That’s all the news on the update delivery front this week.

I did quickly want to also draw your attention to Where’s my phone update?, since we made a few small changes to the table.

While the current school year is coming to a close, it's never too early to start thinking ahead to next year. Are you about to head to college this fall for the first time? Planning another year on campus?  Worried what next year has in store?

Windows recently announced the winners of the MOFILM contest, bringing the grand finalist to the Tribeca Film Festival. We were excited by the winning videos and in response have started another online video competition. This time, the winners will win a trip to the 58^th international Cannes Lions Festival in France.

Here are the details:

Last July, we announced the availability of the second beta of Windows Intune, Microsoft’s cloud solution for PC management. In the fall, we told you that Windows Intune would be available in 2011.

On Oct. 22 Windows 7 Family Pack became available outside the United States. As we noted when Family Pack was launched earlier this month in the USA, more than 94% of folks who try Windows 7 love using it.