Panasonic announced its LF20 Series Full HD LCD displays, the TH-47LF20U and TH-42LF20U that are the company’s first professional LCD models for general-purpose signage. The 47-inch TH-47LF20U and 42-inch TH-42LF20U both come with a Full HD 1920

Following a lead from a xda-developers.com forum thread whose users have analyzed the Windows Phone 7 Series emulator ROM with CSI-like forensics, a question that is now obvious in retrospect was raised, “are Microsoft’s own applications on Windows Phone 7 Series based on the same development platform it exposes to third parties, Silverlight?”

As I found out today at MIX10 the short answer is no, but having said, there is a legitimate explanation.

The reason the “default” applications on Windows Phone 7 Series are not built on Silverlight is actually a very straightforward technical problem, the applications were simultaneously developed with the platform and tools when they committed to building the operating system from scratch.

Having said that, neither users or developers should be concerned as Microsoft assures this will be no disadvantage to third parties.

In terms of performance, they state there is no discernible difference in the processing or rendering speed of third party applications. On the other hand, the breadth of APIs could have some differences but developers of other smartphone platforms like the iPhone face this too. Microsoft vows to surface additional APIs if developers voiced their needs.

Microsoft wasn’t able to confirm or deny the use of the “Iris” or UIX framework, but references to UIX in the ROM dump would strongly suggest so. Appropriately, Rafael Rivera is starting a series of posts that dives into the technicalities of Iris.

About six months ago at Microsoft PDC09, Dean Hachamovitch revealed Internet Explorer 9 for the first time and teased a relatively new browser rendering technique based on Direct2D, at the time. Barely weeks after, Mozilla also showed off their implementation of Direct2D rendering in a nightly build of Firefox.

Now at MIX10 Microsoft once again showed off a bunch of groundbreaking new (performance) features but I’m now skeptical second time coming if they’ll be as innovative when it eventually ships. Remember, Internet Explorer 8 even took the lead in terms of performance, when it was announced too.

In a press briefing I asked Dean if they fear the new features they showed off today could be implemented by other browsers that ship sooner, he responded “the Windows API is very rich” and he supports other applications who take advantage of them.

Of course this shouldn’t take away the fact that when Internet Explorer 9 will be great for end-users and the web as a whole when it finally ships, but by that time, it might be back right where it started – catching up to what is easily the fastest evolving industry in the world with an update cycle that doesn’t match.

As news came out of Microsoft MIX10 that application deployment on Windows Phone 7 Series will be limited to only the Marketplace, lightbulbs started lighting up on what side-effects this might have on third-party application developments on the platform. I took the chance to clear up some of those concerns in a meeting with a Microsoft representative today.

An obvious point of concern that stems from this announcement is the fact that Microsoft will inherit more “control” over what applications can be deployed to end-users and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to draw a comparison to the Apple App Store who also inherit a similar “power”.

To avoid falling into the same trap Apple is now continuously drawing criticism for “banning” applications, Microsoft insists its Marketplace is already and will be more “objective”. Like today, Microsoft will be publish criteria for WP7S developers that they claim will not only guide developers on what’s “allowed” but also allow them to test themselves if they will pass the certification process.

Furthermore Microsoft states if applications “meet the criteria” they won’t deny any applications on subjective grounds. For example, even though WP7S has a strong emphasis on good application design and Microsoft will publish style guides for developers, the Marketplace certification process will not have any power to stop applications that don’t meet the guideline or, frankly, look ugly. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” as they put it.

Finally, developers who are looking to beta test their applications to a wider audience than themselves and enterprises can look forward to changes to the Marketplace “later this spring” that will allow private distributions of applications to support both beta and enterprise scenarios. The Microsoft representative hinted at a method to “unlock” Windows Phone 7 Series devices, although not easily, but presumed will allow loading applications using a USB cable.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock without any GPS reception, you might have heard of location-based applications. From the fun to the useful, letting software know where you are in the world is a powerful way to make information more relevant, but why should smartphones have all the fun?

Half a year ago, Firefox 3.5 introduced support for geolocation, a feature allowed the browser to pinpoint the location of the computer using WiFi triangulation. After personally witnessing how well it worked (it located my home, in fact, my room in the house where I use the computer), I started bugging my partner in crime, Rafael Rivera, to port this feature to the platform-level, where it belongs.

As a matter of fact, Windows 7, like most other current generation OSes, has a built-in location platform and API that allow third-party developers to build native application that are location-aware. However unlike other OSes, specifically OS X, Microsoft made the fatal flaw of not integrating a default geolocation provider, thus developers could not take advantage of this until Windows 7 PCs started shipping with GPS sensors, which hasn’t happened yet.

Instead of waiting for OEMs to pick up the ball, Rafael and I are offering an alternative.

Over the past several weeks, we (Rafael did most of the work, I shouted at him) built Geosense for Windows, a Windows 7 sensor driver that connects the location platform with geolocation service providers who include but is not limited to Google Location Services. These geolocation providers work by matching and triangulating known cell towers and wireless access points in its database to estimate a latitude and longitude, with remarkable accuracy and scope.

Today we are releasing Geosense for Windows for free. We believe by offering this tool for free will help enable the most possible Windows 7 PCs to be location-aware, and in turn add incentive for third-party developers to take advantage of the Windows 7 location APIs and make their applications stand out.

That’s enough talk from me, now go get the bits.

Tom Warren and I just got out of a short but sweet private demonstration of Windows Phone 7 Series in a series of dungeon-like rooms here at Mobile World Congress 2010. Suffice to say the Zune HD-like user experience looks even better upfront and personal.

Here’s a bunch of closeup photos of the phone, user interface and a Microsoft representative’s hands.

One feature of the user interface that was not explained at all in the press conference was that the arrow button in the top-right of the “home screen” actually takes you to a more traditional Start-menu like list where you can browse all the applications.

Subsequently I also got some photos from the Calculator and Dialer application which show off a more traditional single-screen application experience that reflects the new look and feel although the lack of menu icons on the Dialer might suggest it’s still in development.

Check out Tom’s post over at Neowin.net for the video recording of the demonstration.

Whilst Microsoft representatives made it quite clear the build shown off today is not quite final and that was reflected in a number of minor connectivity issues we witnessed during our 30-minute demonstration, but having said, the OS itself appeared quite solid and stable as the applications that broke subsequently recovered without any intervention.

Overall I’ve been pleasantly surprised and impressed by what they’ve shown off today and it’s a great sign that not only is Microsoft taken a giant leap forward in the mobile space but also is offering something that is far different to Windows Mobile today if not everything else on the market.

When faced with a buggy piece of software, most users probably work-around the problems in silence, others might voice the issue at the developers, but there’s also a growing minority who whip out their development tools and attempt to fix it themselves.

In the case of the broken Adobe Reader 9.0 PDF preview and thumbnail handler on 64-bits versions of Windows 7 and Windows Vista, Leo Davidson did just that.

For the past two years, Adobe has neglected a simple issue with Adobe Reader that broke the default and extremely useful file thumbnail and file preview features in Vista and 7 under 64-bit. The problem also extends onto other applications that use the preview APIs such as Office Outlook, throwing out the window what would have been an elegant and streamlined PDF viewing experience, especially since you can scroll within the PDF without awakening the beast that is Adobe Reader.

After some detective work by Leo, not only did he pinpoint the root cause of both the preview and thumbnail issues, but today released a dead-simple fix in a neat executable package that fixes both problems faster than you can say “what the hell Adobe”.