From mobile broadband to the next big app on the small screen to augmented reality, the inaugural UNWIRED 2010 conference held on May 27, 2010 at the Singapore Management University discussed these topics and got a truly participatory attendance asking for more time for questions.

About 160 attendees, speakers and media thronged the halls on the eve of a long weekend, all eager to debate the latest issues as well as get in touch with peers from the industry.

Google has done it, so why not Microsoft? Just hours ago, the software giant unveiled two self-branded phones aimed at getting the non-techy crowd on social networking services on the go.

Called Kin One and Kin Two, they look a little like a miniaturised Nokia N97 mini and a Blackberry with a slide-out keyboard. But hey, why change a proven design if rivals have made it work?

Both phones feature a Windows Phone OS that reminds one of the Zune HD interface, and will hook up to the music service seamlessly. But the OS – not Windows Phone 7 – looks like a hugely simplified affair, going by images and reports out so far.

The future of business collaboration is in web-based social networks, and software vendors of all stripes are all stampeding to gain mindshare in this space.

For example, IBM has LotusLive, Microsoft has their Azure platform, and Google has Google Apps.

And at a media event today, Salesforce.com folks talked about their upcoming launch of Chatter, yet another Facebook-like social networking collaboration platform, this time for their Salesforce.com customer base.

According to Jeremy Cooper, Asia Pacific’s regional VP for marketing at Salesforce.com, Chatter will be live by the middle of this year. It was announced last year in November 2009, and is currently already available for developers in a private beta. I’ll let their Chatter YouTube video explain what it is all about:

There has always been rivalry in the tech industry, but it’s not that common when a tech giant chooses to name and launch a direct assault on an opponent.

Take a look at the following YouTube video, which was just put up yesterday by Microsoft on YouTube, on why their solutions are better than Google’s cloud ones. Basically it charges that Google only has cloud-based solutions, whilst Microsoft has a mix of on-prem and cloud solutions that fit its customers better.

My comment is that the world is migrating towards cloud-based solutions (with some caveats as kinks are being worked out), so vendors either evolve or be rendered obsolete. And with Google in the driver’s seat on this, it can’t be fun for others having to play catch up.

A must-read for everyone.

Written by an ex-MS employee, this guy shares why Microsoft has become what he calls a “clumsy innovator” and why non of the “wow” gadgets coming out these last few years – Kindle, iPhone, Android, Facebook – is from the computing giant.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/opinion/04brass.html?pagewanted=1

Not long after Sony Ericsson put an easy-access Facebook app on its phones, Microsoft is getting into the social media act as well by coming up with a Facebook app for Windows Mobile users.

You can already get a nice mobile version of Facebook through your phone’s Web browser, but this new app from Microsoft, available for download today, promises a richer experience.