The pair announced on May 24 that they are going to build together a version of a native YouTube application for Windows Phone 8 that will meet Google's terms of service. The new app will be available in the Windows Phone Store in the "coming weeks," according to a Google spokesperson.

A quick play-by-play recap for those new to the latest Google-Microsoft feud: On May 8, Microsoft fielded a YouTube application that it built itself for Windows Phone 8. The problem: The app violated Google's terms of service by not serving ads and allowing video downloads. Google sent Microsoft a cease-and desist; Microsoft just yesterday updated its app, ceasing video downloads but still not serving ads.

Neither company would say yesterday what their respective next moves would be in the matter.

On May 24, I received this joint statement from Google and Microsoft:

"Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube’s API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time."

In the interim period, while the two companies develop the new app, Microsoft is going to replace the Microsoft-developed YouTube app that it released on May 8 (and updated yesterday) with the older, not-so-functional-or-pretty HTML version of the YouTube app for Windows Phone.

Microsoft has been complaining that Google has been withholding access to application programming interfaces (APIs) it needed to create a fully-functional YouTube app for Windows Phone. This is Google's public API for mobile app vendors wanting to build YouTube mobile applications. I've asked Google and Microsoft whether this is the same API the pair will use to jointly develop the new app. No word back so far.

Google, for its part, has made it clear that it intended to be the one developing any native YouTube apps for mobile platforms. (Users of mobile platforms Google didn't support were supposed to use Google's mobile YouTube site. Google also made it clear it planned not to release many applications for Windows Phone 8 or Windows 8, citing low market acceptance for the platforms as the cause.

I'm not sure what happened behind closed doors (and would love to know), but as a Windows Phone user, it's nice I'll have the choice of using a native YouTube app or YouTube's mobile site in the coming weeks. 

What's your take, readers? Who blinked? Any guesses why?

Update: For those asking whether today's agreement means Microsoft and Google will also jointly develop a YouTube app for Windows 8/Windows RT, a Google spokesperson told me there was nothing to share on that front today.

In the interim, custom electronics developer Secret Labs is moving full steam ahead with its own .Net Micro Framework-based Agent watch, for which it has been seeking funding via Kickstarter since earlier this month. (Those are Secret Labs' shots of the coming watches, above, from the Kickstarter page.)

Secret Labs is the company behind the open-source Netduino line of custom electronics, as well as its own hardware, software and services used by the smart home and building control industries. For the Agent watches it has partnered with another New York City-based company, House of Horology, which makes Bedlam fashion watches, in developing the Agent.

The Agent watch is designed to talk to users' smartphones (Windows Phone 8, iPhone 4s or newer and Android 2.3 or newer) using Bluetooth. Users will be able to control their music libraries, display incoming calls and notifications and feel a vibration if they accidentally forget their phones, the Kickstarter page notes. Users also will be able to download additional watchfaces through their phones. 

The waterproof Agent watch, acording to its Kickstarter page, relies on a 120 MHz ARM Cortex-M4 prodessor, with a secondary AVR co-processor. It incorporates a 1.28-inch square memory display, Bluetooth 4.0 and an ambient light sensor. It supports Qi wireless charging and runs the Agent OS 1.0, which includes the .Net Microframework 4.3.

Microsoft developed the .Net Micro Framework embedded platform, which was the heart of the Microsoft SPOT watches, some early smart coffee makers and some other small, low-power devices that were unable to accommodate the .Net Compact Framework. In 2009, Microsoft ceased work on the .Net Micro Framework and turned code support over to the community.

Watch apps can be written in C# using Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 (including the free Express edition). Watch apps can be deployed over Bluetooth. Developers also can interact remotely with Agent via Bluetooth from their Objective-C, C#, or Java smartphone apps.

Secret Labs plans to order parts, build circuit boards, finish support for Bluetooth Low Energy mode between June and September. It is planning to obtain FCC, CE and Qi certifications in October, and start pilot production in November. Full production is slated to begin in December 2013, according to the Agent watch Kickstarter page.

Motorola Mobility, later purchased by Google, filed its original Xbox patent complaint in November 2010, claiming Xbox's communication system between the console and peripherals violated its patent. 

In March 2013, the ITC upheld a ruling clearing Microsoft of patent violation in the matter. Today, the ITC said it wouldn't overturn that finding.

"This is a win for Xbox customers and confirms our view that Google had no grounds to block our products," said David Howard, Microsoft Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel in a prepared statement.

I asked Google officials if they had any reaction and have not received word back.

Update: A Google spokesperson said: "We're disappointed with this decision and are evaluating our options."

A copy of today's decision is available here.

Microsoft and Motorola have been warring over patents for the past several years. Microsoft sued Motorola on October 1, 2010, over alleged infringement of Motorola’s Android smartphones on Microsoft’s patents. On November 9 of that year, Microsoft sued Motorola again over wireless and video coding patents that are used by the Xbox and smartphones. In the latter case, Microsoft claimed that Motorola is charging excessive royalties for its patents.

Motorola retaliated with its own countersuit on November 10, 2010, claiming infringement of 16 of its patents by Microsoft’s PC and server software, Windows Mobile and Xbox products. Motorola, and later, its owner Google, was seeking to block U.S. imports of the Xbox as part of its case.

Google purchased Motorola Mobility in 2011.

On May 23, Microsoft announced the Sculpt Comfort Mouse and Sculpt Mobile Mouse, both of which include buttons to help users to find their way quickly to the Start screen.

The Sculpt Comfort mouse has a touch-sensitive blue strip running along the side, which Microsoft calls the "Windows touch tab." The Sculpt Mobile Mouse features a similar Windows button.

The Sculpt Comfort model adds support for some additional gestures which Microsoft officials believe may help users better navigate Windows 8.

As described in a new post on the Microsoft Windows Experience blog: "If you swipe up on the blue strip, it cycles through all your open Windows Store apps in Windows 8. And if you swipe down, it will reveal all the open apps (on the left side of your screen) for you to select the one you want."

The Sculpt Comfort Mouse is due out in June for $39.95 (estimated retail price). The Sculpt Model model is going to be available this month for $29.95 (ERP).

The Sculpt Comfort mouse and the Sculpt Mobile mouse both work with Window 7, Windows 8 and Mac OS 10.4 and higher. Neither seems to work with Windows RT, based on the spec information provided by Microsoft.

While on the topic of improving Windows 8, Microsoft earlier this week made available for download a really nice Windows 8 training brochure. It's a multi-page, colorful PDF that includes lots of navigational tips and tricks. I wish this had been in my box with my Surface RT....

The new Kinect for Windows sensor will include many of the technologies that Microsoft showed off in the Kinect for Xbox One product earlier this week. Microsoft is promising the Kinect for Windows sensor also will include higher fidelity, an expanded field of view, skeletal tracking and new active infrared -- all features of the Kinect for Xbox One.

There also will be a new Kinect for Windows software development kit coming. Microsoft officials said they will be discussing the new SDK and the Kinect for Windows sensor at Build 2013 in June, but aren't saying when the new SDK will be available.

The current Kinect for Windows sensor looks like the existing Kinect for Xbox sensor. But it is designed to work at closer range and to work with Windows 7/8 PCs.

In addition to making firmware adjustments in the current Windows Kinect sensor, Microsoft shortened the the USB cable and is including of a “small dongle” to improve coexistence with other USB peripherals. The first Windows version also modified the Kinect depth camera to see objects that are “as close as 50 centimeters in front of the device” without sacrificing accuracy or precision.

Bing is evolving into more than "just" a Web search engine for Microsoft. It also gives the company a way to harness and make use of data using Microsoft's myriad machine learning and computation capabilities. And though it may be hard to see through all the "Scroogled" fog, Bing may be more important as a service than a "mere" search engine to Microsoft going forward.

This week, as part of its Xbox One reveal, Microsoft execs didn't call out Bing by name much, if at all. However, as a subsequent post on the Microsoft Offical Blog noted, it's Bing that provides the responses when users search by voice via Kinect for movies, TV shows and music. It's Bing that's parsing the natural-language-query commands, such as "Xbox, Snap Internet Explorer." Specifically, it's the Tellme voice technology, combined with social-graph information, plus Bing's search functionality.

A quick Tellme refresher: Microsoft bought Tellme Networks in 2007 for between $800 million and $1 billion.  Tellme provided both a "speech cloud service" and an interactive speech self-service platform that provided interactive voice response, or IVR. (An example of an IVR system is the system that provides an automated voice response when users check on their flight statuses.) Microsoft offloaded the IVR assets to 24/7 in 2012. But it kept the cloud-speech service, which it combined with other internal speech technologies. The cloud service part from Tellme is what is used in Windows Phone, the Bing mobile app, automotive entertainment systems and Xbox Kinect sensors.

Additionally, Bing did work with certain Microsoft Xbox partners, like Netflix and HBO to index their catalogs, alongside Xbox's own game catalog, so that users could search for "Great Gatsby" and see any movies, games, music or other content available through the Xbox. Bing provided the back-end search/recommendation service, starting with the Xbox 360. In a similar way, Bing indexed the Windows Phone app store to provide users with recommendations, in addition to the basic Web search it also provided.

Microsoft is promising the voice-search capability it provides with Xbox and Kinect will be significantly enhanced with the Xbox One. But that's not the only place where Bing is supposed to bring the bling.

Windows Blue, a k a Windows 8.1, has been rumored to include significant Bing improvements. In the leaked Blue builds so far, these search enhancements can't really be seen and tried. But Microsoft's Online Services Division, the unit that includes Bing and the remaining Microsoft Tellme team, has been working with Windows to build a search service that will work across devices, apps and the Web, according to my contacts.

On the apps front, the AppEx team inside Bing is continuing to develop more new Windows 8 apps that Microsoft is expected to roll out when Windows Blue is available this fall. This is the team that built the Weather, News, Sports, Travel and other apps that were preinstalled with Windows 8 and Windows RT. Officials with the AppEx team have said they're working on more, similar kinds of apps. Some new apps -- an Alarms and a Sound Recorder app, specifically -- have leaked as part of the Windows Blue leaks, but I am hearing there will be more. (Update: Supposedly these two already leaked apps were not built by the Bing AppEx team, but were built by a team in Windows.)

The Bing team also is going to power the app-store search and recommendation engine that is part of Windows Blue, I'm told. But Bing is also providing the core search technology for Windows Blue, too, that will improve the search discoverability and relevance in Windows 8.

Instead of having to hunt within Apps, Settings, Mail and other subcategories, users will be able to just start typing and have the operating system figure out for what they're most likely to be searching, one of my contacts said. If that comes to pass, that would be a major improvement over how search currently works in Windows 8 and Windows RT. 

I've been asking around as to whether the Bing/OSD team might be doing anything to improve voice search with Windows Blue, given what they've been doing on the Xbox side of the house. I am hearing from my contacts the answer is no. The reason? Voice isn't so far a priority on PCs/tablets, so Windows Phone and Xbox/Kinect are where the voice focus is at the moment.

That said, Microsoft officials announced on May 23 that a new Kinect for Windows sensor is coming in 2014 and will include improved voice capabilities. So maybe that will include more Bing/OSD capabilities, too.

On May 7, Microsoft rolled out a YouTube app for Windows Phone 8 that the company developed itself. On May 15, Google sent Microsoft a cease-and-desist letter about that app, noting it violated some of the YouTube terms of service, including not displaying ads and allowing users to download content from the app. Google requested that Microsoft either block or pull the YouTube app from the Windows Phone Store by today, May 22.

Microsoft decided to meet Google part way. The company is rolling out, as of 4 pm ET/1 pm PT on May 22, an updated version of its YouTube app for Windows Phone that disables video downloads, but which still doesn't display ads. 

Windows Phone users who've already downloaded the Microsoft YouTube app will lose the video download functionality if and when they apply the update. Those who haven't yet downloaded the app will get the version without the video downloading capability once they grab the app.

A Microsoft spokesperson sent the following statement when I asked about its plans for the app around today's Google-imposed deadline:

“Microsoft updated the Windows Phone YouTube app to address the restricted video and offline video access concerns voiced by Google last week. We have been in contact with Google and continue to believe that our two companies can work together to hone an app that benefits our mutual customers, partners and content providers. We’re earning new customers every day, with IDC reporting recently that Windows Phone posted the largest year-over-year gain among leading operating systems. We look forward to working with Google to maintain a great YouTube experience for the growing number of people who rely on both of our respective products.”

I've reached out to Google for comment on Microsoft's actions. No word back so far.

As a happy Windows Phone user, I can see both Google's and Microsoft's sides in this battle. I want more Windows Phone apps, but I can't blame developers for hesitating to commit time and resources to a platform which is now No. 3 in marketshare, but a very distant No. 3.

Microsoft officials have complained repeatedly and consistently that Google won't provide them with access to necessary application programming interfaces that would allow Microsoft to build a YouTube app for Windows Phone that would serve ads. Microsoft built its YouTube app for Windows Phone with an existing and public YouTube API, but not one that provides ad support.

But Google doesn't allow other phone platform makers, including Apple, BlackBerry and now, Microsoft, to build YouTube apps for their phones. Instead, Google is the one that builds and maintains these native apps.

Google officials have made it clear they aren't interested in supporting Windows 8 or Windows Phone with many Google-developed applications. The implication, at least on the Windows Phone side, is its low market share (around three percent) makes the platform not worth its while to build and support with a native app. Google did build a native YouTube app for Xbox with Microsoft's help, seemingly because of Microsoft's strong share in the gaming console space.

Google has suggested that Windows Phone and BlackBerry users who want to access YouTube do so by going through the mobile YouTube site -- which a Google spokesperson previously said serves up display search and in-stream video ads. (An aside: I don't see these ads on my Windows Phone 8 using IE10, but Google has said they exist.)

Is Google obligated to provide Microsoft with access to its APIs so it can build a YouTube app that complies with its terms of service? I'd argue no, but I'd also point out that Google's CEO recently dinged Microsoft for withholding access to its messaging APIs. Two can play the closed API game. The difference is, Google officials want to claim they are completely open. Microsoft officials don't make that claim.

So now what? Is Google going to sue Microsoft over this? No word. If it does, it could end up giving Microsoft more fodder for its Scroogled Google-bashing campaign -- if not grist for some kind of antitrust complaint, I'd think.

I'm not an app person on my mobile devices. I often find I prefer to access sites like YouTube, Facebook, New York Times and others through my browser rather than through a dedicated app. But what about you, other Windows Phone users? 

After Microsoft's May 21 Xbox One reveal -- which included information about the coming Xbox One operating system that is based on Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor technology -- some developers and users were left wondering whether Microsoft is going to enable any Metro-Style Windows 8 or Windows RT application to run on the next Xbox.

Microsoft officials aren't talking about the Xbox One developer story yet; it sounds like they are planning/hoping to hold off until the Build 2013 conference in late June to share more details on that. But here's what I've gleaned from talking to my sources about this.

As we learned yesterday, the Xbox One OS includes a host OS, which is a heavily modified Hyper-V hypervisor; and two partitions. One partition, called the "Exclusive" partition, is a custom virtual machine (VM) that is designed just for games. It is designed to give games on the Xbox One complete control on everything from memory management to storage, I hear. While games can be paused or switched, only one game can run at a time in this VM. (If Microsoft steps up its support for indie games on Xbox One, those games are going to run in this partition.)

The other piece of the new OS the "Shared" partition. It's called shared because multiple applications can share this VM. According to one of my contacts, this VM is based on the Windows 8 "core," which means the kernel, file system, graphics stack, networking stack and security elements. Like the Windows core that is shared with Windows RT and Windows Phone 8, the Shared partition core is based on the WinRT application programming interface (API). One of my sources said internally it's actually called XRT, similar to the way the Windows Phone implementation of WinRT is known internally as WinPRT.

However, the similarities between the Windows environments seem to end there. On top of the Xbox One Shared Partiion core, the Xbox team created a custom UI for Xbox One. Microsoft supposedly isn't going to allow just anyone to write apps that can run here; devs will have to be chosen and invited, the way that they are now on Xbox 360. And they're not going to be inviting Salesforce or Oracle or even the Microsoft SharePoint team to write apps to run here. More likely are things like Netflix and Skype and other media/companion/social kinds of apps.

Core first-party, Microsoft apps like Xbox Music and Video will run in the Shared Partition, too. But these won't just be the same Windows 8/Windows RT versions of these apps; instead, they'll be Xbox-customized ones that will make use of chunks of the Windows 8/Windows RT complements' code, according to my source. (There need to be customized to work with the Xbox controllers and Kinect.)

I'd think as Microsoft continues to add more features and functionality to Windows 8, starting with Windows 8.1 (Blue), some of these security/reliability/performance-focused features will find their way back into the Shared Partition Core. So yeah... don't be looking for the new Start Button or a way to boot straight to desktop on your Xbox One, even when these options come to Windows 8.1.

So at Build 2013, I do expect Microsoft to play up the message that there's increasing a common core codebase on Windows Phone, Windows PCs and tablets and the coming Xbox. There will no doubt be more on the increasingly common developer platform for all of these screens. This year won't be the year when there is just one shared developer platform across these screens (even if Microsoft officials go so far to claim this is the case). Nor will there be a unified Windows Store for Windows 8, Windows RT, Windows Phone 8 and Xbox One this year. 

It's taking a while to turn the ship and more closely align the release cadences across all the teams that develop anything that involves a flavor of Windows. Yet slowly and surely, Microsoft's moving in that direction. 

Why three? Marc Whitten, Microsoft's chief production officer of its Interactive Entertainment Business, explained during the hour-long reveal event in Redmond, that there'd be an Xbox operating system, the kernel of Windows and a third operating system designed to handle switching, multitasking and control inside the Xbox One.

Microsoft officials told Wired.com back in April something similar. From the Wired story:

"The Xbox One simultaneously runs three separate operating systems. First comes the tiny Host OS, which boots the machine and then launches two other hard-partitioned systems: the Shared partition, an environment that runs any apps (Skype, Live TV, Netflix, etc.) and helps provide processing power for the Kinect sensor and its gesture and voice controls; and the Exclusive partition, which is where games run. Because of the way memory is apportioned in the Shared partition, you can switch between apps with little to no load times, and even snap them into another app or game to use both at the same time."

Before today's Xbox event, Windows SuperSite's Paul Thurrott had said the next Xbox was built on top of the Windows 8 core. If I were a betting woman, I'd guess the Shared partition described in the Wired piece is based on the Windows NT kernel.

The NT "core" is what's shared across Windows 8, Windows RT, Windows Server 2012 and Windows Phone 8. It includes a shared file system (NTFS), networking stack, security elements, graphics engine (DirectX), device driver framework and hardware abstraction layer (HAL).

Dave Cutler, the father of Windows NT, moved to the Xbox team from the Windows Azure team a couple of years ago. At the same time, Hoi Vo also moved from Azure to Xbox. Vo was the director of OS/hypervisor on Windows Azure. So maybe Ho and/or Cutler had something to do with the "host OS" mentioned in the Wired story? (Just a guess on my part, as Microsoft so far isn't commenting on the Xbox One OS guts beyond what I've mentioned above.)

Update: In an under-the-hood architecture panel following the Xbox One reveal, Boyd Multerer, Director of Development for Xbox, confirmed that the team started with Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor in building the Xbox One operating system. Multerer said the team stripped out all the general-purpose "goop" to create an OS that allowd two virtual machines to run in side-by-side partitions. One of the partitions runs apps; the other runs games. 

"David Cutler built the hypervisor that does the switching back and forth," Multerer confirmed.

The new Xbox One interface looks quite similar to the Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 one, with a tiled look and feel. It runs Internet Explorer and Skype, just like any Windows PC/device. Also like Windows 8, the Xbox One includes snapping support. Microsoft officials demonstrated during the Xbox reveal how users will be able to "snap" applications, movies and games allowing them to multitask.

Another Windows 8 similarity: Xbox One is optimized to work in different power states, depending on the game or application that's running. The console remains in a low-power state so that when a user says "Xbox On," it will be able to power up quickly. This sounds a lot like Connected Standby in Windows 8.

Microsoft officials also mentioned Windows Azure during today's Xbox One reveal. Xbox Live does not run on Windows Azure; it runs on its own servers in Microsoft's datacenters. When Xbox Live launched in 2002, Xbox Live required 500 servers. It now requires 15,000. By the time Xbox One launches this holiday season, Micorsoft officials said it will be running across 300,000 servers.

We do know that the Halo game team at Microsoft has used a new cloud-programming model, codenamed "Orleans," which was developed by Microsoft Research. And during today's Xbox One reveal, the Redmondians noted that users will be able to store their movies, music, games and saves "in the cloud," which I am assuming means on Windows Azure.

Update No. 2: In an Xbox One frequently asked questions (FAQ) document, Microsoft officials also noted that the cloud (again, no mention of Azure specifically) will also allow for automatic game updating, game enhancements and saved preferences. VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi has more from the under-the-hood panel on how the cloud also will enable offloading tasks and freeing up more local console resources.

The aforementioned Wired piece states defnitively that "Xbox One gives game developers the ability to access Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform." Microsoft officials didn't say that today during the Xbox reveal event. However, Microsoft didn't say anything about the developer story for Xbox One today, presumably because that is going to be a big part of the messaging at the company's Build 2013 conference at the end of June.

Even without knowing (yet) what Microsoft will say at Build, it's becoming clear the company is edging closer to having a true cross-Windows development strategy at long last -- and that Xbox One is one of the devices that will be part of it.

Hortonworks made available for download a beta of the Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP) for Windows on February 25. At that time, Hortonworks announced the HDP work was an extension of its two-year-old Hadoop partnership with Microsoft. (HDP didn't exist yet when Microsoft and Hortonworks initially announced their partnrship.)

In 2011, Microsoft announced it was partnering with Hortonworks to create both a Windows Azure and Windows Server implementations of the Hadoop big data framework. At that time, Microsoft officials committed to providing a Community Technology Preview (CTP) test build of the Hadoop-based service for Windows Azure before the end of calendar 2011 and a CTP of the Hadoop-based distribution for Windows Server some time in 2012. Microsoft delivered public test builds of Hadoop for Azure -- known officially as Windows Azure HDInsight Service -- and Hadoop for Windows -- HDInsight Server for Windows -- in October 2012.

HDP allows users to deploy Hadoop on Windows Server in their own datacenters -- the same way they can already deploy HDP 1.2 on several Linux distributions. Microsoft and Hortonworks are touting HDP for Windows as offering an easy migration path to HDInsight.

HDP is the foundational layer for Microsoft's HDInsight offerings, according to Hortonworks officials. Microsoft's HDInsight platforms include tight integration with a number of Microsoft services and products.

Microsoft officials have not provided an updated delivery target for the final versions of its HDInsight platforms for Windows Server or Azure.

The HDP 1.1 release is available for immediate download from the Hortonworks site.

One of my sources, who has been pretty accurate so far about Windows Phone futures, said that neither the GDR2 nor GDR3 updates to the Windows Phone 8 operating system are going to introduce VPN support to the platform. (GDR2 is supposedly rolling out to existing Windows Phone users this summer; GDR3 is rumored for this fall.)

It's unclear if Microsoft will relent  and introduce VPN support with the follow-on to GDR3, which is known as Windows Phone Blue -- which is looking increasingly like an early 2014 deliverble. I hear there's still a chance it could be added at that point.

Microsoft officials said last year that the company had decided to rely on Secure SSL rather than support VPN with Windows Phone 8. One Windows Phone official told me Microsoft considered Secure SSL "a better, light-weight approach" to providing this kind of functionality in the new BYOD (bring your own device) world that is adopting Web servcies.

After Microsoft's introduction of Windows Phone 8, there were renewed rumors that Microsoft was planning to add VPN support to Windows Phone 8 at some point as part of what was known as "Apollo Plus." It turns out Apollo Plus was just a generic Microsoft name for the wave of updates to Windows Phone 8 and not a specific update.

The current plan, from what I'm hearing, is to focus this year on securing new Windows Phone 8 apps and devices. The GDR updates are meant to provide minor updates and tweaks to the Windows Phone 8 operating system. But my sources said the thinking by the powers-that-be in the Windows Phone team is that the base phone operating system is largely good enough for now, and apps and devices are what need the most attention.

The way to think about the three General Distribution Releases (GDRs) is that they are meant to provide bug fixes and specific updates requested by handset makers and mobile operators, I hear. GDR2 is about making some much-needed Xbox music app fixes, allowing Data Sense metering, and CalDAV and CardDAV support. GDR3 is the update that will help support larger screen devices.

Windows Phone Blue is where more major new features will be added. Will VPN be among them? No word so far.

Microsoft, unsurprisingly, isn't talking about GDR3 or Windows Phone Blue. It's shut-up-and-ship over there.

There is some good news for business users on the Windows Phone platform this week, however. Good Technology's enterprise messaging app is now available for Windows Phone 8.

There already was a version of Good's encrypted e-mail for Windows Phone 7.X. But the Windows Phone 8 version of Good's app didn't arrive until today, May 17, according to WPCentral. (The new Good app works on both Windows Phone 7.5 and Windows Phone 8.) The Good WP app provides secure access to email, calendar and contacts; remote lock and wipe; supports blocking copy-paste policy; and more.

The Verge first reported news of the letter, dated May 15, and included a copy of it on its Web site.

The TOS that the Microsoft YouTube app violates has to do with it blocking ads and allowing downloads of videos from Google's YouTube site.

From the letter:

"YouTube’s agreements with creators give them choices inhow their content is presented and distributed, and your application takes away that control.The YouTube Terms of Service and API Terms of Service, posted at http://www.youtube.com/t/terms and https://developers.google.com/youtube/terms, were written to protect content creators from this type of abuse. They clearly prohibit downloads of videos from the site and prohibit accessing any portion of YouTube videos by any means other than through the use of an authorized YouTube player. They also bar applications that modify, replace, interfere with or block advertisements placed by YouTube in videos."

Google is requesting that Microsoft immediately withdraw the app from the Windows Phone Store and disable existing downloads of it by May 22.

Microsoft built the new YouTube app itself, after complaining that Google was blocking access to required metadata. When I asked Microsoft officials recently if something had changed from a policy/API standpoint that allowed Microsoft to deliver this much more robust YouTube app, a Microsoft spokesperson sent the following statment:

"Windows Phone invested additional engineering resources against existing APIs to re-architect a Windows Phone app that delivers a great YouTube experience, including support for unique Windows Phone 8 features such Live Tiles and Kids Corner. Microsoft did not receive any additional technical support to create the Windows Phone YouTube app."

I reached out to both Microsoft and Google for comment on the letter. A Google spokesperson said the company was not offering any comment. No word from Microsoft so far.

Update: Microsoft's official statement via a spokesperson:

"YouTube is consistently one of the top apps downloaded by smartphone users on all platforms, but Google has refused to work with us to develop an app on par with other platforms. Since we updated the YouTube app to ensure our mutual customers a similar YouTube experience, ratings and feedback have been overwhelmingly positive.  We’d be more than happy to include advertising but need Google to provide us access to the necessary APIs. In light of Larry Page’s comments today calling for more interoperability and less negativity, we look forward to solving this matter together for our mutual customers."

Update: On Twitter, @MrRajesh28 told me that Microsoft's YouTube app for Xbox does serve up ads and does not allow video downloading. With that app, there seems to be no violation of Google's Terms of Service. That makes me wonder if Microsoft decided to build the Windows Phone 8 app as part of its "Scroogled" efforts. If not, I'm curious why Microsoft did this. I've asked. If I get more information, I'll add it.

Also the timing of The Verge's report is interesting. Just minutes before it went live, Google's CEO Larry Page, during a Q&A session at the company's annual Google I/O developer conference, criticized Microsoft for taking advantage of Google by interoperating with its Google Talk messaging service and not reciprocating by providing free access to APIs for its own messaging service (presumably Skype).

The programming interfaces Microsoft used to integrate Google Talk with Outlook.com are open, but Google is in the midst of dropping support for the XMPP messaging standard with its just-announced Hangouts, which is the successor to Google Talk and Google's new cross-platform communications service .

On May 14, the company made available UEFI firmware updates for both its Intel-based Pro and ARM-based RT models. Here's the full list of what's available for both kinds of Surfaces:

For Surface Pro:

• UEFI firmware update enables the PXE boot feature. (This feature is only available when using the Surface Pro Ethernet Adapter)
• Trackpad Settings driver for Surface Type Cover to enable interaction with the Trackpad Settings app for Japanese customers
• Continued improvement in Wi-Fi connectivity and stability

For Surface RT:

• UEFI firmware update that enhances Surface RT speaker volume and improves system stability
• Driver pack that improves performance and works with the updated UEFI firmware to enhance Surface RT speaker volume
• Trackpad Settings driver for Surface Type Cover to enable interaction with the Trackpad Settings app for Japanese customers

Surface users can proactively grab the new updates using this process.

Microsoft didn't deliver as part of today's Surface updates support for the new Wacom drivers needed to use Surface Pro with pressure-sensitive pens. Microsoft officials said last week that they are beta testing these drivers, but it appeared as though Wacom made them available for download by anyone on May 9.

I asked both Microsoft and Wacom officials if the drivers were beta or final and received no word back. I have seen tweets and blog posts from a number of Surface Pro users who have downloaded them and found them to work just fine, however.

Microsoft officials said last week that the company has delivered more than 700 fixes and updates for Windows 8 and Windows RT since Microsoft made the operating systems generally available in late October 2012. Surface RT was made generally available in late October 2012; Surface Pro in February 2013.

Microsoft looks likely to be making Surface Pro available in Hong Kong on May 17. There's still no word as to when the Pro model will be available in the handful of countries where Microsoft officials said they'd be before the end of May.

On May 14, company officials shared a couple of the expected GDR (General Distribution Release) 2 features in a blog post that was primarily about the new Lumia 925 phone that Nokia unveiled today. That phone, codenamed "Catwalk," is due out in June on Vodafone and some time after that on T-Mobile. It is Nokia's first lighter-weight, aluminum-body Lumia.

Microsoft's supposed plan, according to my tipsters, is to release three GDR updates to the Windows Phone 8 operating system before delivering what we've been calling Windows Phone Blue.

The "Portico" update -- OS build number 8.0.10211.204 -- which began rolling out last year was considered GDR1. The GDR2 update -- which Microsoft officials never actually call GDR2 in today's blog post -- is coming "this summer." GDR3 sounds like it may be timed to arrive this fall. And Windows Phone Blue is sounding from tipsters more and more like a 2014 release.

In today's blog post, this summer's Windows Phone 8 OS update is described as including "a small number of improvements and upgrades." The post said it will be similar in size to the last update, a k a Portico, which included Wi-Fi and messaging improvements, among other new features.

The new update will include support for CalDAV and CardDAV, so that it will continue to work with Google contact and calendar syncing services, officials said. This CalDAV/CardDAV support previously was rumored for GDR2.

The update will reintroduce support for FM radio (as a feature carriers can opt to support or not) -- a feature which was part of the Windows Phone 7 operating system platform, but which was cut for Windows Phone 8. The update also will make the Data Sense monitoring feature of Windows Phone 8 available for more carriers to support if they decide to do so.

The coming update also will improve the ability to select, download and pin tunes in Xbox Music and improve the accuracy of song information and "other metadata."

"The update includes hundreds of other small quality improvements," according to Microsoft's blog post. There may be some other major features not yet disclosed by Microsoft officials coming, as well, but right now that's all the Softies are saying.

The GDR2 update will be rolling out to existing Windows Phone 8 users starting "later this summer," officials said today.

Microsoft's Windows Chief Financial Officer Tami Reller, during an appearance at the May 14 JP Morgan Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, shared the pricing news. 

Reller also acknowledged what those who've downloaded leaked builds of Blue have known for a while: Windows Blue is Windows 8.1.

Windows 8 is currently available via a handful of SKUs -- Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, Windows 8 Enterprise and Windows RT (not exactly Windows 8, but part of the family).  She didn't provide more information about plans for the coming Blue SKUs.

Reller also said today that Microsoft now has more than 70,000 Metro-Style/Windows Store apps in the Windows Store. She also noted that the final version of Windows Blue (both the Windows 8 and the RT flavors)  will be made available to customers through the Windows Store once they are available.

Last week, Reller acknowleged that Microsoft plans to have Windows Blue available by holiday 2013. (I continue to hear the release to manufacturing will be around August 2013.) Julie Larson-Green, the head of Windows engineering, also confirmed last week that Microsoft plans to make a public preview of Blue available by the end of June, 2013, around the time of the Microsoft Build 2013 conference. Reller reconfirmed the preview date today, noting the Blue preview will be out at Build, which kicks off on June 26. (I've asked Microsoft if Windows RT/Surface RT users will get the preview, too. The answer is yes, as a new Microsoft blog post mentions in its last line.)

Last week, Reller wouldn't talk about Windows Blue's price. She said Microsoft planned to disclose more about pricing and the SKU line-up for Blue before the end of May -- which set off a chain of angry reactions among some Windows 8 users who thought the word "pricing" meant Microsoft definitely planned to charge for Blue. But a mention of Blue being a free upgrade by All Things D's Walt Mossberg in an article from late April made me believe free was the plan. 

Reller emphasized that Microsoft's strategy in using the Windows Store to deliver Blue is focused around giving users choice about when they deploy the coming update. 

"Windows 8.1 will be a packaged set of updates which customers can say when they are ready (to deploy)," she said. 

Reller also was asked during a Q&A session about what's behind her own and Larson-Green's recent emphasis on Microsoft being "principled but not stubborn" about expected coming interface changes with Blue. Among those rumored changes are inclusion of an optional Start Button and boot-to-desktop capability.

Reller said that even though the Windows ecosystem needs to know where Microsoft is going so it can go with the company, the Windows team still needs to listen to its customers and partners about what they want.

The Google Talk integration will be implemented similarly to the way Microsoft already integrates Facebook and Skype messaging from inside Outlook.com, according to a new post on the Microsoft Outlook blog.

Microsoft said users should expect to be able to send an instant message to Google contacts with a single click "over the next couple of days." Microsoft built the support using Google's application programming interfaces (APIs.)

As Neowin noted, "Google's chat integration is widely used among Gmail users and Microsoft knew this would be one of the reasons users might hold-out on switching to Outlook.com."

The Google Talk support is currently limited to text messaging, as The Verge said. (Video/audio messaging support may come at some point if there's considerable users demand.)

In addition to making Google Talk messaging available inside the Outlook.com inbox, Microsoft also is integrating support for Google contacts across calendar, its People contact list and with SkyDrive.com. The SkyDrive integration will allow users to collaborate on documents with Google friends with whom users are chatting, Microsoft's blog post said.

The Google integration will happen across all these services internationally over the next few days. From today's blog post:

"Google chat integration will be available to everyone worldwide in the next few days. While it's rolling out, you might notice a few quirks if you're jumping around between SkyDrive and Outlook.com, but that will be resolved as soon as the rollout is complete. If you're like most people, you'll see it appear first in SkyDrive and then in your inbox and People page. If you don't see it in your inbox quite yet, it's on the way!"

Microsoft announced a couple of weeks ago it was integrating Skype messaging into Outlook.com, starting with "a select set" of UK users. I've heard this integration may not be working yet, as the required Skype plug-in still may not be available. Any readers gotten it to work yet?

Microsoft's Google messaging announcement comes just ahead of the start of Google's I/O developer conference, which kicks off this week. Google is said to be working on Babel, which will integrate Google Talk and its other chat/messaging properties, into a single service. There's no word if Babel will be featured as part of this week's I/O announcements.

Skype 2.6 for Windows Phone 8, which the team calls a "minor" update, is available for download from the Windows Phone Store. The 2.6 update includes improvements around the reliability of chat and call notifications, of calls to phone numbers, and resolution to "occasional missing message preview in the recent conversations list," according to the Skype site.

The Skype team also provided information about some upcoming fixes and updates for still-unresolved problems with Skype on Windows Phone 8. The team is working to fix an issue where calls keep ringing when answered on a different device or ended by the caller. The team also said it would provide in an unspecified future release the ability to sign in with a Microsoft account that itsn't joined to a Skype account.

Other coming improvements for some unspecified future releases: A fix to problems some are having with video stopping when a call is in the background; marking as read on other devices a message that the user reads on Windows Phone; and a bug resulting in all calls received when the Skype app is closed appearing as audio calls.

Skype 6.3 for Windows, which works on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7, is available here. (This new version is not an update for the Skype for Windows 8 application.) There's not much information as to specific new features in 6.3, but improvements to "the quality and stability of the application" are listed on Skype's site as what's new.

In other Microsoft service updates, the SkyDrive cloud storage team also announced a few new enhancements to SkyDrive on May 13 that will be rolling out over the next 48 hours. Among them: 

• Ability to scroll through all photos stored on SkyDrive in one seamless timeline experience
• Faster photo upload
• Easier readability of thumbnails, as well as new thumbnails for PowerPoint and Word files

Rather than simply sit back and wait for devs to (hopefully) embrace its growing set of new technologies, the Redmondians have decided to go proactive. On May 13 -- just over a month ahead of Microsoft's Build 2013 developer conference -- Microsoft is launching a new "deep tech" team inside its Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE) unit. The new team is charged with working with top developers outside the company to build next-generation applications on top of the Microsoft platform.

When Microsoft initially launched DPE in 2001, the team was charged with coordinating and evangelizing the "Microsoft platform." At that time, the platform meant, primarily, Windows, the .Net Framework and associated tools.

These days, as Microsoft works to morph from a software vendor to a devices and services one, what constitutes the "Microsoft platform" is something much broader.

"'The platform' is now a collection of capabilities across all of our products," said John Shewchuk, the head of the recently formed technical evangelism and dev team. Our job is "helping devs stitch together solutions with these technologies."

"Devs" also is a much broader target audience for Microsoft than it once was. Back in the early DPE days, devs meant professional, full-time programmers. The target audience for Microsoft's new deep-tech team includes anyone who writes a consumer, business or hybrid application. That means startups, enterprise customers and top consumer and business independent software vendors (ISVs).

The Microsoft toolbox from which devs can choose to mix and match includes many technologies that didn't exist a decade, or even just a few years, ago. They include everything from Windows Azure technologies, to Bing programming interfaces and datasets, to the WinRT framework underlying Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. Microsoft's next Xbox, Kinect, Windows Phones, Surfaces, Perceptive Pixel multitouch displays are among the targets for these technologies.

"This is a playground. We get to work with stuff from all the different Microsoft business groups," said Shewchuk. "It's like geek heaven."

Meet the deep-tech geeks

The idea of creating this kind of deep-tech team has been percolating since October 2012, when Microsoft veteran Steve Guggenheimer returned to Microsoft to head up DPE, according to Microsoft execs. Guggenheimer, in conjunction with Server and Tools Business chief Satya Nadella and with the blessing of CEO Steve Ballmer, set out to recruit some deeply technical evangelists with far-flung specializations.

Shewchuk, a 20-year Microsoft veteran and one of the company's Technical Fellows, agreed to spearhead the team. (Microsoft isn't saying how large the new team is, but I've heard it could be over 100 people in size and growing.) Shewchuk, who is now the Chief Technology Officer for the Microsoft Developer Platform, was working for the last several years on Windows Azure, where he helped the company build Windows Azure Active Directory, Service Bus and SQL services. Shewchuk also was a key contributor to a number of other Microsoft dev technologies, including .Net, Visual Studio, Windows Communication Foundation and the WIndows Identity Foundation.

"The idea is to bridge our inside developers to outside developers," Shewchuk said. "We want to get the top developers to adopt our platform."

Shewchuk described the new deep-tech team as a place where Microsoft pulls together its own "world-class" developers to exchange ideas among themselves and with the outside world. Because Microsoft's new stack of technologies are all at different places, in terms of their maturity cycle, the Microsoft tech team will do everything from build new frameworks; develop code to tie together disparate products; and make available code and templates for external use using services like GitHub or CodePlex. In some cases, the "developers" who take advantage of these pieces may be Microsoft's own product teams who may want to incorporate code (and even the developers who wrote it) directly into their units.

Shewchuck's not the only heavy hitter on the new deep-tech team.

A brand-new-to-Microsoft member is Patrick Chanezon, who joined Microsoft from VMware just over a week ago. His new job is to lead the enterprise evangelism efforts in Microsoft’s DPE unit from San Francisco. At VMware, from 2011 to 2012, Chanezon helped build out the developer relations team for Spring and Cloud Foundry. Before that, he worked at Google from 2005 to 2011, where he managed the Cloud Developer Relations team. He helped with efforts around HTML5, OpenSocial, Google Checkout and the AdWords API. And before that, Chanezon spent five years at Sun Microsystems as a software architect working on Sun Portal Server, blogs and syndication feeds.

"We're at a deep architectural inflection point right now in the enterprise," said Chanezon. "Devs need new ways of working, new apps and new frameworks. There's the whole dev-ops movement, plus the move to become more agile."

Chanezon said he joined Microsoft because he felt the company's new devices plus services strategy really embraces these changes. He said while Google had devices and services, too, it didn't have the private/hybrid cloud component which Microsoft also brings to the enterprise-dev table. As a big believer in the power and potential contribution of open source, he said he was encouraged to see that Azure has become a very open-source-friendly platform.

Another member of the deep-tech team is James Whittaker -- who is known by many because of a much-publicized blog post he wrote in 2012 about why he left Google and rejoined Microsoft. At Google, which he joined in 2009, he was an engineering director, leading teams working on Chrome, Maps and Google+. During his first stint at Microsoft, he worked on the Trustworthy Computing and Visual Studio teams.

Whittaker's most recent gig at Microsoft was development manager for the Microsoft knowledge platform as part of the Bing team. 

"When Microsoft talks about devices and services, that's a two-legged stool," said Whittaker. The third leg is knowledge. We're embedding knowledge into everything from Xbox, to Office, to third-party products."

Whittaker said "dev platform" is no longer simply the operating system and related application programming interfaces (APIs). It's the whole ecosystem, he said, including information that Bing extracts from the Web, like catalogs, weather, and maps. The goal is to make this available inside applications built by both Microsoft and third-party developers. 

"Actions can be performed on these entities. We have hundreds of millions of things we can provide that go beyond the blue links (in search engines)," Whittaker said.

Bringing yet another skill set to the deep-tech team is Eric Schmidt. (No, not that Eric Schmidt.)

Schmidt, a 15-year Microsoft veteran, is a Senior Director on a team focused on adoption of Microsoft's devices and services in "consumer lifestyle" applications. He has worked with Microsoft customers and partners, including NBC Sports, the NCAA, Victoria's Secret Fashion Show and Major League soccer, as well as with Hulu, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Comcast, around building apps and services that leverage the cloud. He also was lead architect of Microsoft's open-source media software development kits, including the Microsoft Media Player Framework and Audience Insight.

Schmidt joined DPE six years ago, bringing his media specialization to the media and entertainment, social and gaming verticals. These are "where people are thinking about attaching devices to a lifestyle," he said. 

A big target for Schmidt is mobile developers, specifically those writing for iOS and Android who may not know how their skills can be transferred to Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. "We're showing them how what they already know is correlated," he said, while playing up the message that the iOS and Android gold mines are drying up.

As the walls break down as to what constitutes a dev, vs. a partner, vs. a customer, DPE's new deep-tech team has an interesting charter ahead of it.

There've been reports claiming everything from Microsoft is doing a 180-degree reversal with Windows Blue, to others advising the Redmondians to dig in their heels and stay the current UI course with its coming Blue update.

Windows Blue, from all leaks and tips I've received, is not a do-over. (If it were, it would take Microsoft a lot longer than nine or ten months to deliver it.) And ignoring customer confusion isn't a virtue; it's stupidity.

This armchair pundit finds it refreshing to hear Windows honchos admit that Windows 8 isn't selling as well as they hoped and that they want to make its successor more comfortable, familiar and usable for the Windows installed base.

In addition to the optional Start Button and boot-to-desktop options, there may be other interface adjustments in the works, according to one of my Blue tipsters. I hear the Windows team may also be tweaking the Charms to make them a bit easier to use with a mouse. There might be new built-in tutorials and in-context help coming to Blue. And word is there may be adjustments to the Start Screen designed to make Blue easier to use for Desktop users. One of my sources said some of these tweaks may not be in the Windows Blue preview release coming at the end of June, but that they still could make it into the final product.

If any or all of these tweaks make it into the final version of Blue, it's nothing but goodness. If you're a user who likes Windows 8 already, great. Just ignore new options and keep on keepin' on. If you're someone like me -- who is still running Windows 7 on two of my three Windows devices (with Windows RT running on my Surface RT) -- maybe Blue will make you reconsider whether you might find the new Metro-centric Windows a little more palatable because of these changes.

Last summer, before Windows 8 launched, I said I thought the operating system would face a rough road. My reasoning at the time was there were few PCs or tablets that made Windows 8 usable. And for those of us who might be interested in putting Windows 8 on existing non-touch hardware, the usability was questionable. Now that Windows 8's been out for about six months, I feel like my early inklings were true. I wouldn't call Windows 8 a disaster (with 100 million licenses sold), but I also wouldn't call it a barn-burner success.

My biggest criticism for Microsoft in all this isn't that the company is trying to make some adjustments to improve usability with Blue. Instead, I can't but help wonder why Microsoft -- with all its telemetry information, customer satisfaction data, and beta-testing input -- still went ahead with what its Windows execs must have known full well would be a confusing and less-than-optimal experience for many Windows users.

It's possible to project a bit by reading one of the recent blog posts of former Windows President Steven Sinofsky, who spearheaded Windows 8's development, for some insights into that question. In a May 8 post (a day after Microsoft's latest Blue disclosures), Sinofsky blogged about the damned-if-they-do/damned-if-they-don't choice that companies face when launching a disruptive technology:

"If you listen to customers (and vector back to the previous path in some way: undo, product modes, multiple products/SKUs, etc.) you will probably cede the market to the new entrants or at least give them more precious time. If technology product history is any guide, pundits will declare you will be roadkill in fairly short order as you lack a strategic response. There’s a good chance your influential customers will rejoice as they can go back and do what they always did. You will then be left without an answer for what comes next for your declining usage patterns.

"If you don’t listen to customers (and stick to your guns) you are going to 'alienate' folks and cede the market to someone who listens. If technology product history is any guide, pundits will declare that your new product is not resonating with the core audience. Pundits will also declare that you are stubborn and not listening to customers."

The Windows organization that Sinofsky left behind in November is facing this very choice right now, and seems to be heading toward Option A (after already trying Option B under Sinofsky).

Given Microsoft's installed base of 1.4 billion and the reticence of some of its key partners to back Microsoft's claim that the whole device world is going touch (something else I have to say I'm relieved to hear), I am liking Microsoft's new direction here. 

I believe Microsoft can stay its Metro-centric, touch-centric course with Windows Blue, while still making some changes that will make the OS more usable and comfortable fora bigger pool of users. While it would have been great if Windows 8 debuted this way last October, I say better late than never.

"Update" is becoming an increasingly loaded -- and important -- word at Microsoft.

VS 2012.3, is almost done and hit the release candidate milestone earlier this week.

A number of Microsoft users have questioned whether these updates are simply new names for service packs. I've pointed out that service packs in Windows were supposed to be "just" bug fixes and not new features. But Technical Fellow and Team Foundation Server Product Unit Manager, Brian Harry, made this point more eloquently in a blog post from earlier this week.

Harry posted a very candid response to a tester's question about Microsoft's thinking around the new Visual Studio update process. The questioner asked whether these updates were simply Service Pack (SP) 1 delivered in pieces. Here's what Harry said:

"I also don’t think it’s 'SP1 in chunks.' The kinds of changes we’ve put into the (VS 2012) updates go FAR beyond what we would have historically included in a Service Pack. Service Packs had an 'aura' that they only contain bug fixes and while that was never strictly true – any time someone proposed a Service Pack change that didn’t smell like a bug fix, there was a lot of justification that had to be done. One of the fundamental mindset changes with the move from 'Service Packs' to 'Updates' has been that the primary value of Updates is new value – and sure we’ll fix a lot of bugs too, but that’s not the focus. Read my posts on the updates and you’ll that generally the bug fixes are a footnote. They are all about the cool new capabilities we are enabling."

While no one from Windows or Office has been anywhere near this upfront about what constitutes and update, I'd bet the thinking is similar, if not identical on those teams.

Not so long ago, Microsoft execs would talk about a major/minor product delivery strategy. Windows, especially, was all about delivering a big-bang release, followed by a more minor one three years or so later. A greater emphasis on services and devices meant that thinking no longer made sense, as many users now expect more regular, frequent updates.

Does Update = Free?

Pricing is the one piece of the new Microsoft "update" puzzle that is still unknown -- at least on the Windows and Office fronts.

With products like Dynamics CRM and Visual Studio 2012, Microsoft has been making updates available for free to users who purchased or subscribed to the latest versions of a particular software/service deliverable.

Microsoft's Windows Chief Financial Officer Tami Reller's pronouncement this week that Microsoft will be revealing Windows Blue SKUs and pricing before the end of May had a number of Windows 8 users up in arms. They immediately assumed that any mention of "price" must mean Microsoft intends to charge for Windows Blue. And a number of these users feel like Blue -- at least the pieces of it that have leaked so far -- are more product refinements and/or features that should have been in Windows 8 when it launched in October 2012 than features for which they should be charged more money. 

I've heard rumors that Microsoft plans to make Blue free for existing Windows 8 users. I've also heard rumors that Microsoft intends to charge existing users a "nominal fee" for Blue (the same way that Apple has been charging for updates to Mac OS X). I'm more inclined to believe it will be free -- especially given a late April "All Things D" laptop guide by Walt Mossberg indicated that Microsoft and/or OEMs had said Windows Blue "will be available to current buyers as a free upgrade."

(I asked Microsoft officials this week about the All Things D post and was told the Windows team had no comment.)

One more tidbit from Harry's post this week: VS 2012.3 is the last of the updates coming for Visual Studio 2012. The next deliverable on the roadmap is VS V.Next, which some tipsters have said is Visual Studio 2013. This is probably what I've heard called "Visual Studio Blue."

I'd think Build 2013 is where we'll hear lots more about this new version of Visual Studio, as well as about the evolving app-dev model designed to bring Windows Blue, Windows Phone and maybe even the new Xbox more into alignment.