If you take a look around the Bell Canada site, there is no longer any sign of Windows 7 Phones?   In fact if you search for WP7 – you end up with a link to the HD7, however this results in the following message:

So what’s happening?    There appears to be a general lack of interest between Canadian carriers to support the platform, who instead are focusing on iPhone, Android and RIM?

Take a look in retail stores and there are little or no signs of any Windows Phone 7 devices.   The only units I’ve found have been mislabelled as running Android!

So are the carriers finally dropping support for Windows Phone 7, or simply clearing stock ready for the imminent arrival of Mango devices?

Nokia has stated that they’ll be bringing WP7 Mango devices to Canada in 2012, however there’s no confirmation on dates, carriers or models yet?     How long will consumers be wiling to wait for WP7 before giving up and going with a different platform?

Are Microsoft and the device manufacturers going to miss their window of opportunity to establish a WP7 Mango presence in the Canadian mobile marketplace?

Following on from yesterdays announcement that Nokia and Microsoft are joining forces in the mobile arena – today they gave a joint press conference.

You can watch the full video here:

As previously rumoured, Nokia and Microsoft announced yesterday that they’re forming a partnership to develop and promote Windows 7 phones.  

Nokia has been suffering from loss of market share due to the rapid take up of both iOS and Android devices.   The recent change to Stephen Elop (@selop) as CEO of Nokia signalled that Nokia realised they needed to make wide reaching changes the their core company focus.

The fact that Stephen came from an influential role within Microsoft gave rise to the speculation that Nokia might be about to join forces with Microsoft.

The alliance brings Nokia’s popular hardware designs and also their influence in the GSM market to the Windows Phone 7 push.     Lately the Nokia Symbian OS platform has been criticized for not keeping up with market trends, so using Windows Phone 7 should help fast forward them to 2011,

The partnership announced that Bing would become the default Search engine for Nokia devices (not really surprising given its deep integration within WP7).   More surprising was that Nokia Maps would be the default mapping service.   I’ve not personally used Nokia Maps, however it must be good for MS to agree to replace Bing Maps?

It’ll be interesting to see how soon Nokia can use the partnership to announce new phones, and also what the market feedback will be.  Nokia users tend to be faithful to the Nokia platform so the move to WP7 is a brave however also necessary to remain competitive.

You may have come across a taste of this if you’ve used the Microsoft knowledge base.    Some KB articles include a Fix-It link which automatically applies the corrective action needed.

Well Microsoft have now taken this much further and have released a Beta of Fix It Center, a troubleshooting and automatic repair tool for Windows (XP SP3 or later).

The tool includes many diagnostics for common problems such as:

Hardware devices not working

Internet explorer crashes

Power management problems

Performance problems

and many more…

The tool also gives you an online management interface where several PCs can report back their current status – a feature which could be useful to small businesses?

The tool is quick to down load, simple to install (without requiring a reboot) and is very easy to use.

This could save a lot of helpdesk calls and visits to computer repair shops!

Fix it Center Portal

Here’s a couple of interesting videos showing the current and future roll out plans for Microsoft’s datacenters.   This shows just how serious they’re getting about cloud computing!

The first one shows how they plan on rolling out these data centers around the world to support Azure, Live, Hosted Exchange etc.

The next video shows the installation of a new server container at an actual data center in Chicago:

All very cool! Looks like there’s going to be real competition building up in the cloud..

Gizmodo have just posted an update to the rumours around “Project Pink”.    If you’ve not heard of it before, Project Pink was a rumour which started last year about a new phone platform developed by Microsoft which would be focused on Social Networking.   

The project stemmed from the Microsoft takeover of Danger (makers of the Sidekick).  Key members of Danger were said to be working on a secret project to release two new phone models – the Turtle and Pure. 

Rumoured Turtle Phone

The latest post from Gizmodo states that they’ve received confidential promotional material regarding the release of Turtle on the Verizon network in the US.   The material has reportedly come from a partner working with Microsoft, so they’re unable to show most of it to avoid giving away their source.

Here’s the facts so far regarding Project Pink:

• The Handset is not running a variant of Windows Phone 7
• Recent FCC Filings show evidence the handset exits and will be manufactured by Sharp
• Recent Twitter posts are coming from a device called “Danger” from within Microsoft
• Verizon appear to be the launch partner
• The phone supports a form of App (similar to IPhone, Google Apps etc)

Although the phone is said not to be running a variant of Windows Phone 7 – I suspect the interface will be similar.   At MWC, Microsoft really emphasised the amount of work which had gone in to the interface over the last two years, so I’d be surprised if they ignored the results on a similar device?   Also the screenshots on the render (although fuzzy and small), do remind me of the interface I saw in Barcelona at MWC.

Looks like we’ll be hearing more about this device soon!

More Articles on Project Pink from Gizmodo

Jason Bradbury from the UK TV program Gadget Show was invited to a sneak preview of Microsoft’s upcoming Project Natal, X-Box add-on.

To say he’s excited about the technology is an understatement!   Sounds like MS is making great headway with the tracking and voice recognition.

Looks like this is truly going to be “Game Changing” when it comes out later this year.    I have to wonder how what other areas MS are going to implement this, such as Windows, Media Center, Windows Mobile etc?

Here’s the video…

Next week, Scotia Systems will be heading to Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona.   If you’ve never been to MWC, it’s quite something to see!  

Held 15th - 18th Feb, MWC is an exhibition with over 1300 businesses from the mobile industry!   The scale of the exhibition is huge and has to be seen to be believed!   Last year the show attracted approximately 47,000 visitors!

This year looks to have major announcements from Microsoft regarding their next version of Windows Mobile.    I see this is the last chance Microsoft has to get back into smartphone race, so they need to announce something really spectacular.

I’ll be posting new blog articles here and you can also follow Scotia Systems on twitter for regular updates during the show.

If you have any stands or products in particular you’d like us to visit, let me know in the comments and I’ll try and get some photos online.

Microsoft has announced that they’ll be releasing their free “Security Essentials” Antiv Virus and Anti Malware tool today:

Press Release

Looks like this could be quite a good contender for AV protection, so we’ll be giving this a try as soon as it’s released and will let you know what we think.

Product Website : http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/market.aspx

Gizmodo have the scoop on a new prototype device from Microsoft called “Courier”.   The device has the form factor of a book and uses two touch panels to create a rather neat interface.

Check it out at www.gizmodo.com or watch the video below: