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Here’s a fun tidbit we just learned from Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore: in order to focus Windows Phone 7 Series on the idea of best serving end users, the team actually created two fictional targets consumers named “Miles” and “Anna,” a pair of married 38-year old “life maximizers” who demand the most from their devices. Yes, it’s a little strange and hilariously specific on the surface — Anna just scaled back her PR job to part-time so she can take care of the kids! Miles like to take pictures and use Facebook to share them with his parents in Europe! — but it makes a certain …

Well, it looks like it’s not just iPad pre-orders that are possibly be beating a few expectations — according to NPD , sales of Macs and iPods were also up over some estimates in January and February. More specifically, NPD’s Gene Munster says that sales of Macs were up 39% year over year for the two months (ahead of estimates of 22%), which should translate to sales of between 2.8 to 2.9 million Macs for the full quarter, while iPod sales were up 7% during the same period, suggesting total iPod sales of between nine and ten million for the first quarter. That latter number may actually be the more impressive of the two, as it marks the first time iPod sales have rebounded into positive territory in a…

Still carrying your iPhone in your pants pocket eh? Well, I guess you can do that. Be careful if you sit down though, you might end up with a pocket full of broken dreams and unicorn tears. Well, unless you have this pretty sweet stainless steel iPhone case. Hand made in Portland Oregon by a person who obviously knows industrial design, this seriously stout case is hand finished and made from high grade steel. The case is custom cut with a flip cover, including space to show the time and date, as well as allowing you to answer the phone without opening the case. The designer even…

Bad news, HTC HD2 owners: Microsoft has finally come right out and confirmed our suspicions that the mighty HTC HD2 won’t be upgraded to Windows Phone 7 Series. Joe Belfiore just told us that the HD2 is “not compliant with the Windows Phone 7 Series hardware specifications ,” which should end any of the lingering doubt that’s clouded this issue since MWC. That certainly puts a damper on the HD2’s upcoming launch on T-Mobile , but hey — every Microsoft employee here at MIX is carrying one, so it’s clearly the WinMo handset to get until it’s eclipsed by 7 late in the year. Pour one out for the king, friends. Confirmed: HTC HD2 will not be upgraded to…

I was pretty bullish on the One Laptop Per Child program for quite some time, and even participated in the ‘Buy One Give One’ program. I recognize that OLPC represents a long-term project, and that the fruits of that project are not likely to be visible for years. While we’re waiting, we can watch One Kindle Per Child , an initiative from Worldreader.org to improve literacy in Africa through the use of Amazon Kindle e-readers. I’m extremely skeptical of this project. I forwarded the story to my friend Rich, who grew up in Africa, and his immediate response was “Well intentioned people who are really good at X look around and say, ‘how can X solve this…

NVIDIA has certainly been more active in 3D than ATI / AMD has as of late, but it looks like the situation may be starting to change, as AMD has taken advantage of the just concluded GDC to lay out its new Open Stereo 3D Initiative. While the company isn’t yet drumming up too much fanfare about it (or even issuing a press release), it does seem to have gotten things started on an ambitious note, with the initiative promising to provide consumers with “more choice, more innovation, and lower cost.” In the nearer term, that will apparently translate to products like 3D-enabled ATI Eyefinity technology, 120Hz displays, stereo 3D notebooks, and various bundled solutions and…

Eager to be the first on your block with an iPad? Apple started taking orders for the tablets on Friday. Wi-Fi models running from $499 to $699 will be available on April 3; 3G models, costing $629 to $829, won’t be available until late April. Along with the advance orders, Apple released some details on what’s expected to be a key app for the new device — e-books. Promoting the iBooks feature of the iPad, Apple’s web site explains, “iBooks works with VoiceOver, the screen reader in iPad, so it can read you the contents of any page. Even with all these extras, reading is so natural on iPad, the technology seems to disappear.” The site also promotes iBooks …

So today, I have something new and interesting for you as I do every weekday, and today, I have the added advantage of not having a whole lot of bad to say about it.  Today I’m talking about the LG CF360, and it’s really pretty good. The LG CF360 is a slider phone that comes with conference call capability, speakerphone, Bluetooth connectivity, TTY compatibility, mobile email, mobile web, a 1.3 megapixel digital camera, alarm clock, calendar, calculator, GPS, a music player, quad-band support, 3G access, and a battery capable of yielding three hours of talk time on a single charge. So you can see from the spec…

At Google’s panel today at SXSW in Austin, a Gmail team member named Jonathan Perlow asked the crowd to raise their hands if they think Gmail is too slow. We love Gmail, but certainly we can sympathize with the fair percentage of those audience members who raised their hands—the problem is pretty much limited to those, like us, who are power users with hundreds of thousands of messages (most of which are junk, we’re not bragging, but still). Perlow had a response, confidently saying “We are fixing it.” He didn’t elaborate, but Google’s always improving Gmail—hopefully this means we’ll be seeing some improvements for power

It’s been something of a long road to this point (beginning with the company being founded by some laid off OpenMoko employees), but Qi Hardware’s ultra-compact, open source Ben NanoNote (actually, 本 NanoNote) is now shipping for just $99. That will get you a bare bones device that can simply be used as a Linux-based “handheld laptop” out of the box or, as the company hopes, be turned into anything from a PMP to an offline Wikipedia device. Something along those lines would seem to be the most practical, considering the device only has a 3-inch 320 x 240 display, along with some similarly basic specs including a 336 MHz XBurst Jz4720 CPU, 32MB of RAM, 2GB of flash storage, and a microSD card slot for expansion. Head on…