Microsoft Wants To Find The Location Of Every Windows Phone

This is a strange one: apparently, Microsoft is looking to hire "highly motivated, extremely intelligent, and deeply technical people" in order to build a "core location service platform".

The timing is a little bit off: Microsoft has beenaccused of tracking location without the user's permission and has issued a response. In the light of these events it is not really clever to look for people in order to facilitate and create a "service to find the location of every Windows Phone device in the world, either by assisting GPS, or by using signal-analysis techniques to compute location where GPS cannot".

Here's the complete job description before it got pulled: "The team is looking for highly motivated, extremely intelligent, and deeply technical people to build the core location service platform. We are tasked with delivering a highly scalable service to find the location of every Windows Phone device in the world, either by assisting GPS, or by using signal-analysis techniques to compute location where GPS cannot. You will work closely with MSR and other research groups to improve our algorithms for mining large amounts of data using Bayesian analysis and other machine learning techniques. We have incredibly hard problems to solve in the coming year such as solving the indoor positioning problem as well as motion detection and relevance based positioning."

Needless to say that the job posting, which went up today, has been already pulled. Microsoft is already able to track the location of Windows Phones for its Find My Phone service which does, of course, need the users approval in order to collect data. Either Redmond is looking to improve the already existing service or is into something different which will probably make huge waves. 

Facebook For iPhone Updated To Version 3.5, Adds Features

Facebook continues to keep the iPhone application up and running with frequent updates that often add new features or bring user interface changes. The latest version is 3.5 which is available as of now for free in the Apple iTunes App Store.

With the new application version you will be able to tag friends and places in posts, share external links from a web view, as well as enjoy the new design for Profile and Group Walls. The sharing tool has been improved to add privacy controls on posts and match your settings on the web site and there are also a handful of improvements and bug fixes, like speed of Notifications, fixed Chat bugs and so on. Follow the source link to download or check with your computer's iTunes/device's AppStore for the update. 

Verizon's Motorola Droid Bionic Shows Up Again On Video

You can literally count the hours until Verizon and Motorola will finally launch the Droid Bionic, after it was introduced at the beginning of this year at CES, so it's just normal that more and more pictures and videos of the phone pop up.

In the video below you will not find anything out of the ordinary. It's the Droid Bionic filmed in what appears to be a Verizon store. There's also a comparison with the Droid X2 but what makes the Droid Bionic unique is that it will be the carrier'sfirst dual-core phone with LTE support. With hours until its launch, will you buy the Droid Bionic or will you wait just a little bit more for that Droid Prime?

Motorola Planning Soak Test for Droid 3 Update

While taking a look at the just-beginning release of the Motorola Droid 2 Global's Gingerbread update, we noted how Motorola's luck seemed to be improving when it came to readying software updates for its phones on Verizon. It looks like the company's sights are now on the new Droid 3, with plans to get an update out sometime this month.

Owners of the phone have reported receiving notification of an upcoming soak test to try out the update with a limited number of users. If everything goes smoothly, we should see the "Sept. 2011" update come out on-schedule.

What would this new software bring to the Droid 3? We haven't seen any official lists, or even leaked copies, but rumors are pointing to fixes for certain battery problems, and enabling video calls with Google Talk. If you end up taking part in the soak, we'd love to hear what changes you notice to your phone. 

Dell's Smartphone Future Focused On China?

Though once a major player in the days ofWindows Mobile, Dell's mobile presence has taken a big dive in recent years. Devices like the Venue and Venue Pro have been few and far between, and we were surprised to see the company not make the list as one of Microsoft's hardware partners for upcoming handsets. More recently, the companypulled the plug on its nearly-smartphone-sized Streak 5 tablet. Just what could Dell be thinking about when it comes to its smartphone strategy? It turns out that its sights are set on one of the biggest markets around, as we've learned about an agreement to start producing phones for China's Baidu running the Yi Android-based OS.

China's certainly big enough to keep Dell busy selling Yi smartphones, so that explains that, but couldn't Dell release those phones there while coming out with Windows Phone and proper Android models elsewhere? Bloomberg reports that the company is hoping to drive up its smartphone sales figures; it can't very well do that if we don't have the chance to buy them!