Swype Betas for Android Become a Whole Lot Easier to Update

If you been installing betas of Swype on your Android phone, you're well familiar with the update process. It's always been a big manual effort, with an installer app, having to log-in each time, and losing your settings. The good news is that's all becoming a thing of the past, thanks to the release of Swype Beta 3.26.

While you're stuck with the old installation process for this update, that will mark the last time you have to go through it all. Instead, future updates will come down through the app itself. You'll be notified when one's ready, and it will install while keeping all your old preferences.

That change alone should be reason enough to upgrade, but there are a few other changes arriving, as well. Now you can exclude language selections you won't be using, so that they don't continue to show up as options. On-screen key arrangement has been tweaked, and there are new characters being added to the selection of symbols. Finally, the appsettings screen and internal help function have been redesigned, with ease-of-use in mind. 

Microsoft Research is using Holographic Windows Phones

A lot of people think that what Apple is doing with capacitive touch screens and touch-based user interfaces is magical, but what if you could interact with a phone that was just a hologram? A team at Microsoft Research has put together a "Holodesk" which not only displays three dimensional holograms, but also lets you physically interact with them. It uses a Kinect sensor to see your hands or other physical objects within its view and models those objects in real time in order to calculate how they interact with the virtual holographic objects. Then there's another cameralooking at your face to see where you're eyes are so that it can adjust the perspective of the 3D holographic objects' display in order to compensate for your angle of view. Check out thevideo below and around the 2:40 mark you'll see the user interacting with a holographic Windows Phone.

Of course, I can't imagine you would cary around a holographic phone in the future, but you can see that Microsoft is well on their way to bringing some science-fiction to the real world.

Google Music MP3 Store To Let You Share Tracks With Friends?

Last week, we heard a rumor that Google wasn't content to live with Google Music as a storage-only solution for your MP3s, and was going to make anther stab at setting up an MP3 store of its own. This week, Andy Rubin confirmed the rumor, saying that the plan was to have the store up-and-running "soon". At the time, he teased that the service would have something special to it, distinguishing it from a simple iTunes knock-off, but didn't go into detail. Now, a new rumor may just nail-down what that feature is, suggesting that Google could allow users to share purchased tracks with friends.

Like that previous rumor, this one is sourced to an unnamed industry insider. Supposedly, under the terms of the licensing agreements Google is working out with the labels, you'll be able to send a copy of a track you just bought to friends. Those users would then have access to the song on a limited basis – whether that would be time-based or having it expire after a certain number of plays isn't yet clear.

This sounds like a fantastic arrangement for the record companies, and once they got past what we can only assume are their reservations towards giving anything away for free, they may have realized what a great advertising opportunity this system could be; how many times have you been introduced to an album you later purchased by having a friend play it for you? 

WP7 Handsets Cheaper To Make Than Ever: Hitting $200 Mark Soon

Part of the reason everyone's so excited to see what Nokia brings to the Windows Phone table is that we've heard the manufacturer will put a focus on producing some very affordable WP7-running models, some targeted for release in markets where the operating system has yet to make appreciable penetration. Just how cheap are we talking, though? Microsoft's Andy Lees recently discussed the state of WP7 hardware, and offered some insight into what such devices may cost.

According to Lees, we're about to see WindowsPhone smartphones reach a point where they're costing roughly half as much to produce as they did when the platform first launched. That means that in a few months, hardware will be coming out that has cost its manufacturer somewhere in the area of $220 to make. Lees doesn't mention Nokiaby name, but that's immediately where our thoughts go when we're talking future, cheap WP7 gear. We've already heard that such devices may arrive with the release of the next Tango update, and the recent rumor we heard of support for devices with lower-res 480x320 displays seems to support that idea. Lees says that the plan is to break the $200 mark.

Of course, cost to manufacture doesn't directly translate to retail cost, but the implication is that we'll see prices drop. That could mean affordable off-contract devices in markets where pre-paid lines are popular. While Microsoft stands to make less money in such an event, as its licensing fees are tied to device pricing, hopefully the volume of sales will balance things out.

As an aside, Lees also mentioned that Microsoft is firmly committed to using Qualcomm chips for its platform, with no plans to support other companies' silicon anytime soon. 

Editorial: Is Siri Useful? (Video)

After having spent a week with Siri on my iPhone 4S, I've gotten to know the useful and the not-so-useful aspects of Apple's "digital personal assistant". Today, Siri is quite limited because it can't interface with third party apps, nor can it carry on a real human conversation. When it's able to do these two things, which is likely to be not too far away, the usefulness of Siri will increase dramatically. Imagine Siri being able to call your doctor for you to make an appointment, or having Siri buy something from Amazon on your behalf. The possibilities are endless.