Microsoft has delayed its “copy and paste” update to Windows Phone 7 (WP7), originally due in early March. The Redmond-based company brought out a first minor update to WP7 in February bringing under-the-hood tweaks to improve the phone update process.

 

According to Eric Hautala, general manager, Customer Experience Engineering at Microsoft, this delay is so that the company can learn everything it can from the first update. Hautala said in a blogpost that “…I’ve decided to take some extra time to ensure the update process meets our standards, your standards, and the standards of our partners. As a result, our plan is to start delivering the copy-and-paste update (also known as NoDo) in the latter half of March.”

 

He, however, reassured WP7 users that the update following the copy and paste one, which is also known as Mango, will not be delayed. “This short pause should in no way impact the timing of future updates, including the one announced recently at Mobile World Congress featuring multitasking, a Twitter feature, and a new HTML 5-friendly version of Internet Explorer Mobile.”

 

 

 

In related news, Microsoft revealed last month that the responsible party behind a data leak issue affecting WP7 smartphones, was Yahoo and its Yahoo! Mail email service. According to the tech blog withinwindows, Yahoo has updated its IMAP servers at some point in the last couple of days, in order to address this issue.  

 

This bug led to WP7-running devices sending and receiving data, without a user’s knowledge, leading to abnormally high data bills for some.

 

 

A photo of the forthcoming Nokia E6 smartphone has been leaked on the net. This new device (and as yet announced) sports the same QWERTY form factor as the Finnish manufacturer’s E5. Unlike the E5 though, this device will (like Nokia’s X3 Touch and Type) also sport a touch-enabled display. It will also reportedly be running an updated version of Symbian^3, boasting four home-screens instead of the N8’s and C7’s three.  

 

 

 

 

PCWorld interviewed BlackBerry holding company Research In Motion’s (RIM’s) David Heit, VP of enterprise strategy, and discovered that the Canadian smartphone maker is working on its own video conferencing application.

 

This application will allow BlackBerry PlayBook users to make peer-to-peer video-calls similar to how users of iOS devices like the iPhone 4, currently video chat with each other over Apple’s FaceTime app.

 

Heit stated that the app is expected to be released “very soon”, but didn’t explain how it will work or if it will only work with the PlayBook tablet. Current BlackBerry smartphones such as the Bold 9780 do not have front-facing cameras though.

 

 

 

According to TechSpot, the next release of Ubuntu, version 11.04 dubbed Natty Narwhal, will no longer boasts a separate edition for netbooks and one for desktop PCs. Canonical (the company responsible for the release and which was founded by South African Mark Shuttleworth) stated that a single user interface (UI) will work as good for all PC form factors.

 

“User feedback also told us that people thought the [netbook or desktop] edition was not for them as they had a laptop and spent time looking for a ‘Laptop Edition’,” a Canonical spokesperson said in a statement. “So we are going back to our roots. We think this will make things simpler. When we mean Ubuntu for notebooks we will say just that rather than the more confusing, ‘Ubuntu Desktop Edition for notebooks’.”

 

 

According to The Telegraph, a 38-year-old British man by the name of Stephen Andreassen has ended up in jail after creating 35 blogs to terrorize his ex-girlfriend. After his relationship with Rebecca Pattinson (36) ended, he proceeded to bombard his ex with calls, emails, SMSes as well as Facebook messages pleading her to take him back. The reason for their break was that Pattinson didn’t want to move in with him after only four weeks of dating.

 

Pattinson, who is a mother of two as well as a mature university student, then threatened to get the police involved. Andreassen amped things up by creating a range of blogs on which he posted messages “warning all men’’, and also providing his take on the whole ordeal. In 2010 he dodged a jail sentence by admitting that he was harassing Pattinson, but was banned under a lifetime restraining order from mentioning her on any website. 

 

Two months after that he was arrested again, following yet another post in which he blogged about a court case involving a woman who was a “liar’’ and “a sociopath”. After avoiding jail once again he set up a new website with a number of sections called The Relationship, My Story and Court Appearance. Following this he booked himself into a hotel in Scotland and took 200 sleeping tablets in a failed suicide attempt.

 

Now Andreassen has been jailed for 18 weeks because he admitted to breaking the restraining order placed on him and has also been fired from his job. Pattinson is receiving counselling over this ordeal and also drives everywhere to avoid walking into Andreassen. “I fear that Stephen will never stop and I can’t understand why he is doing this.’’