The Weekly Round-Up: 26.06.09

The Round-Up is a big fan of Scandinavian countries. They've got some of the most stirring landscapes, tastiest beer and best reindeer steaks in the world. Granted, there's not a lot of competition in the reindeer steak stakes, but still, you've got to take your successes where you can.

More importantly, they're a fiercely techie bunch with a proud reputation as Europe's cradle of mobile civilisation: a Nokia engineering student reportedly sent the first GSM text message, the Round-Up will have you know.

So when silicon.com's Natasha Lomas went for a look around the Mobile Life Centre this week - a lab attached to Stockholm University dedicated to creating the next generation of mobile apps - the Round-Up was very excited to hear what mobile's finest minds were working on.

A self-aware mobile that refuses to call your ex once you've had more than four pints, and remembers to call your mum on her birthday? A mobile that can automatically overlay your voice with a hacking cough and sniffles when you're on the phone to your boss trying to pull a sickie? A phone that automatically shuts down if its owner decides to use it to play tinny R&B loudly on the bus?

Er, no. Gnomes.

That's right: if you ever wanted to explore the Swedish tradition of thieving a gnome, taking it on holiday and sending postcards back to the bereft gnome owner ostensibly from the missing garden ornament, then the Mobile Life Centre's latest work to translate this tomfoolery onto a mobile device will doubtless make you very happy indeed.

If you want to explore more of the Centre's work - including a pervasive gaming tool that makes use of a big shiny red doll (don't ask), it's all revealed here.

You can also find out more on the Centre's project to collect bio-data and display it on mobile phones to help users work out the kind of situations that stress them out. The Round-Up never normally needs help identifying stressful situations, not after having to extract a freshly minted copy of Vista from its plastic prison (more on that little tug of love anon…)

And so to Redmond: the long, dark teatime of Steve Ballmer's soul took another step towards its end this week as Microsoft announced the pricing strategy for the successor to Vista, Windows 7.

The company has announced that prices for the operating system, which goes on sale on 22 October, will range from £49.99 to £229.99.

As with Vista, the company is offering a range of different options, from Home Premium to Ultimate.

Not that corporate users are planning to flock to the system for a couple of years (at least according to the silicon.com CIO Jury).

According to reports and some brief personal experience of the beta, Microsoft has made a fair stab of things with Windows 7. But not all the improvements are technical. Oh no. This time Microsoft really has been thinking out of the box - quite literally.

One big improvement Ballmer and chums have made to Windows 7 is the ability to actually remove the software discs from their packaging.

No laughing at the back - this really is a step up from Vista. Famously, Microsoft had to publish a technical support note to inform users how to take the DVDs containing the Vista software out of the rather over-engineered packaging. If you don't believe the Round-Up, then the truth is a mere click away.

Back again? Good. Happily for Windows 7 customers, the company has listened to its users and made the Windows 7 packaging much easier to open.

In a company blog posting this week, Microsoft said it will use a package that is similarly shaped to the Vista 'sarcophagus'. However, the box will open more like a standard DVD case. The Round-Up is sure you too are thinking: at last, truly a 'tell your friends about the wow' moment…

In any case, the box, which will be recyclable, will contain just the disc and a 'getting started' guide - in case, presumably, you're too wowed by the ease of opening to get any further with the installation process.

With the problems of Vista soon to be consigned to the history books, Microsoft is likely to be hoping the greener nature of the plastic case is the only downgrade-able feature of Windows 7 that appeals to users...

But Microsoft isn't the only tech company giving even the tiniest aspects of its products a spit and polish this week: Laptop maker Lenovo has had its boffins hard at work tweaking the humble keyboard for its latest line of hardware.

The verdict? Make the Delete and Escape buttons bigger. Apparently, they get a hammering with the average user pressing each one 700 times per week - so the plan is to make them even easier to hit. And even easier to press by mistake of course.

You can tell operating systems have moved on in recent years: if the most used buttons were always the biggest, the Round-Up reckons early OSes would have been better off with keyboards sporting an extra large Ctrl and Alt to go with a similarly sized Delete.

Other innovations from the Lenovo folk include smaller gaps between keys to stop stray crumbs falling in when you're dining al desko. Hopefully an end to getting your Qwerty dirty and a boon to all those salt and vinegar eaters out there.

Finally this week, there was some great news for one of Britain's most enduring retail brands: Woolworths, an early casualty of the economic downturn last year.

Woolies' retail business went into administration last November. It closed the last of its 800-plus stores in January, with the loss of around 27,000 jobs, after failing to find a buyer.

Now, it's back. The 100-year-old sweets and DVD retailer has reinvented itself as an online business after the brand name was bought by retailing giant Shop Direct earlier this year.

Woolworths.co.uk will feature a main shop selling children's toys and clothing, an entertainment store selling video games, DVDs and CDs, along with a party goods outlet selling fancy dress costumes and games.

So far, so e-tail. But even the Woolies iconic "pic 'n' mix" sweets have been given a web makeover: they'll now be known as "click 'n' mix".

Nice touch...

In other news this week.

Glastonbury: A festival of iPhone blogging and wireless webcams. Buckets of rain forecast for the weekend and expensive smartphones. What could possibly go wrong?

iPhone-phobic? Been holding out for a Hero? No problem, HTC has taken the wraps off the latest Android device this week.

HTC Hero and iPhone fans? Some bad news: your sleek, gleaming handsets will soon be full of adverts very soon, all thanks to Google.