Fans of the “Metro” user experience which made its debut on Windows Phone 7 Series will be pleased to know desktop applications featuring large fonts and simple shapes too are coming soon to a PC and Mac near you.

Ahead of the MIX10 event next week, Tim Heuer of the Silverlight team let out a sneak peek at some new application themes developed by Microsoft for Silverlight 4, including one inspired by the Zune desktop software appropriately called “Metro”.

Although themes support was introduced with Silverlight 3, none of the built-in themes have been any compelling. These new themes on the other hand are much more extensive and modern which should make it easier for Silverlight developers to create more polished Silverlight applications without much if any investment in customizing the UI. For users, it means more better looking applications.

I, for one, welcome our new Metro overlords.

As the release date for the Office 2010 suite trickled out last week without much fanfare, news about its younger sibling, Office Web Apps, was nowhere to be seen. This was rather odd in context of Microsoft’s announcement in the same week that it’s “all in” for cloud computing

In a briefing with Microsoft representatives this week I was assured the consumer version of Office Web Apps in Windows Live is indeed still coming, scheduled with the next version of Windows Live, Wave 4. Although no specific dates were disclosed, it’s likely Office Web Apps will be available at a separate time to the Office 2010 client and confirmed to be later according to a similar briefing by APC.

Although the initial version 1 release of Office Web Apps will not feature many changes to the technical preview secluded in SkyDrive today, albeit with the full editing functionality of Word Web App and the missing OneNote Web App, Microsoft was able to confirm updates to the Office Web Apps are not necessarily tied to Office client releases.

You can expect us to regularly update Web Apps. For consumers using Web Apps via Windows Live SkyDrive, you can expect us to roll-out features on a rolling basis consistent with the rest of our services including Messenger and Hotmail.

Personally I wouldn’t consider Messenger and Hotmail “regularly updated” but it’s good to know that Office Web Apps will not remain dormant between major Office releases which could take 3 to 4 years.

As the Microsoft representative also pointed out consumers over enterprises are much more comfortable with (and to a degree, expect) updates more frequently, I speculate it won’t be too far before we see new features introduced in Office Web Apps before it hits the client.

A promotional video shown to Microsoft sales staff has revealed a Microsoft wireless webcam codename “Sputnik” – a nod to the Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite in space. Unlike its spacefaring counterpart however, it appears this product never quite made it off the ground.

Elements of the video including Windows XP, Windows Live Messenger 8 and a chunky CRT TV sets this product back to somewhere around 2004.

Although wireless webcams are not a new concept even at that time, but all of which are designed for security and surveillance purposes. Even till now, none have been designed and marketed specifically for the consumer space. Obvious technological limitations such as battery life, wireless quality and range might have attributed to the product’s demise.

Come to think of it, a wireless webcam still makes a lot of sense and smartphones today could easily duplicate its functionality with a combination of software on the PC and the phone. Windows Phone 7 Series app anyone?

Once in a while, what happens in Vegas gets liveblogged to the rest of the world. To bring you the thrill and spills of Microsoft’s MIX10 conference next week join Ed Bott, Mary Jo Foley, Kip Kniskern, Benjamin Rubenstein, Paul Thurrott and myself as we’re all in to group liveblog both keynotes where they’re expected to blow the lids off Windows Phone 7 Series and Internet Explorer 9.

Check back on Monday, March 15 9am PST and Tuesday, March 16 9am PST for the first and second keynote respectively to find the liveblog embed. For the organized among us, import this handy iCal file.

Audience participation will be enabled by default so feel free to ask questions and provide your thoughts on the announcements live.

The first layer of wrapping on the giftbox that is the Windows Phone 7 Series development platform is being teared down today as Charlie Kindel on the Windows Phone team revealed some ever-slight details on what developers might be able to do on WP7S and how.

One detail that caught my eye was a picture attached in the blog post that at quick glance might pass as a general comparison of all the current-generation smartphones with WP7S, but on closer inspection, it’s not the WP7S we’ve come to know and love since Mobile World Congress.

As both images are presumably mockups, the right one resembling the build shown at MWC, I can assume the left one comes from an earlier concept. The striking difference between the two is the way the “start menu” is conveyed. The build at MWC had an arrow in the top right corner which when clicked on revealed a long list of applications that were installed on the device.

In the alternative concept however the menu is “peeking” in from the right hand side which one can assume opens by swiping to the left. The way applications are grouped are also different, as the top five items are the hubs “people, music+video, xbox, photos, marketplace” leaving “apps” in a class of its own.

Personally I actually prefer how the menu peeks in the start screen – it’s much more consistent with the teasing that occurs in the rest of the UI. Which is the “real” start screen, guess it’s one more thing we’ll have to find out at MIX.

Update: Charlie Kindel implies the screenshot is an older mockup.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock without any GPS reception, you might have heard of location-based applications. From the fun to the useful, letting software know where you are in the world is a powerful way to make information more relevant, but why should smartphones have all the fun?

Half a year ago, Firefox 3.5 introduced support for geolocation, a feature allowed the browser to pinpoint the location of the computer using WiFi triangulation. After personally witnessing how well it worked (it located my home, in fact, my room in the house where I use the computer), I started bugging my partner in crime, Rafael Rivera, to port this feature to the platform-level, where it belongs.

As a matter of fact, Windows 7, like most other current generation OSes, has a built-in location platform and API that allow third-party developers to build native application that are location-aware. However unlike other OSes, specifically OS X, Microsoft made the fatal flaw of not integrating a default geolocation provider, thus developers could not take advantage of this until Windows 7 PCs started shipping with GPS sensors, which hasn’t happened yet.

Instead of waiting for OEMs to pick up the ball, Rafael and I are offering an alternative.

Over the past several weeks, we (Rafael did most of the work, I shouted at him) built Geosense for Windows, a Windows 7 sensor driver that connects the location platform with geolocation service providers who include but is not limited to Google Location Services. These geolocation providers work by matching and triangulating known cell towers and wireless access points in its database to estimate a latitude and longitude, with remarkable accuracy and scope.

Today we are releasing Geosense for Windows for free. We believe by offering this tool for free will help enable the most possible Windows 7 PCs to be location-aware, and in turn add incentive for third-party developers to take advantage of the Windows 7 location APIs and make their applications stand out.

That’s enough talk from me, now go get the bits.