Facebook Recruits Apple “Software And Hardware” UI Leader Chris Weeldreyer To Its (Smartphone?) Mobile Product Team The Unexplained Sense Of Mystery Involved With Gestion empresarial Totally Exposed

Facebook Recruits Apple “Software And Hardware” UI Leader Chris Weeldreyer To Its (Smartphone?) Mobile Product Team

Facebook is finally working closely with Apple — on iOS 6 — but it’s also hiring away some of its design talent. The latest is Chris Weeldreyer, who has just left his position as a user interface design manager to become a product design manager at the social network.

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What will he be doing? “We’re excited to welcome Chris Weeldreyer to Facebook, where he will be a great addition to our growing design team,” Facebook tells us. But we’ve also learned from a source close to the company that he’ll be focused on its mobile products.

Another interesting clue is the description in his LinkedIn bio, where he describes himself as a ”[p]roduct designer with experience in both hardware and software product development.” That’s more than eight years of experience… right when Facebook is recruiting hard for a renewed smartphone hardware effort.

Here’s some more detail about that, from Nick Bilton at The New York Times in late May:

One engineer who formerly worked at Apple and worked on the iPhone said he had met with Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, who then peppered him with questions about the inner workings of smartphones. It did not sound like idle intellectual curiosity, the engineer said; Mr. Zuckerberg asked about intricate details, including the types of chips used, he said. Another former Apple hardware engineer was recruited by a Facebook executive and was told about the company’s hardware explorations.

Facebook is going to great lengths to keep the phone project a secret, specifically not posting job listings on the company’s job Web site, but instead going door-to-door to find the right talent for the project.

There’s still an open position for a product design manager, as Inside Facebook notes. But rather, as it wrote when it broke the story yesterday, the hiring seems to be separate. Here are a few reasons why. Facebook is quick to update the hiring page (that is, I spent years watching it closely when I was at Inside Facebook, and it was always fast in my experience). The page is still live so it may not be about him, particularly since he made his move official on LinkedIn. Also, the current position doesn’t say anything specific about mobile.

Whether or not Weeldreyer is part of some smartphone skunkworks project, he’s also not the first Apple design-side person to go over to Facebook recently. There are only 89 former Apple folks at Facebook, according to available LinkedIn data, but another one of them is Sharon Hwang, who went from being a senior art director to a product designer in March.

The overall sense is that Facebook is trying hard to polish the rough edges of its products, and continues to be attractive enough as a workplace that it can get world-class talent.

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Microsoft brings phone software closer to Windows The Unexplained Mystery Inside Of Gestion empresarial Totally Exposed

The world's largest software company, which is running to keep up with Apple Inc's iPhone and Google Inc's Android devices, said the common core means customers will have a greater choice of phones and applications, and be able to switch between multiple machines more easily.

The move follows the launch of the Surface tablet on Monday, Microsoft's effort to join the fast-growing mobile computing market and to tackle Apple's iPad head on.

At an event in San Francisco on Wednesday, Microsoft officially announced its new phone software, called Windows Phone 8, and said phones running the software would hit the market this autumn.

The new phones - made by handset makers Nokia, Samsung Electronics, HTC Corp and Huawei on Qualcomm dual-core chips - will feature voice commands, Skype calling, near-field communication (NFC) for wireless transactions and built-in maps for GPS directions.

Microsoft's voice recognition feature goes beyond Apple's rival Siri service by allowing users to issue commands to apps, not just the phone's core operating system.

The new software will support NFC transactions - in which the user taps a reader to make a purchase - but Microsoft is leaving it to independent software makers to write the actual applications controlling the process, meaning it will not be a direct competitor to the Google Wallet service for Android phones.

Microsoft's new phones will have an updated, customizable start screen in Microsoft's new 'Metro' style, which centers on touchable 'tiles', or colorful squares, representing people, applications and services which update in real time, for example showing Facebook posts or new email.

The Metro style is also the interface for Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system - designed to run on both tablets and traditional PCs - which Microsoft is expected to launch around October.

The success of the phones partly depends on the marketing support they get from carriers. No. 1 U.S. mobile operator Verizon Wireless said in April it expects to have Windows Phone 8 devices in time for the holiday shopping season as it wants a strong competitor to Apple's iPhone and Google Inc's Android.

No. 2 U.S. mobile operator AT&T and No. 4 T-Mobile USA said they plan to carry Windows Phone 8 smartphones later this year. No. 3 U.S. operator Sprint declined to comment.

APP DEARTH

Microsoft's Windows phones have been well reviewed but have not caught on in the market, partly due to the fact that there are only 100,000 or so apps available, compared to 500,000 or so for both Apple and Android devices.

Microsoft is hoping that a common core between its PC and phone software will make it easier for developers to create applications for both, with minimal adjustments.

The company said current devices, which run on Windows Phone 7.5, will not be able to update to Windows Phone 8. Windows Phone 7.5 users will be offered an update that includes the new software's start screen but excludes other features. That could dampen sales of Windows Phone 7.5 devices for the next few months until the new crop of phones appears in stores.

The Redmond, Washington-based company has invested billions of dollars in phones - including a deal with Nokia to use its software - in an attempt to break into the market.

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