While the cloud is great and all, the highest bandwidth connection is between one’s windows phone 7 handset and the desktop (or laptop) right next to it, and users have been complaining for most of the last year about not being able to take advantage of that to sync documents, contacts and other scenarios.
It seems Microsoft is finally getting around to that (or maybe it is just that consent decree expiring) as their latest job opening if for a software engineer in the Companion Experiences Team to “building connections between Windows Phones and desktop computers that will help make our phones integral parts of our customer’s lives.â€
The job descriptions continues:
We are looking for SDE candidates to help build these critical connection experiences on current and future generations of Windows; moving large amounts of data between phones and computers, connecting desktop applications with the mobile experience and enabling scenarios that are critical to our broad user base. We have a tremendous opportunity to differentiate Windows Phone devices from the rest of the industry, and some really unique solutions.
Microsoft’s biggest strength is its huge installed base of Windows PCs and laptops, and not to have Windows Phone integrate with that in some ways has been hugely silly. With the Justice Department Consent Decree having expired in May and the next version of Windows taking on a lot of the characteristics of Windows Phone 7, it just makes sense that the two will work together better.
I look forward to being able to control Windows Media Center or Zune desktop right from my phone, sync documents directly without the slow round trip of the cloud and using my phone as a secondary display for running desktop widgets.
See the full job posting after the break.
What do our readers dream of in desktop/Phone integration? Let us know below.