A few weeks ago now I got hold of a shiny new HTC Trophy running Windows Phone 7.

I’m a bit of a smartphone geek (I’m permanently attached to my Nexus One) so to give the new platform on the block a bit of a workout, I thought I’d swap the Trophy for my usual N1 for a week to see how I got on with it.

Out with the old...

... in with the new

I’m going to be publishing blog posts (check the WP7 tag), tweets and videos all week telling how I get on with it. This is day 1, and the first video is embedded below!

Last night Google Hotpot launched. It is a very early version of Google’s local ratings service, giving users the chance to rate local restaurants, bars, pubs, clubs – well pretty much any place really. Initially I thought (as I suppose many people did) that this is only the web interface, but I also noticed this morning that Google Maps automatically updated on my Android phone (don’t worry, I told it that it could do that) to include a fancy widget to help you rate places as you go to them.

I was thinking the other day about how I use the iPad, Nexus One, netbook, MacBook, desktop PC and so on together. I found it strange how I could accept iOS 3′s restrictions on the iPad, but when I tried to use an iPhone I found myself constantly annoyed about being unable to perform the various tasks I wanted to do.

iPad Unboxing

I suspect what it comes down to is the fact that I expect my mobile phone to perform a lot of tasks – and in many ways, I have been spoilt by the Nexus One allowing me to do pretty much anything I could ever want it to. However with the iPad, there is no precedent – there hasn’t really been a truly widespread tablet of this kind before, so coming in to it makes it a new experience.

Nexus One

Sure, it isn’t without its annoyances here and there when things go horribly wrong (and hopefully iOS 4 will go some way to address that); but I still think the iPad user experience is managed and what I would expect it to be.

Earlier this month Google announced App Inventor, an easy way for anyone to get started on building Android applications. Earlier this week I got myself an invite, and headed over to see what’s what.

App Inventor is in its very early stages. It’s a closed beta, with invites going out to people when Google have the capacity and find suitable people. This shows, as there are still some clunky parts and limitations that will have to be overcome before release, but other than that it seems like an excellent preview of what’s to come.

Remember that awesome demo done on-stage at Google IO’s day 2 keynote? (If not, I embedded it below).

They showed off Froyo’s data push system by having a Chrome extension, that when clicked, opened the same web page you were viewing on your Android phone.

Now, you can go download the application to your phone, and install the Chrome extension, and everything just works!