Microsoft has been touting its Fone+ project for a little while now, but it looks like the company is starting to step up its efforts a bit further, with the new head of Microsoft's Unlimited Potential Group, Craig Mundie, reportedly leading the charge to increase the focus on the project aimed at bringing cellphones to the poor. This isn't a case of simply handing out as many barebones handsets as possible, however. Instead, Microsoft wants to use the cellphones (which are described as a "low-to-mid-end smartphone") as an alternative to computers like the OLPC, an idea the company has been tossing around since before the Fone+ project even had a name. To make things a bit more practical, the cellphones would be paired with a dock that hooks up to TV, resulting in a system that Mundie says is "a lot cheaper than having to buy a whole separate computer." Unfortunately, while it is upping its efforts, Microsoft apparently still isn't ready to provide any sort of timeline about when we can expect to see an actual product, and Mundie adds that the company continues to "explore and look at both phone-up models and PC-down models" to make computing more accessible to the poor.

[Via Phone Scoop

Joining the growing list of up and coming software touched by Microsoft is a number of wireless applications showed off at a summit in the firm's hometown. Most interesting was Fone+, which was described as a "product that lets users connect their mobile phones to a TV, a keyboard, and a mouse" in order to convert their set into a web browsing portal. Of course, we North Americans would probably just tether our mobiles to a laptop to enjoy big screen surfing, but this device will be aimed at nations such as a China "where PC penetration is still quite low but mobile phone ownership is high." Next up was MPTrain, which wed a heart rate sensor with a tempo analyzer to allow runners to "use music players in their mobile phones to set their workouts." Granted, it's not like we don't already have similar alternatives, but this method removes the need for a certain DAP to be on your person in order to tune your workout. As expected, no release dates for these ideas were noted, but hopefully they'll end up a bit more convincing than prior attempts.