Windows Phone 7 Gets "VoIP"; iPhone "FaceTime" Competitor ?

Microsoft had a solid CES appearance with the announcement of many new key products. But sometimes it’s not what’s said at the main events but inside conversations that can provide a peek into the upcoming products from the company.

At a high profile CES Event, a key WP7 employee delivered, in an off comment fashion, a few tips about where the platform may be headed. One feature that was discussed was that Microsoft is working on a FaceTime type like application for Windows Phone platform.

Now we have confirmed the news that Microsoft is working on a Apple iPhone's "Facetime" competitor, a feature of the platform that allows the user to make video phone calls to other users of the iPhone.

The registry keys "VoIP" and "SIP" are hidden inside the "ControlPanel" portion of the registry, and both seem to be set to be off (by having "0" under their "Enabled" value). It's worth noting that for some reason, these keys are in a portion of the registry that contains other features that are fundamental to the platform, such as theme colors. Right now, we don't have write access to the registry to attempt to turn it on, but hopefully in the near future the homebrew community may allow us to do this.

The VoIP feature has not been revealed before, and it is not certain whether or not this will be used for the "Facetime" like feature, or if it would be available for actual VoIP calling to other Windows Phone 7 users.

Windows Phone 7 Marketplace Hacked, Video

Someone claimed that the Windows Phone 7 marketplace had been hacked by phone hackers, reported at Neowin.net, because phone hackers are now seems to be busy to hack most popular smartphones like Android, Droid, iPhone and now Windows Phone 7 marketplace.

WPCentral reports that they have seen the tool in action. Created by a "white hat" developer, the application is called "FreeMarketplace" and performs the original steps outlined in the whitepaper by;

• Downloading the entire marketplace using a C# code snippet that was provided
• Circumventing the maximum application sideload limit, this was originally outlined on WithinWindows
• Enabling deployment of the disabled XAP files by deleting a file header inside the XAP "Zip" itself
• Activating the disabled marketplace XAP by replacing an entry assembly (the example used an open source app which had the debug assembly freely available
• Removing the XAP's security signatures
• Replacing the marketplace published entry assembly with a facade debug assembly

You can even see the tool in action for yourself, in a video that shows off how it works below.