If you’re not an iPhone-toting Macolyte, you may be following the adventures of Windows Phone 7, the little operating system that could – and in particular, Nokia’s recent decision to ditch Symbian (the little operating system that couldn’t) to the curb in favour of it. Most tech heads, shocked at the partnership, cried foul, decrying the move as bad for both Nokia and Microsoft.

But come on, guys, Windows Phone 7 isn’t that bad. It’s functional (in this blogger’s opinion, every bit as much as iOS) and if it isn’t the most gorgeous, chrome-free interface a phone’s ever seen, nothing is.

Anyway, if you’re not convinced yet, maybe you will be soon – Ballmer has announced some new steez for the platform that sound most promising and, failing that, intriguing, at the very least.

Perhaps the most important thing is the integration of IE9, which will be a counterpart to the desktop version, right down to the HTML5 technologies. Hey, say what you will about IE’s history, 9’s looking not unfly, and on the go, it should radiate that flyness from one’s pocket like a nuclear reaction of cool. In fact, you might want to keep it away from your unmentionables, just in case.

Among the other improvements straight from the Ball to be added in 2011 are true Twitter integration (thank goodness), Office document sharing (via the cloud), storage support with Skydrive, and, perhaps most importantly of all, multitasking.

Even Kinect integration was mentioned. Perhaps not the most interesting thing we’ve ever seen, but still, bringing a controller back to controllerless gaming (which is a laughable concept) is definitely something to be the opposite of sad about.

Frankly, I wouldn’t call WP7 dead yet. It’s a beautiful, practical OS, and the future’s looking very bright. Yes, even with Nokia.