My Windows Media Center PC pulled a nice April Fool’s Joke: All shows scheduled to record today disappeared, and I couldn’t restore scheduled recordings. So, my daughter missed her favorite Fox and WB kids shows. […]
Category: Microsoft
Microsoft’s Coal in the Stocking
My week went to hell, no thanks to Microsoft. The Windows Vista delay, then Microsoft platform group reorganization, then Office 2007 delay made for one nutty week. Reporters, clients, everyone have called looking for comment, explanation or speculation. One reporter told me she smashed her cell phone in frustration.
Bad Internet Explorer
I am just so upset, I won’t much blog tonight. I had just finished a long post on last night’s “24” and decided to put in a photo. When I uploaded the image, I got a warning on the Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview toolbar about blocked content. The browser had blocked the image from loading. OK. No big deal. I clicked the option to allow the content, which instead cleared the browser window and my post.
Upset? Upset? There are no words. This is the second time in less than a week where I lost a long blog post to Microsoft beta software—Friday on my work blog and now on my personal blog.
I Like to Look
I just whiled away part of the evening as the voyeur, looking in on the blogs over at MSN Spaces. By default, each Space includes a sidebar module containing recently “Updated Spaces”. I navigated from blog to blog, seeing what I would find. I’m a studier of people, so the look inside people’s lives is fascinating.
I observed a few things.
IM Art
My 11-year old daughter loves to doodle, and since getting back on Windows XP she will doodle in Windows Live Messenger and send her art as instant messages to me. It’s her way of interacting with dad when he’s working late, as I did tonight. Probably she wants to make some point about working late, too.
Just Add ‘i’
Late this afternoon, my daughter yelled to me from another room, “Dad, dad. I figured out what Microsoft means. You’ve got to come see this. Micro. Soft”.
We had just returned from Black Friday shopping, an exercise taken for purely academic purposes. My daughter wanted to see all the Black Friday sales and shoppers, more for the thrill of it. Typically, it’s a banned shopping day in our household. I mean, what nutcase gets up to shop at 5 a.m.? Lots of people that I know. One friend hit the Wal-Mart in Fredericksburg, Va., and she still didn’t get the item she wanted. Another friend started shopping at 5 a.m., but online, spending $350 at CompUSA on rebate items. Geez. Get a life.
Take Back the Web
Well, I couldn’t resist, because this is so damn funny. Some guy from Massachusetts (or so says the WHOIS database) has used the Kill Bill movies as a nice motif for a website aimed at […]
Judge Cracks the Whip
Seeing as I covered Microsoft’s antitrust trial for about five years, when I worked as a reporter, new developments interest me. According to a Computerworld story, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly cracked the whip across Microsoft’s back.
Biggest problem: Compliance with a portion of the antitrust settlement for disclosing communications protocols, which have been a contentious issue since Microsoft agreed to disclose them; and it seems to me the company really doesn’t really want to comply with this portion of the settlement. I should point out that inclusion of the protocol licensing in the settlement wooed as many as half the 18 state litigants to join the Justice Department’s agreement.
Google: It’s Not About Search
These days, Google seems to be interested in just about everything—portals, search, VoIP, instant messaging, email, photos, blogging, maps, topography, Wi-Fi and NASA, just for starters. Google’s eclectic interests must aggravate Microsoft’s competitive analysis folks. Every week, someone asks me what any part of all this stuff has to do with search. After all, Google is a search company.
I disagree. Google no longer is just a search company, if it ever really was. Search is really a means to an end, and that end is the access to information. Looked at from this perspective, access to information, all of Google’s recent announcements make sense. And combined they foreshadow where the company is going and why Microsoft really should worry about Google.
Search as the New User Interface
In my next blog post, I plan to write about good design. As prelude, I offer my May 23, 2005, column for Betanews:
In 1984, Apple’s Macintosh introduced the world to the graphical user interface, eventually changing how people interact with computers. The GUI may not have been Apple’s idea—great credit there goes to the folks at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center—but the company did deliver the first meaningful, commercial product.
A Switcher Repents
Back in September, a friend lugged away the last of my Macs. I relinquished them following a July switch back to Windows. I determined to use Windows on a full-time basis, which suited my fickle mood and work situation. But the Macs are back, in a surprising return to previous enthusiasm. The decision is a personal one and does not reflect my work position with respect to covering Microsoft.
Microsoft’s approach to its MSN Spaces blogging service is what set me off. The service requires proprietary technologies to either view or post some content to MSN Spaces blogsites. I decided that going back to the Mac, which I had grown to miss over six months, best supported my philosophical position. The Internet is classic example of what kind of scale open, supported standards can create. Personally, Microsoft’s technological approach isn’t wholly consistent with my personal position.
What Google Desktop Search Means to Microsoft
Since I received a bunch a calls today about Google’s new desktop search utility, larger perspective is warranted. The browser wars really set the stage for the search competition underway between Microsoft and Google. While […]