Microsoft Archive
These posts are all in this one category.
The screenshot to the right is from a brand new Lenovo N100 laptop (formally IBM) .
Why do hardware manufactures ship machines with such abuse of the Start Menu?
"Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded."
- New Yorker, 1943
I hope Windows Vista gets a major overhaul in this area, and not just a way to search this mess. Companies should be disciplined for littering our Start Menus like this.
Wondering what Microsoft is showing off at Mix 06 in Vegas this week?
Thanks to a friend at Microsoft you can watch it live:
Watch Mix '06 Video Stream (Windows Media)
Not seeing anything? Check the schedule for the next session.
My friend strongly recommend tuning in at around 11:30 PST (2:30 EST) for an unexpected and very cool demonstration from Yahoo.
If you miss the live video stream then check out the daily re-caps from the Mix 06 blog.
Lots of changes for the next version of Office. One of the big ones is removal of the menu bar in favor of something called a ribbon.
Of course these new images might not reflect the final design.
More screens:
Like any big change, this is going to take some getting used to, but it's obvious a lot of usability research has gone into the new design. It's yet to be seen if Microsoft is going to reflect these UI changes across the rest of their product line.
From George Ou at ZDNet:
From March 2005 to September 2005 10 vulnerabilities were published for Microsoft Internet Explorer, 40 for Mozilla Firefox.
In April-September timespan there were 6 exploits for MSIE, 11 for Firefox.
Sidenote... I was an intern on the IE security team back in college. The security tab UI is still the same as what I designed back then for IE5.
According to the rumor mill, the next version of Windows, currently codenamed Longhorn, will be officially called Windows Vista.
I'm guessing the guy who did Microsoft's product naming finally retired (or maybe Google hired him), and it seems Microsoft replaced him with his younger, more clever brother who can think of monikers beyond his older brother's limit of two seemlingly random letters.
Old and busted
Windows NT, Windows ME, Windows XP
New hotness
Windows Vista
If this name is announced, I'm guessing a release date will also be announced.
After Gnomedex I visted friends at Microsoft, and took a tour of the Microsoft Museum. I visit my friends at Microsoft about once every year or so, but the museum has always been closed for renovations (got to keep it up to date, right?). Finally it was open while I was there and I these are the the photos.
If you're interested in photos of the rest of the Microsoft campus, check out my other album, Microsoft Campus Tour, which I took on a previous visit.
Microsoft is giving a demo of Longhorn and showing off, for the first time in public, the new Internet Explorer 7.0. Of course, it has an RSS reader/aggrigator built in - but that's not the cool part. The cool part is that the RSS system is part of Longhorn, so any Windows application has access to the data. This means that you don't even need to use IE to use the feeds and you can use 3rd party programs that can take advantage of the feeds. Why is that cool? Keep reading...
The first real IE 7 screenshot? It's showing an RSS feed. Where's the tabs?
The first demo they subscribed to a calendar of events, and if the times, dates, or locations change, your calendar is automatically updated.
The next demo is a screensaver that uses a photoblog RSS feed for the photos and captions.
The final demo showed off "lists" - and the example they used involved subscribing to friends' Amazon wishlists, and showed how you can sort and view the data using a sample DHTML-built application.
Finally they announced that their new standards would be released through Creative Commons, to which Larry Lessig had a video announcment saying how pleased he was with Microsoft in doin this.
The new standard - Windows RSS Platform Architecural Overview - Simple List Extensions specification - will be published on the IE Blog soon and Scoble uploaded an hour long (!) video to Channel 9.
The Internet connection is flooded with 300 people all trying to update their blogs at once so I don't have the photos just yet, but they are uploading.
Scoble is live-blogging Gnomedex too.
Just two weeks until Gnomedex, the annual meeting of geeks lead by the lockergnome himself, Chris Pirillo. The subject matter is blogging and everything that revolves around it.
Some cool things:
- It's sold out!
- Over half the audience blogs (the list)
- Presenters include Dave Winer, Steve Gilmore, Steve Rubel, Phillip Torrone, Robert Scoble, Marc Canter, John Battelle, Dan Gilmor, and may other A-list bloggers, editors, writers, and inventors. It's like the superbowl of blogging.
For people going:
- The .NET Guy is getting people together for dinner on Thursday. Contact him if you are interested.
- Robert Scoble may be hosting a camping trip after Gnomedex.
- I'll be staying at the Sixth Avenue Inn.
- I'll be in Seattle June 22 till Tuesday, June 28.
- On Monday and/or Tuesday, I'll be visiting friends at Microsoft. Major Nelson, John Porcaro, Dennis, Dave, etc - I expect cool demos that I can't talk about here! <g>
Image is from the great Podbat Blog.
In the early 1990s, Carlos Armando Amado, a grad student from Stanford, created an Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that could import data from a Microsoft Access database. Mr. Amando approached Microsoft to license his spreadsheet.
Microsoft had already been working on such a feature, so they turned him down.
Amando applied for a patent in 1990, and eventually got it. More than decade later, he took Microsoft to court for violating his patent. The US District Court of Central California agreed and ordered Microsoft to pay Amando $8.96 million.
So the moral of the story is - patent everything you create, no matter how trite you think it might be - and then offer to license it to Microsoft. If they ever build something like it - easy money, right?
My guess is that eventually users will choose Microsoft's or Apple's operating system just like we choose Coke or Pepsi in any restaurant today.
Restaurants today offer Coke or Pepsi, but never both. Deals and/or discounts insure that. The same thing will happen with operating systems.
When you buy a Gateway, it might come with Windows.
When you buy a Dell, it might come with OSX.
It's that simple, and it's something you don't really even give much thought to anymore.
And if you're in a bind, the "other" OS will be offered as "add-on" - installed to run in a virtual machine, but you won't care, because thanks to abstraction layer frameworks, most programs will be available for both systems, and will look and act nearly the same in both.
Why don't control panel programs and property sheets show up in the taskbar?
This one of my many Windows peeves.
In my brain, if it gets a Window, it should be on the taskbar. I don't care how it was coded.
Microsoft's new map service called MSN Virtual Earth looks pretty cool:
Click for a larger image:
![050523-msn1-thumb[1].jpg](http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/img/050523-msn1.jpg)
SimCity view!
It's not available until this summer, but there's a great 30 minute (!) video of the dev team showing off the new features.
From ActiveWin:
I love my wireless keyboard and mouse, and my wireless XBOX controllers, but I haven't needed a game controller for my PC since the 1980's.At E3, Microsoft will unveil a mock-up of a universal gaming controller that works with both the Xbox 360 and PCs. The controller, says Microsoft, will provide a consistent experience across all Microsoft gaming platforms.
How about keyboard/mouse support for the next XBOX? Then I wouldn't as bad at Halo 2...
Microsoft is finally having some cool competitions. In this one, whoever gets the most .NET questions right gets $25,000.
Sign up at LastDeveloper.com
UPDATE: You had to sign up by May 2, 2005, which was earlier this week... Good job Microsoft promoting this competition before the sign up date. At least update the web site now that the date has past.
Word is that these image were leaked by MTV and the press... Microsoft doesn't comment on rumors, and officially the next generation XBOX hasn't even been formally announced yet, so they're being hush-hush... for now....
The next generation XBOX will debut Thursday, May 12, at 9:30 p.m (every time zone), on MTV, in a big media event with Elijah Wood and the Killers.