Tag Archives | Microsoft

Microsoft’s Latest Innovation…T-Shirts!

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 7, 2008 at 12:32 am

Softwear by Microsoft

A billion people may use Microsoft products, but until now, just about nobody has worn them. All that changes–maybe–starting December 15th, when the company’s retro-themed Softwear by Microsoft T-shirts hit the market. Including some designs by rapper Common, the line celebrates the much-missed era when floppy disks were actually floppy and 640KB did indeed feel like all the memory anybody would ever need. Here’s a little fashion show of the initial shirts, which come in four sizes: Basic, Home, Business, and Ultimate. (Kidding!) 

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State of the Browser Betas: A Technologizer Cheat Sheet

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 4, 2008 at 12:02 pm

cheatsheetI’m hesitant to make any bold predictions about what 2009 will hold for technology, but this one seems profoundly safe: a lot of Web browser upgrades will ship. That’s because new versions of the current big five–Chrome, Firefox, IE, Opera, and Safari–are all in various stages of progress. And prerelease versions all except Safari are available for download right now. After the jump, a quick guide to what’s up with each of them. If you’ve been using any (or all!) of them, let us know what you think…

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Windows Vista SP2: On Its Way

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 2, 2008 at 10:29 pm

vistabandaidJust a quick note to make sure that you Windows Vista users out there know that Microsoft has announced it’ll release a preview version of Windows Vista Service Pack 2 on Thursday. (The final version is due in the first half of 2009.) ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley has a good writeup (incorporating a list of the service pack’s tweaks from Kevin Tofel). And Ed Bott has an interesting post that shows what the serivice pack cycle for Windows has been like historically (bottom line: the gap between Windows XP SP2 and SP3 was abnormally long and Vista SP2 gets things back on track).

Should you install the preview version of Vista SP2? If you’re sensibly cautious, it’s entirely rational not only to skip the preview but to give the final version a few weeks in the wild before you install it, just so other folks suffer the consequences of any glitches. (Remember, Microsoft was forced to withdraw Vista SP1 after its initial release to fix some unanticipated problems after the fact.)

Me? I’ll probably install the preview right away, but I’m crazy. And my brand-new Lenovo ThinkPad with Vista SP1 just doesn’t work very well; I figure that SP2 can’t make things much worse, and might help. I’ll let you know if I discover anything interesting…

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Windows Live: It’s Live! I Think! Partially! Stay Tuned for More!

Posted by Harry McCracken on December 2, 2008 at 12:48 pm

windowslive1Here’s an undeniable fact about Microsoft: It’s congenitally incapable of springing surprises on anyone. When Google unleashes a new service or improvements to an existing one, it’s typically with no warning, and the new stuff is available immediately or within a few hours to all comers. Microsoft, on the other hand, tends to give advance warning. And then talk publicly about a private beta that isn’t available to everyone. And then do a formal unveiling. Followed by actual availability. Sometimes of part but not all of what was announced.

That’s certainly the situation with the new “Wave 3” upgrades to the company’s Windows Live services. They’ve been public knowledge since at least early this year. Then there was an official announcement three weeks ago. And today the company has announced that the first of the new services–Wave 1 of Wave 3, I guess–are rolling out to everyone over the next twenty-four hours. With more to come.

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Microsoft’s Black Friday Black Eye

Posted by David Worthington on December 1, 2008 at 4:26 pm

cashbackIf Microsoft wants to become a serious Web competitor to Google it should stop tripping over its own feet. On Black Friday, it was offering more apologies than bargains after embarrassing technical glitches incapacitated the company’s Live Search Cashback, scuttling its initiative to gain a larger share of the search market by giving searchers discounts on products they find through Live Search.

Apparently, someone in Redmond neglected to remember that Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year. The Cashback site was unable to cope with the heavy volume, and some customers–ones that were able to access the site at all, that is–were left with the wrong amount of cash back credited to their accounts.

One of the biggest snafus occurred when customers that were trying to take advantage of a generous 40 percent discount on HP products received as little as 3 percent cash back posted to their account, according to News.com, which also reported that Microsoft apoligized to shoppers who encountered Cashback glitches . A spokesperson told Technologizer that customers interested in following up on their Cashback rebate should contract Microsoft Live Search support to have their accounts credited.

The company’s initiative to compensate people for using its search engine began in May. Since that time, Microsoft’s share of the search business has fallen, according to multiple surveys. That’s not to say that the Live Search Cashback program is a bad idea–Microsoft is an underdog, and it needs to be creative and scrappy.

However, it had an opportunity to benefit from word of mouth had its Black Friday promotion gone well, and its failure to execute has left it at best no better off than it would have been on any given Friday.

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A Zune Phone? Likely.

Posted by David Worthington on November 24, 2008 at 3:39 pm

It is plausible that rumors about Microsoft being close to announcing its answer to the iPhone are true. Microsoft must maintain parity with Apple, and its acquisition of Sidekick creator Danger Inc. has given it the industrial design known-how to get the job done.

UK-based technology news journal The Inquirer broke the news that Microsoft will supposedly be unveiling the device at the 3GSM conference in February. The Inquirer also reported that Nvidia has been tapped to supply its graphics chip set.

I won’t speak to the veracity of the report, but it does contain very specific information, and that itself is compelling. There is always the potential for a red herring, but there is a solid chance that Redmond has something up its sleeve. It has matched the Apple iPod line up product by product, and has attempted to differentiate itself on price and features.

Microsoft’s lack of an iPhone alternative is a glaring omission, and the company needs a smart phone if it is to remain a viable alternative to Apple. The iPhone is popular among consumers and is gaining a foothold in the enterprise.

CEO Steve Ballmer would argue that the Windows Mobile platform has the potential to gain a preponderance of market share, but thus far it has not, and it lags far behind Symbian. Microsoft has relied on its partners to develop compelling devices, but few — if any — stand out.

It needs to step up the user experience of its Windows Mobile platform. Meaning, it needs to ship Windows Mobile 6.5 and work diligently to get 7.0 out the door.

A source at Microsoft tells me that a new wave of Windows Live services will launch next week. Perhaps those services will provide a glimpse into what its Internet-enabled smart phone could offer.

With all of its stars aligned and by tapping the know-how of Danger Inc, the creators of the famed Sidekick, Microsoft could produce an interesting product. Microsoft did put a heavy hitter (Roz Ho, former head of its Mac business unit) behind its efforts to absorb Danger into its Entertainment and Devices division.

The question is when would it ship? And who knows what Apple and others will have out by then. Microsoft can’t always be playing catchup if it wants to succeed in the phone biz.

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Zune Pass Update is Just A Band-Aid, Nothing More

Posted by Ed Oswald on November 24, 2008 at 2:52 pm

Ed Bott’s take on Microsoft’s new Zune Pass update over at ZDNet is glowing. But there’s no part of it that I agree with. Where do we start?

Essentially, the price of the subscription service stays the same at $15, but now you are given 10 free “credits” to keep some of the tracks you have downloaded.

This means the subscription portion of the service costs an extra $5 per month. Nothing really new here: Yahoo was offering a $5 a month subscription service years ago, so its not like this price is some novel idea. Zune was overpriced to begin with.

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Kumo? C’mon, Microsoft!

Posted by Harry McCracken on November 24, 2008 at 3:36 am

I don’t think this is even a rumor yet so much as a random shard of speculation, but it’s all over the Web: Folks are wondering whether Microsoft is planning to rebrand Live Search, its confusingly-named search engine, as Kumo, a moniker it apparently controls.

I’m usually a skeptic when it comes to attempts to improve something’s chances of success by changing its name–especially when that something is owned by Microsoft, a company with a long history of replacing one clunky name with another when the real problem is that the product needs work. In this case, though, I wouldn’t argue the point–the search engine’s name is such a failure on so many levels that starting over again might make sense.

(Side note: I’m trying to remember whether the full name of the engine is “Windows Live Search”–it’s not a great sign when it’s hard to even recall a service’s name–but I can’t check right now. I’m still in Beijing, at the airport, and China, or at least the Wi-Fi network here, won’t let me get to live.com.)

Kumo apparently means “spider” or “cloud” in Japanese. (That’s according to the current scuttlebutt, and I’m not sure whether it has two meanings or nobody’s sure what the meaning is–and Google Translate doesn’t know it.) If so, it’s not without logic, but I hope the speculation is wrong. It’s a pretty lifeless name.

LiveSide, which set off the current round of Kumowatching, brings up an important point: There’s a pretty good name for a search site that Microsoft might be able to acquire if wanted to. That name would be Yahoo…

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The New Xbox Experience Makes Life Easier, Sells Things

Posted by Jared Newman on November 21, 2008 at 8:18 am

xbox360Xbox 360 users got a thorough reskinning of their console’s dashboard this week. The one conclusive opinion I can offer is that “The New Xbox Experience” is markedly smoother and shinier than the old one. Other than that, I’m still debating whether this is actually a slicker way to navigate my console of choice or a veiled attempt to sell me more downloadable content. After the jump, a breakdown of the new features.

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Ballmer: Microsoft Would Still Do a Yahoo Search Deal

Posted by David Worthington on November 19, 2008 at 5:44 pm

At Microsoft’s annual shareholder’s meeting today, CEO Steve Ballmer has put the kibosh on speculation that the company will resurrect its bid to acquire Yahoo. However, Ballmer did suggest that a search deal was possible.

Microsoft’s single-minded pursuit to acquire Yahoo never made much sense to me. Sure, it would obtain substantial search market shareover night, but it would still have to claw its way up to compete with Google. Even when the two companies are combined, Google still holds the upper hand in market share.

There is also a great deal of overlap between Microsoft and Yahoo products, and there would certainly be a culture clash among employees. Brain drain is another issue. If Microsoft were to buy Yahoo today, it would not be obtaining the talent that it would have just a few months back. It would also be costly to retain people–even its own employees, many of whom would be hesitant to spend their time at Microsoft getting caught up in turf wars.

A merger with Yahoo would distract Microsoft from important initiatives that are core to its future success, such as project Oslo, an multi-product effort to steer developers toward model driven development and service oriented architecture, as well as continued investment in the .NET Framework.

Microhoo makes no sense for Microsoft, but a search deal does-–especially now that Yahoo has shied away from its partnership with Google. AND it could still happen; Ballmer never backs off.

Aside from Microsoft, who is going to be Yahoo’s white knight now? AOL? As multiple pundits have said, that would be like tying two bricks together to see if they could float.

Yahoo needs to retool and find a successful business model to become a profitable–albeit smaller–company. Microsoft can reap the benefits of Yahoo’s search presence without stepping into that mud pit, and Yahoo can score some much needed cash. Microsoft needs to do something different to compete with Google; it can’t even pay people to use Live Search. The only people who I know that use Live Search work at Microsoft, and that’s partly because they were scolded and ordered to use it. (Word is Ballmer excoriated employees for using Google.)

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