Hello to all my loyal readers,

Over the next week I will be traveling to China for work. I will be posting on techrivet.com about my observations and thoughts on the experience.  It's gonna be a great trip; certainly for me and hopefully an interesting read for you.

I'd like to take this moment to recognize Microsoft, who I work for, and the forward thinking team and group I am part of.

I work for the Unlimited Potential Group.  We're focused on the emerging markets and bringing Microsoft technology to bear in the effort to raise everyone's quality of life.  To quote our mission statement: "Ultimately our mission is to enable sustained social and economic opportunity for those at the middle and bottom of the world’s economic pyramid—the next 5 billion people."

I won't be discussing what I am doing for Microsoft in China (although it is quite cool), but intend to focus on the personal experiences and people I meet.  I will of course be looking at it from a technical perspective whenever appropriate.  Hopefully it will keep you entertained.

So tune in.  I'll be posting here as often as I can, hopefully at least once per day and perhaps more than that.  I depart for China on the 19th of July and return on the 26th.

Target one of the most popular flash games of all time and have the developers make a new version in Silverlight instead.

Line Rider: http://linerider.com/play-line-rider-online

This is a good tactic but it is a small market segment.  But the segment is made up of early adopters which might be willing to advocate for its use.  The problem with the technology, even if it is superior, is that it is going up against a network effect already in place with Flash.

Well...go play the game, it's fun.

Hat tip: http://timheuer.com/blog/

Go Download It!

Just so you know, you need a beefy machine.

But OMG is it cool.  I'll play with it over the next day or two and let you all know what I think.  But here are some brief observations.

1. it's REAL time.  The planets move.

2. It's very very smooth.

3. The UI is incredibly intuitive. 

Here is a little guided tour for you of a simple zoom in to Saturn.  We start out fully zoomed out and looking at the constellation Leo in the center.

In we go, we see Regulus come into focus, one of the key stars of Leo.  37 Leonis is the second brightest in the middle top third of the picture.

Further in still too close now and Regulus has moved off the screen.  37 Leonis is just out of the picture above the center.

And now you can make out Saturn finally.

And there she is.

This little experience in and of itself was enjoyable.  This makes me want to go out and buy a machine for this software only.

This is a compelling reason to upgrade your system.

Free.

Probably available this month.

Made Robert Scoble cry.

WorldWide Telescope, created with Microsoft's high-performance Visual Experience Engine™, enables seamless panning and zooming across the night sky blending terabytes of images, data, and stories from multiple sources over the Internet into a media-rich, immersive experience.

Official WorldWide Telescope site: 

you can zoom in and zoom and zoom and zoom...

It stitches together views from all the best telescopes in the world...

It's "like a magic carpet ride".

Technology rocks.  We are living in the age of miracles.

About the Microsoft offer to buy Yahoo!

Nope.

Not gonna do it.

Go somewhere else to read about it.

...oh ok...since you forced me to.

Damn! but what a bold move!

It is a curious move though, in some regards because in many respects Microsoft and Yahoo have competing platforms: email, search, advertising.  But where the rubber meats the road in Internet superhighway is in the size (and quality) of audience.

Google has been able to charge a premium for its advertising because it has the largest audience.

This merger would put the combined Yahoo - Microsoft search engine market share at a near parity with Google.  Therefore they would be more able to compete in the market place.

It remains to be seen if they can successfully merge the two efforts successfully, not a simple task.

If you haven't seen it check this out.

What will Gates do next?

It's pretty funny.

Microsoft - Greg Era.

Up until today Microsoft has not had the benefit of Greg being onboard.

Now they do.

Huzzah!

I don't usually post personal information on the rivet, but I thought I'd post something about this.

I've been hired by Microsoft.

I'm going to be working in the Unlimited Potential Group.

What is Unlimited Potential?
It's about helping individuals and communities around the globe achieve their goals and dreams with relevant, accessible, and affordable technologies. Through innovative solutions and local partnerships that are transforming education, fostering local innovation, and enabling jobs and opportunities, our mission is to create a continuous cycle of sustained social and economic growth for everyone.

It's a great opportunity and I'm quite excited.

I am leaving my current company of 3.5 years with a little sadness.  Zango has been a great place to work; with a whole bunch of smart, motivated, nice people.  I wish I could have my cake and eat it too...

This looks very interesting.  A place for you to control your own medical records.

http://healthvault.com/

When it's your job to protect your family's health, you need every advantage. Imagine if you had a way to collect, store, and share the health information critical to your family's well-being.

HealthVault is the new and FREE way to do just that.

This is an interesting move by Microsoft, I think it is an astute marketing decision.  The concern over controlling your health care and the growing technical competency of the general users...the timing seem fairly on the mark.

And by Sa-weet I mean horrible.

And that's why everyone who's in knows.
It's also the best DOS to run with Windows.

My eyes they're bleeding...the pain.

The Graphical Shell, do tell.
The mystery's gone, go on.

We'll test the upgrade Big Time...

Whichever marketing department / company / high-school-drama-department thought of this ad should be summarily shot to prevent any further damage to the human collective hive mind.

They sure on their last legs those scrappy kids from Redmond.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2163005,00.asp

key graph

The install base of Windows computers this coming 12 months will reach 1 billion," Ballmer told the group. "If you stop and just think about that, parse that for a second, by the end of our fiscal year '08, there will be more PCs running Windows in the world than there are automobiles, which is at least to me kind of a mind-numbing concept.

Unbelievable. That's 1 windows installation for every 6 people in the world. Does that count the illegal copies? Does that count active versions or just all copies sold? Is Windows 3.1 in those figures? 95? I'd be ok if they are counting 98, NT, XP and Vista.

Quite an accomplishment

The closest thing we have in the tech/geek world resembling a world sport is bashing Microsoft.  There are sites dedicated to it, world-wide efforts to bring and end to its products, bias that runs deeper and stronger the geekier you get.

In a way to gain street cred in the tech world you need to hate MS.

But here is something that MS does better than practically anyone else: It knows how to support independent developers (via Sawickipedia.com).

The Sawicki references a Scobleizer post talking about how Apple is playing true to type and how this may jeopardize its long term strategies. Why? At least in part because [Apple] told developers to go pound sand.

The one piece of this pie that I'd like to add is the fact Visual Studio is the best IDE on the market and has been for a decade. They Visual Studio Group at MS has consistently produced a high quality product. The MSDN program and associated sites, Channel 9, all the team blogs...Microsoft knows how important the developer is and wants to make sure their needs are met.

We're wrong and MS is doomed

Now for a countering opinion I send you over to someone with almost the same weight as Scoble: Joel on Software - How Microsoft Lost the API War. In which he basically states that the change to .Net has removed the primary advantage that MS had which was the desktop as a programming environment.  Now that everything is migrating to the web what does it matter the underlying technology.

My opinion is that Microsoft appreciates the developer more than most of its competitors.  And in the long run this will result in continued strength in the developer community maybe not dominance anymore, but still a strong presence.

Is there a cooler conference to attend than TED?  I gotta get there one of these days.

Semantic connections between pictures.  All the pictures online interconnected.  Your picture that you upload could immediately get enriched with all the data, images, information, perspective, beauty...everything of all the other pictures of the same place.

Truly incredible.

Go here to try it FOR YOURSELF! [photosynth]

This technology along with the recently released surface from Microsoft sure makes me wonder if the king is truly dead.  It sure doesn't look like it to me.

If you haven't seen this yet go and waste some time and watch it.

Bill and Steve

techRivet.com has posted several articles on new interfaces focusing on the new multi-touch technologies: [here's the list]

And now the godzilla has entered the market. Microsoft: Surface.

Double Secret Probation

In all the speculation that the computer is leaving the desktop and migrating to the web. And with all the hype around how Google is positioned better for the future with its business based in the web app market. And with how Microsoft has struggled to move in that direction to head off Google. Along comes this

This is right up Microsofts forte'. It exposes the weakness in Googles business plan. If...and it is a big if...the desktop does not move to the web, but instead moves to an integration-within-our-environment application...well who is in the catbird seat now?

But then I guess Google could just buy out Perceptive Pixel and all that would be solved for them. Right?

Surprise turns to outright astonishment

It is also astonishing in two respects.

1. How under wraps Microsoft has kept this
2. How their timing appears to be very good in this space (unlike many others recently)

Technology continues apace. We have NO IDEA what we will be doing with it in 5 years time. This is only a glimpse into the future

...and Ray Kurzweil continues to say I told you so

Well not just ponies.  Good video from the Stanford Business School, about his perspective on Microsoft - Google - and the future and all that.

http://zdnet.com.com/1606-2_2-6167775.html?tag=nl.e622

Go watch it.

I was curious if Google and Microsoft Live Search were biasing their results for..well let us just say less than friendly searches.  For example would the results for "google sucks" be different on both search engines.  Well of course the results are different, but so what?  What we really want to know is does the difference hold any signifigance?

read more after the jump...

I've now had the discussion a few times over the last few months - will MS as the computing standard be toppled any time soon - and so I figure it's worth talking about here.

The answer is - it is the standard and will continue to be so for at least the next 10-15 years. The reason being that there is a whole generation of IT folks who have been raised on MS software. They know it, they can hire for it and their corporate users are comfortable with it. Is it perfect? Nope but it works and to paraphrase Ross Perot - no one will get fired supporting MS software. Sorry Linux and Apple fans - MS has one. Sorry Google fans - there's no support infrastructure for Google. Now a generation from now things can change but that's a lot of lifetimes in terms of how technology works.

Now the home front is an entirely different battle - as computing morphs into the CE realm the OS fades into the background. Seriously who cares or knows what OS is running their home stereo? Or their TV? With the launch of Apple TV and XBOX 360 computing is evolving more and more into devices where functionality - ie. what can i do with this device - drives the usage decision not the OS. And on the home front no one knows who's going to win. But don't count MS out with the success of XBOX 360 - and it has won the gen 3 advanced console game don't let PS3 fans tell you otherwise - MS has an interesting hedge on the next generation of computing.

Holy Toledo!

1.5 Billion Dollars. One point Five Billllion Dollars!

Microsoft get's fined 1.5 BILLION dollars: read this at ZDNet

A federal jury in San Diego has ordered Microsoft to pay $1.5 billion to Alcatel-Lucent in a patent dispute over MP3 audio technology used in Windows.

In its verdict, the jury assessed damages based on each Windows PC sold since May 2003. The case could have broader implications, should Alcatel-Lucent pursue claims against other companies that use the widespread MP3 technology.

This is an interesting verdict for several reasons.

1. This is merely the end of the beginning not the beginning of the end. I expect Microsoft to appeal this decision for years.
2. I wonder if Alcatel-Lucent will use this as a precendent setting event to go after some other companies.
3. I wonder what sort of license agreement Microsoft actually has if they LOST this suit. Obviously it isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
4. Is this going to be an impetus for Microsoft to extend some support for ogg vorbis?

Again, wow!