Microsoft, since 1997, annually presents a very exclusive summit dedicated only to the most important CEOs around the planet, “Microsoft CEO Summit“. This year’s topic were dedicated, of course, about the recession and global crisis, and how those are impacting on technologies and companies.
The event took place a few days ago, May 19 – 21, at Microsoft Conference Center in Redmond. But if you are thinking that an event for around 100 people (over 105 attended) it shouldn’t sound like a big deal, well it is. Not only over 100 of the most important decisions-makers around the planet were there, they talk and discuss about their next strategies and even Bill Gates appeared in the sessions.
You won’t find much information about the event, that is completely closed for media or public. But you will find some short videos about what they’ve been discussing. Steve Ballmer talked about the state of innovation in technology and the future of IT industry, Bill Gates about the economic impact and some of the work that the “Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation” is doing.
And they gave a clear message about this crisis and technology, they all feel “optimistic” about what’s coming.
I’m sure you’ve seen it (or at least you received the video link). Microsoft released their vision about the future of technology. As they predicted, we will have millions of gadgets and cool stuff floating around the air and everywhere you look.
Of course, the Microsoft idea it’s related about all technologies that is currently using or investigating, like: Microsoft Surface, Seadragon and Second Light. And when is this faboulous future will be here? 2019. Yep, around 10 years from now we are all going to use these things, again, according to Microsoft.
It didn’t take long for some to be totally skeptic about this. So here’s a very funny video that was prepared using the same images from the original, enjoy:
Oh and in case you haven’t seen the original one, here it is. Enjoy it as well:
My opinion? They are always optimistics about these type of things, so we’ll be lucky if we can start testing around in some special places and special situations technologies like Microsoft Surface in about 5 to 7 years.
Microsoft has announced the availability of Visual Studio 2010 beta for public download. VS 2010 was made available to MSDN and TechNet users few days back and its now available for public download. Both MSDN/TechNet subscribers and the public are able to test VS 2010 Professional, Team Suite, Team Foundation Server and the .Net Framework 4.
Currently there has been no announcement of the shipping date of the final version but it will probably be int he final quarter of this year. Visual Studio 2010 ships in with lots of new features and changes. You can check out the complete list of changes here. VS 2010 also features better support for Silverlight and the Windows Presentation Foundation.
If you are interested in testing the new VS 2010 and .Net framework 4, then you can download them here.
If you are currently using a smartphone and running Windows Mobile 6 or higher, then it is time to head over to MyPhone. MyPhone is Microsoft’s new OTA backup system and it is now open in beta. You receive 200MB worth of free storage, which doesn’t seem like a lot, but it should be fine for emails, contact and calendars.
If your phone is already synced with an Exchange server then MyPhone isnt going to be able to work for you. Unlike most Microsoft products the price is free so why not head over and test it out!
So, as for most of Windows 7 unofficial builds, the Office 2010 Technical Preview has leaked through the web and hit several BitTorrent sites; available for the first time in x86 and x64 platforms.
This brand new suite will be available in 2010 and not before, so don’t get all that excited on having a final version hitting the market at Christmas, like Windows 7 will. But those two boys will have, indeed, a lot in common considering the images that leaked from the web. Let’s take a quick look.
Installation process: nothing new, the same procedure. Side note: Total space required for a default installation 1.8GB.
Word 2010 starting up. Hmmm… not sure about those colors being the right choice.
Word 2010. Yep, the same thing as Office 2007 at first glance.
That’s new. A left pane as a quick access for common places.
All products have the same usability, the same ribbons used in Office 2007 (including Outlook, that now does include the same ribbon) and with the left quick access new.
But, here’s an important thing that I’ve found. Outlook 2007 has a glitch when you are using it with Windows 7 taskbar, they are not fully compatible. Also, if you have any add-on for Outlook 2007 like Xobni (or even Microsoft’s Outlook Connector), and if you minimize the Window, you’ll see that the add-on feature from the bar disappears. With this version, you’ll have a nice Taskbar integration.
Seems that’s new Office will also bring the Web version of this suite. Microsoft is planning to ship “Office Web” at the same time, that will include Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote “in the clouds”.
So, you were expecting big changes in this version? Not me. The transition that some users made (and some of them are still struggling) from Office 2003 to Office 2007 was huge, there is no need to add more complexity when you also want to settle a fresh new operating system in the same year.
Do you remember the code name for Office 2007? Office 12. And this one is called Office 14. So, where’s the Office 13?… the number says it all.
Hotmail has now made its POP3 email feature available worldwide to all Hotmail accounts. POP3 also called Post Office Protocol version 3 is an Internet standard protocol used by local e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a remote server over a TCP/IP connection.
Enabling POP3 access from Hotmail allows you to easily access your emails using the e-mail software on your computer (like Thunderbird, Outlook) or mobile devices such as a Windows Mobile phone, iPhone, or BlackBerry.
Here are the email client settings you need for starting POP3
POP server: pop3.live.com (Port 995)
POP SSL required? Yes
User name: Your Windows Live ID (full email address)
Password: Hotmail or Windows Live password
SMTP server: smtp.live.com (Port 25 or 587)
Authentication required? Yes (same POP username and password)
TLS/SSL required? Yes
Microsoft it offering a free download of the E-book “Windows Vista Resource Kit” written by Mitch Tulloch, Tony Northrup, and Jerry Honeycutt with the Windows Vista Team. Microsoft Press Books is celebrating its 25th Anniversary of with this “Free E-book of the Month” offer. For downloading you need to sign in with your Windows Live ID and register with Microsoft Learning.
Some of the core areas covered in this book are exploit new Group Policy features, settings, and ADMX templates, administer disks, file systems, file sharing, search, and Internet Explorer, manage IPsec, IPv6, wireless, and remote connectivity.
In the words of John Cougar Mellencamp, both the commerical for Microsoft Songsmith and the number of parody tunes that have been released “hurt so good.”
The Songsmith commercial caused a ripple of laughter when the painful commercial made its rounds on the internet. Viewers lamented on the lack of acting as well as the blatent use of an Apple laptop throughout the entire promotion. You can vew the entire promotion here.
Recently, several Songsmith parodies of popular songs have been released using the Songsmith application.Both TechCrunch and This Week in Tech (TWiT) covered these interesting adaptions that almost appear to come from a bizarro world.
Here is “Roxanne” by The Police via Songsmith.
If you’d like to see other tunes mutilated by this Microsoft inception, visit the the article posted over on TechCrunch. Prepare to laugh, cry, or a mixture of both!
SnappyFingers is a new question and answer search engine that is slowly making waves in the search space. SnappyFingers currently has over 10 million questions in their database and has recently partnered with Kosmix in which you can see Snappy’s results within their searches.
SnappyFingers is a great place to come if you are looking to find the answers to the most basic of questions. Their search box is simple to use and users can just type in a question as if they were saying it out loud. This reminds me a little of Powerset in which was purchased by Microsoft for $100m about six months ago.
In terms of downside I mainly think that all comes from design. The design of SnappyFingers needs a huge amount of work. Currently the SnappyFingers seems to be set onto a fixed width, in which it really needs to be fluid. Additionally, the questions are actually quite hard to read and if the results were show in the same kind of way as Powerset or Google, then it would be much easier to scan the page looking for the answers you require. Finally the sidebar they are using is complete the wrong size for this type of site. A 300px sidebar is not needed, I’m sure 160px would be more than adequate.
I think SnappyFingers has a lot of potential, but I’m really not keen on the design and if I owned the company that would be the first thing I changed. Additionally, I’m not really sure where this company is going and what market they are trying to enter, because I know they are a question and answer search engine, but why would I use SnappyFingers over Yahoo Answers for example?
Microsoft has created what is undoubtedly the worst promotional piece for an application in their arsenal. While promoting Songtastic, they somehow find ways to hurt us visually by impersonating an Apple laptop as a PC with stickers, and audibly with the horrible singing done by these less than average performers. Either way it was payday for those actors, but I truly hope Microsoft does some reconsideration before releasing this video on to the masses.
If you can make it through this entire video, you might already be dead. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
I worked as a journalist through college, and some after I graduated, and even today I am still producing content for both online and offline projects. As such, nothing infuriates me more then bad journalism, and lack of fact checking. Now before I get blasted, yes I’ve made mistakes, but nothing on the scale of the U.S. economy.
Over the weekend, TechCrunch along with several other media sites, pointed out an incident with The Times reporting a story on Yahoo’s possible bedding of Microsoft with their search technology. For those of us with keen eyes in the industry, the story was missing something, something we just couldn’t put our finger on…perhaps facts. TechCrunch tore the article apart by negating the supposed “facts” of the story and left the article with no leg to stand on. The key to this was that the markets were not open, otherwise a reputable paper printing material like that would have surely made an impact.
Now today, another story comes out announcing another Yahoo buyout story, this time regarding two AOL mavericks, Johnathon Miller and Ross Levinsohn. The article was bogus, the story unconfirmed, later confirmed that while the two were indeed raising money, and while they were having chat with Microsoft and Yahoo, there was no intent to purchase. This time the Wall Street Journal took the brunt of the backlash, and this time people did lose money. Stock for Yahoo jumped 11.7% which resulted in a lot of unhappy people.
This reminds me of a Twitter statement @1938media made regarding those that relied on social media as the “source” for information. “Dopes!” I believe was the word he used. Personally, I don’t know where the story came from, but where was the fact checking? In the rush to be the first to be in-the-know, a lot of people were effected by this financially. I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to check facts and sources, and not always rely on the quick and easy. People need to use their own heads and thinks things through, interpret the information and make sound judgement.
Microsoft have now made the decision to turn the Live.com site into a social network that will compete directly with Facebook and Myspace.
Microsoft Windows Live senior director Ryan Gavin has outlined why he is excited about the raft of social networking improvement in the new software, admitting that this would have been a more appropriate time to launch the ‘Live’ brand.
Talking to TechRadar, Gavin expressed his belief that Windows Live was a step in the right direction in giving people a platform to bring all of their social interactions together on the web.
“When I think about what’s happening online today it still is really two things – what’s happening in my world and what’s happening in the world and fundamentally those two activities make up 65 per cent of online usage.
“What’s happening in my world is where Windows Live is – in the communications and sharing section that makes up 33 per cent of the time online and includes email, instant messaging and social networking. Social networking has come on very strong as the third leg of that stool.
Legacy
Hotmail and what was formely MSN instant messenger make up the cornerstone of Windows Live’s audience, but adding in the social networking aspect is of paramount importance to Gavin.
“Live has its base in mail and messaging with 460 million active users and 17 per cent of online time specifically in the UK which is quite staggering when you think about it.
“The lines between instant messaging, email and social networking are really being taken down; we’re thinking about these things less as discrete categories and more as integrated thing.
“When you look at how things have evolved it’s been an explosion in rich ways to communicate in the past few years and it’s also set up a new set of challenges.
“So there’s been an explosion of ways to communicate but there’s only one consumer at the centre of this with one list of friends to manage or one list of contacts and they are saying ‘help me manage that list.
Communications
“There are ways that I like to communicate and ways that I like to be communicated to. Tons of ways to get hold of someone but I don’t want to log into five accounts to find out if someone is trying to get hold of me and it’s the same with stuff like documents, data and pictures. This gets spread over several devices but you should be able to access it easily
“Finally there are applications and a truth in that which says when you think about consumer service no one company is going to build the end to end consumer value properly so you’d better have platform so that third parties can make that first party platform better.
“And because it’s my data when I leave I’d better be able to take it with me.”
Gavin believes that this update indicates a sea change for the software and web applications, admitting that the past confusion over the move away from brands like MSN and hotmail to the ‘Live’ name make a lot more sense with this raft of changes.
“In some ways this would have been the best time to launch the Live brand,” he adds.
Microsoft, since 1997, annually presents a very exclusive summit dedicated only to the most important CEOs around the planet, “Microsoft CEO Summit“. This year’s topic were dedicated, of course, about the recession and global crisis, and how those are impacting on technologies and companies.
I’m sure you’ve seen it (or at least you received the video link). Microsoft released their vision about the future of technology. As they predicted, we will have millions of gadgets and cool stuff floating around the air and everywhere you look.
So, as for most of Windows 7 unofficial builds, the Office 2010 Technical Preview has leaked through the web and hit several BitTorrent sites; available for the first time in x86 and x64 platforms.
SnappyFingers
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