Microsoft Chooses The A-Bomb
The final Windows Phone 7 software has been released to the phone makers. Next month you can drop by your local carrier's mall kiosk and grab a new phone and a Starbucks. Although Microsoft would love to take on the iPhone, it's more likely to try and grab some of Android's surging market share.
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A Bolder, Brassier VMware Emerges From The Cloud
Around the breakfast table at VMworld, attendees from places like Calgary, Little Rock and Charleston, S.C., remarked on how Ubuntu, Microsoft and Red Hat were barely visible at the show this year. Microsoft had a little booth I never succeeded in spotting; Red Hat had a 10-by-10 on the perimeter. It all suddenly seemed so obvious.
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Google Vs. Oracle: Microsoft Wins?
Oracle, now the keeper of the Java flame through its acquisition of Sun Microsystems, has decided that Google has sullied Java through its modifications for the Android platform. For that, Google must pay, and it must pay Oracle. At least that's the way Oracle sees things.
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Windows Phone 7 Performance Promising
For the early part of its life, Windows Mobile was one of the more powerful mobile platforms, yet it was never known as being the most spry. Microsoft set out to fix that with Windows Phone 7 and early indications are it has succeeded.
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Windows Phone 7 Gets $500 Million In Support
After Windows Vista, Microsoft had a bit of a rebirth with Windows 7. That momentum is carrying forward into Windows Phone 7. Microsoft has committed over half a billion dollars to help launch the platform this fall. The funds are spread across marketing, developers, handset makers and likely carriers to ensure the platform gets the largest smartphone platform launch in history. Will that translate into sales for the platform?
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Good Ideas Make Good Products
In a recent blog entry, Om Malik argues that Apple's success comes from the fact that it doesn't target markets, but instead makes products with people in mind. I don't think it's the targeting that makes the products successful, but the ideas they embody and the insight of the people who built them.
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Windows Phone 7 Boasts 300,000 Developer Downloads
We are just a few months away from Windows Phone 7 launching. It is key the operating system and hardware perform well, but today, having only that doesn't mean much. Third party apps are at least as important, if not more so, than the core phone itself. If only 10 percent of those that have downloaded the developer kit write an app, Microsoft's mobile OS will have a decent application library in no time.
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Intel Plus McAfee Equals ... Huh?
We all know Intel for the processors that drove Windows to its world domination, but lately the company has been having problems in downsizing its hardware technology for the red-hot mobile market. With its bid to buy McAfee, Intel seems to be trying to expand outside its core competencies. I can't see how this will turn out well.
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Microsoft Breakup Won't Happen
An article at Forbes.com argues that Microsoft might be able to compete better if it broke into smaller companies. It's an interesting thought experiment, but it's not going to happen.
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RightScale Scales Up To 1.3 Million Servers In View
RightScale announced a little while ago that it was managing over one million servers in the cloud through its management platform. That would be a million virtual, not physical, machines, but the number is still impressive. Maybe the return on cloud computing lies in supplying front-end management as much as in infrastructure.
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Big Tech Stifles Innovation
As I read an article about small companies versus big ones, it occurred to me that large technology companies often don't get credit for one of their biggest services to the enterprise: stopping innovation.
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Will Intel Kill Wintel?
Although IBM may have committed the original sin that allowed Microsoft to dominate the desktop, it couldn't have stayed on top for so long without Intel. Windows is so tied to Intel's CPU that the industry came up with "Wintel" to describe the symbiotic pairing. But now, Intel is becoming a player in Microsoft's undoing.
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Advertisers Nixed Browser Privacy
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal reported that Microsoft originally had plans for aggressive privacy protections by default in Internet Explorer 8. That was before Microsoft’s own advertising group, among others, got wind of the plan.
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Microsoft Phone Idea Is Nuts
Over at Ars Technica, Peter Bright has proposed that if Microsoft really wants to succeed at Windows Phone 7, the company should build its own phone. That idea is, in a word, nuts. It doesn't address any of the real problems that Microsoft has in this market.
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Microsoft's Free Phone Giveaway
Wow, Microsoft will be giving away a lot of phones this fall, about 90,000 of them. That's one way to make sure that Windows Phone 7 gets off to a fast start, for both users and developers. Given that Microsoft is far behind, it's something they need to do if they want to compete against iPhone and Android.
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Google Docs Gets Smartquote Controls
Google on Tuesday is adding two new features to Google Docs: The ability to translate documents into one of 53 languages and the ability to remove smartquotes.
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Microsoft Wants Free Testers
Writing software is hard, but testing software and finding bugs can be harder. That's why companies like Google and Mozilla pay upwards of a $3,000 bounty to anyone who reports a serious security bug in their browsers. Don't expect anything more than an attaboy if you find a hole in Internet Explorer, though.
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Microsoft's Matrix For The Web
Despite the fact that the Web has been around for just about twenty years, getting started with a web site still isn't anywhere near as easy as one would expect. Over that time many tools have been released to make getting a website started much easier, and now you can add WebMatrix, a new tool from Microsoft, to that list.
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Can Microsoft Turn It Around?
The past few months haven't seen much good news for Microsoft. Between the death of Kin phones, layoffs, and the European plans that could hurt their overseas sales, it can’t be a happy time in Redmond. How long can this go on?
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Windows Mobile's Lost Generation of Users
Steve Ballmer apologized to its partners during Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference saying that the mobile platform missed out on a "whole generation of users." It is evident Microsoft recognizes its mistakes with the mobile market. The question is, will they learn from them?
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I Have Broken My Printer Addiction
There is a printer sitting in my office, but the last two times I've gone to use it I've found that the ink cartridge isn't working. The ink clotted in the print-head from lack of use, since I only can work up the courage to power it up about once every four months. I'm not sure it will ever get another chance.
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Just Make It Sound Good
People love a good rumor. Since we're in the technology business, juicy stories about Lindsay Lohan, LeBron James, or Lady Ga Ga don’t quite fit in. That doesn’t stop some tech stories from repeating things that seem just as crazy, and are totally unsupported by any facts.
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Kin Fallout Gets Ugly
The aftermath of the Kin debacle at Microsoft doesn't seem to be doing a whole lot for employee morale. Those with inside knowledge have started disclosing the circumstances within Microsoft during the development of the Kin and after it was dropped. Many are former Kin team members and just about all are doing so unofficially.
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Monopolies Could Kill Microsoft
After a disastrous Kin experience, Microsoft is doubling down on the launch of Windows Phone 7 this fall. The question is whether the same problems that plagued the Kin might also torpedo Windows Phone 7. One of those problems is something that used to help Microsoft: monopolies.
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Kin's Fate Foretells Windows Phone 7's Future?
On Wednesday Microsoft killed the Kin a mere 48 days after launch. It makes you wonder how much Microsoft will be behind Windows Phone 7.
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Notify The Next Of Kin
There's a business strategy for new products that goes by the name of "fail fast, fail cheap". Perhaps that's the reason that Microsoft is pulling the plug on its Kin phones after just two months and one desperate price cut. But they didn't fail fast, and I doubt Kin's failure will be cheap.
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Microsoft's Slow Path To IE 9
The current round of the browser wars has been marked by near constant upgrades and innovations (typified by Google's five updates of Chrome in less than two years). All of which makes Microsoft's slow progress to IE 9 somewhat surprising.
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Windows Phone 7 Missing A Number Of Features
Windows Phone 7 is nearing "gold" status so they can release it to the carriers and manufacturers for final testing and device production. There are a number of features that simply won't be in the initial release. Will it matter or is the target market for the device less discerning than the smartphone enthusiast?
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Is Silverlight A Dead End?
When Microsoft released Silverlight in 2007, it was widely seen as an attack on Adobe's Flash player. Silverlight has come a long way since then, adding lots of features in version 4.0 that was just released in April. One thing that it hasn't done, though, is kill Flash. If anything, the predator is now suffering from friendly fire at the hands of its own company.
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Microsoft's Ad-Serving Machine
Let's face it, Microsoft has an uphill battle in jump-starting their morbid mobile strategy. The early peeks at Windows Phone 7 show that it may be able to compete as a mobile platform. Assuming, of course, that Microsoft doesn't screw up some other aspect.
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Desktops Won't Die
So this week a writer at Slate says that "Soon there will be no reason to have a big, boxy computer on your desk." I think what he really was trying to say was that the days of full-sized keyboards and monitors is over, since most desktop PCs have long since migrated under the desktop. Still, I think he's wrong.
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Google-Disclosed Hole Being Exploited
Less than a week after Google security researcher Tavis Ormandy disclosed a security problem with the Windows Help application, attackers are exploiting the hole on Windows XP. Their work was simple since he provided proof-of-concept code.
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Loose Google Lips Can Sink Ships
Security researchers at major companies are usually very responsible about disclosing vulnerabilities. Last week a Google researcher did something very irresponsible though, and it may affect security in your company.
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A Bing Browser-Buying Bid Busts
Microsoft has started to wind down its Bing Cashback program. Introduced in May 2008, Cashback was one of Microsoft's ploys to buy search share for Bing so that it could compete with Google. All cashback offers are done at the end of July, and users have a year after that to claim their money.
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Who Doesn't Like The Ribbon?
When Windows users get together, it's never hard to find some topics to gripe about. Last weekend at a neighborhood party, our geeky party conversations turned to Microsoft Office and its polarizing Ribbon user interface.
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Google Blames Windows For Its Own Mistakes
This week's word is that Google is in the process of dumping Microsoft Windows. Employees have the choice of Linux or Mac; any new use of Windows has to be approved at the CIO level. The policy was apparently triggered by Google's Chinese hacker attack revealed in January. That's a lame excuse.
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Microsoft Seeds The Windows Phone Games Market
Windows Phone needs a shot in the arm to spur consumer interest. Windows Mobile 6.5 isn't exactly a media darling and WP7 hasn't launched yet. To help Microsoft has commissioned a company to write at least twenty casual entertainment games, so things like puzzles and brain teasers seem to be the main focus. Will it make any difference?
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Silent Security Fixes Are A Calculated Risk
Recently, the folks at Core Security noticed that Microsoft has been delivering more fixes during patch day than they have documented in their security bulletins. It's great that Microsoft is fixing more security issues, but when they're not documented the IT department's job could become even more challenging.
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[Updated] 30 Million Windows Phone 7 Units In 2011
Microsoft certainly isn't planning to slowly gain market share when it launches Windows Phone 7 this fall. At a ReMIX conference in France yesterday a slide was presented that claimed 30 million Windows Phone 7 devices would be sold in 2011 worldwide. That is no small feat.
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Management Shake Up At Microsoft Mobile Division
It is pretty clear that things still aren't going particularly well within Microsoft's entertainment and devices group. This group contains the X-Box, Zune and Windows Phone product groups. While X-Box itself is doing well, retaining a respectable second place in the gaming console wars, Windows Mobile hasn't fared so well and Zune continues to be an afterthought in the portable music player world.
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Shakeup Bodes Ill For Windows Phone 7
Hoo boy. For every step forward lately, Microsoft is taking two steps back. Windows 7 has been a great success to the company's bottom line and reputation, but the implosion at the Entertainment and Devices Division (E&DD) is bringing the company back into negative-karma territory.
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Is Microsoft A Patent Troll?
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, says that Microsoft is a patent troll. Given that Microsoft has just sued the company for patent infringement just this month, that comment might not be a surprise. Looking a bit deeper though, I don't think Benioff's name-calling is justified.
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Updates On Windows Phone 7 Progress
Windows Phone 7 development is continuing and all indications are it is still on track for a Q4 launch this year as originally promised. We've now got one device, called the LG Panther, and at least one Twitter app is well on its way too.
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Some Apps Won't Make It To Windows Phone 7
Microsoft isn't getting great publicity on Windows Phone 7 right now when it comes to developers jumping on board. No doubt there are hundreds, if not thousands, of developers getting their apps ready for the fall launch, but some key players have announced that initially, they won't be supporting the mobile platform.
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Microsoft's Eating Caviar In The Cloud
One of my favorite terms in Microsoft-speak is "dogfooding", the act of using a product or service internally so that its developers can experience it the same way that customers will. When it comes to cloud computing, though, Microsoft seems to have lost its way. Their cloud efforts reflect an internal diet that's more like caviar than dogfood.
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Microsoft and Google Deliver Variety
Apple was the first to market with a smartphone that people understood and really wanted. That seems to have the company thinking that they alone know what is good for their customers. That will lead to some serious problems for Apple, and soon.
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XP Holdouts Will Hold Back Progress
The web has been moving ahead quickly as vendors trip over each other to implement the latest standards such as HTML5. Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, and even the upcoming Internet Explorer 9 have all pledged allegiance to the web. The future of the web looks bright, but I fear that the future will take a long time to arrive because of Windows XP.
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Web 2.0: Curtailing Platform Power
The theme of the Web 2.0 Expo this year was "the power of platforms." There's power in owning a platform, alright. Just look at Apple: With the stroke of a pen, it can revise its developer agreement and disallow the use of Flash and any number of other third-party development tools for creating iPhone apps.
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How Push Notification Works In Windows Phone 7
Microsoft made a bold move by removing third party application multitasking from Windows Phone 7. This was especially surprising since multitasking has always been one of the features that separated it from its competition. Instead, it will rely on push notifications to simulate multitasking for many alerts from network enabled apps, which on a smartphone is just about all of them.
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IBM Wants Linux' KVM To Compete With VMware
One of IBM's current goals is to "accelerate the maturation of KVM as a world class hypervisor." That may not sound like much to the uninitiated but IBM has picked its targets well in the past. Of course it's now ten years ago that it announced its backing for Linux.
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