Tag: microsoft

Gates to become part-time Microsoft employee

Post ImageBill Gates announced today that over the next couple years he will gradually move away from his full-time duties at Microsoft, after three decades of serving as the public face of the company. Not too surprising a move, as far as I am concerned. Gates is 50 now, with young children, lots of money, and the right people at Microsoft to take it forward:

Gates announced on Thursday that he will gradually relinquish his current role, ceding the chief software architect title immediately, while remaining a full-time employee for the next two years. In July 2008, he will remain as a part-time employee and chairman.

Microsoft’s Chief Technical Officer Ray Ozzie will immediately assume the title of chief software architect, Gates said. In addition, Craig Mundie, CTO for advanced strategies and policy, will immediately take the new title of chief research and strategy officer and will assume Gates’ responsibilities for the company’s research and incubation efforts.

If there was ever a question as to why Microsoft purchased Groove, that has surely been answered now. They didn’t buy the company, they bought Ray Ozzie. He’s clearly the strategy guy moving forward.

I think this is good for Gates and for Microsoft. He can spend more time with his family and his non-profit, while Microsoft can start to bring in fresh and different ideas. He won’t be gone entirely, which is good, remaining as company chairman.

Read: CNET News.com

realDEVELOPMENT_06

Post ImageAs you know, I was down in Calgary yesterday, “keeping it real” at realDEVELOPMENT_06. Now I don’t want to sound too arrogant, but normally I don’t learn much at these Microsoft events, simply because I keep very up-to-date on my own, but yesterday’s event was different. With the exception of the “Hack and Defend” session (which was a complete repeat of past security presentations, except for the fact that John Bristowe (aka “God’s Evangelist” (he’s a great speaker, and he loves to call Windows “God’s operating system” and Visual Studio “God’s IDE”)) delivered it) I think I learned something in every session.

Windows CardSpace (formerly known as “InfoCard”) was presented, and it looks like some very cool technology. Hopefully it becomes adopted quite widely, especially since it is built on the WS-* standards and not something proprietary to Microsoft. Also looks incredibly simple for developers to implement support on their websites, minus the fact that you need an SSL certificate.

The other “new” technology presented was Atlas, Microsoft’s AJAX framework. I heard about Atlas a long time ago, but never bothered to look into it, as I was happy with Michael Schwarz’s wonderful Ajax.NET Professional. I still am happy with it, but I’m going to have to take a good look at Atlas now. Apparently MySpace is working on integrating Atlas into their website, now that they have converted to ASP.NET 2.0. My only complaint thus far is that the controls do not appear to work in Opera, though Microsoft claims they work in IE, Mozilla/Firefox, and Safari. Microsoft’s big value proposition is that they make life easier for the developer, and Atlas certainly seems to deliver (the demo’s were pretty cool).

The idea that Atlas is a stepping stone to Windows Presentation Foundation was also thrown around at the event. The presenters didn’t exactly say that, but pointed out that you can use Atlas to build great sites today, and you might use WPF or WPF/E in the future. I hadn’t really thought about the two as being related on the product timeline, but I guess it makes sense.

The other neat thing about the event was that the presenters were using the Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 6000 (it has a ridiculously long name). Anyway, the cool thing about the mouse is the zoom button it has – it’s totally awesome! I don’t know how to describe it, but you can check it out on their website. I think I am going to have to get one. Anyway, it was a pretty good event!

Windows Live Dev

Post ImageFinally. Finally. That’s really all I have to say about it. If there is one thing missing from Windows Live, it’s that Microsoft basically ignored their primary and most strategic audience – developers. Well, until now that is:

Microsoft Chief Technical Officer Ray Ozzie on Sunday said the company is creating Internet-delivered services for corporate customers to complement its on-premise software.

Ozzie, speaking at Microsoft’s TechEd 2006 conference for business technology users, described some of the online services Microsoft intends to offer to businesses, including single sign-on and network management.

As a result, we now have Windows Live Dev. I’m going to dive into it a little further this week, and hopefully they say something about it tomorrow at realDEVELOPMENT_06. Sadly, the SDK I most want to use is not yet available (Windows Live ID).

Read: CNET News.com

Windows Vista Torrent

Post ImageHaving trouble downloading Vista Beta 2, but don’t want to wait for the DVD? Well now you don’t have to. Microsoft refused to offer Vista Beta 2 via BitTorrent citing problems with ensuring that users end up with genuine software. It’s really not that hard, especially for the techy types who use BitTorrent. Thus, Chris Pirillo and Jake Ludington have created Windows Vista Torrent:

The only official tracker for this torrent is found here at VistaTorrent.com. We’re providing an MD5 hash to verify the file after download to make sure you’re getting the real thing. If the torrent URL is anything other than the one from Vistatorrent.com, don’t download or install the file! We’re staking our reputations on providing a clean ISO torrent here. There is no registration required to download this torrent.

That should help matters! So fire up your BitTorrent clients and enjoy Vista Beta 2 goodness. Assuming there are no major problems as a result of this site, I’d say its a safe bet that Microsoft will more seriously consider BitTorrent support in the future.

Read: TechCrunch

Scoble is leaving Microsoft!

Post ImageNews is flying fast and furious that the blogosphere’s most famous blogger has decided to leave Microsoft to be a videoblogger at PodTech.net. I’m really quite shocked at the news, and as Chris Pirillo notes, most of the blogosphere won’t even find out until Monday! Scoble himself is yet to post any extensive commentary on the move, save for this:

This is a rapidly-evolving part of my life. I just made this decision and it got out before I was completely ready to talk about it. I invite you to meet with me at the VLoggerCon tomorrow evening at 3 to 6 p.m. in San Francisco where we’ll talk about it further (and I’ll post again tomorrow about what’s going on in my life and why I made this decision).

I wish him the best of luck, but man, what a blow to Microsoft. Or a huge mistake on their part if they didn’t try hard to keep him. Some might argue that Scoble has single-handedly made Microsoft a “nicer” company in the last couple years. He is the reason they have adopted technologies like RSS, and his Channel9 initiative has been amazing at kickstarting the trend at Microsoft to open up to the community. Scoble is not the kind of employee you can replace.

Here’s a bunch of notable “first mover” posts on the news:

I am looking forward to Robert’s post on this. There must be something truly special about PodTech for him to leave what he liked to call “the best job in the tech world.”

You might think that a blogger leaving his current job for a new one isn’t news, but I think you’re dead wrong if you hold on to that belief. Scoble leaving Microsoft is huge, and I don’t think we’ll truly understand the effects of this for quite some time.

UPDATE: Robert has posted about his decision. There’s also an excellent Reuters article on the story. Isn’t that crazy? A blogger switching jobs makes Reuters. Told you this was big news!

WinFX renamed .NET Framework 3.0

Post ImageIn a fairly quiet announcement, made on a blog (noteworthy all by itself!), Microsoft has decided to rename their next development platform from WinFX to the .NET Framework 3.0. While it won’t affect the average user, it has created quite a discussion for developers:

The .NET Framework has always been at the core of WinFX, but the WinFX brand didn’t convey this. The brand also created an unnatural discontinuity between previous versions of our framework and the current version.

With this in mind we have decided to rename WinFX to the .NET Framework 3.0. .NET Framework 3.0 aptly identifies the technology for exactly what it is – the next version of our developer framework.

We are confident that this change will go a long way towards reducing confusion people may have about our developer platform and the technologies in which they should invest.

.NET Framework 3.0 will include the existing .NET 2.0 components, WPF, WCF, WF, and WCS. Most people seem to think this is a bad idea (judging by the comments on these posts), and here’s why:

  1. The runtime is still at version 2.0, even in .NET 3.0 – sounds more confusing than helpful!
  2. Everything will be put into the %windir%Microsoft.NETFrameworkV3.0 directory. Again, confusing!
  3. As the release is built on .NET 2.0, it will include C# 2.0, and not C# 3.0, creating more confusion for down the road.
  4. The new stuff (W**) was never intended to be backported to Windows 2000, only Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 but .NET 2.0 fully supports all three. Presumably, this means support for Windows 2000 has been dropped.

Initially I agreed that the decision wasn’t a good one, but after thinking about it more, I think it was actually a good call on Microsoft’s part. This is about the development platform. When developing for WinFX, it’s better to think of it as a new platform, not just a superset of the old platform. Despite .NET 2.0 being at it’s core, developers are indeed using .NET 2.0 plus a bunch of other stuff when developing for WinFX. Naming the platform .NET 3.0 conveys this much more clearly.

Some of this is still confusing (such as, will .NET 2.0 be installed into both a V2 and a V3 directory, or just one of the two?) but I think in the long run this is good. It’s also the first time a lot of people will think of the .NET Framework as a product in and of itself, and when you do that, you realize it doesn’t matter what version the innards have. The other nice thing is that we’ll get a single installer now, instead of three or four.

I guess my main concern is that the size of the framework is going to start to balloon. Well, that and we have no idea what version of the framework the next release of Visual Studio, codenamed “Orcas”, will ship with. Presumably the change doesn’t affect the release date for Vista.

Who is Google's worst enemy?

Post ImageIf you said Microsoft or Yahoo, you’d be wrong. I think the real enemy for Google is itself, which is kind of like Microsoft, but for different reasons. Microsoft’s worst enemy is itself because it has to find ways to get people to upgrade from the existing versions of Microsoft software they already use. Or to move their users to a subscription model. Google’s worst enemy is itself because they have done an amazingly good job of accomplishing nothing.

“But they have so many products!” you exclaim. Exactly. They have got a ton of products, including some like the recently released Google Spreadsheets that seem to target Microsoft applications (though Microsoft’s Don Dodge makes a good case that they target open source software instead), yet none of them make money. Honestly, Google must have the largest number of non-revenue earning products of any company in history. I say they have accomplished nothing because their core product (AdSense, not search) really hasn’t changed all that much since it was launched. Instead of improving it, and finding ways to deal with click fraud and the other problems, Google has blinded itself with these side projects that seem bent on competing with Microsoft. And don’t be fooled by their ad company purchases – none of them have come to bear any fruit yet.

When I first learned about it, I thought that Google’s policy of encouraging employees to spend 10-20% of their time working on non-core projects was a good one, but now I am not so sure. It has resulted in lots of interesting technology to be sure, but not much else. I really don’t see how Google would get any ROI out of something like Google Spreadsheets. I have no idea what Google’s revenue breakdown is, but I highly doubt there’s a gem, other than AdSense of course, to be found.

That’s why I think Google’s worst enemy is itself. They have grown so big, so fast, that they forgot to take care of the goose that laid the golden egg. They haven’t cut it open yet, but if they continue to focus on these other mostly unimportant side projects, they might as well have.

Download Windows Vista Now!

Post ImageIts another sign that Windows Vista is inching closer to launch. Microsoft today announced the “Customer Preview Program” that enables pretty much anyone to download and test out the latest version of Windows Vista:

The software maker is still cautioning that Vista is not ready for the average consumer, pitching the CPP as suited for developers and tech workers, as well as hard-core enthusiasts who don’t mind a few bugs and have a spare machine for testing. Microsoft also recommends those interested in the CPP run its recently released adviser tool, which helps detect how Vista-ready a PC is.

If you think you fit the bill, you can download Vista from the Microsoft website. I’ve had it running in a virtual machine for about a week now, and it’s pretty cool, but very slow inside the VM.

Read: CNET News.com

See Windows Vista

Post ImageI just stumbled across the SeeWindowsVista site via Scoble. It’s basically a marketing site that gives you some interesting information on what Windows Vista can do for you (when it finally launches).

Apparently the site got 39,000 unique visits in the first 24 hours of being live, which is pretty good. My only complaint with the site? Let me see the start menu! Gah, why put the icon there in the bottom left if it doesn’t do anything?! I was very disappointed I couldn’t activate a virtual start menu.

Read: SeeWindowsVista

REVIEW: Windows Media Player 11 Beta

Post ImageAs I mentioned a few days ago, I recently downloaded and installed the new Windows Media Player 11 beta to test it out. I use WMP almost all day, every day, so it’s an important application for me, and I’d say I am somewhat qualified to offer a review.

Let’s start with the bad shall we? Importing the 20,000 or so items from my WMP10 library took a very long time, so installation wasn’t incredibly quick. The installer also offered to setup a music store, so I chose Urge, the brand new MTV-sponsored service. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work outside of the United States (when will companies launch things for Canada and the US simultaneously, I mean seriously!). Missing from this beta are the visualizations that would not support full screen controls, thus my favorite (“Plenoptic Vox”) is nowhere to be found. Also missing is the ability to browse for a single file and add it to the library – the only ways to do this now are by monitoring folders, or playing a file and setting the player to automatically add played items. All of the auto-playlists I had in WMP 10 are gone, except the ones I had created manually, and they are now combined with normal playlists in the tree. Album art is everywhere in WMP11, but it seems to be quite slow at downloading it.

Some of those things are really annoying (such as not being able to add a single file) but they aren’t deal-breakers as far as I am concerned. And fortunately, the good is well, really good. I would upgrade to WMP11 for the new search capability alone – it is light years beyond previous versions! As soon as you start typing, WMP11 finds matching artists, songs, and albums (in the Music tab anyway) and displays them instantly. In WMP10, any search would take at least a minute to complete, it was brutal. Aside from the search, the new UI is absolutely beautiful. I love the layout, the colors, the graphics, all of it! The look of the player is a huge improvement over previous versions. The organization is better too – there is a really defined distinction between Music, Video, Pictures, Recorded TV, and Other. The most beautiful part of all: icons for albums, artists and songs, meaning you can display items in a details list, or with tiles. It looks great! I like the black mini-player on the taskbar too.

Here are some other things to note:

  • Synchronization with my Zen Touch worked flawlessly, and no settings were lost from WMP10. I really like the new Sync UI too, much more clear.
  • Using the player effectively really means using the search functionality. I find myself going to the tree on the left to find an artist, only to realize they aren’t listed there anymore! Once I get used to typing in the search box, I’ll probably find I navigate much more quickly than with the tree anyway.
  • I haven’t tested ripping or burning in the new version, but I would expect them to work very similarly to previous versions.
  • The visualizations seem really buggy on my three display setup. Sometimes they work fine full-screen, other times they jump to a different monitor, it’s very strange.
  • The player has crashed on me maybe three or four times so far. Sometimes it seems to slow up for a second or two, but it’s fairly solid for the most part.
  • I am not sure if WMP11 updated Windows Media Connect or not, because the service uses an insane amount of memory. Maybe I just didn’t notice it from before? WMP11 itself only uses about 25 MB when I have music playing with the window open, and even less when minimized.

Some people, notably Todd Cochrane, are upset that WMP11 does not contain any podcasting features. I don’t think it makes a big difference – podcasting is going to grow with or without Microsoft baking support into WMP. And I would argue that Todd would end up using something else anyway, as any podcasting support in WMP11 would probably be incredibly basic.

My verdict: wait for the final release. There’s still too many bugs in this beta for most people to use it, but I think WMP11 is going to be awesome. I’ve been using the beta nonstop for a few days now, and overall I am quite impressed. I’d love to see it on Windows Vista too, but that will have to wait for another day.

Read: WMP11 Beta