Tag: microsoft

I would like an @live.com address!

Post ImageThe fine folks over at the LiveSide blog had the chance to interview Omar Shahine and Ellie Powers-Boyle of the Windows Live Hotmail team this morning, and they asked some great questions. The reason for the chat was to talk about Windows Live Hotmail, which started its rollout to selected markets this week. You can download the 25 minute MP3 file here, but I figured I’d transcribe the most interesting part:

“Our short term concerns are around taking our existing user base, which is currently using the @hotmail.com namespace primarily, and making sure that they have a smooth transition. Once we feel that we’ve gotten that work sort of comfortably under our belt, we’ll move on to things like the @live.com namespace…”

So it sounds like users will be able to acquire an @live.com email address at some point. It would definitely make for a pretty cool email address – sign me up!

Read: LiveSide

Microsoft releases a hotfix for Outlook 2007

Post ImageAll my posting about Outlook 2007 has come in handy! On Saturday, Kevin sent me this link, and today Justice sent me this one. Both point to a hotfix from Microsoft for Outlook 2007:

This update fixes a problem in which a calendar item that is marked as private is opened if it is found by using the Search Desktop feature. The update also fixes performance issues that occur when you work with items in a large .pst file or .ost file.

I have installed it on both my main computers, but haven’t really had a chance to test it yet. This thread at Neowin.net looks positive though. Here is the KB article, and the download page. Enjoy!

Read: Download Hotfix

Why does Microsoft hate Opera?

Post ImageI just went to checkout the Silverlight website, and was presented with this message:

Your current browser does not support WPF/E (codename). Click here for more details on WPF/E-supported browsers and platforms.

I am using Opera of course. So I click through to the suggested link, and here’s what I find:

Silverlight media capabilities include fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality audio and video to all major browsers including Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer running on the Mac or on Windows.

What?!

According to these stats, Safari had 1.7% market share last month compared with Opera’s 1.6%. The numbers are a little lower at Wikipedia, but it’s not like Safari has ten times the market share.

I realize that Safari is the offical browser for the Mac, but I still think that Opera is being unfairly left out by Microsoft. And it’s not the first time – it took them a very long time to support Opera with ASP.NET Ajax.

Especially with Silverlight, I think Opera should be supported. It is widely used on mobile phones and other devices, like the Nintendo Wii.

Read: Silverlight

Google buys DoubleClick

Post ImageIn a way it’s pretty incredible that “Google” has become synonymous with search. It really should make you think of advertising, and perhaps in 25 years, it will. Today Google ventured further down that rabbit hole, acquiring one of the web’s oldest ad companies (via Scoble):

Google reached an agreement today to acquire DoubleClick, the online advertising company, from two private equity firms for $3.1 billion in cash, the companies announced, an amount that was almost double the $1.65 billion in stock that Google paid for YouTube late last year.

Two days in a row now, I’ve seen news break on Twitter. Last night it was the earthquake in Mexico City, and today this acquisition. This is pretty significant, don’t you think?

Anyway, I don’t think Google buying DoubleClick is earth-shattering news. It’s not much of a stretch if you consider Google to be an advertising company, as I do. What’s more interesting is that Microsoft was apparently trying to purchase DoubleClick too. Why? I can only imagine it was an attempt to harm Google.

Read: NYTimes.com

Ten Years of Visual Studio

Post ImageI missed this last week, but March 19th was the ten year anniversary of the release of Visual Studio 97 – the first release of the Visual Studio product. Rob Caron has written my thoughts exactly:

Visual Studio has come a long way in that 10-year period.

I remember Visual Studio 97. It was sitting around in my Dad’s office, and I asked if I could “borrow” it. Who knows why they had ordered it…they never used it! I might even have the box around someplace.

I love Visual Studio. It’s a great product. More than that, it’s a great environment…and it now forms the base environment of tools in SQL Server and BizTalk Server, among others. Combined with the expanded lineup of SKUs, you could say that Visual Studio is taking over the tools scene at Microsoft!

Despite coming a long way in ten years, there’s much more on tap. Check out the future releases page for more info.

Microsoft – ahead and behind at the same time

Post ImageThere’s no question that Microsoft is a unique company. They’re gigantic, and they have an incredible amount of resources at their disposal. The company spends billions on R&D every year too, so it should be no surprise that they are often ahead of the curve when it comes to technology innovations. I don’t know what the problem is, but I continue to be amazed at how they can be so far ahead, and yet so far behind, all at the same time:

Given Microsoft’s statements about a hybrid approach, with online and offline products, the company should be ahead of the pack in delivering synchronization between the two modes…

Yeah, you would think so! But no.

It happened with Ajax, and it’s going to happen again with offline apps. Microsoft developers will know that seamless offline access has been an important part of Microsoft’s .NET message for years, yet it looks like it will be other companies stealing the spotlight. Just as Microsoft had the guts of Ajax in use long before it was known as Ajax, the same will happen with offline apps, especially when Firefox 3 ships.

As a Microsoft developer, it saddens me. They have some amazing stuff going on, but they seem to get lost when it comes to making the new and interesting technologies front and centre in the industry. Is it just a marketing thing? I am not sure.

Read: ZDNet

A simple tip to make Outlook 2007 faster

Post ImageI use Outlook all the time, so the many problems I have found with the newest version drive me nuts. Especially the speed issue. As a result, I have spent far too much time looking for a solution. I think I finally found one though as Tris explains:

One of the big problems folks have been having with Office 2007 is Outlook. Frankly, it can be a serious dog. Sluggish, serious performance lags. All the things you don’t want in your “latest and greatest” e-mail client.

Looks like, thanks to Mack D. Male, there is a solution…I did this last night and I think it’s working.

I appreciate the nod Tris, but I’m just the messenger. Full thanks should go to Monty and Dell. Who’s Monty? Beats me. But he posted the message on the Microsoft discussion groups with the solution he got from Dell. Instructions are in the post, and in Tris’ post too, but basically the tip is to turn off all the addins in Outlook. You need to be running Outlook as an Administrator when you do this, and you should also restart Outlook after you turn them off.

I have tried this tip on two machines – one where Outlook is a POP3 client, and one where Outlook connects to Exchange. The biggest difference appears on the first one, but both seem faster when selecting messages, changing views, etc. Downloading mail doesn’t appear much faster yet. The only addin I left checked is the Windows Search Indexing.

Microsoft still needs to fix Outlook, but hopefully this tip will help you in the meantime. Let me know if it works for you!

Read: Pimp Your Work

Build the next Tetris for Xbox Live Arcade

Post ImageSmart move Microsoft! It’s no secret that one of the biggest selling points for the Xbox 360 is the Xbox Live service, and specifically the Arcade which contains relatively simple games. Now Microsoft is making moves to further increase the importance of XBLA:

Microsoft plans to announce a contest akin to the television show “Project Greenlight” that will award a cash prize and a potential slot on Xbox Live Arcade to the best new game created with XNA tools. The company intends to announce the winner of the contest, called “Dream-Build-Play,” in August.

That’s pretty cool! Imagine seeing your game in the Xbox Live Arcade…that would be sweet. You can learn more about Microsoft’s XNA tools here.

Read: NYTimes.com

Visual Studio Orcas

Post ImageI haven’t been keeping up on my .NET news as much as I used to, so lots of the things that Scott Guthrie mentioned in his “First Look at Orcas” post were new to me. And now I’m all excited! Here are some of the things that stick out for me:

  • Orcas will indeed bring us version 3.5 of the .NET Framework. First time I have seen a reference to 3.5.
  • Rich HTML/CSS WYSIWYG designer. Ahhhhhh. I use this daily, so I welcome any changes. I am particularly looking forward to the split-view editing mode…I could never figure out why Visual Studio didn’t have it.
  • LINQ. By all accounts, LINQ looks intense. Scott posted a video a couple weeks ago that demonstrates how it works.
  • First beta this spring, and final release this year. Bring it on!

His post contains screenshots and a link to a slide deck he presented recently. Check it out!

Read: ScottGu’s Blog

Mini-Microsoft on Outlook 2007

Post ImageI have talked about Outlook 2007 a couple of times before, and in neither post was I singing Outlook’s praises. Nope, I love the interface tweaks, but Outlook 2007 is terribly slow. Almost so slow that it is unusable. I wonder if it would be any faster if I had 4 GB of RAM…probably not. Anyway, here’s what Mini-Microsoft had to say about Outlook 2007 recently:

I’ve learned to meditate while Outlook ruminates over ten incoming POP messages of 69K. Perhaps it takes a few seconds over each incoming message or RSS feed to contribute to solving a Grand Challenge. Or it and Desktop Search have to play 333 iterations of rock-paper-scissors everytime a change has to be written. I don’t know.

I have wondered the same thing. It has to be doing something when it’s not doing what I want it to, right? He continues:

For our customers’ sake, I hope that I’m the only one and that there is just something funky about my setup…

Sorry, no. Outlook 2007 sucks when it comes to performance, plain and simple. It can’t be your setup, because there’s thousands of threads on the Internet in which people are complaining. Please Mini, use your power to get someone to fix it!

Read: Mini-Microsoft