November 12, 2007 • 2:24 pm 0
You’ve seen C9, C8, C10, mixonline…. welcome to TechNet Edge! Hot out of the oven, smoking hot!
Plus, the silverlight player is shareable, so you can embed it in your blog or something, cool… way to go Jeff and team!
Filed under: .NET, communities, microsoft
October 22, 2007 • 11:29 am 0
Probably everyone who is interested in software knows about BillG reviews, you know, basically where you present your product to BillG to basically crash conceptually and you hope you will survive the intense questioning!?
Well, it so turns out that I had a ‘near-bill-g-review-experience’. I had to present some product features that I had been working on and well, let’s just say that, I think I may just have graduated to somewhere closer to just barely surviving an actually BillG review, if they are actually what they are purported to be, and I have no doubt that they are! And this after having less than three hours of sleep as I worked myself to pieces to make sure I had covered some vital points.
It was actually kinda fun though, yeah… it actually was! I think I enjoy talking about product features and how they can work for the user. 
Here are a few tales of the brave warriors who walked into a BillG review and lived to tell the tale :
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html
http://weblogs.asp.net/rhoward/archive/2003/04/22/5946.aspx
http://blog.tomevslin.com/2007/05/microsoft_memor.html
http://blog.tomevslin.com/2007/05/microsoft_meeti.html
http://blog.tomevslin.com/2007/05/microsoft_meeti.html
Filed under: microsoft
September 25, 2007 • 12:14 pm 1
When I saw this I just sat up straight in my chair (before that I was in a bit of a lull after some good lunch), especially since I just posted about Mark.
There’s a report out that MSFT might buy 5% of Facebook, according to Reuters:
Microsoft Corp is in talks to buy up to 5 percent of Facebook in a deal that could value the fast-growing online social network company at $10 billion or more, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.[Full article...]
Of course this would have some SERIOUS repercussions, it could help boost the Facebook coffers and in turn place MSFT in a better competitive position in regards to Google and Yahoo! But also it may be viewed as an ‘interesting’ move in the tech community. Of course, MSFT is mostly viewed as something of a ‘Big Brother’ in the industry and one could speculate what would happen if it went on to take over Facebook, an icon of the ‘free world’; at least those are speculations. According to reuters:
The move could give maturing Microsoft more access to young users and let Facebook get closer to a major software maker at a time when its growth is increasingly tied to a proliferation of small applications from independent developers on its site.
Of course Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Facebook, has been quoted saying that his company wants to stay independent, but there’s a twisted saying that if the price is high enough… Well, yeah.
In my opinion, I don’t think it would be a good idea for Facebook to sell out. Not to MSFT, or Google, or Yahoo! (and nothing against MSFT, if anything I have mad respect for them). That does not rule out having business relationships with them. Like imagine if instead of selling out, they looked for strategic ways in which they could have, say joint products/services with the companies or something. That way not selling out, but getting the advantage of the weight of these corporations in key areas.
Anyway, enough speculating. Let’s see how this turns out.
July 27, 2007 • 5:38 am 0
I am sure enough people have already blogged this, but in case there’s someone who doesn’t know it yet, yes, Channel 8 is now in beta!
Also hot off the press, Visual Studio Beta 2 is here! In this video, Scott Guthrie and Soma give us the ‘down low’ on what’s new, what’s hot and what’s cool about VS Orcas!
Applause!
Filed under: microsoft, technology
July 26, 2007 • 5:44 am 0
So finally I pulled myself together, formatted and upgraded a PC that was idle (and in such a pathetic state due to viruses) to Vista, installed Visual Studio 2008 code-named ‘Orcas’, Silverlight runtime, tools and SDK as well as ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX extensions and ASP.NET 2.0 Futures, and obtained all the associated documentation, and dubbed the machine ‘devpc’!!! So far I have done a few things with both Silverlight (1.1) and ASP.NET AJAX, but still at chilld’s-play level and learning!
I also installed VS 2005 parallel to my current installation of VS 2003 (I just have never got past that cos many projects were lying on it) on my production machine which is running XP and installed Silverlight (1.0) and ASP.NET AJAX extensions and I am also playing around with that.
The only snag is the monitor on devpc, apparently the drivers for Vista are not in existence for it (it’s a Dell monitor).
All in all… definitely a step in the right direction! I will be doing some LINQ later on today! I have a couple of screencasts and videos to follow as well.
Filed under: fun, laptop, microsoft, OS, research, software, technology
July 16, 2007 • 10:19 am 0
July 16, 2007 • 8:37 am 0
As I was surfing the blogosphere this morning i came across these two posts from microsoft-watch.com.
The first listed (what are according to the author) ten luckiest moments of Microsoft; here are the top 3:
1. Microsoft’s MS-DOS licensing deal with IBM for its personal computer. Maybe in a parallel universe, IBM favored CP/M.
2. Compaq’s “Luggable,” which opened up the PC clone market, widespread licensing of MS-DOS and the supporting partner channels.
3. Windows 95. The planets aligned and people waited in line to buy Microsoft’s pseudo-32-bit operating system.
The second listed (what are according to the author) ten unluckiest moments of Microsoft; here are the top 3:
1. Microsoft’s paranoid corporate culture, which is an ongoing moment of bad luck. The company jinxes customers and partners every time it bases strategy on what competitors—or presumed competitors—might do.
2. Windows Vista’s most recent ship date slip. The March 2006 delay announcement meant that Microsoft would do the unthinkable and ship its new desktop operating system after the holiday sales rush.
3. Jackson’s ruling, in 2000, that Microsoft violated U.S. antitrust law and his subsequent order to break up the company
The most interesting thing the unlucky list pointed me to was this thing that was known as Microsoft Bob!
I had no idea it existed but it’s interesting what Steve Ballmer had to say about it…, it was one of the projects where ‘we [had] undertaken … where we decided that we have not succeeded and let’s stop.‘. I looked around and let’s just say that the findings were not quite encouraging… ‘a product that sold so poorly it was actually canceled after just one version.‘ The product was voted worst product of the decade by CNET.com.
Goes to show you that failure is part of success I guess and it must have been a really valuable, though probably not very exciting, learning experience for MS.
Talking about better user experience and more realistic user experience, have you heard of Microsoft Surface!?
Filed under: microsoft
Currently on Afrinnovator.com
