I’ve been unconsciously paying attention to the goings-on at Microsoft lately. Some part of my brain has been filing away snippets here and there. As the most visible company in the computer industry, they’re important to watch. A lot has been happening lately, and Redmond seems to be in a turmoil. A couple different interviews with Microsoft leaders seem to indicate opposing philosophies.
In a recent interview with Steve Ballmer, Telis Demos asks Steve if he has an iPod. I can imagine his response is instantaneous: “No, I do not. Nor do my children…. I’ve got my kids brainwashed. You don’t use Google, and you don’t use an iPod.” Whether he meant it as a joke or not, it’s obvious that he’s actually quite serious. Now, I’m all for a little company rivalry, but that’s hardly a healthy attitude. As a leader of the industry, I’d rather embrace the successes of my competitors and work to push myself beyond them to the next level. It makes you wonder if iPods and Google are banned on Microsoft’s campuses too.
On the other hand, Bill Gates seems to have the right idea. A recent article on CNN Money talks about Bill’s daily workflow, and it’s obvious that he’s passionate about technology. Based on the interview, which stresses his desire to go paperless, and other articles I’ve read about his home, Bill always wants to find new technology that makes his life better and easier. I noticed that he dropped product names for some of the technologies he uses on his three-monitor PC. He talks about Outlook, SharePoint, and OneNote. Then he says that he uses a desktop search program, but he never says the name of it. Unlike Ballmer, I’d expect Bill, thanks to his technophilic desires, to actually be willing to use Google’s program. Sure, he probably has plans for Microsoft to make a better version, and he certainly wouldn’t say he uses it in an interview, but he’s a guy who seems to be more passionate about exciting technology than bitterly choosing sides.
Other initiatives at Microsoft, such as live.com, show that a lot of the employees are looking to innovate. I’m personally excited about the pageless AJAX results in their new search engine. With all the excitement that Apple is generating, Microsoft needs to focus on the ideas coming from those innovators. I don’t know who led the restructuring of the Windows group, but I hope it will help refocus their direction. I’ve loved my iPod since I got it, and my next computer will be a Mac. I want Microsoft to try to win me back with bigger and better ideas.
Thursday, April 6th, 2006
I’ve been meaning to pick up Foundation Actionscript Animation: Making Things Move
for a while now. Keith Peters is a fellow contributer to IFBIN and I’ve been enjoying the cool stuff he’s been showing off in his Bit-101 Lab. After he announced that the book had gone into it’s third printing in only five months, I finally decided I had better get my butt to Barnes and Noble and pick it up.
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Sunday, April 2nd, 2006
In this article by eWeek, Mark Swords, a representative of Eolas whines about Microsoft changing the behavior of IE. Part of his message stuck out in my mind:
the IE modifications spelled out by Microsoft… will reportedly disrupt the way online advertising and streaming media content is delivered over the Internet. [It] is an inconvenience users could do without.
Advertising? I don’t know about everyone else, but I’d love it if Flash ads went the way of the dodo. They’re usually annoying or ugly. Mostly both. Yet, Flash-based ads still account for a good deal of the advertising I see on the larger sites. Since the purpose of an ad is to get the click, you certainly don’t want to give your potential customer a hassle by making them click twice. What does this mean? I think there’s a good chance we’ll be seeing fewer Flash ads soon.
I’m not saying they’ll completely disappear. Obviously, there are fixes available for the Eolas issue. However, everything I’ve seen requires JavaScript. Not everybody likes JavaScript. Some people completely turn it off. Personally, I believe that’s a very small population, but I know that many websites are reluctant to use it thanks to these vocal people.
It all seems kind of murky. Advertisers that provide content in iframes might be least affected since they handle all their code and includes. Yet, even then, their clients may demand zero JavaScript. Will we see more Adsense or other types of text ads? How about simply an increase in animated GIFs? I’m curious to see if there will be a noticeable change.
Friday, March 31st, 2006
Note: This project was written for an early, pre-release version of Flash 9. Have a look at my MXNA Dashboard, which has been updated to work with the proper final version of the player.
I had a lot of fun building a treemap of the MXNA last week. With the framework laid, I spent some time sprucing things up. Some Flex buttons give the map a little depth, and with a few color changes here and there, they easily match the MXNA color scheme. I’ve also expanded the map to show two different views. You’ll be able to tab between the most popular posts and the most recent. My next job will be to add category views.
With the exciting Flex Developer Derby on the horizon, I decided to try out some dashboard-like functionality. On the left side, I added a full listing of all the stories in the map. Above that, I’ve put together some interesting statistics on the displayed data. Ignoring various common words like “the” or “is”, you can view the top five keywords that appear in the titles of the current articles. I’d like to think it will give a good idea of what’s hot on the MXNA on those days where everybody’s posting about something exciting. I may add post excerpts at some point to make it even more accurate. The analysis also captures the most active posts. I hope to find more statistics to extract from the data.
Monday, March 27th, 2006
