May

5

A Windows Back Door?

Filed Under Back door, Microsoft | Leave a Comment

Surprise!  Not really.  The real surprise, if the allegation is true, is how this was not already found.  It’s interesting because the question then becomes does Apple do the same thing?  Does the OS “hide” the data from traffic monitoring tools on the local machine?  Even if that’s the case, how could those who monitored traffic at another layer in the network (say at a router level) not have noticed it for so many years?

May

3

Microsoft pulls its bid for Yahoo!

Filed Under Google, Merger, Microsoft, Yahoo! | Leave a Comment

That’s right — no Microhoo in any of our futures. I’ll bet Google and Yahoo! will pull some sort of partnership out of the hat and make things even more interesting.

Mar

2

WWT - Microsoft does something cool

Filed Under Microsoft, software | Leave a Comment

Hit up this link for a sneak peek at some new Microsoft Research software dealing with astronomy.  It’s almost like google earth but centered around space.  Too bad it’ll likely be limited to Windows unlike google earth.

Feb

13

Microsoft + Danger = mPhone?

Filed Under Danger, Microsoft, mPhone | Leave a Comment

Full disclosure, although I have friends at both MS and Danger, I don’t have any sort of inside information so this post is purely speculation on my part.  Usually when MS starts a division to delve into some reasonably new-to-them arena (xbox? zune?), it takes a while for them to get it right.

It seems natural for MS to buy a company, like Danger, who already has big customers like T-Mobile and already has the expertise to get a product like a Microsoft-branded phone off the ground quickly.  It also seems, on one hand, like MS is playing catch-up with Apple and their iPhone. On the other hand, the iPhone is pretty limited in its capabilities (currently, anyway.

I’ll have to review Apple’s SDK for it when it hits later this month) whereas the slightly-less-polished Windows Mobile platform already has all of the basic features that I assumed the iPhone would have (better bluetooth support for say, A2DP, file transfers, connection tethering, bluetooth GPS support, video recording, etc.).  It’ll be interesting to see where they take it from here given that both Danger and Microsoft have successful (maybe not Symbian successful but very successful) mobile platforms based on totally different technologies (Danger’s Hiptop OS is Java-based, as I understand it). 

Feb

11

DANGER! DANGER!

Filed Under Buyout, Danger, Microsoft | Leave a Comment

So Microsoft bought Danger.  CRAZY.

Feb

1

Microhoo!?

Filed Under Acquisition, Microhoo, Microsoft, Yahoo! | Leave a Comment

So Microsoft just bid 44.6 BILLION dollars for Yahoo!, 62% over Yahoo! stock’s closing price this past Thursday.  That’s a good deal for Yahoo! share holders, if you ask me and would put Microsoft in a better place to compete with the big G.  Interesting.

May

30

Good job,

Filed Under Microsoft, Touch | Leave a Comment

Microsoft.  Lets hope there’s more where that came from AND that you can find a practical in-home purpose for it.

May

20

I (sort of) switched

Filed Under Gaming, Mac, Microsoft, Switch, Tech | Leave a Comment

Well, I bought a black macbook and man is it slick.  You talk about a quality piece of hardware.  I don’t mind the operating system so much either — it has its quirks and little things I’m not used to (why mix the launch of applications with the list of running tasks?  It’s counter intuitive to me, but I suppose it does save screen realestate).  I am going to put a Windows VM on it for IE7 testing, but the majority of my work will be in OS X.

I’ll still be using XP/Vista full-time on my PC, however, as I need to be able to game, etc., given that I run a CS:S team (not that I get to play as much any more, but that’s fine).  I wasn’t so thrilled at the idea of plopping down so much cash, but I need the machine and I’m sure it’ll be nice to have on trips and such.  I bought 2GB of ram from newegg and am waiting on that to get here; until then, it’ll be running a bit slower than I’d like.  I would have bought the ram locally, but the cheapest price was through Apple themselves at $175, 2.2 times as much as I paid through newegg.  Many of the places wanted 4x what I paid through newegg.  Oh well, I’ll just have to wait for it to come in.

May

5

Microsoft

Filed Under Merger, Microsoft, Tech | Leave a Comment

You know what I want to see from Microsoft?  Innovation.  Microsoft has the resources to do a lot of neat things and while I’m regularly made fun of, by friends, for being a Microsoft fan boy, they’ve really disappointed me this go around.

They should be hammering companies like nVidia to have stable, feature-complete drivers ready for their $600 flag-ship video cards upon release.

They should be the first to release features like desktop composition, 3D accelerated GUIs, etc.  They shouldn’t have to play catch-up with Apple or Linux or anyone else.  It’s sad, really.  The best-funded company in the world has stopped innovating and brining new things to the table before anyone else.  Now, they just follow.

Of course, there are exceptions — the xbox brand, anyone?  They’ve done an amazing job with it, even if they’re not yet profitable.  There’s a lot of “neato” behind it, brand and content integration, etc.

My challenge to MS is to use all of the talent and resources they have — stop following and start leading.  Start innovating in the finest sense.  I suppose we’ll see what happens in the coming years, I suppose, as the Google-Microsoft-Yahoo hate-love-triangle heats up.