Henry Blodget , mostly is known mostly for being spectacularly wrong during the dot com bubble of the early 2000s, and Silicon Alley Insider have decided this week to put pen to tablet (so to speak) and wax on about how Microsoft is poised to take advantage of the current weakness in the stock market. [...]...
Analyst firm Canalys has released the results of it’s Consumer Mobility Analysis Report and it is very good news for Apple, good news for RIM and Microsoft and bad news for Nokia:
The success of Apple and RIM, as well as fifth-placed HTC with its Windows Mobile devices, has eaten into Nokia’s share of [...]...
It’s not exactly a huge surprise, given the anti-trust brouhaha that the proposal caused in Washington, but Google formally announced that its search deal with Yahoo is over, kaput, deceased, pushing up the daisies — it is an ex-agreement. It wasn’t just the anti-trust concerns either; some advertisers were apparently worried about a lack of choice as a result of the tie-up, and not without reason. So how badly is Yahoo screwed right now? On a scale of one to 10, I would say Yahoo is now at 11.
As John Paczkowski notes at All Things D, this deal was supposed to generate as much as half a billion dollars worth of additional cash flow in its first year, money Yahoo could definitely use. But more than that, this deal was a way of trying to stand on its own two feet (albeit...
Copyright © 2008 Miss604 - Rebecca Bollwitt. If you are not viewing this post through the Miss604.com feed then this content has been republished without permission. Visit the original article at http://www.miss604.com/2008/10/im-a-pc-and-im-still-a-mac.html.Microsoft produced this to address the “I’m a Mac / I’m a PC” ads about a month ago:
Several celebrities are visible throughout the campaign, including company co-founder Bill Gates, Deepak Chopra, and Eva Longoria; Microsoft employees, including Gates, have an @windows.com e-mail address attached to their appearances to emphasize their human connection.
Two shorter ads have also appeared with a similar exploration of the theme where people in various jobs explain how they wear different kinds of suits or...
So Microsoft seems to have finally woken up and decided to get serious about the Web — or at least semi-serious — by rolling out a cloud-computing platform called Azure and announcing the imminent arrival of Web-ized versions of its Office applications (my favourite response to these announcements came in a Twitter message from Sarah Perez of Read/Write Web). Obviously, the Web Office news is a shot across the bow of Google and its Google Docs — Microsoft is even using mostly Ajax just like Google, instead of its Flash-style Silverlight technology. But who does the rollout of a Web Office hurt Google more, or does it hurt Microsoft itself?
I don’t know the answer to that question, but I still think it’s worth asking. No doubt many users of Google Docs will...
Uploaded flickr by gholzer
Windows Mobile was originally launched as Pocket PC in April 2000. It was born in an age when Microsoft was busy trying to tie everything to the Windows Desktop and cast a long shadow over every part of the IT industry. It was not long after that that the Windows wheels fell [...]...
I often think that Zoho doesn’t get enough credit for the work it has done building a Web-based, Office-style suite of apps. As TechCrunch is reporting (and others have mentioned in the past), the company has launched an application marketplace where developers can host apps that they create with Zoho Creator, an Ajax-driven platform that makes it easy to put together small Web applications. The launch is just the latest in a steady series of releases from Zoho over the past year or so.
Developers who sell applications through the marketplace get 100 per cent of the revenue from anything they sell, which is a nice change from many similar Web stores, and hosting apps on Zoho’s database service will be free for small applications (those that draw a larger crowd will pay a fee,...
In an industry, becoming the “default” product is a dream come true.
When most people think of buying an MP3 player, for example, they immediately think about an iPod. It’s not that other products aren’t as good and/or better value, it’s just that the iPod has become so ubiquitous, it’s difficult for other products to attract the spotlight.
Apple has maintained its dominance by continually pushing innovative, even if it means cannibalizing its existing portfolio. By continually introducing new iPods, Apple has kept its rivals on their heels while, in the process, slaying players such as Dell.
Given this competition environment, it will be interesting to see if the Microsoft Zune can establish a foothold and establish itself as a viable alternative to...
Okay, so maybe the Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates ads were designed to soften up the market by letting people get out all their pent-up anti-Microsoft emotions, so that the newer ads would seem better by comparison (sort of a scapegoat strategy). Or maybe they were just a total screwup and someone thought better of them. Whatever the case may be, the new one I just watched is light-years better (and I was one of the few who actually liked the Seinfeld ones, along with Mike Masnick at Techdirt). It’s understated, it’s human, it’s international in flavour and it has some touching moments as well. All in all, pretty well done, I think....
but the Bill (Gates) and Jerry (Seinfeld) show is apparently over.
After two memorable, quirky and definitely different television ads, Microsoft has decided to pull the plug on Gates and Seinfeld.
It’s a strange decision because you have to wonder how many layers within Microsoft had to approve the concept before it allowed to see the light of day?
I’ll give Microsoft credit for trying something new and, to be honest, the ad had potential. Seinfeld was Seinfeld but he was outshone by Gates, whose stole the show as his sidekick. If the series had been allowed to evolve, it would have been fascinating to see Gates perform some more.
So, I guess it’s back to the drawing board for Microsoft, which is spending $300-million on an advertising campaign to give itself a new...
Anyone who isn’t talking about how dumb Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin was in her interview (and that’s a lot of people) seems to be talking about the new Microsoft ad with Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld, and how they don’t get it. Mike Arrington doesn’t get it, and neither does my friend Mark Evans, to name just two. I think John Furrier comes close to the truth when he says that Mike not getting it is a sign that it’s working, because it’s not aimed at geeks. And part of what makes it hard to get is that it isn’t even about Windows, or Microsoft for that matter. Like Seinfeld, it’s not really about anything.
I made a marketing expert friend of mine mad recently when she said that the marketing professionals she knew...
Huh? via Mark Evans September 12th, 2008 at 18:08
I definitely get that Microsoft is looking to re-brand itself with a $300-million advertising campaign.
I kind of get that Microsoft hired Jerry Seinfeld to jump-start it.
I sort of get they’re paying him $10-million.
I do not get the videos featuring Seinfield and Bill Gates, particularly this one. That said, I do find them funny, especially Gates, who may have found a new post-Microsoft career.
I’d like to get it but I can’t. Am I missing something? TechCrunchh has questions as well.
Technorati Tags: Advertising, Microsoft...
Reuters reported today:
The London Stock Exchange suffered its worst systems failure in eight years on Monday, forcing the world’s third largest share market to suspend trading for about seven hours and infuriating its users.
“This halt today clearly has once again damaged (the LSE’s) reputation as a leading exchange, especially on a day like today, highlighting [...]...
[Uploaded via flickr by Thomas Hawk]
With Microsoft’s stumbling with the lauch of Vista has come a litany of stories about the demise of Windows as the IT industries richest franchise. However it’s death, if evident, will be slow and painful and will be a result of lots of small cuts, not a wholesale shift to...
This will, no doubt, get the Mac Nation up in arms but sometimes the difference in price between a MacBook and Windows-based laptops makes you wonder.
Here’s a good example: this week, Best Buy (Canada) has an “exclusive” deal on an Acer Extreme for $399. Here’s what you get:
- 14.1″ screen
- 1GB RAM
- 120 GB hard drive
- Dual layer DVD burner
- ATI Radeon X1250 graphics card
- Vista Home Basic
At first glance, it’s seems like a great deal if you’re looking for a new laptop that easily meets the needs of most people.
In comparison, Best Buy is selling the MacBook for $1149. (Has anyone ever seen a MacBook on sale?). Here’s what you get:
- 13.3″ screen
- 1GB RAM
- 120 GB hard drive
- CD burner and DVD player
I know we’re...
So, if I want to watch the Olympics online, I need to install Microsoft
Silverlight.
And if I’m interested in good-looking new high-end compact cameras, I’m
super-interested in the
new Nikon
P6000; which writes a RAW format that can only be read by Microsoft
WIC,
available only on Windows.
Open, non-proprietary equivalents to all of these, which do not constrain
your customers’ choice of platform, are widely available.
Nikon is a competent camera company. The IOC is a competent sports
impresario. The Chinese government is a competent authoritarian
dictatorship. Pity they’re all so fucking stupid about......
Not too long ago, users accessing the Internet via the Firefox browser accounted for only 10 to 13 per cent, while Microsoft's Internet Explorer was still the invincible number one (based on visitor stats for this site). Now, however, things have really shifted in favour of Firefox: on average, 70 per cent of this site's readers use Firefox, with Internet Explorer managing only 19 per cent or so on a "good day". I have also switched to Firefox as my main browser, and I really like Firefox 3.0.1 so far. It really is faster than Internet Explorer, I find,...
This is pretty darn cool, I have to say. If you’ve seen the Lord of the Rings movies, you probably remember a scene or two involving a magical orb or sphere (known as a “palantir“) with which magicians like Saruman can see across vast distances. Well, Microsoft seems to have something pretty much like that, at least in prototype form. Todd Bishop of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer got a close look at one, and watched as a researcher moved photos around, created a virtual 3D globe and even moved through a 360-degree webcam projection of a city street. Of course, palantirs could be used by Sauron to see whoever was looking into them too — hopefully Microsoft isn’t working on that angle.
...
I was going to call this post “Decoding the Microsoft memo,” but my friend Kara Swisher has that kind of trademarked already, and I don’t want to owe her any more money than I already do. But reading through the missive from CEO Steve Ballmer that she has posted made me long for someone who could translate it into English, because I don’t think Monkey Boy and I are speaking the same language. It’s not just the egregious use of euphemisms either; there are points where what Steve is saying — about the separation of the Platforms and Services division into two units, for example — shows a fundamental confusion about what Microsoft wants to be when it grows up.
I can’t remember whether Steve used to work at a car company before he joined Bill...
I think even infamous zombie-movie director George Romero would have felt outmatched by the ongoing Yahoo takeover saga, which has gone beyond drama into farce, then back into drama, then taken a right turn into the bizarre, and now threatens to become The Takeover/Merger That Wouldn’t Die. Microsoft wants to buy it, then it doesn’t, then Carl Icahn gets his fingers in the pie, then Microsoft wants to buy just the search operation, then it wants the whole company again, then it wants to team up with someone like News Corp. in order to dismantle the company — and meanwhile, Yahoo is talking with everyone but your Aunt Sally about a merger to thwart Microsoft.
The latest twist is that Microsoft and Carl are apparently still working on a takeover deal for the company. Icahn...
[Uploaded on flickr on December 29, 2005 by niallkennedy]
With the departure of Bill Gates from the day to day running of Microsoft it marks an end of an era for Microsoft and one of the truly great business icons. However Gates is not remarkable for the technology he produced, but for his ability to transform...
According to the Wall Street Journal, the seemingly interminable Microsoft-Yahoo dance has taken a new twist: Microsoft has apparently approached large media entities — including Time-Warner and News Corp. — about joining up for a run at Yahoo, with the ultimate intent of breaking the company into its component parts. I have to say that this makes total sense to me, and in fact, I would argue that such a deal makes even more sense than either a Microsoft takeover of the entire company or a Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo’s search operations.
If Yahoo were a patient at a hospital, the physician in charge might already have scrawled “GFP” on its chart, which to other doctors and nurses is a sign that things are not going well and the patient is “good for...
Update:
The much-rumoured Microsoft acquisition of “natural-language search” startup Powerset is now official, with a statement from MSFT and one from Powerset. Mike Arrington says that sources close to the deal tell him the rumoured $100-million asking price is in the ball park. Not bad for a company that has virtually no actual operating business.
Original post:
Matt Marshall over at VentureBeat says he has it on good authority that Microsoft is planning to make an offer for Powerset, the “semantic search” startup that has been in stealth mode for quite awhile now, popping up only long enough for a party or two, and recently poked its head out with a small-scale demo of its technology as a Wikipedia search engine. The rumoured dollar value for this deal?...
Or at least that’s what
ISO’s
Secretary General says. [I had hoped to stop writing about this subject,
sigh]. There are multiple appeals against OOXML; let’s try to read the
tea-leaves without too many guttural snickers.
The Story Thus Far
When Microsoft decided to ram OOXML through the ISO “fast-track” process,
a number of voices spoke up saying that would be inappropriate given the scale of the
spec, and that doing this would be bad for the ISO and for the
industry.
ISO thought it over (well, one assumes they must have) and decided that no,
fast-track would be OK and they’d proceed, making up ad-hoc
process as necessary.
Predictably, and as predicted, the process was rife with corruption and
bullying; at the end of the day, the pretence of carefully evaluating...
Those of us who are used to the nightmare of upgrading and installing software on Windows will relate to Bill Gates 2003 experience when he tried to download and install Moviemaker:
I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack … so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went [...]...
Matt Marshall over at VentureBeat says he has it on good authority that Microsoft is planning to make an offer for Powerset, the “semantic search” startup that has been in stealth mode for quite awhile now, popping up only long enough for a party or two, and recently poked its head out with a small-scale demo of its technology as a Wikipedia search engine. The rumoured dollar value for this deal? $100-million. If true, that would be a hell of a payday for something that hasn’t really shown much in the way of spectacular results so far, and is based at least in part on 30-year-old technology that the company licensed from Xerox’s PARC labs.
Of course, for a company like Microsoft, $100-million is chicken feed — Bill and Steve find that kind of money stuffed...
Well, looky what we’ve got here: multiple rumours that the Microsoft and Yahoo talks are back on, although whether Microsoft is interested in an all-out acquisition again or just a search deal depends on whose sources you choose to believe. I hate to say that I told you so, but… oh, who am I kidding — I love to say I told you so. Well, I told you so. Like my friend Kara Swisher of All Things D, I continue to believe that a Yahoo purchase makes sense for Microsoft, and that the longer Yahoo’s stock price remains under pressure (which it seems likely to do, given all the executive departures and general deck-chair rearranging that is going on) the more the software behemoth will want to own it.
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My friend Kara Swisher at All Things D seems convinced that Microsoft has shelved its offer for Yahoo for the last time, since a number of senior Microsoft executives “close to the dealmaking” told her they have walked away from the table for good, and have no interest in acquiring the troubled Internet giant — not even if Jerry Yang is ousted as CEO, or the stock drops below $20. I have no doubt that sources told Kara that, since her contacts are usually impeccable. But I think they (even this guy) are still bluffing, and are ready to pull the trigger on a Yahoo deal.
Why do I think that? Unlike Kara, I have no inside sources at Microsoft with knowledge of a deal. But I can’t help but think that if an acquisition of Yahoo made any sense whatsoever at $33 a share,...
[Uploaded on March 17, 2008 by Carlo Alberto Della Siega]
A club to celebrate the love child between Steve Ballmer and Robbie the Robot, otherwise known as the Zune player has opened in downtown LA:
Zune L.A., formerly photographer Greg Gorman’s studio, serves as an office for a handful of the Microsoft music player’s employees...
There are many great moments in the Wall Street Journal’s retrospective about the changing of the guard at Microsoft, which describes how former CEO Bill Gates fought with — and, in classic Gates fashion, sarcastically undermined — new CEO and friend Steve Ballmer in front of the troops. But one of the things that jumped out at me (as it did at Zoli Erdos) was the part where the article describes the fate of NetDocs, an attempt by Microsoft to grapple with the freight train that was rushing headlong towards the company (and continues to do so): namely, the advent of Web-enabled Office-style applications.
In one case, two vice presidents clashed over the future of NetDocs, a promising effort to offer software programs such as word processing over the Internet. The issue:...