Tag: microsoft

Web applications Growth

The low adoption barriers to web applications mean that no traditional packaged software company is safe from web-based competition in the near term.

redmond, we have a problem

Microsoft Search quality

As if we needed to see the gulf between Google and the rest, the Windows Live SkyDrive rename and update has only just hit the top of techmeme and yet Google has already updated its index and ranking and is continuing to do so. Yahoo and Live Search are both way behind

such candor

Map attention data

Hotmap shows where people have looked at when using Virtual Earth, the engine that powers Live Search Maps: the darker a point, the more times it has been downloaded. It is a pretty cool idea. The heat maps clearly focus on high population areas, roads, coastlines, rivers, country borders, and other items of interest.

interesting. we should do this with a site that has actual market share

Live.com Usability

Walking barefoot over a cobblestone path is possible, and no step in particular will injure your feet. But the overall experience isn’t nice. It’s the same when a website has minor usability problems piling up: none of the issues taken on its own is disastrous at all, but taken together, the site ends up being a slightly bad experience. I wanted to take a minute to illustrate such a collection of minor usability issues with the new Live.com, Microsoft’s search effort. All in all shows that the Live.com team doesn’t have people with a 100% focus on usability.

why microsoft will continue to inhale the exhaust of their competent competitors as it watches them pull away, and take their remaining market share.

Google Slides

Google appears to be making remarkable progress chipping away at the utility of a desktop PC environment.

Towards the Geoweb

heh. the economist calls my work on kml standardization “the road to web 3.0”.
2007-10-18: Mining Information from Collections and KML

Among the results were many amazing links that completed my research by taking me to geo-referenced content on the web; the Rome honeymoon Collection lead me to this great photo of the fountain and this KML file from Google’s keyhole BBS lead me to this stunning Panorama of the area.

I hope this brief overview helps get you started with this new feature in Live search maps. I find it to be one of the most fun and useful (I’m biased as I work on the VE Collections team), and when combined with other features like 3D Birds eye navigation the line between research and leisurely exploration get pretty blurry

very commendable how they talk about the geoweb.

Ever used a Zune?

microsoft can’t even get the spinny wheel right. based on this i predict a completely underwhelming zune “surprise” in Q4.

Microsoft on CapGemini-Google deal

Google has a history of releasing incomplete products, calling them beta software, and issuing updates on a “known only to Google” schedule – this flies in the face of what enterprises want and need in their technology partners – what is Google doing that indicates they are in lock step with customer needs?

aww, cute

Changing Health Care

In politics, every serious candidate for the White House has a health care plan. So too in business, where the 2 leading candidates for Web supremacy, Google and Microsoft, are working up their plans to improve the nation’s health care. By combining better Internet search tools, the vast resources of the Web and online personal health records, both companies are betting they can enable people to make smarter choices about their health habits and medical care.

industries that stop fighting the internet and embrace it offer vastly superior services. so it will be with these hidebound guys.

Google Docs good enough

Then I saw “Open as as a Google Document” and I tried and, you know, it’s Good Enough. And snappy. And free. And internationalized. And I’m not the only person having this experience.