Microsoft Stuff

Judging strictly from the outside, this makes a lot of sense. After all, Microsoft has risen to a multi-billion dollar market cap on the basis of its brilliantly executed ad services … oh, wait, that’s Google.

AMAZON HIRED MICROSOFT AD EXECUTIVE LISA UTZSCHNEIDER TO POWER ONLINE ADS - New York Post
isa Utzschneider, who worked at Microsoft for 10 years, will become senior vice president of national ad sales for Amazon, according to e-mails yesterday announcing her departure…

this is simply extortion. For china, one of the worst violators of intellectual property and fair trade laws in the world, to complain about anti-trust is laughable.

Might Office be where Microsoft gets socked with Chinese antitrust charges? | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com
Back in June, there were more than a few stories about PC makers in China getting ready to sue Microsoft for alleged antitrust violations pertaining to Windows. Microsoft and China’s State Intellectual Property Office — the latter being the source of the original round of stories — both claimed the initial reports were inaccurate.

But according to a new story from the August 15 edition of the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft still might not be out of antitrust hot water in China. And Office, not Windows, may end up the primary target of any new antitrust complaints.

…
What’s your take?

Official Gmail Blog: Gmail blog turns 1: Looking back at our 10 most read tips

The more things change, the more they remain the same. A lot of these tips are pretty techie things that most users will never do.

(How many people will use the AND NOT operator, -foo, when searching gmail?)

gmail is rapidly becoming more feature-laden and complex–is this an inevitable product maturity trajectory that will make gmail 2012 = Microsoft Office 2012?

I suspect so–but there will still be one key difference which remains the primary reason why I permanently switched from Office in 2005. No more giant .pst files!

Yang accuses Microsoft of ‘trying to destabilize’ Yahoo

Yahoo founder and chief executive Jerry Yang accused Microsoft of trying to destabilize Yahoo with no genuine intent to buy the company, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

Awww. That’s terrible. Those naughty boys!

United States Patent Application: 0070300174

A unique monitoring system and method is provided that involves monitoring user activity in order to facilitate managing and optimizing the utilization of various system resources. In particular, the system can monitor user activity, detect when users need assistance with their specific activities, and identify at least one other user that can assist them. Assistance can be in the form of answering questions, providing guidance to the user as the user completes the activity, or completing the activity such as in the case of taking on an assigned activity. In addition, the system can aggregate activity data across users and/or devices. As a result, problems with activity templates or activities themselves can be more readily identified, user performance can be readily compared, and users can communicate and exchange information regarding similar activity experiences. Furthermore, synchronicity and time-sensitive scheduling of activities between users can be facilitated and improved overall.

What a PITA and resource hog. It would be interesting to see whether this comes out of the Microsoft Research usability team.

Testing multiple category post from inside Microsoft Word.

Wired News: Microsoft Readies Its IPod Killer

SEATTLE — Microsoft said on Friday it plans to release a new music and entertainment player and accompanying software under the “Zune” brand this year, in a belated attempt to challenge the dominance of Apple Computer’s iPod player.

Microsoft confirmed the plans for an entertainment device and software in a statement after touting those products to record companies in recent months.

The world’s largest software maker faces an uphill climb in closing the gap on Apple’s iPod media player and iTunes Music Store, the runaway leaders in their respective areas.

The iPod holds more than half of the digital media player market, according to research company NPD, while iTunes accounts for over 70 percent of U.S. digital music sales.

Technorati Tags: ipod, Zune

have made all the other billionaires on the planet look like a bunch of self-indulgent punks.

Technorati Tags: Bill Gates, Microsoft, Warren Buffett

Wow! This is great!

Test from Word 2007.