Craig Bailey

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December 22, 2008

Live Mesh update on hold, Quality in focus

By Craig Bailey
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22December

I think it’s interesting that the Live Mesh team decided to put their upcoming release on hold (as announced at the start of this month). Here’s their reasoning: UPDATE: In the world of services, we have blackout periods where no updates are allowed. This is to ensure stability during, e.g., the holiday season when use of a product goes up and the availability of employees to fix issues goes...

December 22, 2008

Werner Vogels – Chief of the Year 2008

By Craig Bailey
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Amazon’s CTO – Werner Vogels – has been awarded the Information Week Chief of the Year title. He’s quickly given the credit to his team of course, legend that he is. Now, it’s easy to be cynical of awards – it seems that sometimes companies/twitter abusers/magazines/etc just create them as a marketing device – but regardless, it’d be hard to disagree with the decision in this case...

December 17, 2008

Live Sync is Live

By Craig Bailey
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17December

You know, I think I read Sarah Perez’s blog before just about anyone’s these days. She’s even ahead of Mary-Jo, Long Zheng, Steve Clayton, and *gasp*, TechCrunch. Why? Take today’s post on Live Sync for example. Informative (she explains that Windows Live Sync is the new FolderShare), clarifying (she explains the difference between Live Sync and Live Mesh), pithy (with a simple list of...

December 17, 2008

When the chips are down… people play games

By Craig Bailey
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Should we be surprised by this Gartner report outlining the second year on year decline in PC chip sales (they’re predicting a 16.3% decline). Intel and AMD must be doing it hard, like, ahem, just about everyone in the IT industry. Well, not quite. At least games are doing well, with sales of game hardware and software in the US up by 10% over last year’s figures (that’s a nice little $3B...

December 17, 2008

WordPad Zero Day exploit

By Craig Bailey
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OMG, panic! But don’t be distracted by that other zero day exploit (you know, the Internet Explorer one), here’s where your security gaze should be firmly focused: WordPad. It turns out that WordPad has a significant exploit. And by significant, I mean it affects at least one person. I strongly recommend WordPad users (both of you) stay glued to your browser screens (here) in anticipation of...

December 17, 2008

Perception is reality

By Craig Bailey
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I know I’ve harped on this in years gone by, but it needs to be top of mind for developers: Perception is reality. That is, it doesn’t matter what your app really is/does – all that matters is what your customer thinks your app is/does. That’s why a buggy, semi functional, but awesome looking application can often get the sale (or user acceptance) over a solid, does-the-job, but awful...

December 17, 2008

Windows Live Essentials refresh

By Craig Bailey
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Yes, it’s still a beta, but they’re looking good. Microsoft has released the latest version of their Live Essentials pack, including Messenger, Mail, Writer, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Family Safety, Toolbar and more. Get them here. My main interest was Windows Live Writer, which is one of my must have applications that just keeps getting better and better (which I may have mentioned before)...

December 15, 2008

BizTalk Server 2009 Beta released

By Craig Bailey
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15December

As Steve Martin announced last week, the beta of BizTalk Server 2009 is now available (download here). BizTalk continues to be one of those great unknowns in the developer space it seems – even with an installed base of over 10,000 customers globally – and releases like this often slip under the radar. However, my reason for posting here isn’t to alert you to BizTalk the product (read...

December 15, 2008

Microsoft Mobile Momentum

By Craig Bailey
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…seems to be slowing. Figures released last week show that for the first time, iPhone sales have been higher than Windows Mobile based phone sales. Gartner reports that Apple took a 12.9% stake in the market in Q3, ahead of Microsoft with 11.1%. Both Nokia and Blackberry were ahead with 49.8% and 15.9% respectively. Canalys report similar trends, although slightly different numbers (Apple with...

December 15, 2008

Microsoft navigates the economic waters carefully

By Craig Bailey
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Microsoft has noted that times are tough, and indicated revenue figures are flattening out (although there may be some hope in the Server and Tools Business). No real surprised there. Tough times call for prudent analysis. They’ve still been hiring, albeit at reduced rates, but are reducing budgets for the coming year. This of course falls in line with what we’ve been seeing across the...

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