I’ve always liked how the Team System team work hard to provide details on what they’re up to. This is becoming more the norm on Microsoft assets (just check out the great job Beth Massi has been doing on the VSTO site for example), and so I shouldn’t be surprised to see just how serious they see simple things like content management to be. as Jeff Beehler notes, the Team System team have...
Google Chrome leaves beta
I’ve been using Chrome a fair bit lately. Why? It’s fast. And although people point to its lack of basic features, plug-in architecture (although that is in the works), cross platform support and it’s lack of market share, I for one don’t care, as long as it is fast for browsing. I use Firefox when I need the other stuff. Anyway, Chrome came out of Beta yesterday. Download it here. Love...
Facebook statistics
Nick Ellery’s post alerted me to the incredible Facebook statistics (about half way down the article) that are (probably) driving them into the ground. Here’s a taste: 300,000 images are uploaded to Facebook every second. How do you pay for the infrastructure that supports that? Or a trillion page views per year. That’s serious load. How do you finance it? Advertising? Yeah, right. Whilst...
Bogus tips for IT Managers
Any blog that has 4 Ps in its title is worth reading in my book. That aside, I’ve been reading Phil Factor’s Phrenetic Phoughts (oh hang on, that’s only 3 Ps – you tricked me with that clever similar sounding thing Phil) for years now. It’s always a classic read. And for managers like me, his tips are gold. Take his series on hints for aspiring IT managers. If I happen to find myself...
Office 14
From Office Web to Office 14 now, and I found Mary-Jo’s post useful as a quick update on progress. Office 14 is the next version of Office (the desktop based one), and in terms of version numbers I think they skipped 13 due to it being an unlucky number (or some such). The post is a good summary, but also includes a few new items, such as the rumour that SharePoint 14 will include offline...
Microsoft Office Web Applications FAQ
I’m catching up on my blogs, and one that I’ve missed reading for a while is Sarah Perez on Channel 10. I could probably spend a happy half day simply linking to stories she’s been posting over the last month… so do yourself a favor and subscribe to her if you haven’t already. Back in early November she posted a quick Q & A about the recently announced Office Web (coming next year...
Microsoft advertising spend: $1.2B
It’s easy to be impressed (or horrified) by big numbers, and 1.2 billion is certainly a big number when it comes to dollars. That’s what Microsoft spent on advertising last year. Apple by contrast spent $486M (as Lindsay Blakely reported). But forget the actual dollars, instead focus on percentages. As Todd Bishop helpfully points out in his excellent analysis, Microsoft spend between 2% and...
Do more with this Ad
I spotted this gem on MSDN tonight (yeah, slow night…). Above the annoying flashing ad was a link titled ‘Do more with this Ad’. You got me. I clicked it. Amazing, they’re after my feedback. They care about me. My opinion counts. I submitted my response, refreshed the page and waited expectantly for the refreshing change it would bring to my browsing experience. Can you guess what...
Office 14 for the web
One of the announcements at PDC was about Microsoft’s foray into the web based Office space. This was met with initial excitement, and seems to be answer to the (small I suspect) group of people wondering how Microsoft can compete with Google Docs, Zoho and other online offerings. The demo here, with Antoine Leblond and Chris Bryant is a nice indication of how it will operate. I’ve been a...
Wish item: PDC viewer
One thing I’d like is a special PDC videos viewer. Currently I’m watching most of the videos via Channel 9, and the experience is quite nice. I also have a number of sessions downloaded (and a big thanks to Justin King for saving me tons of bandwidth by burning me a DVD of all his downloads). But in general the experience is so… Web 1.0, and here’s the user experience I’d really like:...