Talking about What’s this?

 

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What’s this?

Start Speculating

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As I point out over at Scott’s blog:

 

Brandon, I agree with what you are saying. I too agree it’s going to be an API release. What’s interesting, in my opinion, is how the start.com and forthcoming APIs basically change the rules to the game.

You stated:
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How to make money off this, I don’t know. Ads? But it is difficult to serve up relevant ads when content is not controlled.
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Here is where we don’t agree: It’s in Microsoft’s best interest to not have any adds. It’s the best way to drive the Google wannabe machine into the ground. A portal without adds, is the best portal of all, especially when the web page type portal is replaced by the "plugged directly into the OS portal" because screen realestate becomes much more valuable in this situation.

Here’s how the game has changed.

1. Ads are annoying, I don’t care how relavant and non-obtrusive they are. Look how great a product Tivo is.
2. Google and Yahoo make money off of ads, but at the same time they use this money to pose a threat to Microsoft (G-OS, G-Browser, G-Mail)
3. Vista loves RSS, but it will do more than Just RSS. In my opinion, this API release could be the start of something big. Like I point out in my blog-and you touch on as well–today’s generation doesn’t need web pages to get their fill of "today’s news." An API release with all of the agrigated data makes it very possible to put all the info you want, where ever you want. If I want to drop a startlet in an outlook pane, I will be able to. That way I never have to go to weather.com.

I think it’s in Microsoft’s best interest to provide this as a value proposition add-in to Vista. Add-free. The same way Apple makes money selling Ipods, and bundling Itunes, which makes no money. That’s right, all of this info provided add free where ever I want it.

Google made adds very unintrusive as possible, and relevant as possible because they new users would prefer it over the annoying flash popups and all the other garbage. Microsoft can not drive google out of business by providing a cheaper product because Google doesn’t sell any. They can however leave users with a choice, use Google and get non-annoying adds, or MSN tied in with Windows for the only thing that’s better.

No adds at all. This way, Google has no money left to pay for all that talent.

The Google Killer. They will be hoping the guys at Cnet ask them for interviews after they don’t matter.

Doctor in Trouble for Telling Woman to Lose Some Weight!

Wow, what’s this country coming to? Well you could look at it two ways. Are we too fat or too politically correct? This is rather humorous, I am assuming this woman was treated with respect.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/08/25/udoctor.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/08/25/ixportaltop.html

 

Talk.google.com

Talk.google.com is running an OSS jabber server and speculation is wild on what they are to announce tomorrow. Their market cap soars a billion dollars with speculation that an IM services coupled with free VOIP will be the announcement tomorrow. Talk.google.com has a redirector to www.google.com/talk .

I think one of the things that people have failed to recognize is that when google enters a market, they usually redefine that market. I think we are going to see some work from their social experiments come to fruition tomorrow. They do own a bunch of dark fiber, which they got for pretty cheap. Will the skype-killing-hype be upon us tomorrow? Will google delver the better app, by utilizing their dark fiber network?

Only time will tell.

Texas Longhorns Bell Ringer does a great job at keeping the fans happy

http://www.whoomp.com/articles/44/1/Texas-Tech-Bell-Ringer-Video

 

This is one of the funniest sports bloopers I have seen in some time.

 

 

Start.msn.com

What do the MSN folks have cooking? There is a promise of info on September 15th if you go to www.start.com/developer which I think is going to be some sort of API release. After all, you don’t want to have to go to start.com all the time; people will want widgets and add-ins for sidebars and such. Looking forward, I see a passport account being very useful. All of your customized panels plugging into every app, on any computer, and that info being accessible from any computer you sign into passport with. Also, I just found this Easter egg, looks like start.com will finally plug directly into msn.
 
http://start.msn.com/
 
"You are testing me"

Most detailed info on Windows Vista (the next version of Windows)

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The feature set for Windows Vista has been in flux for some time. Here’s why: Back in 2003, the plans for Windows Vista were quite ambitious, but when the core Windows team attempted to finally componentized Vista, then based on the XP SP2 code base, they found the task to be impossible and had to start over from scratch. That work commenced in mid-2004 and was finished near the end of 2004. By that time

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Paul Thurrott’s Windows Supersite

 

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_preview_2005.asp

 

Paul does a great job of giving you detailed reviews on Microsoft products. He loves the technology so much he even throws the occasional temper tantrum. Good stuff Paul! One of the things this article goes a great lenghts to show is how important and difficult it is today to be very vague and promise nothing if you are a behemoth technology giant. On the one hand you MUST draw hype and you need your developers on board because if you don’t have them you don’t have anyone. But on the other hand accurately describing what code you know needs written and how that actually translates to the exact bits that ship to RTM and their their exact roles is like a game of paper football, You want the paper to slide as far across the table as possible, but if you aim too far, it does you no good.

 

It’s about time.

I have really wanted a place to rant about all the things people rant about on the internet. I almost started blogging a few years back when windows 2000 was just coming out. I ended up spending too much time working and doing all of the other great things besides writing about it.

 

I don’t want to spend too long talking about my boring life but I wanted to point out that I think blogging is a natural and healthy activity for me to pursue I believe, and I hope to point out some great points and make it very entertaining here as well.