John Battelle is one of the authorities on search and
his Searchblog is a must read for anyone interesting in the Search space.
Recently he conducted an interview with Garry Flake who used
to work for Overture and then moved on to work for Yahoo. Garry is now working for Microsoft as the director for the
Live Labs strategy. His job being to get Microsoft and Microsoft Research to come up with the next generation in
search. Garry provides some very honest answers to some well thought out questions.Insightful interview with Garry Flake of Microsoft Search
John Battelle is one of the authorities on search and
his Searchblog is a must read for anyone interesting in the Search space.
Recently he conducted an interview with Garry Flake who used
to work for Overture and then moved on to work for Yahoo. Garry is now working for Microsoft as the director for the
Live Labs strategy. His job being to get Microsoft and Microsoft Research to come up with the next generation in
search. Garry provides some very honest answers to some well thought out questions.Bill Gates' workflow
Scoble
points out this Fortune article
about how Sir Gates manages his workload. Well actually Scoble’s intention for linking to the article was to show
us that a Channel9 guy was on Bill’s desk. It looks like 10% of
Gates’ reading is still done on paper. He has the now compulsory tri-monitor setup and Tablet PC, yet
surprisingly has an analogue whiteboard -- maybe next year Bill. The article goes on to explain how Bill focuses his
attention and how he tries to prioritize his time.
Vista delayed until 2007 for consumers
Microsoft broke
the sad news today that Windows Vista, our belated operating system will be pushed back again. Microsoft tells us
that this is due to demand from the retail channel to allow them time to prepare? Yes you read that right. This should
only change for the consumer channel with the enterprise still moving forward for November 2006. So just to recap
– Microsoft this November will have the Windows Vista code go gold yet are unwilling to provide this gold to
consumers. Scoble's response. New Internet Explorer every year or less
Talking at Microsoft’s current Mix 06 
Parental controls coming to Windows XP
Windows Vista is already scheduled to be
released with parental controls baked into the system. Windows XP on the other hand does not contain parental controls,
at least not yet. According to this article by CNET
Microsoft will be releasing parental controls under the Windows Live umbrella this summer. Parents will be able to
control the child’s available web sites, who they are adding to Windows Live Messenger and Mail along with who
can access their MSN Spaces service.Windows Mobile devices at the 2006 Commonwealth Games
Over on Pocket PC
Thoughts they point to a post by my old friend Anthony
“the PDA guy” Caruana. He tells us that they will be using Microsoft Mobile technology to help people find their way around during the games. I find this
particularly interesting for reasons other then the fact that I live in Melbourne where the games will be hosted.
Unfortunately living in Melbourne I have been affected by the Commonwealth Games Time Zone change. This Time Zone
change means that computers that are not patched to accommodate for the 1 hour offset will be telling the wrong time.
The problem with this is that Windows Mobile devices do not have a
solution. Let’s hope that the people giving out directions are also not giving out the time.Ray Ozzie introduces Live Clipboard concept
Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's acquired CTO from Groove
Networks is on
fire these days. Demonstrating a new concept for the web called Live Clipboard. The idea behind Live Clipboard is to
maintain the structure of copied data from web to web and from web to PC. This is something you really have to visualise to understand,
well I did anyway. Ray and friend’s released this idea under the Creative Commons which will hopefully spur on
adoption by the industry; so far Dave Winter is onboard. What I
also found interesting was that all the demonstrations I’ve seen so far were done using Firefox. Isn’t it
great when we work together?
Microsoft Research working on a new project called StepUI
Every year Microsoft Research holds an event called
TechFest where MS Research shows off their new ideas. This year included a program called StepMail that allows you to use your feet to scroll through
and read email. A broader project StepUI tries to apply the same technique to other applications.
Slashdot now knows that Windows Vista won't suck
Slashdot pointed out an excellent
article by Extreme Tech for Windows Vista. The
Slashdot link is also worth a look to see what the
often opinionated Slashdot crowd had to say about Microsoft and Windows Vista.
Windows Live Local now at StreetSide
Microsoft today released a Technology Preview for Virtual
Earth allowing you to view cities at street level. The preview at this stage only includes Seattle and San
Francisco. Internet Explorer 7 is telling me this looks like a suspicious Website so be careful :-).Update on Origami project with video
Jason had a post up yesterday
about Microsoft's mysterious Origami Project. We then had Engadget show us what it actually looked like. Now we
have the video from one of
Microsoft's PR firms. Enjoy!Paul Thurrott's Windows Vista Product Editions Preview
Paul was the first person to release the Vista product editions information on the web, prior to the last Professional
Developers Conference. Now he presents us with a product edition breakdown to try and help us
figure out what feature goes with what edition.
It's been fun FrontPage yet it's time to move on
I remember doing some work for a leading web company at the time that use to refer to FrontPage as the
f-word. A lot has changed since then, granted that company still does not use FrontPage yet the quality of the products
and its reduction in messing with your code has improved dramatically. Now with the introduction of Office 2007 system
we will see this product torn apart with Microsoft’s Expression Web Designer and Office SharePoint Designer 2007.
When Office 2007 system hits us hopefully in the later part of this year FrontPage will be no longer be part of the new Office
family.Office 2007 details start flooding in
The Office 2007 system formally Office 12 had its pricing, naming and features announced. Brian Jones from the Office team does an
excellent job explaining what is happening here. Paul
Thurrott also setup a frequently asked questions section on his Windows Supersite. Quoting Bill Gates from his Channel9 video posted yesterday
“Office 12 has got more sexy new stuff then any release we’ve done for ages and ages.”New look for MSN Search
The MSN Search user interface was upgraded last night. They have also
changed the ranking algorithm. From what I have seen so far the results have been pretty good. It would be great for
people to comment here on the results they are getting compared to the likes of Google and Yahoo.
