Engadget has Creative Zen Vision about Microsoft "breaking some new ground" with a… Battlebot (?!) walking around with Sony Ericsson's new W600 Walkman Phone and chatting up how the Nintendo Revolution won't support HD.

AdJab covers AutoTrader's attacks, on Heinz one-liners, marooned on Gilligan's Island and then

Note: I'm cross posting this report from the D Conference to the Microsoft and Google blogs. This post is from the personal blog of Jason McCabe Calacanis.

Gates just spent 15 minutes showing off maps at the D conference. It seemed that 75% of Gates' talk was focused on would-be Google killers and the other 25% on Apple-killers. I'm exaggerating, since Tablet and Windows Media Center having nothing to do with those companies.

He just showed mapping technology that included satellite images just like Google Maps. He then showed putting layers on top of maps—just like the Google Mash-ups people are doing. No big deal, we've seen this before.

Gates said that in their satellite images today one pixel represents one foot. OK, great… we know about that as well.

He then talked about a company he has partnered with that that flies planes over cities and takes photos at 45 degrees. He showed flipping a map from a drawing to a satellite to an amazing 45-degree close up photo of a building. Everyone let out a big "ohhhhhhhh."

It was the first "ohhhhhhhhhhhh" moment of the conference. Steve Jobs' podcasts in iTunes got no "ohhhhh" except the one that I did under my breath while blogging it.

For my money podcast support is better than 45-degree photos.

Gates also showed off a bunch of search stuff that I'll blog next.

Update: My main man John Battelle blogged Microsoft Maps as well http://battellemedia.com/archives/001559.php

A couple of weeks ago Engadget interviewed Bill Gates, today Joystiq interview Steve Ballmer about the XBOX 360. I stayed up late last night helping the guys transcribe the tape. Steve Ballmer is still the loud, laughing maniac I remember interviewing for Silicon Alley Reporter/Digital Coast Reporter back in 99—and he is still sharp as a samurai sword. He goes from screaming in excitement to introspective in 7 seconds. I'd love to see him and Jeff Bezos watch Chappelle Show sometime—these guys are both huge laughers.

Great interview… I wish you could hear the tape (not sure if there is a podcast of this one happening… there should be!). Everyone in the room was laughing so hard at one point it sounds like a drunken frat party.

Bill Gates launched a bunch of new products today in Los Angeles at the "Digital Entertainment Anywhere" event. It was basically an event aimed at killing iTunes, which as we all know is locked down (i.e. you can't take your iTunes music anywhere you want—not by a long shot).

Engadget has a ton of coverage, including a recording I made (aka an MP3, aka a Podcast) of the event here: http://www.engadget.com/entry/6832728859549251/

Microsoft labs showed off some of their projects. No time to write it up, but they hit on Wallop and medical databases. I deleted the Mp3 file by accident!

Looking to find out if anyone else covered it, or has an MP3.

Every year we have to replace our desktop machines, or at least upgrade them. Every year we have to reinstall WINDOWS, deal with a virus attack and battle adware. Today's New York Times piece by my friend Saul got me to thinking about how I've been able to triumph over the "WINDOWS is productivity killer" meme that is circulating in the blogosphere.

How have I been able to make my machine lightening fast and spyware free?

Simple, I've kicked out all of my Microsoft products and replaced them with Open Source products. So, I get the benefit of being on an OS that is used by 90%+ of the people out there without all the headaches. If I need to use IE or WORD I do, but 95% of the time I'm using Firefox, Notepro (not Open Source), Thunderbird (still getting the hang of it), and now Gaim. Take a look at this chart I created by hitting CTRL-ALT-DEL and looking at Processes in teh TASK Manager. Note: I tried to do the same thing in each application and loaded each from scratch (i.e. loaded Google.com in both browswer, no documents in each word processor, same number of emails in each mail client folder, etc).

Now, a lot of saving above—half in fact—comes from consolidating my IM clients, but you can still save about 40-50% of the memory your system uses by going with "light" version of popular Microsoft software.

The time is now for Microsoft to release Office Light—the Diet Coke of the Desktop world. Come on guys, we want speed and stability over features. I use 5% of the features in your products, but my desktop is slowed to a crawl because of the other 95%. Can't you start your products in light mode and have a switch that turns on the other features?

If Microsoft doesn't respond to the marketplaces need for light, low-cost applications you're going to see them loose massive marketshare I believe. There is no reason why a company could not toss out IE for Firefox—in fact most companies should it they want to keep up productivity. It is only a matter of time before this trend moves over to the Office space.

Now, this is a huge opportunity for Google and Yahoo. I've been saying this for five years, but Yahoo would get another 20% of my desktop time if they gave me a notepad that saved to my briefcase on Yahoo—and I would pay for it! Come on Google, same with you guys. Where is your IM program? When are you going to come out with an Office suite? The web is the new desktop, and light applications are what the world wants—it's not a feature race no more! Get in the game guys!

so, i finally got word from Yahoo re:
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1883446244611980/

—————————————-
Hi Jason,

This is a licensing agreement through our marketing department.  It's
just another component of a licensing program that we've had in place
for several years for a variety of items such as computer peripherals
and we're now extending to additional items such as those you see in the
photograph.

The manufacturer is Diamond Electronics and we will be providing our
branding and logo.  The manufacturer is working to sell these products
into major retailers.

It's an exciting extension of the Yahoo! brand, but it won't be a
significant announcement for the company as the blog suggests.

Thanks,

YAHOO PERSON'S NAME DELETED

Like may people I hate IE. For about five years I used Opera for 80% of my surfing, and like many I gave started using Firefox this year.

I'm doing some log file reports for Engadget.com—which is as tech savvy an audience as you could have—and it turns out that only 57% of our audience uses a MS browswer and Firefox is now at—holy cow—18%!

If our audience is the vanguard, I'm wondering if these stats are going to become the norm in another year or two. Is it possible that Microsoft being slammed for killing Netscape was in some way unfair? I mean, if Firefox can come out of no where an in a year start taking 10-20% that says something about the free market of the Internet.

thoughts?!

Engadget brower stats

————————————————-

Internet Explorer 6.x 53%

Firefox 18.16% 

Safari 11.25% 

Internet Explorer 5.x 4.07%

Mozilla 3.18% 

Opera 2.50% 

Netscape 7.x 1.42%

Update: Other folks are talking about this too:
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/006444.html

If true I think this is the biggest story of the year, right up there with the Google IPO! Engadget has a lot more pictures and details.

Google has put up a sensible set of principles on how software, and the companies that put out software, should behave on the Internet. The problem is that the people who make this software don't care about their reputations, let alone the reputations of the industry. No, that is way to high-concept for these slim buckets.

This whole thing started, of course, when Limewire and Kazaa started bundling spyware with their wildly popular P2P software. These products would watch what you were looking at on the Internet and present you with ads (i.e you're on JetBlue they show you an ad for Southwest). They might set your home page to their portal, or they might hijack the default setting for when you type in a URL wrong.

Perhaps the biggest problem these things cause is not the unwanted ads. They are poorly written, are memory hogs and are highly un-installable. They eat up your computer's resources to the point at which Windows just stops working.

To solve the problem you have to just reinstall Windows every three months—that is what I do.

The market will correct this problem. Users are getting savvy and they are learning to not load P2P software. Limewire has such a horrible reputation that they just yesterday introduced a "spyware" free version of their software.

Over time—and this is highly unlikely—if Microsoft can't solve this problem people are just going to move to the Mac or Linux platforms. I know just yesterday I installed a Lindows machines next to my new rocketship from ABSComputing.com. I'm thinking about using that machine for blogging and email just to avoid all the problems with Windows.

Thanks for the concept Google, and it's not bad—it's noble in fact. However this is one problem even Google can't solve except by being the finest example of how a company should behave on the planet. You are doing a great job at that.

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer please take note: two kids who were nobody a decade ago are now the shinning example of leadership in your industry. They are not only trying to run their business, but they are trying to help you fix your business.

I think the torch was just passed.

Looks like Microsoft is taking RFID A little more seriously today…

CNET: The software giant on Monday announced that it is forming the Microsoft Radio Frequency Identification Council, which is set to hold its first meeting this month. Participants in the group include Accenture, GlobeRanger, Intermec Technologies and Provia Software. .... "With RFID in the early stages of adoption, we are continuing to expand and evolve our partner-driven strategy based on the needs of the industry," said Javed Sikander, a program manager for RFID strategy at Microsoft.

From Dave Farber's IP list comes this post:

This was on the AP wire. Japanese officials raided Microsoft's Tokyo offices to exter pressure on the company to change some unsavory terms in the company's contracts with Japanese firms. There's a storm building up in Taiwan as well (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15123).

Japan Joins Global Pressures on Microsoft The surprise raid by Japanese anti-monopoly authorities' on Microsoft Corp.'s Tokyo offices was impeccably timed- barely a month before the European Union slapped a $613 million fine on the company.

As we mention here months ago, Google is launching a free email program called "Gmail."

Amidst rampant media speculation, Google Inc. today announced it is testing a preview release of Gmail — a free search-based webmail service with a storage capacity of up to eight billion bits of information, the equivalent of 500,000 pages of email. Per user.

The inspiration for Gmail came from a Google user complaining about the poor quality of existing email services, recalled Larry Page, Google co-founder and president, Products. "She kvetched about spending all her time filing messages or trying to find them," Page said. "And when she's not doing that, she has to delete email like crazy to stay under the obligatory four megabyte limit. So she asked, 'Can't you people fix this?'"

The idea that there could be a better way to handle email caught the attention of a Google engineer who thought it might be a good "20 percent time" project. (Google requires engineers to spend a day a week on projects that interest them, unrelated to their day jobs). Millions of M&Ms later, Gmail was born.

Found this via Google News today.

What is blogging all about? 
First, "blog" is short for Web log. It's a medium in which an author writes a journal-style Web site with provisions for readers to respond. These Web logs are becoming quite valuable in the software community for sharing ideas. Check out blogging on MSDN® at http://blogs.msdn.com

As you can see we've added two new blogs to WIN (the Weblogs, Inc. Network): The Playstation 3 Weblog and The Xbox 2 Weblog.

Now, these two products are not coming out for months, if not years, so news will be very slow to trickle in. Don't expect all that much from these blogs, perhaps a couple of posts a week.

To be honest we can't find much news about these two new gaming consoles out there, however we thought that instead of being the 129th Playstation weblog we would just be the first Platstation 3 one.

If you have news, you know what to do: send it to us in the form on the right.

Oh yeah, we've got a really great blogger working with us on these sites, David Touve. David also works on our P2P blog. Hey David, how about introducing yourself?