Tag Archives | microsoft

How Microsoft Can Win the RSS War

By on December 23, 2005 in Tech

Scoble links to a blog post by Michael Affronti, a program manager for Microsoft’s Outlook team, about planned RSS integration in an upcoming version of Outlook. I use Outlook for email and probably always will. I have often scratched my head about why Outlook (unlike Outlook Express) doesn’t have newsgroup integration- thereby making users launch another program to read newsgroups. Now it looks like Outlook will have a built-in RSS aggregator so users won’t have to look elsewhere to read their RSS feeds (there’s a screen shot on Michael’s blog post).

Here’s how Microsoft can win the RSS war:

1) Make the RSS integration seamless. The screenshot looks pretty sweet in this regard.

2) For the love of Elvis, give us a “mark ALL feeds as read” button. The lack of this is a Sage-killer for me.

3) Figure out a way to give us 3 big viewing panes: a list of feeds; a list of post titles; and the post itself. Give me an integrated way to click to the post page AND home page of the blog I’m reading. In most of the RSS readers I have used, the first two columns make the window where the actual blog post appears too narrow. Outlook has a good pane structure now, so this should be easy.

4) Give us a way to synchronize our feeds, including read and unread, over multiple computers (via Foldershare, perhaps?). Scoble mentions the need for synchronization in his post. Foldershare, Foldershare, Foldershare. Say it with me…

5) Get this release out there before Firefox and/or Sage makes Outlook as an RSS reader as yesterday’s news as it’s in the process of making Internet Explorer. Firefox (and the multitude of extensions for it) is seriously kicking Microsoft’s butt as far as the browser feature war goes. I just don’t know if Microsoft can move fast enough to keep up. I hope it can (I have owned Microsoft stock for a long time), but I bet it can’t.

Alas, there are also ways Microsoft can lose the RSS war:

1) Take forever (see above).

2) Remove elements and features that people are expecting (think Vista).

3) Release something that does what other RSS readers do, but doesn’t represent an evolutionary advance. People need an evolutionary advance to switch. That’s why Internet Explorer dominated the browser market pre-Firefox.

Outlook still owns the email business and no one has come out with the ultimate RSS reader yet. Microsoft can win the RSS war if it moves fast enough and gives people something that is significantly better than what we have now. That sounds easy enough, right?

UPDATE: Mike busted me on my lack of numbering skill in the comments. I just fixed it. There are three reasons why I can’t count : (1) I’m bad at math, (1) I can’t type and (1) I’m bad at proofreading :)

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Windows Live Mail Update

By on December 6, 2005 in Tech

I received an email invitation to join the beta test of Windows Live Mail (the pending overhaul of Microsoft’s Hotmail service) today. Having poked around a bit, it looks like my outside-looking-in impression may be correct- it looks like the easy winner in the three horse race for online email domination. Of course since, unlike Gmail and Windows Live Mail, I have not wrangled a Yahoo! Mail beta invitation, I can’t really compare all of them. Enough whining- here are my impressions.

1) It looks a lot like Outlook, which I and a zillion other people use for our email. This familiarity will give it a head start in getting people to use it over the other less familiar applications.

2) In addition to the usual email folders along the left side of the window, there are tabs for Calendar, Contact and Today at the top- again similar to Outlook (though in Outlook these tabs are at the bottom left of the window below the email folders). The Calendar tab doesn’t work in my account, but this is a beta version so that’s not unexpected. The Contacts tab works, though I could find no import feature to import my contacts from my desktop Outlook application. That may be a feature reserved for the paid upgrade version (Outlook Live)- I don’t know. The Today tab shows links to a tutorial and a feedback page. In sum, the look and feel is an improvement over Hotmail and more intuitive than Gmail’s conversational structure.

3) You can add topical folders to store mail by clicking a link at the bottom of the standard email folders. I didn’t see a way to create rules to direct email into chosen folders, but that may be coming.

The issue in my mind is how many features will be added to this free version and how many will be held back for the paid upgrade. Clearly, it’s a work in progress, but add some features (RSS functionality, perhaps) and Windows Live Mail will replace Hotmail, its predecessor, as my web based email of choice.

I’m going to use Live Mail and Gmail regularly over the next few weeks and I’ll report my impressions from time to time.

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Microsoft to Remove Sony Spyware

By on November 13, 2005 in Music, Tech

I thought I was through with this story, but I have to add one more nugget. I and others previously wondered if Microsoft might add the Sony BMG spyware to the list of bugs removed by Microsoft’s Malicious Software Removal Tool. Well it seems it will.

According to this post on the Anti-Malware Engineering Team blog:

We are concerned about any malware and its impact on our customers’ machines. Rootkits have a clearly negative impact on not only the security, but also the reliability and performance of their systems.

The post goes on to say that removal of the Sony software will be included in the upcoming editions of the Microsoft programs.

Good job Microsoft.

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Will Microsoft Exterminate the Sony Bug?

By on November 5, 2005 in Music

Ed Bott has called for Microsoft to include the removal of Sony BMG’s spyware in the next update of its Malicious Software Removal Tool, which is updated every month. He admits it’s a longshot, but this is a rare chance for Microsoft to be viewed by all as the good guy.

Mark Russinovich, the guy who discovered Sony’s spyware, has analyzed Sony’s so called patch for this spyware and reports that that the patch is more menace than medicine.

Whoever is the decision maker for Sony on this issue is a walking bad decision.

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What Ed Said

By on November 3, 2005 in Music

After I posted the update below, I read Ed Bott’s excellent takes on the Sony spyware issue here, here and here.

I think Ed nailed it, although I don’t think Sony’s lame attempt at placating consumers by issuing the patch that isn’t really a patch is much of a step in any positive direction.

Sony is going to continue to get slammed about this until they do the right thing. This will be an interesting litmus test of the power of bloggers to generate a policy changing buzz. I hope we succeed.

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Windows Vista

By on July 28, 2005 in Tech

I’m not all that excited about the (late next year) forthcoming new version of Windows (now called Vista, previously called Longhorn), mainly because it sounds like Microsoft has decided to leave a lot of the previously heralded features out and the end of next year is a long, long way away (plus the release date will undoubtedly move back several times).

However, Paul Thurrott (Windows guru) has an interesting review of the recently released beta version 1.

Installation seems to be easier. I’m dubious of the new desktop search, because it can’t be as good as, but may spell the end of, my beloved X-1. My Documents, which is somewhat of a nightmare now, especially in Windows 2000, seems to have miraculously become more confusing, which is not what most computer users need. The Parental Controls stuff sounds promising, since my kids will be well supervised computer-wise by the time Vista ships. Tabs in Internet Explorer 7 looks very useful and is, as Paul points out, very overdue. Microsoft still seems to be optomistically pushing voice recognition, but everybody knows that its no more than a neat toy that is utterly useless for increasing productivity for most users (though undoubtedly of great value for people with disabilities). Networking (perhaps the most important thing) looks spotty in this release, but will undoubtedly be fixed in future beta releases.

I was a beta tester for Windows 95 and it was sort of fun. But these days I just want my computer to work. I think I’ll wait until the end of 2006 or better yet, the middle of 2007.

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Proof Positive

By on July 13, 2005 in Tech

That if enough people blog loudly about an issue, they can make a difference.

Microsoft was rumored to be negotiating to purchase Claria, a company that has been associated with spyware. Everybody from Ed Bott to Dwight Silverman wondered why Miscrosoft would do such a stupid thing.

Today word was leaked that Microsoft is not going to buy Claria. One of the reasons- the adverse PR that would have resulted.

Mark one up for the good guys.

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