Here's the thing - the really smart people at Microsoft are out there working on the hard problems, like improving facial recognition for image searches, writing software that synchs up your work and home laptops to your phone, making it easier for average users to take photos from their digital cameras and post them directly to Facebook, etc... www.microsoft.com is probably run by someone in the marketing department, with the actual html/css/javascript/Silverlight coding outsourced to either an external web agency or an in-house team of entry-level devs - it's really not a good indicator of whether or not MS "gets the web". Good headline for an attention-grabbing blog post, though.
Not necessarily. The company I work for is considered one of the best web development in my country and virtually none of our clients come from the front page. We have much more important things to work on than to spend time and money on something that is frankly just there for the sake of being there.
What I'm wondering right now is what do people mean when they say "x doesn't get the web" in the context of companies. There are far more companies out there with not-so-spectacular e-retail websites than there are Googles and Facebooks, but they are all part of the web-as-an-economic-vehicle.
I think that the number of cosmetic bugs on a site is merely a measure of technical competency for whoever coded / qa'ed the site before it went live. Extrapolating this measurement to all Microsoft operations might be a nice excuse for Microsoft-bashing(tm), but I've been finding this sort of articles counter-productive especially when people start talking about such non-scientific measurements such as "getting the web", instead of focusing on things like current research and interesting acquisitions done by Microsoft recently.
I didn't see any microsoft software that actually "making it easier for average users to take photos from their digital cameras and post them directly to Facebook".
But, the new ilife 09 has exactly this feature. IMO, microsoft has to find a way to make its "advanced" technology useful to people.
Definitely agree, just had a long conversation with a coworker about MS's need to apply research to real-life products. FYI, here's the "post to Facebook" feature, it's still in beta and was done by an intern this past summer. I believe eventually the photo program will come pre-installed on every Dell, hopefully this plug-in will be as well. I just started using it and it's pretty slick.
This article reminded me of a quote I heard a while back: "People pay for atoms, not for bits". Not 100% accurate, but if someone is going to fork over cash, you really, really, really need to make it worth their while. Unfortunately I don't think that individual news articles qualify.
I don't know if this is the solution, but here's one idea I had around this problem that I keep coming back to. It's a way to combine the disciplined process of a traditional news agency with the economies of scale and spirit of the citizen journalism movement: http://astartupaday.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/y-combinator-ch...
I'm tired of them, too. However, here are a few areas where I think building a Twitter app can be useful.
First, if you take advantage of the fact that a semi-interesting Twitter app can get lots of press right now, you can use it as a way to promote your real money-maker app. For hackers, it's probably way more fun (and cheap) to spend a day building an app than sending 50 Emails to bloggers begging for a post.
Second, if you truly do it on your downtime for your the pure joy of imagining something and seeing it come to life. Wasting time is relative, it's more productive than watching TV, playing WoW or Xbox, random web surfing, etc...
I'm working on the finishing touches for the next phase of my "A Startup A Day" project. The goal is to bring together experienced entrepreneurs, high-potential hackers/designers, and (eventually) investors in a step-by-step process to build new companies.
First, users can collaborate to identify major market opportunities (aka 10x problems that desparately need a 10x solution). Members can then brainstorm potential solutions and the corresponding business model. After getting feedback from the community, members who want to tackle the idea can get paired up with a compatible co-founder and kick out a prototype. Members provide feedback on the prototypes and work with the team to help promote the app once it's ready for prime time.
Right now I'm keeping it invite-only for the alpha, but if you're a killer hacker with a keen sense of the big problems that everyday internet users are facing, drop me a line at kleneway@hotmail.com and I may be able to hook you up.
This is definitely the post to read if you want a good perspective of what's really going on. I don't have any firsthand knowledge, but around this time every year MSFT seems to do a reorg, which can cause a lot of people to have to find new roles internally (which most people do every 3-4 years anyway). I suspect that internal roles will be more difficult to find, and a percentage of the internal job seekers will eventually run out of time and will quietly leave the company. But I highly doubt they will come out and announce a blanket 17% cut on 1/15 - just doesn't make any sense.
Why doesn't it make any sense? That post mentions that a large number of HUGE business customers are going away (bankrupt financial firms, mergers, etc). Revenue is going down. Does MSFT need 90,000 to do what they need to do to grow/succeed?
That post is interesting, but internal memos of managers saying, "No layoffs!" isn't very reliable. That's EXACTLY what they would be saying if there WERE going to be layoffs to keep people engaged, working hard, and NOT stealing IP.
I'm not saying there are going to be layoffs, but off the cuff I imagine it'd be a pretty good idea. Trim the fat.
Facebook had this same "Quit your job, get easy money by building stupid little apps like this one!" buzz about a year ago. I actually know some people who quit their very well-paying jobs to take a shot at it...and unfortunately it hasn't yet panned out that well... Maybe the App Store's ability to provide direct revenue to devs will make this platform more sustainable, but I think it's more likely that it will be a similar pattern to FB (where the apps launched in the first two weeks and a tiny percentage of very compelling later apps will do well, and the rest will get zero attention)
Better question - would Facebook apps improve to the point where they would be worth paying for if FB built out a payment platform? Would enough pro devs start building FB apps if they knew they might have a revenue stream besides the dreadful social networking CPMs?
Good idea for those with some extra time during the holiday break. Here's one I like that I've been saving for my blog (http://www.astartupaday.com) but I'll go ahead and post it here.
I'm predicting that over the next 1-3 years, we're going to start to see a major shift as users move from mouse+keyboard to touch as the primary input to their computing devices. However, today every mainstream website is optimized for the mouse+keyboard.
My idea is to get ahead of the curve and create user experiences for all the major mainstream web verticals (such as Email, social networking, news, search, etc..) that are designed primarily for use with touch. For verticals that have a high switching cost (such as mail and social networking), instead of trying to build from scratch, the focus should be on a front end that pulls from an existing service (i.e. pulls from gmail pop or Facebook connect). Users could choose the verticals that they use on a daily basis, and each service would be available from different tabs. The core UX elements would be consistent across all services, and would be optimized for use with a touch screen.
If anyone's interested in hearing more or maybe hacking out a prototype with me over break, feel free to contact me at kleneway@hotmail
We need an entire gesture language! We have language we use to speak to each other, user interfaces, and conventions, and soon we'll need a gesture language. Can you imagine if every touch app had a different way to turn up the volume? But if there was a volume gesture, people would know how to do it no matter what application they were using.
I'm a bit skeptical that we'll see touch screens or Minority Report type UI's replace the keyboard and mouse. The keyboard and mouse are under appreciated. It's really hard to match the following benefits:
1) keyboards are an incredibly fast way to input human language into a computer system.
2) keyboard/mouse operate on flat surface while your arm is at rest. This makes it easy to use for 8 hours a day.
3) A small movement of a mouse creates a much larger movement on the screen. Yet, because the mouse is flat and at rest, it is easy to control.
4) Mice are far more precise at pointing than touch screens. Although perhaps that's a secret disadvantage, since it encouraged the use of small widgets. A good touch screen would most certainly not be able to use anything like our current UI widgets.
You move the monitor down, and make it very large. Build it into the desk at a slight angle. Your arms rest on the entire surface, so its very comfortable. The entire display and its interface is oversized, sort of like a media center interface. An iPhone like keyboard pops up when you need it, sized exactly like a regular keyboard. But quick keys on either side of the monitor's face can also input commands.
"Doesn't matter where you are or what you are doing, just who you are with."
That one hasn't let me down yet.