Sam Ramji, Senior Director of Strategic Platforms at Microsoft, said some pretty unexpected things during his interview on my podcast this week. I've gone back and listened to the interview with Sam several times, each time picking up a new little tidbit, but also re-enforcing what I heard him say about open source, hybrid and mixed stacks, and heterogeneity. At least in Sam's case, we're hearing things I thought I'd never hear from good old proprietary Microsoft. Read more
On July 3rd, Ray Ozzie spoke to the 444 youthful competitors at the annual Imagine Cup competition held this year in Cairo, Egypt. Ozzie spoke about his own technology journey, the people who inspired him and the insight, the ah-ha, that set him on his mission to create collaboration software like Notes and Groove. Read more
Perhaps its telling that Ford is selling so few cars these days, its CEO can personally deliver vehicles to high-tech big-shots like Microsoft's Steve Ballmer. Or maybe both CEOs just wanted an opportunity for a non-news photo op.
The question of whether a Computer Science degree is necessary when hiring an IT professional came up recently. Or is it simply the skills and experience that we are after? Or should we hire tech-savvy business majors who show the required aptitude? Let’s take a look…. Read more
Bill Gates lost $18 billion, but at a net worth of $40 billion he still regained his title as the richest man on Earth, according to Forbes ranking of the world's billionaires. Gates is followed by No. 2 seed Warren Buffett, who is worth $37 billion (and lost $25 billion).
The Forbes profile of Gates describes him in these words: Read more
Bill Gates is advising President-elect Barack Obama that he should up deficit spending to help the people hardest hit by current economic woes, reports the Washington Post. Gates met with the Post today as part of a trip to D.C. Read more
Microsoft's $33 per share offer for Yahoo! is looking pretty darn good after their close today at $10.63 today. And while Microsoft's stock price has taken a beating right along with everyone else, they've tracked pretty close to the Dow's fall, where the same can't be said for Yahoo. Yahoo's stockholders have taken an even steeper ride down. Read more
Things have definitely changed at Microsoft, and it's clear Ray Ozzie is a big part of the reason for it. Microsoft seems to have a bit of a swagger again. Case in point, the comprehensive PDC announcements with Windows Azure, Windows 7, Live synchronization and Office apps in the cloud last week. Everyone expected Microsoft to drip and drop little pieces of the cloud strategy out to us at PDC, but Ozzie said forget that, here's how the whole thing works and how it works together. Read more
So it looks like there won't be any more Bill and Jerry ads. The ad agency says this was the plan all along...which raises a couple of questions: First, was this a good way for Microsoft to spend $10M? Can anybody think of a better way Microsoft could have spent that money? A decent book explaining its PerfMon counters, perhaps? An online reference to which command-line utilities work with Server 2008 and which don't? A Vista Service Pack that fixes the terrible performance? An Office 2007 Service Pack that does the same? I mean, I'm OK with $10M if it makes me laugh. If it doesn't, I want something a bit more helpful than the two Bill-and-Jerry duds. (Not that anybody's asking me, of course!)
Another question that comes up is whether it's true that "there's no such thing as bad press." The Microsoft ads DID have a lot of people talking... but mostly they were talking about how dumb the ads were. My suspicion is that that kind of "buzz" is not what you want. Read more
Ok, I about busted a gut when a co-worker of mine brought this can of interesting food in for me from Akihabara. The can of food is called Oden （おでん）. As you can see from the following picture, there is an interesting little guy on the front whose name is Gates-chan. Yes, that is supposed to be good old Bill Gates!
Not to be confused with a traditional Japanese food, these Oden food cans are apparently very popular within the Japanese Otaku culture. In fact, there is one vending machine in Akihabara that is very famous for dispensing Oden food cans, from which this can most likely came from. :>) On my next trip, I will try to take a picture. Also, on an interesting side note… there are many different foods that you can get in an Oden can. These foods range from Oden-currey, Oden-bread, Oden-ramen, etc…
The whole concept is just buy, pop, and eat!
Have you seen the new Microsoft ad on TV featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld? At the risk of taking it WAY too seriously, one could interpret it as being emblematic of some of the things that are wrong at Microsoft these days.
First, it's impossible to figure out what the company is trying to say in this ad. This is a microcosm of the confusion in Microsoft's current product line. Server Core says "lean and mean is good," but Vista says "big and rich is good." Hyper-V says "speed is good," but Vista says "speed isn't all that important." What is Microsoft's message these days? Nobody really knows, but to enshrine this lack of a consistent message in an impenetrable TV ad seems an ironic decision.
Second, the ad is trying to be hip, but Microsoft has never been hip and most likely never will. It tried to be hip with Vista, but nobody really bought into that. Several years ago Microsoft tried to be hip (at least at the kiddie level) with "Bob," which was far worse. No, what customers want from Redmond is software that is workmanlike, functional, reliable, secure, and leverages the learning curves that organizations have already travelled. Let Apple be cool and funny. We don't need Microsoft to be hip; we'd be happy with consistent and competent.
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One commenter on the official Microsoft Vista blog noted "I found myself waiting to get the message". And that, my friends, is exactly the point! The blogosphere and even mainstream media is abuzz about the new Microsoft ads. Where are they going? What's the point? Why? Why ask why? I don't remember the last time people were buzzing this much about Microsoft! Read more
I just watched the new Microsoft Seinfeld ad. I'm stunned that it wasn't a "blown away" kind of ad. So I have to ask myself, what's going on... what are they doing with these ads? The commercial basically is this; Seinfeld see Gates at a shoe store, goes in, tries to figure out what shoe size Gates wears, advises him to shower with his shoes on, offers him a sugary churro treat, tells him Microsoft should come out with something that makes his computer soft and chewy like cake, and Gates gives Seinfeld a signal that something like that's coming. Commercial's over. Done.
Keith Shaw my colleague at Network World posted an interesting piece today. The new ad campaign featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has been released, see here.
It seems the first of the $300 million ($10 million going to Seinfeld) ad campaign dubbed "Windows, not walls" ads has hit...well a WALL.
In what I can only call the most confusing ad campaign ever, it features Jerry, Bill, a discount shoe store, cake, some subtext...and I don't know what else.
I went absolutely crazy when I saw the Mojave Experiment Now I have to say that was a work of genius compared to this advertisement. Read more
I always thought that Microsoft was a pretty good marketing company, but after seeing the new Seinfeld/Gates commercial, I am beginning to have my doubts. I have watched the commercial a couple of times now looking for some kind of subliminal message or even the point that they are trying to make, but so far I am totally baffled as to what Microsoft was trying to do. Read more
Maybe it's because it's Friday and the "hip factor" part of my brain is turned off, but I just watched the new Microsoft ad featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld (see below).
Can someone explain the humor in this ad? Is this supposed to make me forget about Windows Vista? Is this supposed to stop me from buying a Mac? Or is this supposed to make me want to buy shoes? Remind me again how much Microsoft paid Jerry Seinfeld to do these ads? Read more
Last week's news that Microsoft had signed on Jerry Seinfeld to star with Bill Gates in ads assuring us that all is well with Vista inspired me to head into the way back machine and look at some of the other celeb tech endorsements from years past (view slideshow here). Quite a collection....including this classic from Mr. T.
Microsoft has reportedly hired Jerry Seinfeld to bring in a big gun against Apple's stream of "Mac vs. PC" ads.
Seinfeld will be paid $10 million, according to the reports, as part of a $300 million campaign.
So now that Bill Gates is no longer running Microsoft what will happen with Microsoft's relationship with Apple? The answer doesn't look too good for Mac faithfuls who actually want to use Microsoft software on Apple's hardware.
Michael Goonan writing in Appletell.com is worried: Read more
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