Blogger The Product Guy has reviewed the good and the bad of Windows Live Events and feels that it has missed a “golden opportunity.” Windows Live Events is Microsoft’s foray into e-invites, but includes other functions such as the ability to upload pictures. In walking through the site, the Product Guy offers decent advice for anyone running a corporate Web site on how to increase usability. For instance, he finds Live Events doesn’t “pop.” He “found the interface experience, my user experience, to be slow, sluggish, and, at times, sleep inducing.” The take-away here is obvious but oft overlooked. Any consumer-oriented application should darn well perform quickly. The bigger problem, he says, is Microsoft’s continued aversion of popular Web technologies:
“Microsoft did you ever hear of Ajax or dynamic page elements? My advice to you is to make the event overview and its management a single page, a page that loads the ‘dashboard’ view once and dynamically allows me to enter new information or be updated while I am looking at my event. Don’t force me to navigate back and forth, again and again, to manipulate my details and invite people. All those extra pages, all that extra loading, all that interruption in my workflow of planning and managing and ENJOYING my event just slows me down, ruins any potential happiness I may get from some of the features, and makes me want to look elsewhere for a UI that will be fast, responsive, and fun to interact with.”
He also lambastes Microsoft for its singular desire to only recognize its own products in this world. Events only integrates with Microsoft’s blogging platform, Windows Live Spaces; photo sharing doesn’t include Flickr. Upshot is, from the product guy and everyone else, that the world has changed. The Web is not just an Internet application but an entire model on how people want to work. We are no longer living in the 1980’s where a company competes by ignoring the existence of others. Microsoft, the longer you stay mired in that old way of thinking, the easier it is for you to one day soon be left behind. Don’t think that could happen? Where is Digital Equipment Corp.? Where is Compaq? Examples abound of truly enormous tech companies drying up and blowing away. More importantly, enterprise companies don’t have to follow Microsoft’s lead in this. When building out their own customer facing Web sites, reach out and socialize! Make sure using your site is easy for your users, even if this means tapping into a competitor or using young technologies like Ajax. See also: Sneak peek: Live Workspace combines Microsoft’s software and services
For daily Microsoft news and opinion visit Network World’s Microsoft Subnet Details of Microsoft virtualization revealed in video 10 little-known features of Windows 2008 10 funniest Microsoft YouTube videos Visit Microsoft Subnet for more news, blogs, opinion from around the Web. Subscribe to all the Microsoft Subnet bloggers.
