You may now scroll through 30 years of Microsoft-speak — analyzed, categorized and neatly presented in a timeline-like “tag cloud” — thanks to Seattle P-I blogger Todd Bishop and some innovative software.
We’re talking all the way from Altair to Zune, with stops along the way for every technology the company developed, bought or borrowed, right on through to current entanglements with Vista, Linux and Google.
The tool allows for an at-a-glance view of company priorities as they evolve and shift: “Networking” first shows up prominently in a May 1991 “challenges and strategies” memo from Gates, for example.
And you can see such oddities as CEO Steve Ballmer’s verbal tick of uttering “blah, blah, blah” instead of “etc.”
From Bishop’s story on the project:
Those are some of the trends visible on an interactive timeline that displays the most commonly used words from key Microsoft-related speeches, interviews, memos and other documents during the past three decades.
The timeline, at seattlepi.com/microwords, was created by the Seattle P-I using the open-source Tagline Generator, a program by blogger Chirag Mehta. It presents words in a form known as a tag cloud — in varying sizes, depending on how often they’re used; and in different shades, based on when a particular word was first used.
The result is a scrolling snapshot of the competitors, products, technologies and issues at the center of Microsoft’s consciousness across the years.
The scrolling can be a bit a tricky to control and you have to have the patience to give the tag-clouds a good enough look to decipher their meaning, but all in all the tool offers a wealth of fun and insight. And while word usages and patterns are its primary purpose, links are also provided to original documents — and they provide a reader with even more rabbit holes to explore.
If you’ve never read Bill Gates’ “Open Letter to Hobbyists,” published in February, 1976, it’s highly recommended as Gates goes off on the “majority of hobbyists” who are “stealing” their software. He was right, of course, but the language he uses sounds so incredibly whiney that you wonder how the man ever became Bill Gates.
Want to see Microsoft’s gaming roots? Check out this magazine ad (.pdf) announcing the company’s foray into consumer products, including “Microsoft Adventure.”
“Only Microsoft offers Adventure complete, as originally written for the DEC PDP-10, now implemented on personal computers. The ultimate fantasy/logic game, Adventure allows you to explore the depths of the ‘Colossal Cave,’ collecting treasures and magic, solving puzzles, avoiding hazards and adversaries, including the dreaded killer dwarves.”
Come to think of it, that might have been the basis for the company’s business plan, too.
And then there’s this Gates e-mail from April 17, 1987 in which he crows about the company’s newfound position atop the heap of software makers:
As conservative as we are about self-congratulations and celebrating our achievements, I have to say, as today went on, I got pretty excited about the fact that we are now the number 1 software company in every respect (sales, profit, units, leadership, people…) In fact when I think of Lotus’s statement at the introduction of their annual report where they say “there is increasing evidence that LOTUS is the preferred vendor, the preferred investor and the preferred employer,” I think they are kidding themselves. We didn’t just have somewhat higher sales that they did – we had $14M more in sales which puts us ahead for 3, 6, 9 and 12 months (I think). Of course their sales may go past ours again and it’s not really our goal to be #1, but I do get a real kick out of the fight that their big distraction of being the largest is being taken away BEFORE WE HAVE EVEN BEGUN TO REALLY COMPETE WITH THEM. Actually, I found out these numbers about 5pm, so I’ve been enjoying it for only 6 hours and it will be a fact of no importance in a few days but I think it’s really great.
Remember the Gates interview in Playboy in 1994? Me neither. It’s actually quite interesting, though. Here’s an excerpt (sorry, the only pictures are of Gates):
PLAYBOY: Why do some of your critics say you and by extension, Microsoft are not innovative, that you are evolutionary rather than revolutionary? Here’s a quote: Bill is just a systems guy who has been able to fund a wider range of me-too applications on the basis of one extremely lucrative product MS-DOS practically handed to him ten years ago by IBM. All he’s done since is hang in.
GATES: [Smiles] DOS has been as much as 25 percent of our profit. But believe me, those profits go to the bottom line. If the company weren’t profitable you could say, Ah, DOS, they’re using it to fund the other stuff. The fact is, everything is very profitable here. And we’re doing so many innovative things now, even my harshest critics will never say that again.
PLAYBOY: Perhaps. But why did they say it in the first place that, along with vision, luck, timing and an unrelenting need to win, you’ve succeeded by picking up the fumbles of your competitors? You were given the right to license MS-DOS by IBM because it thought the future was in hardware, not in software or operating systems.
GATES: [Stands, paces] So here’s our management meeting: Well, I don’t know what we’re supposed to do. Has anybody fumbled anything recently? I mean, come on! Hey, Digital Research: I hear they’re fumbling something. Let’s go do something there. What was the first microcomputer software company? Microsoft. The very first! Who were we imitating when we dropped out of school and started Microsoft? When we did the Altair BASIC? When, early on, we did CD-ROM conferences and talked about all this multimedia software? And who were we imitating when we did Microsoft Word? When we did Excel? It’s just nonsense.
Yes, this is a time sink, all right. You might want to set aside a lunch hour.
Welcome Slashdotters, regulars and assorted passersby. If you have the time and interest, here are a few other recent Buzzblog items that involve Microsoft:
Microsoft laptop giveaway to bloggers still causing a fuss.
The Microsoft-Novell affair: In your face (on a billboard).
‘Gates for President’ bandwagon picks up, uh, something.
‘Gates for President’ Bandwagon Watch: Day 2
‘Gates for President:’ Stocking-stuffer edition.
Photo editors at the Washington Post must really dislike Steve Ballmer.
Gates Foundation has a problem.
