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Can Ray Ozzie Save the House that Bill Built?


Can Ray Ozzie Save the House that Bill Built? That’s the question that Wired are asking in their new issue, which can be found here.

I think he can and, perhaps more importantly, I think Microsoft was very close to actually needing to be saved. I’ve been a fan of the Redmond giant for a good few years, always defending them against (mostly) unfounded criticism but in the run up to, and the fall out from, Vista- I started to wonder if we were witnessing the beginning…not of the end but perhaps of the stunting of growth and the start of stagnation. I was less interested in what Microsoft was doing, less annoyed when people furthered the lies and mis-conceptions, less pro-active in promoting them and their products which wasn’t good, as I’m the MS Evangelist internally for my company!

Then I went to the Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston (July 2008) and things were different. The keynotes were energetic, more web 2.0ish (without seeming contrived), more exciting. The speakers and the content made me believe in Microsoft again, made me believe that Microsoft could help my business, that Microsoft were still innovative, that Microsoft were looking ahead, that Microsoft could still excite me-personally & professionally, that good things were going to come.

Software+Services was a key theme of this year’s WPC and was the icing on the “get Rich excited” cake…the fact that Microsoft had embraced this “disruption” early on and clearly put a lot of time, money & effort into their plans and making sure they could execute them, really inspired me. I took the online assessment and signed us up straight after the keynote and couldn’t wait to get started!

I didn’t realise then that Ray Ozzie was behind S+S, but now-I really do credit him with re-igniting my belief in Microsoft as a company, as an industry leader, as an innovator.

He might not be as Iconic, but he’s going to be very nearly as important as Bill…if you look up you can see it in the clouds…

Thanks to Steve Clayton for pointing me to the article, you can see his thoughts on it here.

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Is Tupac still alive?


This is a brilliant clip from the Dave Chapelle show, taking aim at the rumours that Tupac Shakur wasn’t shot in LA back in 96..

Again, can’t get it to embed so check the link here.

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Wu Tang Financial


The Wu-Tang Clan give financial advice on the Dave Chapelle Show..truly brilliant!

RZA & GZA are quality in this clip-“Gotta diversify your bonds”…love it!

I can’t get it to embed here so follow the link below to check it out (Warning: Contains the “N” word)

Wu-Tang Financials

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Under the Bridge Literal Video


The Red Hot Chilli Pepper’s “Under the Bridge” has been turned into a Literal Video by the originator of this awesome meme, Dustin McNeato, and it’s pretty gosh darn brilliant!

I used to love this track back in the day and this makes it even better..No Habla Ingles hehe 🙂

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Microsoft Office 2007 Edition Comparison


With the current 2007 release, there are a number of different versions of Microsoft Office. They all contain different products and they all come with different price tags so making sure you pick the right one is definitely important.

The full comparison chart for the different versions of Office can be found here but I’m going to cover the main differences below.

What are the different editions?

There are 5 separate version of Microsoft Office 2007 and these are:

The first thing to note is that ALL the versions include Word, Powerpoint & Excel. If those three applications are all you need, then Standard is the best edition for you as it is the cheapest*, and Standard also includes Outlook, as do all the version other than Home & Student. (*This is assuming you’re licensing this within a Corporate environment, as Home & Student isn’t valid for business use.)

  • Access is only available with Pro & Ultimate.
  • OneNote is included only with Home & Student and Ultimate.
  • Small Business includes Accounting Express.
  • Groove & InfoPath are included with Ultimate only.
  • Office Home & Student allows for installation on up to 3 devices in the same household via retail, but not OEM (pre-installed).

Applications such as Access, OneNote, InfoPath, Outlook and Groove can all be purchased separately to work alongside an existing office installation. So for example, you could buy Office Standard and then get OneNote separately.

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Microsoft Live OneCare to be killed off


It seems that OneCare, Microsoft’s subscription based anti-malware/backup/management tool is on it’s way out, according to ArsTechnica.

It seems that as of 30/06/09 (June 30th 2009), retail sales of subscriptions will halt and OneCare will subsequently be replaced by codename “Morro”, a real-time solely anti-malware solution that will be provided Free of Charge.

I get the impression that a lot of people were unhappy with OneCare, so will this make things better?

Mary Jo Foley has a post about the above with more details and also reveals that Microsoft’s “Equipt” package (a version of Office Home and Student 2007, Windows Live OneCare and some extras) has been killed off, to the point that MS are recalling existing stock from Circuit City in the US and PC World here in the UK. Microsoft are offering customers a pro-rated refund as well as allowing them to keep Office Home & Student Edition as a perpetual licence.

Ina Fried over at Cnet has got a quote from the Group Product Manager Bryson Gordon:

“It was a very difficult decision for us to shut down Equipt but the fact of the matter is there is this higher order need (to offer free antivirus software)……the decision to end-of-life Equipt was not in any way based with sales performance”.

He went on to say:

“What we really are going to turn our attention to is other places where we can build a software plus service offering of Office like we sold on a subscription basis”

which would tie into Microsoft’s newly re-vitalised S+S plans.

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Use Excel 2007 to grab live web data


“Can I use Excel 2007 to grab live web data?”. If that’s a question you’ve ever asked, or been asked, we have an answer..and that answer is yes 🙂

I saw this pretty cool video over at Community Clips showing how to do just that, and it’s surprisingly easy! I was expecting it to at least involve Pivot Tables but nope, there’s none of that-just a few logical clicks and away you go. One great feature is that each time you open the Excel sheet, the information will update!

This is one of those things where I can’t actually think of anything I could use this for right now, but I know that one day, for some reason, this is going to come in so handy it’ll be ridiculous!!!

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Microsoft Touchless


Touchless is another Microsoft Office Labs project and it is seriously cool…it enables developers to create multi-touch based apps with just a webcam!

It lets you play Pong, control images on-screen and draw within applications using motions-all via a standard webcam 🙂

This video features the creator of Touchless, Mike Wassermann showing off the great capabilities of his Touchless SDK, which can be downloaded from Codeplex here

Good skills Mike, good skills!

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Microsoft StickySorter


StickySorter is a new development by Microsoft’s Office Lab team, and looks jsut as great and useful as PPTplex.

Sticky Sorter lets you create and arrange virtual sticky notes, as often used for affinity diagramming. There are a number of programs out there that let you do this, but as always, Microsoft have brought something new to the table 🙂

The full post with more background info etc is available over at the Office Labs site here, but for a break down of it’s unique features:

·         Import and Exportinformation in csv format, a standard format that is compatible with many other applications such as Excel and Access.

·         Create and Label Groups of notes and save that information along with the notes themselves.
Other virtual note applications allow you move notes close to one another as the only means of grouping. StickySorter goes beyond this: it stores group information as a property of the individual notes so it can be saved and used for other tasks.  It also allows you move and manipulate groups with ease.

·         Display Structured Informationon a note. StickySorter allows you to create notes that have multiple fields—a title, description, and author, for example—rather than a single block of text.  Like groups, this field information is saved with the notes so it can be used for other tasks.

·         Create Custom Views of your information.  In addition to allowing you to define multiple fields on a note, StickySorter allows you to choose which fields you want to display. This is handy when you import information that has multiple fields but you only need to see a couple of them for sorting and organizing.

·         Work with Large Collections of notes.   StickySorter has a number of features that make it easier to work with large numbers of notes, including panning and zooming on an infinite canvas; tiling, cascading, and piling notes; setting note colors; searching for text within notes, and much more.

You can download StickySorter here and see more info, including help videos here.

This is yet anotehr example of Microsoft, especially the Office Labs team, bringing something fresh and unique to the game that’s actually going to help people too!

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Adobe Flash on Mobile Devices


Adobe Flash Player 10 is coming to Windows Mobile devices! Over at the Adobe MAX tech conference, they will today demonstrate FULL Flash 10 running on a Windows Mobile device…

This would be pretty great, as I find Flash to be one of the big differences between mobile & desktop browsing. It’s not going to start shipping on devices until late next year (2009) so it looks like it will be a Windows Mobile 7 feature.

There’s going to be an Android version, but quite possible nothing for the iPhone-due to Apple’s objections. Engadget reveal that there was indeed a demo of Flash running on the G1 at the Adobe event yesterday, so for all you Android users it will hopefully be available in the Marketplace within the next 15 months…

You can see more info over at Mobile Crunch.

*UPDATE* According to Engadget, BSQUARE have announced that they’re porting Adobe FLash to the Android G1. It’s unclear how this relates to the demo mentioned above but BSQUARe bought “NEC’s Adobe(R) Flash(R) Technology Consulting and Distribution business 12 months ago, and has done Android work for other customers” so they should know what they’re up to!

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