Prompt's Blog

Windows 7, fresh off many positive reviews, is looking like it will be the smash hit for Microsoft that Vista was supposed to be.

What better way to celebrate than with 7,000 dominoes?

Labels: microsoft, Windows, Windows 7

Microsoft recently announced an innovative dual-screen laptop called the Courier, which will create whole new ways of interacting with a computer. It's currently in a "late prototype" stage but Gizmodo posted a sneak preview:



It looks absolutely breathtaking and seems to be expanding on the multi-touch concept it introduced with Surface.

Labels: courier, microsoft, surface

Great picture that someone pinned up to our noticeboard:

Labels: microsoft

Microsoft has made a great deal of improvements to its browser, mostly due to the innovations of other browsers like Firefox and Chrome which have been eating at its market share. It has become faster at loading pages, more add-ons and it has added helpful features like crash recovery and tab isolation to prevent the loss of data. There are a lot of good reasons to use Internet Explorer 8. For people that are buying new machines and haven’t already installed Firefox, there is also less of an incentive to install other browsers if IE gives the majority of the speed and functionality that most people are looking for.

But Microsoft has launched a smear campaign against Firefox and Chrome and released a data sheet comparing IE8 with Firefox and Chrome with numerous false statements. Webmonkey had a post breaking down all of Microsoft’s exaggerations.

Microsoft says it has superior privacy and that is not true. The fact is that as far as privacy is concerned, they are all about equal. IE8 does not support the amount of web standards that either other browser does. Its claim that it is faster than other browsers due to easier navigation is hilariously untrue, and browser speed tests all confirm that IE is slightly slower. It’s not very noticeable to the average user, but it’s a fact that Microsoft shouldn’t be addressing.

It’s a very strange move by the Redmond-based giant. The company has been trumpeting its increased focus on openness at the same time as it releases a document deriding open source browsers. What Microsoft should do is focus only on the benefits of users moving to IE8. It still is the dominant player in the market, and if it was able to convert the majority of its users from IE6 and 7 to 8, that would be a tremendous coup. Comparing it to other browsers and having its comparisons publicly mocked is not helping.

(Image from Webmonkey)

Labels: Chrome, Firefox, IE8, Internet Explorer, microsoft

Microsoft has been really making some weird videos lately, from their short-lived commercials with Seinfeld, to an ad tricking people testing Vista thinking it was the next OS, and now the video below. I think that Bill Gates leaving his day-to-day role at the company may have had something to do with the company going completely and utterly crazy.

Microsoft hired a boy band and filmed in a video about it in an ironic style that came right out of The Office (how fitting for Microsoft to use that style) to promote its upcoming Professional Developers Conference 2008. Someone at Microsoft must've said "hey guys, let's make a bad boy band song for Windows 7," realized that it really did come out bad and then said "well, let's make an ironic intro and outro so it seems like we meant to do it like that the whole time."



It's actually pretty catchy, and better than most NSync and Backstreet Boys songs were. That still doesn't cover up the sheer finger-scratching-against-the-chalkboard terribleness of lyrics like:

"Windows 7 my love is true,
Now let me use Direct3D to unlock your GPU"

"PCD 2008, Windows 7 is coming and I can't wait,
I'm going to get the first one out of the crates, wrap your Windows around me"

"I'm going to need my developer guys, get tons of content on 160 Gigabyte drives"

It could've been a hit if Microsoft didn't go for the ironic angle. It worked for Wrigley's.

Labels: Advertising, boy bands, microsoft, video, Windows

Microsoft has just moved onto the second stage of its latest advertising campaign. The first stage made headlines as Jerry Seinfeld joined Microsoft's Bill Gates for some fun and quirky sketches that seemed to be about nothing related to Microsoft. Seinfeld and Gates made for an interesting comedic pair and seeing Seinfeld, I couldn't help recalling his hilarious 'sitcom about nothing'.

Just a few weeks ago, around the corner from our office in Harvard Square, Boston, a Seinfeld "Campus Tour" was held to honor the show and some of its most famous moments. The famous Soup Nazi was signing autographs and crowds of people gathered to meet him, get his autograph and simply soak up the memories of the Emmy Award-winning comedy show. The dynamic duo of Gates and Seinfeld are amusing, and provide humor about nothing just as the series did for nine seasons.

As you can see, we're big fans of Seinfeld here at Prompt, which is why we were a little surprised to see that Microsoft has dropped the comedian for the second stage of the advertising campaign. Microsoft's latest TV ads confront Apple's 'I'm a Mac, I'm a PC' commercials, and feature the PC actor from those advertisements. Although Microsoft claims that this stage of the campaign was planned to highlight "real people" who use Microsoft products, many have speculated that Seinfeld was dropped because his commercials were proving unsuccessful. Microsoft is staying quiet about this, but they haven't ruled out the possibility of Seinfeld returning later in the campaign.

The new 'I'm a PC' advert has been created by agency Crispin Porter & Bogusky, the same organization behind the legendary Subservient Chicken online advertisement.

Labels: Advertising, microsoft, Seinfeld

Sometimes I feel more cyborg than human after twelve hours slumped in front of this screen. Am I alone? With the internet doing all my thinking for me, my fading laptop keyboard and beleaguered mouse tapping and clicking away like autonomous extensions of an increasingly bedraggled sedentary body mass, my adopted electrical brain still insists on continually bleating: "Windows has encountered a problem..." And yet unfathomably this all remains somewhat acceptable. It's just how it is. All of which makes me wonder if my blinking reaction to this week's news of Microsoft's leaked future plans for its operating system are typical or skewed by my tragic computer dependence.

Internal Microsoft documents which somehow fell into the hands of editors at Software Development Times revealed plans for a new modular operation system project codenamed Midori. According to the leaked information, the new OS would be developed from the ground up to be internet-centric, service-oriented, and geared towards highly connected users, distributed computing, shared resources and mixed environments.

Looking for positives, I'd say that re-engineering something so pretty but fatally flawed as Vista as soon as possible could only be 'a good thing'. No matter how much processor power, memory or patching I throw at the thing, it remains horribly slow and clunky, riddled with error messages and incompatibilities, and bizarrely deskbound in a tech world long dominated by connectivity and internet content. On the downside, each time Microsoft decides to revamp its operating system, I find it an enormous upheaval that also usually results in me wanting other revamped things too - like new laptops, service providers, desks, a house...

Perhaps it's not surprising in a way. Like many people I plug myself in - literally I guess taking into account my headset - every weekday morning after coffee, and apart from necessary 'bio-breaks' I'm still there or thereabouts until bedtime. It's only natural then that this sudden news of my 17-inch widescreen immersive world changing - perhaps radically, perhaps disappointingly - is a little daunting. How will all my other hardware and software bits and bobs react? Will we all still get along?

Moreover, if Microsoft does go ahead with its roadmap of OS alterations, does this mean we will all have to shell out a hundred pounds or more for upgrades or standalone installations every few years (or worse if we all get tetchy and buy new pre-installed laptops)?

Discussing this in my office this morning, one of my colleagues chipped in helpfully with: "Linux! Linux! Linux! Linux!" A compelling argument well put, but a call I've resisted to date. I've flirted with dual-boot a couple of times, but deep down although I proclaim to hate Microsoft on an almost hourly basis, I do ultimately trust it more than any other OS manufacturer to hook-up easily with my array of peripherals and support all the various software tools and doodads I now have hanging around on my home network.

Although it has just about managed to skirt on the legal side of monopoly, any layman will tell you that Microsoft does, really, actually, utterly dominate the operating system space in any sense that is meaningful. Fortunately, its desire and stated intent to move away from its deskbound comfort space into wider web waters will certainly put it up against more formidable competition than Linux can currently provide, notably in the shape of Google, but inevitably also with myriad newcomers and upstarts eager to show off innovation and grab a slice of Microsoft's pie.

At this stage, news of Microsoft's Midori research project roadmap all pretty much stems from those leaked internal documents. It will prove useful to the market as a whole, as analysts and developers gauge public reaction through online discussion. The problem as I see it over the longer term will be the sheer diversity of those reactions.

How blind is loyalty to Microsoft, despite the heartache and tribulation it frequently puts its users through? Will this news boost or deflate the Linux and open source community? Where does this leave Apple and its pile of pleasing gadgets in terms of OS provision? Can Google really win hearts and minds in the operating system world as easily as it has won eyes online? Is Microsoft being remarkably astute in laying out its plans for a more flexible internet based platform this far ahead of realisation, or is it playing in to the hands of its rivals? Should I budget for a new laptop, or simply get out more?

Please chip in with your own thoughts - I'm sure to be online somewhere to read them - Vista permitting.

Labels: Linux, microsoft, Midori, operating systems, vista, Windows

Microsoft, the world's favorite multi-billion dollar software conglomerate, recently had its CEO, Steve Ballmer, egged at a conference. Literally.

Below is the video which I first caught on Matt Asay's blog.



It's hilarious, not only for the eggs awkwardly being thrown, but also for the incoherence of the person throwing them and Steve Ballmer's priceless reaction. Listen carefully to see if you can decipher the second half of what he says. I sure can't. (Something about Microsoft stealing money something something Hungarian government something...)


Ballmer actually has a great recovery and finds the humor in the situation, so kudos to him.

While some people might say that Microsoft deserved it for its lack of openness, or applaud the protest for its audacity, I say that it was WEAK and not enough.

It came nowhere near the classic Bill Gates pie-in-the-face from several years ago (gee, Europeans seem to really love Microsoft, they keep giving them free food).



None of the eggs even hit. Much worse, it was a clear step backward from a previous prank. If the software community, and open source in particular, is to foster openness, innovation, and software quality, then WE MUST DO BETTER.

We must think of the next great prank and do it with the community involved. We must join together, and find innovative methods of Microsoft-targeted hijinks, where we can do things like launch 100 pies simultaneously at Bill Gates. Or stealthily leave 1000 banana peels for Steve Ballmer to slip on as he leaves the podium. Or ridiculously-complicated Rube Goldberg devices in Microsoft's executive offices that somehow leave them tarred and feathered after opening their doors. Stranding them in a giant room with a floor made entirely of Microsoft Surfaces that opens a rickroll video each time it's touched, anyone?


I've seen the code in your intricate applications. I've seen your 3D-rendered ultrarealistic machinima. I've seen the innovative way you turn 140-character messages to haikus in your Twitter stream. Now, people, is the time to join together for the next great Microsoft prank.

But eggs? Lame.

Labels: microsoft, open source, pranks, software

Have you been yearning to listen to a great Bruce Springsteen cover band singing about Microsoft Vista? Well, I'm sure that you, and the millions of people just like you that have been wanting the same thing, will enjoy the following video that I first caught on Matt Asay's blog today. Microsoft recently had an internal video leak that has just that. Not only is it campy and a bad parody, you just know that it cost them a lot of money. See, this is what I like about dealing with open source companies a lot, there is always a community of people that can say "no, that's a terrible, horrible idea" to make sure videos like this don't happen.



Microsoft really needs to get The SEO Rapper involved to make the next video for Vista. Not only are his rhyme schemes solid, his technical knowledge and advice are sound.

Labels: bruce, microsoft, rapper, seo, springsteen, vista

Yesterday I tried to get Brian Eno's Generative Music running on my PC. It's a program that replays Eno's music and regenerates it within the parameters he's defined so that each performance is unique. The album was issued on a floppy in 1996 and was compatible with Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. It doesn't run under XP, though, which means that the music sequences Eno programmed are effectively lost to me and probably most others who don't want to tinker with the program.

More and more of our business and cultural data is stored digitally, and that means its lifespan is as short as the software and hardware it runs on. In 1986, the Domesday Project aimed to create a digital record of then-modern Britain. Barely a few years later, the BBC computer was obsolete and the video disc players were hard to find in fully working order. The data was effectively lost, until a massive rescue operation a few years back. Compared to the print edition of the 1086 Domesday Book, which is still available at London's Public Record Office in Kew, the digital version didn't last long.

Now the National Archives and Microsoft have teamed up to try to preserve digital documents. Microsoft has of course caused many of the problems with its proprietary and incompatible file formats, used to force people to upgrade software. And rather than work with the existing Open Document Format for Office 2007, Microsoft specified its own format and had it ratified as an open standard, so that it wouldn't have to cede too much control.

The deal will provide National Archives with an operating system that can run different versions of Microsoft Windows and Office applications from the same PC. The idea is that the staff will be able to swap between the operating system and application version they need to access any data.

Is this the right solution, though? Is this not perpetuating the lock-in by ensuring that this data will always be dependent on Microsoft software?

I wonder whether a better solution would be to convert data from obsolete formats into current open source formats. If the source code and format documentation is archived too, it will make it much easier for future generations to recreate code that can open files. The code can be adapted for different platforms without breaking any copyright or licensing restrictions. The software to access the data can be copied as widely as the data itself, which would ensure everybody could access it.

Clearly hardware changes will continue and even open source file formats can obsolesce. Perhaps the simplest thing of all, certainly for documents and other data files that don't depend on interactive features, is just to print them onto archive quality paper and keep them somewhere dark and dry.

Labels: data formats, microsoft, national archives