Over the next couple of months, Microsoft will be hosting full-day training sessions for developers looking to build apps for the new Windows Phone 7 platform. It looks like the sessions are in a variety of cities around the country including Houston, Austin, several in Michigan and several in Ohio. There are also multiple dates for each city. Some cities (Atlanta is one) are hosting evening hackathon sessions as well. The events are free to attend and it looks like they will be held at the Microsoft office in each city.

From the event overview, “Join us for a day of Windows Phone 7 hands-on training. You’ll learn how to build Silverlight-based applications that take advantage of the many Windows Phone 7 platform features. We’ll introduce all the basic concepts required to get started building Silverlight applications including the Windows Phone 7 platform and frameworks as well as the designer and developer tools. We’ll also cover the process for submitting your application or game to the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace. Bring your laptop! Topics covered will be reinforced with an opportunity to explore hands-on-labs using your own laptop. Windows Phone 7 experts will be on hand to help you explore Windows Phone 7 development.”

The only requirement is that you bring your own laptop with the Windows Phone 7 tools already installed.

I couldn’t find a comprehensive list on the Microsoft training site but this search query gets you pretty close (let the page fully load). I will be attending the session here and perhaps if there’s interest, we could all meet for drinks after the training sessions have completed.

Find more stories about: Microsoft, mobile, Phone

Microsoft briefly posted an Office 2010 technical preview site but quickly removed it as it appeared to be posted early in error. There’s still a Google cache of the site which you can review.

Here’s the overview of the Office 2010 Web Applications version:

Office Web Applications, the online companion to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote applications, allow you to access documents from anywhere. You can even simultaneously share and work on documents with others online. View documents across PCs, mobile phones, and the Web without compromising document fidelity. Create new documents and do basic editing using the familiar Office interface. By offering more ways to access files from almost anywhere, Office Web Applications enable you to get things done according to your schedule.

The Microsoft employee in the video, Monica Mendoza, is very lucky it seems – first she was able to go work in Europe then take a trip to Las Vegas. If the video doesn’t work below – click here to view it.

After talking to a few of my friends who use Google Docs heavily, they say the demo video and images make Office 2010 look much more powerful. We’ve covered online office provider Zoho many times on CN – it will be interesting to get their take on the Office 2010 release.

I can only guess this is what Robert Scoble was very excited about on Friendfeed last week but said he was embargoed until today.

Find more stories about: Microsoft, Office, online video, realtime, Robert Scoble, Video, videos

Last night while winding down and watching Ask This Old House, I was alerted to an important post by MG Siegler (MG writes for Techcrunch). The post noted that Microsoft Corporation is now tweeting (that means they are posting up to 140 character messages on the Twitter service). This is huge news! Microsoft’s competitors like Google and Sun and Oracle and Zappos are already tweeting so it’s huge news that Redmond is now on their game too.

MG then went all Columbo on us by explaining the stats on the Microsoft official twitter account.  He notes that only 1,000 people were following the account but as of this morning it’s up to nearly 5,000! MG also found out who is behind the account. He notes, “The account is being run by its corporate communications team, consisting of four people.”

The big news here is that since the post, Microsoft’s 4-person twitter communications team has added a third tweet. That’s right…a company with two tweets makes big headlines (the story got a lead from Techmeme ) so I figured I’d watch the account as best I could and I setup a SMS alert when content is added. So I present now, the third tweet message from Microsoft Corporation:

USA Today on Bing v Google “For a search that sings you may want to Bing it” ^JR

CenterNetworks will continue to monitor the account and will report back of any further important developments.

Update: Microsoft has since added tweets 4 and 5 to their account. We can confirm they are now closing in on Oprah’s count.

Find more stories about: Microsoft, TechCrunch, TechMeme, Twitter

Earlier today, Allen posted a story about Microsoft releasing a chart comparing IE8, Firefox 3 and Chrome (who knows which version). Following is my response to that chart. I would say that I’m disappointed not to see Safari included in this comparison, but since much of the comparison is spin and misinformation, there wouldn’t be much point.

1. Security – it may very well be that IE8 has some security tools built in, but that doesn’t mean that those tools work the way you would expect. Some people would call this “bloat.” Besides, it cuts down on the amount of choice the users have. What if I want to install AVG with its toolbar? I’ve used Firefox with the AVG toolbar, and find it much better and easier to use than the “filters” built into IE8.
2. Privacy – Really? The don’t even give a nod to Chrome? Chrome was the first major browser to offer private (or “incognito”) browsing.
3. Ease of use – Who judges this? As far as I’m concerned, Chrome is much easier to use than IE8. The “most visited” feature in Chrome (similar to Opera’s speed dial, but it automatically populates the list with your most often visited sites) gives Chrome a huge advantage in my opinion. The autocomplete function in Chrome’s address bar and the automatic Google search give it a few steps up, too.
4. Web standards – I like the spin they apply to this category. I also find it curious the way they define “standards.” Granted, IE8 does account for many of the CSS 2.x standards available now, but it also still includes a great deal of IE-only “features” that make it difficult to utilize the standards. It’s also interesting that they didn’t include Safari in any of these comparisons, as, from what I’ve heard, the latest Safari would beat all of the browsers hands-down. Still, IE8 is much, much, much better than IE7 or IE6, so I will give props to Microsoft for that.
5. Developer tools – Really? Microsoft is trying to say that IE includes better developer tools? Firefox’s built-in javascript console still beats the heck out of the IE javascript console. Add on top of that the add-ons that are available for Firefox, and IE falls flat. The IETester “MyDebug” toolbar does offer a few great tools, but that has nothing to do with Microsoft; that’s a completely independent product.
6. Reliability – I haven’t had IE8 crash on me, yet (though I very rarely use it, so that’s not saying much), so I can’t comment on it’s crash recovery. Still, Chrome has only crashed a handful of times for me, so I certainly wouldn’t knock its reliability.
7. Customizability – are they serious? They’re spinning “we’ve bloated the heck out of our browser by giving our users no choice as to what features they want” into “we win!” There’s no browser out there that beats Firefox in terms of customizability. There most likely never will be (which is unfortunate, because I would really like to be able to download an extremely barebones browser, then customize it with my desired features).
8. Compatibility – If we’re talking about the browser’s compatibility with specific Web sites, I do have to give this one to IE8, but that’s sheerly because there are still so many sites out there that were developed specifically for IE6, using proprietary Microsoft technology. Of course IE8 is going to work with those sites; and of course the other browsers won’t. Even if we only take into consideration the Exchange Webmail applications out there, that still makes IE8 more compatible than Firefox or Chrome, unfortunately. Sloppy, lazy programming is the only reason IE8 is more compatible. However, if we’re talking about the browser’s compatibility with operating systems (which I’m sure never even crossed their minds), Firefox wins with Chrome coming in second (having just released a pretty nice – though it doesn’t support Flash, yet – beta version for Linux and Mac). In fact, I’d guess that the number of users with an operating system other than Windows is probably equal to or larger than the number of users visiting Web sites that are only compatible with IE.
9. Manageability – I’m not sure what this even means, so I can’t really comment on it. Still, I’d almost be willing to bet that there are Firefox add-ons available that do these things, if they’re even necessary with Firefox.
10. Performance – A tie? Really? There’s no way Firefox is as fast as IE8, and there’s no way IE8 is as fast as Chrome. I’d be very curious to see the actual test data used for this comparison.

Curtiss Grymala is the full-time Webmaster for a community college in Virginia. In his spare time, he runs a freelance Web development company called Ten-321 Enterprises, is an active participant in the HTMLCenter Forums and offers small snippets of code and bug reports to the developers and modders of the YaBB Forum system. He has been developing Web sites and applications for nearly 15 years.

Find more stories about: browser, Curtiss Grymala, Firefox, Google Chrome, ie8, Microsoft

I nearly lost my lunch when I saw the chart below. It’s a comparison chart between Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), Firefox and Chrome. I should note that I am an IE user – I run different things in IE and Firefox.

Microsoft took an internal comparison look at the following categories: security, privacy, ease of use, web standards, developer tools, reliability, customizability, compatibility, manageability and performance.

I am using IE7 so I can’t comment on how good or bad IE8 is but it’s a bit odd that a company would show a chart that makes their browser look amazingly better than the competition. IE8 wins or ties in every category and some of the comments seem like an agency was involved. Here are a couple of examples, “Of course Internet Explorer 8 wins this one”  and “Neither Firefox nor Chrome provide guidance or enterprise tools. That’s just not nice.” Is there really not one area that Firefox or Chrome is better than IE8? (I have no idea so someone educate me plz)

My advice to Microsoft is to just sell us on why IE8 is great – don’t worry about comparisons – we will take care of those as users.

It looks like Microsoft is trying to come across as cutsie but it just didn’t work for me. Did it work for you? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Find more stories about: browser, IE7, ie8, internet, Microsoft

Yesterday Microsoft sent an email to advertisers on their adCenter product. The email, copied below, explains what Bing is and how advertisers can benefit from using Bing. They call it a “search experience” and there’s no mention of the term “decision engine”. From what I can tell, the advertising options are the same as any other search engine — text ads above and to the side of search results.

Here’s the email:

So what does Bing do?
Plain and simple, it provides consumers with easy access to relevant information. With new features and more organized results, consumers can spend less time searching and more time finding what’s most relevant to them—like travel, health, cars, and shopping.

What can that mean to you as an advertiser?
Quality leads – Bing helps provide the relevant search results and ads your consumers are interested in. This means you can engage with consumers when they’re ready to research, influence or make a purchase decision.

Find more stories about: Bing, Microsoft, online advertising

Last week was all about Bing and Wave – both products the respective companies believe will change something about what we do online. Master search engine journalist Danny Sullivan has an indepth review of Bing which is worth reading (along with his partners comparison review).

In the ”coming soon” video, Microsoft classifies Bing as a “decision engine”. The video makes it seem like a search engine.

Whether you classify Bing as a decision engine or a search engine, whether you compare Bing to Google or any other engine, I have one question for Microsoft….

WHY NOT USE LIVE.COM?

Something tells me that Microsoft hired an expensive agency which eventually (after large payments) came up with the name Bing. I’ve sat through hundreds of these type of presentations over my career and have found it funny how many times the agency misses what’s right in front of them. Now maybe the Bing name was developed in-house. Frankly it really doesn’t matter where Bing came from (note, when I hear bing, I think of the bing-bong chime on the subway when the doors close).

Live is nearly a perfect name. All of the social media techies are in love with “real-time” and Google and other engines have talked about wanting to add more real-time activities into their results. Microsoft could have worked towards branding Live as THE real-time results/decision/search engine. Real-time = Live. Everything inside of Bing could have been included along with the real-time results.

Will Bing be the next Google or the next Cuil? Who knows at this point but what I do know is that had they used the Live name for the brand, they would have been further down the better path.

Perhaps in future ads and videos we will learn what the Bing name actually means and why it was chosen for this new brand.

Find more stories about: Bing, Microsoft, search, search engine strategies, windows live

The post below was originally posted on the Zoho blog and is authored by Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu.

Inevitable comparisons are made between the hugely enthusiastic developer response (including from us at Zoho) to Google Wave yesterday with the relatively tepid reponse to Microsoft’s new search engine Bing. The real interesting contrast to us, as independent software developers, is the way developers responded to Silverlight as opposed to the reaction yesterday to Google Wave. Both Silverlight and Wave are aimed at taking the internet experience to the next level. To be perfectly honest, Silverlight is a great piece of technology. Google Wave, as yet, is not much more than a concept and an announcement.

It is easy to dismiss all this with “Oh, the press just loves to hype everything Google, and loves to hate Microsoft,” but that cannot explain why even competitors like us are willing to embrace Google’s innovations, but stay away from perfectly good innovations from Microsoft, such as Silverlight?

It comes down to one word: karma. Microsoft just has so much bad karma in this industry that I cannot imagine a company like us trusting them on much of anything. Take Silverlight: Microsoft pledged that they will always support Silverlight on Mac and Linux, and on browsers other than IE. Do you really, really believe their promise? Let’s recap some ancient history here: Microsoft used to have IE for Solaris and even had a beta of IE for Linux. That was when IE was way behind Netscape and was trying to catch up. Once Netscape was safely vanquished, Microsoft’s commitment to support IE on other platforms vanished. In fact, Microsoft intentionally pulled IE on other platforms, because it was clear to them that making the web experience suck on other platforms was a way to keep Windows firmly entrenched. I am glad they adopted that strategy, because that strategy eventually paved the way for Firefox (and Safari and Chrome …), and together those browsers have rendered the operating system utterly irrelevant. Apple’s resurgence – based on design prowess, not platform dominance – and Vista’s failure, have demonstrated that convincingly.

Let’s try to imagine what a Google Silverlight would have been. It would have been a fully open source product from Google, with a very liberal open source license (BSD or Apache). It would have all the technical specifications published openly. They would pledge to have the Silverlight VM interoperate with Javascript and HTML5. And a company like Zoho would have a ton of developers working on Google Silverlight based applications by now – as opposed to having exactly ZERO developers working on Microsoft Silverlight. Please note that this has nothing to do with the technology: as I said before, I happen to agree that Silverlight is a great piece of technology.

What could Microsoft do to earn our trust? For starters, they could really support all the web standards on IE. IE is increasingly an embarrassment of a browser and a pain for developers to support. The only reason IE is making any progress at all is the competition from Firefox and Safari and Chrome. I know, IE was once known for web innovation, including AJAX – but that was the time Microsoft was really trying to catch up and beat Netscape. Fair or not, the impression independent developers get is that Microsoft would prefer the web to stay crippled, so pesky applications that challenge their cash cows can stay frozen as “online Wordpad”, as Bill Gates put it.

That brings us back to Google: today, it is Google which is driving web standards forward. That is why we at Zoho are firmly aligned with them, even if they are our primary competitor. We believe in an open web, there is plenty of opportunity for all of us. Could Google abuse its position? Well, I am sure they understand karma!

Find more stories about: Google, Google Wave, Microsoft, Zoho

Yesterday for a brief moment, lots of tech bloggers removed the twitter auto-post function and replaced it with excitement over the Google Wave announcement. I’ve read posts that say Google Wave will replace the Web as we know it and then I read posts that say nearly the opposite. I am just wondering, did anyone else immediately think that Google Wave looks nearly identical to Microsoft Outlook?

For reference, the main blue color in Outlook is #e3efff and in Google Wave the main blue color is #c9e2fc. Google Wave has pretty pictures too. I think if you add the Xobni plugin into Outlook, the screenshots get even closer.

Exhibit #1 – Outlook

Exhibit #2 – Google Wave

Exhibit #3 – Microsoft Outlook with Xobni

Find more stories about: Google, Google Wave, Microsoft, social media, Social Networking

Online advertising optimization service YieldBuild has announced that they now support Microsoft pubCenter in their premium text ad program. Microsoft pubCenter is in beta and publishers need to be approved for entry. YieldBuild notes they can get qualified publishers directly into the text ad program. Microsoft pubCenter is similar to Google AdSense.

Apparently some publishers in the pubCenter beta report better performance than with AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network. I can’t comment on the results as I don’t use pubCenter but as with any ad network, pricing can fluctuate on each individual ad click.

Check out my video interview with YieldBuild CEO Paul Edmondson.

Find more stories about: advertising, Microsoft, online advertising, Quick News, YieldBuild

I just received a tip that something is going on with the Microsoft Messenger/Windows Live Messenger. If you check Twitter search, you can see many people are being asked via a message on Microsoft Messenger to change their email address and/or login. I’ve posted a screenshot of the message below. Yahoo Answers has an open thread on the issue and the replies seem to indicate that it is some sort of worm/virus. The initial poster on Yahoo Answers says the box appears each time they login to MSN Messenger and that it takes them to a link on the Microsoft site but there’s no way to change the email address. Naturally Yahoo Answers isn’t absolute confirmation but I would tread lightly for now.

I have emailed Microsoft for a reply to the issue and will update this post if/when I hear back. Please leave a comment if you have any details or if this same issue is occuring with your Messenger installation.

Update: Microsoft has posted an announcement about the need to change the login id. The change has to do with the Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 SP1 product offering.

Find more stories about: chat, IM, Microsoft, Quick News

I was up very late last night and just before I shut down for the evening, I noticed a post by Mr. CES Robert Scoble pointing to a new launch by Microsoft called "Tag". Since that time, there have been over 60 comments discussing the Tag on Scoble’s post. If you regularly read CN, you know how much of a fan I am of QR Codes. There’s an example of a Microsoft Tag on the left – it’s got pretty colors and lots of triangles!

As an Internet marketer, I know how valuable mobile codes are around the world and how important they will be in the U.S. over the coming years. When I saw the Microsoft Tag, I was instantly disappointed because now we have yet another tagging technology to deal with. To some extent this is similar to the comparisons between Facebook Connect and OpenID. I haven’t heard anyone moaning that QR codes aren’t serving the needs of the community. The Microsoft Tag works just like a QR code works. You zap the tag with your mobile device and are taken to a site, promotion or application.

It appears the Microsoft Tag creation is free for now but eventually Microsoft will charge a fee to create a tag. What I wonder is how these tags change the cost of printing. A QR code can be printed in black/gray, this new Microsoft Tag needs full color which will certainly increase the cost of printing when black-only would have sufficed.

Long Zheng has a good comparison of the technical specifications between the Microsoft Tag and a QR code. Scoble says that the Microsoft Tag can be printed smaller and are more accurate.

I will be investigating these codes further as we support QR codes on CloudContacts for instant phone dialing. I doubt I would pay for code creation – especially when each person would have a unique code.

Find more stories about: Microsoft, mobile, QR Codes, Quick News

Anand Iyer with Microsoft Startup Zone provided a video demo and details about the Microsoft BizSpark program. Microsoft describes the program as, "BizSpark is an innovative new program that unites Startups with entrepreneurial and technology resources in a global community with a common goal of supporting and accelerating the success of a new generation of high-potential Startups."

Check out reviews on Geekzone, The Register, Ostatic and Sitepoint.

Find more stories about: business, Microsoft, Quick News, startups, Video

When Microsoft launched their Live Search Cashback option back in May, all of the bloggers and reporters talked about how it was going to really boost Microsoft’s search market share. I took a different view, looking at it from the dealhunters point-of-view. In late June we talked to the deal hunters (me included) and they said that the Live Search Cashback was great, paying up to 35% rewards for shopping on eBay.

Today Techcrunch editor Erick Schonfeld has an article about how Microsoft hasn’t gained any market share with the new Live Search Cashback option and in fact the overall share dropped by a small percentage in July. Erick points to research by comScore and concludes with, "While two months worth of data is far from conclusive, it does suggest that in search you can’t buy market share. You have to earn it."

The issue that so many writers are missing is that this new cashback option will never get users who are looking for information to switch. Why would I switch from Google to Microsoft Live Search Cashback when I am looking for cat photos? Microsoft is sitting on a huge homerun if they could get their ducks in a row about how to market this tool properly.

For example, why would ANYONE not start a purchase on the Microsoft site? If you are buying items online and not getting cashback from Microsoft, Fatwallet or the other cashback services, you are simply throwing money away. Look at these cashback amounts:

• Zappos – 22.5%
• Footlocker – 45%
• Newegg – 3%

In the deal hunter segment, the Microsoft Live Search Cashback is doing well from my perspective. Fatwallet continues to be a discussion place for the cashback search and as of yesterday there are now merchants paying up to 62.5% back.

Will Live Search Cashback take away market share from Google or Yahoo in the informational searches? No. Could it dominate the product search/price comparison category? Yes. Microsoft needs to learn how to market the search as a product and purchase search – and then we will see those charts change direction.

Find more stories about: cashback, Microsoft, money, Quick News

comScore is out with their June Ad Metrix analysis of the top online display advertising publishers and advertisers in the U.S. On the publisher side, Fox Interactive Media leads the pack with 52.3 billion ad views. MySpace accounted for 51 billion of the 52.3 billion hence my story title. Facebook came in sixth with 3 billion ads and Glam made the report in tenth with just over 2 billion ads.

On the advertiser side, Microsoft leads the pack with 5.5 billion ads purchased. In second place is the University of Phoenix with 4.7 billion ads – guess they have some open seats. Vonage and Netflix came in eighth and ninth respectively with just over 3 billion ads purchased. Experian Interactive is the company who pushes the dancing women/bear/monkey ads for Lower My Bills and the FreeCreditReport ads.

Find more stories about: advertising, comScore, Fox Business, Microsoft, MySpace, online advertising, Quick News