Microsoft Archive

After using an iPhone 3G for about 2 years, I gave it up last week. This week I picked up one of the new Windows Phone 7 devices (the HTC Surround). Following is a brief comparison of the two from my perspective.

Table of Contents:

• Buying Apps
• Interface
• Media
• Buttons
• Web Browser
• Camera
• Email, Contacts
• Other
• Conclusion

Buying Apps

The iPhone has the famous App Store, Windows Phone has the Marketplace. While the iPhone obviously has exponentially more apps available than Windows Phone does, a lot of the major apps were available for Windows Phone from day-one. I can’t, in good conscience, say that the Windows Phone Marketplace even compares to the iPhone app store in terms of apps, yet, but things do look good for such a new system.

Both systems allow you to buy/download apps through your computer or through your device, so they are basically equal in that regard. I do think that the Windows Phone will need to find a better way to arrange and organize the apps and games once the marketplace starts to really take off, though.

One place the iPhone has the Windows Phone beat, hands-down, right now is the fact that you can’t view what apps you currently have on your Windows Phone when using your PC. You can only view and manage your apps through the phone. Continue reading “In-Depth Comparison: Windows Phone vs. iPhone” »

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.

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.

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.

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. Continue reading “My Response to the IE8 Comparison Chart” »

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.
Continue reading “Microsoft IE8 Comparison Chart – “Of course Internet Explorer 8 wins this one”” »

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.