Hey Europe, welcome to the social. Oh, wait. Wrong product.
Category Archives: Microsoft
Semi-Interesting Developments at Walmart
iTunes is more than the iPod. iTunes represents an experience. You plug your iPod into your computer. You fire up iTunes, browse the iTunes Music Store (iTMS), make a few purchases, then with the click of a button, the songs are on your iPod and you’re ready to go. People who purchase songs from iTMS are invested in more than an individual song. They’re invested in the user experience, which is easier and more straightforward than anything else on the market. Most iTunes users — rightly or wrongly — don’t care about DRM because under the iPod/iTunes/iTMS system, it just works. And that’s what really matters to them. Click, browse, buy, boom. It just works.
MTV Is Losing The URGE
In other words, the new partnership, Rhapsody America, will struggle to be a second- or third tier-player in the digital music arena. Awesome plan, guys.
Microsoft Music Label?
According to Digital Music News, Microsoft is widening its promotional efforts with a new program called Ignition. The program will provide promotion across the Zune Marketplace, Xbox Live and MSN. Moreover, the article mentions
Meanwhile, a well-placed executive source pointed Digital Music News to possible label ambitions by the software giant. According to the [...]
Welcome to 1999
Microsoft is still talking about making its server OS more modular.
“Having less surface area does reduce the servicing and the amount of code you have running and exposed, so we have done a lot of work in 2008 to make the system more modular. You have the server manager; every role is optional, and there [...]
Copy Issues with Vista
Wow.
On a Windows Vista-based computer, when you try to copy files from a server on a network, the copy process may stop responding (hang), and you may receive a message that resembles the following: Calculating Time Remaining0 minutes remaining This problem may occur only occasionally.
The solution? Call Microsoft support. Wow.
(Via Bink.nu.)
Shipley on Ballmer
Wil Shipley tears into Ballmer’s recent comments regarding Vista and piracy.
Damn, that’s a fine idea, Steve! Those freaking Chinese are sitting on piles of gold! They pirate your software because they are a greedy, greedy people, not because Windows Vista Basic costs $295 in China and laborers rake in about $160 a month.
Read the whole [...]
Mail Queue Sizes
When someone asks me, What’s the size of the mail queue?, my response is going to be the number of email in the queue. And when you think about it, that makes sense. In geek jargon, a queue is defined as a FIFO-organized sequence of items, as data, messages, jobs, or the like, [...]
Vista Virtualization
Infinite Loop has a post regarding virtualizing Windows Vista under Parallels. It seems that only the EULA for Vista Enterprise and Ultimate allow you to run virtualized, which means you have to pony up $399. For Windows. It’s times like this that I’m glad I get my copy of Windows through the [...]
Exchange Training, Days 2-4
Wow, I really meant to blog this better but there hasn’t been too much to talk about. For the most part, the class could easily be retitled Exchange 2003 For Babies. Although the instructor is certainly capable of getting just about as detailed as I’d like, the course is geared more toward the [...]
Q&A with Microsoft about Windows Vista
Lifehacker has a good Q&A (overview) of [tag]Microsoft[/tag]’s upcoming [tag]Vista[/tag].
Exchange Training, Day 1
So, I made it to Dallas in one piece, survived a massive traffic jam at Texas Stadium, and got to the hotel within the hour of climbing into the rental car. Not bad.
I was up and moving at 6:00AM, figuring that I’d need to allot “I’m lost” time and I was right. The [...]
Tracking Zero-Day Exploits
Lifehacker has a blurb about tracking the Microsoft Word [tag]zero-day exploit[/tag].
For those unfamiliar with them, so-called zero-day exploits appear the same day as the vulnerability, making them particularly difficult to thwart. If you want to be as diligent as possible about keeping your PC secure, visit the site regularly–and consider installing eEye’s Blink Personal, which [...]
Boot Camp Miracles
Miracles, black boxes, voodoo, whatever you want to call it, I hate it. I want to know why it works and why it doesn’t work. I don’t think it’s asking a lot.
When Boot Camp was first released, I gave it a spin. The installation was smooth, but everything went south when I [...]
Zune, The Community Which Squirts
In a recent Business Week article, Steve Balmer (Microsoft CEO) explained the social networking feature of the Zune thusly:
I want to squirt you a picture of my kids. You want to squirt me back a video of your vacation.
Frankly, I don’t want Balmer squirting anything at me. And I’m not sure I want to [...]