Many years ago, when I worked at Microsoft, I took a trip with a person several rungs up my management chain to talk to a software vendor. The purpose of our trip was to figure out what could be achieved if we worked more closely together with them, as they were filling a gap for our customers that we did not (and couldn’t for at least the foreseeable future). I still recall at lunch that day, when one of their…
TODO: Google Search Google Reader Google Chrome Google Maps Google Analytics for the blog In my blog last weekend, I set out to discuss whether I could quit Google’s software and services. To begin, I decided to start just with using Bing instead of Google. This caused no end of amusement to friends on Twitter who mocked be because I wasn’t searching with Google, but worse, I was using their browser all the time. That, exactly, was the reason why…
If you asked me a few years ago about Google, odds are I would talk your ear off about privacy, about how Google aggregates your life together in a manner you can’t imagine. Ask any co-worker at my last job before I left Austin – it’s true. Yet while I’ve still held up my stance as someone concerned about online security and privacy… I’ve lowered my guard. I’ve used Google. I use Google a lot, actually. But Google has been…
In January of 2011, I wrote my first suppositions about “Windows 8” and the ARM processor architecture. Though we now know the version of Windows that will land on ARM will be called Windows RT, and the Windows 8 name will be reserved for editions of the operating system that will run on x86/x64 processors. In that blog post early last year, I stated: Microsoft has never sustained Windows on any platform besides x86. What would make Windows on ARM…
In 1998, while on vacation, I recall having an idea about a new kind of computer. A computer where you could use it as a laptop, or flip the display around and use it with your fingers. I let the idea pass, since I figured it was novel, but nobody would pay a premium price for such a device. Several years later, I recall when Windows Tablet PC was in it’s infancy, seeing a convertible Tablet PC, and thinking, “maybe…
On Friday Morning, Splashtop introduced a new application, the Win8 Metro Testbed – powered by Splashtop. With both of the releases of Windows 8 so far, a key criticism of mine has been how hard it is to fairly evaluate the OS without a device that supports touch properly. Where Windows 7 is a desktop OS that offers little value when used with touch, Windows 8 is so touch-centric that evaluating it with only a keyboard and mouse is, I believe,…
I don’t have a Ph.D. in ergonomics. I didn’t even stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. But still, I have to say, I have to disagree with Jakob Nielsen in his blog post. Jakob states that if you build a mobile site (and he recommends that you do), that you redirect users to it automatically. This is not that different from the incredibly annoying tendency of sites to offer you their mobile app with the persistence that the talking toaster from…
For most of my career at Microsoft, I worked as a Program Manager on Windows Setup. No, not the Windows installer. Windows Setup – the tools and technologies that took a computer either from an earlier version of Windows or a bare PC, to an installation of Windows. But in this role, I still had to deal with the ramifications of how Windows applications were installed, and often would see the work of other teams incorporated into Windows setup –…
This is my office phone. See the red light? Most people who know me know that the best way to reach me is always my cell phone or email (or Twitter). But that red light marks purgatory for those who didn’t know. You see, office phones and I just don’t get along. I’ve tried, really I have. But these “designed by an electrical engineer” phones have always driven me nuts. Right up there with fax machines and printers, the needlessly…
If you’ve read my blog or followed me on Twitter for long, you know that I love to analyze patterns in spam and scams. Over most of 2010 and 2011, spammers (in particular the porn spammers in late 2012) were very prolific. I believe recent controls put in place are helping to regulate the amount of spam on Twitter to a better degree than before. However, last week, something happened that exposed a weak point in whatever algorithm Twitter is…