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Last October, I noted on Twitter that an unusual (I mean highly unusual) number of spammers on Twitter used an avatar photo of a woman. But not just any woman. In addition, many spammers seemed to use a photo of a woman specifically with cleavage showing. Since I have been doing some research on criminal domains that involves a fair amount of REST querying anyway, it didn’t take much work for me to build a query engine where before reporting them…

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Do the engineers who design the electrical supplies for electronic gadgets hate their customers? Am I wrong, or doesn’t it seem like this 20+ year passive/aggressive game of inconsistent sizes, voltages, wattages, and connectors , along with designing AC adapters that block AC wall outlets or take up two or more spaces on a surge suppressor has gone on too long? I’m cleaning my office today. At least I’m trying to. I’m getting rid of two old Netgear WiFi routers,…

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While reading a friend’s Windows 8/ARM article on Forbes, I had what is often described as a BFO (Blinding Flash of the Obvious). For a year now, we’ve all been theorizing (err… guessing?) what Windows 8 on ARM would look like. The biggest question has been the will they/won’t they of the Win32 desktop on ARM. Early on I thought it’d be there. Then later last year I thought maybe not. Now, I think, I’m all but certain it won’t…

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I’ve mentioned before how much time I spend investigating spam. It’s allowed me to observe some pretty interesting, sometimes amusing, often annoying, criminal behavior. I also enjoy analyzing Twitter spam as well, and have built a pretty interesting collection of spammer examples. One of the most common things I see on Twitter, though, is spammers using shortlinks to try and pull off their crime. Shortlinks (goo.gl, bit.ly, etc) have made sharing links handy, especially on character limited communication mediums such…

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From when I joined Microsoft in 1997 until I left in 2004, and even since then (but especially during the heady days of the DOJ lawsuit), accusations flew fast and furious accusing Microsoft of misusing the word “innovation”, that Microsoft couldn’t innovate, or didn’t innovate. To a large part, I don’t agree with that. Sure, you can say that Windows Phone 7 was a reaction to the iPhone and Android, but it wasn’t a clone, and it attempts to offer a…

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In Louisiana, there is a bridge on Interstate 55 that crosses the Manchac Swamp. One of the world’s longest bridges, it’s over 22 miles long. I mention that because I think it’s important that you be visualizing a very long bridge, because that is, in so many ways what Microsoft is building with Windows 8. Win8 on the legacy (x86/x64) architectures and Win8 on ARM are in many ways two different platforms, and WinRT is the (very long) bridge that Microsoft…

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A few years ago, someone in Hollywood got scared. They started looking at the volume that DVD/Blu-Ray (“shiny media”) movies were selling at, versus the volume movies were selling to shiny media rental stores and Netflix. And that someone’s reaction? The most idiotic idea I’ve ever seen (I even think it was dumber than DIVX). The “28 56 Day Rental Window”. I said it was stupid then, I’ll reaffirm it is stupid now. But just wait – it’s getting dumber. You…

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On January 2, 2012, Apple accidentally released an app called “Game Store” to the iOS App Store. I saw this early in the day, so thought I would check it out. Turned out it was only in the German App Store – and that it wasn’t really that exciting. In the end, it didn’t even show up in my search results. But what did show up in the search caught my eye. Take a look. See all those “Maker” apps in…

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Last night, a follower on Twitter asked me the following: [blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/robertmclaws/status/154446168846368768″] For those who don’t know, my day job is as a research analyst at Directions on Microsoft (DoM). Unlike most analysis firms that focus horizontally across various vendors in various markets, we focus exclusively on Microsoft (which DoM has done for 20 years this year). This single vendor approach has enabled us to dive deep and lets us answer questions about Microsoft’s software, services, hardware, and even complex licensing…

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Last Friday I posted this on Twitter: Netflix/Quickster, GoDaddy, Verizon… fascinating to watch an Internet beat-down cause a business decision to be reversed. 2011 should go down on record as the year that companies – some of them, anyway, experienced resonance to the point that they were forced to reverse a key business decision. I refer to resonance as the innate amplification of topics across the Internet as they reverberate from user to user that agrees with the sentiment. Amusing topics that…

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