In a response to Microsoft watcher Todd Bishop’s post saying  Microsoft should buy Twitter, Mary Jo-Foley wrote Microsoft Shouldn’t Buy Twitter saying:

…But I’d argue Microsoft could simply do a Twitter clone — the same way that it has built its own Facebook-notification-like news stream into Windows Live — and reap similar results. In fact, the Softies are hinting they’ve already been experimenting with adding Twitter-like functionality to its business software (possibly via SharePoint). I’d bet the Xbox and maybe the Pink/Danger mobile teams have been looking at doing their own Twitter-like services too.

Seriously?! Microsoft could simply clone Twitter?!

Sure, Microsoft certainly has some brilliant tech folks that can surely implement or clone anything. It also has the resources to do that.
And yet, its mostly following the pack with its online offering pretty stagnant. Last time it tried anything like that was Live Home with its Facebook\FriendFeed like functionality and that’s pretty much dead…
It can certainly clone Twitter, probably even do a better job at it than the original, but will anyone bother using it?

Twitter has a fast growing, huge and vibrant community. Its also a well known brand name that’s getting a huge amount of media attention right now.
It survived its own fail whales, upgrade owls and all sorts of other nasty service downtimes simply because no one else can beat that…
You can clone technology but you can’t clone a community and brand strength…

Tags: Microsoft, MSFT, Twitter

I just finished installing Windows 7 Beta on my home machine to find a fish swimming on my desktop:

But not just any fish, its a Siamese fighting fish, also knows a “betta fish” (or just “betta”).
A subtle Microsoft joke? Hope it does a better job selectively breeding this one (and get rid of some mutations… err… SKUs) …

Tags: beta, Betta Fish, Microsoft, MSFT, Windows 7

Originally published on Cloud Avenue.

About a month ago, Microsoft rolled out its previously announced 3rd wave of Windows Live Services refresh.

The purpose of the release was to position the Live Services as the central hub for everything you do online – the new Live Home shows input from your various services (Hotmail, SkyDrive, etc.) as well as an activity stream composed of your friends’ activities on both Live Services as well as other external services such as Twitter, Flickr and blogs…

Tags: Cloud Avenue, Live Home, Microsoft, Microsoft Windows Live, social network, Windows Live Wave, Windows Live Wave 3

If you like the scrolling functionality as implemented in the iPhone (and Zune etc.) you’ll be happy to know its part of the Windows 7 operating system and implemented for anything with a scrollbar.

More Windows 7 goodies on Rafael Rivera’s blog…

Tags: Kinetic Scrolling, Microsoft, Multi-Touch, Panning, Windows 7

(Cross posted from CloudAve)

Microsoft announced today its rollout plans for the 3rd wave of Windows Live services.

The goal of this latest release wave, according to company officials, is to simplify the use of the offered services and unify the user’s entire online experience into the Windows Live interface.
Microsoft is planning to rollout the new services, currently in beta, to the public within the 1-2 months timeframe.

Windows Live Goes Social

One of Microsoft’s main emphasis with the current wave of services is on social networking between users using its services.

Microsoft finally figured out that its Live Messenger with about 268 million users worldwide, is by far the most popular instant messaging software in the world, is actually a social networks. With the new release, your Live Messenger contacts are now your Friends and you can see aggregated information about their activities on the net.

Very much like Plaxo, FriendFeed etc. Microsoft allows users to bring into their profile content they create in all sorts of services on the web (Live Services, Flickr, LinkedIn, blogs and RSS feeds, …) and share it with their friends and colleagues.
When users add photos, write reviews, and update their profiles directly on Live.com, that content will be put into their activity stream as well.
This activity stream is exposed in all sort of ways throughout Microsoft’s services interface.

For example, Microsoft’s new Live Home portal shows the latest events in your social network. When emailing a friend or chatting on Messenger you’re also able to interact with that friend’s activity stream and more…

Not just for private consumers…

I’ve been told that all these new service updates will not skip Windows Live Domains used by universities and organizations to create a personalized version of Microsoft’s services.
If that really the case, having all these new social capabilities as part of its domain offering can be amazing for collaboration and communication inside the organization.
While Google doesn’t seem to care about its Google Applications for Your Domains customers its good to see that Microsoft is going forward with Live Domains.
This latest update may just be the final straw I need to make the switch to Live Domains…

Where’s Live Mesh?!

It will be really interested to see where Live Mesh comes into the picture in regards to all of these Live services.
Live Mesh should be the glue bridging between Microsoft’s online services and its offline applications and devices (S+S) allowing users to sync all their content- contacts, photos, events, favorites, etc. – across devices and services.
Unfortunately, there’s no clear answer for that…

During the launch we’ve only heard about Live Sync allowing users to sync photos across computers. Some sources say its an incarnation of FolderShare and in any case it doesn’t seem to be based on Live Mesh technology.
With Live Mesh being one of Microsoft’s core platform offering its really hard to understand why we need to have Live Sync too…

Other notes…

• All the services are released simultaneously in all countries and in 48 (!) languages.
• Windows Live Skydrive size limit has changed from 5GB to 25GB
• Windows Live Hotmail looks and feels a lot better to use.
• I’ve uploaded all the screenshots of the new services to my SkyDrive:

Tags: Cloud Computing, Google, Live Mesh, Microsoft, SkyDrive, social networks, Windows Live

(Originally posted at Cloud Avenue)

This year’s Microsoft Profesional Developers Conference is full of announcements and surprises. The next big announcement besides Windows Azure (and Windows 7?) is the new “Office Web Applications” live service. The Office team will be delivering the five most popular Office applications as light weight browser based versions that include Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

Here are some of the demo screenshots available:

The applications will be offered in both a simple HTML/AJAX version and a rich-client Silverlight version.
Office Web Applications are not planned to replace Microsoft’s traditional desktop offering but rather complete it, together with Mobile Office for mobile devices, allowing users to seamlessly work on their documents across all environments.

Providing such a reach collaboration environment isn’t a simple task as you can see in the following interview of Antoine Leblond, Senior VP of Office Productivity Apps and Chris Bryant, General Program Manager:

Although its not meant to replace its Desktop Office offering, one of Microsoft’s biggest cash cows, one has got to wonder about the risk these new services to cannibalize their big desktop brother’s profits. Windows and Office, which are Microsoft’s core business, are likely to stay its core moneymakers for at least the next 2-3 years, maybe even longer.
This move clearly shows that Microsoft is starting to think beyond that and along with its other platform announcements (Azure, Live Mesh…) we can clearly see a trend away from desktop software to rich clients installed from the web….

Office Web Applications will be released to a limited set of partners and customers at the end of this year. The release date will closely align with Office 14 and Windows 7 which will be sometime in late 2009 or early 2010.
Microsoft plans to make Office Web Applications available as a service through its Live platform supporting both an ad-funded and a paid-subscription models.
Business users that require an on-premise will be able to do so through Sharepoint via its traditional volume licensing program.

Tags: Cloud Avenue, Cloud Computing, Desktop Office, Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Mobile Office, Office, Office 14, Office Live, Office Productivity Apps, Office Suites, Office Web Applications, PDC 2008, Web Applications, Windows, Windows 7

(Originally posted at Cloud Avenue)

Windows Live™Microsoft’s Windows Live ID team just announced their support for OpenID calling it a “de facto standard Web protocol for user authentication.”

Beginning today, Windows Live™ ID is publicly committing to support the OpenID digital identity framework with the announcement of the public availability of a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of the Windows Live ID OpenID Provider.

You will soon be able to use your Windows Live ID account to sign in to any OpenID Web site!

What does it means for users?

OpenID allows users to maintain their identity information (Name, E-Mail, address, etc.) on a single provider and use that information to register and login to any website that supports OpenID. This relieves the user from having to fill out registration form and maintaining multiple different user names and passwords and profiles on different sites add provides a simplified online experience while increasing security.

Over 400 million LiveID users will soon be able to use their LiveID to do just that – login and provide identity information to any site supporting OpenID without the hassles of filling out registration forms and saving user\password information and with the user experience common to all OpenId sites (or, maybe even common to their familiar LiveID user interface?)

The wide adoption of OpenID led by Yahoo and Microsoft provides the required push for site owners to support OpenID providing the same simple and familiar login interface everywhere…

What does it mean for web developers?

With a simple integration effort that shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes, site owners can relieve themselves from taking care of authentication and registration process while providing their users with a simple familiar interface for signing up and using their services.
OpenID provides an easy and secure mechanism for authenticating and registering users, and with additional online services (like JanRain’s RPX) site owners can handover the entire care of handling their user information to the cloud – cheaper, faster, more secure.

For now, the LiveID team is testing their system’s OpenID Provider which is at a CTP (Community Technology Preview) stage. Widespread support is planned for “sometime in 2009″.

[Update: Screencast Overview]

Tags: Cloud Avenue, Cloud Computing, Federated Identity, LiveID, Microsoft, OpenID, Security, Windows Live, Yahoo

Reading Mary Jo Foley’s Microsoft 2.0 it suddenly struck me: Could Microsoft’s next killer OS be SharePoint?

Instead of being quite so blatant, Microsoft has taken a quieter back route to achieving the same ends via two related technologies:

1. Baking SharePoint reliance into more and more of its products
2. Requiring users to buy pricey client-access licenses (CALs) in order to use Microsoft’s servers

Microsoft has been basing a growing number of its products on SharePoint technologies to provide basic common services like storage, pub/sub, identity/security infrastructure, communications and collaboration functionalities.

With SharePoint’s BDC catalog and search server it is apparent that Microsoft is targeting SharePoint to serve as an integration layer on top of services and LOB applications in the organization.

With “Oslo” its much more…

In 2007, the company began to roll out Microsoft-hosted versions of three of its servers—Exchange, SharePoint Server, and Communications Server—with more planned. The next stage is a set of online services for application developers that offer OS-like functions, such as application-based data storage, and data synchronization among multiple connected devices.

Microsoft’s “Oslo” vision and roadmap to “Simplify SOA, Bridge Software Plus Services, and Take Composite Applications Mainstream” is largely built with SharePoint backing its platform.

As Microsoft expands its reach into cloud computing it’ll have to adjust its SharePoint infrastructure services, which its other server products rely on, to support this kind of environment.

We can already see signs for this transformation in Microsoft’s last year’s announcement on switching SharePoint to use claim based security.
Performing authentication and authorization using claims allows SharePoint to support federated identities across different services and applications – from integration with common identity services like Active Directory, LiveID and OpenID to service\application specific identity models.
This means SharePoint is no longer limited to using the Active Directory on premise but can integrate with remote external authentication providers enabling SharePoint hosted scenarios.

Office, OBAs and LOB Integration

On February 27th last year Microsoft shared some details on LOBi (Line of Business Interoperability), the next version of its SharePoint BDC, postponing it to be released as part of its Office 14 technology stack:

Consequently, LOBi technologies will now be delivered as a set of capabilities within the Office SharePoint Server as part of the next major set of Microsoft Office product releases (the Office 14 wave).”

LOBi, now known as OBAF (OBA Framework), allows developers to integrate LOB applications (SAP, Oracle, etc.) into SharePoint.

It provides developers with all the necessary services required to develop a composite LOB web application on top of existing systems while also supporting offline synchronization to Office clients (S+S strategy).

With the extensive support in application modeling planned as part of “Oslo” roadmap, Microsoft is positioning SharePoint as an integration platform that will run composite applications.

Dynamics and its other server products will probably leverage this platform, as well as its partners and ISVs.
An example for such an application’s is Duet 3.0, the next version of the SAP integration productivity product jointly developed with SAP, which will be developed on top of the new SharePoint technology stack.

Conclusion

By providing developers with rich set of platform services – security services, data indexing, search, synchronization services and offline capabilities – coupled with a development environment (Visual Studio 10) and modeling support, Microsoft is trying to provide all the essential capabilities required to build and run application in a hosted environment – the beginning of an OS for cloud applications?

Some more links on Microsoft’s Cloud Direction:

• Whatever happened to Microsoft LOBi?
• Here comes the “Windows Cloud”
• Windows HPC Partner- Electric Cloud
• Microsoft Research Work – TechFest Presentations and Demos
• Presentations – Democratizing The Cloud, The Cloud Data Center & The CARMEN Science Cloud & Beyond
• Cloud based Claims Authentication

Originally published on Cloud Avenue.

Tags: Cloud Avenue, Cloud Computing, Microsoft, MOSS, SharePoint, SharePoint technologies, SOA, Windows Cloud OS

Nokia recently announced its new 5800 Xpress Music, or Tube, as an “iPhone Killer”. Reviewers, however, disagree, mainly on hardware spec grounds – no touchscreen, S60 software issues.

What most reviewers seem to ignore is that even if Nokia (or Google, Sony, LG etc.) do come up with a device that matches the iPhone’s technical abilities (and I’m sure they have the required resources to do so) they’re still going to have a tough time competing with it.

Why? They way they sell and support their devices is very different than Apple.

When you buy an iPhone you have one company that control’s your entire experience with the device. From purchasing to ongoing operations and services its all ran by Apple that controls the entire product experience etc.
Apple bundles its iPhone with a set of services (AppStore, iTunes, Music Store…) that are tightly integrated with the device allowing easy consumption by customers which eventually is what’s driving Apple’s business.

Nokia, Sony, LG etc., on the other hand, sell the device through partnerships with different communication companies such as Orange Partner, which in turn, works with local sub-diaries. They rely on these partners for supporting their device and providing services to customers which often results in poor (sometime broken) customer experience.

Speaking at an Israeli GarageGeeks meeting, Steve Glagow, VP of Marketing Operations at Orange Partner VP mentioned that due to the fact they have to work with many regional and local partners, it takes more than 3 clicks and several screens for a user to install an application. Although he said their application installation rate is high (percentage of users who reach the application marketplace and end up installing an application) its a misleading measurement as most users will give up and never even reach the marketplace – only users determined to install an application will go through that effort.

Bundling your device with services is a winning strategy, not just for cellphones. Microsoft’s Xbox Live! platform is another great example on how bundling a device with online services helps increasing its value and perception.

Killing the iPhone will require more than just cool new hardware…

Related readings:

• Six Reasons iPhone Delivers Where Android Won’t
• Nokia 5800 (Tube) – Not an iPhone Killer?
• Nokia 5800 on Engadget

Tags: 5800, Apple, Google, iPhone, Microsoft, Nokia, Sony, Steve Glagow, Xpress Music, XpressMusic

"We need to connect with real people," Seinfeld says and reminds Gates that "you and I are a little out of it. You’re living in some kind of moon house hovering over Seattle like the mother ship. I got so many cars I get stuck in my own traffic."

The new ad explains that Bill and Jerry are on a quest to reconnect with real people, pretty much like what Microsoft is trying to do with this new campaign.

It’s definitely better than the first ad as there are some funny scenes and a clear message that actually makes sense  – Windows need to appeal to the needs of real people.

However, the Mac vs. PC took just one add to get you hooked and the message across. Microsoft can’t seem to compete with that…

Lets just wait and see what the 3rd ad will be like…

Tags: Bill Gates, Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, MSFT, Vista