Mix It Up

Microsoft is hosting a 72 hour conversation.

Its essentially a conference for web designers/developers & next generation change agents. Keynote speakers will include Ray Ozzie (but of course), Scott Guthrie who's general manager within Microsoft’s developer division & Robbie Bach, president of the Microsoft Entertainment and Devices Division.

So there's obviously going to be a lot of fun & games with Guthrie showing people what's going to be there to rave about in Visual Studio (codename Orcas) & WPF/E (Windows Presentation Foundation) & Bach playing around with the latest consoles & talking about new media opportunities created by some of Microsoft's devices.

Photos from last year.

We should have one of these in B'lore too....

[via Rahul Soni]

R(Evolution)

Evolution is fascinating.. much like artificial intelligence & push-up bra's.
Check out Microsoft following Darwin's footsteps.

The WOW Is NOW

After 5 years & $7 Billion, Microsoft has finally come out with 'the biggest software release ever'. With a boisterous $500 million marketing campaign, it has launched Vista for consumers.




While product reviewers may gush & drool over its rich graphics intense user interface & robust security features, operating system releases have lost their glory. Mr Ballmer hopes to sell 5 times as many Vistas as he did Windows95 & thrice as many as WindowsXP.Lets wait & watch how versatile he is at predicting the future.

With a new software fabric in the making with buzzwords auch as SaaS(Software as a Service) & SOA(Services Oriented Architecture), a shrink wrapped OS package has really lost its sheen. It doesn't help that open source is being preferred by governments in many countries as well as developers worldwide.

But does Vista have anything new to offer.. Microsoft would love to make you believe that there is but the truth is that there are a lot of 'enhancements' & pretty impressive ones from what I've gathered but not a lot of new 'killer features'.

From the snapshots, the graphical UI seems to be absolutely cutting edge & hopefully will bring rich visual experiences into the mainstream. MAC cultists will go ho-hum! but we can spend aeons comparing the two.

Why is no one lining up for Vista in San Francisco?

[image source: engadget]