4 posts tagged “microsoft”

Today Microsoft announced that they are indeed going to produce a media player/iTunes killer, which they have xristened "Zune." Look forward to an onslaught of stupid puns, like, say, the title of my post. The article that announced the new product (? brand? products?) is hidden behind the Billboard paywall, but here's a quote from the TechCrunch post that quotes Billboard:

In an interview with Billboard, Chris Stephenson, Microsoft’s new GM of marketing for MSN Entertainment Business, said Zune will be an umbrella brand for what he says is “a family of hardware and software products” targeting various digital entertainment services.

Not terribly informative.

A Microsoft employee who is working on the project has started a blog on it called the Zune Insider Blog. And what blog serivce is he using? Typepad. Which, given Microsoft's propensity for always eating their own dogfood, pretty impressive. Here's his description of Zune:

It’s Microsoft’s new, holistic approach to music and entertainment. And yes, this year, we’ll be releasing a device as part of the project. Under the Zune brand, we’re looking to build a community for connecting with folks, all to discover new music and entertainment.

It's interesting how, just by what I've read so far, that I can tell this is going to be a disaster of epic proportions. Every hair on my BS detector is standing straight up. It's kind of a blink thing, because I can't articulate exactly why this seems so obviously a trainwreck in the making, but maybe it's the vagueness of it all. Based on the above, could anyone even answer the question "what is Zune?" Like if you asked "what is an iPod" the answer is immediately obvious. So is the answer to "What is Windows?"

A basic fact of business is that brands come from products. Products do not come from brands. It's as simple as that. That's why Zune will fail.

Ars Technica is reporting that Word 2007 is going to feature integrated blogging . Microsoft Word is legendary for producing for inefficient and ugly html, but it seems that maybe they've fixed that, according to the lead engineer (with the oddly disturbing name of "Joe Friend") on the project on a post from his blog :

The goal for this feature is not pure fidelity, but the right fidelity for your blog. The HTML for this post was created by Word. Go ahead, click View, Source in your browser and look at the HTML starting with "Word is a great tool..." We really are going pretty basic here. Bold become <strong>, Italic becomes <em>, Heading 1 become <h1>, Quotes become <blockquote> and on it goes. There are definitely kinks in Beta 2. For example we are encoding smart quotes incorrectly so I had to turn off that feature in Word, but the goal is to output just what is needed to make your blog post clean and readable (code and rendered HTML).

Here's a screenshot, from the Microsoft guy's blog posting:

Here is the new blog account dialog, which giznankerously doesn't mention Typepad:

When I was blogging a lot to Typepad I used Word a lot, because it felt safer (no chance of browser giznank losing a long post) and because I am very used to editing text in Word. In Comet, I do actually compose using the rtf editor-because it's cooler, and there's a post recovery feature (which is huge) and the easy integration of assets.

That being said, I would actually be tempted to use this Word 2007 blogging feature if:

• it ends up in the Mac version of Office
• it supported Typepad (or Comet)

Those are both big ifs, of course. This seems like something worth keeping an eye on. Maybe someone should evangelize him to support 6A products as well?

TechCrunch just posted part II of their look at online music serivces, this one focusing on subscription "all you can eat" services . As you can see by looking at their comparison chart, there isn't really much difference between the services. Because Microsoft is providing the software, and the RIAA cartel controls the content, the market has devolved to a commodity business where the players have very little ability to differentiate themslves, beyond competing to see who can create the prettiest screens. Situations like this are not good for the consumer. Because so much of the potential value is locked up by the RIAA and Microsoft, the players actually have very little incentive to improve or even maintain their services. Not to put a fine a point on it, but Microsoft and the music labels have Yahoo, Rhapsody and the others by the short and curlies.

Add television to the list of industries that Apple has reformated (computers, publishing, video production, music.) I just bought my first "Season Pass" for an ITMS (iTunes Music Store) distributed show-season 10 of South Park . I had been wondering why they were only selling the first two seasons of SP when it seemed like such an obvious candidate for iTunes distribution, demographically and otherwise. It will be interesting to see what the user experience is like for the season pass.

Last night I tried using a Microsoft "Media Center PC" hooked up to DirectTV and by the end of trying to use, I was almost in tears. It's beyond the scope of this entry to explain why Apple gets it and Microsoft doesn't, but I think it has something to do with power and how its distributed at the two companies. I'm sorry to say, but I don't think great products are made democratically. Call it the Nietzchean superman theory of product development.