Earlier Ad “Shoe Circus“

Starring himself, Brian Williams, Steve Ballmer, Matthew McConaugheyr, Robbie Bach, Jay-Z, Bono, Steven Spielberg, George Clooney, Jon Stewart, Kevin Turner, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Al Gore, Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie.

A must Watch.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEWMC4usElM&rel=1]

Can check out a wide screen version of this clip in high quality at http://www.istartedsomething.com/20080107/bill-gates-last-day-microsoft-video/

Also, take a peek at the full keynote speech by Bill Gates at http://www.microsoft.com/ces/

I stare at empty screens
On the Boulevard of Broken Builds
Where the city sleeps
but I’m unlucky one and I code alone
I code alone
I code alone
I code alone
I code alone …

My music’s the only one that wakes beside me
My hollow brain’s the only thing that’s beating
Sometimes I hope someone out there will help me
‘Til then I code alone

I’m scrolling down the file
That divides me somewhere in my mind
Why are these million errors
Of the build and why should I fix alone

Read between the lines
All’s fucked up and trillion hash defines
Check my vital signs
To know I’m still alive and I code alone
I code alone
I code alone
I code alone
I code alone …

My music’s the only one that wakes beside me
The night’s the only time when I’m working
Sometimes I dream someone out there will help me
‘And throughout the day I sleep alone
I sleep alone …

Disclaimer – This piece is pure fiction and has nothing to with my profession, my current assignment and my current employer.

Technorati Tags: random, frustration, ramblings, timepass

IE 7+1
IE VIII
IE 1000 (think binary)
IE Eight!
iIE
IE for Web 2.0 (Service Pack 2)
IE Desktop Online Web Browser Live Professional Ultimate Edition for the Internet (the marketing team really pushed for this one
Ie^2.079 (we might still use this for the Math Major Edition)

but sadly they settled for IE8 … read more here

I can suggest some more .. how about

IE X-2 …. the Xmen version
IE Tigeress
iBrowse
IE GO (pronounced as ayeeee go)
IE Beta .. for earth and we will never come out of beta .. coz its the name *lol*

They will have to still decide the various edtions it will ship as, like

Web Developers edition, Children edition, Student edition, Home edition, Professional edition (tuned for social networking and digging), Ulitmate edition, Live edition, Offline edition, Web edition …

Can you think of more?

How will you name it? OR What can be the name if someone else would have developed the next version of IE, say apple or google or a new start up?

Building on the foundation of the original service that currently includes more than 1 billion searchable posts from the
Usenet archive, Google Groups now offers users the ability to join and follow discussions among different groups, keep in
touch with family and friends, and share information more easily.

Using Google Groups, people can search and participate in a variety of discussions. For example, someone looking to buy a
new digital camera this holiday season can search for (digital camera recommendations) and find relevant posts from others
about the best cameras to buy.

A user can star (bookmark) this topic to watch and subscribe to receive posts from a group such as rec.photo.digital to
regularly read more opinions on digital cameras. Similarly, users looking for advice on treating carpal tunnel or disputing
a cell phone bill can find discussions from other people who have experience in these areas.

In addition, family, friends, and official organizations like schools or community centers can keep their members informed
via email lists and announcement-only newsletters through Google Groups.

"Google Groups enables users to easily gather groups of friends, acquaintances, and those sharing interests together, and
communicate with them directly via email, newsletters and message boards," said Jonathan Rosenberg, vice president, Product
Management, Google Inc.

"These online communities connect people with information they care about, and that furthers our commitment to enhancing the
online experience for Google users."

New features of Google Groups include:

-Create groups: Create, join and search email-based mailing lists, and designate your group as public (anyone can read the
group's messages on the Web) or restricted (only members can read, respond or start new conversations).
-Dynamic conversations: Postings to all Google Groups mailing lists and Usenet lists appear within seconds and are indexed
within minutes.
-Enhanced user interface: Track and mark topics using the "My starred topics" feature, and view postings by message summary,
title, or conversation view.
-Email notification: Receive individual messages or read daily email summaries to participate in discussions via your inbox.
-Easy searching: Users can easily search for information within a group or across many groups.
-Relevant text ads: Google Groups displays only targeted ads that are relevant to user searches or the content on the page.
Google continues to experiment with new technologies that make it faster and easier for people to find and use relevant
information. Currently in beta and available in English language only, Google Groups can be found by clicking on the 'Groups'
link on the Google home page or visiting : http://groups-beta.google.com.

Published: September 15, 2004 New York Times

In a move to expand its role in the online music business, Yahoo announced yesterday that it would buy Musicmatch, a company

that sells music online, for $160 million. The move puts Yahoo in direct competition with Apple Computer’s iTunes,

Microsoft’s new music store and RealNetworks in the small but growing market for online downloads of music.

Yahoo already has a significant advertiser-supported free music business, with Internet radio and music video channels, along

with information and discussion boards about music. The services are based on technology it acquired with Launch Media, which

it bought in 2001 for $12 million. Yahoo has also introduced an Internet radio service that offers more choices and better

sound quality but charges a fee. But until now, it has not offered users the ability to buy and download songs.

Musicmatch, which started selling songs online last year for 99 cents each, gives Yahoo that ability.

“Music is one of the most-used applications on the Web,” said Dan Rosensweig, Yahoo’s chief operating officer. “Our objective

is to be the leading player in the digital music world.”

Musicmatch is best known for its Jukebox software, which allows users to organize their electronic music collections. It also

offers an Internet radio service and a $9.95-a-month subscription service that lets users listen to any of its 700,000 songs

on their personal computers.

While some analysts have suggested that $160 million was a high price for Musicmatch, whose annual revenue was estimated at

$50 million, Mr. Rosensweig said the cost was justified.

“The industry is already so big and it is accelerating,” so that getting a music service to the market quickly is crucial,

Mr. Rosensweig said.

Phil Leigh, the president of Inside Digital Media, a market research firm, said that the most significant piece of the deal

for Yahoo was not Musicmatch’s store but its software.

“The biggest part of online music today is people taking their existing CD collections and moving them to their PC’s,” Mr.

Leigh said. Musicmatch is a leader in the music software market, with 55 million registered users. Yahoo hopes to sell more

songs to those users.

But Mr. Leigh said that Musicmatch had a significant flaw because its songs cannot be played on Apple’s iPod devices, by far

the most popular portable music players. Until recently, only Apple’s iTunes store sold songs for the iPod, though

RealNetworks recently introduced technology – which has drawn strong objection from Apple – that allows songs sold by its

online store to play on the iPod.

“Of the tracks people are paying to download,” Mr. Leigh said, “the majority of them are going on iPods.”

But Mr. Rosensweig said that by next year, non-Apple music players will represent the majority of the market, making

compatibility with the iPod less crucial.

While there is no question that Apple is the leader in selling downloadable songs, there is debate about how the rest of the

market is divided. Mr. Rosensweig said Musicmatch was No. 2. RealNetworks said its music store was second (and was second

even before it ran a three-week campaign offering songs at 49 cents each.) Mr. Leigh, however, said he thought Musicmatch and

Roxio’s Napster were tied for second.

Market share for music subscription services is somewhat clearer. RealNetworks says it has 550,000 subscribers to its music

services. America Online has 260,000 subscribers to its MusicNet service. And Musicmatch has about 225,000 paying

subscribers. Napster does not disclose its subscriber count.

Yahoo does not disclose how many people subscribe to its pay radio service.

Mr. Leigh said that he thought other companies, including Amazon.com, had been trying to buy Musicmatch, and that Amazon was

likely to make a move to expand its online music business.

“This provides more incentive to Amazon for them to fish or cut bait in music,” Mr. Leigh said. “I think they will fish.” He

said the most logical move for Amazon would be to acquire Napster. An Amazon spokeswoman, Patti Smith, and a spokeswoman for

Napster, Dana Harris, both declined to comment.

Correction: Sept. 16, 2004, Thursday

An article in Business Day yesterday about Yahoo’s acquisition of the online Musicmatch service, referred imprecisely to

songs that can be played on the Apple iPod. While RealNetworks’ online store is the only one besides Apple’s to sell songs in

the protected iPod format, other companies sell them in the MP3 format, which the player can also use.

The article also misspelled the given name of a spokeswoman for Amazon.com, who declined to comment on speculation that her

company might want to acquire Napster, a rival to Musicmatch. She is Patty Smith, not Patti.

JUNE 23, 2004 – Technology battles have long been a feature of the IT industry. Most IT managers will remember the LAN wars

– Ethernet .vs Token Ring — and the bus wars — Industry Standard Architecture .vs Micro-Channel Architecture. In both

cases the eventual winner was the least proprietary solution.

In the Web services war, the two dominant platforms are Java and .Net. Conventional wisdom indicates that most enterprises

will adopt strategies featuring both, but recent research by Evans Data Corp. suggests otherwise. In surveying 500 developers

currently involved in Web services, Evans found that 70% believe that support for multiple operating systems is more

important than support for multiple languages.

The reasons are apparent from answers to a question about time frames for developing Web services with wireless devices.

Almost 40% of respondents are either already rolling out Web services to such devices, or plan to do so within 12 months. A

further 21.2% expect to be extending Web services in this manner 12 to 24 months from now.

The most interesting aspect revealed by the research was the rating that developers gave to various characteristics of Web

services. The most important factor for 58% of the respondents was support for the latest standards — specifically those

related to security and reliability.

Other characteristics rated highly were: integration with specific Web or applications servers (47.1%); debugging and test

features (43.4%); a robust and usable GUI (43.4%); certified support for interoperability (42.8%); and open-source support

(34.9%).

On the issue of standards, Gartner Inc. analyst Daryl Plummer notes that Microsoft Corp. has submitted approximately 40% of

the APIs and specifications for .Net to the European Computer Manufacturers Association standard body.

"However, Microsoft only submitted the lower-level API and has retained proprietary control over higher-level elements of the

platform. Nevertheless, this has successfully created the 'illusion' of open-standards support for the platform," he says.

Gartner makes the point that applications and services deployed within the .Net framework aren't tied directly to the

underlying operating system. "Although Microsoft has made no official announcements regarding its intention to support the

full .Net framework beyond Windows, it has frequently alluded to this option," Plummer says.

Advocates of Microsoft's vision for Web services frequently mention the Common Language Runtime element of .Net. Evans has

this to say: "Through the CLR, Microsoft's .Net supports multiple languages, but so does Java. In .Net, compiled code –

whether from C#, VB.Net, or even Cobol — is the same. This compiled code, called Intermediate Language, is analogous to Java

Bytecode. Equally, however, for Java, there are many languages that code can be written in, and there are also free

open-source compilers for the Java Virtual Machine."

Who will win the war? The answer is debatable, but, where the relative maturity of Java is a factor in its favor, Microsoft

owns the desktop, and its marketing muscle should never be discounted.

The likelihood is that Java will continue to permeate the enterprise — primarily at the back end — while Microsoft will

remain a factor on the desktop, as well as in the small and medium-size enterprise sector, where multiple platforms are less

prevalent.

The Associated Press
Updated: 9:08 a.m. ET Sept. 29, 2004
NEW DELHI – Microsoft Corp. announced Wednesday that it would offer a low-cost, localized version of its Windows XP operating

system in India to tap the large market potential in this country of 1 billion people, most of whom do not speak English.

The Advertisement

The Windows XP Starter Edition, designed for first-time personal computer users in India’s national language, Hindi, will be

“significantly cheaper” than the Windows XP, said Rajeev Kaul, managing director of Microsoft India. (Microsoft is a partner

in MSNBC.)
Kaul, however, didn’t divulge the price, saying the software would be available only through desktop manufacturers and the

price decided weeks before its launch early next year. If the Hindi version works well, the company plans to offer the

software in 14 other Indian languages. “It is easy to use, and is the most affordable version of Windows so far,” Kaul said

of the Starter Edition, which is also being rolled out in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Russia.

The new software, analysts say, is an attempt by Microsoft to protect its market share from the open-source Linux system and

software piracy.
Although Microsoft still accounts for 90 percent of the desktop software market in India, several major computer retailers,

including IBM and Sun Microsystems, in the past year have begun offering hardware with locally adapted Linux installed.
“In some ways, it is the recognition of the kind of momentum that we have had in the market place,” said Javed F. Tapia,

India director of Red Hat, which distributes customized versions of Linux software.
Linux is open-source software available for little or no cost to computer vendors and users because no licensing fee is

charged in its basic form.
“Though open source is not free, people think it is so cheap that it is virtually free. To counter this psychology,

Microsoft may also want to create the impression that Windows is so cheap that it is also virtually free,” said Pawan Kumar,

the chief of VMoksha Technologies, a Bangalore-based software services firm.

“Now Windows may be used increasingly in assembled computers, cutting down piracy there. It is good for the market in the

long run,” Kumar said. Computer sales in India have been buoyant, growing 35 percent annually in recent years. But companies

like Microsoft benefit little from the boom, because about 80 percent of the computers are assembled by local manufacturers

who mostly install pirated software.
“It will also help in bridging the price gap between the branded computers and those assembled by local manufacturers,” said

Vinnie Mehta, executive director of the Manufacturing Association of Information Technology in India.
A locally assembled computer costs anything between $325 and $545, depending on whether it is loaded with pirated or licensed

software. Windows XP costs about $150 and its pirated version can be had for $10 to $20.
Microsoft officials insisted, however, that the new software is neither aimed at countering competition from Linux, nor

curbing piracy.
Kaul said the main objective is to create new buyers in India, where only 12 out of 1,000 people own a computer. More than

300 million people could afford a computer if it was loaded with a software that comes in a local language and offers

easy-to-handle tools, he said.
Microsoft developed the Starter Edition after conducting a survey of 1,000 middle-class households across India to determine

their requirements and the price they were willing to pay for a computer, Kaul said.
Key features of the new software include enhanced help, country-specific motifs, and “preconfigured settings” for features

that might confuse novices. It has a redesigned help menu with a detailed “Getting Started Guide” and offers wallpaper

photos of the Taj Mahal, the Royal Bengal tiger and the Indian flag.