What’s better than going to Vegas? Getting all the freebies without going of course! I’m proud to say I have with me not only one, but three (3) copies of the exclusively limited Commemorative Editions of Expression Studio to give away! Considering each of these are valued at over $600, you could say I’m giving away the equivalent of 3 iPhones – take that Engadget.

Unfortunately for three MIX07 attendees who got a little distracted by all the Pussycat Dolls, they forgot to pick up their complimentary copies of Expression Studio. Fortunately for the rest of us, some lucky people will have the chance to own their little piece of Microsoft history. Like I’ve said many times, these are intriguingly unique – every single one of these is different ever so slightly. One of these has a Chinese recipe for battered fish, another has someone’s day schedule and the last describes someone’s love for coffee.

The contents of the box include a “thank you” card, a copy of Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition, and pre-release versions of Expression Blend, Expression Design, Expression Web and Expression Media. Because these were packaged before the products were finalized, you will have to download the latest release from the website and use the product keys included.

The rules and conditions of entry are as follows:

• Submit at least one comment below with a legitimate email address for contact. Multiple comments will only count as one entry.
• You must be a residence of any country with an operational postal system and valid shipping address.
• Microsoft employees or their immediate family members are only allowed to enter by providing internal documents on Vista SP1 or Windows 7.
• Contest will close Friday, 6th of July 2007. Winners will be notified soon after.

Special thanks to Miwa Mueller from Microsoft for providing these wonderful gifts, who actually coordinated the design efforts on this project.

Update: Competition closed – entries are no longer accepted. Winners are Josh, John and Ivan.

It feels like Microsoft is suffering a little bit of the ‘Duke Nukem syndrome‘ – that is, announcing really cool and exciting products way ahead of its time, building up as much hype as it can get, ignoring it, letting it gather dust and stretching the release date longer than most people’s attention span until, well, the rubber-band breaks and no one cares anymore. Why are great products left rotting?

I know you’re thinking about the infamous Utopian file system, “WinFS“, but that’s not what I’m referring to. There’s plenty of other goodies down in the Redmond attic – including a bunch of Live stuff and Viridian. I’m referring to of course products much more tangible; one is a keyboard & mouse, the other is an instant messenger software. Remember these?

The “world’s-first” backlit rechargeable keyboard, the Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 and the “world’s-first” WPF-powered instant-messenger application, Yahoo Messenger for Windows Vista. Two great products that would have blown away the competition, had it ever shipped when anyone still cared.

The thing that annoys me is how they unimaginably screwed up the launch of the Wireless 8000. What they had what a thing of beauty – everyone loved the design, quite an achievement coming out of Microsoft. They also had the hype, because this thing was so unique at the time, it spread like wild fire – everyone wanted one. First, it was rumored to launch in holiday 2006, then officially announced to February 2007 to coincide with the launch of Vista. And now, it’s all the way back to September 07. Why?

This was not simply just a cool prototype that had problems realized, it was as real as the iPhone. They had no problems sending these out to reviewers, I even touched one at CES. I can’t imagine they would run into any manufacturing problems, but obviously they have. If this product ever ships, it wouldn’t surprise me there’ll be also plenty of (cheaper) alternatives like it. In my opinion, missed opportunity for Microsoft to hold on to their keyboard & mouse market lead.

An example of a conversation on Yahoo Messenger between tight-ass employers and sun-deprived employees.

On the other hand, I’m willing to make some concessions for Yahoo Messenger since it’s not under Microsoft’s control. First shown at CES in January, Yahoo said they have been developing on a version of their IM application exclusively for Windows Vista to take advantage of the fancy Windows Presentation Foundation framework. It was demoed to us live pretty much fully functional – if not all complete. Of course, Yahoo never announced a release date, but “coming soon” shouldn’t be “see you next year” either.

Frog Design, the designers behind the WPF user interface insists “This process of overlapping work streams enabled the application to be built in a dramatically shorter timeframe than possible in the traditional software process.” Oh really? However, I can’t imagine a top-notch design company like Frog not delivering on their schedules. Even with all the fancy new Microsoft frameworks, there’s some geniuses at Frog who have no problems doing cool stuff within some really tight time constraints. If I were to speculate, I’d say Yahoo’s not putting in what they ought to.

No, I’m not trying to say “don’t talk about anything until you can actually deliver” because that will just undo all the hard work that made the great transparent company Microsoft is. What I insist is, as well to the Ultimate Extras team if any of them still live to bear the title, “tell us your problems and keep us in the loop”. No one’s making a chirp about the Wireless 8000, and no one wants to set any targets for Yahoo Messenger. Are we so afraid to missing the deadline that we’re going to abandon ‘hope’ altogether?

If the iPhone has shown us anything is that release dates still work. Just because it might get pushed back a week doesn’t mean you shouldn’t set one to begin with. If you’re that unsure, bundle the Wireless 8000 with Duke Nukem Forever.

Inside the Insiders is a series of interviews with some of the most recognized and outspoken Microsoft influentials, journalists and enthusiasts I know. I plan to go around interviewing as many of these peers as possible to find out more about their background, life outside of Microsoft and their darkest Unix fetishes. At least that’s what I tell them. Little did they know their answers will help me annihilate them and my other competitors.

Bob insists he is the dude on the left and not the ball of fun in the red vest.

Before the spew of silly little blogs like this one, most people visited one of the bigger technology websites or portals for their source of information and gossip. For Microsoft news, one of those that withstood the test of time is ActiveWin. One of it’s co-founders is Robert Stein, or otherwise simply known as Bob. I also happened to meet Bob during CES and there’s no better way to describe him than just a great down-to-earth guy. But as it turns out, he’s not as down-to-earth as I thought he was. In fact, you could say he’s above-and-all-over-the-earth.

Hey Robert. Who are you and what website do you run?

Continue reading →

Even when you’re just getting your picture taken, you’ll still be brainwashed.

Call me picky but this little Microsoft web advertisement has been bugging me all week. For some strange reason, it’s popping up all over almost every website I visit. Either Google’s contextual targeting algorithm is seriously buggered or Macrumors.com has a secret agenda to sell me Microsoft Dynamics.

The advertisement in question is a 300×250 Flash animation for the new Microsoft Dynamics suite. There’s nothing wrong with it except it’s sole and entire selling-point is flawed. Take a look on the right and see if you can spot the Achilles’ heel. Refresh this page if you have to get it to replay.

If you see it, congratulations, you win an iPhone. For those of you that don’t see it, try to focus on the animation, then look at what applications they’re comparing and maybe do a little comparison with a copy of the same application on your own computer.

That’s right! They even make the same mistake again on their website. They imply Microsoft Excel 2007 has toolbars and menus, when it doesn’t. Their whole “familiarity” – taking icons from A to B – argument falls apart when you compare the Ribbon interface in Excel with the traditional toolbars and menus interface in Dynamics, they’re two completely different interfaces. How’s that for cross-application consistency.

Looks like your business goals aren’t going anywhere whilst you re-train your staff for two different user interfaces.

Update: A number of Dynamics applications does feature a portion of the Ribbon interface in some of their interface screens. The interface is still a far cry compared to Office. It’s got back and forward buttons, a hybrid breadcrumb navigation bar and a sidebar. It’s amazing to see how acceptable messy business applications can be.

But who needs friends when you have an iPhone.