When 1.3 billion communists who love a good bargain get on the internet, they can be pretty serious when it comes to freebies, especially those valued at nearly ¥2,500 (several folds the average monthly wage).

It hasn’t even been 24 hours since I officially announced the Windows Vista Ultimate giveaway yesterday, I had already received 1,052 entries. The range of entry responses were pretty amazing – there were the expected kidneys, church organs and appendixes. Then there were whole coworkers, one breast, eyes, livers, toes, nails and even testicles. It’s amazing how many don’t want to breathe when they get Vista. My hats off to everyone who thought of something creative 🙂

At almost 40 entries an hour, even picking up more pace, I thought if I had let this go on until the announced date of March 12, then I could have received up to 10000 entries. The chances of 1 in 10000 doesn’t sound very appealing to anyone even to those who believe in luck.

On that note, I have decided to end the competition early, and draw a winner before it gets out of hand. The hamsters has spun the wheel, and the winner is Aaron Mitchell Bernstein. Congratulations. Clap clap.

The problem with something like this is, instead of rewarding loyal users who appreciate or even understand what I write, I have 100 times more entries from people who’s never heard of my site, and comes to my site because their friend’s pet’s cousin’s nephew’s sister’s owner’s wife told them about the competition. It’s one thing to feel lucky, but it’s another to provide your address.

For future competitions, I’m going to rethink the way I allow and select winners with considerations for readers who support and appreciate what I do. Until then, my apologies.

Apple released an 7.1 update to iTunes this morning, and being the latest-software-updates freak I am, I downloaded and installed it immediately. New features include a full-screen coverflow, better Windows Vista support, and a big surprise in the iTunes Store.

I don’t use the iTunes Store very frequently, only to sample music once in a while, so I don’t know how long this has been up for. Apparently, us Australians like our fair share of Silverchair, Justin Timberlake and Erotic Short Stories by Tinca Turle, unabridged I might add.

The audiobook description goes into much more detail. Emphasis on the “detail”.

This disturbs me in many ways. Besides knowing what Australians like to listen to on their iPods, but also the lack of control and filtering by Apple. Mind you, this is a default installation of iTunes. Anyone (minors included) could access this whether if they just installed iTunes or been using iTunes for a while. Even restricting explicit content under parental controls fail to remove the specific audiobook from the listing.

Shouldn’t Apple be responsible for what content they display on the front-page?

Well if you’re not having much luck trying to brute force your way to a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate, then maybe you should enter this.

In January, Microsoft gave away copies of Windows Vista Ultimate to attendees of the CES Windows Vista Lab just in case this group of Windows Vista enthusiasts has never played with Windows Vista Ultimate. It is a pretty good gift in terms of the monetary value it represents, but it literally looks like something you could buy from a back-alley way in Chinatown for $5. Nevertheless, it has a totally legitimate product key so it is worth every dollar of a retail version.

I only found this in my ‘box of stuff from CES’ last week, so that explains why it is given away right now. I also have more than an adequate number of copies of Windows Vista for my personal use, so that explains why I’m even giving it away at all. Besides the “Not for resale” notice on the CD, and good karma, that’s all the explaining I can do.

The contents of this amazing prize includes:

• Paper CD/DVD sleeve with a clear plastic window
• Windows Vista on a recordable DVD (as seen above)
• Product key label affixed to the back of sleeve
• Various fingerprints and scratches

You can use it on your home computer, work computer or even your rainbow-of-fun machine, a.k.a. the Mac.

Submit your entry at the “Win a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate” competition page.
Competition closes Monday 12th of March, 2007.

Update: Competition ended early due to an overwhelming number of responses (mostly Chinese).

The quality of your response is not judged. Winner will be picked at random using hamsters on wheels. Attempts to bribe the hamster will disqualify you of any present and future competitions.

P.S. If you are with a company and would like to giveaway a product on this blog, please get in touch with me.

In the true spirit of following every step of Tjeerd Hoek, director of Windows user experience design at Microsoft, here is one of the older video of Tjeerd being interviewed on Microsoft self-produced vidcast programe called “The .NET Show“. Whilst this particular episode focuses on Longhorn Server, the last 10 minutes features Tjeerd as a guest on the special “[email protected]” segment which for no apparent reason, someone at Microsoft is interviewed.

The interview goes for about 9 minutes, and covers topics ranging from his career, background, hobbies and Windows Vista. Pretty much everything that appeals to a stalker. There are also shots of funky looking chairs to appeal to furniture enthusiasts.

If there is one particular note to take away from this interview, it’s this.

Sometimes there’s these – certainly around UI – there are little rumors on the Internet, like, Oh, they’re going to at the last minute change the whole UI. I always go like, No, our customers don’t like that sort of stuff. We have beta programs to really get the feedback on what we want to build. You can’t just suddenly change your plans, so we’re very focused on just getting all the details right, getting everything to quality and shipping it on time.

Only if he said that I had picked this up before the launch, it could have cleared the heads of so many disillusional enthusiasts.

Update: YouTube video seems to be having problems. Reuploading… Video a little out of sync.

In January, following a story by Fast Company about the creation of twenty people and eight notes, I began to curiously question the value and effort put into creating the Windows Vista startup sound we all know by now. I compared the development process between Microsoft and Ubuntu to find out what makes each different and how each deals with the constraints in their respective projects, and I was surprised to find Ubuntu only had one sound designer, but virtually millions of ears. But a lot of what I thought about Microsoft was wrong.

In the days following, I was fortunate enough to have received a blog-reply and an email from Steve Ball, one of the people behind the Vista sounds, explaining in more detail about the process and decisions that ultimately decided the Vista start-up melody. There is so much content in his email, but one paragraph summed it all up.

From this view, focusing on the ‘cost’ of this project might imply that a Windows brand sound is an optional, unnecessary luxury, or a useless ‘throwaway’ design element – a tradeoff for some other higher value opportunity. However, in our now media-centric world, I view this sound as 100% necessary and ‘un-tradable’ for some other feature. Ignoring sound (or considering it ‘optional’) in product design is foolish and, IMHO, out of tune with the primary brand and media-driven changes going on in technology and user interface design today.

Today, Channel9 released a second video featuring Robert Fripp’s second trip to Redmond, closer to the end of the Vista development, and features more soundscapes, interviews and discussions with the people who contributed to the Vista sounds project. It’s a pretty long video at 1 hour and 3 minutes, but there is at least the contents of 4 videos in this single video. Well worth checking out!

Oh, and Jenny Lam and Tjeerd Hoek makes an appearance from 36:22min for those of you Vista UX stalkers enthusiasts playing at home. 🙂

Near the end of video, there is a good part with Robert Fripp talking about Windows Vista vs OS X as questioned by Steve Ball. As a Mac user himself, he has a fantastic response. Since this is a long video, some of you might miss it, so here it is on YouTube for everyone to see.

Bernard Oh spotted this Microsoft marketing campaign earlier this week for Office 2007. Don’t worry, I can’t get my head around this one too.

Recently, Microsoft Australia tried an unique marketing campaign aimed at Australian University students to help boost the sale of Microsoft Office and combat piracy amongst teens. It’s not cheating. The angle? Sell Office Ultimate 2007 cheap. Very cheap. Insanely cheap.

At only $75 Australian dollars (US$59) for an untimed license and $25 for a yearly license, Microsoft has truly lost it. In fact, I’d call them crazy. Why? Not because Microsoft is selling Office for under $100, or Microsoft selling a software on a subscription-model, but because the recommended retail price for Office Ultimate 2007 in Australia is $1,175.00. You don’t even need Excel to know that’s a discount of over $1,100 (94%).

Microsoft probably did this out of desperation because of such the large-scale and growing force of piracy within institutions like universities where high software prices forces students to seek alternatives. In fact only a few days ago, a lecturer at my university hinted at the idea of ‘acquiring software from friends’ which is a totally legitimate argument since universities alone cannot support technology for all of its students. Is this solution, to sell directly to students the most expensive version of Office ever released at a cost so low that it literally cries for attention, going to work?

I think this is a bomb waiting to explode. Why?

• This promotes piracy, even worse, profiting from piracy. – Even if you sell the copy you buy at half the recommended retail price, which equates to $587.50, you can still make a profit of $512.50 (580% markup). It’s like robbing a convenience store only with an university email account and without any repercussions.
• A spit in the face for everyone who bought copies of Office Home and Student 2007 previously – Imagine you bought yourself a copy of Home and Student legitimately on February 25 because you thought you were Mr. Nice Guy. Well, tough, luck since you just wasted $174 and you don’t even get Outlook.
• A stab in the back to Microsoft retail partners – How are they suppose to compete with a $75 Office if Microsoft don’t even wholesale Home and Student at that price? They spend thousands of advertising dollars on promoting Home and Students to, you guessed it, students, only to be shot down by Microsoft themselves.
• This doesn’t reflect well on the true value of (Office) software – If you hold Microsoft by the neck, will it spit out Windows Vista Ultimate for $5 too? If Microsoft can bare the guilt to sell Office Ultimate for $75, then how much is Office really worth? Maybe when an executive approved this, he/she knew they weren’t losing $1100 per copy.

Thinking of buying a copy and retiring? Hurry. Offer ends May 28. You will need an eligible university email address and some pocket change. Use Street Team code “MSP9” if you want someone (not me) to win brownie points.

Update: I wonder if this blog post qualifies for the “Golden Blog Awards”. It says winners will be judged on creativity, but I wonder if they accept opinions. I want that mobile phone. 😀