Music is called Born to Funk by Ed Royal feat. Enne. Awesome soundtrack.

I don’t really know if all that moving and dancing makes me want to buy a Core 2 Duo. Without seeing this ad, I was quite excited by Core 2. But now, I feel like if I buy it, I’ll turn crazy.

Since LiveSide didn’t take the design mockup I did yesterday, I thought I should re-use the flare element for something else.

So I did and made these wallpapers. And like a good wallpaper is suppose to be, there’s no branding, no copyright and certainly no watermark. Just like if you made it yourself. And one of my personal requirements was that it was clean enough to draw on with Ink Desktop, which I use a lot on the tablet.

So here they are:
Download 1024×768 resolution
Download 1280×800 widescreen resolution
Download 1280×1024 resolution
Download 1400×1050 resolution
Download 1600×1200 resolution
Download 1680×1050 widescreen resolution
Download 1920×1200 widescreen resolution
Download 2560×1600 30″ LCD widescreen resolution

Also added a sea-blue version:

Download 1024×768 resolution
Download 1280×800 widescreen resolution
Download 1280×1024 resolution
Download 1400×1050 resolution
Download 1600×1200 resolution
Download 1680×1050 widescreen resolution
Download 1920×1200 widescreen resolution
Download 2560×1600 30″ LCD widescreen resolution

Most of the time, I prefer style over substance. In today’s Web 2.0 world, rounded corners and subtle gradients keeps me pretty happy. But some of the worst players of Web 2.0 standards or any design standards for that matter are from Microsoft enthusiast communities. Some of the sites I hate to love include: ActiveWin, AeroXP, Bink, JCXP, LiveSide and Neowin. Your mileage may vary.

But it’s not all wrinkles and HTML 4.0 out there, there’s some great looking sites out there including MSTechToday, Windows-Now, Windows Connected, Shell:revealed and honorable mention to On10.

Whilst it is still true, content should come before design, but once you have content, why not top off some great content with a great design that’s easy to read and use? Most of the time, these sites have some really in-depth content, but because they don’t pay enough attention to formatting and styling, it’s hard to read and I end up giving up reading it all together.

And to demonstrate, I have taken a few hours away from my group assignment time to work on this mockup for LiveSide. If I fail, you’ll know why. And hopefully some will enjoy it even.

I’m happy to give away the logo and website design to LiveSide for free, if they want it. Only because I think they do publish some really good insider news and provide great insight into the Windows Live venture.

What does everyone else think?

Added: honorable mention to On10.

Everyone who reads this blog is probably familiar with this concept, you are tech support for all your family, relatives and close friends. Not every computer user is fortunate enough to have a computer whiz-kid around, so they find the next best thing, and that usually means you. But soon, Windows Vista might free you from the never-ending stream of problems and questions. Guided Help is an amazing new help feature in Windows Vista that will make it so easy for users to help themselves. You can find my screencast of Guided Help here.

I got in touch with Matthew Goldberg, the development lead on the Guided Help team to find out more about Guided Help. Here is what he had to say.

My commentary are surrounded with [square brackets] in italics.

The opinions expressed by Matthew Goldberg herein are his own personal opinions and do not represent his employer’s views in any way. If you would like to sue him, you can either ask Guided Help to ‘do it automatically’ for you, or let it ‘show you step-by-step’.

Who are you? Are you related to Whoopi Goldberg?

I am Matthew Goldberg, father of two and amateur musician. I am the development lead on the Guided Help team, building a cool new technology available in Windows Vista and currently in use on some Microsoft Knowledge Base articles. While not directly related to Whoopi, family legend has it that my Aunt’s best friend’s college roommate actually went to high school with her. [Rumour has it, my cousin’s father’s brother’s son is actually me.]

Continue reading →

The following article is purely satire. Don’t sue me.

(Image adapted from photo by Drift Words)

Microsoft today published a press release about Windows Vista’s release schedules and the European Commission. Obviously Microsoft isn’t happy with the European Commission and vice versa, but this press release fails to express that. So I’m going to uncover perhaps what Microsoft really wanted to say.

REDMOND, Wash. — Oct. 13, 2006 — Microsoft Corp. today confirmed that it is on track to deliver Windows Vista™ for worldwide availability to its volume license business customers in November and worldwide general availability in January. The company also confirmed that it would be (unfortunately) releasing Windows Vista in Europe and Korea on schedule, following what the company called “constructive dialogue” (boardroom cockfights) with the European (“Stole-a-lot-of-money-from-us”) Commission and the Korea Fair Trade Commission.

“We are excited to bring the security enhancements and innovative new features of Windows Vista to our customers and partners around the world (countries which appreciate built-in security and media support), and we are committed to adhering to (demanding) local law in every region of the world (two particular countries),” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft.

Ballmer said the company over the past two years had (unnecessarily) submitted information (about upcoming features) to competition authorities (competitors) around the world about Windows Vista as it was being (re-)developed.

Microsoft (reluctantly) agreed to make a number of changes to Windows Vista in response to guidance the company received from the (demanding) European Commission, said Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith. Smith confirmed that the company has also incorporated changes to Windows Vista in Korea to comply with its legal obligations there.

“We recognize that the European Commission does not give ‘green lights’ for new (Microsoft) products, and we have not asked (prayed) for one,” Smith said. “We appreciate the constructive dialogue (tension) we have had with the commission and the guidance (fines) the commission has provided (issued). Based on this guidance (the outrageous fines), we have made changes to ensure that we’re in compliance with our competition law obligations (not going bankrupt), and we are moving forward to make Windows Vista available on a worldwide basis.”

“We welcome the constructive discussions (hope to never have again what) we have had with governmental authorities around the world, and we are committed to continuing (avoiding) this type of dialogue in the future,” Smith said.

🙂

Before you start, it’s a slow news day OK?

Spotted today, it seems as Microsoft has updated their website in the most subtle ways possible, by adding a new favicon. A favicon is an icon file which is used to identify a website in the browser by displaying a 16 pixel squared image shown next to bookmarks, the address bar and tabs.

The new favicon portrays the letter “M” negatively imposed on a blue background, thought to be similar to the blue color from the website header. However as my good friend Aaron Parker pointed out, a favicon is only limited to 256 colors and therefore cannot accurate reproduce the correct blue color. It is unknown why Microsoft did not generate a full color icon instead of the 256 colors icon which cannot accurately recreate the blue used on the rest of the website.

Sadly, Microsoft did not make available a press release highlighting the benefits of the new favicon and how it reduces internet tension. Also, Microsoft did not issue an response to my inquiries as I did not bother to contact them.

In other news, Microsoft has also closed the public beta of the new Microsoft home page beta.

Q: I was able to access the preview site in the last month. Why am I no longer able to access the site?
A: The preview site was originally open for all users. During the current phase of testing, we are only allowing randomly selected users to view the page.

They must be hiding some really elite AJAX scripting to make it so discreet. I guess we’ll all know in early November when it launches.