MS sacks 1,400 workers. Miscalculates the severance payemnts. Asks for money back. Here’s the result of the poll on ZDnet asking…
What would you do?
Total Votes: 946
Good tip from Headshift’s Lee Bryant on Twitter today regarding Microsoft’s Live Mesh:
So my post in May following launch. Quote below:
One example of such aggregation is Windows Live Mail, which Microsoft released last summer in beta form. The application can pull together all of a person’s various e-mail accounts, Hall said. It solves the problem of dealing with multiple accumulated e-mail accounts.
“Another way that Microsoft has been working to interconnect is with social networking partnerships. Hall said that Microsoft has established partnerships with “most of the leading social networks” to have address book synchronization and roaming. Users can provide their Windows Live or Hotmail credentials at those social networking sites, he said. It moves people closer to using ‘a single address book approach’.
For: Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer: “We’ll need a new operating system. Just as we have an operating system for the PC, for the phone and for the server, we need a new operating system that runs in the internet. I bet we’ll call it Windows something. We’re going to announce it in four weeks. We might even have a trademark by then. So, for today I’ll call it Windows Cloud. And Windows Cloud will be a place where you can run arbitrary applications up in the internet that runs .Net.”
Against: Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, has warned that cloud computing is mainly “hype” and companies risk losing control of their data if they buy into such systems. “It’s just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program, or somebody else’s web server, you’re defenceless.”
+ IBM: a series of cloud initiatives, including Bluehouse.
oh yes, believe the slow-burn-hype, Google’s Chrome is only the new OS *you’ve* been waiting for;-) http://poprl.com/jW (..”The elephant in the room is that Google is an OS.”). Part of the drive to market the new Google Android phone perhaps?
Microsoft’s Gary Turner, writing on the ICAEW’s IT Counts social network (soon to launch to the public) gives an insider’s view of the elephant:
- Google as / with its own operating system – is a four year old (plus) debate/theory/point of view/reality. Neither news nor an elephant.
- The definition of what we mean by “operating system” is starting to change for users, and radically changed long ago inside the research and development teams of Microsoft, Google and anyone else with chips in the game.
- Parking code / value inside the guise of a browser vehicle is an interesting way to deliver your future-OS/whatever/foundation play to an audience that still thinks of the web in terms of browsers and websites.
- Software and tech companies are often smarter than they get credit for/disclose in advance.
From the Guardian’s jemimakiss via Twitter: “So Sienfeld – a Mac user for years – is doing ads for Microsoft. Any other examples of inappropriate brand representatives, people?” Hmm, what do you reckon, people? Who would be a better rep’ for Microsoft is a more positive way to put it? I nominate myself, for one. Shame I lack the fame, though I better I’d score well with 18-25 ABC1s.
>> Making Microsoft Cool (my post on MS new ad agency).