Archive for the ‘Microsoft’ Category

Well, after quite an exciting day of Windows 8 information leaking its way out to the Internet, it appears Microsoft is officially on the war path to finding who leaked the information in the first place. As noted on Twitter by Tom Warren of Neowin, the blog of Francisco Martin — one of the first to bring some of this Windows 8 information to light — has apparently been nixed by Microsoft (his blog resided on spaces.live.com). The earliest that these slides can be traced back is to the Website win7vista.com (thanks to @tom_warren for the link).

The documents were originally XPS files converted to PDFs with the goal of removing any incriminating watermarks. Well, win7vista.com made a mistake. As “DanielRemains” — the individual who posted the leaked content — notes, “I spent many hours working on these on removing watermarks etc.” Unfortunately, he seemed to miss a slide and it has undoubtedly brought some unwanted attention to one Derek Goode from HP. Here’s the slide which shows his email address (Update: email address removed from slide by request):

Whether or not Derek Goode is the individual who leaked the slides directly, if it was a colleague who did it behind his back, or some other scenario, Microsoft is clearly on the prowl. win7vista.com wanted all the credit, so I hope they’re ready for what’s about to ensue. Don’t be surprised if many of these posts around the Internet involving this Windows 8 documentation suddenly disappear.

-Stephen Chapman
http://msftkitchen.com

This post is my gratuitous offer to Microsoft to help them track down websites of piracy advocates who store and/or share activation cracks and similar nuisances. This all started as an experiment to see how many ways I could find a particular file and I’ve come to the conclusion that Microsoft probably either isn’t implementing half the methods I’ve devised or they don’t have the time/interest or a person/team in-house or outsourced dedicated to formulating solutions like this. I’ve cherry-picked two methods to delve into, then listed some action items to follow through with in taking said methods into consideration.

I would use Bing for these examples, but I’m still waiting for an all-encompassing guide for using advanced syntax usage in Bing. Usually, when I try to replicate my Google methods in Bing (yes, I make sure I’m using Bing’s syntax where applicable), the results are dismal. Anyway, I’d like to think someone at Microsoft will see this for what it is and bring me in to really get creative with this stuff, because there’s a whooooooole lot more where this came from! But I won’t hold my breath, because in the words of one Tony Lucca, “if I held my breath, you’d be the death of me.” lol.

Method 1: Use the following query in Google (I’ve even hyper-linked it for your pleasure):

 

intitle:index.of removewat21 | removewat22 | removewat*

 

Results: A large number of personal websites where they have the RemoveWAT file stored and directly accessible for anyone to immediately download.

Method 2: Go to Google. Click “more” and then click “Blogs.” Now, perform a search using the following query and then, on the left-hand side, click, “Sorted by date” (yes, I’ve hyper-linked this one as well already using the aforementioned steps):

 

removewat21 | removewat22 | removewat*

 

Results: An ever-expanding list of blogs linking to the file(s) you’re interested in getting off the internet. Most of them link to file sharing services, but that’s a major score as well.

Action Items: Bearing in mind the methods above, the next thing is to gather a list of as many variables of the RemoveWAT file name as you can, such as scene release names, shortened versions, etc. and interchange them throughout the queries. Rinse and repeat the process with other activation crack technologies and voila. From there, of course, gather contact information from somewhere on the site, perform a whois search, etc. to contact the individual(s) to remove the file or simply send a DMCA take-down request to the host or whatever legal actions Microsoft has to adhere to.

Also, you can get more extensive with the research portion and use Yahoo Site Explorer or SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer to search for inbound links to the links harvested via method 1. The results are a mixed bag where that’s concerned, but I’ve found that Google typically yields those results after spidering the site from a completely separate entry point, so whether or not the person posted the file in a public forum or simply posted something completely irrelevant and Google happened to spider its way to the particular file is up in the air until additional research is performed.

Oh, and while you’re at it, you might as well try to make this process as automated, productive and facile as possible by setting up some Google Alerts (or something similar) for all the terms/queries you come up with and keep an eye on when new sites are indexed with those file names. What a great way of finding and getting rid of those files from (probably) a completely untapped avenue.

There! I’ve officially put my personal information-finding and off-page SEO research methods to good use for Microsoft’s anti-piracy endeavors. =) But bear in mind, the aforementioned methods and action items are just the tip of the iceberg. If I so chose, I could use just about any Microsoft product for free without ever touching a P2P application or utilizing a crack — all thanks to Google and absolutely careless individuals out there. There’s a lot out there; you just have to know how to find it.

Happy hunting, Microsoft.

-Stephen Chapman

http://www.msftkitchen.com

Back in 2005, Microsoft mentioned in a Thinkweek article the idea of an ad-driven Windows. Ina Fried summarized quite well what was discussed in that article in a section titled “Plan Extends to Windows.” Seemingly only an idea back then, new evidence shows that Microsoft has done more than simply *think* about placing ads in Windows.

While recently doing a bit of research, I ran across a Microsoft employee’s mention (screen shot below) of an incubation project they were involved with sometime between 2005-2008. Code named “Madison” (not to be confused with the SQL 2010 code name), it appears an actual prototype has been created for advertising in Windows. Prior to writing this article, I mentioned my findings to Mary Jo Foley from ZDNet and she quickly made an observation I hadn’t thought of — the code name “Madison” obviously stemming from “Madison Ave.” in Manhattan. To quote Wikipedia, “[s]ince the 1920s, the street’s name has been synonymous with the American advertising industry.”

(Yes, that says “madision” but that’s almost certainly a grammatical error)

The implications of this prototype are staggering, but not necessarily all bad.

On one hand, this could be a way for Microsoft to offer Windows on-the-cheap for many individuals — namely, those who either can’t afford Windows or don’t want to pay for Windows in the first place (i.e. pirates, yarrr!). In theory, you could use a “Windows Ads Edition” or something where you’ve basically opted for ads to stream to you in exchange for your usage of Windows. Another possible scenario is for this prototype technology to perhaps replace (or maybe become a component of) Starter Edition. After all, with Microsoft’s recent job post looking to fill a position on the “Windows SKU team,” it’s pretty clear that Microsoft is planning Windows 8 SKUs — thus implying a SKU-secured future for Windows — so why not the possibility of a “Windows Ads Edition?” I don’t think too many people would use such a thing by choice, and for those who did choose to, Microsoft’s marketing would have to be crystal clear to spell out why you wouldn’t simply be using an ad-ridden version of Windows.

Also, when bringing ads into the equation, I can’t imagine they would riddle every SKU with ads, but how could Microsoft really expect to make a significant ROI based on a model where ads are being shown to people who are looking to circumvent – or simply cannot afford the cost of – Windows in the first place? With that in mind, perhaps it would have nothing to do with SKUs at all. Perhaps it would consist of a technology designed to run under certain variables in *any* SKU of Windows where the obvious candidates would lie amongst all unactivated, non-genuine, and pirated copies. The thought of that gets shaky when considering all the headaches Microsoft would face from those screaming “invasion of privacy” or “anti-trust measures!” They would have to be clever about monitoring ad traffic, of which there’s absolutely no way Microsoft could successfully convince businesses to fork over cash for ad views without being able to show some semblance of accurate numbers… unless it’s a PPC thing, and then Microsoft has to face dealing with potential click fraud amongst the other obvious deterrents, such as ad blocking software, host file modification to block ad servers, or even full-blow file modification/replacement to remove the ad-driven functionality in its totality.

Naturally, this all just boils down to Microsoft looking to cash in on a BIG money-making industry with the most visible product they have. The most popular application in the entire world. Potentially, every Windows user would be a lead just waiting to turn a profit for whoever pays to advertise in Windows. And if Microsoft went the route of making this a technology that wasn’t limited to any particular version of Windows, they could even scale it back to XP via a simple update (but I see XP being obsolete by the time ads ever make it into Windows).

Thinking even grander, imagine if Microsoft created an ad platform in Windows that was so successfully facile to the end user that the price of ALL versions of Windows was little to nothing at all. Now, that may sound ridiculous, but that’s the kind of forward-thinking that — if they could pull it off — would bring them many more users and drastically drop certain costs of developing Windows, such as the cost of anti-piracy measures. If they could figure out a way to make ads extremely relevant, non-evasive, yet have them yield high click-through rates — in a perfect world — that would be a version of Windows accessible to nearly everyone.

But I’m a realist. I don’t think such a scenario would ever come to fruition. Honestly, between unhappy users who want nothing to do with ads and potential legal woes that would inevitably face Microsoft, I see the headaches mounting for actually implementing ads in Windows. What do you think? Do you think Microsoft will ever bring such an effort to Windows? How would you feel about actually using an ad-implemented Windows? I don’t think I would mind too much, but the implementation of them would have to be nothing short of genius.

-Stephen Chapman

http://msftkitchen.com

In Microsoft’s never-ending battle to stop piracy, it appears Microsoft is considering upping the ante in Windows 8 and other products by searching for a new candidate to help “shake hackers and crackers off Microsoft products” by designing and building “new anti-hacking mechanisms” and “hack detection.” The job ad says the job is “not for the faint of heart,” so I imagine things get pretty intense and technical on this team.

To quote the job ad directly:

Our group is on a mission to build a rich, powerful platform to help protect Microsoft products against piracy. Here is your chance to join a team of exceptional developers as we build an extensible cross-company platform to support this vision. This is a fast-paced group that rewards smart and motivated individuals. We are looking for an experienced software developer to help us design and build new anti-hacking mechanisms, hack detection, and work on the security processor driver. The work touches many layers of the operating system and includes opportunities for partnership with MS Research and other security teams at Microsoft to productize exciting innovations and ideas that help shake hackers and crackers off Microsoft products. It’s not for the faint of heart, but the diversity of the problem space in this area is rich in growth opportunities just waiting for the right candidate. You will have ample opportunity to diversify your skill set and grow. In this position, you’ll get a chance to work on many aspects of the platform, starting with an assignment to drive the design of our application and Operating System (OS) virtualization support.

Regardless of how intense or involved, hackers and crackers always seem to be one step ahead of Microsoft where piracy is concerned. Naturally, they cannot account for every single scenario possible, but it’s a given that they must keep up and continue to innovate new security technologies. Some may consider anti-piracy measures a lost cause, but that’s certainly not the case. For every one product Microsoft sells purely based on theft prevention alone, it’s a win for them. What has me curious is the all-encompassing mention of “Microsoft products” in the job ad. Could Microsoft really be looking to put all of their eggs in one basket by employing a single anti-piracy platform across all applications? Probably not, but the thought of that doesn’t sit well with me insofar as if the platform were ever to be fully exploited.

-Stephen Chapman

http://msftkitchen.com

While sitting here this morning randomly surfing around some netbook ratings and reviews after considering picking up one of Alienware’s m11x gaming monsters (I know, it’s not really a netbook, per se, but it has the form factor of one which is very appealing to me), I noticed a news headline that said, “new richest man in the world!” Normally, I wouldn’t have cared about that, but seeing it as I’m a Microsoft fan, I knew who *WAS* number 1, so my interest was piqued. The “billionaire’s club,” as I’ll call it, seems to shift a bit every year in Forbes, but they all generally keep the same company overall. However, Bill Gates has remained the top dog on the list for some 14 years or so (with some fluctuations here and there, I believe, but none-the-less)… that is until now.

At the helm of “richest person in the world,” edging Bill out by a measly .5 billion (or 500 million — or, in other words, “chump change” when you’re worth in excess of 50 billion), is Carlos Slim Helu. Who the heck is that? Yeah, I wondered the same thing. From the article I’m sourcing:

Riding surging prices of his various telecom holdings, including giant mobile outfit America Movil (AMX), Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim Helu has beaten out Americans Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to become the wealthiest person on earth and nab the top spot on the 2010 Forbes list of the World’s Billionaires

Slim’s fortune has swelled to an estimated $53.5 billion, up $18.5 billion in 12 months. Shares of America Movil, of which Slim owns a $23 billion stake, were up 35% in a year.

That massive hoard of scratch puts him ahead of Microsoft (MSFT) cofounder Bill Gates, who had held the title of world’s richest 14 of the past 15 years.

Gates, now worth $53 billion, is ranked second in the world. He is up $13 billion from a year ago as shares of Microsoft rose 50% in 12 months. Gates’ holdings in his personal investment vehicle Cascade (CAE) also soared with the rest of the markets.

So, what is Bill Gates to do now that he’s not technically the richest man in the world? If I’m not mistaking, Mr. Gates probably couldn’t care less about his all-too-familiar “richest man in the world” title. He’s clearly focusing his worth on issues that will benefit the world and those who are suffering within it. If you haven’t yet, make sure to check out Bill’s blog — notably, the “Infrequently Asked Questions” section which contains some really great questions you’ll certainly want to read Bill’s opinion of.

Bill Gates: No longer the richest man in the world. So what? What has Mr. Helu done for the world lately?

Source: Yahoo! Finance

-Stephen Chapman

http://msftkitchen.com

Here’s an interesting Microsoft Education project I ran across. Created for Microsoft by Daniele Monti, UX/UI designer at Zerofiftyfive Interactive, the Microsoft Electronic Textbook appears to be quite an ambitious concept. Possible Courier application? Maybe not, but in a world where the Courier is cost-effective enough, I could certainly see this application running on one in an educational capacity. Imagine, every student with their very own Courier and an application like this to store all of their reading materials, assignments, homework, in-class recordings, and more. In theory, this could be like OneNote on steroids for the classroom. Pretty cool idea! Anyway, on to the screen shots (click the smaller ones for larger versions of them):

Microsoft Electronic Textbook Concept

Please feel free to chime in on what you think of this concept. Speculation is always fun. =)

-Stephen
http://www.msftkitchen.com

Check this out. While taking a look at the traffic to/from my site, I decided to check the percentage of that traffic arriving from search engines. Of that traffic, I was pleasantly surprised to see just how good Bing appears to be doing! Check out the following graph:

While those results are unusual for today (the percentage is typically in Google’s favor by a wide margin, which it is here, but only when you tally all of Google’s sites together), what I have noticed over time is a small but steady increase of Bing traffic to my site. Much more than I *ever* saw out of MSN, that’s for sure. I know I’m simply mirroring what a lot of us have already said, but Microsoft seems to have done things right this time around with Bing. It makes me smile in my heart just a little bit.

-Stephen
http://www.msftkitchen.com

I want to take a break from the typical format of my blog and share a story of mine. Saturday night, I went over to an uncle’s house for dinner and — long story short — told him he should have installed Windows 7 instead of reinstalling Windows XP after a massive crash he had a couple of weeks ago. He said he wanted to, so I decided to use one of my unused Windows 7 keys and install Home Premium for him. Things like AERO shake, thumbnail previews, and the combination of search/run generated genuine giggles of excitement out of him… and, as a Microsoft fan and blogger, that was actually really cool for me to experience.

You see, I get so used to this stuff that I actually forget there are people out there who have only maybe heard the casual mention of Windows 7 — much less ever seen it or actually messed with it! Every time I see Microsoft’s commercials where they show people being all excited about Windows 7, there’s a portion of all of that, that I wonder how much of it is all just marketing… and if anyone would really ever get that excited about Windows 7. Well, this situation with my uncle validated for me that people DO get excited about this stuff! I’m so used to the segue between versions of Windows that I have completely forgotten what it’s like to try a completely NEW OS for the first time and be excited about all the features it offers.

Something kind of random he said at one point was, “why is it that Macs don’t have any crashes or problems at all?”

Yikes.

My response to that was actually even-handed, in that I said they both have their ups and downs but the notion that Windows 7 is “just another Vista” like the Apple commercials try to peddle… that’s just all marketing, as I explained. So, out of the evening came the realization that actually seeing someone go from XP to Windows 7 can be more than just an upgrade, but an enjoyable experience! Unfortunately, I also learned that Apple’s embellished dishonesty for marketing gets through to people. At least he was never inclined to actually buy a Mac, he was just curious as to everything he’d heard. And honestly, with how much better of an OS Windows 7 is than its predecessors, for Apple to compare them and say it’s no better than the rest… well, let’s just say I wouldn’t feel bad comparing the latest OSX to the problematic issues of the past, even knowing the difference these days.

It’s just awesome to know that Windows 7 sealed the deal in the face of OSX-curious inquiry. =) Not that I have anything against OSX or those who use it — just Apple’s intellectually dishonest marketing of it vs. Windows 7.

-Stephen
http://www.msftkitchen.com

Remember the ginormous burger that Burger King was serving in China in celebration of Windows 7 for that brief period of time? What about the Windows 7 cake or the awesome Windows 7 MCE custom system? Well, I just stumbled upon another oddity… a cool oddity, but an oddity none-the-less. This one comes to us via an eBay auction that’s taking place right now (so you can actually nab this thing if you’re interested)! It’s a limited-edition Windows 7 Kubrick made by C.I.Boys (whoever the heck they are) that was given out in celebration of the launch of Windows 7 at Microsoft Hong Kong.

Check it out:

(I love the graphics on the belt)

 

(I thought the Windows 7 graphic was accidentally upside down until I realized the whole belt was. Doh!)

If you’re interested in purchasing it, they’re asking for a cool $90.00… not including shipping. I like the little guy and all, but not in a $90.00 kind of way, if you know what I mean. Hey, at least the seller left the option for you to make an offer, right?

Link: The eBays

-Stephen
http://www.msftkitchen.com

This is more an observation than anything else, but I’m highly optimistic about the outlook for Microsoft where the web is concerned in 2010. Why? Follow along to find out.

Those of you who have been around since the early days of the web when competition really started getting heated between Microsoft and Netscape know how important online market share is to Microsoft. And these days, it’s all about advertising. Whoever has the most web real estate to run the most ads on with the most agencies/companies contains the midas touch and that’s all there is to it. This week at PDC, Microsoft took us on a journey through the beginnings and vision of Internet Explorer 9. They also unveiled Silverlight 4 in all of its majesty and I have to say… I’m extremely excited about it. Having time to digest all of the information from PDC 2009, I can’t help but run the following equation through my mind:

Internet Explorer 9 + Silverlight 4 + Bing = The Year of Microsoft on the Web in 2010

If (and that’s a huge, “if”) Microsoft can pull off their vision for IE9, I may very well make the jump back to the browser I used to know and love (IE7 is about the time I jumped ship to FireFox, then Opera). Now that Microsoft has spilled the beans about hardware rendering in their browser, I’m sure every other browser out there has now shifted their model to include the very same technology. It’s off to the races and while another company may beat Microsoft to the market, I think Microsoft has a couple of tricks up their sleeve. After all, their new philosophy is to say as little as possible and over-deliver when the time comes (the polar opposite of the Windows Longhorn mentality, basically). With that in mind, I don’t see Microsoft stepping up to the plate with IE9 so soon without having full confidence that – even *if* someone else beats them to the market with similar technology under the hood – they will do what they have set out to do and they will do it better than everyone else. One would hope, at least.

Let’s step away from Internet Explorer 9 for a moment and talk Bing.

Bing. As a brand, it’s starting to catch on. I couldn’t stand the name initially, but it has managed to grow on me. As a search engine, I’m not sure that it will ever fully replace Google for me, but I find myself using Bing more and more. It provides additional results for me that Google doesn’t (and for how I use Google, that’s huge) and for shopping and travel, I look no further. Where I’m concerned as a consumer, Bing has the shopping/travel market share 100%. Also, I’ve spotted Bing as being the catalyst for traffic to my site more and more. Sure, it’s a very low percentage compared to Google, but it has knocked Yahoo out of ranking. Slowly but surely, Bing keeps creeping up in market share. I hope that trend continues as Bing is truly worthy of being an accessory to Google (as I said, I doubt it will ever be a full-on replacement for Google, but you never know what can happen years down the road).

Now, this is the point in which I note the obvious combination of Google and Firefox. Although Firefox has increasingly become a sluggish product for me (even on my blazing new gaming rig), I still prefer it over IE8. Even in compatibility mode, I notice a number of the pages I frequent acting strangely in IE8. Now, what are the odds of someone actually using and enjoying a combination of Bing and IE9? Google has become a habit. It’s almost instinct to have Google as your main page, so to change that behavior, it would take quite a concious act – one which I may be willing to go through with when IE9 finally drops. Once again, I doubt the combination of Google/Firefox will ever drop below the combination of any other search engine/web browser, but it’s an interesting thought none-the-less.

Lastly, we have Silverlight 4. What an exciting time for developers and Microsoft alike. Silverlight 4 takes Silverlight well-outside the realm of being labeled an Adobe Flash clone and finally places it into a territory all its own (they have been pulling away from that comparison all along, but Silverlight 4 finally commands all the respect Silverlight deserves). If developers can jump on the Silverlight/WCF boat and really help the technology take off, it will be to the benefit of everyone! It almost seems foreign that a technology like Silverlight could come along this late in the game, best Adobe Flash, and become the new standard in interactive/high-def/streaming media, but I really hope it does. And with the rumors of Windows Mobile 7 containing Silverlight controls (at the very least, there’s Silverlight for Mobile), I do not see this technology going away anytime soon (and that’s a good thing).

There is so much more I have to learn about all of the technologies above, so I’m not trying to pretend to be some expert on it all. These are just my personal observations and a culmination of thoughts from the excitement generated by putting all of this together. It seems that if Microsoft was/is ever to finally gain/reclaim web browser and search engine market share, 2010 is going to be the time for it. Now, it may not happen all at once in 2010. It will take time, just as Bing has. Unfortunately, there’s a negative stigma out there about Microsoft’s products in regards to the web. It has almost become a fad to hate Internet Explorer and any type of search engine that Microsoft creates, but now is the time when people should step back and actually give this stuff a chance (or a second-chance, as the case may be for IE9). Yes, at the end of the day, Microsoft is a business. They want to make as much as they can, but then again, that’s no different from any other company. The trick is to put a product out there that will not only be useful, but possibly life-changing… and when I say, “life-changing,” that can be as simple as something someone can leverage in addition to what they already know and love.

I was sold the moment Bing provided results for an exclusive for me that Google failed to. As for how I use the web, that’s a product I’ll stick with. Best of luck to Microsoft in 2010. So many people love to hate them, but I, for one, am excited to see what they put out to enrich the lives of those who give their products the fair shot they deserve. Feel free to chime in with your comments and let me know what you think.

Oh, and for the first time ever, I’m compelled to attend a MIX conference. It’s shaping up to be fantastic next year!

-Stephen
http://www.msftkitchen.com