Posts Tagged ‘Google’

Apparently, Verizon’s employees aren’t very educated with Windows Phone 7 yet. I recently purchased an HTC Incredible (I’ll get a WP7 device one day, but desperately needed something more modern than my LG Dare what with social media being the way it is these days and all), but just prior to making that purchasing decision, I decided to see what the response would be from the guy trying to make the sale when asking him about Windows Phone devices that are supposed to hit the market at the end of the year. His response? “No. No, no, no… you don’t want a Windows Mobile device. They’re horrible.”

The Microsoft evangelist in me wanted to educate him a bit on Windows Phone 7, but I decided to inquire more. He basically noted all the pitfalls we’ve seen with previous iterations of Windows Mobile and assumed the next revision would be exactly the same. I told him it’s supposed to be a lot better and started to go into why, but I could tell he didn’t really care. His thoughts looked to be something to the effect of, “yeah, that’s what they say about every version that’s about to be released.” Ergo, I decided the battle would be best fought another day. With a different opponent. On a completely different battlefield.

With that in mind, the story I almost missed was the chance to write about the stigma that’s already carrying over from Windows Mobile to Windows Phone 7. Instead of excitement and intrigue, this guy made Windows Phone 7 sound like it was going to be worth its weight in pyrite (aka, “fool’s gold”). Had I been any other clueless buyer, I might have taken his recommendations (or lack thereof) and passed them on to friends and family — ensuring a no-sale from all I spread the word to.

The question it brings to mind is how Microsoft will choose to market Windows Phone 7. I know it’s not really a big deal at the moment and the only people inquiring about WP7 are those who are either already informed (like me) or have formed an opinion either way, regardless of how informed said opinion may or may not be. I did notice the Kin setup in Verizon a couple of weeks ago — a kiosk-type of setup with banners, lcd displays running promotional videos, phones set up that you can play with, etc. — so I’m going to take a wild guess that Microsoft will hit the marketing pretty hard once devices are ready to roll out. Hopefully, they’ll get with the right company, because Google is killing it right now with Android (and I’ve got to say, I’m a full-on believer now from owning my HTC Incredible since its release — I LOVE this phone) and I’m sure Apple’s got something up their sleeves for the upcoming iteration of the iPhone.

Perhaps a WP7 representative in a bunch of stores like they did with Windows 7 and Best Buy?

-Stephen
http://www.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

First and foremost, Bing just doesn’t quite cut the mustard with the results regarding everything I’m about to go into, so the opportunity to evangelize for Bing will have to wait until another day (but if a Bing expert would like to contact me and show me how to leverage Bing in the same manner to yield quality results, I would love to do this same article with Bing as the catalyst).

Something I have people inquire with me about frequently (friends and family and sometimes even random strangers via email) is if I can find a Windows 7 ISO that they can’t find themselves. There are some applicable scenarios for this outside of pirating, such as if you want to honestly give something a trial run or if you’ve purchased a licensed physical or digital copy but you’ve lost the media (either digital or physical). If you can’t find the product on Microsoft’s web site and you don’t want to go the torrent/P2P/newsgroup/rapidshare/etc. route, you’re in luck. I just so happen to be a Google aficionado (via my 8+ years experience with advanced search queries on-the-fly and because I’m an internet marketer full-time now, which means I am practically married to Google) and though what I’m about to show you is a very basic query, it’s the thought processes and the terminology you will learn to apply to them that you’ll benefit the most from. And, hey, if you aren’t even familiar with using Google in this capacity, then you’ll gain that component from this post as well!

Remember: intitle:index.of

Learn it, love it, eat, sleep and drink it. That little prefix to your Google queries can land you a treasure trove of results — and I don’t just mean for the specific scenario I’m going to delve into in this post. Now, with that said, let’s say I need to find an x64 Professional Edition Windows 7 ISO. I’ve got a key but I don’t have the media, right? There are a number of ways to approach this but I’m giving you the keys to the best method right up-front:

• 1 – intitle:index of

 

• 2 – The name of the Windows 7 ISO as you would get it from Microsoft (think via MSDN or some similar avenue where software is distributed digitally, thus resulting in a file name you can search for). So, for our scenario, we could search Google for something like Windows 7 ISO MSDN to find out what Microsoft’s Windows 7 ISO name scheme is. Using that method, I discovered that Windows 7 Professional x64′s ISO name as it exists on MSDN is en_windows_7_professional_x64_dvd_x15-65805.iso.

 

• 3 – With points 1 and 2 in mind, your search query will look like this (click it to see it in Google): intitle:index.of en_windows_7_professional_x64_dvd_x15-65805.iso

And for quick reference, here is a list of all the Windows 7 ISO names (excluding VLK and OEM versions, and I was going to hyperlink them, but the point of this post is to give you a new tool to leverage, so to make you copy/paste these into a new query is by design):

• Windows 7 ISO Enterprise x64 English: en_windows_7_enterprise_x64_dvd_x15-70749.iso
• Windows 7 ISO Enterprise x86 English: en_windows_7_enterprise_x86_dvd_x15-70745.iso
• Windows 7 ISO Ultimate x64 English: en_windows_7_ultimate_x64_dvd_x15-65922.iso
• Windows 7 ISO Ultimate x86 English: en_windows_7_ultimate_x86_dvd_x15-65921.iso
• Windows 7 ISO Professional x64 English: en_windows_7_professional_x64_dvd_x15-65805.iso
• Windows 7 ISO Professional x86 English: en_windows_7_professional_x86_dvd_x15-65804.iso
• Windows 7 ISO Home Premium x64 English: en_windows_7_home_premium_x64_dvd_x15-65733.iso
• Windows 7 ISO Home Premium x86 English: en_windows_7_home_premium_x86_dvd_x15-65732.iso
• Windows 7 ISO Home Basic x86 English: en_windows_7_home_basic_x86_dvd_x15-65654.iso
• Windows 7 ISO Starter x86 English: en_windows_7_starter_x86_dvd_x15-68956.iso
• Windows 7 ISO Language Pack x64 Multilingual: mu_windows_7_language_pack_x64_dvd_x15-73276.iso
• Windows 7 ISO Language Pack x86 Multilingual: mu_windows_7_language_pack_x86_dvd_x15-73272.iso

Remember: You can use this method for *anything*! Office, XP, Vista, Expression, SQL; you name it, you can apply this method to find it.

Now, while that particular approach works 8 times out of 10, for the 2 times it doesn’t work, you may need to get a bit more creative. Sometimes, all the links will be dead or maybe you won’t land a single result. Sometimes, you may find a link that’s live one day but then dead the next, or you might try a query one day only to find nothing, then try it again tomorrow and see that Google has indexed 3 new pages for your search term! Also some factors to take into consideration are thinking what someone else might name the file or you may need to find out the name of a scene release (if you don’t know what that means, basically, it’s when an internet group gets a hold of something and they release it to the general public — of which, they usually change the file name and release it in some kind of archived format like .zip, .rar, .7z, etc.) and search for the file name of the release to see if someone else downloaded it and stored it on their server.

Be creative and don’t get discouraged if you’re not successful! Have a formula and I guarantee you, you’ll never have to worry about how to get a hold of any Microsoft media ever again (unless you’re looking for the latest leaked build of Windows or if you’re searching for something that’s quite obscure or not truly utilized by the public, such as Microsoft MultiPoint Server or Windows 7 Enterprise, etc.).

I hope you found this post useful! Please feel free to comment and spread the word. =)

-Stephen Chapman

http://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