One of the beauties of being a blogger is the ability to take a selected short snippet from a seemingly benign article and blow it up into something worthy of a Chicken-Little treatise. With a little extra effort we can turn those same snippets into a full fledged game. Below you’ll find a series of phrases taken from a recent online tit-for-tat. Playing along is simple - is the the following about Microsoft Vista or a Valentine romp gone horribly awry? You be the judge:
Doomed Microsoft operating system “Vista” launched within the virtual world Second Life last month. Last week, Linden Lab informed consumers that its Second Life client software doesn’t work reliably with Vista. According to the company, a new (Vista-unfriendly) version client software is “just about ready”–after this release, Linden Lab will “start the process of ensuring that Second Life runs under Vista.”
The blog of the marketing guy behind the ’synergy’ is also a hoot. Not only is the irony of advertising Vista in a game that doesn’t work with it lost, but associating the OS with with a “gentleman’s club” is also apparently a good idea.
Closing the line is the Liquid Dreams club. An industrial strip joint with a load of Lords of Acid fans. They were amongst the first to literally beg to become a partner, and they’ve been arranging ad space with most of their partnering malls and clubs. These guys are overjoyed to be part of our little initiative.
Of course, maybe if Vista had more to do with strip clubs and less to do with incremental usability improvements there would have been more demand at launch.
Say that you’re the world’s largest software company. Now suppose that you’ve just released your latest operating system to less than rave reviews. There are some nice things about it but the universal consensus by consumers is to wait and ‘upgrade’ when they buy a new machine. It now sounds like those users who snooze will lose out Vista completely.
Robert McMillan, writing for the IDG News Service and appearing on PCWorld, states that Vienna, the brand new OS after Vista will be delivered in 2009. That gives Vista a shelf life of a little over two years - or even less than that for those waiting for the first major service pack (Fuji) before upgrading. Of course, with such a small time frame Microsoft must practically have the thing written right? What are the features? Ben Fathi, corporate vice president of development with Microsoft’s Windows Core Operating System Division, what can we expect?
According to Fathi, that’s still being worked out. “We’re going to look at a fundamental piece of enabling technology. Maybe its hypervisors, I don’t know what it is,” he said. “Maybe it’s a new user interface paradigm for consumers.”
‘Interface paradigm’? Hypervisors? Sure sounds like Vienna is treading water to me.
Microsoft’s Clippy was a rebel. In an age of usability design that stressed minimizing user trepidation by maximizing user control Clippy broke all the rules. He would pop up unexpectantly, break work flows, nag with unnecessary questions, confuse with undesired options, and produce the kind of productivity terrorism now reserved for YouTube. He was a scamp!
With the new Office 2007 ribbon interface, however, there was little room for Clippy’s antics. At militant geek we have this look back at one of the worst attempts at humanizing software since Microsoft’s Bob:
Earlier here on MilitantGeek we talked about how Vista unleashed upon the unsuspecting world an entirely new way to hack a machine. They should have known. Clear back in July 2006 Microsoft’s voice recognition was a source of extreme embarrassment. In a rather large press display Vista demonstrates that you can talk all you want but Vista takes orders from no one.
Don’t think the clip is funny? I blame the ambient noise.
If you haven’t heard there’s something of a game today. Of course, if your surfing the Internet right now instead of enjoying a beer and chicken wing stupor you probably don’t much care. Let’s get a new week of tech mediocrity kicked off with the play by play of what came before:
But don’t be fooled. Vista is revolutionary. With Vista’s voice recognition technology Microsoft has created an entirely new way of being hacked. You no longer need to know arcane bits of code to destroy a computer - with Vista you only have to talk to it.
Apple’s iTunes (now illegal in Norway due to its own monopolistic behavior) currently doesn’t work on Vista. Apple’s advice? Just keep the OS purchase on hold and we’ll get back to you. It’s not like they knew that Vista was coming out this past week… or that they had six years to do something about it.
John Jantsch from Duct Tape Marketing tries to get senior execs at LinkedIn, the professional equivalent of a pyramid scheme, to explain what it’s good for.
They responded by telling me they were pretty busy but my chances of getting to participate would improve if I used their system to get referred to one of their executives.
Technorati launches a Digg clone named WTF. Even Technorati observers are asking the same thing. The sound heard immediately after the stunned confusion is Technorati further sliding into obsolescence.
On NewTeeVee there’s a piece about Amanda Congdon, a person that everybody thought was a big fish; turns out she was big only because she came from the teeny tiny pond. As the piece by Steve Bryant says:
If you’re looking for a reason why Congdon’s reporting has taken a turn for the retarded lately, scuttlebutt has it that she’s still shellshocked from her move to L.A.
Shocker #1: Congdon’s reporting? Shocker #2: a turn for the worse? The former host of Rocketboom has always been painfully forced, at best. People keep saying she’s a brilliant, articulate person foiling the image of the vapid ‘pretty face behind a desk’. But dumb humor + smart blonde = dumb blonde.
Microsoft circa 1978: That HAIR! The BEARDS! The flannel! Of course there is that natty young man with the feathered locks in the lower left; he could be going places…
As you may have heard by now an otherwise lackluster interview with Bill Gates was made notable when he hightailed it out of the Daily show set as fast as possible. John Stewart recaps the event:
CNET announces that the newest version of Windows will not launch with critical fanfare or technical chops but with a circus… on the side of a building. From the Ina Fried piece:
Microsoft will kick off its Windows Vista launch activities with a human billboard in downtown New York.
The Cirque du Soleil-style performance will take place at 9 a.m. Monday at the Terminal Building.
“It’s a billboard. It’s marketing, except that it’s made by people,” Mike Sievert, corporate VP for Windows told CNET News.com late Wednesday.
[*Soylent Green Charlton Heston] Windows Vista…. It’s PEOPLE!
Doomed Microsoft operating system “Vista” launched within the virtual world Second Life last month. Last week, Linden Lab informed consumers that its Second Life client software doesn’t work reliably with Vista. According to the company, a new (Vista-unfriendly) version client software is “just about ready”–after this release, Linden Lab will “start the process of ensuring that Second Life runs under Vista.”
