Torres Talking: Web

Silverlight on MLB.com

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 05:09:37 GMT

How cool is this? Silverlight is out in the wild already on MLB.com, one of the premiere video sites on the web and a service I use about 3-4x/week for hours. From Ryan Stewart (just a quote - more on his blog below)

MLB.com looks like they’ve rolled out a whole video portal powered by Silverlight. They have a bunch of highlight footage as well as all the typical features such as being able to link to the video and send to a friend.

My mobile favorites

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 18:43:50 GMT

Finding good mobile websites (aka sites for PDAs, phones, and smartphones) is still a total chore; most sites don't automatically redirect to a "mobile friendly" version when you browse with your phone, and the .mobi initiative has been misguided from day one. So it's really a lot of "hit or miss" when it comes to finding the best mobile sites... you know, the ones you actually want to use on a daily or weekly basis.

With all this talk about the iPhone recently, I figured it would be a good time to share some of my mobile favorites with everyone. If nothing else, maybe you'll pick up a favorite or two for yourself, saving yourself the pain of sitting on a bus playing around with these sites (and the ones that didn't make the list) like I did recently.

Amazon.com - I've been an Amazon.com fan for as long as I've been on the Internet; they've had a mobile site for almost as long, but it wasn't a killer app for me until recently. They now support mobile 1-click purchases, Amazon Prime discounts, and viewing and managing your order history in addition to the basic search and browse functionality. Just browse to www.amazon.com on your mobile device (kudos to Amazon for doing this automatic redirect)
Bank of America - This site could be better, but... if you have a Bank of America account or credit card, you can check-in on your account balance and find ATM or bank locations. Browse to www.bofa.mobi to use.
Mybus - I just started using this to track Seattle buses. Mike Smuga has a great write-up about Mybus - check out his write-up before using it if you want it to make any sense whatsoever.
ESPN - Can't live without this site as this is how I check in with the Yankees and Mariners on a daily basis. Don't go to espn.com, it doesn't redirect to the mobile site. To get to the mobile site, just navigate to http://mobileapp.espn.go.com/wireless/espn/redesign (intuitive, isn't it?)
Facebook - A bunch of friends use Facebook so I try and check-in regularly. Their mobile site exposes a lot of functionality and is easy to use. I still like Spaces better, of course ;) But if you use Facebook, the mobile site is worth checking out. Again, don't go to www.facebook.com as they don't do an intelligent redirect, you have to go to http://m.facebook.com.
Google Reader - I live in Google Reader on the desktop these days, and the great mobile version of the site makes it possible to take Google Reader with me to the dentist or to the movies. I love how it automatically "squeezes" the original pages for a small screen when you click on them, making it easy to read partial feeds as well as full feeds from a mobile device. To use Google Reader on your mobile device, just browse over to www.google.com/reader and it will redirect automatically to www.google.com/reader/m/view.
Live Search - A great mobile search experience that includes maps, spaces, news, and the web. I use the Live Search application on Windows Mobile which is mind-blowingly cool, but for just searching the web, Live Search on the web rocks. Check it out at http://m.live.com or just go to http://live.com and you will be redirected automatically.
MSN - Best in class mobile portal :) The new redesign is light years better than the long-standing MSN Mobile site. I'm now using this for checking up on stocks, checking the weather, reading sports news via FOX Sports, and looking up movie showtimes on-the-go. I actually have about 5 different browser favorites on my phone to automatically link to the sub-pages like Seattle Weather and Movie Showtimes. To use MSN Mobile, just go to www.msn.com from your mobile device and you will be redirected. Awesome.
MSNBC - While MSNBC is a part of MSN, this site stands on its own for top news and category-specific headlines. They also have a downloadable MSNBC client application that plays video from the Today Show and other shows directly on your Windows Mobile phone. I use this all the time. To check out MSNBC, just go to www.msnbc.com from your mobile device and you will be redirected.
Orb - I've talked about this quite a bit in the past, but Orb is a great way to browse your photos, music, and video libraries on your home PC. It's still best-in-class. Before browsing to orb from a mobile device, you need to set it up at home via www.orb.com.
Techmeme - Not the easiest mobile site to read, but a fun way to catch up on the happenings in the blogosphere while sitting in a ski lodge. I wish Techmeme did the same "squeezing" that Google Reader does, but it's still a useful site. To get to Techmeme Mobile, go to www.techmeme.com/mini from your mobile device.
Torres Talking :) Enough said. Check it out at http://mike.spaces.live.com and you'll be redirected automatically. Read this blog, read and leave comments, and more.
Twitter - Great way to update your status on the go as well as check in with friends. Thanks to the new mobile web site, I no longer receive 700 text messages every day - I turned that feature off for the most part - and I just check this site. To use Twitter Mobile, browse to http://m.twitter.com from your mobile device as www.twitter.com doesn't redirect (argh!)
Wapedia - One of the best sites ever (with a horrible URL). Browse the entire Wikipedia database from your PDA or phone. I use http://pda.wapedia.mobi even though the "server is under heavy load" right now :(
Windows Live Hotmail - If you don't have Windows Mobile 6 with Windows Live built-in, you can still check your Hotmail using the mobile website. To get to Hotmail, you can browse directly to http://mobile.live.com and click on Hotmail, or you can go to http://mobile.live.com/hm to get right to Hotmail. I use this a lot.

Windows Live Spaces - One of the best mobile blogging and social networking sites on the planet. Little known fact: we shipped the mobile version of spaces in our first version and have updated it regularly ever since. Check it out by browsing to http://spaces.live.com on your mobile device - you will be automatically redirected.

Enjoy! Know of any others?

Facebook weirdness

Sat, 30 Jun 2007 02:21:11 GMT

There's something very disconcerting to me about the new Facebook platform at this moment. I love the concept, don't get me wrong. I could easily make this post a total raving rant about the loss of control I feel right now having granted "applications" on Facebook to essentially "work on my behalf" with no real say over what they do, but I don't want to do that. I'm going to try not to do this because I have a lot of respect for what the Facebook team has done with the platform initiative, and I think for the most part it deserves the praise it has received.

But that doesn't mean something creepy didn't just happen to me. Because it did, and I think it has to do with the fact that I ceded the right to be "me" to a bunch of strangers. So that right will be revoked right after I hit Post by removing these apps from my profile.

So what happened? I added a friend of mine to my friends list on Facebook last night. Today, when I checked my mini-feed of recent activity, there was an entry in the list indicating that I recruited her to a cause to "Stop Global Warming". That's suspect because I did no such thing - I was asleep at the time - but since this application has access to my world, it apparently thought it would be a great idea to recruit a friend of mine on my behalf. Ick. Now, I don't know if she received an email or a request to add the application. Or an SMS. Or nothing at all. But that's part of the problem.

The second creepy thing - I scroll down the page and there's a mood indicator that someone probably invited me to a couple weeks ago. What does it say? It says "I'm feeling Depressed". Problem is: I never set that mood. It was set for me somehow. Ick again. Now my friends think I'm depressed about something. Lovely.

What else is happening on my behalf? Have I recruiting people to anything else? Am I secretly telling my friends the combination to my gym locker? Is some application listing my home for sale on the marketplace for 80% of its market value? I kid of course, but who knows what's going on? Of course, when I try and remove the Causes application (due to the fact that it appears to me to be spamming my friends) it instantly appears to all my friends. So now they think I don't care about supporting causes since I removed the little spammer. Yes, I realize I could select to hide that from my mini-feed. But this is all a lot of work!

Open APIs: Why I like them

Sat, 05 May 2007 22:41:48 GMT

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer and I don't pretend to be one. My mother is but that's not relevant. I am not representing Microsoft, Windows Live, MSDN, or anything or anyone else here. I'm on my own in this post.

Back in June of last year, there was a flurry of discussion on Digg, Slashdot, and TechCrunch about open APIs for user data and their importance in the Web 2.0 world. If I recall correctly, this was all kicked off when Google's Picasa Web came out and a follow-up thread about Flickr not offering API keys for direct competitors like Zooomr resulted in a change in heart by Stewart, co-founder of Flickr. He wrote at the time:

...we definitely should approve requests from direct competitors as long as they do the same. That means (a) that they need to have a full and complete API and (b) be willing to give us access.

The whole thing blew up and then blew over in a matter of something like 48 hours (as these things typically do) but for some reason, it has stuck with me ever since. I've always believed in a "fair and open" web, where users own the data they contribute to online services - not the service provider - and they can access/backup/migrate this data however they see fit. I view online services as the "custodian" of the data; users pay a small fee (whether through advertising or actual dollars) to consume the resources of the service provider, but the data stored with the provider belongs to the user and can be taken with them elsewhere at any point. This is a necessary first step towards the "banking and hosted storage" world I talked about back in December where you can trust to keep your data online knowing it's safe and available at any point.

From day one with Windows Live Spaces, we've done everything we can to give people "fair and open" access to the data they're storing with us. With just about every release, we've introduced new ways to syndicate content outside of the system via RSS, and at MIX07 we introduced a very approachable terms of use for access to all sorts of data across the Windows Live Platform. Access to the platform is fee-based only beyond a very high scale point (once a service reaches 1 million unique users) primarily because at that level (and quite frankly, well below that level) resource utilization such as disk space, CPU, and/or bandwidth can become quite costly. But for everyday developers and users, it's free. I'm a big fan of this.

Given this position, it's starting to really get to me when I come across sites that allow RSS import without output, or contact list import without opening up access to their own contact list for others to do the same. Ditto for profile data or photos. In my opinion - and that's all it is - if you're going to support straight importing from Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail for the purposes of luring that user's friends to your service, you should provide ways for people to do the same with your users.

Scary, huh? Maybe - but that's how we're going to get to the next level with all this stuff. Where users can choose a service based on how it meets their needs, and not because they made a choice to store their data there at some point which resulted in inappropriate lock-in. We'll reach a tipping point (sorry, had to say it) where users demand data interoperability and providers won't have any choice but to give it to them. It's taken longer than I had hoped, but I do believe this will happen someday soon.

Searching for Integrity

Wed, 27 Dec 2006 20:28:37 GMT

(before I forget, HAPPY HOLIDAYS!)

There's a flurry of negative buzz surrounding Google's promotion of their services like Blogger and Gmail "at the expense of the integrity of their search results and its advertisers". Check out Techmeme and watch this thing unfold. I was following this peripherally like I follow most of the silly things bloggers get upset about for linkbait purposes... until I stumbled upon it myself.

Every so often I do some Google searches to see where Windows Live Spaces ranks. This is what it looked like this morning after a search for "blog service":

Are you kidding me? For a company that prides itself in its integrity (or at least used to) this is a pretty messed up thing to do. I can't even find Blogger in the organic search results; I stopped looking on page 5. Which means that instead of earning its spot on page 1 (or any other page for that matter) they decided to promote their own service in a way that no one else can do at the top of the organic search results. This makes it look like Blogger is actually more popular than TypePad, Windows Live Spaces, Yahoo 360, and WordPress.com when in reality, according to Google's own algorithms, it isn't.

Google owns Google.com so they can do whatever they want. But as Blake Ross wrote, trust is hard to gain and easy to lose. And when Google's marketing department says things like this just 3 weeks ago, it makes you wonder.

"It’s important to note, however, that our ads are created and managed under the exact same guidelines, principles, practices and algorithms as the ads of any other advertiser…There are no algorithm changes to ’smooth the way’ for Google’s ads"

Ultimately, the folks who end up suffering the most are the Six Apart guys who are paying Google to run ads against the word "blog". Now, if you were in charge of Six Apart's advertising strategy, would you continue to pay for this ad when your competition has an unfair advantage? Which one would you click on? The one that looks like an ad or the one that looks like a friendly tip from your friends at Google HQ?

Come on guys. You can't have it both ways - you're either biased or you're unbiased. But don't say you're unbiased and then sneak little orange B icons above your competition. Especially after saying you don't 'smooth the way' for your own ads.

Banking and Hosted Storage

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 23:50:48 GMT

Earlier this year, Jay and I attended a talk with John Connors (former Microsoft CFO, not the guy from the Terminator movies who fails to save the world) and I asked him where he thought our most important files would end up - in the "cloud" or our desktop? His response was something like (I'm paraphrasing), "It actually won't matter. You won't have to think about how or where to store your files, they will just be available when and where you need them."

A few months later, I heard someone say that online file storage (i.e. Xdrive, Box.net, etc.) is similar to banking in a lot of ways. There's something about that comparison that really appeals to me. When you think about the shift from stuffing money into a mattress for safekeeping and banking as we know it today, you can draw a lot of parallels with how we store files now vs. in the future.

Right now, most of our precious files (emails from loved ones, photos, documents, home videos) are stored locally. We manage them, we back them up, and we're solely responsible for them should something go wrong (file, theft, viruses). It's ludicrous when you think about it - and very similar to how people 150 years ago managed their money. If someone made it into your house and found your coins hidden under a floor board, you'd be broke.

If you were to go back in time and explain today's use of banking services to someone, they would think you were crazy. You never actually SEE the money you have - you can't hold it, smell it, or swim in it - but it's ready and waiting for you everywhere you go?! You can access it from any ATM or bank, you can use debit/credit cards just about anywhere and have it automatically access your private funds? Yup, it IS pretty crazy. But that's our reality. You give up a little control for safety, convenience, and simplicity. It just makes sense that we've reached a point where just about everyone with any money has at least one bank account.

The same thing will eventually happen with everything you produce or consume digitally. There are a number of areas where this is already happening of course... Online music subscription services are moving away from you having to manage the files; they're stored centrally and the fact that you've already paid is what gives you access to them. More people use web mail (Windows Live Mail/Hotmail, Yahoo Mail) than use old-school POP accounts requiring you to remove everything from the server. And I'm sure people using Spaces trust us with your blog entries, favorite lists, and your friends list/contacts.

But in order for a shift to hosted services to really happen, we need to go through the same transformation banks did. These services likely need more regulation and standardization, and they need to be held accountable at some level if data loss or other violations occur. They need to build an incredibly high level of trust, just like Wells Fargo and Bank of America had to do at one point. But it will eventually happen, there's no question.

I'm dubious however that this shift will occur all at once - and I'm equally dubious that the switch from local storage to hosted storage will occur en masse in the next 10 years. Even though a percentage of people have already made the switch, they're far from "normal" people. It will likely take closer to 20 years than 10 for this to happen in a way that affects just about everyone with digital assets; each passing year we'll get closer until, like banking, it'll be considered crazy not to let a service manage, backup, and protect your most valuable possessions.

Of course, none of this is news to anyone who has been following trends over the last couple of years... I just thought the banking comparison was especially interesting.

Internet Explorer & extensibility

Thu, 07 Sep 2006 02:10:25 GMT

Just the other day I was singing the praises of some useful Firefox extensions that improve the overall browsing experience. As fate would have it, just today I was introduced (via Omar) to an IE add-on that brings IE7 up to par with my tricked out Firefox in almost every way. Hurrah! I spoke too soon.

Download it here! (not associated with Microsoft - or with me)

For a number of reasons, IE7 is still my preferred browser on my PC (while on the Mac I really have no other choice but to use Firefox now). IE7 still screams compared to Firefox on my machine... and its boot time is less than half of what Firefox's is. Plus it renders beautiful ClearType fonts (compared to Firefox's dated Netscape look!) and I'm a sucker for that.

I still wish the IE add-on experience could match the Firefox extension model but with the inline search problem solved, it really isn't that important to me anymore. Let's move onto bigger problems.

Web 2.0 Revelation #3: I dig Firefox Extensions

Thu, 31 Aug 2006 01:39:43 GMT

“The security and tabbed browsing brought people to Firefox, and the extensions are what keeps them there.” - ExtremeTech

Again, this is me stating the obvious. But having returned to Firefox (on my Mac and casually on my PC), I'm seriously impressed by just how much Firefox Extensions have enabled me to do. And as much as I really love using IE7 on my PC, having things like the SessionSaver, Answers, LiveLines, and del.iciou.us extensions are going a long way towards swaying me over to Firefox again (note: I haven't used Firefox exclusively on my PC since it was called Firebird a few years ago!)

The list of extensions I'm exploring on the PC:

Browster to make searching and browsing just a little bit faster - slick! (works in IE too)
de.icio.us to make sure I update my linkblog regularly
Answers just because it's cool
Tab X because I need close buttons on tabs
Livelines to map the RSS feed icon to "Subscribe in Bloglines"
SessionSaver to keep me from losing my place
Luna (theme) to make it look like it belongs on Windows again - although I want a better looking theme

One of the things that's immediately clear to me after a little experimentation this week: IE7 just doesn't have enough to sway power users just yet. Without a full set of rich extensions like Firefox has, people like me who want complete and utter control over every pixel on the screen are at a loss when it comes to IE6 or 7. Now, it isn't that IE doesn't support add-ins - it does - they're just kind of weak. Check out www.ieaddons.com.

And there are two key features in Firefox that I seriously long for in IE: spell check for edit boxes (only in the new Firefox 2.0 beta) and "Find in this page". The find feature is so useful that I find myself constantly hitting the keyboard shortcut ('/') while in IE7 to kick off a search within the page. Argh...

Now, having said all that, IE7 has more than enough in terms of usability and enhanced security to be the default browser for everyone else (i.e. everyone who isn't a power user) as I can virtually guarantee that my mother has no clue why she would ever need an extension. So I fully expect IE7 to put a tourniquet on the market share bleeding - and could even start to reverse the trend slightly. But it probably won't be until some future release where we might see power users start to flock to IE again like we did in the IE4 days (ahh, remember those?) In the meantime, I will continue to use both IE7 and Firefox.

(And for what it's worth, Spaces renders nicely in Firefox ;)

Web 2.0 Revelation #1: Techmeme vs. Digg

Wed, 30 Aug 2006 19:15:18 GMT

I've spent some time over the last few weeks trying to get back into this whole Web 2.0 thing after a month or so of purposely ignoring it. Don't get me wrong, I still read my Bloglines feeds everyday - I just don't always install things, investigate every link, or troll around leaving comments on blogs. Actually, I think Windows Live Writer reinspired me to be more active and consistently seek out interesting new ways to improve my overall computing experience. I freakin love this thing.

There's one thing that's become immediately apparent to me as a Techmeme addict (since about December of last year) and as I start to rely more and more on Digg for interesting technology news. This is probably old news to a lot of you, but it's a revelation to slow people like myself. Digg is a lot less about the echo chamber than Techmeme.

Very rarely do you see Scoble's rants, Dave Winer's new inventions, the attendee list at some foo-foo conference, or the fact that some blogger left Microsoft making the front page of Digg. Yet just about daily these things are showing up as link #1 on Techmeme as if they are the most interesting things happening in the technology world. Yet they really aren't. At least not to me.

This is likely due to the fact that Digg is community driven (and likely has a much more varied readership) while Techmeme is algorithmic, yet "pseudo-editorialized" due to the fact that those algorithms are based on of a preset list of feeds and the conversations that get spawned from them. While Digg doesn't always produce interesting content on the homepage, it's at least a step removed from the blogger battles that Techmeme is so fond of featuring. I don't know about you, but I simply don't care to read about the Tim O'Reilly/Dave Winer feud anymore.

I'm close to abandoning Techmeme because of this.

Switching to Firefox... on the Mac

Mon, 14 Aug 2006 03:36:04 GMT

I spent a lot of time this weekend cleaning up my "digital life" (including uninstalling Windows Media Player 11 to get my computer back and get Orb to work again, but that's a story for another time). A small percentage of that digital life is spent on my 4+ year old PowerBook running Mac OS X Tiger. I *love* this machine for basic things like browsing, email, and blogging.

When I'm not in the office, I use this guy almost exclusively (except when I have to connect to our corporate network for something). I've said it before, but the main thing holding me back from being a switcher (aside from working at Microsoft and using Windows all day) is the lack of a good Outlook port for Mac OS X.

I'm also not the world's biggest fan of Safari, the default Mac OS X browser. A number of sites don't work as well as they should - including this one. Safari is dog slow when compared to IE7 on the PC, and it crashes about 2-3x a week with multiple tabs open. So I almost always have to recreate what I was doing. So this weekend, I decided to give Firefox a try on the Mac for real... I've used it a bit in the past, mostly for browsing Spaces, but I wanted to give it a go as my default browser. So I did. And I like it a lot.

The first thing I didn't like much after a little while was just how ugly and boring the default skin is... it felt circa 1998 to me. So after a quick search I found a Safari theme which makes Firefox look almost exactly like Safari. The next: I didn't like the way the tabs worked. I like being able to close tabs by clicking on the (X) on the tab itself, not all the way over to the right. Well, I was able to fix that too through an extension called Tab X which adds a close button to each tab. I also wanted to make sure that if Firefox crashed that I don't lose what I'm browsing... well, there's another extension that handles that: Tab Mix Plus.

All in all, it was a great experience. I now have a super-fast browser on the Mac that renders 99.9% of sites perfectly to Safari's 95%. It looks great and works just like a browser should. I've always been a fan of the extension/theme/plug-in model (I think I blogged about it long ago) where you give users most of the basics out of the box, but more advanced things have to be added on. It keeps the download and footprint of the application small but doesn't limit the functionality. Ironically enough, Windows Live Writer released about the same time as I was doing all of this follows that model exactly. So does the Windows Live Toolbar. And in a lot of ways, so does Spaces with support for gadget "add-ons" via Windows Live Gallery.

One definite plus of switching to Firefox on the Mac is that I can use just about all of Windows Live Spaces without sacrificing anything. Safari doesn't provide quite the same experience.

One other random plus in Firefox is the ability to use multiple search engines (like IE7). Safari limits you to Google which is so uncool. But contracts have a way of doing that to you.

Anyway, here are the things I added to Firefox on the Mac to make it look better and function like Safari. If anyone has any other suggestions, throw them my way. And YES, I still use IE7 on the PC. I don't have a need to switch to Firefox... and even if I did, the lack of support for Windows authentication means using it for intranet sites is just painful.

Themes: GrApple
Extensions: Tab X and Tab Mix Plus

(Update: Tab Mix Plus was a little much for me - kind of overkill - so I uninstalled it. Tab X is great though.)

(posted from Firefox on the Mac)

Orkut goes creepy too!

Wed, 07 Jun 2006 00:35:13 GMT

Following in the footsteps of their long-lost cousin, Orkut has decided to go creepy just like Friendster (here and here).

I logged in and saw "Want to see who visited your profile recently?" Sure enough there was a list of the last five people who had viewed my profile recently. What a privacy NO-NO. This is the only notice I've seen about this; I didn't get an email, I didn't have to opt-in to the functionality, and when I went to change my setting to OFF I got this error:

Unfortunately, the orkut.com server has acted out in an unexpected way. Hopefully, it will return to its helpful self if you try again in a few minutes.

There are ways to build a compelling, engaging service without going creepy on people. If I don't remember to change this setting the next time I login, my footsteps are visible to people. Ick.

It's now official...

Thu, 13 Apr 2006 04:42:40 GMT

2006 is really 1998 in disguise... in case you were wondering. Follow those links; pretty amazing. And here's more on this topic from 2005.

(Yes, I know posting has been slow recently. I think I needed a break. I'll return to posting more regularly soon.)

Bloglines problems

Mon, 31 Oct 2005 18:57:25 GMT

Bloglines keeps marking old items new again... and it's really starting to drive me crazy. It's happening to the majority of the blogs/feeds I subscribe to, not just those hosted on MSN Spaces (which Bloglines knows is a problem but hasn't fixed yet).

It seems to be getting worse day to day... I've started unsubscribing from the worst offenders. I track over 330 feeds in Bloglines so even 1-2 new items per day takes a lot of time to go through.

Between this and being painfully out-of-date on some feeds and I'm about ready to ditch Bloglines for good. There are times when I'm more than 36 hours behind on Scoble's feed and that's just not cool. Especially since we gave Bloglines a bunch of kudos in the MSN Spaces book :)

Should I go back to NewsGator Online? I had performance problems when I first tried it, but coupled with FeedDemon or RSS Bandit it might not matter. The only bummer is that there's a monthly fee for using the mobile version.

Friendster is STILL creepy

Thu, 27 Oct 2005 21:03:16 GMT

Friendster apparently thought it was a good idea to send mail to all of the "friends" I invited a year and half ago who decided to delete my invitation instead of joining. Of course, Friendster did this without my "OK". And of course, I ended up with a flame mail from a friend thinking I did it:

You don't have time to chat with me, so you just want me to update my Frienster profile?

No thanks. I don't really have time for Friendster, sorry.

Once again... Creepy, man. Stop trying to get me in trouble, Friendster!

Web as Platform

Thu, 06 Oct 2005 17:09:50 GMT

Joshua Allen, Microsoft's first blogger, talks about the programmable web and Microsoft's role in its evolution. It's especially appropriate as we all sit here at Web 2.0 talking about the "web as platform" vision as if it's a new thing :)

I remember attending part of the Microsoft PDC in 2001 and hearing all about the .NET vision whose promise was (and still is) enabling web services everywhere. .NET was talked about as a bet-the-company initiative - services complementing software and software complementing services (with neither replacing the other). Which coincidentally is exactly the same vision Ray Ozzie spoke of last night at the MSN Search dinner here at the conference.

Click the link below to read the whole post.

Quote

Why is Microsoft Afraid of Google?
Five years ago, Bill Gates shook up the industry by announcing a dual-pronged strategy -- all productivity apps seamlessly integrated into the universal canvas of the web, and the "web as a platform". This wasn't vapor, this was what I used every day. Five years ago, I did not have Office installed on my machine. I used an app that combined word processing, IM, telephony, and e-mail in a single universal canvas (with cool contextual side-menu), all running in my web browser. We decided not to ship it at that time, but it had nothing to do with product quality or feasibility.

Now fast forward to 2005. A bunch of people who worked on that project are now at Google, and rumors fly around about "bricking over" MSFT by shipping productivity apps on the web. At the same time, pundits run around talking about "web as a platform", ripping off Bill's 2000 vision wholesale without giving credit. Give me a break.

Friendster is creepy

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 22:17:23 GMT

I'm not usually one to talk smack about our competitors, but in this particular case it actually seems well deserved. Of course, this is me talking and not Microsoft, MSN, or MSN Spaces. I've been using Friendster (admittedly not very much) since the very beginning of their existence and they just lost me as a user forever.

Find out why -> Friendster Sells You Out

Friendster's new "feature" of showing you all the people who have viewed your profile recently (without notice to those people) is entirely creepy and should never have been implemented. Features like this have to be opt IN not opt OUT as Friendster has it.

I just tried it and I'm amazed they shipped this. Creepy, creepy, creepy.

Future of the Web?

Thu, 29 Sep 2005 21:44:12 GMT

I've read about 15+ articles over the past week (a few of them on CNET) that are basically the same article with a different shell around it. Quite frankly, it's getting pretty old.

Joy: Future of the Web is mobile devices
He indicated that development activity on the current reigning platform--the PC-- is beginning to stagnate. "Maybe Google replaces Microsoft at some point, with the Web as a platform. What are the hot, interesting PC apps? Nobody's saying anything about that."

Last I checked, Microsoft is as invested in the concepts behind the "web as a platform" as any other company - and we have been for a long time. I don't know if this is just a journalistic trend (like the one back in 1998 of the same exact ilk) or if people are actually unaware of our investments here. Either way, sometimes I think it's better if people count you out than expect you to "get it". All we can do is exceed our customers' expectations.

On Virtual Earth & Web 2.0

Sat, 10 Sep 2005 00:38:24 GMT

Tim O'Reilly talks about Virtual Earth's latest announcement:

I've been hard on parts of Microsoft before, but MSN Virtual Earth is getting it right. They've given us a great user interface, with features beyond those of the competition. They've given us developer documentation with people dedicated to answering user questions (something Google has struggled to do). They're going to share revenue with the remixers. This is all good.

I may be missing something, but didn't Tim just yesterday insinuate that Microsoft doesn't get Web 2.0 in a post titled "Why Microsoft can't best Google"? I started to respond to his post last night but decided against it. Sometimes it's better to just do your thing and let people believe what they want to believe. Turns out I didn't need to say anything after all; actions speak louder than words!

Competition & Google Talk

Thu, 25 Aug 2005 01:07:35 GMT

Necessary disclaimer before the rant: These are my words. I am not speaking for the 60,000 people at Microsoft. Please do not attribute my words to Microsoft, the MSN Spaces team, MSN, or any such thing. I work for Microsoft so that may be hard. But please try.

Sanaz has a mini write-up of Google Talk (and competition in general) over on her space. I installed Google Talk last night and played with it for about 20 minutes; which is about all the time it took for me to realize I won't be using it. Don't get me wrong, there are some fantastic things about it; first off, installation and setup was seamless. Secondly, it is very lightweight (small download, small footprint) and responds to user input pretty quickly.

But I am having a really hard time getting excited (as an end user) about this product. Dare claims that this is a "disruptive" move by Google... but I personally don't see anything inherently disruptive about it. It is a small, lightweight messaging client whose real value is in Gmail notifications and some basic voice chatting. The download/install process (while nice) isn't the day-to-day experience with the program. It only happens once. And the fact that it uses Jabber/XMPP isn't reason enough for me to nag my 200+ Messenger contacts and 120+ AIM contacts to use it.

Sidebar (I think in book form now): Disruptive to me is defined by game-changing events. Gmail offering 1GB of storage (albeit in limited beta) when other people were offering 2-4MB was very disruptive. Yahoo Messenger's new voicemail feature has the potential to be disruptive given the ease of use and the number of people exposed to it. MSN Messenger 7.0/MSN Spaces integration was insanely disruptive given the discoverability and continual uptake of Spaces compared to standalone services.

The one common element that has caught my eye in the reviews of Google Talk has been around "simplicity". It doesn't have tabs, emoticons, backgrounds, nudges, video chat, or winks. And to many, that means a more focused, streamlined application. I can't say I disagree with this in theory. But in application, it just doesn't hold water for me. Existing IM applications are actually pretty malleable... and if Google wants to do more than the equivalent of the talk command on Unix, they will eventually struggle with managing clutter the same as others have over the last decade.

To be clear, you can turn off tabs in MSN Messenger (the first thing I do). You can get rid of the conversation toolbar, display pictures, and formatting bar. You can switch to small icons in the main window. You can turn off alerts & sounds. You can turn off background sharing and nudges. You can turn off emoticons, voice clips, winks and even hyperlinks in the main window. You can resize all windows to make them smaller and even get rid of the Win32 toolbars completely.

In about 15 seconds flat you can make the application as "simple" as you want it to be. Now, you could argue that all of this stuff should be turned off by default. And for some, that may be how they want their software to work. But ask any 12 year old if they want to have to turn on emoticons and backgrounds and see what they have to say ;) Trying to be perfect for all people is impossible. There are tradeoffs with either approach... but personally, I at least want the option to make up my own mind.

I discussed this in Simplicity and "It just works" a couple months back where I said "I would argue (and I do quite often) that simplicity in the long run is over-rated for most users, especially for users who actually know what they are doing. Keep it simple while they learn what they need to do but then empower them by adjusting the software to adapt to meet their unique needs."

Going forward, I fully expect Google to do some great things with Google Talk. But just because Google is in the game, don't dismiss the other players just yet. I can only speak from experience at MSN; we are moving faster and smarter then ever before. MSN gets it.

Still digging Bloglines

Sun, 14 Aug 2005 00:50:16 GMT

Back in December I posted about how much I love Bloglines in Why I dig Bloglines.

Well, here we are in August and I still cruise over to Bloglines.com a few times each day to catch up on things. As much as I love Start.com, I just haven't yet been able to get into the same groove as I'm in right now with Bloglines. Bloglines has 100% changed the way I use the web and that counts for something.

A year ago you would find me wasting 15 minutes a few times each day looking at a series of pages (my Favorites) that maybe changed every few days... and when I wasn't doing that, I was scanning My Yahoo every once in a while for new articles on things that interested me. What a complete waste of time that was! (Russell Beattie recently summed up the problem with portals like My Yahoo that treat all information the same way.)

Here is more on how I use Bloglines. Note that the things I dug about Bloglines in December still stand. In short those things were free, fast, minimalist, accessible anywhere, sharing, efficiency, and open APIs.

Subscribe with Bloglines toolbar button to automatically subscribe to any web page that has a corresponding feed. I use this 3-4x a week.
"Keep as new" option on posts. I use this all the time to keep something marked as “unread” until I am ready to clear it.
Newspaper view. I click on my feeds and all unread posts appear on one huge page AND mark all the posts as read. Because of this, there is no reason for me to spend the time categorizing my feeds into folders. Now, in a perfect world, the app would be smart enough to only mark the posts read if I scroll past them in the window... but that is probably wishful thinking. I can scan hundreds of posts in no time this way.
Mobile version. I also use this 3-4x a week from my Treo 650. Of course, without roaming my read/unread status it would be pretty useless. But because I can get the same newspaper view on my mobile device, it makes all the difference.
Sort order. Great feature. I have my feeds sorted by "# Unread" which is far more useful than scrolling up and down the page hunting for bolded feeds. I just found this option the other day and I love it!

Bloglines has really opened my eyes to a few things as well:

I've found that a bunch of the sites I used to visit daily I haven't visited in months. Why? Because they don't publish an RSS feed. It is just way too much work to manually check these sites when everything else comes to me in Bloglines. I would bet that over 80% of the time I spend "browsing" these days happens from within Bloglines (note to advertisers: this is significant!)
I find things faster. I am exposed to 100x as much information and I spend far less time looking for it.
The web is ideally suited for an application like this. Roaming is inherent so I never see the same post twice (with the caveat below). And I can get to the application from anywhere (work, home, my Mac, my Treo, etc.)
As some of you may remember, Bloglines is a little messed up when it comes to feeds originating from MSN Spaces. Every once in a while you get a "phantom post" (sometimes it actually happens quite often) which makes reading spaces from within Bloglines pretty painful. We've let the Bloglines staff know about this and we are working on a solution to this from our end as well.

So, there it is. Bloglines is still my dawg. But just like Virtual Earth did to my old Google Maps obsession, I don't expect it will be long before I am starting my day this way. Especially with the pace those guys are keeping. I'll be very impressed (but not necessarily surprised) if they can actually get me to switch.

(By the way, Bloglines calls everything a feed and always has. Not an RSS feed. So much for that debate.)

Search engines scare me

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 02:33:26 GMT

In looking at my referrer log over the past few months, it never ceases to amaze me how people stumble upon this space. It seems that for whatever reason, spaces on MSN generally tend to have pretty decent standing on Google. It becomes somewhat daunting to post about a particular topic when you know within a few days you may have a bunch of passionate people reading what you write.

But it can also be empowering. For example, using this "power" to post about how your (former) apartment complex (ahem, Site 17) placed a huge tent over all of your windows and then raised your rent when they knew they were shopping the building around to the highest bidder. Or you could post about the time the garage door malfunctioned and didn't realize your 2-day old car was underneath it and cost you $800 in damage by slamming into your hood. And you could even go so far as to mention that after claiming they weren't responsible, Site 17 management put up a sign warning people about the garage door a few months later.

And if you really want to get even, you can "inadvertently" become the #1 result for "Site 17" on all the major search engines. It isn't like there are a lot of people talking about Site 17 in Seattle, so when there is a bit of activity around a topic it is likely to be noticed. By the way, don't ever live at Site 17 in Seattle.

Now back to the daunting part. Having people search for "MSN Messenger audio" and find my space is cool, but am I really the best resource for this? We have support forums, help topics, community boards, and blogs/sites dedicated to MSN Messenger. Why is my space listed here at all?

Same could be said about "Outlook macros" - they have been around forever, and there are hundreds of great resources on writing/debugging/installing macros. Why in the world would a post from 6 months ago be listed in the top 10 results on Google? Especially considering I have never mentioned Outlook macros again.

And just when you thought the battle over the martial arts used in Batman Begins (KFM) was over in that post from a couple of weeks ago, it turns out this space is the #1 result for "KFM Batman". Great. Just what I need; a bunch of Tom Cruise clones arguing about the validity of their belief system.

I think what is becoming more and more apparent to me is just how horribly ineffective search engines in 2005 really are. I have heard Bill Gates and members of the MSN Search team say over and over that search as a concept has a long way to go, but I guess I never fully internalized it until now.

Criticism

Thu, 19 May 2005 15:12:57 GMT

Dave criticizes Dare & me for the "way we develop software". But for the life of me, I don't know what he is referring to. The link to Dare's blog (not his space!) isn't working but I am assuming this has something to do with Start.com and the model they have for aggregation.

The problem is that neither of us work on Start.com -- although Dare does work on RSS Bandit (another aggregator) in his free time. So while we may agree with Dave's "River of News" style, we actually aren't the ones writing that code. We aren't even in the same building; Dare and I just so happen to know the smart guy working on it and we want it to succeed. So we talk about it.

However, re: the "River of News", I think it is important to note that what works for one person may not work for the other. And that's the real challenge of software.

Quote

Scripting News: 5/19/2005

Update: OK, Dare's link works for me now. Looks like it was in reference to Dare's post on Bandit's Outlook-esque model and my Bloglines post from a few months ago. Despite Bloglines' shortcomings, I still use it daily. I have a hard time with the "River of News" model with the number of feeds I subscribe to and the fact that I can't read them all in one sitting. It is the whole "why did you mark everything read when I only got 1/3rd of the way down the page" problem.

QR Code

Mon, 16 May 2005 17:34:45 GMT

Takao, our former International Program Manager, sent over some information on QR Code last week. For those of you who have never heard of QR Code, Takao explains:

"In Japan, it's a popular way to exchange URLs and other information. Cell phones in Japan read the code using the built-in camera, and works just like a barcode except QR Code has much more storage than barcode, and works on paper as well as on computer screen."

Pretty cool - they are doing some amazing things in Japan. Here is what a QR Code for the Torres Talking URL looks like:

If you would like to learn more about QR Code, check out this link Takao sent over:

QR Code Features

Online Calendars - Jump.com, Google?

Thu, 03 Mar 2005 02:38:18 GMT

There is a lot of chatter out there about an upcoming Google Calendar release. Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo! lists some of the things he would like to see Google do if they were to release an online calendar. Lots of good suggestions after the jump, both in his post and in the comments.

For those of you who don't know, I have logged a fair amount of time in the online calendar/scheduling space. I was a co-founder (along with Bill Trenchard and Andre Black) and VP of Products at Jump.com in the late 90's after graduating from Cornell. Jump.com was acquired by Microsoft in 1999 and has since been integrated into MSN Hotmail at calendar.msn.com.

Some time after Jump.com, I helped steer product development at a startup company in Los Angeles; Handshake.com/SimplyDone.com (now deceased). At the time (Y2k) I was beginning to wonder if I would ever work on anything other than time zones, recurrence rules, and "new appointment" dialogs. Thankfully, I eventually did.

But Jump.com was an absolute marvel for its day, and did a bunch of things that online calendars still don't do (including MSN Calendar!). Some of the features (MSN does have some of these): Calendar sharing, Weather/TV/Sports feed integration, group calendars, contact "linking", Outlook and PDA synchronization, and a host of other cool things - in a BETA, no less. Built by college kids. Making just enough money to buy pizza on Fridays.

The vision at Jump was to bring online calendars "to the masses" - make them friendly, easy-to-use, but most importantly social! There really are two kind of calendar users - the user who tracks everything in their day down to the minute (me) and the user who posts a sticky note onto a shared wall calendar. Jump.com was really designed to adapt to both of those users - the hardcore calendar junkie as well as the user who only had nine appointments every month but is still interested in tracking when the next episode of their favorite TV show is going to air. The sharing features made it possible to have a family calendar or to share your own personal calendar with your spouse; making it easy to schedule that next trip to IKEA. Overall, it was an incredibly impressive system for its time.

It will be interesting to see what advancements are made in the upcoming days in the calendar space. If the rumors are true about Google, expect to see an XMLHTTP-based calendar that is lightening fast, useful, but not integrated into Gmail or Orkut :) Seriously, I think having Google enter this space would be incredibly exciting - as an emerging technology company, they are great... and there is nothing better than someone stepping in to do things a little differently. There is a lot of potential opportunity here if you step out of the traditional Outlook-style model and think about calendars as a social dashboard. Don't you think?

So, here we are... six years have passed and online calendars are the "next big thing" again... Crazy how things come full circle. Here is a nostalgic screenshot of Jump.com for your viewing pleasure.