this is just the consumer grade stuff

This device is transmitting thousands of infrared light beams, and detecting your presence, movement, and your environment with them. Wow.

Imagine what the military or intelligence agencies can do?

Microsoft goes all in on Mobile with Windows 7

As Engadget reports, Microsoft anounced 10 new handsets for 30 countries.

I wonder if the phones are any good.

Office 2007 help, someday maybe we can move beyond keyword matching

Type "edit background image" into Power Point's help and this is what you get:

Advent calendar, really?

There is a check box on the View ribbon that allows you to "hide background image" - so naturally when I click that and it makes the items I want to change disappear - I assume that it is a background image I need to change. Hence the chosen search terms.

But, alas it really isn't an image at all. It is a text box on the master sheet. Took me a few clicks and sorting out a red herring to get the text changed.

I wonder if help could be made smarter and see that I'm looking at the master sheet and I'm typing those search terms and .... well I think you see where I"m going. I'd like an AI help system so that it seems like I have a Power Point expert leaning over my shoulder. One who I can ask how do I do such-n-such? This "person" looks at what I'm trying to do and maybe through a mouse gesture and keypress combo, I'd get nearly human style help.

Sounds a bit like clippy - but smarter.

I'd like a video walk through of what I'm trying to do or a relevant help text to come up. Something that tells me the page I'm looking at doesn't have a background image, so unless I'm really looking to "add a background image", "edit background image" makes no sense.

Now that would be helpful.

Microsoft gets it - KIN equals win

KIN is Microsoft's second new phone system this year after Windows Phone 7.

Best described by this short quote:

Windows Phone 7 is the "generic" smartphone platform to target a broad audience, Kin is for a specific subset of super-connected kids.

I think Microsoft gets it. The Facebook, MySpace, Twitter generation. They may be coming in later than Apple and Google, but their new stuff is very compelling. And the target audience is going to eat this stuff up. I bet the data plans will be cheaper too, as in less than the current $30 a month. We'll see when Verizon makes an announcement.


As for KIN itself, you can watch the UI videos on Engadget explaining how it works. If you only watch one, watch the fourth one on photo sharing. All photos are automatically backed up to the cloud - so now you don't have to worry about losing the phone or how much memory is on the phone (well not as much anyway). A great concept - I love it.

I believe KIN, along with Microsoft's Windows Phone 7, will bring Microsoft's phone business back from the brink.

shoe circus clown club

Not sure if the new Microsoft Ad campaign will sell anything. But its nice to see Seinfeld on TV again. Even if it is for just a minute 30 seconds. I thought the commercial was pretty funny. Here is a screen grab from Bill Gate's "platnum" membership card to the Shoe Circus Clown Club.



It might be funny, but its not as convincing as Apple's get a mac ads. Hopefully they won't have Bill adjust his shorts ever again.

What did you think of the ad?