My hotel, the Redmond Town Center Marriott, is about 10 minutes from the Microsoft Campus. The hotel itself is very well presented and I was particularly happy to find that they have free wired Internet Access. Most impressive are the staff who literally bent over backwards to help me when I found that I’d brought two European travel adaptors instead of a US one. I’m now the proud user of a AC adaptor which came out of the ‘tub of left behind stuff’. There must have been 25 AC adaptors in there for al manner of phones and even a Toshiba laptop. Awesome.
Redmond Town Center is a development that feels very shiny and new but has been around for about 10 years so the receptionist told me. It even has a store that sells Macs just around the corner from my hotel.
Well at about 2pm I got a cab over to Building 36. The Redmond Campus is actually quite nice, surrounded by trees and giving the impression that there are many decent brains here. Everyone seems to be carrying either a laptop or a baseball bat. (The latter because they’ve been playing baseball rather than beating people about with it).
Building 36 is fairly non-descript, but it’s here that one of Microsoft’s flagship products is designed. It’s here that they design Microsoft Office. From when I last posted about Office 14 it seems that the list of what to build is becoming more concrete. Three tenets shape what Microsoft are designing for: Easy - building on their consumer experiences to create a great usability experience; Enterprise - making sure that the products scale to cope with the demands of large enterprise; and the third tenet which is so secret that I would be forced to be erased from Time if I were to mention it.
My statements centred around creating a journey to take users on. They will typically always revert to the path of least resistance - which for most is a File Share - when it comes to doing things like Document Management. So I talked about how when someone drives a car they can typically get into and drive another car without having to relearn the controls. This is currently the case with document management systems, each have their own take. I want Microsoft to use their skill in this area to create something that is as easy to use as a file share but provides the rigour and discipline necessary to be a compliant document store. Microsoft know that most people don’t start from scratch when creating a document. They use the PowerPoint that they used last time and simply change the pieces they need to change. This real world working is what the current solutions lack. Putting new features in is not the thing here, it’s about raising the profile of those useful features that make someone’s job more straightforward. If they see the value in using the system then they wont go back to using a file share. However, the likes of Microsoft and Novell ‘invented’ electronic document management by creating the file share for most companies. It’s the way people have worked for 15 years. It’s hard to unlearn that way of working.
Tomorrow I’m back there again. This time a bus is coming for me at 7am. Ouch..
So (I have to start the sentence with ‘So’ because it makes it sound like I’m from the Valley) I’m off to Redmond. Off to the Microsoft Campus to talk to them about Office 14 and the Wave 14 products in the Unified Communications space. It should be exciting. I’m hoping they listen to some real world stories of how Office needs to mature in some areas - and I’m not talking about just adding piles more functionality. For me it’s all about integration. Adoption of Microsoft’s Information Worker vision is not simple, it’s not easy and most users don’t want to buy-in as it’s different for them from just clicking ‘Save As…’. As soon as you have to messing about with third p[arty products to get SharePoint to talk to Documentum you know it’s game over.
Equally the VOIP and Instant Messenger worlds need to be more joined up. The PC and the phone need to blend better than they do at the moment and I don’t want to have to use the complicated method of doing it that Microsoft and Nortel offer at the moment.
So Office 14 for me will be about integration, it will be about workflow, it will be about inheriting permissions from one system to the next and not having to manage multiple lists in multiple applications. “Hang on..” you say.. “you can do that now”. I always frown at such statements. “Have you tried to do it? Have you tried to support it? Have you tried to get your users to adopt it?” /grimace.
That’s the story I’ve got for Microsoft. This meeting is not about them telling me what they’re going to build, it’s about me telling them what to build. I hope they listen.
I tried a similar approach with Google last week when I met their UK people. They’re serious about touting themselves in the Enterprise space. However, Enterprise for Google means non-consumer. It means business, and from what I gleaned in a conversation with their UK Sales Manager it really means small businesses. When I mentioned security, Sarbanes Oxley and such like to Google they looked at me and said “But that’s not very interesting, it’s not very exciting”. The rules that SOX lays down were clearly not interesting to Enron prior to it’s enactment, and look where they ended up. I’m sorry Google. You’ve got a long way to go to get onto the radar of large corporates with your suite of applications. They might have some features that are nice, simple and readily accessible (accept for if you’re on a train or plane with no Internet connection and want to type a document or read a spreadsheet) but they’re not ready for the big time just yet.
It’s my second trip to Redmond. The last time I was talked to in their Executive Briefing Centre and I saw a great demo of their vision of the office of the future by a lovely lady who told me off for taking a Tablet PC out of it’s cradle. This time I’m going to talk to them. God help them…
Toby Heap has posted on his blog about the reason why Blackle has vanished.
Needless to say they’re working on bringing it back. Perhaps the recent interest in Blackle might prompt Google to offer their own equivalent version. But then again the World’s most powerful brand wouldn’t want to dilute its famous homepage by doing something like that would they?
Menori.com has been getting a lot of traffic from people looking for Blackle, Toby Heap’s black skin on Google’s search engine. Infact Kelly from Canada commented that she had changed her homepage to Blackle and was wondering what had happened.
Blackle has recently disappeared. Visiting the URL just results in an Apache server 403 ‘Forbidden’ error. I’ve dropped Toby and email asking him what’s gone on. Hopefully Google haven’t shut him down. Or perhaps he’s getting so much traffic he’s had to lock the site down because his hosting bandwidth is all being eaten up. I’ll be sure to let you know if he gets back to me.
April 29, 2007 – 10:43 am
The BBC have ‘finally’ had some primetime coverage for the shadow economy of WoW gold. People paying real money for in game gold in a virtual world. The BBC News website has covered WoW, Second Life and other online worlds comprehensively over the last couple of years but this is the first time that I’ve seen it break into primetime news on TV.
I first bought 5 gold in Everquest II about three years ago, I think I paid about £15. Fundamentally it allowed me to save a ridiculous amount of time griding my character, mining, crafting, and most importantly selling items. I bought some special item rares so that I could craft some great lower level items to ‘twink‘ a second character that had just started in the game. This enabled me to be significantly more powerful than other characters of a similar level - pretty much what everyone wants in such games. I clocked up a 15000-1 kill ratio, battering Goblins on the beginner’s Isle. I was ranked 3rd in the World for kills to deaths ratio on the Lucan-D’lere server. But, like many things that I engage in, I lost interest and haven’t played EQII for a good little while now. So I spent hard earned cash on an experience that didn’t last that long. Just like several other practices I can think of, like going to the movies :-).
This topic has been covered in some depth several times, with books having been written on the subject telling how people quit their day jobs to set up gold farming companies for World of Warcraft.
I remember when a Jedi character in Star Wars Galaxies (when Jedi were rare) sold for $1200 on eBay. Now an Elder Jedi character sells for something in the region of $300. The laws of supply and demand apply to everything, virtual worlds included.
This article predicted in 2005 that Blizzard, the producers of World of Warcraft, would make more money from WoW than it had made from all the other single player games it had produced (Diablo, Warcraft, Starcraft) in two years. That assumed 1 Million subscribers. In 2007 WoW has 8 million subscribers.
The success of WoW is quite incredible. It has spawned a massive fan base and has even had the recognition of other industries and parody in the form of Whorecraft. And come on, if something gets parodied by the Aduly Industry then you know its successful.
After about 10 hours or so of Shivering Isles Hadaster, my Dark-Elf Monk character, is now the new Mad God of Oblivion.
So here’s my little review, and a few tips, to the Elder Scrolls IV official expansion. There are a few spoilers so go and read something else if you don’t want to know what happens.
I felt the story unfolded in a little bit of a weak way really. Much the same as the other, more minor, expansions you get word of something strange going on. Here it’s a new small island that has appeared off the coast of Bravil. Well I walked over there (come on, who swims when you’re 42nd level?) and my adventure started.
Rather than write a walkthrough, I’ll just say what I enjoyed. The world that is the plane of the Mad God Sheogorath is gorgeous. Once again Bethesda have shown that their artists have imagination and a good grasp on fantasy concepts. From the strangeness of the Fringe to the darknened splendour of Sheogorath’s Palace. And Sheogorath himself is a right card. The voice actor performs a dodgy Irish leprechaun kind of tone for the Mad God. But it must be quite difficult to go from demented to manic in the same sentence. As Sheogorath begins his slip towards Order and finally is consumed by Jyggalag I thought this was becoming all the more enjoyable.
The Golden Saints and Dark Seducers are brilliantly unemotional and the quests that involve them specifically are very good. I always enjoy charging in to battle with others, even if I’m the only one standing after the first twenty or so seconds.
Shivering Isles has some tremendous items in it. The Darkfang / Duskfang sword is a great, one handed sword with a twist. It’s blood drinker ability adds a nice addtional feature and it does mean that the sword is effectively recharged automatically upon the sun rising and setting (this is 6am and 6pm repsectively in Oblivion). In order to ensure you end up with the more powerful version of the sword summon a few zombies and chop them from behind when sneaking. Make sure the sword is charged though as any kills by an uncharged Dawnfang do not count. Hadaster has something in the region of 45% reflected damage too, so I found that creature would strike their own death blow when hitting me. Clearly such kills also don’t count towards the tally.
There are also a few new neat abilities that are bestowed upon you as you climb the ranks of the Shivering Isles. Being able to summon Haskil (the ever obedient and helpful ‘butler’) or a Golden Saint / Dark Seducer is a nice touch (although I tend never to summon creatures in battle).
All in all Shivering Isles has been a satifying add-on. It’s big enough with sufficient side quests. It still leaves me wanting more. But maybe that wont arrive until Elder Scrolls V. (or Fable 2 :-))
At the recent CanSecWest conference a security expert took on the challenge of the ‘pwn to own’ contest whereby if you could hack a MacBook pro, you could win it. ZDnet covered the story of Dino Da Zovi creating a Zero-Day exploit that took advantage of a hole in Apple’s Safari browser. Dino created the webpage that Shane Macauley browsed to. Macauley won the MacBook, but Da Zovi stands to win $10,000 for using a Zero-Day exploit to hack the Mac. [For those of you unfamiliar with the term 'Zero-Day' see the Wikipedia entry here].
So Apple have another hole to plug by the looks of it. This comes only days after the recent patch to OS X which fixed some 25 security bugs. I applied this patch to my 12″ Powerbook on Thursday and it failed to reboot! So much for the ‘it just works’ mantra of Mac OS X. However, after powering off and powering on the Mac it soon came back to life.
I quite like the idea of the ‘pwn to own’ concept. It sort of reminds me of old principles of land ownership. Although it is more akin to stealing cars. If you can break into the car then it’s yours, albeit not legally. This idea has been applied to certain online games whereby the victor in a PVP battle could then take an item from the defeated player. Such ideas have been seen to be unfair though. Judging by the number of times I’ve been defeated in Star Wars Galaxies though I’d have no items left!
Now news that SWOS is coming to Xbox Live is nothing new. What is news is that a Custom Team that I submitted to CodeMasters is going to make it into the release! Hoorah!
So when you download SWOS from Xbox Live look out for ‘Bad Haircuts’. I assume they’ll be managed by me!
The line up goes:
1. Perm
2. Flat-top 4. Bob 5. Comb-over 3. Quiff
6. Baldie 7. Keegan 8. Mullet 9. Comb-over
10. Basin 11. Back-drop
Subs:
12. Sideburns
13. Mohawk
14. Slaphead
15. Short-back-and-sides
16. Fringe
My winning note from CodeMasters read:
Hi there,
I’m writing to congratulate you on winning a place for your recently submitted team “Bad Haircuts” in Codemasters’ XBLA game Sensible World of Soccer, due out in the summer. Our team of judges loved your submission and we found that it really captured the essence of what we were looking for and what the custom teams in Sensible World of Soccer are all about.
If you want to chat about your success and your little piece of immortality in the form of a Sensible World of Soccer custom team go on the SWOS forum and boast!
http://community.codemasters.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=642
Well done again, and many thanks for your submission - they all kept us amused for hours!
Regards,
Peer/Rubbergenius
Peer Lawther | Codemasters Web Editor & Liaison Manager
So ‘Bad Haricuts’ joins the likes of ‘Doggy Style’ and ‘Favourite Words’ in the Custom Teams list for SWOS on Xbox Live. Fingers crossed they’re actually any good!
Joost 0.9.0 has hit the beta testing community and sports a more polished interface, 26 channels and a new way to dish out Joost Invites. More importantly for me personally Joost now works fine without any kind of UAC changes in Windows Vista. No more need to ‘run as administrator’. The install process now detects Vista as an operating system option.
The major change in this version is the introduction of some new channels such as the ‘Soccer Channel’ which seems to be sponsored by that lovely pink Italian sports newspaper (you know the one.. James Richardson always used to read it on Gazetta Football Italia on Channel 4). World’s Strongest Man now has the full series up to the 2005 final. Hooray.. more Atlas Stones lifting.
Invites are now handled ‘in Joost’. This is something that has been mooted on the Joost user forums for a while but in 0.9.0 it has manifested itself as a Joost widget. Take a look on the screenshot on the left.
Joost also now offers users the ability to pick a username rather than using your email address to logon. I clearly chose Menori (couldn’t have Gary as it needs to be a minimum of 6 characters) as my name. Watch for me on the World’s Strongest Man chat channel.
There have been one or two fixes to some UI bugs too. I reported this one on the image on the left where when adding a new RSS feed to the Joost ‘News Ticker’ widget the ‘OK’ and ‘Cancel’ buttons did not get rendered fully. Such things have either been fixed, or on the case of the News Ticker, have been redone. (see below).
So Joost is clearly nearing completion and, with the introduction of new content, continues to be a very promising application. I can see me using it a lot when staying over in hotels rather than watching the standard hotel rubbish or having to pay for a movie to pass the time. And yes…. I do have more Joost invites now. 
Make an orderly queue.
Unconvincing. That said England’s second half performance was reminiscent of a team whose players earn in hours what the Andora players do in weeks. Bravo to Steven Gerrard who, in the absence of Frank Lampard, played in the way that he can… and gaffered the game. If Lennon could cross the ball then England could have had many more goals. I heard briefly chants of ‘there’s only one David Beckham’ on the radio. The same had been sung in Tel Aviv but I’m pretty sure this was just directed to rile McClaren rather than any serious praise for the ex-England skipper.
Due to family circumstances late on the weekend beforehand I didn’t go to the game in person. Perhaps I’m happy I didn’t.
If confidence is what is shattered in the England team (in the words of Alan Shearer) then the players need to rise to the challenge. England fans expect. Just as Brazillian and Italian fans expect. There are no excuses, it’s the Manager who sets the tactics and the players then need to perform on the field. 3 points is 3 points and thankfully England managed this amidst solid, at times dirty, challenges and time wasting.
Roll on the end of the season. Get on the training ground and prepare for Estonia. An injury-free England will still qualify for Euro 2008.
