If you’re interested, the BBC’s Newsnight programme is leading tonight with a profile of Bill Gates and Microsoft in general. In the UK its on BBC Two starting now (10:30), or you can watch it online at the above website for 24 hours. In their own words:

Imagine the world without Microsoft. It’s not easy, if you have anything to do with computers. Now we’re going to have to imagine Microsoft without Bill Gates, who is leaving to spend more time with his charity work.

We’ll devote a big slice of tonight’s programme to the Harvard drop-out who came up with Windows and changed our world. Is Microsoft too powerful? And will its founder be remembered - like Andrew Carnegie - less as a ruthlessly competitive businessman and more as a philanthropist?

Update: The item was quite good. It had Scoble on (title Microsoft Strategist) who eulogised Gates, and some economist who said that in some cases he stifled innovation. I was just waiting for Scoble to get fed up with this claim, and list all of the innovations Microsoft had ever made under Bill Gates, but he didn’t (probably a good thing). It will definitely be available for UK users until 10:30 pm BST, and maybe longer. I’m not sure about the US and rest of the world, though.

Neowin.net has a list of instructions to get @live.com (or other country domain) email addresses. From the forum:

1. Go to https://accountservices.passport.net/reg.srf register an passport account with a NON-HOTMAIL/MSN email address
2. Sign in to http://login.live.com with your passport that you just registered.
3. Paste https://account.live.com/EditProf.aspx into address bar.
4. Edit your registered information, input your birthday (18+) and change your Country/Region to ‘United States’.
5. Paste https://account.live.com/LoginChangeName.aspx to address bar, then your can change your passport to @live.com.

I’ve got huw at live -dot- com. Get yours now!

I’ve just read an interesting article on PC Pro, entitled ‘Podcasters beware: the marketeers are coming‘. From the article (my emphasis):

This year has been earmarked as the tipping point for the new age of online media, with blogs, podcasts and video podcasts beginning to challenge the dinosaurs of broadcasting. The supposed mass migration of people to the web will relieve traditional media firms of their viewers and listeners, putting pressure on the old-school rules of advertising.

But, unfortunately for those hoping to sidestep adverts, product placement and the hard sell, technology is giving with one hand, and taking with another.

The new business model needs to provide ads that aren’t as intrusive, delivering a more seamless experience that compels us to buy things directly rather than having to go to another website, or remember a URL.

So don’t think that by becoming a consumer of blogs, podcasts and video podcasts that you’ll evade marketeers: technology is helping them become even better at getting their message across.

It raises some interesting questions about what the future of advertising will be in this much hyped (but in my opinion not over-hyped) world of the new media. The article makes the point that it the old hard-sell, in your face ads will not work, and it is right. Advertisers need to radically rethink their strategies if they want to succeed.

The last time there was a new media was at the height of the dot-com bubble in 2000. Although it all went to pot, there were some successes. One of the most notable is Google with AdWords. One of the few examples of successful monetisation of business models, it revolutionised the world of advertising, by provided advertisers with a win-win situation; great targeting, and if it doesn’t work, you don’t pay. Now obviously problems have emerged since with AdWords (such as click-fraud), but it still contains valuable lessons.

In the new blogs and podcasts it is eminently possible to monetise them, yet without downgrading their quality or irritating users. It will be made possible by having clever technology and clever people to implement it. A scenario; I have a podcast which I want to make money from. It is about great country walks available in my area, and I am happy to let someone pay me to put a 30 second clip advertsing their product, but only if it is relevant and interesting to my users. I use an online service to achieve this. The service scans my podcast, converting the speech into text and then semantically analysing the text so that it knows what the podcast is about. After comparing what the podcast is about with a list of the advertisers wanting to advertise in podcasts and finding a match, it automatically inserts the ad. Thus, in an episode that talks about rambles in Kent, a local landlord could place an advert about their pub that lies on the route.

We’re not at this stage yet. For the above to happen, technology needs to improve massively, but more importantly there needs to be widespread adoption of the new media outside the tech demographic. For this to work, someone needs to be publishing a podcast about walks in Kent, and a pub owner on the route of one of these walks has to want to advertise. The technology will probably get there (it usually does), but what is more uncertain is whether there will be widespread adoption. One of the biggest tests will be the imminent expansion of Digg into new areas of news; will ordinary people get excited enough for it to be a success. Only time will tell, but I certainly hope they will.

In Part 1 of my look at bundled applications in Windows Vista, you saw Windows Photo Gallery, Windows DVD Maker and Windows Media Centre. In Part 2, I’m going to take a look at the new Outlook Express, called Windows Mail, Windows Movie Maker and Windows Defender.

Windows Mail

Windows Mail is the new name for an application we have had since Windows 98, Outlook Express. At first glance, it looks very much like Outlook Express 6 for Windows XP. In fact, save a few new icons and a new Vista toolbar, it is very much like Outlook Express. As you can see from the About window below, not much has yet changed and Windows Mail feels very beta-ish and flaky. I’ve no doubt that there will be significant changes yet to Windows Mail, considering we are only at Beta 2.

There are some new features, however, but I wouldn’t really call them innovative. The lack of junk mail filtering in Outlook Express has made it a terrible email client previously, and finally, that has been addressed in Windows Mail. Unfortunately, I don’t actually know how effective it is, so I can’t comment on that.

A good point about Windows Mail is that it now sports the new search functionality included with Windows Vista. Good job on Microsoft’s part for getting this into Windows Mail.

A feature that really should have made it into Windows Mail (and might still yet, considering its relative infancy) is feeds. Microsoft have embraced feeds in Internet Explorer 7, and in the beta version of Office 2007 have extended the IE feeds into Outlook. I see no reason why similar functionality shouldn’t be integrated into Windows Mail, as having email and feeds in one place would make sense to a lot of people. Of course, Microsoft could be deliberately leaving this out to convince people to get Office.

The name change, to Windows Mail, seems to echo the fact that all the other bundled applications are also prefixed with ‘Windows’. But the name Windows Mail also bears similarity to Mac OS X Mail, which, in my opinion, looks a far better email client at the moment than Windows Mail, although I haven’t had a chance to use it extensively. It might also be a ploy by Microsoft to get people to stop confusing Microsoft Office Outlook and Outlook Express and make the distinction, Windows Mail for the home user, and Office Outlook for the business user.
Overall, Windows Mail does not feel like the rest of the Vista system; at the moment it is in desperate need of refreshing and adding more features to bring it up to the level of other basic email clients out there.

Windows Movie Maker

Windows Movie Maker in Vista, again, looks extremely similar to its Windows XP counterpart. In fact, the only visible differences are icons, and the new Windows Media Player 11-style playing controls on the monitor area on the right.

Presumably, however, this means that Microsoft are getting round to it. If they make Windows Movie Maker as good an experience as Windows Photo Gallery and DVD Maker, then they really do have a winner.

There have been some stability problems with Movie Maker. Playback of the sample videos included with Vista seemed slow and the playing controls were not always responsive; sometimes they refused to work at all. At the moment, this application, once again, feels very ‘beta’ and “I’m not finished yet”. I look forward to seeing what changes Microsoft will make for Release Candidate 1 (RC1) of Windows Vista.

Windows Defender

Windows Defender has been causing some real controversy since it was initially announced, as an anti-spyware solution to be included with Windows Vista. Windows Defender is the product of the beta application Microsoft AntiSpyware which was released for Windows XP. In fact, if you’re running XP you can try Defender yourself by downloading the beta from Microsoft.

Windows Defender’s integration into Vista (and even XP) is very well done. Updates to Windows Defender’s spyware definitions are published through Windows Update, which is very convienient, because it is one less thing to remember to have to update.

The quick scan mode, which is chosen by default when you do a spyware scan, finishes quickly (under 2 minutes on my test machine). This looks in common places where spyware tries to hide itself.

Full scan, however, takes significant time, as Windows Defender by default scans inside archives. That’s not just .zip files, but any type of archive you can think of including compressed game files, temporary installation .cab files and even Linux .rpm package files (if they are on a Windows-visible partiton). OK, that does mean spyware can’t escape through, but it is time-consuming. Archive scanning can be turned off in Tools > Options, thankfully. There’s also an option to exclude certain locations from the scan.
Defender has real-time protection, which is a great bonus. However, it is limited to checking things like Auto-Start programs and Internet Explorer Add-ons. That means Defender throws a lot of alerts when you install a program that wants to start at startup, or when you change certain Internet Explorer settings. It could be easier to allow the changes; at the moment you have to click a notification, choose the actions, and click Apply.

Overall, Defender is an excellent anti-spyware product and has the added bonus of being free to both Vista and XP users. Give it a try, if you haven’t already

Grand Conclusion

Like it or lump it (and if you’re a software vendor it’s likely to be the latter), bundled applications in Windows are here. Many of the headline new bundles feel smooth and integrated with the Vista user experience, namely Windows Photo Gallery. Although the bundled applications don’t exactly boast functionality you can’t get from a third-party application (and I bet a lot of third-party apps can do a better job), the trade off you get is complete integration within Windows. So, for example, you can export your photos right into DVD Maker from Photo Gallery.

Also, it means that the good things about the new version of Windows extend into the individual application. So, you get search capability in Photo Gallery, Media Player, and even Windows Mail.

The downside of bundles is that you are once again putting everything in one company’s hands. It’s something that personally I don’t like doing, I think we should encourage competition within any sphere of business. Competition makes everyone’s products better. It’s been Picasa and maybe iPhoto that have drawn Microsoft to build Photo Gallery, and I’ve no doubt that soon Picasa and iPhoto (Picasa have done it already with Web Albums) will become better because of what Microsoft are offering.

Microsoft do have the advantage of being able to bundle, and that’s what this article is all about. Let’s take the Picasa argument again. Picasa is a great program, but not everyone who uses Windows will have heard of it. By the time everyone’s running Vista, everyone will most likely be using Photo Gallery, because it’s just ‘there’.

Is this right? I think it’s up to you to decide. Given the choice, would you get the better product that didn’t feel integrated, or would you use the one provided just because it was ‘there’?

It has been revealed by numerous sources that Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft, yes, that Microsoft, will give up his main day-to-day job as chief software architect by 2008.

He is giving up to focus more on his charity work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

“The change we’re announcing today is not a retirement - it’s a re-ordering of my priorities…” Bill Gates

The people that will take over the main job will be Microsoft’s chief technical officer, Ray Ozzie, who will become chief software architect.

Apparently, this is an expected ‘re-ordering of priorites’ that Mr Gates has been looking at for some time, and it won’t take effect immediately either. By July 2008, Gates will no longer be head of software development, so presumably that should give him enough time to see Vista, Office 2007 and Longhorn Server (probably Windows Server 2007) through.

Read the official press release here.

Update: Huw here. There’s also now a Channel 9 audition with Ballmer and Gates here.

Digg has just gone down.

Kevin Rose announced that Digg would be adding new categories to the currently tech site, such as Politics and World News. There’s doubts, however, that it will be successful, with lots of the evidence showing that its only the tech crowd that are interested in such sites. It will be a big test as to whether Web 2.0 has any importance outside the early adopter community. More on this at Techcrunch.

Oh, well, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Update: The old digg’s just gone back up, so I guess we’ll have to wait a bit longer!

This is one of the most controversial things surrounding every new release of Windows. Ever since Windows 98, when Microsoft got into legal trouble by bundling Internet Explorer with the operating system, Microsoft have bundled more and more applications with Windows.

It’s not exactly like other operating systems don’t do this; but Microsoft, having the near monopoly, do tend to get into more trouble.

Guess what? There are plenty of new bundled applications for Windows Vista. From what I can see in Beta 2, we now have:

(* means they’re not new but there is a new version for Vista)

• Windows Photo Gallery (photo album software)
• Windows DVD Maker (makes video DVDs of photos and videos)
• Windows Media Player (plays video and audio) *
• Windows Media Centre (media centre program for media in your living room) * ¹
  
• Windows Calendar (calendar and organisation application)
• Windows Collaboration (peer-to-peer collaboration)
• Windows Contacts (replacement for the Windows Address Book)
• Windows Mail (replacement for Outlook Express)
• Windows Movie Maker (entry-level video editing) *
• Windows Defender (anti-spyware)
• Windows Ultimate Extras (free downloads for Windows Vista Ultimate Edition only)
• Windows Journal (journal/note-taking software)
• Windows Fax and Scan (fax and scanning functionality) *

1: We’ve seen Windows Media Centre before in the dedicated Windows XP Media Centre Editions.

If I’ve missed any off this list, please drop me an email. I won’t look at all of the bundled apps, but instead I’ll focus on the main ones.

So, can anyone spot the pattern here? All of the applications’ names begin with Windows. Yes, it emphasises that they’re bundled applications, but I think it does it a little too much. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Overview

Whatever your view on Microsoft bundling the applications, you must admit it’s a pretty impressive line-up of programs, at least from the number that are there.

But should Microsoft be bundling? Let’s face it, Microsoft’s only real competitor in the commerical desktop market is Apple. And they do it. Strictly speaking, Apple’s iLife (iTunes, iPhoto, iDVD, iWeb, iMovie, GarageBand) isn’t part of Mac OS X, but it is given away free with every Mac. So it is essentially, bundling. Does that make bundling right? I’m not really sure, but I’ve no doubt some of the offerings here will cause some headaches for software companies, particularly Windows Defender, which I’ll look at in Part 2.
A lot of the new Windows bundles also seem to have similar functionality to their iLife contemporaries. In fact, Apple recently made fun of Windows due to its lack of bundled applications. So there’s Windows Photo Gallery - iPhoto. Windows DVD Maker - iDVD, Windows Movie Maker - iMovie. In fact the only applications not covered are GarageBand and iWeb.

Windows Photo Gallery

Microsoft have long been at loggerheads with Google. No, I haven’t forgotten what I’m talking about; it seems that Windows Photo Gallery is a response to Google’s excellent free photo management software, Picasa.

Windows Photo Gallery looks nice, and it feels very well integrated into Vista and the other bundled applications. It uses Microsoft’s new coloured toolbar idea, doing away with traditional menus. I like the look of the application, and the transparent navigation area at the bottom looks awesome when you’re using Aero (Aero Basic users get a nasty-looking grey).

Photo Gallery offers options for tagging and rating photos; as well as keeping them in albums. Seach integrated into the application means as long as you’ve tagged your photos, or they have meaningful filenames, you can very easily find what you are looking for. Helpfully, though, if you do search for a phrase and a folder containing pictures is found, the whole folder’s contents will display in the search results; so it’s not vital to have to name each individual photo, as long as your folders have a brief description.

You can also do minor edits to photos, which is similar to the functionality we have seen in Microsoft Office Picture Manager, which was included with Office 2003. The editing tools are easy to use, but aren’t really suitable for doing anything major, as you can only really adjust colours and fix red-eye etc.

There are also options to make DVDs through Windows DVD Maker, but I won’t delve into too much depth.

Windows DVD Maker

Windows DVD Maker, frankly, isn’t too impressive apart from sporting the new Windows Vista look. Now I haven’t really had much of a chance to look at its features, but from what I see, it seems only to be able to add movies and photos to a DVD.

Forgive me for not actually having tried burning anything with Windows DVD Maker, but it seems only to be a tool which plugs into Windows Movie Maker and Photo Gallery to burn things onto DVD. Unlike the name suggest, DVD burning functionality for normal files is built into Windows Explorer.

A word of warning: DVD Maker won’t run without 64 MB of video memory, so basically if you’re not running Aero, you’re unlikely to be able to use it at all. Obviously, it also needs a DVD burner.

Windows Media Centre

Microsoft wants Windows in every living room. Recently, a lot of PCs specifically designed for the living room have been sold, most running Windows XP Media Centre 2005. Media Centre has evolved a lot in Windows Vista, and will be available in Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate.

Media Centre oozes polish from everywhere. When you start it up you are greeted by a very cinematic fanfare, and you jump straight into a menu which is traversible by mouse, keyboard or by one of the nifty Windows remote controls that you’ve probably seen for XP Media Centre.

If you have a compatible TV tuner, you can watch TV on Media Centre, and also record it to your hard drive for watching later. I can’t test this out, because I haven’t the hardware. I’m told that it’s awesome in Windows XP, so I’m presuming it’s just as good in Vista.

Media Centre can be run inside a window, but it is really designed for running full screen or being shown on a TV. This can be done, but again, I don’t have the facilities to test this.

Media Centre, as well as watching TV, can also play your music in your Windows Media Player library, see your Photo Gallery photos and play movies on your computer. You also have access to an online service called Spotlight that allows you to download more content, such as movie trailers and the like.

Windows Media Centre is a brilliant piece of software, but at the moment TV tuner cards compatible with it are few and far between, and the TV functionality of Media Centre I think is probably its best feature.

To be continued…

That’s it for Part 1 of this look at Bundled Applications. I’ll be back with Part 2 where I will look at the new Outlook Express, Windows Mail, Windows Movie Maker for Vista and the controversial Windows Defender.

Digg this

Does anyone actually know what the OPML editor is? I downloaded it, tried to use it to post a test post to this blog, and it didn’t work. I tried to delete it, that didn’t work, so I ended up having to edit it into something interesting. I know what OPML is (a method of transferring round structured lists of RSS feeds, in XML format). I have yet to find a sensible use for the editor though.

I’ve now managed to get Vista finally. Eventually I got it off Vista Torrent’s torrent of the download offered by Microsoft. So far they haven’t been shut down, which is good! You still have to get a licence key off Microsoft, so it’s not pirate software. I’ve only installed it on a Pentium M laptop with 512mb ram and no graphics to speak of. It works fine (albeit a little slowly) apart from the wireless drivers which haven’t been released by Intel yet.

I think Peter’s planning on writing some more reviews (?) of Vista, so stay tuned!

The BBC is reporting that MySpace have announced that they will sell their search feature to find other people on their site to one of the ‘big three’; Microsoft, Yahoo, or Google. This is possibly a very good move for them, for two reasons. Firstly, it establishes them as the ‘official’ social network, if a ‘Google People’ search has a little ‘Powered by Myspace’ button underneath it. In the social networking space, it matters hugely what network your peers use, so if you percieve one product as the market leader you are more likely to signup and use it. Thus MySpace could further secure its position at the top, becoming the market leader not only in terms of %, but also in perception.
The other advantage for MySpace is the more obvious one - driving yet more traffic to their website. The increased exposure from such a deal would definitely help them to reach people outside the 18-25 demographic, something that they are already trying to do with products such as the recently launched MySpace careers. It has become clear that they are trying to become a service where people of all ages list themselves, and a search on a big site would help them.

What’s less clear is the benefits for the search provider. The only reason that I can see for a search engine buying the right to do MySpace search would be a desire to piggy-back on the networks phenomenal success. Without actually buying MySpace the level of integration needed to successfully piggy-back would be impossible. If I were Eric Schmidt or Bill Gates, there is no way I would buy MySpace search.

Something I might do, though, is produce a general social network search. It would be very simple; identify the domains of the social networks you want to search, add in some extra operators like ’status:single’ and some semantic text analysis (which in this context would probably be quite easy) and then you would have a search engine that was as good, if not better, than one you could buy from MySpace. On a side note, Google would never buy MySpace search anyway, because they already own Orkut, which presumably they still hope will take off at some point. The same goes for Yahoo, with their ‘360′ product, and to a lesser extent with Microsoft, with their MSN/Windows Live quasi-social network with Spaces etc.