It's amazing how Nokia has managed to keep the lid on this! I doubt it's the communicator they're launching. Has to be a more consumer-centric phone. - Bhavishya Kanjhan
Peter: I don't say "wow" lightly, but I can't say more. They did something Apple never does: trusted us with an early view of their devices the night before their big coming out party. - Robert Scoble
Robert, you're such a Tease! That's great to hear, because I just purchased a G1! :D - Daynah
Although I haven't owned a Nokia in years and love my iPhone, I really hope this is going to be the N-Series touchscreen phone. - Ben Kessler
It doesn't surprise me. Nokia has been the leader in mobile innovation for ever. They've trumped Motorola, Sony Ericsson, LG, Samsung, all with ease... Whatever tricks they're pulling out will no doubt make you froth at the mouth. Just sayin... - Enrique Gutierrez
Oh crap I've also got a friend in the US to get me the G1, I better hold that purchase till Wednesday then! - Bhavishya Kanjhan
Simon: I've already hinted way too much. I don't want to get the blogger relations team fired. It's VERY COOL that they are treating us so well and giving us such great access to their team. - Robert Scoble
Looking forward to tomorrow's announcement... Nokia is an interesting company. - karen2
Only Scoble can get you excited about something you don't want or need (iPhone user here) - James Hull
James: I took a picture of the new thing from Nokia next to an iPhone. Believe me, I'm a MAJOR iPhone fan. More later today. FriendFeed'ers will get first look at the videos and pictures I shot tonight. - Robert Scoble
until Nokia does something about the god awful user interface that is the current Symbian - the hardware is not going to make a lick of difference - ben rogers
Good. I have my fingers crossed. So long as the alarm clock still works when the phone is turned off (the single greatest feature of every Nokia :-)) I'll be a happy chap. - mattpovey
Ben: you'll want to see what they are doing there. Let's just say this isn't the same old N95 interface. - Robert Scoble
Well now I am interested, a new UI, that will be something to talk about - Brendon Wadey
For years, the American cell industry was laughed at as being so far behind the rest of the world. Then comes the iPhone, and guess who laughed, while the Nokias of the world realized how small their advantage had been, and how incremental their products truly were. Nokia is no Apple, they never have been, they don't have the chops to revolutionize. Maybe they'll impress along the lines of an XPERIA. But I don't buy hype when it comes to Nokia. - Christopher Galtenberg
UI will be Maemo or S60 Touch, or maybe.... Android? - Simon
They have alot of work to do to catch up to the iPhone and G1. Nokia has been far down my list of 'must have' phones for a while - Alistair
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Robert - if its truly different then it will be interesting to see :) - ben rogers
I'm a big Nokia fan, so I'm looking forward to whatever they have to offer. I've decided the iPhone just isn't for me (although it's dead sexy) and the T-Mobile G1 is an obvious Gen1 device. - Jason Huebel
You guys should check out the HTC phones, as in the Touch Diamond, very nice interface and phone. - Brendon Wadey
Might be a new internet tablet running on Linux... - yannick
@Christopher Galtenberg I guess that Nokia sell every day the same amount of phones that Apple sells in a year. Not to mention that modern Nokia's have better cameras, uncrippled bluetooths, better HSDPA, OLED screens (in N85)..... and FM radio! :-) - Ricardo Galli
I wonder if it is a new edition of the N95? My company markets them exclusively here in the states. We are rolling out video to video cell phone software 2Q 2009! It's a sick MMD. (Multi Media Device) - Brandi
eight hours from now, i can wait to buy my iphone. i have almost went to buy my white earpods following lisa simpson - hector juarez
I was told they crash like it's 1999 (and you're running windows 98, remember that). - Ian May
Just a clue (I don't know what it is), their guy in charge of Social strategy (yes, Nokia has one of those - a clue in and of itself) was at the Palo Alto Facebook Developers Garage a couple months ago. - Jesse Stay
Did they put the folding screen idea to use? - James
Now I'm getting interested. Unforunately there is always a lag before we get new mobile tech out here in NZ anyway (very frustrating) - Alistair
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I'll only take it seriously if they do NOT use the term 'iPhone killer'. - Andrew Leyden
I'm guessing Flash with a good data environment. - Floyd Davenport
Andrew: it's not an iPhone killer. :-) - Robert Scoble
That surprises me--Chrome is fast and fairly compatible. For that reason, it shines is as a surfing browser (I always have Firefox open as well, for the toolbar.) - Robert Linthicum
Flash, who cares. What I really want on the iPhone is to be able to take video. So what about it Qik, is Scoble the only one to get it so far. - Grant Griffiths
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Grant: Qik isn't the one to ask about video on iPhone. That's AT&T and Apple. - Robert Scoble
Personally I think it is an integral part of the web experience therefore should be there. The reality is that it is not developed yet so it doesn't matter. Jailbroken phones most likely will get it if anyone. - Gabe Boisvert
I'm with Zee... Flash drives me nuts too. If your site is useless without Flash, you're doing it wrong. Flash certainly isn't required for video. YouTube has proven that. - Logical Extremes
Logical, I'm sure youtube uses a Flash based player. Flash is also far more established than some web technologies, and I'd like to see people try deliver effective multimedia solutions online without it. - Mo Kargas
Author sez "don't check your email for the first hour you're at work. Instead, immediately tackle a high-priority task" Not sure if I can kick this habit. I check my mail in bed when the iPhone alarm wakes me. - Steve Rubel
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I think I'll have to agree with him, although, I too would have a hard time not checking my email in the morning... - Danielle Closs
Then the boss says "Did you get my email about not doing that High-Priority Task I sent you last night?" - L0GiX
I tried it and actually got a lot more productive but then I travelled a bit and got out of the habit, but if you have the discipline, it does work. - Sally Church
Managing things by putting them off may not be the most effective approach, nor will it get at the root of the issue - Jeff McNeill
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I've realized that I get derailed as soon as I check the email. Best if I wait until 9 or 10 am to check it. - Sandra Fernandez
I try to get one task out of the way first thing but it's hard...I always feel like I'm missing something important - Al Stevens
Automatic mail sorting is important. Don't let anything end up in your inbox unless it's important. Everything else should be tagged and read later. (some tags I only deal with once a week or even less often) - April Russo
Tim Ferriss also gives this advice in his book! - Loic Le Meur
oh yeah, THAT would really fly with my co-workers - Jeff Woelker
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I was allowed to install Mozilla Thunderbird in my office, so I star everything that needs immediate assistance. - Helen Sventitsky
sure and I'm going to start working without two espressos too - Trevor Cook
i tend to do this: dont check feeds or social sites before 11. Check email for any urgent stuff, flag all the others by type/context (Outlook flags) for review after 11 or after lunch. Push to get meetings set between 3 and 5. Dont always succeed, but 8 to 11 are prime hours for me. I am working or spending time in 1:1 or small meetings with the team, only on things that matters i.e. is about actionable things that are on the current plan. Most people have learned to adapt. - Joelle Nebbe
I often don't check my email for days, does that count? ;-) - Duncan Riley
They might as well tell me not to drink a cup of coffee before starting work. Or to not check Twitter, FriendFeed and NewsJunk. Where were they 30 years ago when I was forming all these habits! You know how hard it was to quit smoking! That's enough quitting for one lifetime. :-) - Dave Winer
completely agree. My strategy is to check mails after putting 2-3 of work. Some of my friends do other way around. They clear mail box early in the morning in one hr and than come back to it only after lunch... - sameer guglani
+1 Dave. We teach people how to treat us. When returning or taking calls it's typical to hear "Did you get my email?" or making references to email with lines like "What do you think?" The assumption is emails are being read if not upon receipt then soon after. - Dave Martin
Couldn't agree with author more. So I have multiple rules and filters in Outlook plus whitelists, means I rarely visit inbox but know who I need/want to pay attention to, and when. It all fits with my regimen for email on my terms. Another thing: I don''t do mobile email so no Blackberry/iPhone/whatever. - Neville Hobson
This works if your work culture is in sync with the philosophy. I am expected to have my face in Outlook about a hundred times a day. Since I haven't been able to change that expectation, I have to live under it. - Robert Linthicum
I don't check my email all the time, only once every few hours, unless something very pressing is going on. It also helps to move clients and colleagues on to Wikis or other collaborative platforms and reduce email. I try to get at least one priority task out of the way in the morning before answering my email, at least, even if there are days when I need to read it early in the day. - Cathryn Hrudicka
The Zune is a very nice device and my preferred media player. - John Denver
I bet the standalone zune is discontinued within a year. - Chris White
See what I mean. This is about getting Microsoft noticed by budget concious consumers. "yeah you can still have a great music player, cheaper" - Roberto Bonini
To stay relevant, Zune would first have to *be* relevant. - Pat Rice
What about us here in the UK. Netflix is a US only movie thing. Whats going to happen when we update to the NXE, what so we get in its place? Lovefilm? As far as i know they dont do streaming movies.. - Simon Wicks
lucky I have a US credit card and mailing address. ;) - Jon Price
Yeah, but it would be a lot cooler if it actually offered some movies worth watching. All the good stuff is unavailable! - IAmGHOSTBLOGGER.com-BradW
tried it last night, works great. DVDs will soon be obsolete. - John Sirman
UK is a top priority for the Xbox team. Hang tight! - Ryan
This is a game-changer, IMO. I've switched from Blockbuster Online to Netflix primarily for this feature. And it does work great, with the only slight drawback being having to populate your Watch Instantly queue via the web site. - Craig Eddy
... and in those 12,000 movies there are lots of independent and Netflix-only films - stuff you won't see anywhere else. With unlimited viewing, users are much more likely to check out unfamiliar movies and discover new things. Love it. - John Sirman
I watched my first one last night. sooooooo happy! - David Cook
My kids downloaded the update last night I poked around with it a little. I really like not only the NetFlix feature but also the community building it's attempting to grow. Plus I can get HD movies delivered straight to my HD TV. Not bad. - Al Stevens
This would seem to be first step towards having the government regulate the content of the Internet. While one may argue the govt. already does this, the government focuses on what's considered illegal content such as various forms of pornography and "stolen" copywrighted materials. This regulation would seem to cover all of the content on the Internet. - Edmundo
Edmundo -- it's the old fight. Someone is going to control content. And it will either be the companies providing connections, that will produce a situation similar to the hell of cable, or the gov't allowing open access that spurs innovation and progress like what we've already seen. I'd like to see an example where allowing companies to handle regulation ala their vision of the 'Net has worked. - Woodrow Jarvis Hill
@woodrow, it's my understanding that a lot of it is that the cost of content is being pushed back onto carriers versus the content creators, in terms of bandwidth, back end service, etc. - is this accurate? I had heard some of this was about carriers getting stiffed for the giant content demands that consumers aren't paying for.... I have no idea, but would love to hear more. - Patricia
@Patricia -- in essence, that is true. But it's been true for every medium of communications known to man that's been "open" for general use. It's very roughly analogous, as well, to having gov't-owned roads over a toll/corporate system. The carriers can raise prices to subsidize the additional content, and since no one carrier has a monopoly (except regionally), the system will encourage actual free-market competition, rather than de-facto content monopoly like AOL and Compuserve used to do. - Woodrow Jarvis Hill
"Bayesian inference is statistical inference in which evidence or observations are used to update or to newly infer the probability that a hypothesis may be true. The name "Bayesian" comes from the frequent use of Bayes' theorem in the inference process." -Wikipedia - DeWitt Clinton
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Shame the article doesn't include a picture of the Rev'd Thomas Bayes - j1m
The "From which bowl is the cookie?" section is as lucid an explanation of the process as you'll find anywhere. It concludes, "before we observed the cookie, the probability we assigned for Fred having chosen bowl #1 was the prior probability, P(H1), which was 0.5. After observing the cookie, we must revise the probability to P(H1 | E), which is 0.6." - DeWitt Clinton
Wikipedia articles on math and science are really impressive these days. The medical false positive example is the one I usually see cited to explain the concept, and frankly, I don't think it makes nearly as much intuitive sense as the simple cookie example. - DeWitt Clinton
I predict a massive backlash against online media being "green" (which is as much of a myth as food miles and "carbon neutral") once people figure out that it's massively costly and not carbon neutral beyond the point of purchase for the duration of its lifecycle. Unlike a book which (unless you burn it) has no further direct environmental impact beyond its point of production. - Alex Murray
I will buy books until they are no longer printed, and while their print runs may get smaller, I don't see them ending in my lifetime; furthermore, I could see myself buying books that I read and enjoyed electronically, just as I often buy books that I originally read at the library. - RAPatton
@Alex sure, but I suspect E=mc^2 says that book could support transmission of that book to every human on earth, once a second, for the next 1000 years. Of course that sort of "book burning" probably isn't green either, and will lead to the universe imploding or something nasty like that, but whatever. - Wade Dorrell
@Steve: Just a correction. The Christian Science isn't going to be entirely online. Effective April 2009, it will no longer have a daily print edition, but it will print a Sunday edition (magazine style, I think). That's not to say that weekly print edition won't eventually go away, too, but that's not happening yet. - Bryan Person
"There is also a pilot program you can sign up for that allows you "to incorporate advertisements seamlessly into your results pages," and a new "100% OpenSearch compliant RSS format." - DeWitt Clinton
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I'll have lots more to say about this soon of course. Expect a blog post tomorrow. - DeWitt Clinton
The documentation at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-u... has tons of detail about the new XML and JSON formats, but I can't find any information about OpenSearch support, neither in the docs nor in the feeds themselves. The OpenSearch announcement may have jumped the gun. I'm asking around. - DeWitt Clinton
“Just realized that you can hack anyone's bit.ly link. Just type info/ in between bit.ly/ and the ext. Try it with Marshall's RWW link http://bit.ly/oUZm = http://bit.ly/info/oUZm. You get a glimpse into how much traffic they're driving to a post using Twitter, FF, etc.”
Yup. Do the ends justify the means? I don;t think so. Google has no right to mine (or rape) my search queries for identifiable data, no matter what they do with the date. It's mine and I say they can't have it. - RudĩϐЯaЯïaȵ
Sometimes I wish Google had an "Opt out" option in google account settings to prevent my data from being used frivolously. Preferrably that they didn't store it in the first place. - Daniel Bruce
If they are correlating my search to info they are sucking off my browser or my IP address, they are pulling individually identifiable info. How else do they know where my search is taking place? - RudĩϐЯaЯïaȵ
Does that just opt out of collecting identifiable data, or all data? I'd rather not any of my data be retained, even if it's scrubbed for identifiable data. =) - Daniel Bruce
dude, are you THE Obasanjo?! The one who confronted Arrington and lived to tell the tale?! I can't believe I never saw you before here! Sub'd! - Mohomed=genieyclo
Well, personally I'd prefer that no data was retained in the first place, no matter who it is, but as said, if you have an account, and you are logged in, there could be an option to opt out of collecting data (such as searches and what have you). However, I'm not really all that militant about it :) - Daniel Bruce
And before it all gets lost in the void of time, it IS a very nice service though, even though it's a little Big Brother-y. ;) Would be nice if it were available for other countries as well. - Daniel Bruce
Well flu vaccine is one of those things that often has a *constrained supply* -- for various reasons, it's impossible for everyone to get a flu shot, so doctors, medical associations and public health officials have to figure out who gets one and who doesn't -- e.g. "high-risk" populations (elderly or immunocompromised people) and health care personnel. - Karim
What happens if people start gaming Google by searching on "flu symptoms" in the hopes it will motivate public health officials to send scarce supplies of vaccine to their geographic vicinity...? What happens if that kind of gaming is automated, with spoofed IP addresses? - Karim
Karim just blew my mind on a number of fronts. Nice work, Karim. - Wade Dorrell
Of all the things to worry about, this is not one of them. Btw, have you all heard of Google Trends? - Paul Buchheit
I don't know if there's a name for it or if it already exists -- don't know much about SEO blackhattery but I thought "reverse googlebomb" was trying to undo a googlebomb -- e.g. having "miserable failure" link somewhere *other* than George W. Bush -- but my understanding is that googlebombs don't work as well as they used to anyway, as Google can now spot link swarms that develop over short periods of time. - Karim
If it needs a name... hmmm how about something off of Munchausen (Goohausen? Munchaugle?) because Munchausen's Syndrome is when you fake having illness to get attention. :-) Likewise you could riff off of "hypochondria" or "hypochondriasis," but doctors already use "cyberchondria" to describe people who spend too much time looking up illnesses on the internet :-D - Karim
Paul, I'm not sure what the antecedent to "this" is -- we shouldn't worry about Google collecting aggregate, non-personally-identifying data? Or gaming the system? Or getting the flu? :-D - Karim
The former Karim. The notion that tracking the aggregate search volume is somehow harmful is absurd. - Paul Buchheit
gaming the system? Srsly? what if someone owned a media company and decided to foist a personal political agenda into the mainstream? what if a newspaper tycoon thought ginning up excitement for a small war would increase sales of his papers? what if a gov't decided to monitor the movement of it's citizens and search for troublemakers. yeah, Google is so scary. - MikeAmundsen
Paul, I generally agree it's absurd, though I think some consideration needs to be given to *what* is tracked and what the level of anonymity is (i.e. how granular is the geolocation). Sure, today we might be talking about influenza and ZIP codes, but if one day Google tells me (for example) that 50% of the people living in your *block* are currently puking their guts out with norovirus, or Ebola, I *guarantee* that's going to lower the attendance at your BBQ. :-D - Karim
In fact, I *expect* Google Calendar at that point to find the BBQ on my calendar, realize it's in your block, correlate that with the Ebola and then suggest that I don't attend. lol - Karim
Mike, just saying that people have "gamed the system" many times in the past, so why should we care, isn't particularly comforting. The examples you gave are all of *rich* people gaming the system. Society is used to that. Google has the potential of lowering the bar so that some script kiddie sitting in his parents' basement can game the system, possibly to the point where it affects who gets flu shots and who *dies of the flu.* I don't think society is prepared for that one... - Karim
Eh. No one is putting a gun to your head to use Google. You query, you expose yourself. - Victor Ganata
@Karim: i understand your point. you're not worried that data is used or abused as it often has been and will be. your point is that it's now easier to use/abuse the data and that Google is part of that. you're concerned that more harm can result since more opportunity exists to use/abuse the data, right? - MikeAmundsen
actually, Victor, it seems like the implication here is, "you DON'T query, you DON'T expose yourself, your community DOESN'T get medicine." seems like a pretty strong incentive to me. Google or die. lol - Karim
Mike, yes, basically -- there's always going to be people gaming the system -- if you have enough money, you'll always be able to get a flu shot -- but since there are *relatively* few rich people, there's *relatively* little gaming. Of course, letting everyone game the system is more democratic -- why should the rich have all the fun? -- but if everyone cheats, the system is in danger of collapse. It's just clans and warlords at that point -- federate with us and you'll get flu vaccine! - Karim
Obviously I'm just playing devil's advocate here, because it seems like the Interwebs have made mistakes like this before, and I'm hoping someone will say that they only use non-spoofed IPv6 addresses, or they only count single queries from logged-in Google accounts -- something that indicates they are thinking about the potential for misuse instead of the usual "Isn't this COOL?" and then figuring out it was abused later. - Karim
because if this has potential to *save* lives -- which it might -- it also has the potential to end them prematurely. - Karim
Yeah, I don't know the technical details of how Google scrubs their data, but it seems no more and no less nefarious as the practice of basic epidemiology. After all, how do you think the CDC gathers their data? All of those flu cases obviously have names, ages, and locations attached to them, too. - Victor Ganata
The difference between the Google system and current epidemiology is that Google relies on *self-reporting.* Currently, a *doctor* tells the CDC you have the flu. If you knew that going to google.com and clicking on "I'm Feeling Nauseous" would affect how much medicine your community received, don't you think you might be tempted to click on it, especially if flu vaccine became scarce, as it so often does? - Karim
A Google employee, Niniane Wang, demonstrated conclusively that a lot of the talk about "anonymized" logs is just pure B.S., and people like Greg Linden have shown that it's possible to identify people even from aggregate data. So I think some of the Google apologists here are being a bit too partisan. But in this specific case, I think it's perfectly legitimate (and even honorable) to mine the data in aggregate. - Joshua Allen
But that's the thing. For same reason why it's hard (but not impossible) to game your doctor, and why it's harder to still to game an epidemiologist, I think it would be hard to game Google. It certainly won't be a single variable that they're analyzing, and it's a lot easier to spot a vociferous faker, than someone who is quietly trying to hide their symptoms. - Victor Ganata
The real gripe I have with this and similar aggregate mining exercises is that this data belongs to the public. Any aggregate data like this which is computed on the backs of the public should be made freely available to the public. I don't care about data like PageRank -- that's perfectly reasonable to remain proprietary. But the idea that Google should own the rights to important public information, derived from our activities, is morally unconscionable. - Joshua Allen
And while the CDC utilizes self-reporting for the flu (although this is actually changing), for things like West Nile, Strep throat, and gonorrhea, it's a lot less voluntary. In essence, if you visit your doctor, you invite the possibility that your identifying data will be transmitted to the CDC (not to mention to the health insurance companies, but I digress.) - Victor Ganata
Victor, I think it's far easier to game Google than game a doctor. It is *far* easier to pretend to be multiple user agents and IP addresses on the Internet than it is for you to convince your doctor that you are really [insert arbitrarily large number] different people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O... - Karim
Karim, I agree with your point about anonymity and the ease of creating bots. But it would have to be done pretty expertly, to mimic a normal pattern of queries. Without knowing what a normal pattern looks like, how do you mimic it? - Victor Ganata
Victor, hmm, well, I suppose Google might not divulge the search terms they are using, but I'm not sure how "expert" you have to be "to mimic a normal pattern of queries." The problem here is thinking like the average I.Q. 100 person who uses Google, which, on the Difficulty Scale, ranks quite a bit lower than solving the Goldbach conjecture. :-D - Karim
guessing people type in things like "flu" and "flu symptoms" and "cold or flu." The reason why googlebombs don't work like they used to is that Google can spot too much activity over too short a period of time from too few sources. Just theorizing here, but if it's sufficiently *slow*, from sufficiently *many* addresses, it probably does a passable job at a search-specific Turing Test (i.e. bot searches that are indistinguishable from human) - Karim
There could be subtle patterns of course -- maybe people search on "flu" for a few minutes, then go away and search an hour later on "chicken soup recipes" -- but given that you are trying to emulate what normal, average, everyday people do, it doesn't seem like an insurmountable problem... - Karim
Crazy thought: if you don't want your data mined by Google, don't use Google. Chances are MS will do the same thing to less effect on Live Search, or that Yahoo will do it ... but hey, vote with your feet. - Clay Newton
Seriously, if you don't want to be exposed, don't expose yourself. In any case, if you're an American, your data is being mined by the government anyway. - Victor Ganata
We're so used to thinking of these things in terms of privacy -- "spying on users," as Dare put it -- that I think the kneejerk reaction is to say "don't share the information with Google if you don't want them to have it." But it's aggregate data -- I don't think *privacy* is the most important concern here. - Karim
The concern is that search queries are being used to determine who gets supplies of scarce, potentially life-saving medicine. i.e. *potentially* speaking, who lives and who dies. Dropping dead is a slightly more serious problem than having your privacy violated. - Karim
Karim, I think vaccination is a bad example of that kind of abuse, though. If there's an outbreak somewhere, vaccination isn't going to be the main life-saving intervention. So there aren't going to be major diversions of scarce flu vaccines because someone launched a botnet against Google. - Victor Ganata
I could see the concern if we were talking about, say, anthrax, but only if for some bizarre reason penicillin became scarce. I just need a better example for me to feel concerned that this type of abuse would actually cost lives. - Victor Ganata
If we start talking about West Nile or ebola, well, there is no cure for these things, the only thing you can do is quarantine. I suppose that would be concerning, if somehow a botnet were able to convince people to not visit, for example, NYC because ebola was running rampant when in fact it wasn't. But then you would think Google would be a little more responsible than letting their automated services talk to the press without being filtered by a human. - Victor Ganata
36,000 people die from influenza each year in the US alone (http://www.usmedicine.com/dail...). It's not clear what percentage of deaths are directly or indirectly attributable to decisions about the distribution of vaccine, but there isn't enough vaccine for everyone. - Karim
I'm sure it's a complex process for public health agencies to decide who needs a vaccination -- the supply varies each year with the strain, sometimes supplies go bad, etc. -- but it seems possible that the CDC might say, "Based on our Google data, we had 10 X more illness in this region than we expected, therefore next year we should send more vaccine to these people." If that means someone else *can't* get a flu shot, you could theoretically be making life-and-death decisions on search engine queries. - Karim
36,000 deaths probably doesn't sound like a lot. unless you were one of the 36,000 people killed that year by the flu, in which case it probably seems significant :-D - Karim
this was an awesome post...I've had some advance knowledge of some of the stuff announced at PDC, other stuff was a surprise to me, too, but these are some of the reasons why I really believe that msft does NOT suck. Will Azure etc be successful? who knows? the company just took one of the biggest risks ever...but this may be what it takes to get enterprise to move to the cloud...and that is a HUGE shift for the tech industry. Also, web-based msft office? heck yeah!! did you see that it's going to be CTP by year-end...that's like next month!!! I can't wait! - Sarah Perez
web-based anything with comcast and verizon shouting about throttling and caps and where are we left? - Gregory Lent
A good post. I think if you are an ISV of Microsoft, there will be lot of opportunities for innovation as well. It is unfortunate that many of Microsoft's innovations go un-noticed. I am biased since we were one of the ISVs benefitted from the VB component market a decade ago. - Dorai
I still remember the Bill Clinton advance team telling me it doesn't matter what the candidate says, it matters how he looks. This is an interesting analysis of the visuals on screen. I thought they were stunningly bad, too. - Robert Scoble
Those solid Blue & Green screens make him look like he's in a studio, and leaves him wide open for people to drop in other scenes. - Victor Ryden
The horrible backdrops are the number one thing I remember from the speech, but I haven't seen it discussed enough elsewhere. This post does a nice job of summing it up, I think. - TreJack
They stunk. I thought the Academy Awards look of the DNC was over the top, but I would have preferred that any day to solid green. Ick! - Jim Ierley
I listened to the beginning of McCain's speech on radio (then had to go to a 7:30 meeting), so I didn't see the visuals, but I saw a lot of FriendFeed/Twitter puzzlement. - Ontario Emperor
