Gizmodo had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Microsoft himself (Bill Gates) at the CES trade show. In this clip Bill discusses the strengths, weaknesses, and general differences between Microsoft and Apple.

Raving fanboys of either company may be taken slightly off guard by the clip. Bill gives props to both his own company and bitter rival Apple.

In truth, both companies are responsible for some amazing products, and any true nerd knows this, including Mr. Gates.

Poor Microsoft. They’re so desperate to get a better grip on the search market that they’re paying people to use their engine. It’s called the Live Search Trial Program. Yup – Microsoft’s new big bad search strategy isn’t a new algorithm or a better user interface. Instead, Microsoft is bribing you with prizes.

Nice try, Microsoft. I might have given your engine a little love just to win a prize, but I can’t even figure out how to participate in the program. Do I have to be a Hotmail user?

I’d rather try Blingo, powered by Google’s search engine (although Google’s universal search features are somewhat depreciated in Blingo’s interface). For 25 searches a day, you are automatically entered to win a prize on Blingo. When you refer your friends, any prize they win, you win as well.

Feel free to be one of my friends….

Many have suggested, and I agree, the iPhone is bad for web developers. Travel back in time with me to 1997. Microsoft releases a relatively competitive browser, for free, that can render standards based websites well.

With the help of Microsoft’s excellent marketing, the new browser quickly became a hot platform to develop for. However, some features developers were utilizing were specific to IE, and broke compatibility with other browsers.

Today a similar situation is brewing with Safari 3 and the iPhone. Although the iPhone is supposed to render standard sites well, many iPhone-only sites are popping up.

Thus, the suffering of web developers everywhere continues…

Over the weekend, I did a couple of things with big enterprisey companies which have big enterprisey applications for consumers to, er, use. I purchased a computer from the online Dell outlet, sought support from Microsoft, slogged through insurance forms on State Farm’s site, and, oh right–paid my iPhone bill. Warning: I rarely sound so whiny as when I’m criticizing the interfaces of companies who should know better. Read the rest of this entry »

I use a tablet PC - an IBM X41 for most of my computing. I was running Windows XP for Tablets, but recently upgraded to Vista mainly because I had heard that the handwriting recognition was really good.

It is eerily accurate - with no training, out of the box it converts my scrawls to perfect type face 99.99% of the time. I haven’t had to correct it at all this week. For kicks I wrote this sentence with a pen. Pretty good, huh? I bet you can’t even tell the difference….

On a side note but not entirely unrelated - I like the upgrade to Office 2007 mainly for the improvements made to Outlook - 1. It syncs with my iPhone (Office XP did not work). 2. The task / calendar / email integration is really tight - if you’re a fan of David Allen - you’ll definitely dig the new sidebar views and calendar / task integration in the weekly calendar view.

So as the hardcore Mac and Open Source users within ArcStone hang their heads in shame as I publicly talk about liking Vista. Do not give up all hope - as I am a fickle computer user and a big fan of using the best tool for the job.

The Seattle Post Intelligencer posted an interesting experimental article in January that compared keynote texts given by Apple’s Steve Jobs, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, and Dell’s Michael Dell using keyword clouds. I know I’m a bit behind the times, but the keyword results and lengthy discussion were interesting.

If you scan over each keyword cloud, each speech evokes a different “personality”. While each speech was written for a different audience, you can’t help but notice the branding through repetition.

The popular Tag Cloud site is “getting an overhaul”, but here’s another tag-cloud generator I found while surfing. Go ahead, see what your keyword frequencies are in your web page, term paper, or presidential address.
http://www.tocloud.com/

The same division within Microsoft that makes its mice and keyboards plans to launch a new interface for interacting with computers. Dubbed “Microsoft Surface” it turns your desktop into your desktop.

The surface lays flat on your desk - you no longer have the keyboard, mouse or monitor, you simply interact by touching the surface of your desk. There are some videos if you want to see it in action. They are predicting a price point between $5K and $10K.

This is a classic example of a technology created first, seeking a market second - fairly risky. Where it would be nice is when you’re in a highly interactive, collaborative environment - say working with an architect. You could move design elements around interactively - rather than huddling around a screen and fighting over the mouse.

I’m going to wait for the 3-D Microsoft Holo-Surface. I think I saw that on Star Trek once, so you know it’s gonna happen….

Microsoft has recently asserted that Open Source Software violates 235 patents, and that Linux violates 42. While those claims are highly questionable since Microsoft won’t say which patents are violated, the real question is how many patents might Microsoft be violating? The sick thing is, nobody can really find out, since Microsoft won’t share its source code, but anyone can accuse Linux of any violation arising from its source since Linux is an open, honest operating system.

Worse yet, Microsoft is already inking agreements with some of the less altruistic Linux vendors, including Novell, which as part of its deal is protected from patent lawsuits.

I will admit that it seems unlikely that legal action could arise from these so called patent violations, but if it really is just a scare tactic, it’s a really dirty trick. Hinting at legal action to either scare businesses back towards Microsoft products or towards its partners that sell lawsuit-protected versions of Linux is highly unethical and really nasty. All this serves a purpose I suppose–if their gambit fails, they’ll have egg on their face. And regardless, this whole incident makes me feel much less guilty for bashing Microsoft. They deserve it in spades.