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Posts Tagged ‘microsoft’

Flash: I’m not dead yet!

1 May 2010

I’m getting a little tired of this topic. I was tired of it about a day after Steve Jobs first showed the iPad to the world, and the infamous blue LEGO appeared where a Flash plug-in should have been. It wasn’t really so much a shock to the world — Apple had been denying Flash applications on their iPod/iPhone platform all along. But this seemed to start off a little maelstrom the likes of which I haven’t read since people argued over on which end to start eating a hard-boiled egg.

The events of the last few weeks have been extremely tiresome to say the least. Far too many people and groups have been prognosticating the future of personal computing, and there’s been far too little in doses of reality. The future is coming, but it’s not coming nearly as quickly as everyone thinks it is, and rushing to meet the future will likely only harm the present. A little rational thought would be appreciated.

Okay, let’s address the elephant in the room, first. Steve Jobs hates Flash. There, I’ve said it. Now let’s move on.

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Make April 1 “IE6 Dies” Day

1 Feb 2010

At the moment, IE6 still holds about 20% of the market (according to today’s metrics from NetMarketShare). That’s far too large a share for a 8.5 year old browser, especially one that has been superseded by successive releases of its own code by two versions. It’s far too much for a browser that costs too much to support, and despite several service packs still bears significant security issues. It continues to haunt the internet, acting like a lazy bouncer allowing the seediest of activities to go on unchecked.

I propose April 1st be “IE6 Dies” Day. It’s time that IE6 be shown the door. But we’ll need help.

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Greed kills innovation

24 Jan 2010

I was sitting at my kitchen table, poring over recommendations I’m writing for my client (partially communicative, partially CYA), when I had one of those sudden thoughts: I need tea. While I was drinking my tea — a pomegranate green tea, if you must know — I had one of those epiphanal moments when something becomes radically clear.

Greed kills innovation.

It’s short, it’s simple, it’s sure to raise the ire of a lot of people, but it’s also a major problem we’re seeing lately, especially in internet technologies. It’s a problem that’s dogged humanity for generations. And it’s getting worse.

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You can’t kill IE6

5 Aug 2009

There’s been a massive upswelling of support for eliminating Internet Explorer 6 (IE6), the much-maligned former-heavyweight and former-saviour of the world that now lies as one of the worst pieces of web browsing software in common use. It started more grass roots, but now includes such fan-favourites as YouTube, Digg, and a whack of other Web 2.0 firms.

The hope, particularly around the web development world, is that this upswelling will finally put nails in the coffin of IE6 and eliminate the bugger from the software world, thus heralding in a new era of (near-)web standards.

There’s only one problem: Web 2.0 companies don’t mean jack to Corporate America.

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The “Power” of Word in Outlook

24 Jun 2009

You may have come across a URL for a webpage that is (effectively) building a petition to Microsoft to correct HTML support in Outlook — and if you haven’t, just click on the link. The petition’s purpose is quite simple: Please, Dear Microsoft, replace the HTML rendering present in Microsoft Outlook 2010 with something better.

Microsoft, to their credit, has seen this petition and has authored their own response: The Power of Word in Outlook. The sad reality is that, even though written by William Kennedy, Corporate Vice President, Office Communications and Forms Team, that team has completely missed the point of the petition.

And it raises the question: Why is Microsoft — yet again — refusing to listen to the people who know best? Not the developers of a system, but its users.

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I (heart) Google Chrome

2 Sep 2008

Not 45 minutes ago, Google released their latest contribution to the internet: Chrome. This effectively ended years of speculation that Google was writing a browser, that it would throw its hat into the ring and kick off another heated browser war.

Figures that Google wouldn’t just drop a bomb, it would lay waste to the expectations of a browser. My hat is off to the Chrome development team — you guys pulled off a doozy.

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Web 2.0 Expo: Wednesday morning keynotes

24 Apr 2008

Unlike other conferences I’ve been to, they seem to have a lot of keynotes. Strikes me as a little odd. The only real person who do a “true” keynote would be O’Reilly, since he coined this term in the first place. He did that yesterday, and didn’t really say anything different (at least from what I’ve read).

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Web 2.0 Expo: Building Next Generation Web 2.0 Applications

22 Apr 2008

In the afternoon session today, I’m going to learn what it’ll take to build the next generation of apps. I’m curious to see what they’ve got to say.

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Why I pick on Microsoft

28 Mar 2008

You’ve probably noticed a few posts about Microsoft on this site. Most of them are rants. And, indeed, there are those who’ve noticed me picking on Microsoft on Experience Matters as well. (Certainly, Neil‘s noticed it and taken me to task on that.)

But I don’t do it for the sake of doing it. Ranting (bitching, complaining, whatever you want to call it) is pointless without reason. And it’s only with a bit of retrospect that I’ve come to the root of my problem with Microsoft.

In short, Microsoft doesn’t suck. But it could be a whole lot better.

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To Mac or not to Mac?

28 Feb 2008

So recently, I went on a little experiment. I’m an Apple fan-boy, I admit it. I love Apple stuff. I want a Mac. I want to be one of those cool people. I have a Dell. It’s very business-oriented. It’s not fancy. It has no built-in camera or aluminium case.

And it runs Microsoft Windows.

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