As reported by InfoWorld it appears as if someone in the Zune team is having a bit of joke by setting up an amnesty bin for team member’s to deposit their iPods! This image was posted on flickr supposedly taken at Zune HQ. The bin’s probably a bit of a joke as Matt Rosoff, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, points out
“Most of the people [working on] Zune would want to have an iPod to keep track of the competition,” he said. “On that team, they’re all into digital music, so all of them probably have a bunch of players.”
It seems that Bungie and Microsoft had a few issues with their limited beta for Halo 3 last week. According to 1up,
5:00 a.m. on that appointed date came and went, though, and the beta didn’t launch for Crackdown owners. It wasn’t until some 14 hours later — 7:00 p.m. PST — that Microsoft issued a patch for Crackdown…yes, Crackdown. There wasn’t an issue with the beta — Halo 3 downloaded and played fine for press and those involved in the Friends and Family program — so how did Microsoft’s biggest promotion of 2007 blow up in its face after months of hype?
After a lot of finger pointing Microsoft fessed up that the issue was with Xbox Live.
“This is the first time that we’ve tried to interface downloading of a beta through Xbox LIVE with a previously-shipped game. It’s a complicated process, made even more significant by the huge interest in this beta,” said the company [Microsoft] in a statement.
Given all the effort (hype?) that has gone into marketing this launch which is after all just a beta release and a limited one at that, you think Microsoft would have thoroughly tested the process. You get the feeling the first user to download the beta was the VERY first person to download it. People had taken time off work and school to be some of the first to play test this beta so the lack of QA by Bungie and Microsoft is pitiful. Hopefully a bit more effort will be put into the final release - the marketing machine has already stepped up a gear with this press release announcing the launch date of September 25th.
For those of us who weren’t involved in the beta screw-up, err, test here’s a great Halo video with a smattering of Alien vs Predator to feed our Halo need.
Despite the eagerly anticipated release of Halo 3 not being until towards the end of the year, just in time for the Christmas present shopping season, Microsoft arranged for a sneak preview for invite-only gamers. The lucky group got to presumably play a version similar to the public beta version out on Wednesday.
However the game got mixed reviews from the group with the graphics receiving particular negative feedback. Nick Puleo, editor at Evilavatar.com, said,
The graphics can use some work…They’re not much different than the previous Halo.
Despite any misgivings the group may have about the game, we’re sure it’ll still sell like the proverbial hot cake come release time. It’ll be interesting to see what the responses are during the beta test too. Anyway to keep you Halo freaks happy (that’ll be us too!) here’s a video of a leaked beta of the game.
Russian authorities originally charged school teacher, Alexander Ponosov, with installing pirated versions of Microsoft Office and Windows on PCs at the school where he taught. The case was thrown out of court after the court said Ponosov’s actions were “insignificant”. Posonov had claimed the PCs had come with the pirated software pre-installed by sub-contractors.
In a bizarre twist Ponosov has ended up being fined US$200 (about half a month’s salary or a crate of Stolichnaya) after he joined prosecutors who lodged an appeal after the first case was dropped. The appeal led to Ponosov’s retrial and subsequent guilty verdict and fine. Bet he wishes he’d kept quiet now. But no, he does plan to appeal again. Just keep on digging mate, keep on digging.
However the story sounds a bit fishy to us? How come there’s no reports of the authorities pursuing the ‘sub-contractors’ that Ponosov bought the PCs from? Also Russia is on an American ‘watch list’ regarding copyright protection, perhaps the Russian authorities think that Posonov’s conviction will satisfy the Americans? It just smacks of a political manoeuvre by Russia in its effort to join the World Trade Organisation. What do you think?
No, neither of the merger names really work, but despite this Microsoft and Yahoo are again looking at a merger. According to the New York Post Microsoft had made an offer for Yahoo a few months ago which had been rejected but it looks as if Microsoft have made yet another more vigorous offer this week. Yahoo’s share price reacted appropriately to the rumors, ending Friday at around $31 an increase of 10% for the day. Yahoo’s price tag was a mere $50 billion at the end of trading.
Ever since Google purchased DoubleClick Microsoft has been under pressure to increase it’s own web advertising presence. Purchasing Yahoo would achieve that goal, although it would not make much difference to Google’s search domination. We’re certain that it would take more than a merger of the competition to worry the guys at the plex.
A lot of the media reports stated that the merger would not happen due to the diversity in the culture of the staff. We’ve never noticed that being a problem before with any mergers we’ve been a part of. There’s always a bigger partner whose culture slowly infiltrates the smaller.
With this merger it’s just a question of how much Microsoft want this, will they stump up the cash? And if Bill opens up his wallet Yahoo may not get to play much part in the joint role.
Would a MS-Yahoo merger be a good thing, could it spell the end of Google’s domination? Let us know your thoughts.
The change from XP to Vista wasn’t as sudden as most would have expected. Despite the craze that has surrounded Microsoft’s newest product, not everybody was ready to drop their former operating system (namely Windows XP, because I doubt many Mac or Linux users made the change) and switch to Vista. Read the rest of this entry »
ZenZui is the latest Web browser from Microsoft. The Redmond Company has announced yesterday the launch of ZenZui as an independent company focused on innovating Web content consumption and interaction via mobile devices.
I know, it sounds a bit weird, but its user interface uses a technology 100% developed and patented by Microsoft.
Conceived in the research lab by experts in human-computer interaction and data visualization, and refined over three years of development, ZenZui represents an entirely new way to discover and consume the mobile web. With ZenZui, your phone screen is a portal into your own customized Zoomspace, an information landscape of personalized, cached content in the form of Tiles that directly reflect your lifestyle. Using a single thumb, you fly in and out of your Zoomspace – two simple taps get you directly to any Tile. Through some clever engineering, we constantly refresh your Tiles in the background, so they’re always fresh, available, and ready to be Zoomed.
New phones launch every week, with a wild diversity of screen resolutions, input hardware, and orientation. They took this into consideration when they built the ZenZui adaptive rendering platform, which enables your tiles to work on a wide array of mobile devices and platforms, all with a consistent, intuitive, and gorgeous user interface.
Mobile browsing no longer needs to be a slow and painful experience. ZenZui: Choose your Tiles. Stop Surfing. Start Zooming.
Here’s an interesting video that proves ZenZui’s functionality. Also, Here‘s a small introductory podcast where you can hear from ZenZui’s founders about the project’s inspiration and genesis. Born out of years of mobile user interface research, ZenZui is a new kind of mobile media company and development studio. This Podcast will walk you through the adventure of bringing ZenZui to life.
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As reported by InfoWorld it appears as if someone in the Zune team is having a bit of joke by setting up an amnesty bin for team member’s to deposit their iPods! This image was posted on flickr supposedly taken at Zune HQ. The bin’s probably a bit of a joke as Matt Rosoff, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, points out
In a bizarre twist Ponosov has ended up being fined US$200 (about half a month’s salary or a crate of Stolichnaya) after he joined prosecutors who lodged an appeal after the first case was dropped. The appeal led to Ponosov’s retrial and subsequent guilty verdict and fine. Bet he wishes he’d kept quiet now. But no, he does plan to appeal again. Just keep on digging mate, keep on digging.
