Yet another 7 days have slipped past, and that means that it is time to glance back over the whole week of Microsoft news and take another look at the gems.
If you are a regular reader of TNWmicrosoft you already know and love me saying this, but I welcome suggestions (via email: [email protected]) as to how to improve these weekly posts. The comments sent in so far have been great, thanks everyone. Now let’s get into it, shall we?
Windows 8
Windows 8 is going to be a big damn deal, and everyone knows it. Ballmer has even called it their “riskiest product bet,” and so when the news came out that Windows 8 might be a complete break from what we know and love we jumped on it like a fat kid in a doughnut shop.
Windows 8, at least according to an Italian blog, will contain a new interface called ‘Wind’ that will pack all sorts of amazing visual tools to help people interact with their computers in wholly new ways. Oh, and you are going to need a dedicated GPU to run it, in case you don’t already have one.
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What do we say? Fascinating rumor mill material that we hope is true. Read the post, it’s worth your time.
Windows Phone 7
Windows Phone 7 will not leave us alone, which Microsoft must enjoy. What happened this week? Microsoft moved up the date for developer payouts, and has streamlined their developer tools. Pandora also stated that they have no immediate plans to come to the platform, leaving audiophiles flat, alone, and in the cold. We were sorry to hear the news.
We got a big data set from Rowfeeder and took a serious look at the US launch of Windows Phone 7 which was fascinating, but Microsoft refuses to leak or detail WP7 sales numbers. The company did finally admit that they are “feeling pretty good” about sales. Make of that what you will.
Oh, and this is how copy and paste will work on your WP7 handset when it comes out.
Salesforce Eats Microsoft’s Lunch
This week’s comedy comes from the Dreamforce conference where Salesforce turned a Microsoft PR stunt back on them. Microsoft had hired a number of branded Segways to drive around in front of the conference venue and tout Microsoft products.
Their ad featured a man. That man turned out to be a friend of Salesforce’s CEO. To beat Microsoft at their own game, Benioff had the model come on stage during his keynote, and then mock-converted him to Salesforce products. Score one for the Salesforce PR team.
Why IE9 Tabs Are Terrible
The Intenet Explorer team is on a tear. Their new project, IE9, is the best version of Internet Explorer ever, period. We have all downloaded and played with it, and yet it has a glaring problem: its tabs.
In Chrome, tabs have their own full line of pixel space, and are at the very top of the window, so that they have maximum space to stretch, and you can’t ‘miss’ them by clicking above them. Tabs in IE9 are scrunched over to the right, next to the URL area, and are down a full row from the top so that they are smaller, harder to read, and harder to click on.
IE9 redesigned their tabs, but did not fix the issue. We protested.
That’s all for now, see you all next week!
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