microsoft

In the open source world, you never know who will be certifying you next. Dries Buytaert (Founder and project lead of Drupal) and I were chatting today and he pointed me to this. Microsoft and Spikesource are both certifying Drupal on their platforms.

In true open source fashion, they didn't bother to tell him. The news did.… Read more

Coca-Cola and Microsoft are the two top global brands, according to an annual ranking by BusinessWeek and branding company Interbrand. Coca-Cola has kept the No. 1 spot and Microsoft has stayed No. 2 for the last seven years.

IBM, GE and Nokia made it into the top 5. Google is climbing and has reached the 20th position; the search giant has raised its brand value 44 percent compared with last year and 45 percent since 2005, breaking into the top 20 in just two years.

The ranking, called Best Global Brands 2007, compiles a list of 100 companies worldwide, a … Read more

Microsoft clearly has serious problems with its development and distribution methodologies. Problems that open source could help. Problems that far too many entrenched interests within the company would kill before they could be given a fair chance.

That's the lesson I take from yesterday's Wall Street Journal profile of Craig Mundie. The man puts in over 200,000 miles on planes every year, desperately trying to help the company become less like itself, and more like open source software communities. Mundie describes Microsoft and his job within it thus:… Read more

Speaking in front of a group of financial analysts Thursday, Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive of Microsoft, explained that his company needs to stay focused on moving away from the desktop and focus on Web services and consumer devices. But what Ballmer did not come out and finally admit is the very products keeping Microsoft afloat are quickly becoming its albatross.

Windows and Office are the sole reasons why Microsoft has enjoyed such success over the past decade. Without Windows, the company could not have moved into all of the markets it currently maintains products in. Without Office, the company would … Read more

A thought struck me this morning: would you really want your database/application server/office productivity suite/etc. developer to also be the author of your operating system? On one level, the answer is an easy 'yes': tighter integration between the OS and the applications that run on it is a good thing.

On the other side of this coin, however, is the reality that today's integration is tomorrow's barrier to entry against all other applications. Take Microsoft, for example.

Microsoft has arguably done a very good job of encouraging third-party applications on its Windows platforms. But Microsoft has done less well once it starts to compete in a given application market against its partners. Even where the company has a financial incentive to boost the partner, it has a competing incentive to boost itself.… Read more

I've been attending the O'Reilly Open Source Conference for years and have watched an interesting thing happen. A rising number of attendees have come with Mac OS X-based laptops. In fact, throughout the tech world, you see a dramatic increase in the number of people toting Macs. Why?

The Mac, after all, is a closed platform, just as Windows is. In fact, arguably, Apple is a more proprietary company than Microsoft has ever thought of being, controlling hardware and software alike. Just look at how Apple has managed its iPhone product: developers were initially shunned, and then they were allowed to crawl onto the device through the browser (and not a community-based browser like Firefox, but rather through its own Safari).

As a die-hard Mac addict and open-source advocate myself, I was thinking this morning about why the two increasingly converge, despite all the ironies and conflicting approaches. Here's my best guess.… Read more

E3 came and went, and while another company announced a "price drop," the Internet-wide speculation of Microsoft doing the same at the big show went unmentioned.

Well it seems that these Xbox 360 price-drop suspicions were not completely unfounded; over the weekend it was discovered that multiple retailers will have the Xbox 360 premium listed at $350 beginning in early August--most likely to coincide with the release of Madden 08.

Thanks to Cheap Ass Gamer, we have two scans of predated ads from Wal-Mart and Toys R Us displaying the $50 price cut. It is unclear, however, about whether this will affect the Elite and Core versions of the console as well.

Check out the Wal-Mart ad scan after the jump.… Read more

Sorry. I saw this ad on a website today, and it made me laugh.

Roll over and beg for patent reform, Fido? Or roll over, as in a freeway accident? Roll over in one's grave at the thought? Or...well, let's leave it there. :-)

Zimbra has now made a great product even better. Determined to help "fat-client Luddites" like me, Zimbra has released the second version of its Ajax, offline client, Zimbra Desktop. First it was email offline, and now the calendar works offline, too. This may well be the the first major web application to go offline.

Who cares? Well, I do, and not because of Zimbra's open source credentials. The primary value I see in Zimbra is an enterprise-class email server that treats Macs and Linux as first-class citizens, rather than as an afterthought.… Read more