Take a look at this cool video that explains in one way just the kind of ridiculously stupid fun you can have in Crackdown (and why I’m buying the game):
If that doesn’t get you, try this one, which shows you ten fun things you can do in Crackdown (be sure to stick around after the credits):
What is this useful for? Say your kid is using the computer, this change ensures that, if UAC wants to do something, the computer just says no and moves on. By doing this, the kid doesn’t get stuck at UAC prompts, yelling for the parent to come and enter a password. Also, if you are running a public terminal, this locks out users from even seeing the UAC prompt, meaning they couldn’t install software even if they tried.
If someone you know is getting annoyed by UAC prompts, but never really needs you to accept them in regular use, this is a great help.
Microsoft has put out new themes for you to customize your Windows Live Space, 14 in all, including five LeBron James themes. The themes are, by category:
Art:
· Street Graffiti
Music and entertainment:
· Music Machine
Nature:
· Cat Tails
· Garden Lawn
· Moon set
Objects:
· Ropes
Patterns:
· Light Stream
· Tiles
· Wallpaper Stripes
Sports:
· LeBron Book
· LeBron Graffiti
· LeBron Hoops
· King James
· Slick LeBron
Also, Live.com is adding some social features, letting you put together a cool Live.com page and then share it with the world. Currently, there are ten of these Collections, eight of which are celebrity and system Collections provided by Microsoft (like a Hilarry Duff Collection or Valentine’s Day Collection), but users will be able to submit their own and see how popular they become. Seems like a good opportunity for someone to create dashboards on every subject imaginable for everyone to enjoy.
Also, CNBC did an interview with Janina Gavankar, the actress who plays Ms. Dewey, the Windows Live human search engine. Funny and informative stuff.
Also (I swear, last “also”!), MSN Soapbox is now a public beta, meaning everyone can sign up. Yes, it doesn’t have the community YouTube enjoys, but Soapbox videos have a higher quality than those of any major free video service, and the interface is a revolution, so it’s completely worth signing up for.
Microsoft, Google, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Intel and Philips are petitioning the FCC to allow them to create a handheld internet device that uses vacated TV airwaves to establish wireless internet access. I’m not exactly sure what the point is, except maybe to use all the now-useless TV rooftop antennas to create a new way of connecting homes to internet service providers, without laying tons of new cable. It’s all confusing, but the main thing is that a certain gadget blog embaressed themselves by prematurely assuming this was all about a Zune phone.
Long Zheng has done a mockup of a Windows Seven logo, and I’m guessing the Australian didn’t realize he made an accidental reference to the Brad Pitt/Morgan Freeman film “Seven”, commonly logoed as “Se7en”. I wonder if he’s on to something. Could Windows Seven be a reference to the Seven Deadly Sins?
When Windows Seven hits stores, will we all be asking, “What’s in the box?”
Jeez, that movie creeps me out even when I’m trying to joke about it.
There was a report last week that PC sales have been up sharply, rising 67% in the week Windows Vista launched. The sales increase might be easilly explained by stores clearing out their Windows XP inventory, with PC sales dropping 59% the week before, but there still is a lot to learn from the sales statistics:
“The price difference between Vista Home Premium and Vista Home Basic PCs was considerable, with Vista Home Premium notebooks selling for an average sales price (ASP) of $863 and Vista Home Basic notebooks selling for an ASP $616. Despite this significant price premium, notebook consumers chose Vista Home Premium 76% of the time.”
That’s great news for Microsoft. Last time around, few consumers opted for XP Pro, and about 50% were buying XP Media Center near the end, so Vista is doing a lot better with premium sales. Vista Home Basic, besides being a substandard OS that makes Vista look bad, costs the same as XP Home, so a high percentage of buyers opting for Home Premium means Microsoft gets more per user without subjecting the whole market to a price increase. In some ways, everybody wins.
Paul Kedrosky compared Microsoft stock performance after the three biggest Windows launches (Windows 95, Windows XP and Windows Vista), noting that Vista has had the worst post-launch showing. His numbers were through the seven market days after the launch, and it is now 12 days since the launch, and here’s how they stack up:
Given the huge buzz at the Windows 95 launch, and that it was Microsoft’s biggest launch ever, and the fact that Microsoft stock traded down until October 26, 1995 (two months, two days later!), it’s pretty obvious there is zero correlation between a launch and the stock price. Microsoft’s stock started seeing the effects of the Windows 95 launch in the second quarterly report after the launch, and the stock skyrocketed. Give it some time.
Office 2007 is doing very well at retail, with launch sales moving 108% more units than the Office 2003 launch (and 106% more revenue). This despite the fact that the business launch was months ago, and the slower shopping season, which implies the new suite is an early hit. Also, Office Home and Student is not making up as large a portion of sales as Office Student and Teacher did, with the lack of Outlook costing it about 10% of its predecessor’s sales. That’s good news for Microsoft which hoped removing Outlook would make businesses pass over the family suite.
This article is cross-posted on both InsideMicrosoft and InsideGoogle.
Last week, after I looked at similar shots of the Super Bowl stadium and downtown Miami in Google Earth and Windows Live Maps 3D, Frank Taylor of the GEarthBlog invited me to check out Google’s 3D buildings in Denver, Colorado. He makes a great case that Google’s buildings there are ways ahead of those in other cities, and thus gives a better idea of what Google Earth is capable of.
Check out his YouTube flythrough:
Of course, if we are going to set this debate to rest anytime soon, we’ll need to see the same view in both products:
View#1:
Google Earth:
Windows Live Maps:
View#2:
Google Earth:
Windows Live Maps:
Google fares a lot better in this comparison than it did last week, with brighter (yet not cartoonish) buildings that look bold and near-perfect. However, Windows Live’s buildings look more realistic, which is both good and bad, because they come off a little too dark. Windows Live has far more buildings than Google does, especially including many smaller building Google is completely ignoring.
What also hurts Google is that there is a damn good reason Denver has all these great buildings: Sketchup, which does the 3D modeling and got bought by Google, was formed in Boulder Colorado. It’s likely that the Sketchup team, or local user groups friendly with the team, did most of these buildings, a model that doesn’t scale to the rest of the world.
I’m declaring Round Two a tie, but Microsoft is still winning and looks confident going deeper into the fight. Microsoft is spending a lot of resources on 3D buildings, and Google doesn’t seem to be dedicating the money or the infrastructure to pull even, let alone win. Microsoft is going to have a virtual 3D earth before Google does at this pace, and if the rest of the media and blogs start paying attention, Google Maps is going to lose its hold as the maps brand de jour.
UPDATE: Rob posted some pictures that show Windows Live in a “better light”, literally. He turned the camera around, showing that Windows Live’s pictures were taken at a different time of the day than Google’s. They were pretty dark from my angle, while his looks considerably better. It doesn’t affect my verdict, but it is prettier.
Windows Live:
Google Earth:
Microsoft should consider the angle of the sun when taking their pictures, since in some cities, the shadows on building make them impossible to photograph at certain times of the day. I imagine that’s why New York hasn’t been given the same treatment as some other cities.
Frank at the GEarthBlog makes the point that we shouldn’t underestimate the Google Earth community. Over time, they will create tons of new buildings, and have been for years adding data layer, placemarks, pointing out cool and odd things in the imagery, and finding ways to make the product better. Google’s user-generated focus is hard to control or direct, but could ultimately yield a better out-of-box experience for the typical user, and that’s the bet Google has made.
Also, Rob found out from Microsoft that there were 6,657 rendered 3D buildings in Denver, compared with about 300 for Google (Google would not give an exact number). No matter how good Google’s buildings look, if they can’t scale up, they aren’t going to have the sheer number of buildings Microsoft will, and they won’t have the smaller buildings that give a city its character.
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