Funny little anecdote: Even Bill Gates checks up the value of his house on Zillow, the site that attempts to value pretty much every home out there. Zillow’s results are sure to spark a conversation, because they’re always too low (if you’re a homeowner) or too high (if you’re a buyer), which means they mirror the market perfectly, and Gates’ home’s valuation is no exception.
Zillow values the William H. Gates estate, a massive technology infested powerHouse, at $130 million. If you’re thinking, “No house could be worth that much!”, you’d be wrong, because Gates says:
If you bid that number on my house I won’t sell it to you.
Yikes! You’d probably have to sell a Photobucket just to have a chance.
Microsoft is making a major push for the Zune during this month’s season finales and other May sweeps TV events, with a new Zune commercial airing during popular shows. Expect to see this new ad during Lost, Heroes, Grey’s Anatomy, The Office, Family Guy, the NBA playoffs, and on MTV, VH1, BET and Adult Swim:
And yes, the beginning does seem like it takes place in a graveyard. But at least the ad does one thing really well: It shows you what the device is capable of. And that’s a smart change from the previous “social” ads.
Choose A Vista is pretty funny, even if it includes Starter and Enterprise, two versions you can’t buy anywhere (a common mistake of Microsoft opponents. Party Is Over is just kind of silly, with the PC complaining way too much to be at all realistic. Genius is okay, but it exposes the absurdity of calling anyone a Genius, when they’re little more than non-crappy tech support. I mean, really, are any of them actual geniuses? And if so, why don’t they get a better job?
(via Mac Daily News > Digg)
Microsoft has officially killed the Portable Media Center platform, after three years of mismanaged and not supporting it properly. In theory, Portable Media Center, a universal operating system for video/audio players, was a great, or at least workable idea, but Microsoft never did the things necessary to make it work. To have competed with the iPod, Microsoft needed to issue constant OS updates, improving the interface and giving it new features, and instead, they did nothing, and now it’s dead.
I have two Creative Zen PMCs, and while I wouldn’t mistake them for a quality device, they were cheap and had a lot of capacity, and synced extremely well (most of the time) with Windows Media Center recorded TV shows. For that, I’ll miss the platform. Microsoft screwed the pooch with this one, and it looks like they aren’t moving fast enough on Zune either. Zune owners expect often firmware updates with cool new features, and I’m not sure they’ll ever get what they want how they want it.
Yeah, that’s the two richest men in the world, playing a game of ping pong. Of course, they’re playing doubles, so who’s on the other end? Who do the two richest men play? The two richest women (maybe Martha Stewart and Oprah?)? The two poorest men? The Google guys?
Samsung has announced the Q1 Ultra, the next version of its Ultra Mobile PC, and this one actually looks real good. The two biggest problems with previous UMPCs have been minimized. Battery life is now up to 4.5 hours, and prices start as $800. That’s amazing, and makes for a UMPC that might finally be worth buying. Plus, it looks a lot better.
Some of what you get:
Just 1.5 pounts
New Intel Ultra Mobile Processor at 600 and 800 MHz
1 gigabye of fast DDR2 RAM
4.5 hour integrated Lithium Ion prismatic batteries
802.11 b/g wifi
Bluetooth 2.0 with Enhanced Data Rate
Optional 3.5G HSDPA cellular network modem
Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows XP Tablet supported
300 pixel webcam
1.3 megapixel digital camera
dual array microphone
7 inch WSVGA LC screen, with a 1024×600 resolution
A keyboard, split on both sides of the screen
Optional docking station with 3 USB ports, extra battery charger, audio out, microphone port
Optional GPS receiver
Optional 6-cell battery and 8-cell PowerBank
Optional external dual-layer DVD RW drive
I don’t like the processor speed, but otherwise it sounds great. Find it on clearance in a bunch of months, or a nice coupon, and it’ll be well worth the money spent.
(via Engadget)
Clint has come up with a brilliant fix for Windows Vista, something guaranteed to increase your battery life. He has written a tiny program that turns off Windows Aero when your laptop is running on battery. Simple, and very effective (and it’s open source, so you can mess with/improve it).
Aero has been found to be pretty taxing on battery life, running your GPU hot, activating your fan, all of which runs down the battery. Switching to the Vista Basic interface improves battery life, sometimes significantly, but running through the menus is annoying. Using Clint’s little Vista Laptop Battery Saver application, the system just switches you from Aero to Basic when you pull out the plug, and turns Aero back on when you plug it back in.
Great work, Clint! Microsoft needs to build this option into the power management control panel for Service Pack 1.
(via Coding4Fun)
Oh, and for some reason it leaves a windows open all the time. It doesn’t appear in the taskbar, but I see it in Alt-Tab. Perhaps that’s the first thing to fix in this app.
A teacher in Russia has been ordered to pay 5,000 rubles ($194.4), about half his monthly salary, for pirating Windows for school computers. Alexander Ponosov was charged with installing Windows and Office on 12 computers for his students.
This case is ridiculous on so many levels:
Microsoft didn’t sue the guy - A Microsoft spokesman is making it quite clear the company is not responsible for this, and says it is interested in stopping software pirates, not schoolteachers (and that the teacher was probably helping them more than hurting them).
The guy says he didn’t do it - According to Ponosov, the computers came preloaded with unlicensed copies of Windows. In a country where you can get Windows on the street for six dollars, that’s pretty likely.
He already won the case - Ponosov’s case was thrown out by a court which ruled that the losses were too small to be worth its time, but Ponosov asked for a retrial because he wanted to be declared innocent! What a moron! You won, go home! Now he’s out half a month’s salary over what? Pride?
Basically, this guy is the victim of a justice system that is working hard to appear tough on piracy as it gets close to entering the World Trade Organization. Wrong place, really really wrong time.
Oh, and good for Microsoft, standing up for educators who maybe need to pirate Windows in order to afford it. I remember running student organizations in college, and we pirated anything we couldn’t get budgeted, because it was the only way our computers were ever going to work. And no one lost real money, because the people doing the pirating are all now professionals, paying thousands for the same publishing/editing tools and operating systems they stole years ago.
That’s the way you grow a software market, by ensuring those who are just starting out have the means to steal their way in. Microsoft should hope somebody releases a reliable crack for Vista, else college students will just keep pirating XP through the end of the decade.
Do a search on Google for “sitemeter“, and you’ll probably see an ad for Microsoft’s Gatineau web analytics service, which is currently in development. Only it’s not an ad for the service, since you can’t get it now anyway, but rather an ad for a survey that will help the Gatineau team in developing the service. Answering the short survey (it took me about four minutes) will let them know you want to get into the Gatineau beta (they ask if you’re interested), so just for that it’s worth it.
Plus, one random participant gets a Zune. Sounds peachy.
Smart idea of Microsoft to advertise on Google to get survey participants. They’re probably paying about 5 cents per referral, are getting targeted traffic, and are saving a ton of money compared with focus groups.
The Microsoft’s Project Gatineau team is building a free Web analytics service and wants to know more about how to best serve customers like you.
Please share your feedback with us regarding your experience with Web analytics services. Please provide your e-mail address so that we may follow up with you with information regarding your participation in our upcoming Beta. You will also be added to the list for our Thank You giveaway - one lucky respondent will receive a Zune digital media player.
An answer for each of the questions is required before the survey can be submitted. The survey closes May 31, 2007.
– The Microsoft Project Gatineau Team
BLANK@microsoft.com
