Tim Wang's eLearning Blog

Microsoft launched the WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) and OGA (Office Genuine Advantage) tools this month to examine the legitimacy of the MS Windows and MS Office software on all PCs in China. Those who failed the tests would see a black desktop on their Windows background or a permanent warning message of pirated Office software. This is yet the most harsh action taken by the software giant against software piracy in China.

Although the company repeated it would not collect personal information with the tools, which would not affect computer use, controversy over the move has escalated. Many Chinese users have questioned the legality of Microsoft's move. A question on many Chinese consumers' mind: Does Microsoft have the right to penalize pirated systems by intruding the system without permission of the computer owner? There have been several law suits filed against Microsoft based on their WGA and OGA movement in China since October 20th. I personally do think the act has breached the basic ethics of software manufacturers with the unsolicited remote control of computers. I don't believe any software companies would dare to this kind of "certification based penalization" here in Canada or US. In the meanwhile, I do support software developers to take legitimate legal actions against piracy.

One of the most "exciting" conference took place in town last week - The CanSecWest conference 2008 (the world's most advanced conference focusing on applied digital security) was held in Vancouver, B.C. Canada. And of course, the most exciting event in the conference would be the "PWN2OWN 2008" contest, where three laptop computers each equipped with Mac OSX 10.5.2, MS. Windows Vista Ultimate SP1, and Ubuntu 7.10 (linux) are put to the stand to some brilliant "hackers" to break. The first person succeed take the laptop he/she breaks plus a cash prize. Specific rules applies to each day of the contest, regulations will be gradually relaxed over time, but the cash prize is also shrinking while the clock is ticking...

The first day, under the strict condition that only the default OS could be targeted, no security breach reported among all three machines. The second day (Thursday, Mar 27th, 2008), stand applications like email clients, browsers were allowed to be targeted and guess who was the first to go? The brand new MacBook Air with OSX 10.5.2 went down due to an undisclosed Safari (the default web browser for Mac) flaw. The Windows Vista held one more day and went down on the third day (Friday, Mar 28th, 2008). On that day, the contest rule was even more relaxed where more "popular applications" can be installed on the laptops. Thanks to an previously unknown flaw in Adobe's Flash software, thus the Windows Vista fell...

The Sony Vaio laptop running Ubuntu remained "un-compromised" at the end of the conference. The MacBook Air winners collected $10,000 and the Vista breakers collected $5,000. What a nerve wracking event!

In case you haven't watched this, a short clip put together for Bill Gates, to illustrate his last day at Microsoft, with a nerdy humor. Quite brilliant as matter of fact. The cast is incredible: Matthew McConaughey, Brian Williams, Steve Palmer (well, that's a given), Jay-Z, Bono (from U2), Steven Spielberg, George Clooney, Jon Stewart, Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Al Gore. Here's the video:

This video was screened during Gates' farewell speech at CES 2007. A crucial part of the talk:

Gates outlined three major themes for the second digital decade-high definition displays with 3D experiences and high quality video and audio, connected services and the power of natural interfaces. Gates had a vision early of those themes, but his quest to make the Tablet PC, Media Center PCs and natural interfaces, such as speech and touch, more mainstream has not been realized.

Soon after Adobe released Apollo - a tool that brings Flash contents a step closer to the client side desktop, Microsoft reveals it's counter strike tool – Silverlight, formerly code-named "WPF/E" . Microsoft's description of this new program is,

Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of Microsoft .NET–based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.

In my understanding, Silverlight is a new Scalable Vector Graphics tool built on Microsoft's .NET technology with a focus of media components integration. Another word, Silverlight is a new Flash player where combines vector graphics, raster graphics, sound files, video files, and human interaction elements. There have been many discussion on Microsoft Silverlight Vs Adobe Flash. Grant Skinner has a pretty good summary on this topic. In general, I believe the only way for Microsoft to succeed with Silverlight technology is:

1.Focus on the market, dump tons (I mean TONS) of cash towards the promotion of this new software. This one I am almost certain is the least to worry for Microsoft.

2.Understand the usesrs' and content creators' need. Design a good user interface for the Sliverlight content authoring. I see the true value of Flash as it provided a bridge between the logically creative developers and the artistically creative designers. The geeky coders were excited by Flash's simple to use interface and yet powerful scripting engine. The visual designers appreciate the simplicity of the scripting aspect of Flash.

3.Microsoft MUST think cross platform. If Microsoft can not provide both a good user interface and a flawless client side compiler (player), Silverlight is aimed to fail. It's dead simple, most of the telanted designers I know are using Mac... Not to mention I had some "funny" bugs when I installed Silverlight to my Firefox in Windows XP. I had to restart a few times to see the installed plugin.

4.Break the "search engine black box theory" on rich media content. It's just fatal that standard search engines can not pick up Flash contents. It's like you putting content into a black box. My limited understanding of Silverlight is much contents are in well organized XML format where indexing it by the searching engines are feasible.

5.More power. You can't just "duplicate" the existing power of Flash player, Microsoft needs to invent some well differentiated new features like 3D Open GL support...

6.Microsoft needs to see they are not just competing with 1 of Adobe's product, they need to consider taking on the entire Adobe's product line. At the least be prepared for it. Because after the merge between Adobe and Macromedia, applications like Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, Acrobat PDF and Premiere are working together closer than ever. Adobe is creating a true harmony among their web/media publishing tools.

I may add more points to this post later. In conclusion, a majority of designers/developers doing RIA (Rich Internet Applicaitons) and Online content publishing are using Adobe applications. As much as I want to see other alternative technology to take on Flash, I still think Silverlight has a long way to go...

VS

With competitions on the right, left and center (Google, Adobe and Apple), Microsoft is coming out with “cool” tools to strike back. I have to say, the Microsoft Photosynth is a really cool tool. It is a new technology that analyzes a large collection of photos for their similarities. The analysis allows the software to “map” the photos precisely onto a 3D object that is created in resemble of the real object / architecture in the photos. Then viewing these photos is like a true 3D “walk through” experience. It's similar to Panorama effects but much much much more advanced.

What can you do with this tool? Here are some ideas from the developers at Microsoft Live Labs:

- Walk or fly through a scene to see photos from any angle.
- Seamlessly zoom in or out of a photo whether it's megapixels or gigapixels in size.
- See where pictures were taken in relation to one another.
- Find similar photos to the one you're currently viewing.
- Send a collection - or a particular view of one - to a friend.

This tool reminds me of an interesting application that was born in UBC a few years ago: Autostitch™.

Steve Ballmer has signed a memorandum with China’s Ministry of Information Industry (MII) to help the Chinese government with the economic development in China’s rural areas.

"Microsoft will work closely with MII to reduce the digital divide and increase informatization in China’s rural communities." - Steve Ballmer

In this memorandum, Steve has promised that Microsoft will use technology to provide career training to thousands of educators in non-developed areas and will help the Chinese government to deliver distance education to hundreds thousands of students in the country sides. This echoes the recent polices on making rural development a priority.

Microsoft has also promised to train more than 70,000 software engineers through a combination of classroom instruction and distance learning. This deal seems to be a formal response to the high-profile April visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao to Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond. The Chinese government has promised to further enforce all government organizations use copy-righted software and strengthening the regulations on software piracy. Not to mention, Lenovo (the Chinese company who acquired IBM personal computer division) just signed a $1.2 billion deal with Microsoft.

Microsoft Office 2007, code-name Office “12” has an impressive user interface. The Microsoft Office UI development team is so proud of the design they say it is “the most significant update to the Microsoft Office user interface in more than a decade.” The team has updated the official preview page, go check it out!

The development team has smartly used several TAB systems to replace the traditional system of menus, toolbars, task panes, and dialog boxes. They focused on a “result-oriented” approach which enables the users to use the advanced features easier and faster.

Tabs are being used across Microsoft Office 2007. The Command Tabs reminds me very much of the property panels in Dreamweaver. One of the benefit using panels like this is the users can easily categorize and familiarize different features and tasks. It essentially makes Microsoft Office 2007 easier to learn compare the past versions.

Office 2007 also used the object property panel (Contextual Command Tabs) idea where you click on “instances” (e.g. chart), the properties and modification tools associated to the type of instance (e.g. chart editing functions) will appear. This makes more sense compare to the old versions where you constantly “search” for the editing functions.

The overall Office 2007 interface is well done and it would be a good direction to complete with the Google’s “Web Based Word Processor” (Writely).

Ever after Lee Kaifu switched to Google, the war between Microsoft and Google is no longer behind the curtain. Started this month, Microsoft high up officials constantly make noises on the new MSN Search Engine will beat Google's Search Engine. It looks like Microsoft is no longer fooling around but is ready to take on a direct competition against Google's bread and butter service - web search. How confident is Microsoft?

What we're saying is that in six months' time we'll be more relevant in the US market place than Google. - Neil Holloway, Microsoft president for Europe, Middle East and Africa

My immediate impression was, "Man, Microsoft is gonna bundle this new service with VISTA". The answer is not...

Should we add a Google-like search engine but twice as good, hard-core into Windows? Guess what. If we did that, I don't think a company called Google would be very happy. - Neil Holloway

Then how is MSN Search planning on beating Google?

Integrating search into those other applications... makes it very seamless for people." - Neil Holloway

The applications Neil meant here I believe are MSN Messenger and Hotmail etc. I have to say the MSN Messenger has a pretty concrete IM market and Google Talk just started a little too late. Gmail gave a pretty powerful shot to start but there have been mixed feed backs on people are not feeling comfortable with how Google can "spy through" their emails to deliver accurate advertisements.

However, since we are talking about search engines here, how can Microsoft's new search engine be better? Well, this is not really a secret any more, is to go beyond finding URLs and instead focus in on the specific information sought by Internet users:

Generally these days what you get back is URLs, and based upon research, 50 per cent of the time you do a search you don't get the URL you're looking for. - Neil Holloway

This means:

potential home buyers might find a group of houses in the price range and with the precise amenities they're seeking. Or web surfers might find a restaurant with the kind of menu they want in a particular geographic area. - Neil Holloway

The new service will be launched in 6 months period first in North America and UK and then different countries (languages) after every three months. Who will win the supreme? Let's wait and see.

The new Windows Vista will come with a new highly configurable firewall. This means all Windows users no long need to buy third party firewall software like Zone Alarm and Norton Firewall. I guess the new around Monopoly suits against Microsoft will start soon. However, I think Microsoft may have this one easily justified simply because many of the third party firewalls are hard to install and maintain. And internet security is an important enough issue to allow Microsoft justify. But what next? How about Microsoft Anti Virus software?

As a powerful response to the recent OpenOffice.Org 2.0 release, some Microsoft insiders have revealed the up-coming MS office being hosted as a server/client product. Bill Gates has mentioned about shifting the paradigm from licensed software to software access licenses over the last few years. By charging an annual renewals to the license, users can use Microsoft CRM, ERP and SharePoint products. This will obviously change the paradigm of the software delivery process. Is this a good way to "compete" with the open source products? Or it may open a can of worms which may cause a negative effects from the end users?

Steven Sinofsky recently revealed that the newest Office product from Microsoft - Office 12 will have the capability of saving a document into Adobe PDF format. However, Sinofsky did not indicate whether this feature is an add on or if it requires the users to pay extra. My guess is not, since people can easy buy the add-on from Adobe directly. Office suite is one of the two lifelines of Microsoft (the other lifeline is Windows of course). Each year, MS can make around 33 billion US dollars off Office alone. Adobe PDF has become the most popular document viewing format on the web. Inserting this "Save to PDF" feature" will certainly help Microsoft to make more sales on Office 12. I am curious what will Adobe get out of this?

Well, let’s put it this way, the leader of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer wants to personally “bury” Eric Schmidt and the company Google. According to Mark Lucovsky’s sworn statement in the court days ago. Mark was a senior engineer and currently working in Google. He also worked for Sun Microsystems and was the CEO of Novell.

Here is Mark’s statement:

"At some point in the conversation, Mr. Ballmer said: 'Just tell me it's not Google,'"Lucovosky said in his statement. Mark replied that he was joining Google. "At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office," Lucovosky recounted, adding that Ballmer then launched into a tirade about Google CEO Eric Schmidt. "I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again.
I'm going to f***ing kill Google."

Carefully thought through, just how innovative has Microsoft been in the last 5-8 years? How many "killer applications" have been produced by Microsoft? Other than Microsoft Office, I can’t think of any. I have to admit that they are still doing everything right to sell the Windows product which is a product they tried to bandit for the last ten years. They spend most of their effort on acquiring companies that are threatening them and shut them down. Anyway, good luck to the search engine war against Google. This one is coming to stay I think…

Microsoft announced the "new weapon" in dot net based application creation - Sparkle. It is a Microsoft product for building Avalon user interfaces. It is aimed towards non-programmers using this tool to design media rich web or OS (Microsoft Windows series of course) based applications. Or looking at it from another angle, it can be used by "geeky" programmers to easily create applications with "cool" interfaces. Although this philosophy was first introduced by Macromedia products - Director and Flash, Sparkle still has many unique strength to compete (if they will compete) with the existing products. After watching the hourly long video on Sparkle, my first impression is it is still too early to compare Sparkle to Flash. However, what's worth to mention about Sparkle is it's easy data-binding and round trip XAML makes the final product more "searchable" by standard search engine. Flash contents not being indexable is the long known "fatal" problem and Sparkle may have a solution to this. However, in the short run (2-3) years, good luck to the Sparkle team to market this product. I simple can't see those hard core Flash developers will easily convert to this new application and not to mention, many of them are hard core Mac users too!