TIM FAULKNER — One expects Microsoft to try every marketing tactic conceivable, especially if it seems hip and new, but can even the most loyal and deluded Zune marketers think this is an effective idea? Does anyone think these are not planted or that five or six dead iPods at the bottom of a three foot tall bin is even conveying the intended message? [Photo credit: fimoculous from Flickr.]
Microsoft continues to throw marketing dollars at what it perceives to be the coolest, hippest, freshest new form of marketing. This time building its own island in Linden Lab's Second Life featuring sophisticated architecture (with glass walls resembling an Apple Store), a blimp, suspension bridge, and reflective modern sculpture. There is also an auditorium which Microsoft presumably hopes to fill with the avatars of attentive developers.
CONFONZ — Yes, cheezburgers have taken over the IntarWeb. Who are we to go against the grain? Bitching and moaning won't help. The Conference Fonzerelli is still here, though his reign of terror is coming to a rapid end. With the weekend, and the Sea Siren parade coming up, the Fonz needs to trade in his leather jacket for a Spongebob-colored cardboard box. In an effort to get him out the door faster, he's wrapped up a nicely flavored selection of little dots for your mastication. After the jump, the Reiser alibi gets stronger, Semel on a Cruise, the Ballminator gets with L. Ron, and did the WSJ change its story?
CONFONZ — Ah, yes. the age old topic of security at Microsoft. Two great tastes that just don't seem to have ever made it into the same sandwich. With old MS demanding attention for its reinvigorated security efforts in Vista, you'd think they're have hired the right people to lock that sucker down. But as it turns out, this little lady, who remains safely hidden beneath the veil of secrecy we call the Blind Item, is a sure fire loser with a cheating past and a complete lack of skills. According to the buzz around her credentials, the only reason this hidden lass became so well known at Symantec before MS poached her is because she had help crafting exploits from someone very close to her. Too bad she decided to cheat on him, because when MS asks her to perform, she'll have no one to do her work for her!
NICK DOUGLAS — Is Microsoft (market value $296 billion) looking to buy Yahoo (market value $38 billion) for $50 billion? Holy mother of mergers, people! This isn't some rumor from TechCrunch (or, like, us) — it was reported in the New York Post, Washington Post Wall Street Journal, and Financial Times, each citing "sources" or "people close to the matter. One banker who'd spoken with Microsoft told the Post, "They're getting tired of being left at the altar." That, of course, could describe both companies, which have each reportedly talked to potential acquisitions before Google scooped them up. But the Times points out that Yahoo rejected a buyout offer from Microsoft in 2006. So, peanut gallery, do you think it will happen and do you think it will work?
CONFONZ — Lo, and below him, he saw the valley. Above him he saw the smog filled skies, and in his hand he found a broken bottle of bourbon, half drained and bloodied. Where had this bottle come from, and why was the humble Conference Fonzerelli stumbling around on Microsoft's Mountain View campus? And, for the love of Allah, why are all the urinals here one foot off the ground? Is this Paris? Japan? Does Microsoft employ lots of little men? Yes, gentle reader, the ConFonz is in charge of Valleywag today, and the fun has only just started. After the jump, the ConFonz goes to college.
Back in the day, Carnegie Mellon university made its name in robotics. When you're competing with MIT for math dorks, and Stanford for programmers, it's tough to find a geek niche. So, when CMU decided to build an arm of its computer sciences department in the Valley, it wasn't the most readily expected news. Where would students of this new program go in order to buy deep fried hot dogs? What about being beaten up by Pitt frat boys? Those poor Pitt boys would have to fly for six hours to dispense geek beatings.
As it turns out, CMU is only in the bay area to hold conferences. Silly little conferences, sponsored, thus far, by Microsoft and UC Berkeley. The first of these was at Microsoft's campus on Monday, and it included everything you'd expect from the event.
Dozens of professors discussing software as a service? Check.
Small-time CEO's trying to confirm that these professors are right? Check.
Press, snorting and guffawing at how out of touch the professors are? Check.
Microsoft's Craig Mundie explaining how the professors are wrong, and laying out a roadmap for how Microsoft will max out all CPU's everywhere, no matter how many cores or how fast the clock speeds are? Check.
But the real shocker of this mini-conference is the fact that all of Microsoft's men's rooms in its Silicon Valley campus include dwarf urinals. Does MS employ multiple little people? Usually, these things are installed haphazardly upon the hiring of a dwarf. But it would seem that Microsoft is prepared for that eventuality, and that people working here tend to have splash-back marks on their immaculately pressed khakis.
NICK DOUGLAS — Thailand will continue banning YouTube even though the user who posted a video mocking the king has taken it down. (There are still two pics on YouTube, says Thailand, that harm the king's sensitive sensibilities.) But Google says they'll work with Thailand to help censor YouTube. So who's outlawed in what country? Where is Google banned, and where's it just censored? And what's with North Korea? Let's answer this with the magic of charts!
NICK DOUGLAS — Remember how the Daily Show's John Hodgman did such an adorable performance in Apple's "Get a Mac" ads that it made the PC seem cuddlier than the smug Mac? Then remember how Microsoft hired the equally charming Daily Show correspondent Demetri Martin to pimp Windows Vista on the delightful site, Clearification? Now imagine how Microsoft might handle such blessing. Yes, by screwing them up. Know the annoying prick in every coffeeshop line and office hallway, bragging about his $500 phone that runs his "work stuff"? He's the new spokesperson for Windows Mobile. Sure, some of his lines in the videos are charming, but on this promo page, he comes off a little too much like the suits I avoid at tech conferences.
In Bill Gates's rah-rah innovation editorial in the weekend Washington Post, he mentions his admiration for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-backed High Tech High, a network of tech-enabled charter schools. Poor timing perhaps, as Friday marked the abrupt closure of High Tech High Bayshore, overriding the literal tears and rage of students' parents. Apparently the school was losing money ($500,000 per year) and had barely half-met its goal for student recruitment. More importantly, the school building's owner — an anonymous "philanthropist affiliated with the High Tech High corporation" — decided to unload the building after the school couldn't afford to buy it back. Hey, at least those kids got part of a kind of good education. If you know the identity of the mystery philanthropist, by all means tip us off.
It's almost certain to be tied up in appeal for quite some time, but a federal jury awarded Alcatel-Lucent $1.52 billion in damages versus Microsoft for patent infringement on the MP3 music format. Microsoft had paid a German consortium for use of the format years ago, but Alcatel-Lucent contended they were due cash as well, since one of their corporate forerunners (Bell Labs) was also involved in MP3 format development. Whatever happens to Microsoft, this represents a potentially serious headache for anyone else making MP3 players (hardware or software). Apple declined to comment, so perhaps we'll see Steve Jobs's "Thoughts on MP3 Patents" soon.
Microsoft daddy Bill Gates tips Reuters to the most likely nickname his 10-year-old will give the new version of Windows.
We hear there's a big showdown and resulting re-org in the works at MSN, Microsoft's online unit. The conflict has been framed in terms of relative newcomer Steve Berkowitz (of Ask Jeeves fame) versus the resisting remnants of the old online regime, i.e. online senior VP David Cole and his pal Yusuf Mehdi. True or false or somewhere in between. You tell us.
Perhaps disturbed by the collective yawn that greeted the beta launch of their video-sharesite Soapbox, Microsoft is manifesting an interest in buying out an established site — such as Revver. The MSN goons were reportedly sniffing around Revver's office last month to see what they could stripe-mine in terms of tech and personnel. But the takeover amour must have cooled, as nothing further occured. For his part, Revver CEO Steven Starr declared:
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates will make a joint appearance at the Wall Street Journal's fifth All Things Digital conference in May. Despite a dinner-table tête-à-tête at last year's conference — and not counting the legendary "Big Screen Bill" at 1997's Macworld — formal Jobs-Gates manifestations are pretty rare. It's unscripted and unrehearsed! Oh, how the fur will fly! Expect gentle ribbing.
Jupiter Research's Michael Gartenberg will be hopping over to Microsoft, a la Jon Udell, to serve as an "enthusiast evangelist." Whatever you think of the credibility issues such positions create, it's not like this is a new phenomenon. All you really have is a publicist with a little bit of industry celebrity, and those have been around forever. But this "enthusiast evangelist" title is odious in the extreme. When did evangelism become a positive term to anyone but evangelicals? If anyone hands me a business card with "evangelist" anywhere thereon, they better get ready to magically heal my whooping cough.
What did Microsoft get for splurging half a billion dollars to hype the Windows Vista release? Apparently, a public reaction that paled in comparison to the heady days of Windows 95 (shudder). Rather than vast heaving lines of eager consumers broken up by occasional gunplay, release-day mobs for Vista (in New York at least) petered out in under an hour. Marketers have several explanations for Vista's lack of curb appeal — media balkanization, short attention spans, that old devil Internet — even though all their excuses don't stop the crowds gathering outside any Apple Store whenever Steve Jobs clears his throat.
The Microsoft chairman gets a little testy with Newsweek:
NICK DOUGLAS — Underneath all that decorum and collared polyester, geeks have crazy personalities waiting to bust out. Normally they have to suppress those personalities to appease investors and look like Real Important Bosses. But when they find their time to shine, they pull poses that would make Star Wars Kid proud. Here are the top ten photos some geeks wish time forgot. (Warning: some shots are a touch NSFW.)
Nerdy humorist John Hodgman, who plays a bumbling PC in Apple commercials, will get a chance to rub shoulders with nerdy billionaire Bill Gates on Monday, January 29. That's when Gates will be appearing on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, where Hodgman is the "Resident Expert." Geeks will be looking forward to seeing whether Gates and Hodgman combine to create some kind of nerdy critical mass. Valley flacks will be marveling at Microsoft's ability to get prime exposure just one hour before Vista goes on sale at midnight.
