http://slyoyster.com

And by program, I mean having a standards compliant browsers.  IE 9 is still in the preview stage but early indications are the browser (playing catchup to Chrome and Firefox and just about every other browser available) will have support for HTML 5, CSS 3, scalable vector graphics and a better javascript rendering engine.

The name sucks for sure, and if Gizmodo is to be believe (which they aren’t because they blow their load on seemingly everything [Android will change everything! Windows Phone 7 is the greatest! The iPhone you can't live without! etc. etc. etc.]), then you might be interested to learn that Windows Phone 7 Series is “the most groundbreaking phone since the iPhone.” Ugh.

Engadget has a more practical look at the new mobile software that was unveiled in Barcelona, and they too were impressed with it.

“It’s hard to believe that just a year ago this company was showing off WM 6.5, which now looks ages behind what they’ve turned around with today,” writes Joshua Topolsky.  “We’re not sure if someone was just let off the leash or if we’re seeing a newer, smarter, more agile Microsoft, but the 7 Series concept definitely shows that this company is learning from its mistakes.”

Regardless, it’s nice to see Microsoft evolving a bit, doing something different, dusting the cobwebs off and getting into the game.  Just about everyone I know loves Windows 7, so maybe with Windows 8 we’ll see a tighter integration between their new mobile software and their desktop OS and the Xbox.  It’s weird to think that maybe Microsoft could pull it all together in the same way that Apple has.

This is actually very reminiscent of the Zune HD, which I had a chance to use the other day and quite liked.  It’s different than an iPod, in a good way.  It feels more playful.

Former Microsoft vice president Dick Brass, writes an damning op-ed for the New York Times, that anyone paying attention sort of already figured was the case.  He lambastes the Redmond, Wash. company for no longer being innovative, but rather a monopoly resting on their laurels. Here he is on Microsoft’s paranoid and competitive corporate culture:

For example, early in my tenure, our group of very clever graphics experts invented a way to display text on screen called ClearType. It worked by using the color dots of liquid crystal displays to make type much more readable on the screen. Although we built it to help sell e-books, it gave Microsoft a huge potential advantage for every device with a screen. But it also annoyed other Microsoft groups that felt threatened by our success.

Engineers in the Windows group falsely claimed it made the display go haywire when certain colors were used. The head of Office products said it was fuzzy and gave him headaches. The vice president for pocket devices was blunter: he’d support ClearType and use it, but only if I transferred the program and the programmers to his control. As a result, even though it received much public praise, internal promotion and patents, a decade passed before a fully operational version of ClearType finally made it into Windows.

Can you imagine this ever happening at Google or Apple?

Microsoft is cutting the price of the XBOX 360 Elite, the one with the 120 GB hard-drive, by $100.  Now it’ll retail for $299.  The move isn’t much of a surprise, given that Sony had priced the PS3 for $300.

Lost in the Google Chrome OS announcement was the underlying digs at rival Microsoft.  Sure plenty of people called it the shot across the bow, but Computerworld takes a look at five specific statements from Google’s 655-word announcement that are a direct attack on Microsoft. 

Truthfully, however, many of their thinly veiled critiques at Windows and Microsoft are pretty true.  Microsoft stopped evolving their products, stopped trying to push ahead with improvements, when they became the defacto market leader — something that could be problematic for Google as it positions itself as the tech company for the internet era.

Just like Greg Gillis could convince me that PCs are cool, along comes another Microsoft commercial starring The Tron Guy and it has the opposite affect.  I’m selling my PC and buying a Mac.  Thanks Bill Gates!

“Without the networks and communities created by the PC, the world might never have even heard of the “Tron Guy” or internet phenomenons just like him,” so says the ad page. But here’s the thing – most people still look at this guy (can’t believe Microsoft couldn’t find a meme from 2008) not like he’s awesome for being a fat guy in spandex and “doing his own thing” but as a kinda pathetic.  Laughing at him, definitely not with him.

I will say, with him being from Minnesota, that state strikes me as something of a cultural oddity.  Can someone get Chuck Klosterman and Rex Sorgatz to co-author an anthropoligical study of the state?

Girl Talk, nay Greg Gillis, heartily endorses the PC.  And given the propensity of his live shows and his always awesome mashup albums, he’s earned the right to proudly declare his computing preference.  This is actually the first “I’m a PC” commercial that has made me think, hey you know PC’s are okay – even though I just dropped $85 to have mine repaired for a corrupted hal.dll file.

Bill Gates, mastermind behind the not-so-easy to use Microsoft Windows, sent an email to some honchos at his company regarding a software download. Unfortunately, all Gates was able to do was download a tantrum. Seriously, if there is any proof that Windows needs to be reconfigured to be consumer/idiot friendly it is this email.

From the Seattle Post-Intelligence:

I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don’t drive usability issues.

Let me give you my experience from yesterday.

I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack … so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there.

The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second delay I got it to come up.

This site is so slow it is unusable.

It wasn’t in the top 5 so I expanded the other 45.

These 45 names are totally confusing. These names make stuff like: C:\Documents and Settings\billg\My Documents\My Pictures seem clear.

They are not filtered by the system … and so many of the things are strange.

I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing.

So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying – where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?

So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.

They told me to go to the main page search button and type movie maker (not moviemaker!).

I tried that. The site was pathetically slow but after 6 seconds of waiting up it came.

I thought for sure now I would see a button to just go do the download.

In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve.

Anyway, the email goes on for a bit and it’s really funny to read Gates’s frustrations spilled across the page. Also, this was written five years ago. Have things with Windows gotten easier to use? I doubt it. It’s enough to make one want to switch to a Mac. The best part is at the end of the article, where the reporter did a follow up interview with Gates regarding the email.

Gates chuckled and admitted that, “There’s not a day that I don’t send a piece of e-mail … like that piece of e-mail. That’s my job.”

No sir, your job is to make an operating system that doesn’t suck. [via]