Hey, why not - all the other big guys have their own "innovation threads".

I think we've all seen "Live Local", MS's answer to Google Maps - http://local.live.com/
It's like MS Streets & Trips, AJAXified. Works nice, have some advantages and disadvantages over Google Maps. Notably, they have "Bird's Eye View" for select cities, which gives an isometric overhead angle shot of the city, which is nice, but i've found very hard to navigate.

But the latest addition to Local is "Street-Side" - http://preview.local.live.com/
It's, ummmm, weird, and strangly facinating. You get a horizontal split-screen where there is a map on the bottom half with a little toy-car icon, and the top half is a street level, dynamic view out of the "front" of your car (or in front of you, if you're "walking"). It feels like a late-80s Nintendo game or something. I haven't found anything interesting to look at yet, but it certainly is innovative and creative. It's a bit like Amazon's A9, which i don't know of anyone who's actually used that, but with lots of interactivity added in. Only works in Seattle and San Fran for now since it takes 10+ million images/city.

here's a short writeup of it
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/02/28/killer-new-livecom-service-street-side/

2/28/2006 3:25:44 PM

i'll wait until WASD+mouse earth exploration comes along

[Edited on February 28, 2006 at 3:37 PM. Reason : does apple have an innovation thread?]

2/28/2006 3:37:28 PM

hmm, i know i haven't created one. I think basically apple get's its own thread everytime they release a point update for iTunes (i.e. every 10 days)

2/28/2006 3:47:03 PM

apple has all of the popular media, they dont need a thread

2/28/2006 3:57:56 PM

here's something that i've been following for several months - Office and Excel 12, or now cleverly renamed Excel 2007, or the "2007 Office System" or something.

MS seems to be very transparent about what's going on in Office 2007, much more so than in the past. It could be argued, of course, that nothing major has changed in Office for the last 8 years, but Office 2007 is going to see some major changes, and I think their liberal use of blogging to show people what the new features are and why/what they're changing is a very good thing.

Here's a run down of the major blogs (all other Office 2007 blogs are linked to from Jensen Harris' Office Interface blog)
New Office Interface - http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/default.aspx
Word - http://blogs.msdn.com/joe_friend/
Excel - http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/default.aspx
Outlook - http://blogs.msdn.com/michael_affronti/
Access - http://blogs.msdn.com/access/
XML/Data formats - http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/

I'll pick out some interesting topics, but start with one of my favorite, but crippled in it's current state, feature of Excel: Conditionl Formatting. The conditional formatting engine has been completely redone. There is a whole category on it in the Excel blog - http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/category/11358.aspx

For the highlights:
- They've added a "data bar" feature, where you can create mini bar charts directly in the cells. It automatically scales itself according to the min/max values in the range.


- My favorite, they added "color scales", which will automatically asign colors to the cell based on color scale, instead of selecting a couple discrete colors and hard values
(i removed this pic from the thread b/c it's too wide, but be sure to view the link for a very nice color scale chart)
http://www.isamrad.com/dgainer/Two_10-06-2005.png



Or stick with different shades of the same color



- Added "icon sets" where you can apply icons to cells based on their values.
E.g.



Available icon sets as of Beta 1



A completely new way to apply Conditional Formatting, based on "The Ribbon", the overarching interface redesign (another post)




And finally integrating conditional formatting with the new Pivot Tables (also another post for another time)
I'll just link to the article because the pictures are very wide -
http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2005/12/21/506626.aspx

[Edited on March 3, 2006 at 10:06 AM. Reason : .]

[Edited on March 3, 2006 at 10:14 AM. Reason : pic]

3/3/2006 10:05:08 AM

wow, nice

3/3/2006 10:11:22 AM

yeah, i've been watching Office 12 too. i really like how they blog about how they make design decisions and take feedback from the comments.

3/3/2006 10:47:18 AM

dont have time to go through all that blog jazz, but are they implementing some kind of REAL change control into office? I know that I could definitely use a journaling/auditting/versioning system built into the document editting interface for regulatory docs.

I seriously spend 50% of the time updating the "CHANGE LOG" tab in every single goddamned spreadsheet I have to deal with.

Would be nice if something did that for me.

3/3/2006 3:04:06 PM

It's never going to do that adequately and you will always be disappointed, but the close-but-not-there functionality will drive you MAD

3/3/2006 6:25:56 PM

http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/07/microsoft-alexandria/
http://youtube.com/watch?v=IS4qlYwTdnk

more hype and speculation to complement the origami

[Edited on March 7, 2006 at 7:02 PM. Reason : .]

3/7/2006 7:02:02 PM

http://search.live.com

not particularly impressed. too slow. though i do like the "smart scrolling" so i don't have to click page 2, page 3, etc

[Edited on March 8, 2006 at 3:03 PM. Reason : link]

3/8/2006 3:03:34 PM

way too slow - bad interface

3/8/2006 3:08:14 PM

works faster than google for me.

3/8/2006 3:24:56 PM

I'm sure a good amount of the slowness has to do with it being hit pretty hard today. The times I have tried it though it has been no slower than Google or any other search.

3/8/2006 3:50:36 PM

the scrolling and the such - or the actual search? - the search works nicely - i meant for scrolling and the such

3/8/2006 3:50:59 PM

not a fan of it

3/8/2006 3:53:46 PM

MS live.com beta is HORRIBLE to put it mildly

it looks good, but... you decide

3/8/2006 9:51:37 PM

Quote :

"It could be argued, of course, that nothing major has changed in Office for the last 8 years"

hit it's sweet spot with ver. 5.1

3/8/2006 10:04:56 PM

this is not an innovation, but i wanted to give some props to MS for some of their communications lately, especially considering how competitors like Google, Yahoo and Apple are so tight-lipped most of the time it's very frustrating.

2 blogs, in particular. First, here's a post by Raymond Chen, one of (the?) MS's lead programmers/designers/engineers (also considered by some to be the best programmer in the world).
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/03/30/564809.aspx
It is a post about a real and current problem in Windows Vista and how deals with a bug in someone else's, Sambas, code. They found the bug during Vista beta testing. To the end user, it would probably appear to be a problem with Vista, but it's actually a bug in Samba and how it interprets certain queries. Raymond was posting several fixes, and gathering ideas for other possible fixes. If you read back through Raymonds archives, you will see that Windows has a strong history of maintaining backwards compatibility, even to the extent of implementing features in Windows code to workaround bugs in other people's code. He had a follow up today with some more info
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2006/03/31/565878.aspx


Then here are some posts by Jensen Harris, the Office 2007 UI Manager, discussing how the office interface has developed and grown over the past 25 years.
The first post talks about the history of the GUI and how the first Word interface was created. He rightfully gives Xerox and Apple most of the credit for shaping the modern computer GUI, hopefully (but doubtfully) dispelling some animosity among MS haters that they are just a bunch of theiving bastards who claim they were the first to do everything
http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/03/28/563007.aspx

Then in today's Part 3 of the series he talks about many of the mistakes Office has made in the past several versions, including poorly designed command bars and adaptive menus and command bars
http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/03/31/565877.aspx

I find it refreshing that he is able to speak freely about the mistakes that were made and how they are trying to fix them. It will be interesting, for example, if Google comes out in a few years and openly admits mistakes they've made in products like Web Accellerator and Video.

3/31/2006 12:14:50 PM

i really enjoy jensen's blog. i think it's great that they can benefit from a wide range of perspective that comes out of the discussions in the comments. didn't know about raymond's. another blog to add to bloglines

3/31/2006 12:24:35 PM

"Windows Live Academic (beta)" is now.... Live - http://academic.live.com/
It's a search of journals, peer-reviewed articles, library databases, etc. Results are also integrated form the regular search at live.com.... not that anybody actually uses that, do they?

4/12/2006 11:53:14 AM

nope

4/12/2006 12:10:06 PM

People in research/academics use this sort of thing all the time. Look at all the Bio toolbar crap there is for firefox.

4/12/2006 1:31:40 PM

i think he was wondering if people actually use live.com, not the journals. obviously people use journals. i sure do

4/12/2006 1:45:38 PM

yeah, i think he was talking about live.com that nobody uses

4/12/2006 2:12:22 PM

exactly. i'm still confused at to what "live" is.... i guess it's like MSN 2.0 or something, since MSN is a complete mess of old-school "web 1.0" stuff, and Live is supposed to be all "Web 2.0" content. The image search is cool, but the entire site is just way way way too slow for me. When i go to a search engine, i don't want to see a damn scroll bar telling me the search page is loading....

4/12/2006 2:31:38 PM

A couple of people at work use Live.com for their home/start page. Pretty much anything can do the same thing with widgets, rss, etc. Its whatever floats your boat. I use Yahoo for my main webmail its not all that useful to me (neither is the gmail stuff).

4/12/2006 10:55:33 PM

Quote :

"the Excel 12 grid will be 1,048,576 rows by 16,384 columns..."

And those PTs look interesting too. I'm stoked if it'll make work easier (and eliminate that damned "EXCEL.EXE has generated and error and must close").

4/13/2006 9:18:21 AM

here's a very good use of the MS Live "Bird's Eye View" feature.
Zillow - http://www.zillow.com - is an awesome tool in its own right that came out a couple months ago. It is great for comparing housing prices, shopping for realestate, etc.

now you can view the Bird's Eye View images of the houses, where available - which probably is not in many places right now.... here's an example
http://www.zillow.com/aerial/DualMapPage.z?zpid=49086984

via http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/04/13/zillow-goes-3d/

4/18/2006 8:37:05 AM

Welcome to college, here's your Windows Live account via digg

Quote :

"Microsoft, in an attempt to spread the word about Windows Live, has struck a deal with 72 colleges all across the world. And what is this said deal? The colleges have agreed to let Microsoft host their student's e-mail accounts. Windows Live@edu, as the service is called, will allow university students to keep their existing e-mail addresses but use Windows Live Mail as their client. Better yet, students won't have to deal with ads because Microsoft has agreed to turn them off for those specific accounts, at least until the students graduate. "

4/24/2006 7:01:02 PM

^ that's cool. I haven't tried the Live mail account, but if it's somewhere between Hotmail and Gmail, it's probably a big step up for most college webmails. I would prefer to go on Gmail though (not that it matters for me....). When Google started the Gmail for your Domain, they signed up San Jose City College (https://www.google.com/hosted/jaguars.sjcc.edu), but I haven't heard about any other schools.


Anyway - IE 7 Beta 2 is out -
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.mspx
via http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/04/24/ie7-beta-2-ships/


and Paul Thurrott has some critiques of recent builds of Vista
http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/winvista_5308_05.asp
Bruce Schnieder highlights some of the security implications of Paul's critiques
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/04/microsoft_vista.html

4/25/2006 6:36:52 AM

IE7 Plugins (i.e. extensions) - http://www.ieaddons.com/

4/26/2006 3:01:17 AM

MS Live (whatever it is) grew a little bit today with Live Shopping - http://shopping.live.com/
of course, i have no idea what it does or how it looks because it only supports IE on Windows!!

via http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/04/28/microsoft-blows-live-shopping-launch-no-firefox/

4/28/2006 8:30:40 PM

I'm just mad that I can't use Mail Live because I'm a premium hotmail member (through my parents subscription to MSN)

4/28/2006 8:57:53 PM

Quote :

"all the other big guys have their own "innovation threads""

Where's the Adobe innovation thread?

4/29/2006 4:30:12 AM

4/29/2006 4:31:05 AM

i heard Adobe is coming out with a killer new DRM product they ripped off from some small Raleigh company!

5/3/2006 1:43:35 PM

looks like you can go download Office 2007 beta 2 now - http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/default.mspx
since i don't have access to a Windows machine outside of work for the next several weeks, looks like i won't be fooling with it....
If aynone tries it, give your thoughts on the new Ribbon interface, and new features in Excel. I'm really looking forward to it. And be sure to read Jensen harris's blog to get background on the new interface
http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/default.aspx

5/23/2006 1:28:48 PM

^ beat me to it

5/23/2006 1:41:39 PM

To those that have not seen it yet - Zing!

5/23/2006 8:23:02 PM

bttt

We are playing around with some of the newer Office server technologies at work right now. They look intruiging, powerful, and highly configurable. Be curios what the next-gen versions will offer with Office 2007.

6/23/2006 6:35:17 AM

i got a beta fish

6/23/2006 8:19:17 AM

look good but i dunno what it is useful for as of yet

http://outlook.local.live.com/minisites/local/outlook/default.aspx

8/21/2006 4:20:11 PM

I would sum it up as... google maps... within outlook

8/21/2006 4:37:19 PM

i went to live.com today for the first time in a month or so and it was actually very fast loading and responsive. pleasant surprise

8/21/2006 10:55:07 PM

Let's get excited about office@!!!

8/21/2006 11:22:49 PM

1) i'm using Office 2007 Beta and liking it a lot, if not just because it makes beautiful graphs, and the conditional formatting is awesome.

2) you can get a free beta of "Expression Web", their Frontpage replacement. I'm downloading it now.... big file. Scoble has good things to say about it -
scoble - http://tinyurl.com/elky3
download - http://tinyurl.com/ml87c

[Edited on September 5, 2006 at 11:38 PM. Reason : .]

9/5/2006 11:37:27 PM

probably an old topic, but what do you guys think of the candidate release internet explorer 7?

9/11/2006 10:53:10 PM

lets not forget the Xbox 360...

oh and Flight Simulator X

9/12/2006 4:51:34 AM

I can't WAIT until Flight Sim X ... drooool

9/12/2006 1:31:06 PM