That I'm allow to talk about:

We got to see the new Dell Adamo which is 2/3 the thickness of the Macbook Air, bigger screen and a freaking SICK design (I'm guessing Dell will go public with that soon)

Also the new Sony Vaio X

Bing 2.0 starts rolling out soon, and there are several features that are truly a leap ahead of Google (this was by far the most interesting non-hardware stuff at the meeting to me). Very, very impressed with where Bing is going and the attitude and effort of the group to get it right.

First Win7 Commercial : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssOq02DTTMU

Windows Live! Movie Maker has been updated and is finally better than the Vista version. I dare say better than iMovie, but that's a close call.

9/11/2009 4:58:58 AM

I award you 3 arbitrary points for using "Final Countdown" in your commercial. However, I'm docking you 7 arbitrary points for continuing to advertise using 4-year old girls.

9/11/2009 8:31:09 AM

Snappy and reponkinsive.

9/11/2009 8:55:44 AM

10/22/2009 - The day I bury Vista in my backyard with a blank tombstone.

9/11/2009 9:03:26 AM

i saw that win7 commercial on twitter.com/mswindows yesterday. not impressed.

don't care much about super-thin laptops

i'll be interested to see what bing leaps come out

9/11/2009 9:19:40 AM

I WANT A LAPTOP I COULD READ A NEWSPAPER THROUGH

9/11/2009 12:39:54 PM

^^^ did that last weekend

9/11/2009 4:18:06 PM

Quote :

"We got to see the new Dell Adamo which is 2/3 the thickness of the Macbook Air, bigger screen and a freaking SICK design (I'm guessing Dell will go public with that soon)"

from the link, i couldn't tell if that was a macbook air or something else. (obviously something else or it wouldn't be on dell's site). Interested to see how the rest of it looks and the specs/price. Although I would much rather see something as thin as this or macbook air (same styling) but as small as those $299 netbooks.

not even going to bother with clicking on the sony link because VAIO's suck hardcore.

I would be interested to see Movie Maker. Would be nice to have a free windows based video editor that doesn't suck.


ok i just watched the win7 commercial. Is that a joke or are they serious? Microsoft needs to seriously weed out their marketing team and bring in some real talent.

[Edited on September 11, 2009 at 4:42 PM. Reason : .]

9/11/2009 4:38:08 PM

kids using a PC = easy to use
kids = cute = people generally like

gosh what is wrong with you people. it's the most straight forward marketing i've ever seen.

at least they don't spend a decade using the same commercial over and over again with lame ass (borderline hypocritical) banter back and forth.

[Edited on September 11, 2009 at 5:33 PM. Reason : .]

9/11/2009 5:32:35 PM

^

9/11/2009 5:50:22 PM

Quote :

"I would be interested to see Movie Maker. Would be nice to have a free windows based video editor that doesn't suck."

you can use see it now. http://download.live.com/moviemaker

9/11/2009 6:00:31 PM

^ is that the actual "new" version that Tyler mentioned?

9/11/2009 6:04:42 PM

yep. i've been using the beta for a while

it's definitely better than the old movie maker, but i don't think i'd say it's up to imovie yet

9/11/2009 6:06:22 PM

that's been out like a week.... sorry a month, i posted it here:
http://thewolfweb.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=391379&page=7#13184919

[Edited on September 11, 2009 at 6:08 PM. Reason : m]

9/11/2009 6:07:53 PM

i was also wondering if this was you

http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/11/ce-oh-no-he-didnt-part-lxii-steve-ballmer-publicly-ridicules/

9/11/2009 6:10:08 PM

Quote :

"kids using a PC = easy to use kids = cute = people generally like"

I mean, that is true, I guess my point is just that this isn't 1995 anymore. To most of the American public, computers aren't "big bad scary machine boxes" anymore. Is it really still necessary to show that computers are easy to use? I don't generally buy the same products that 4-year olds use. To me, that sort of advertising only works if you're doing it tongue-in-cheek, a la Geico with the "It's so easy, a caveman can do it" routine. But I don't get the sense the Microsoft is doing it as a joke...

9/11/2009 8:04:35 PM

Quote :

"at least they don't spend a decade using the same commercial over and over again with lame ass (borderline hypocritical) banter back and forth."

if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

9/11/2009 8:26:24 PM

Quote :

"it's definitely better than the old movie maker, but i don't think i'd say it's up to imovie yet"

what makes you say that? i haven't used it, so i don't have a frame of reference.

9/11/2009 8:59:58 PM

it's kinda like the notepad of video editing. you can do all the basic stuff, trimming, basic transitions, soundtrack, basic output options. and it's easy to use and makes good use of the ribbon UI.

but i mean, it's really, very basic. and that's probably exactly what it needs to be to make video editing a more frequent activity for basic users. and not that iMovie is way super-powered compared to Movie Maker, but it's probably at least Wordpad comparatively speaking

[Edited on September 11, 2009 at 9:07 PM. Reason : .]

9/11/2009 9:04:48 PM

so After Effects is like Word... does that mean that Adobe Premier is like WordPerfect? Or that Sony Vegas is like, um, OpenOffice?

9/11/2009 9:08:36 PM

this analogy is going downhill fast

*high five*

9/11/2009 9:10:57 PM

Premiere would be like word, After effects would be like quark, and final cut pro would be like indesign

if you want to follow the document composition analogy.

The ballmer iPhone bit was pretty funny, he Very obviously did it in good humor, but as thr CEO he really can't have any position other than hating it

9/11/2009 11:36:08 PM

Really excited about Bing2.0 considering how well done their initial push was.

I swear mini-Ballmer was at the MSDN event on Friday. Looked, sounded, and acted just like him... was disappointed we didn't get the "DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!" treatment.

9/12/2009 5:17:43 PM

I wasn't very happy with the new movie maker. I can't remember what I was trying to do that was easy on the old one but not possible with the new one off the top of my head, though. I just did the work in Premiere instead.

9/12/2009 5:49:00 PM

Keep up the good work on Bing, though. I've converted to it for most of my daily searches, and been satisfied with the results. One thing that I don't like though... the UI for image searches is kinda painful to use on netbook-class machines. The UI seems to assume that you have a lot of screen real estate.

9/13/2009 12:24:05 AM

sounds like the Dell Adamo looks pretty, but doesn't have much horsepower.

9/13/2009 11:02:49 AM

Now that's been shown on video publicly: http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/12/zune-hd-promotional-videos-offer-brief-glimpse-at-3d-gaming/

They demo'd Project Gotham Racing live. It looks incredible. Like, it looks exactly like PGR3 on the 360. Full 60fps (probably 30, but it was glass smooth), no aliasing on the models, full texture and lighting. I got to see another game running on it a long time ago, and lemme tell you, this is going to be a beast of a gaming system.

the graphics power easily rivals, if not beating, the PSP.

9/14/2009 8:44:51 AM

Lot of MS employees tweeting during or right after the meeting. Lots of tweets deleted, haha. They are still indexed in Twitter search though.

9/14/2009 2:28:22 PM

is it me or is it just odd that a company would have a meeting to go over products it doesn't make? (dell/sony)

i know there is a connection but really? it's like a dairy farmer having a meeting about a ground beef factory innovation.

9/15/2009 11:04:02 AM

no its not. maybe a dairy farmer meeting talking about the plastic containers being used to transport the milk, but seeing as all of microsoft's products end up running on non-microsoft hardware, I'd say it's pretty important.

9/15/2009 11:51:21 AM

i, too, think its really odd. I mean yes you do need non-microsoft hardware to demo your software but that doesn't mean you show off the hardware if its not yours. Leave that for the Sony/Dell 'company meetings'

9/15/2009 11:55:40 AM

We didn't have meetings specifically to talk about where are devices were being used, but at big all hands it was pointed out from time to time who our customers were and how they were going to use our device. I don't see it as much of a leap to hold a big meeting to talk about what is thought to be a really important product to the company. It boosts employee morale to know your work isn't in vain.

But I can see how you think it strange when you work for a small company.

[Edited on September 15, 2009 at 12:09 PM. Reason : .]

9/15/2009 12:08:31 PM

because your work definitely wasn't in vain.... hahahaha

9/15/2009 12:09:24 PM

No, our devices are still running in machines all over the world. Our devices are currently still being manufactured by several other vendors. So, no, our work wasn't really in vain when you consider the contribution to society.

9/15/2009 12:19:34 PM

^Yep.

And consider that the "device show-off" was maybe 5 minutes of a 5+ hour company meeting DAY, I don't think it was anything over the top. This topic is stuff I'm allowed to talk about, and publicly announced hardware happens to be in that bucket

9/15/2009 12:21:21 PM

wow, what altruism

that's pretty rough when you're reduced to thinking about your "contributions to society" as a way of coping with all those extra hours you slaved away... for nothing society

[Edited on September 15, 2009 at 12:35 PM. Reason : s]

9/15/2009 12:34:34 PM

This is some pretty weak trolling, even by your already in the basement standards. Do you have anything else?

9/15/2009 12:58:04 PM

^seriously. Can't believe how whole-heartedly I'm agreeing with Chance

9/15/2009 1:19:43 PM

It's almost as if I wasn't paid (and generously) for my work, like I did it for free, and society didn't care. I cry myself to sleep at night.

9/15/2009 1:21:09 PM

shake it off, man...

9/15/2009 1:25:53 PM

Quote :

"Windows Live! Movie Maker has been updated and is finally better than the Vista version. I dare say better than iMovie, but that's a close call."

I switched over to Windows Movie Maker a couple of months ago for day-to-day editing and from what I've seen of the beta I'm sticking with it, and I do have the choice between it and IMovie at work. Of course if I do a longer project I use Adobe, but I've still been very pleased using it as much as I do. I'll agree with fred's eval, I do like the ribbon ui and the version for 7 is just as good if not better.

Quote :

"is it me or is it just odd that a company would have a meeting to go over products it doesn't make? (dell/sony)"

I could see this if you're going to be using them in work day-to-day operations, but other than that it seems more like something you'd just email to everyone. I mean, it's not like it's a new training topic.

[Edited on September 15, 2009 at 3:30 PM. Reason : .]

9/15/2009 3:28:07 PM

For some reason this thread just makes me think of that other guy that made the "NDA's Love 'Em or Hate 'Em?" thread.

9/15/2009 4:55:15 PM

not sure if this is what Noen was referring to, but I saw this yesterday:

http://www.bing.com/visualsearch

9/15/2009 6:13:35 PM

That's one of the new Bing2.0 features

9/15/2009 6:42:52 PM

I don't know if it's worth my time to install Silverlight just to get Google Image Search on acid.

9/15/2009 7:03:58 PM

Is it worth your time to install Silverlight for http://snfextra.nbcsports.com/ ?

Quote :

"• A full screen video player that is capable of delivering 720p HD video. TV quality on the web. • A main HD video feed, plus 4 user selectable alternate synchronized camera feeds that allows users to switch camera angles themselves. Your TV can’t do that. • Adaptive smooth streaming of live HD video, which enables the video player to automatically switch bitrates on the fly depending on networking/CPU conditions. No buffering/stuttering experience. • DVR support of the live video, including Pause, Instant Replay, Slow Motion, Skip Forward/Back. You can pause and rewind on live video. • Play-by-play data (touchdowns, fumbles, etc) inserted as tooltip chapter markers on the scrubber at the bottom allowing you to quickly seek to key moments. A smarter, contextual DVR. • Highlights of major plays created within minutes of the play. NBC is cutting on demand highlights and publishing them on the fly with Smooth Streaming. • Sideline interviews with the players. No more channel surfing, you are one click away from additional content. • Game statistics. These are live stats coming directly in real-time from the NFL. • Game commentary and Q&A with the SNF hosts. Chat with the live TV broadcasters. "

[Edited on September 15, 2009 at 7:48 PM. Reason : .]

9/15/2009 7:39:43 PM

for netflix:
silverlight > flash

9/15/2009 7:50:58 PM

Quote :

"is it me or is it just odd that a company would have a meeting to go over products it doesn't make?"

Quote :

"there's an app for that"

9/15/2009 7:52:33 PM

smooth streaming is the goddamned coolest thing ever and theres absolutely no reason any site should use flash instead.

9/15/2009 8:03:50 PM

And for those that haven't seen Smooth Streaming then go here for a demo that shows the live stats of the process while HD is being streamed:
http://www.iis.net/media/experiencesmoothstreaming

9/16/2009 5:19:15 PM