what consumes me, bud caddell » Microsoft

two visions of the future

Bud Caddell — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:55:40 +0000

The first, from Microsoft.

World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

The future is certainly all about user interfaces, no? Microsoft sees touchscreens everywhere and Bruce sees a world that is, in essence, its own user interface. This must be an expression of our current state of technology and culture.

Think about the 50′s. Society was enraptured in thinking about the future of transportation, everything was a jet pack, rocket car, etc (even our regular cars had space-age fins). As a culture, we seem to be less focused on physical travel, moving from point A to point B, and much more obsessed with the movement of bits and bytes and our place in that world. This is a bit frightening to me in some ways. Our exploration of outer space (the place and the thing) seems to have been replaced by a fascination with inner space.

What do you think? Seriously, I want to know.

100 Jobs for Purple People

Jennifer Van Grove — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 19:53:30 +0000

Ex-Yahoo Ryan Kuder started The Purple People Collective as a resource for newly laid-off Yahoos (and any other tech workers) looking to band together and find freelance work. The site, which launched last month, now has 100 listings including a few fr...

Zunes Everywhere Froze At 2am This Morning [Microsoft]

Chris Walters — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:13:32 +0000

If you're Steve Jobs, you probably dream of stories like this: Zunes all over the world froze up at around 2am this morning and won't reboot, and nobody knows why.

ArsTechnica says it seems to have affected all owners of the 30 gig model, and hit no matter what you were doing at the moment:

"i was on the computer my zune was hooked up charging all of the sudden it reset it self and froze on the zune loading logo screen !!!" said ISUZU RODEO on the Zune.net forums. "Same thing just happened to me!" replied momogirl. "Except mine wasn't hooked up to the computer, I was playing music and all of sudden the music stopped and it shut off. I turned the Zune back on and it loaded to 100% but then froze and none of the reset combinations are working."

Microsoft has been embarrassingly slow to respond to the story, but according to MSNBC they've now released the following statement:

“Customers with 30gb Zune devices may experience issues when booting their Zune hardware. We’re aware of the problem and are working to correct it. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for your patience!”

We assume by "your patience" they mean "your many, many class action lawsuits."

We were going to make some pointless Skynet jokes, but the funny has already been exhaustively covered on Gizmodo's board as well as Zune's own forums (which are now offline for "maintenance"—maybe they were hosted on a Zune). We have a feeling that Shatner Zune pic, courtesy of Gizmodo reader Bill Bradski, is going to stick around for a while, though.

(Photo: Bill Bradski or Brasky, Gizmodo isn't sure) [Update: I didn't get that "Brasky" was an SNL reference, my apologies. - CW]

The Future Of Social Search (Or Why Google Should Buy Facebook)

Erick Schonfeld — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 18:08:36 +0000

If you could search your friends’ thoughts, interests, and activities, would that be a better search experience? In many cases, it would be. Searching for restaurants, books, or movies, would turn up recommendations from people you actually know. ...

Online Ad Growth Grinds To A Halt

Erick Schonfeld — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 14:34:51 +0000

We all know online advertising decelerated in the third quarter, but how bad was the slowdown overall? To find out, we added up the online advertising revenues for Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL, which together account for the majority of online a...

Fanboy Fever Explained Through Science [Science]

Dan Nosowitz — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 22:00:00 +0000

A study commissioned by Professor Semir Zeki of University College London sought to explore the difference between love and hate in the human mind. It found, oddly enough, that hate tends to be more rational than love. What does this all have to do with gadgets? It just might explain why you commenters fight incessantly about Apple and Microsoft.

The study is a little small for my liking, at only 17 people, and the results seem a bit anecdotal, but they do make sense. Imagine trying to explain why you like somebody: you're bound to use vague words. "Oh, she's really, um, nice, and cool, and funny." But then explain why you dislike somebody: "Oh GOOD LORD if she says 'utilize' instead of 'use' one more time I'm just going to explode all over her and she'll have to UTILIZE all sorts of cleaning products to get my rage shrapnel off her shirt!" See what I mean? The hatred is so much more specific than the love.

So when you Apple fanboys blurt out nonsense like "No but Mac OS just works better! It's, um, well, easier!" and yet Apple haters can compose long and tiresome rants about the enclosed architecture and infuriating attitude of OS X, it's neither of your faults. It's science. Sort of.

Honestly, I'm a little dubious. Sure, I can think of situations in which the rationality of hate over love makes sense, but not in all cases, and it seems like too much generalization to make statements about "love" and "hate" like either is any one simple thing. But maybe I'm just being overly rational in my hatred of this study. [CNET]