Filed under: Text, Utilities, Windows, Blogging, Web services, Microsoft, Freeware
Microsoft Live not yet ready for prime time?
by Victor Agreda, Jr. Nov 2nd 2005 at 5:00PM
Looks like Joel Spolsky doesn't think too much of Microsoft's new portal page, live.com. Aside from completely breaking down in Firefox, and only partially working in IE, it appears Joel has a beef with the tack that Microsoft has taken. It's something you hear a lot of in the energetic startups in Silicon Valley and elsewhere: ship early, ship often. Let's face it, some of the best tools in the Web 2.0 stratosphere are still beta products. So what's the diff when Microsoft shows off a beta product? Well, they are Microsoft.Yeah, it'd be easy for me to say Windows is just one big beta. Based on what I've seen of Vista, I'm going to just say I feel those days will be over (eventually). However, for Microsoft to release a half-baked bizarro version of their own start.com page, well that's just weird. Joel calls it the Marimba phenomenon. Anyone remember Marimba? Yeah, that's what I thought. Long story short, don't let PR write a check the developers can't cash. At least, don't post-date those checks. You could just as easily call it the Apple phenomenon though (remember the Apple III, the Lisa?), or any number of botched launches. Point is, Microsoft is too big and too smart to do such a thing. According to Joel, a company with their resources should really be spending a little more time fixing things than promoting things... I'd have to agree there.
While it may be nice for the pundits to ponder the competition between MS, Yahoo, and Google "heating up" because of things like Live's launch, to me it seems like MS just getting in to the game. And while I think Joel has a point, I think he may have underestimated MS. They will not let live.com sit still for long. I fully believe it will continue to morph, expand, and extend its usefulness over time. And frankly, I don't think it will take a long time. 2006 is going to be a banner year for Microsoft, and somehow little pieces like this fit into the larger puzzle. It's the classic "watch this space and it will change" gag from the old newspaper days.
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
A said 6:19PM on 11-02-2005
I have been using the Hotmail beta (mail.live.com) in addition to their cool new Favorites storage site (favorites.live.com) and I think they are terrific. Yea they need some beautification work, but they are fully functional and what they do, is done well. Now if they would only enable my to sync my outlook calendar to my hotmail account for free!
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Jay Contonio said 6:21PM on 11-02-2005
Yes, but what you're not understanding is by the time Microsoft actually fixes live.com and all of it's sub-sites, people will already have live.com's failures in the back of their minds and never visit it again. It seems Microsoft released a half-assed product just to get in on the "beta" trend Google started. The only problem is, Google's stuff works and it works in every current day browser.
The design, functionality, and usefulness of live.com is all a bunch of suck. People will remember this. People will choose Goooooooogle.
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easyfrag said 8:50PM on 11-02-2005
You have to do this product-release thing the Googley way or the Appley way: the Googley way is you release without any prior announcement, put the site/file up, mark it as beta and wait for the feedback. The beta tag is removed when the bug fixes/complaints slow to everyone's liking.
The Appley way is you wait until the product is worthy of the black turtleneck, show it at a carefully orchestrated event preferrably at the end, as if the product were an afterthought , and parade a stream of celebrities who declare it the greatest thing they have ever used.
Microsoft's problem is that they had a Googley product but had an Appley release party.
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Dave Brown said 12:34PM on 12-02-2005
Realise this is an old blog, but had to tell someone. I tried www.live.com, and entered
XMLHTTPRequest childnode
as the search term. At the top of the results was this astonishing suggestion:
Were you looking for Xmlhttprequest child nude
Yes, of course I was...
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