Seifi.org » microsoft http://www.seifi.org A Web Development Blog by Joe Seifi - seifi.org Thu, 26 Jan 2012 01:08:13 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Seinfeld Microsoft Ads http://www.seifi.org/microsoft/seinfeld-microsoft-ads.html http://www.seifi.org/microsoft/seinfeld-microsoft-ads.html#comments Mon, 08 Sep 2008 01:23:43 +0000 Joe Seifi http://www.seifi.org/?p=684 Finally got a look at the Bill Gates / Jerry Seinfeld ads for Microsoft. Pretty unconventional stuff and sometimes funny. There is no mention of Apple in the ad at all, which is what I was naturally expecting to see. This ad made me realize how much I miss Seinfeld. It been pretty cool to have other ads with Morty, Newman and Elaine. Take a look for yourself. I can go for a Churro right about now!

Here is an alternate pwned ending version, pretty weird.

Brand new Ad

]]> http://www.seifi.org/microsoft/seinfeld-microsoft-ads.html/feed 0 Microsoft Buys Google for $200 Billion http://www.seifi.org/google/microsoft-buys-google-for-200-billion.html http://www.seifi.org/google/microsoft-buys-google-for-200-billion.html#comments Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:01:45 +0000 Joe Seifi http://www.seifi.org/microsoft/microsoft-buys-google-for-200-billion.html Microsoft Buys Google for $200 Billion
The number one search engine on the planet has just announced the biggest deal to hit the internet since its YouTube buy. Microsoft has just made an offer for Google for the amount of $200,000,000,000 which is about $638 per share of the 137 million outstanding shares.

Google shares have plummeted to all time low of $41 per share on the news of the buyout, while Microsoft shares opened trading at an all time high of $121 this morning. Google is shipping its PageRank and search index which contains 1.34 Petabytes of data stored in over 550,000 tape drives over to Microsoft using 3,000 Armored Trucks, driving up north from Mountain View to Redmond. The 848 mile road trip will be overseen by law enforcement agencies both on the ground and in the air.

There is yet no official announcement as to what Microsoft plans to do with the new Google acquisition, but rumors are flying around that Microsoft plans to start selling a new search based operating system with a new built in software called Windows Internet Search that will perform web searches at an alarming fast rate using Google search. The new upgrade will cost around $149 for existing Windows Vista users. Microsoft has no plans of providing search functionality to Apple users.

Microsoft will also be offering a subscription based search to its customers starting next year that is said to incorporate the new Google logic. The search feature will provide subscribers with 10 Google searches per day starting at 0.99c.

In related news, Google announced that it is experiencing unusually high traffic today, as users of the search engine giant around the world are are frantically trying to back up the entire search engine’s database before Microsoft officially shuts it down in the coming weeks.

Google employees have made a pact to never give up and are voicing their disapproval of the announcement by forming their own Open Source startup search engine company called AprilFools that is expected to be a noteworthy replacement for the many fooled Google users worldwide.

]]> http://www.seifi.org/google/microsoft-buys-google-for-200-billion.html/feed 1 Bill Gates and Steve Jobs Talk it Out Video Series http://www.seifi.org/apple/bill-gates-and-steve-jobs-talk-it-out.html http://www.seifi.org/apple/bill-gates-and-steve-jobs-talk-it-out.html#comments Fri, 01 Jun 2007 03:25:45 +0000 Joe Seifi http://www.seifi.org/apple/bill-gates-and-steve-jobs-talk-it-out.html Gates and Jobs on Making a Mark in History… 15min 05sec


Gates and Jobs Look Back to ’97… 11min 00sec

Gates and Jobs on Past Mistakes… 15min 10sec

Gates and Jobs on Partnering… 8min 16sec

Gates and Jobs Look to the Future… 10min 56sec

Gates and Jobs on Their Relationship… 4min 06sec

Gates and Jobs Take Questions… 18min 44sec

]]> http://www.seifi.org/apple/bill-gates-and-steve-jobs-talk-it-out.html/feed 0 Microsoft Surfaces Ubiquitous Computing TouchScreen http://www.seifi.org/cool/ubiquitous-computing-touchscreen-from-microsoft-surfaces.html http://www.seifi.org/cool/ubiquitous-computing-touchscreen-from-microsoft-surfaces.html#comments Thu, 31 May 2007 06:36:51 +0000 Joe Seifi http://www.seifi.org/cool/ubiquitous-computing-touchscreen-from-microsoft-surfaces.html Microsoft and Wow haven’t gone hand in hand in a long time. Until now! Since, being first means everything, Microsoft’s latest offering surfaced today as the first step towards ubiquitous computing. With touch and drag technology, there are tons of potential for this. If you have ever used an ATM machine or been to uWink you’ve see similar ideas being put to use. Microsoft Surface is a commercial product for use by partners such as casinos, and will require device manufacturers to release compatible products. It has many features that are similar to that of Apple’s touchscreen computing technology, some of which will be seen in the iPhone. Here are the videos for these products.

Here is a video sneak preview of Surface. It is a coffee table touchpad computer with some really mindblowing features. The user or users for that matter use their finger(s) to control it. The computer actually has a camera that recognizes objects placed on its sruface such as Phones or Cameras and allows for specific device actions such as transferring photos and contact information.


Wireless computing is about to get really exciting. I guess pretty soon our homes will look like a scene out of Minority Report.

Here is the first demo of multi-touch computing from Jeff Han which aired back in Feb 06

And another famous demo from Jeff

Apple’s iPhone uses Multi-touch technology, but apparently they have not been able to hire Jeff Han. Apple bought FingerWorks in June 2006. Jeff was quoted saying “The iPhone is absolutely gorgeous, and I’ve always said, if there ever were a company to bring this kind of technology to the consumer market, it’s Apple. I just wish it were a bit bigger so I could really use both of my hands.” And last but not least here is the complete iPhone demo, which by the way will be the first one released on June 29th, 2007.

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Ok let’s get going. Open word and from the new round Office button choose Publish > Blog. This opens up the blog entry view. Then in the Blog Post ribbon click on Manage Accounts > New > and choose WordPress. Then all you have to do is enter the path to xmlrpc.php which is by default http://www.yourdomain.com/xmlrpc.php and your WordPress account login information.

To setup automated picture uploading, click on the Picture Options button and from the Picture provider drop down choose My own server. In the Upload URL enter your full ftp server URL. The default WordPress upload folder is ftp://user:pass@domain.com/full/path/to/wp-content/uploads and the Source URL is the http path to the upload folder for example http://domain.com/wp-content/uploads.

The Insert ribbon allows you to insert images into the blog. Once you add images you can easily Format them using a preset of choices such as drop shadow and mirror effects. The images are all uploaded to the same directory, but the file names are formatted like date_postid_description.ext. For example this image is called 051007_1339_Bloggingwit1.gif. Word tries to optimize the images before uploading them and at times the resulting gif images can look too lossy. It would be nice to be able to configure the image quality. Also I don’t like having all the images in one folder and it would be nice to be able to configure a directory structure for how those images are stored. Lastly the image tags produced by Word are missing the alt, border, width,  and height attributes.

You can also insert and format tables, shapes, SmartArt, charts, symbols, and WordArt, and format them using the format ribbon.

Use the Insert Category button to associate your story to a specific category, using a nice drop down menu. To add more than one category click on the Insert button again. Although Word says you can add a new category by just typing it, I was unable to get one to be added and could only choose from existing ones.

Once you are done, you can either Publish your post or Publish as Draft for later use. You can also open existing posts for modification.

Although this is not a perfect solution, it is a great start for Microsoft. The code is actually pretty clean as well. Word uses simple <p>, <em> and <strong> tags to format entries, and uses simple inline CSS for other formatting intensive layouts. If you find that you are getting unwanted markup code in your source, click on the Clear Formatting icon in the Basic Text ribbon to clean out the useless gunk.

Overall, if you are a big fan of the WYSIWYG editor in WordPress and or don’t want to bother with writing html code, this might be a good alternative for you. You give up some control as to what you can and can’t do, but you can perhaps cut out some time and add more layout variety to your posts. Personally I’m not 100% sold on using software to blog but would be interested in test driving other appealing blogging tools with innovative features.

]]> http://www.seifi.org/software/blogging-with-wordpress-and-word-2007.html/feed 11 Microsoft has too many portals http://www.seifi.org/portals/microsoft_has_too_many_portals.html http://www.seifi.org/portals/microsoft_has_too_many_portals.html#comments Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 Joe Seifi My MSN and Start, Microsoft has now released Live.com. That's 3 portals that do pretty much the same thing as far as the average user is concerned (well OK Live.com has some cool web 2.0 ajax ideas). There are also a few other portal type pages in the Microsoft realm including Search, the Microsoft page itself, the Windows portal and the Xbox portal. Compare all those with just one portal each for Yahoo, Google and Apple. The main difference is that these companies have a single point of access to all of their products and services. Can you say c o n s o l i d a t e? Bill gates should probably read "The art of not confusing your users". Until that gets published he can try Why Business People Speak Like Idiots. I guess it will be another year before MS decides to release yet another redundant portal with an expensive domain name. Now I'm really beginning to wonder if the giant guerilla can save itself. Another reason why being small is a bonus these days. The latest live.com release is going to somehow tie into a new platform. Wow! Best of luck with that!]]> After playing around with My MSN and Start, Microsoft has now released Live.com. That’s 3 portals that do pretty much the same thing as far as the average user is concerned (well OK Live.com has some cool web 2.0 ajax ideas). There are also a few other portal type pages in the Microsoft realm including Search, the Microsoft page itself, the Windows portal and the Xbox portal. Compare all those with just one portal each for Yahoo, Google and Apple. The main difference is that these companies have a single point of access to all of their products and services. Can you say c o n s o l i d a t e? Bill gates should probably read “The art of not confusing your users”. Until that gets published he can try Why Business People Speak Like Idiots.

I guess it will be another year before MS decides to release yet another redundant portal with an expensive domain name. Now I’m really beginning to wonder if the giant guerilla can save itself. Another reason why being small is a bonus these days. The latest live.com release is going to somehow tie into a new platform. Wow! Best of luck with that!

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