Posted by: kurtsh | November 28, 2005

NEWS: Microsoft technologies on the Apprentice

Say what you want about it:  We have to advertise just like any other company. 

Thursday, we will be featured on NBC’s “The Apprentice” as part of our cross promotion with the show to establish awareness of LiveMeeting & Live Communications Server solutions.  Dustin Grosse and Janice Kapner of Microsoft’s Real Time Communications Marketing team will have cameo appearances on the show to select the episode’s winning team.

Some of you may know that a couple years ago, I considered leaving my position for another one that would have made me responsible for Microsoft’s product placement in Los Angeles Entertainment community.  The idea was that our products – Smartphones, Pocket PCs, Tablet PCs, XBoxes, Windows, and other software were to be in the background… or even highlighted on prime time television shows. 

For example:  If you watch really carefully, you’ll notice that the Kiefer Sutherland TV hit, "24" has a tremendous amount of Microsoft technology in it.  From Pocket PC’s to Tablet PCs, they seem to find ways to use MS technology in every episode.  If you look at NBC’s "West Wing", you’ll see that they use Windows-based computers prominently displaying the "Start" button along with Windows Mobile PDAs and Tablet PCs around the White House.  (After all – while the cast of Will & Grace might all use iMacs and iPods, what President would ever be caught using a Macintosh? <grin>)

In my travels, I’ve met the Product Placement guy for Apple incidentally – he’s EXCEPTIONALLY well paid, but lives in a little 1st floor condo in West LA.  It turns out that Apple doesn’t have an internal group to do this in the same way that we do.  They hire outside consultants to do the placement and the advertising and they through a lot and I mean a LOT of money at it.  At last check, I heard, Apple’s placement and advertising budget was 15x the size of Microsoft’s… which is why you see all those TV commercials and billboard ads all over the place. 

Well, that’s the position.  I ended up not applying for it, even though the position seemed designed for me, because I’d made a commitment to my account executive that I’d stick around as long as he was on the same accounts. 

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Posted by: kurtsh | November 25, 2005

COMMENTARY: How do I get an XBox360?

There’s been a lot of lame rumors going around recently about what Microsoft’s doing to get more XBox’s out there in distribution.  I myself have gone to eBay for 2 consoles and paid a healthy premium – but I accept that there’s a cost to getting an in-demand item.  That’s supply and demand.
 
I’m not going to sit here and ‘hate’ on the ‘scalpers’.  They provide a legitimate service and that’s what capitalism’s all about.  I personally waited in line with these folks (I was unable to procure one at the Mojave Desert launch… long story) and for 10 hours, we all stood in line in front of BestBuy waiting to get our hands on a XBox360… hoping that the unit we got was a Premium pack with a Hard Drive.
 
There are however two things I’d like to clear up about this whole ‘shortage’:
1) BE PATIENT:  It’s a long ways until Christmas.  Microsoft has new shipments of XBox’s going to the major stores EVERY WEEK.  You’ll notice that the price of XBox360 units on eBay have gone down from $1,500 to around $800.  This drop will continue as more and more units are available in the distribution channel every week.  In fact, all you need to do is call your local store in the evenings to see if they’re going to get any the next day (or call them in the morning to see if they’re expecting any midday)… and then just show up.
 
This is the single easiest way we can ‘trump’ scalping:  Simply make the units available at varying intervals every week so that other people – normal consumers – have a shot at getting the inventory just as any other scalper does.  It makes it so that scalpers aren’t the only one’s holding the goods:  There’s ALWAYS an alternative, and that’s to simply wait a little and constantly check back with your local Best Buy or Circuit City.
 
 
2) THERE’S NO HOLD BACK:  The conspiracy theorists abound around this topic however, rest assured that we’re not synthetically holding back consoles to heighten the hype around the launch.  I assure you – there’s no need.  Logic dictates that this is clearly the "hot item" of the holiday season and there’s no need to aggrevate people any more than necessary.  We know that all people want to do is buy our product.   We’re chruning ’em out as fast as we can. 
 
And if you really want to get down to brass tacks, our goal is to sell GAMES – not consoles.  We need the consoles in people’s hands as a platform to sell games.  We make a rumored $8-$9 per 3rd party game and a bit more for our first party games.  We lose a considerable amount of money on the consoles but without the consoles out there, we can’t sell the games.  We NEED as many consoles out there as possible and as soon as possible to make up the difference otherwise this whole "razors for razorblades" model falls apart.
 
But let’s face it:  People hate us not matter what we do.  We could have enough consoles for everyone and the press would conclude that the product "is a dud" because people aren’t fist fighting in the aisles for an XBox360.  We could come out with the cure for cancer and there’s be some guy with a Macintosh yelling about how "we could have released it sooner" or that "we’re trying to monopolize the market on cancer cures".
 

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Posted by: kurtsh | November 21, 2005

RELEASE: XBox360… details.

If you want to get one of the 1st XBOX 360s (we will only ship 1M units in the US at launch) Here is how:

 

Option #1:  

Go to Zero Hour in the Palmdale desert and buy it there … one allocated to every attendee (if you were invited to go and have a pass).

 

Option #2:

If you preordered form EB Games or Gamestop and received confirmation, you are set and should get it shipped to you, or pick it up at the EB games celebration event @ Universal City Walk.

 

Option #3:

If you absolutely want to guarantee getting one at this juncture… and don’t mind dropping a $129 premium you can go to your Best Buy and sign up for the Geek Squad to come to your home and install your unit (that’s what the $129 is for… but it guarantees you will get a unit since you prepay for it and the service)

Otherwise wait in line for a Best Buy to open at 9:00 a.m. on the 22nd to get your unit. Allocations differ by Best Buy, and just to give you an idea of “the limitations” my local Best Buy in West LA is only getting 78 units total and I don’t know if all of them are the premium edition

Costa Mesa will have 120 of the $399 Xbox.  Fountain Valley will have about 60.  Tustin will have 40.  Fullerton will have about 60.

This is the Xbox360 locator:  http://xbox.clambert.org

Other sites to note: 

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Posted by: kurtsh | October 26, 2005

NEWS: ZDnet – OpenOffice turns out

Oh man:  Straight from the publication organization that seemingly HATES us. 
 
The net-net of the evaluation is that OpenOffice 2.0 requires 10x the CPU & memory resources AND takes 10x as long to accomplish the same relative operations as Microsoft Office 2003.  Here’s an excerpt:
——————————–
Performance analysis of OpenOffice and MS Office Posted by George Ou @ 3:21 am
"It doesn’t matter how fast the CPU is:  OpenOffice is simply bloated."
 
In my last blog, where I did a high-level technical evaluation of Microsoft Office 2003 and OpenOffice.org 2.0, I showed that OpenOffice was a memory and resource hog.  Contrary to popular belief (among Open Source advocates), Microsoft Office came out very lean and fast while OpenOffice.org Office Suite was just the opposite.  Some couldn’t accept the numbers and complained that the Task Manager numbers may be inaccurate and hiding memory usage.  They demanded more proof, so here it is.
——————————–

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Posted in Computers and Internet

Posted by: kurtsh | October 21, 2005

COMMENTARY: The high definition DVD wars

So from the gods on high, I got a comment directly from the folks without our company working with each of the DVD consortiums:  BluRay and HD-DVD.

The net net is that the 50GB dual-layer BD-ROM disc is completely & total vaporware.  The major US replicators not only do not have any pilot lines or even a single TEST line running.  They can’t even pre-order the equipment to do so. 

If you think that’s bad, check this out:  The replicators don’t even have access to any replication data or specifications to even begin to guess at prices or manufacturability.  As a matter of fact, far as we can tell, it will be SEVERAL YEARS before BD-ROM 50GB is ready for mass production.

Conversely, the HD-DVD 30GB dual-layer disc is ready for mass production today. Given that BD-Rom will enter the market with only the single-layer 25GB disc ready for production, HD-DVD will launch with more more capacity than BD. 

This is apparently what’s so laughable:  All the people in the peanut gallery rallying behind BluRay because of the well-marketed 50GB capacity are in for a very big disappointment over at least the next 3 years as they see all the other folks puchasing HD-DVD’s with not only 5GB more capacity that their BD-ROM disc, but more importantly, HD-DVD will have managed copy allowing people to store their videos on their PC or their Home Video Servers for random access without needing a DVD jukebox.

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Posted by: kurtsh | October 20, 2005

LAUNCH: SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005, Biztalk Server 2006

Join us in Anaheim, December 6, 2005. Admission is free.
http://www.microsoft.com/events/2005launchevents/default.mspx


Microsoft® Visual Studio 2005® and SQL Server™ 2005 are out of beta and ready to go. Now the people behind them are joining the Microsoft BizTalk Server® 2006 development team for a 90-city, 50 country tour.

Join us at the Anaheim Convention Center, December 6, 2005 for:

  • Solution Specific Seminars
  • Q&A’s with Development Teams
  • Community Lounges
  • Complimentary copies of SQL Server 2005 & Visual Studio 2005 for all attendees

See these enterprise-class tools in action.
SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 are deeply integrated to help you deliver mission-critical, process-driven applications to your organization. You can develop and deploy these applications more efficiently, and keep them in production at predictable performance levels.

Don’t just learn about the new software. Walk away with it.
Come to a Launch Tour 2005 event, and you’ll receive a copy of SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005 as a token of our appreciation.

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Posted in Event

Posted by: kurtsh | October 17, 2005

NEWS: Toy manufacturers discovering today’s standards don’t necessarily cut it with kids anymore

I’ll just leave this for everyone to read, but don’t be surprised if kids this Christmas pass by the doll and race car aisle and go straight to pick up an ‘iPod’. 
 
Bottom line: 
According to this article, toys need to use simple yet innovative technology to meet the demands to today’s increasingly more sophisticated children.

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Posted in Computers and Internet

Posted by: kurtsh | October 17, 2005

Hmm. Been a while since I posted.

Well, it’s been a while since I posted anything to the ol’ blog.  I’ve been overly busy recently.
1) I spent the last week in New York.  Customer visit.  You know who you are.
2) I got a new dog.  We rescued him from the shelter where he was flea-bitten, lethargic, and very sad and pathetic.  His name is Sheepa because he looked like a sheep dog. (the shelter named him that and we just kept his name)
 
Hopefully I’ll get into the swing of things soon.

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Posted by: kurtsh | October 9, 2005

Who am I?

Hi.  Welcome to my blog.  I was recently asked the very basic question, "Who am I?" and I realized that I don’t actually have any sort of free form description of myself or my role so I figured, heck, why not?
 
 
MICROSOFT "TECH": 
I’ve been working for Microsoft since 1995 as a Systems Engineer.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with that position, it’s basically a pre-sale technical sales role.  Back in the 80’s, it was common for a single salesperson (Account Executive) to speak to customers, manage licensing contracts, and demonstrate products.  Some time in the early 90’s, it was deemed near impossible for one person to accomplish all 3 tasks with the exploding number of products that we were creating.  So in addition to the Account Exec role, we produced a role called the Systems Engineer, similar to what IBM had, whose responsibility was to understand and explain the usage and implementation of our technologies and how they could be best used together. 
  
TECHNOLOGY FOCUSES:
I’m a Operating Systems and Management Technologies specialist, which in Microsoft-speak means I cover any product with the word "Windows" in it, and any product with the word, "Manage" in it, such as Systems Management Server and Operations Manager.
 
My favorite technologies include:
  • Windows Mobile, an operating system for PDAs & Phones that rivals PalmOS, MobileLinux, & Blackberry.  It comes in 3 flavors that operate on Pocket PC, Pocket PC Phones, and Smartphones.
  • Windows Media, the world’s most popular Streaming Media technology and part of Windows Server 2003.  It includes the following products:  Windows Media Player 10, Windows Media Server 9.0, Windows Media Encoder 9.0, Windows Media Codec 9.0, and Windows Digital Rights Management.
  • Certificate Services, an amazingly versatile technology that comes with Windows Server 2003.  It is what enables Windows Server file system encryption, IIS 6.0 web server SSL-encryption, 802.1x wireless networking encryption, VBscript & Office document signing, S-MIME email encryption, smart card authentication, wireline IPSec networking encryption, secure VPN connectivity… it goes ON and ON.  Good god – I can’t believe we give this stuff away with Windows Server 2003.
  • Rights Management Services, a highly useful, hardly known technology that not only secures & encrypts Office documents & web pages (per user or group), but it also regulates HOW PEOPLE USE THOSE DOCUMENTS & WEB PAGES as in, "Can I print it?  Can I cut & paste content from it?  Can I screen capture it?", and it also logs all uses of said content.
THOUGHTS ON MICROSOFT:
I love this company.  I mean, I really do.  And I don’t mean that in a ass-kissing, I-hope-I-don’t-get-fired-for-this-blog, Eddie Haskel way.  I’ve worked at 3 of the largest companies in the world, and a few smaller independent organizations and especially after seeing how many other companies operate, Microsoft is truly the best of many different worlds. 
 
Where else can someone work with:
– smart, creative, thoughtful minds and the power to recruit them
– the funding & executive backing to develop a technology over time from 1.0 to 3.0
– a CEO like Steve Ballmer that embodies the spirit of the company and is approachable enough to personally talk to
– a cultural icon like Bill Gates that symbolizes the attitude & drive of the company
– the existing tools & technologies to built interconnected systems and products to virtually guarantee market integration
 
I know that there are people that have left the company in pursuit for "something better" and I laugh.  I’ve been at this company for 10 years:  I’ve seen y’all come and go… and then come back again.  Throughout the Directory battles with Novell in the mid 90’s, Internet boom of the late 90’s, the thin client wars of the same era, & the Java wars of the early 2000’s – I saw people leave and eventually come back.  Yes – COME BACK.  Folks – that’s the story that no one ever reports.   Microsoft isn’t just run by people who firmly believe in the company, but also by people I call the "humbled":  Folks that are casualties of .COM failures and stillborn startups, with companies like, "PETS.COM" and "ETOYS.COM" clogging up their resume.
 
Now the headlines talk about the open source wars of late, and the supposed "Mini-MSFT" binge.  Proof that even smart people get mentally lethargic and forget everything we have here is all around the headlines… PhD types start thinking that the grass is greener next door at Google, some IPTV start up or whatever.  Folks like Mark Lucovsky, one of the people I admire for his work on Windows NT who was one of two high profile individuals that left Microsoft for Google (other than Kai Fu Lee), are proof that ego can lobotomize even the most distinguished individuals and get them to completely dismiss the power, strength, and "ability to get things done", of Microsoft.
 
Which brings me to my final point about the company:  We’re a company that’s 55,000 people strong.  The only two people that have left Microsoft of any significance is Kai Fu Lee and Mark Lucovsky.  That’s HARDLY a brain drain folks.  Every company has its stable of great minds and Microsoft has hundreds of those.  For example, did you know that the following people work for Microsoft?
– Gary Starkweather – the inventor of the laser printer
– Jim Gray – the creative mind behind the today’s database clusters
– Jim Allchin – the godfather behind the first directory service (Banyan Vines)
– Gordon Bell – the man behind the VAX and the modern supercomputer
…wanna see more credits?  Check out http://research.microsoft.com/research/people/
 
OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER:
The information in this weblog is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. This weblog does not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my employer. It is solely my opinion. Inappropriate comments will be deleted at the authors discretion. All code samples are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose.

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Posted by: kurtsh | October 1, 2005

NEWS: More on Intel & Microsoft’s decision to support HD-DVD

Here’s a few more articles on the topic of DVD formats that may help clarify to the "50GB! I want 50GB!" crowd why we are throwing our support behind HD-DVD.
 
There’s an analysis of this news highlighting consumer choice around the topic of DVD formats:
 
There’s also an article the goes over the issue of next gen DVD media durability and the economics of disk protection which frankly makes one wonder why there is even a discussion:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/next-gen-dvd.ars
 
…
 
The question was posed as to "why do we care" or "why is Intel & Microsoft concerned about hardware"?  The answer was given by one the guys working on this stuff up in Redmond.  (I’ve paraphrased some of what he said so that it’s not precisely his words, to keep him anonymous)
 
————————
We care because this really isn’t about just drivers any more, like some not close to the situation might think.  Yes, we need drivers but providing support for HD on disc is a software discussion because you need some serious software technology to display two 1080p/720p video streams with "frame-accurate animated interactivity".  (See below for an explanation of why this is necessary)
 
Yes, one could use the recordable versions to do data backups and that’s cool – never mind that NEITHER format has enough capacity to backup >300GB hard discs that are quickly becoming the standard hard drives out there today.   But the really big deal is how movies are distributed in a disc format and how that might be interesting and attractive to consumers. 
 
Let’s say you were a typical Mom & Pop consumer:  Can you imagine repurchasing all your existing DVD’s as HD-DVDs?  Sure – maybe some of the blockbusters out there like the Matrix and Star Wars, but with other movies, it’s not as likely.  Well, the movie studios know this and they’re really trying hard to make the experience much more immersive that what we have today. 
 
For example, how many times have you been listening to the director’s commentary and the director says “Did you see the alien at the top left of the screen and how it didn’t render properly?”  Well of course I didn’t you reply… it’s NOT THERE ANY MORE.  But if I had director’s commentary that could actually show display video overlays that allowed a directory to draw on the screen around the alien, you could make a much more interactive commentary.  (For those of you who remember it, image a Mystery Science Theatre 3000 overlay over Ghostbusters.)
 
Again, this is far more than just firmware.   The HD DVD spec is huge covering everything from the disc format all the way through to the software stack (including video and iHD).  Microsoft & Intel care because we care about providing customers with the best software experience.  HD DVD provides that and we believe Blu Ray doesn’t.

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