How many different consumer online platforms does Microsoft have right now?

• Bing
• MSN
• Windows Live
• XBOX Live
• Zune Marketplace

That’s just a quick braindump; there are probably more, but for the purposes of my quick bout with insanity, this should suffice.  The way I see it, Microsoft is rapidly losing branding focus, and while this doesn’t sound like something that matters in this age of Web 2.name-it-whatever, it is an issue for Microsoft, and it extends beyond the world of Microsoft’s online properties.

Jump to see why I think this is becoming a problem. Yeah, it’s long, but this is one of the few times when an overly long post is justified.

Bing, MSN, and Windows Live share the same origin, which is to say, they all came from The Microsoft Network. MSN came about as a name because it used to be an ISP, though that’s in the distant online past. Later, MSN transformed into a general online content and services platform, with MSN Messenger, the MSN launch page, MSN Search, et al. finding themselves all a part of one platform.

Windows Live found its way into existence after being toyed around as “start.com” (which you’ll now notice redirects to Bing) and later coming into existence as just plain “Live” before becoming Windows Live down the road. While MSN was designed to deliver predefined content much like Yahoo’s default portal, the idea behind Live was to deliver a personalized services experience, from a customizable launch page to various user services such as Messenger. The justification for the Windows Live branding was that Windows Live as a platform was an extension of the Windows experience.

Bing was officially launched June 3, 2009. Before Bing, Microsoft’s search efforts started under MSN before progressing to Live, Windows Live, and then back to Live again in the form of “Live Search". The name itself was chosen because the guys with Kumo (the testing name for Bing) “needed a brand that was as fresh and new as [their] approach. It needed to be like the product — optimized for the Internet.” In other words, it’s yet another web 2.0 name, though thankfully, I seem to have at least been somewhat wrong about the name being a major problem.

So, the end result of this is a jumbled series of online platforms which accomplish only marginally different tasks. MSN is a generic online launch page, while Bing is Microsoft’s version of the plain search page. The customizable launch page concept is now kinda-sorta over at home.live.com, while any further-personal services and extra Windows apps from Microsoft have been tucked under the Windows Live brand name. I can see the logic, but unless Microsoft’s goal is to make some properties look like they’re from Microsoft while making others look as distant as possible while still retaining some association, this sort of fractured online presence just feels much more confusing than it needs to be.

Do you see Google squaring fundamentally similar yet differently functional apps away under vastly different names? GMail (Google Mal), Google Shopping, Google News, iGoogle, Google Google Google Google Great you get the idea. They’re all people-services, and as a result, they all share the same root name. There was a time when Google was slightly branding-confuzzled (froogle), but they’ve rightfully straightened out.

The reason for why I’m busy throwing gray matter at the wall this morning, though, is that there’s just no reason for the Windows brand to fall victim to the same fate. Once upon a time, Windows meant something. The name was directly related to the concept behind the user interface itself, and this has held steadfastly true (the exception being Windows Live, but Windows Live was meant as a tie-in for Windows users) up until Mobile World Congress this year.

Windows Phone 7 is exactly the kind of gradual brandicide that Microsoft really doesn’t need to be committing, whether it’s against Windows or against Zune. I’m inclined to see it as being the eventual downfall of the term “Windows” as a meaningful Microsoft brand for one simple reason:

Do you see any windows in the UI?

Nope. Neither do I. In fact, I see a data-centric user interface in Windows Phone 7, whereas the entire user experience in Windows (including Windows Mobile) up until now has been function/application-centric. With a UI which is so fundamentally different from the original concept of the brand itself, what’s the point of even calling it “Windows”-anything at all? There are no windows, there is no traditional window-oriented multitasking, and the entire UI is many miles away from the Windows concept. In fact, I can explain exactly where this name came from in a few simple points:

• 7 has proven to be worth something in the consumer’s mind thanks to the success of Windows 7.
• Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7 sound similar
• A name close to Windows Mobile was needed so that people could associate it with its completely unrelated cousin without reminding people of the horrors of the old Windows Mobile platform, hence why it’s now Windows Phone.

That’s it. Microsoft essentially decided to take the cheap road and draw heavily from other successful brands despite simultaneously butchering the inherent meaning in the most important name in Microsoft’s history. Whether this was or wasn’t the conscious reason is beside the point; this is absolutely why the name was chosen.

Seriously, do you see any windows in that UI?

Speculation that Microsoft would release a Zune phone, in my opinion, was 100% correct. The only difference is that Microsoft decided to stay away from the Zune name in order to ensure its short-term success. The Windows Phone 7 UI is brilliant in execution, but the problem is that both the name and the UI concept are a huge risk. If Windows Phone 7’s roll-out doesn’t go as planned, if apps stay limited (Zune HD is a great example), or if  Microsoft flubs something up down the line beyond Windows Phone 7 (think Windows Phone 8), more than just that brand will be compromised. Furthermore, if Microsoft proves yet again to know what its doing with its mobile division upon the release of Windows Phone 8, 9, etc., then the brand will further dilute.

Microsoft needs to sort its branding priorities. In the online sector, I can understand the split between Windows Live and Bing, but I see no reason for MSN to be separate from either platform. It’s so closely related to both Windows Live and Bing that it can go under either as another subordinate property. On the flip side, keeping branding separate between Microsoft’s mobile and desktop properties would almost definitely be a better idea: Zune HD is a fantastic device which suffers from terrible advertising, while Windows Phone 7 is definitely not a Windows Phone at all. Zune Phone or Zune Mobile would almost definitely have been better names for the OS itself given the interface similarities (heck, just call it Zune OS. It’s not as if people don’t already know that Zune is a Microsoft mobile property anyway). Microsoft has the backing to make sure the Zune name becomes successful, but Microsoft’s marketing teams feel so compelled to keep some of their brands unnecessarily interwoven in order to ensure short-term success that they’re doing damage to the very foundation of the brands in question.

While Microsoft’s mobile product development teams did indeed have the guts to try something new and go metro, Microsoft’s mobile marketing teams seem to be unwilling to take risks (conversely, Microsoft’s online branding teams seem to be taking too many).

In short, name your similar apples apples and your similar oranges oranges, but don’t name your apples and oranges peaches.

Did I get it wrong? Drop me a line in the comments and I’ll either address your thoughts, edit accordingly, or both.

My thanks goes, as noted before, to Microsoft for providing the licenses to give away. Best of luck to you all!

Last Update: the final drawing has been completed. Congratulations to @wizardcm for winning the last license! I’ll strive to find more to give away from CES.

Windows 7 launched on October 22nd to mass fanfare, and a good friend of mine at the event thought it would be fantastic to spread the Windows 7 spirit. In addition to assisting with Mary Jo’s Windows 7 afterparty in NYC (giveaway video here), he passed a few licenses my way to give away on winJade, so here it goes.

I’ve got three Windows 7 Ultimate licenses to give away (pictured above), and they’ll be given away as follows:

• The first on Christmas Day (25th). @yertosaurus nabbed this one!
• The second on December 28. @migue333 won this license!
• The last on December 31. @wizardcm got this last license!

If you want one, dive in to find out what you need to do. It’s pretty simple.

There are three steps for you to take part:

1. Tell us what you think is the best new feature in Windows 7. You can expand on this with whatever else you want, such as what you wished made it into Windows 7 prior to RTM or what you hope ends up in Windows 8. Remember to comment with a valid email address, and a valid twitter URL (twitter.com/yourtwittername) as the URL in your comment. Otherwise, I’ve got no way of getting in touch with you if you’ve won. If your comment doesn’t immediately appear, don’t fret; I need to approve comments before they show up, but I’ll still see your comment either way.
2. Follow @eganist on Twitter. Otherwise, you’ll have no real way of knowing whether or not you won, which would truly suck if you happened to be one of the ones to win..
3. Retweet This. Or, if you’d prefer using your own client, just tweet “RT @eganist Win 1 of 3 #Windows7 Ultimate licenses for Christmas, New Years’ from #winJade: http://is.gd/5v9lu” without quotes.

I need at least 100 qualifying retweets by 11:50 AM Eastern Time on Christmas Day for this giveaway to go ahead, so be sure to enter!

Each retweet counts as an entry, so if you want multiple chances to win, you can retweet that line (at most) once every 12 hours. The comment and any tweets need to be up before the drawing dates listed above to qualify for said drawing dates. That’s it, really. 

Regarding shipping, here’s the thing: I can send the physical disc to any winners within the continental United States. However, I cannot ship the disc on my own to any winners outside the continental United States. As such, if you happen to win and you’re not in the continental United States (meaning the 48 states that happen to be touching each other), you have a choice of either reimbursing my shipping costs or agreeing to receive only the key on one of these discs. To the rest of you within the continental United States, if you happen to win, we’ll discuss how to get this thing to your place via email.

I should note that Microsoft employees, any employees working with the PR firms Waggener Edstrom and Edelman, as well as close friends and immediate family of me or anyone working for winJade cannot participate (it would be unfair, and you know it).

As the person who headed the Office user experience teams and the person who is now running the Windows experience teams in Microsoft, Julie drove the idea for the Ribbon user interface in Office 2007 and led the conceptualization and development efforts behind all of the new user interface elements in Windows 7. At PDC, I had a chance to speak with her about her efforts within the Windows and Office teams. During this interview, we discussed:

• the inspiration and need for a new interface for Office
• the circumstances which led to the superbar and the multi-touch-oriented user interface in Windows 7
• how the PDC laptops came into existence
• the decision to use various new technologies such as gaze tracking, heat maps, among others.

Highlights:

Office 2007’s Ribbon: “A lot of the things they would ask for would already be in [Office], and so we felt we could come up with a better way to expose capabilities that were in Office and help people create better, more powerful documents”

The Windows 7 superbar, jumplists, etc.: “We wanted to simplify the whole experience and take away the differences between launching applications and switching applications and making it easier to get back to documents you did the day before. That was kinda the inspiration: to put the customer more in control of everything they’re trying to do on their PC”

Multi-touch in Windows 7: “There were a lot of cool things going on both inside Microsoft and outside Microsoft with touch, things like the iPhone which has the touch interface as well as Microsoft Surface, and so we felt that your PC experience could be very much enhanced by having direct manipulation [of objects on the screen], and you’d work much more naturally with it.”

The PDC laptops and how they happened: “We worked together with Acer to spec-out a PC and we kinda had the idea that ‘what would the ultimate developer machine look like?’ and ‘what can we do to put all the things in it that would be the things we want developers to do with Windows?’ So we had location awareness, the touch screen, all of the virtualization capabilities in it, 64 bit, etc.”

The direction of the Windows 7 beta program: “We used a lot of the beta feedback from Vista to help inform the plan for what we were going to do with Windows 7, as well as things on the blogs, the customer research that we did”

How the Office 2007 UI itself was researched: “We always try to apply new technologies to learn about how people use [our software]. We even talked about trying to figure out if we could put electrodes on [people’s heads] and measuring brain waves to see how they responded to one interface over another, but we didn’t get to that point.”
(You can catch the Ribbon presentation where the gaze tracking and heat mapping bits were discussed on Jensen Harris’ blog. ~Bryant)

Catch the full video interview with full answers to these topics after the jump.

Update: I made the video public prior to posting this, but within the last ten minutes (as of 6:54 PM GMT-5), something happened to revert the video back to private again. Video has been re-established as public.

As the first of my interviews from PDC, I noticed that Loic Le Muer was quick to familiarize himself with me as a part of the interview. This fact coupled with his persistent praise for the Seesmic devs who worked on Seesmic for Windows have led me to believe that Seesmic might actually be one of the better small software companies in existence.

Loic demonstrated Seesmic for Windows at PDC 2009 during Tuesday’s keynote. The obvious difference between Seesmic for Windows and Seesmic Desktop (the AIR version) is that the Windows client is native and written on top of the .net CLR. The plus sides to this include far better performance figures, a more Windows-integrated UI, and a lower tendency to leak handles (and fill my ram). The only downside to this is that it’s Windows-only… well, until you realize that moving .net code from a Windows native environment to Silverlight is actually not nearly as bad as writing another app from scratch.

My interview with Loic takes a browse through Seesmic for Windows v. Seesmic Desktop. I also decided to run through Silverlight Seesmic with Loic during our quick block of time, and while the Silverlight version still requires some polish before going live, the Windows preview version is solid enough for everyone to take a look.

Both parts of the interview can be found below the read link. Blame YouTube for forcing me to split a 13 minute video.
My thanks goes to Andrew Lyle from neowin for manning the camera.

The interview with Dan Polivy from PDC 2008 can be found here.

1. The day after 7: perspective… and Brad Brooks (October 23, 2009) (Update: video brightened)
2. The Windows 7 tweet-up in New York City, Winners, etc. (October 24, 2009)
3. The Effects of Leaks: A Candid Interview (October 25, 2009)
4. Unfortunately, the Windows 7 Keynote Interview with  Thorsten Ganz cannot be published due to technical issues.
   

That’s it. Keep an eye on us for PDC!

1. Microsoft is fully shifting focus to Windows 7. Windows Vista, of which the sheer length of the development cycle was inversely related to the level of approval and favor it garnered as time passed, has turned into something of an elephant in the room for Microsoft employees. Using the same metaphor and finding an excuse to quote an anonymous Microsoft employee I overheard yesterday afternoon, Windows 7 is the equivalent of a reputational wrecking ball designed for the sole purpose of “getting that elephant the f*** out”; it was the first Windows consumer OS born almost entirely from what the user wanted (read: what the average user hated about Vista). Now that it’s out and it starts replacing what was a good OS blighted by pre-SP1 bugs with what is a good OS right from the get-go, Microsoft has switched into what’s essentially a massive damage control mode.
2. Adoption rates and momentum are high, at least according to an analysis by Rob Enderle. Based on his analysis of a study done independently from Microsoft by Laura DiDio and Sunbelt Software, he believes that Windows 7 adoption rates are “unmatched since Windows 2000” adoption rates almost a decade ago. Consumer adoption rates are also up there, with PCMag using the line “Windows 7 More Popular Than Harry Potter” to carry their point. Given that Windows 7 beat Harry Potter on Potter’s home turf, I’m going with the notion that PCMag and Amazon UK are right.
3. Apple created more ads specifically for launch day. Yes, that depressing and uninspired ad campaign which Apple has continued for the last 4 years saw three new additions to the lineup. That’s three new ads released on the same day, which makes sense given the massive dearth of negative press against Windows 7. When a competitor simultaneously launches three attack ads specifically for your product launch, it’s a sign of desperation and a good enough reason for you to pull out your grill and refill that propane tank.

Hey, it wasn’t just me. The vast majority of Engadget’s commentators happen to agree.

Despite the recession and the subdued projections stemming as a result, it’s fair to say that all of the excitement is actually making jobs easier. Microsoft’s PR teams have an easier time when products don’t suck, and the press can move on to fuming at something more important, like the name of the next celebrity’s adopted baby.

The benefit to you? Better apps, higher developer morale, a solid OS, a higher willingness to publicly be a fan of Windows 7, and enough free time for a quick and awesome interview with a certain keynoting executive and perhaps the new face of Windows client by the name of Brad Brooks (Brandon LeBlanc would wisely and accurately like to remind me that there is no single face to Windows).

You can catch the video after the break. This interview happened near the end of our day, so the detailed questions were reserved for others who were around the event. You’ll see all (but one) of them over the coming week.

Download links coming in a bit.

On Tuesday, some no-good hackers decided to post a vulnerability, complete with a proof-of-concept Python script, that can remotely crash any Windows-based computer that has the SMB 2.0 network protocol enabled, which includes any system running Windows Vista or later. So like anybody with a bunch of free time would do, I cracked open a couple of VM’s and had some BSoD fun with Vista but noticed that 7 didn’t budge whenever I sent the exploit packets, so I suspected that they probably tested the RC version against this exploit

Well my gut feeling was right, and Microsoft released a security advisory later that day stating that it only affected Windows Vista and Server 2008, as well as the Windows 7 RC, but no mention of the 7 RTM (or Server 2008 R2). Plus, the scope was narrowed further when it was revealed that Public network locations were unaffected (they blocked incoming connections anyway). So nothing that bad to get riled over.

Of course, until a hotfix is released, if you’d like to completely protect yourself from the exploit you can follow the directions to either

• Block ports 139 and 445 from inbound connections using a firewall
• Disable the SMB2 driver
• Both (why not? unless you’re actively using file/printer sharing)

For the uninitiated,

FSF = Free Software Foundation

CC = Creative Commons

That out of the way, let’s get to the point: The Free Software Foundation’s latest ridiculous hit piece on Microsoft (after the break) not only uses a license considered a “cardinal sin” (as stated by Matt Asay) amongst free open source software proponents, they actually render their own licensing null and void by blanketing IP which they don’t actually own. Let’s take a look.

The important part, circled in mspaint-esque red, can be found at the bottom of the campaign’s page. Basically, their Creative Commons license requires attribution, denies derivative works (the “cardinal sin”), and, quite ironically, puts no limits on commercial reproduction. I’ve saved a copy of the page to commercially reprint for the sake of covering my PDC bills since they apparently don’t care, but that’s beside the point. The point is that they applied a Creative Commons license to the entire page, which of course spans all of the elements used within the page. This also spans the header image, which violates Microsoft’s trademark by reproducing the new Windows logo with the primary four colors intact, thereby qualifying as a gross breach of Microsoft’s trademark. Because the FSF did not receive permission to use the Windows logo and because they did not exempt the trademark from the license, they’re now left with a license which covers items in violation… which renders the Creative Commons license spanning their entire page (and every other page mentioning that license with that header) null and void. This, of course, also means that my derivative works are perfectly allowed. Score one for defense.

To summarize, not only did the Free Software Foundation violate their own principals, they hypocritically denied the right to create derivative works from the campaign page while creating a derivative work from Microsoft’s logo which is close enough to the original as to give grounds to Microsoft for a lawsuit. In addition, it begs the question of whether the funds they happen to have are truly being used to better the open source cause or if they’re just burning money in a campaign of FUD.

Microsoft, of course, likely won’t sue because giving the Free Software Foundation their own Streisand Effect would be a nightmare scenario.

All of the above is from my primitive understanding of IP law and licenses. I am not a lawyer, but I would love to be corrected by someone who is and hasn’t chosen a side in this mess.

Photopapered derivative of site content ©2009 Bryant Zadegan, all rights reserved. Original site ©2009 Free Software Foundation. No rights were reserved by the FSF, apparently, because they violated the license they were using to cover their stuff.

Of course, I’m talking about Java.

I figured I would turn Java into an example of what not to do when designing something for Windows before uninstalling it. Since Sun Microsystems clearly has no idea how to develop for Windows Vista, I’m going to direct them to this wonderful page.

I highlighted the single switch present in the command which indicates the problem: “-auto”. UAC prompts should never be automatically launched without informing the user prior to launching one. It’s very plain and very simple, and when developers start writing applications which throw consent prompts without any obvious reason as to why, they’re clearly doing something wrong.

Worse yet, Java Automatic Update decides to tell me after I click Cancel that it wants to update.

This bubble should be thrown first, followed by launching the consent prompt should the user decide to update. Doing it the other way around is mindblowingly stupid. It’s not exactly an easy thing to screw up, either, so I’m chalking this one up either to developers not knowing what they’re doing or developers testing UAC out for the heck of it to see how many people obey random UAC prompts.

If you’re seeing this, I highly encourage you to click Cancel. Better yet, go ahead and uninstall Java. That’s what I did.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be going off to celebrate my birthday away from random UAC prompts.

Oh hey, seems like Windows 7-E is making a comeback (source-link is German) after having lived and died a very uneventful life in the EU. The German-language Microsoft Store is selling it for 299 euros, and the box art (as well as the page) clearly notes the lack of internet explorer on this version.

Mistake? Joke? A sign that Microsoft might’ve gotten pissed at Opera’s and Mozilla’s recent efforts to milk even more out of them? Who knows, but the box art for “Ultimate-E” has a weird stuttery look to it.

Credit goes to Andre Da Costa for pointing me to the buy page via MSN. I can’t read German, but from the presence of the box art, I’m certain this is for a retail copy of Windows 7-E.