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.

In the wonderful world of Zune, all the Zune teamsters, Zune coders, Zune pushers, and Zune lovers are busy celebrating the launch of the Zune HD. That’s not to say there aren’t any snags with which to deal. Case in point: I came across this wonderful screen when I tried to sign into my account under Zune 4.0 for the first time:

“Great, there’s no terms to which I must agree. I’ll just go ahead and click Accept,” (the result of which you can see after the jump)

“Crap.”

I’ll chalk it up to quick thinking on behalf of Michael Gillet (@Gilly2468) for coming up with the bright idea of signing in online and accepting the terms there. If you’re one of the few people who, for whatever reason, aren’t able to sign into the Zune account for which you may have paid, try signing in via Zune.net and accepting the new terms there (you’ll see your account edit screen when you sign in, which is where you’ll do this). Once you’re done, you can sign back in via the Zune software and voila, life is good again.

No, it’s not a joke, but it’s not hands-down proof that Microsoft will allow it either. The Tegra platform is fully capable of 1080p playback (as you’ll hear after the jump roughly two minutes into the video), and the Zune HD has already been outed as being built on the Tegra platform. Now, with this in mind, there are still a few things holding Microsoft back from enabling 1080p video playback on Tegra: The Zune HD likely won’t have the hard drive space to store more than a few movies in full 1080p resolution, nor is there much of a point in squandering space on a 1080p film and playing it back on a reduced screen. Storing 720p and scaling it down for playback on a smaller screen while on the move makes sense, but it doesn’t make sense to do this with massive 1080p video, especially when there isn’t even much of a perceived difference in quality when outputting both 720p and 1080p to a TV. Keep in mind as well that while Tegra’s power usage is awesomely low, playing 1080p video is still more energy-expensive than playing 720p, so 1080p will also reduce battery life. The benefits v. drawbacks aren’t in favor of 1080p, but at least it’s comforting to know that the ZuneHD is capable.

The reason this matters, though, is that for those enthusiasts out there who want the capability to throw 1080p at their TVs from their Zunes, this may be nothing more than a quick hackjob to enable. If Microsoft decides to produce a high-capacity model down the road (say, 320GB), I also wouldn’t be surprised to see it officially enabled on the Zune HD by default.

As for the Tegra platform, I managed to run into two separate Tegra netbooks, one of which was throwing 720p video at a TV without any problems. Tegra itself is ridiculously tiny, and NVIDIA seems to be working quite hard to get deals with car manufacturers, smartphone makers, netbook makers, TV makers, etc. for the Tegra platform. The goal, basically, is to get Tegra embedded into anything in which it might possibly fit, which is to say, basically everything. Power usage is also amazingly low, which opens the gates for many applications.

Update: I’ve checked the specs for the two different Tegra Systems-on-Chip, and neither state support for 1080p. However, there’s clear confirmation in the video that at least one of the Tegra models is 1080p-capable, so who knows. Thanks goes to @clubdirthill for sparking a desire within me to look into the matter.

More details on everything (including the size) can be found in my video of NVIDIA’s Tegra platform, which happens to be below the fold in both vanilla and HD YouTube form.

View in High Definition

This is a shout-out to all Zune 30 owners who remained patient.

This is to you, the faithful owner of a Zune 30, who didn’t buckle under stress and kept a keen eye on Microsoft, waiting for a solution.

This is to you, the discount shopper who picked up a Zune 30 and didn’t want to lose faith in your hardware.

Low and behold, Microsoft dug deep to find out the problem and, within minutes of finding out exactly what it was, pushed out an answer and a solution that didn’t void your warranty (thanks, Gizmodo). There’s a reason for why I’m bringing all of this up. July of 2008 saw cataclysmic server failure when a vast majority of all newly-purchased iPhone 3G units tried activating at nearly the same time, leaving both new iPhone 3Gs and some iPhone Gen 1 units dead in the water until the activation servers came back online. Poor planning led to the creation of a load-intolerant system on AT&T’s side (though the blame hardly belongs to them, given that Apple mandated this system in the first place). However, people weren’t infuriated by Apple’s ineptitude here. They were complacent and merely went with whatever explanation was fed to them. Meanwhile, a sizable majority of people who stuck with their own platforms of choice decided not to point and jeer.

Fast forward to December 31, 2008, and every Zune 30 device freezes due to a bug in a driver from Freescale Semiconductor in this while loop (between lines 259 and 274):

    while (days > 365)
    {
        if (IsLeapYear(year))
        {
            if (days > 366)
            {
                days -= 366;
                year += 1;
            }
        }
        else
        {
            days -= 365;
            year += 1;
        }
    }

(protip: day 366 triggers an infinite loop. To see the context of the code, check out the pastie link above, or just click here. You can see a breakdown of how this could’ve been handled here) 

What happened? Every Apple-loyal iPhone, iPod, and Mac owner threw a fit even though none of them actually owned a Zune 30 (You can’t run a Zune 30… or any Zune, for that matter, on a Mac). Thanks in part to the additional sensationalism promoted by gadget bloggers and, subsequently, news outlets the world over, a problem with a Zune model sold only in North America suddenly became a "Worldwide Zune Outage."

This is the difference between the Social and the Kingdom of Apple. Those with Zunes held out patiently and were rewarded with verbose output by Microsoft, whereas Apple simply vaguely alluded to some other company being the source of their problems (or were otherwise mute for a long period of time) whenever something on Apple’s side went wrong.

Thank you, Zune 30 owners, for living up to the hype of the Social. I’m now quite proud to be an owner of a Zune myself.

1. Your newly updated/purchased Zune has two games: Texas Hold’em and Hexic. They won’t last you too long, but try them out anyway. I’ve caught myself playing both for a wasteful amount of time, so it’s not like they’re bad games.
2. Stock up on music and podcasts from the Zune marketplace beforehand. Your Zune likely came with a 14 day Zune Pass trial, so you could use it now and stock up on as many songs as you can. If your conscience is telling you that blowing two days of free Zune Pass time on maintenance is a bad idea… it’s probably right.
3. Hit TWiT (specifically Windows Weekly) or gdgt for some podcasts you can add to your Zune hassle-free to keep yourself from chewing your nails at the lack of tech.
4. Play games on your Wii, PlayStation 3, or Xbox 360. Better yet, go play some games online via Xbox Live! Oops, Xbox Live will be down as well.
5. Stick around on our forums. You’ll find many people who, like you, are interested in awesome and interesting Microsoft news and developments.
6. If none of these are suitable for you, go outside and get some fresh air. It’s probably not a bad idea. You shouldn’t be that addicted to anything anyway.

On that note, should we open Zune-related forums? How many of you guys own your own Zunes? Feel free to peg me your thoughts either via a PM on the forums, the contact form on the about page, or here as a comment.

You’ll survive the outage.

Don’t invest money in flimsy Zune holsters or belt clips. If your jeans have snug belt loops, you can just use those. Your Zune probably won’t slip out of it, but that depends entirely on how snug the fit is. Don’t try this with a 30, 80, or 120GB Zune.

(Image from my utterly ingenious friend, Matt Boehm.)