Microsoft Office

Top five lessons from TechEd

The pallid economy took its toll on TechEd 2009 attendance. But there were still lessons to be learned or reinforced. My top five:

 1: Microsoft burns with Silverlight fever. This is not a good thing. Microsoft, everyone knows you have Flash envy, but remember that many Web surfers hate, hate, HATE flashy multimedia sites that are more about showcasing technology than providing information. Remember, just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should do it.  Show goers blasted the TechEd 2009 web site’s poor usability. Want to scroll down the sessions, put the cursor just there. No, not there. Scootch over–THERE! Try the schedule builder? Fuhgeddaboudit.  One of the greatest things about Google (yes, Google, get over it!) is its sparse interface.

Continued »

Ballmer’s white board magic

Last month, the New York Times brilliantly reproduced Steve Ballmer’s white boarded vision of the company’s cloud services plan. It depicts the company’s “software plus services” vision with Azure at the center of the universe, making use of SQL Server services, Exchange services etc etc. Continued »