Bradley Howard's Blog - Filed under 'Microsoft' - with views of digital media, innovation, loyalty and business in the real world

Silently updating

Dec 21, 2011 at 10:26am

One of the best features about Google Chrome is how it updates itself to provide new features.

If you look at the user experience of various desktop applications, on one end of the scale would be Google Chrome, and the other end would be Microsoft Windows, which relies on the user to configure that they want updates. In most organisations over 100 people, updates are disabled by system administrators. Other applications such as Spotify sit closer to the “Chrome end” because they automatically update however the user is still prompted during the process.

I'm excluding the stomach-churning "will make data survive this?" iPhone OS upgrades because you can't compare a complete OS upgrade to an application upgrade.

Every so often, Google Chrome checks to see if you are using the latest version. If you aren’t, it automatically downloads the latest version and installs it. The next time you launch Chrome, you’ll be using the latest version – you won’t have clicked on anything to accept it or install it.

Microsoft have cottoned on to this and the next version of Internet Explorer will silently update the browser by default. You can already install an ‘Update blocker’ to prevent automatic updates if you wish.

This puts Microsoft in an interesting situation because they are still clearly focussed on business users rather than consumers. IT organisations aim to standardise programs on user’s computers so that it’s easier to support them en masse. By choosing such a high profile application to start doing automatic updates, it will be a steep learning curve for both IT organisations and Microsoft.

This all paves the way for staff in large organisations to move a step further along the consumerisation journey. As users [supposedly] get more tech-savvy, they don’t need huge IT service desks for application support. In ten years’ time we’ll be choosing our own technology – mobile phone and laptop, and perhaps even our own applications.

We’ll keep the documents centralised (in ‘The Cloud’) and access them via Google Docs, Office 365 or any other newcomers.

The version of the application we are using won’t make any difference whatsoever.

Photo courtesy of warrenski on Flickr.

tags:

Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, software development,

0 Comments

How I would Yahoo!

Oct 26, 2011 at 8:43am

So, apparently Yahoo! is up for sale, and even better, Google are willing to help fund it's resurgence. This sounds so familiar – in 1997, Apple were having serious problems and Microsoft, their once main competitor, invested $150 million in the company, and now Apple is worth more than Microsoft!

Back to Yahoo!, it’s amazing how many people are so dismissive of Yahoo!’s (that’s a lot of punctuation) value.

Here are the high level stats:

Yahoo has over 500 million unique visitors each month, around the World, in over 30 languages.

In the UK alone, adults spend over 3 hours a month just on Yahoo! Mail.

To build that audience of 500 million would cost a HUGE amount of money (and time), so in my opinion there's never been a better time to Yahoo! Stock is set at a very reasonable price, and Google are willing to invest a significant amount of money.

Here’s what I would do if I took over Yahoo! tomorrow:

Focus

An Internet content portal above all else. In terms of competition, Google provide mail to compete with Yahoo! Mail however there is no one with similar a traffic size which provides the level of content as Yahoo!
Generate a cost/revenue model for services such as Yahoo! Mail and Flickr to see if it’s worth selling these on or keeping them and reinvesting.
Create a cloud development service model to compete with the likes of Amazon and Microsoft - turning a cost centre into a profit centre

Analytics

Work out where my users are coming from – is it mainly from PC manufacturer-set-browser-homepages which haven’t been updated for 5 years? In fact, I’d probably do most of my initial work on the analysis of who uses the individual Yahoo! services to ascertain the users’ value, or even try to derive an ARPU (Average Revenue Per User).

Innovation

Yahoo! strikes me as a company which is struggling to innovate. How many new services of note have their launched recently? I would look at why this has happened – have they all left to go to competitors? Internet companies need to have innovation at the centre of their philosophy, vision and corporate structure in order to keep users returning. I would reignite this passion for innovation immediately.

And finally, I think I’d rebrand Yahoo! to drop the exclamation mark! (Pun intended).

tags:

Microsoft, cloud, content, email, google, innovation, web traffic,

0 Comments

The future of consumerisation

Aug 1, 2011 at 3:26pm

One of the major shifts in the last five years has been the “consumerisation” of technology. Consumerisation is a swanky word for technology moving outside of the office/professional life into personal lives, and then moving back into the office in a different guise.

The shift started with broadband Internet. Once staff had broadband installed at home, they checked their email from home. They stopped taking laptops home with them and used their home computer.

Smartphones have accelerated the amount of consumerisation. You definitely know some people who have been provided a mobile phone from their employer, and the same individuals also have a smartphone on a personal contract. They will then use their personal phone to check their work email because they prefer their personal device.

This grey area of using personally-paid-for devices is a real issue for IT departments at the moment because of lack of standardisation (having to support iPhones, Android, BlackBerry, Nokia, etc.) and security risks.

Consumerisation isn’t limited to hardware either. I use Outlook 2010 at work, and mainly Google Mail for personal email. New features on Google Mail are appearing regularly. One of my favourites is if you type “I have attached the document” inside a GMail email and press send before attaching a file, Google gives you an alert to ask if you want to attach a document. Brilliant. I wish Microsoft had built the same functionality to prevent me forgetting to attach a file in Outlook.

In fact Google understands consumerisation on a new level. GMail and Google Docs started their lives as consumer tools and then became available as white labeled enterprise tools (a matter of opinion) for businesses. And there's recently been a lot of commentary about Google refusing to let businesses on to their new social networks - they want end users on there first.

Technology is continuing to become more consumer-focussed, which means we’ll use more of our personally-paid-for technology in our working lives. As my post earlier this week demonstrated, once we start checking our work calendar on our bathroom sink as soon as we wake up, the grey line will been very broad indeed.

tags:

Microsoft, Outlook 2010, consumerisation, email, google, iPhone,

0 Comments

Why Internet scams are becoming harder to detect

Jul 21, 2011 at 9:04am

Internet scams are becoming more and more elaborate and easier to fall for, according to the Howard household. Here are two scams that we've experienced in the last couple of months:

Trial products

Mrs H signed up for a trial product which arrived quickly and was good value at £29.95. The next month we noticed a number of significant transactions on our credit card (we always use the credit card for Internet purchases so that we can appeal to the credit card company, rather than having to claim back money into our own debit account).

We called the company we'd bought the trial from, and they asked us to look at the terms and conditions of the trial.

How often do you check the terms and conditions on ecommerce sites? How often do you even click through to the terms and conditions page?

On this site, number one term was "the cost of the product will be £200 from the second month".

The second term was that we would be automatically registered and charged for other products.

Luckily, the person on the phone was extremely rude and ended up putting the phone down on us. I called the credit card company who, as soon as I said I think we've fallen for a scam, they said "Is it xxxxxxx company, because we've had a number of complaints about them, however they are adamant they are not hiding anything, it's all in the terms and conditions. It's morally wrong, but not illegal."

I then wrote an email to the company and focussed on the rude phone support rather than the product, and they agreed to refund the additional items and the second month's "full" cost.

The trust had already been broken and I asked the credit card company to reinssue our cards with new numbers, so there was no way we could be charged at a later point.

A few key lessons from this:

Read the terms and conditions. Even if it's a quick glance, it's important to read them.
Always use a credit card and not your debit card for Internet purchases.
If you regularly buy from Internet sites, I think it's worth changing your card number from time to time (even if it's every couple of years).

Viruses

We haven't had a virus on our home PC for several years. I make sure our anti-virus software is regularly up to date and configured correctly. The kids also have parental controls on their accounts, which prevents them going to many sites.

This morning Mrs H woke me up and called me over the computer to show me the screenshot below:

At first glance, I looked at it and agreed that it looked like we had a virus. I paused, and thought "Why is this screen inside Internet Explorer?" and then I realised it was just an elaborate web page.

Mrs H had been looking for a photo to use on a birthday card (she'd searched on Google Images) and when she clicked on a site, this came up.

I've seen a number of virus warning ads and websites over the years, but this one was the most accurate-looking of them all.

A few key lessons if you see a virus warning:

Take a screenshot (just press the Print Screen button, and email it to yourself in Gmail/ Hotmail). You might need this evidence later.
Close all windows and applications.
Open anti-virus, and run a scan. Only follow instructions from your anti-virus program, nothing else.

tags:

Microsoft, ecommerce, google, legal, scams, virus,

1 Comment

Windows 8 review

Jun 6, 2011 at 9:41am

So, the covers have started to be lifted from Windows 8. Take 5 minutes to watch the video to see a glimpse of Microsoft's new operating system.

Some immediate feedback:

"We're watching Google". Google believe the [Chrome] browser is the future, so Microsoft are looking to pull as many Internet services out of the browser into small apps.
"Touch my screen". I hate fingermarks on my screen. Walk up to someone else's screen at work today and touch their screen - you'll get a reaction as if you invaded their privacy! No one likes fingermarks on their screen. Windows 8 will be all about touch screens though. We recently bought a new PC at home and I decided not to get a touch screen because I was concerned the kids would have wrecked it within weeks. And a keyboard on the screen? A vertical keyboard? No thanks.
"It looks so beautiful until you want to do anything productive". All the screens in the video look really nice - it's like 'Windows 7 mobile meets XBox'. And then the video shows Excel and Word, which are straight back to square one.
"Multiple windows - hmmmm". I get the slider to show multiple windows, but the sad thing is that this is a world away from how people really multi-task with many smaller windows. Have a vertical slider is very inefficient with wasted space.
"Files haven't changed". Whilst Microsoft should be commended from abstracting the C: hierarchy to users folders (it started in Windows Vista and Windows 7 makes it even easier), the abstraction should continue. Why do we still care about files? The only point of a file it to email it to someone else, and Google Docs has solved this already (by sharing it from a central place).
"Why no Kinnect?". After using Kinnect over the weekend with the family, you start wondering why objects in the rest of the world need you to touch them! Kinnect (aka waving at things) is the future and a smaller one to one style interface would be much better than touch (see #2).

However the OS does look lovely. It's like a 'Windows 7 meets XBox' interface (and both are good). I'm just concerned they're fine on a 5" screen or when you sit 5" away from it. Sitting a foot away from it at a desk for 8 hours a day requires a different style of UI.

tags:

Google Chrome, Kinnect, Microsoft, Windows 8, XBox, application review, usability,

3 Comments

Chromebooks are expensive

Jun 3, 2011 at 10:19am

On June 15th, the Google Chromebooks will go on sale.

The price of the new Chromebook is $499. That’s the same as a Windows laptop, only you can’t run Windows applications on a Chromebook, including office apps, games, or use external devices such as video cameras, scanners, etc.

I thought that we’d see a $250 laptop with a Chrome browser. We’ve ended up with an expensive laptop with a Chrome browser. Put another way, it’s cheaper to buy a $450 Dell Windows laptop and install Chrome (plus you get the benefit of a using Internet Explorer for sites that don't support Chrome!).

If the laptop looked as beautiful as a Macbook Air, I could understand a premium, but it doesn’t. To most people the Chromebook looks identical to a Windows laptop.

On another note, Microsoft is required by EU law to ship Windows without Internet Explorer because of its monopolistic position. If Chromebooks [first become cheaper and] become widely used, will Google need to start shipping them without a browser? Or ship them with Windows?

Any thoughts on why it costs so much?

tags:

Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, browser, business, google, legal,

2 Comments

Superbrands on BBC

May 18, 2011 at 11:38pm

Last night on BBC3 (why BBC3??) was the first part of a three part documentary on Superbrands, and why they mean so much to us. Last night’s episode was on Technology, with next week investigating Fashion.

You can watch the Superbrands: Technology version here on iPlayer.

The series is well produced with a Louis Theroux style presenter, Alex Riley, who you can’t tell if he’s mocking his interviewee or being serious.

In case you don’t watch the episode, (and even if you do, I’m not giving too much away), the crux of the episode was “Why are Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Sony such powerful brands, and Nokia not so powerful? After all, Nokia is still the largest handset manufacturer in the World, and has more handsets out there.”

One of the light hearted parts of last night’s programme is that various groups of people were asked to describe these brands as if they were a personality. These groups included primary school children and older children, to people in the street. Facebook was described as “your mate in the pub who knew everything about everyone and bought you a drink as you walked in, but you weren’t sure if your wallet was safe with them.” Microsoft was the “middle aged BMW driver” – not bad for the company who produce the hippest games console.

The programme’s conclusion was about Control:

Apple own the entire user journey from turning on your phone to the app, to the advertising on the app.
Apparently Sony lose around $200 per PS3 unit because they want to use the highest quality components including a Blu-Ray player which costs almost $100 per unit. Its a small price to pay when it provides a mass market desire to buy Blu-Ray discs, of which Sony has a revenue sharing model.
Microsoft was interesting because of its image as an Operating System vendor (yawn, and please look at the recent Windows 7 launch video) and a generally ‘boring’ application stack. Except for Xbox that is, which interestingly has no Microsoft branding near it.

Yet Nokia only own the handset. They are a hardware manufacturer. A non-exciting consumable manufacturer.

The programme was highly entertaining however I can’t say I learned anything new from it, except the Xbox-has-no-Microsoft-branding and the scientific (via MRI scan) similarity with brand loyalty and religion.

Thinking of other superbrands with similar levels of Control, Visa is another great example. It’s a Superbrand in the Control category because as soon as you pay for an item in a supermarket with your card, or online, you have regular reinforcement of the brand. The logo on your card, to Verified-by-Visa (I’m not saying V-B-V is a good thing) if you’re shopping online. And Visa has similar levels of Control of the successful technology superbrands because they understand spending data across retailers, which virtually no one else has. Actually, Akamai has probably more data about consumer behaviour, but is a B2B brand rather than a Superbrand.

I'm looking forward to next week with Superbrands: Fashion.

tags:

BBC, Microsoft, apple, google, insight, loyalty, television, trends,

0 Comments

How we browse the web

May 9, 2011 at 10:12am

The FT have started using a good implementation of a tag cloud on some of their blogs. E.g., if you go to the FT Alphaville blog, look on the right hand side under 'Tags' - and the most commonly used tags appear larger than other text. It's quite useful for browsing and looks quite nice. The FT uses WP-Cumulus to do the tag cloud, which is a free plugin.

However the nicest implementation (which admittedly, is of comments not tags) I've seen is on The Economist. Go to their 'Comments Homepage' and you can see how all the comments posted on to the website relate to each other. Very nice, and pretty guaranteed to find something in there of interest.

Navigation such as tag clouds, or The Enonomist's 'comment cloud', or the BBC's Most Read (again, look on the right hand column of most BBC News articles) lists are an excellent method to promote a longer visit on a website and more pages per visit.

The web started with a browsing navigation style. There wasn't a huge amount of content, so users meandered around the web looking for interesting content. Next came searchable navigation style. Google recognised the explosive amount of content on the web, and we started using Google to search for our data nuggets - deep diving into sites for our specific information, and then moving to the next site. We've now moved back to browsing. We use Facebook Activity feeds to burn five spare minutes, or our Twitter feeds to spend 15 minutes looking for recommendations from those that we're following.

Groupon have capitalised on this - sending out broadcasts to say "Hey, this product is 80% cheaper - why not buy one?" Within two years we'll be back to a search based browsing experience, which will be fine because Google or Bing (Microsoft) will own Twitter by then.

tags:

BBC, FT, Facebook, Microsoft, browser, google, trends, twitter, usability,

0 Comments

Mission statements

Apr 21, 2011 at 12:39pm

Look at these companies' mission statements - it's interesting how some are totally product centric and others people centric. And they're not necessarily the ones you would have expected. E.g. Google & Apple as product companies and Microsoft as a people focussed company...

Google (http://www.google.com/corporate/)
Google’s mission is to organize the world‘s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/about/en/us/default.aspx)
At Microsoft, our mission and values are to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential.

Apple (http://www.apple.com/investor/)
Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork, and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced its magical iPad which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/facebook?sk=info)
Facebook's mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.

Myspace (http://www.myspace.com/Help/AboutUs)
Myspace, Inc. is a leading social entertainment destination powered by the passions of fans. Aimed at a Gen Y audience, Myspace drives social interaction by providing a highly personalised experience around entertainment and connecting people to the music, celebrities, TV, movies, and games that they love. These entertainment experiences are available through multiple platforms, including online, mobile devices, and offline events.

Another way to look at this collection is the just look at the first verb because you would expect it to be the most important thing in the company. In this case it's:

Google - organize [information]
Microsoft - help [people]
Apple - designs [computers & software]
Facebook - give [people]
Myspace - drives social interaction.

Photo: "Mission Statement" courtesy of Dipfan on Flickr.

tags:

Facebook, Microsoft, Myspace, apple, business, google,

0 Comments

Amazing technology in the living room

Jan 21, 2011 at 1:59pm

Last weekend we bought an Xbox Kinect at home. I have a personality trait whereby I get really excited about technology only for it to rapidly degrade after a few days. So I decided not to write this review any sooner for fear of it being written with a bit too much passion and not enough objectivity.

A week after plugging in the Kinect controller, I can report that's it's still AMAZING. The technology still feels futuristic. Picking up an iPhone with it's two year old pinching and stretch controls feels ancient. Using a mouse or a keyboard feels archaic.

Gesturing is the way forward.

The kids (ranging from 4 to 9 years old) love it and find it intuitive. Adults find it intuitive, although I've yet to see an adult that doesn't sit (or for that matter, stand) with their jaws open finding it difficult to appreciate that the television is responding to body movements.

Many reviewers compare the Kinect to the Wii, because they are the two consoles where players need to be active or stand up to play most games. The comparison is ridiculous. The graphics and playability on the Xbox Kinect games are as polished, clear and fast as the rest of the Xbox titles compared to the Wii which feels like it's still using the graphics chips from an 1980s Atari console.

However the part that most of our visitors like the most about the Kinect is being able to control the main Xbox menu, by sweeping icons to the left and right and selecting them on the screen just like in Minority Report.

To select a menu, the user puts your left arm at 45 degrees down becomes second nature in much the same way as a right mouse click on a PC felt odd a decade ago but is now automatic.

If a different user stands up Kinect will recognise them if they have a profile on the box using face recognition.

Microsoft have got the Kinect completely right. Installing it on my old Xbox (the original white one) was painfree. I've never opened a manual for it. The kids got it. Adults get it. Gestures are the way of the future.

I also bought a new family PC for the home as well after the last one died. For a while, we considered getting a Dell with a touch screen for two reasons. One is that it looks nice without complex wires, and the second is that its a large touch screen. However I've never seen the point of a touch screen on a PC - why do you want to press the X to close a window and get a fingerprint on the screen when it's quicker and cleaner to press Alt+F4 (and you still think the 45 degree arm salute is unobvious?!) or move and then press the mouse.

I don't get PCs with touch screens, but if you could gesture with your hand to quickly close a window, or click your fingers to open a favourite application, that is the future.

The Kinect is an amazing piece of technology, and the fact it costs about £150 and sits in your living room is testament to consumer power forcing companies to create such viable mass consumer devices. I just can't wait until I'm controlling everything in the house with gestures.

tags:

Microsoft, PC, Wii, XBox, children, kinect, technology, usability,

2 Comments

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