microsoft

Aug 19 2008

Viral Marketing Works !

You obviously know these viral marketing schemes, where you create a social network that will try to establish a brand via referrals and other people discussing it.
A brand will become more popular because lots of people will be pointing to the new products or features.

Microsoft also seems to have figured out this method. They demoed one of the most interesting features of their product at the Olympics

And according to Matt it seems like the FrankFurt airport also is showing off this feature. Obviously this isn't the first time this virus pops up but it seems to become popular again

:))

Feb 09 2008

The Future of Zimbra

The interweb thinks there isn't much future for Zimbra if Yahoo gets swallowed by Redmond. I`m not sure.

There are different alternatives apart from the being extinguished during the takeover.
I have no clue how the core developers and the management of Zimbra was reimbursed when they were taken over by Yahoo, however I hope they didn't waste all their money and still have some money left. As they went this far with the company already they must have some good contacts with financial people that can help them get a new company off the ground ArbmiZ or ɐɹqɯız would be good names ;)

They could either go with a fresh start, or Yahoo could be so smart to have the guys perform an MBO.
Or even sell the Zimbra assests again .. even at loss.

If getting the Zimbra organisation out of Yahoo doesn't work why not hire the key developers away from the company effectively rendering it worthless , big chance you don't have to hire them away from their current job but just be waiting at the front doors when the exodus starts, people either don't want to work for the new company or will be forced to leave as they are redundant.

RedHat has a big opportunity here .. they don't have a relevant mail offering yet, there have been rumors around RedHat going to partner with the OpenXchange folks but I haven't heard from that yet .., but other companies might have look at the codebase also.

Would we need a fork ? We don't know yet ..

But I don't think we have to worry that much .. I think there are bigger things to worry about ..

Feb 01 2008

Microsoft to Buy Yahoo ?

Lots of rumours about Yahoo wanting to dump a significant part of it's personnel have been overwhelmed by the new news that Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo.

Let's stand still for 5 seconds to think about that impact :

First of all.. they are buying a lot of advertising and content , a field where they were currently losing market share. But they are buying more.

They are buying into the mindset of startups, Flickr, Upcoming, and others.. something they have long lost ..

Bort just made an interesting point in realising that in with Microsoft buying Yahoo, that would also include buying Zimbra, and lots of other open source technology. What about openID, will they make their own MS-OpenID ?

Will they make the same mistake they made when buying Hotmail ?

Will yahoo still need to let people go or will they leave themselves because of this ?
Lots of questions .. time will tell.

Jan 23 2008

I just overheard


Back in the days T-Mobile required 3 machines to do all their mail on a VMS box. Upon migrating to a product from microsoft they needed 6 long rows of racks totally filled.

So, it's actually Microsoft who is to blame for Global Warming

Oct 12 2007

Slashdot party invaded by Microsoft Spies

Philip , I wanted to take pictures of the guy in the Blue shirt with the weird logo .. but you guys didn't let me..

I really wonder what he was doing there.. the only answer I can come up with is that he was spying on us and that Microsoft is creating files of which Open Source people to sue .. so laughing with his shirt might not have been our best bet.

I`m starting to be scared, the guy obviously had some friends and he was into what he called Business Intelligence .. that's like Microsofts Central Intelligence Agency right ?

Were there any other Slashdot parties invaded by the borg ?

UPDATE. There used to be a typo in this article, but honestly it was NOT on purpose ..
I had a good laugh upon noticing however ..