Announcing the Friend of Microsoft badge program

Yes, today after some heavy consideration and debating I am removing the veil on this brilliant and self-gratifying banner which allows the best-of-the-best, crème de la crème, superlatively wonderful one-amongst-many (you know who I’m talking about) to nurture and grow that little underprivileged ego to break free and prove to the world that you mean something.

So if you’ve ever considered yourself anything close to being a friend, follower, or fanboy of Microsoft, then I present you with the following badges that you can use to display proudly on your website, blog, coffee mug, t-shirt, or whatever… (You could print it out and burn it for all I care!)

Without further ado, because I couldn’t be bothered with typing any more, here is the non-official FOM (Friend of Microsoft) badge version 1.0 Deluxe Edition, in four incredible sizes: (You can use them in whatever way you would like, such as the above examples, and if you want to link back to my blog or this post, then go ahead.)

Friend of Microsoft, Small(180x73)

Friend of Microsoft, Medium (256x104)

Friend of Microsoft, Large (640x259)

Friend of Microsoft, Super Large (1120x453)

Now for the backstory: This all came together when I read the latest in the continuing drama between a so-called tech writer who didn’t get into a certain hush-hush session meant for a limited number of bloggers at the PDC and his desire to exact his revenge for not getting the FREE LAPTOP that he demanded*, which after reading this opinion post I decided that FOM sounded too much like something that is awarded (e.g. the Microsoft MVP program), and thus I took the MVP logo and modified it this way…

Now for the truth: I don’t profess to know everything about this whole issue with that guy, his article(s), and what really happened – in fact, I really don’t know much of anything… especially since I wasn’t there, I didn’t see anything (because I wasn’t there), and I really could care less about these types of dramas. And perhaps I’m just making it out to be a drama, so take all of this with a grain of salt. But more importantly: just enjoy a boost to your ego when you tell others that you’re an (un)official FOM – Friend of Microsoft!

* p.s. I’m still waiting for my FREE LAPTOP.

Live Search Club prizes, where art thou?

I love Live Search Club as I’ve mentioned before, but recently I’ve been wondering about the state of LSC. The prizes have mostly disappeared, save for the sub-1000 ticket prizes (which are worthless unless you want to put on a twill hat and play a game of net ball with me), and with nothing great to focus on (like a Zune, Xbox 360 or other 20,000+ ticket items) I’m just playing silly word games that have too many repetitive answers… Really, how many different Flexicon questions can you have with an answer of “IDO”?

However over the weekend I signed up for the Live SearchPerks, which doesn’t offer a great number of tickets per day (25 – a single game of Flexicon), but can add up to enough tickets by the time the promotion ends on the 15th of April to get something semi-useful. What I noticed when I compared the list of prizes they’re offering with Perks versus Club is interesting, to say the least:

 

 

On the left we have Live Search Club and on the right we have Live SearchPerks. What’s important to note is that most (if not all) of the prizes in Perks were in Club before (e.g. Frequent Flyer Miles, Xbox 360 Games, cookbooks, etc.). But where the story really begins to get interesting is when you read the SearchPerks FAQ:

About three weeks after the SearchPerks! promotion ends on April 15, 2009, look for an e-mail from Microsoft, which will include ticket redemption instructions. The e-mail will direct you to the Live Search Club Web site [more specifically…]

From what I can gather after reading the entire FAQ, this means that if you’re using the same Live ID account for Perks and Club, you’ll see an increase of tickets in Club on that day (whenever it is). Since the SearchPerks is showcasing prizes that were formerly on Club, I can safely assume that those prizes will return to Club sometime around the 15th. Whether or not they’ll be visible only for those in the SearchPerks promotion is anybody’s guess.

If I could give a date to be afraid of Live Search Club ending, it would be October 15, 2009:

You must claim your tickets no later than October 15, 2009.

However, I don’t fear much about things falling apart since it is in their best interest to keep programs like SearchPerks and Club going to keep people interested about Live Search (in one way or another). Perhaps the prizes will be available only for the SearchPerks participants until the 15th of October, when they return to full Club availability…

Oh, and another interesting bit is the little ad seen on Club:

Update: What a difference a day makes, eh? They’ve returned the Frequent Flyer Miles and have added 2 new items… but still nothing great (unless you want a water bottle that is BPA-free).

 

Live Search finally turns on the Search Suggestions

I’m not sure when this happened, but since I regularly search with Live Search, I figure they just flipped the switch sometime in the last 12-15 hours because I didn’t see this yesterday.

It doesn’t seem to accept too many keywords, meaning that it’s pulling from a smaller database instead of actually searching everything you type, but for a quick spellchecker it’ll work well enough.

I guess this would also be a great time to point out that you could use search suggestions since IE8 beta 2 when they added suggestions to the main search box:

…However, unlike the nice visual results you get from the search box, the Live.com homepage search shows just text results when you switch to images or video.

I finally see a Zune commercial!

Yes, I’m that happy to say that for once I actually got to see a Zune commercial – earlier while watching Heroes. I don’t watch too much TV so perhaps these things are on all the time but, even with a DVR, the closest I had ever come to seeing one live was the last 2 seconds of one a year ago, so this is a big monument for a fanboy like myself.

Anyway, here’s the commercial from the official Zune team:

The biggest thing to note is that this isn’t about the Zune hardware but instead the software, which strikes a chord with the commotion about how MS is moving Zune towards a broader range of devices, including smart phones and other devices.

If you haven’t tried out the Zune software, go download it. My only complaint (which doesn’t even affect me) is that it doesn’t support any generic MP3 players – I hope that changes in the future (specifically in a “Zune-compatible” program). UPDATE: Actually my other complaint, from what I’ve heard is that the hardware (which again: doesn’t affect me… yet) doesn’t support non-latin characters, such as Korean or Japanese. A simple change of device fonts to match the set included with the software would fix that problem.

Windows 7 – Common Ribbon can be hidden

Since I know someone who went to the Microsoft PDC, I got a chance to play with Windows 7… (I should pester another someone who was supposed to get me into the now-rubbish Media Center “Fiji” beta–but forgot to–and see if he could get me into the Windows 7 beta program before it becomes publically available…)

Just as the full-blown ribbon found in Office 2007, the common ribbon (that should be seen across all sorts of applications in the future) will still let you hide the ribbon, should you find it taking too much space for too little reason:

When it’s hidden it works just the same as in Office 2007: