[via Skype News]

[via Jeff Clavier]

Blake points to an issue of some open source projects: generally made up of brilliant technologists who consider that code is what makes the value of a project, as opposed to a means to an end. The Firefox team was built on a different approach that led them to really focus on users and deliver a product solving their needs. They also innovated by deploying a true marketing compaign to push the deployment of Firefox, through the site SpreadFirefox.com and the now famous $200K NY Times ad that was paid by 10,000 members of the community.

An interview of Bill Gates in News.com.

server-equal-service

The idea that the computing industry can simplify its offerings dramatically by having this server-equals-service approach, and having richer services, absolutely I believe in that, and we need to be at the forefront of that. The idea that management can be more automatic and software updating can be more automatic, state-replication more automatic–there are some big things here that can drive the industry forward. They are very complex, because we have to make things very reliable and very secure if you are going to do this. It’s just now that we have the maturity of XML and the Web Services protocols that we can start to do (this).

Positioning difference between Google and Microsoft

So Google is not offering development capabilities yet. Of course, I expect they will. But they’re not in that game at all today. In fact, they have this slogan that they are going to organize the world’s information. Our slogan is that we are going to give people tools to let them organize the world’s information. It’s a slightly different approach, based on the platformization of all of our capabilities and not thinking of ourselves as the organizer.

Information at our fingertips?

Do we have information at your fingertips today? No. Do we have a lot more than we had in the year 2000? A huge amount more. We’re getting decent Web search, we’re getting RSS. So software as a service has been moving along. We needed the Internet. We needed low-cost connectivity. We needed XML. The scale economics of doing large server farms…you can do those and do those well.

Free and commercial software

The industry will always be a mix of free and commercial software. So there will be a balance between those. I think that we are going to have a lot of both. There are some zealots that think there should be no software jobs, that we should all, like, cut hair during the day and write code at night.

We have already seen some screenshots of MS Word, Excel. Powerpoint and Access, in their new version 12. Laurent wanted to see the new Outlook look&feel.; Dragos found them ;-) Have a look below!

Microsoft Outlook 12

Thanx dragos

[via BetaNews]

Version 1.3 available, not in beta anymore.

Foxit PDF Reader is a reader for PDF (eBook) documents. You can view and print PDF documents with it. This program is small (the download size less than 1MB), and does not require installation.

Latest Changes:

• Installer for Foxit Reader available
• Changed visual design for most of our UI elements: icon, About box, toolbar buttons, etc
• Fixed most of the bugs reported by users during beta phase of version 1.3. Including printing crash problems, errors on Windows 9x platforms, etc

As already explained in one of my post in July, we were invited by Mr. Boydak (in German) at the third IT Strategie Forum to talk about innovation and the eCenter.

About 40 IT Executives from different industries were present, some very nice and refreshing talks, and good contacts.

The Forum took place at the Hotel Panorama, near Zurich. Marvelous landscape and view on the lake of Zurich!

[click, 2.7MB]

[click, 3.3MB]

I know, I know, you have *all* already tested the new Google’s service ;-) The end of Technorati?

This functionality, in case you haven’t seen it:

Can I subscribe to search results?

Yes. At the bottom of each page of search results you can find several links, offering the top 10 or 100 results as either Atom or RSS feeds. Just grab the links from here and subscribe to them in the news aggregator of your choice and you will get updates whenever new posts are made that match your query.

I have seen a superb documentary on surf history, lifestyle and … big waves surfing, called Riding giants. Specially the third part about big waves surfing and Laird Hamilton makes this movie different. I have already seen a lot of shots with big waves but these ones…are just unbelievable.

“Riding Giants” has 3 parts or acts, each concentrating on one surfing innovator and the culture in which he thrived.

1) The first act explores the world of Greg Noll, surfing’s flamboyant celebrity of the 1950s and 1960s. Interviews with Noll and other surfing giants of the time, including Ricky Grigg, Mickey Munoz, and Mike Stang, take us through the genesis of the surfing lifestyle in Southern California to Hawaii’s Waimea Bay, through the explosion in surfing popularity brought on by “Gidget” in 1959, up until Noll surfed “the greatest swell of the 20th century” at Makaha in December of 1969.

2) “Riding Giants”‘ second act focuses on Jeff Clark and the surfers of Maverick’s in Northern California. Clark tells the story of surfing Maverick’s alone for 15 years before finally convincing 2 other surfers to join him in 1990. Maverick’s surfers talk about the challenges of cold water, fog, and rocks and the day that Mark Foo died.

3) The third act of “Riding Giants” profiles Laird Hamilton, a man who has been described as the “best big wave rider the world has seen”, and explores the relatively new field of tow-in surfing, in which surfing becomes a partnership instead of a solitary pursuit. A tow-in by a jet ski provides surfers with the speed required to catch enormous waves -up to 80 feet- at considerable peril. Hamilton and fellow surfers Darrick Doerner, Dave Kalama, and Gerry Lopez talk about discovering the tow-in technique and surfing Peahi (Jaws).

[via Rodrigo]

More news published about the coming event:
– have a look at the official blog.
– dates are confirmed: 5th & 6th December, in Paris
– Robert Scoble and Shel Israel confirmed as speakers
– costs: 200 euros (without VAT) for the 2 days + lunches + cocktail party on Monday evening
– “merge” (it is in the air ;-) between Around the blog and Blog 2.0
– registration and program will be available in a few days

[via ZDnet.de]

First screenshots of the new look&feel; of Microsoft Office 12, presented at the Professional Developers Conference 2005 in Los Angeles.

Microsoft Word 12

Microsoft Excel 12

Microsoft Powerpoint 12

Microsoft Access 12