February 23, 2010

Microsoft’s Browser Selection + User Ignorance Lets Google’s Chrome “cheat”?

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase

Michael B. from the Mozilla Marketing list recently posted an hypothesis on why Google Chrome may suddenly start taking a much larger chunk out of the browser market now that Microsoft’s browser selection screens are appearing in the EU.

I’ve a hypothesis to explain Chrome’s recent and sudden surge of usage share the last couple months. Let me first say that almost every time I ever ask what web browser someone uses, the answer I get is Google. After I explain that Google is a search engine, not a web browser they usually tell me that they have no idea. I later find out that they are either using Internet Explorer or Firefox. Enter Microsoft’s new browser ballot into the equation. Instead of just saying “Chrome,” Google’s web browser says “Google” and then says “chrome” in smaller letter. People are asked what web browser they want so they think, I want to search with Google of course so they choose Chrome. If this is the case, it might be a problem that should be addressed.

Perhaps user ignorance on what a browser actually is will give Google a major boost.  Because, admittedly, even my own father reference to Internet Explorer as “my internet”.

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February 21, 2010

Europeans Get a Taste of the Browser Choice Screen

Microsoft Browser Choice ScreenWe might finally get more people off of IE, FINALLY.

It might seem like a minor thing, but it isn’t.

Microsoft has been fined billions over browser choice (or lack thereof) in Windows, and the solution that finally satisfied EU regulators was a browser choice screen, which would let users choose a web browser rather then having Internet Explorerinstalled as the default.

Now, Microsoft has posted images of what the browser choice screen will probably look like.

Here’s how it will work: The user will be presented with five major browsers, randomly ordered. He will also be able to choose several additional browsers, which are also randomly ordered. Once you install a browser, you’ll get a shortcut of that browser on your desktop, while Internet Explorer will be unpinned from the taskbar.

Since Windows 7 has been available on the European market for quite a while now, one may ask why (and how) is this happening so late? Since Microsoft needed some time to implement the browser choice solution, it will now use Windows Update to provide the browser choice screen to European users who are using Internet Explorer as their default browser. Better late than never, huh?

More precisely, testing of the browser choice screen begins next week in the UK, Belgium and France, where users will be able to download the software update from Windows Update if they like. A phased rollout of the update will happen across Europe starting with March 1.

via Europeans Get a Taste of the Browser Choice Screen.

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February 4, 2010

Thanks Microsoft!

Microsoft Expression
Image via Wikipedia

So, Microsoft sent me a complimentary copy of Microsoft Expression Studio 3 today for being a partner.  Kudos to them.

As to Expression Web, it works wonderful for prototyping but, doesn’t really handle CMS themeing that well.  Will be playing around with Expression Blend a bit later to see what geekiness I can come up with.

It has an interesting screen capture utility too (try the demo flash video below full-screen).  Oh yeah, I’m gonna have fun…

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November 18, 2009

Microsoft may have crippled up to a million of their Xbox 360 consoles

Xbox
Image via Wikipedia

A recent PCworld story, suggests in a measure to prevent hardware modding (which does have fair use purposes as well, such as making backups of content) they have banned up to a million Xbox 360 consoles from the Xbox LIVE service, and may have rendered the machines mainly unusable.

DailyTech’s sources claim the ban blocks game installations to the hard drive and the Windows Media Player extender, corrupts save games and Gamertags, and disallows the console from accessing Xbox LIVE.

If this is in fact true; and does render installations mainly useless; it may result in ~$200,000,000 of consoles (at new market value) no longer being usable and requiring their owners to purchase new consoles from Microsoft if they want to keep gaming on the 360 platform. Sounds like Microsoft may be stuffing their Christmas stockings a little earlier in the name of fair play.

[Kudo's to a friend of mine for nudging me on this, thanks Dylan!]

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January 1, 2006

Run Windows Update (and other pages that need IE) in Firefox!

Thanks to a new invention by PCMan (Hong Jen Yee), this extension let’s you choose the engine to use (gecko or IE) for a webpage, much like Netscape does. One great use of this is the ability to run Mircosoft Update in Firefox:

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us

Now you’ll never need to open IE to view a webpage again! Get it here.

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December 20, 2005

Dell embraces Firefox

Dell, one of the largest PC makers, has begun to put Firefox on their UK PCs. The Inquirer posted a article suggesting it might be true, which was later confirmed by Blake Ross, with a promise of more information later on. (See also: Netscape on HP)
This could further push consumers away from Microsoft products, as open source products are more frequently bundled with new PCs. Let’s see if they won’t put OpenOffice.org on those PCs too :)

November 23, 2005

Bill Gates leaked the wrong memo…

Ad-supported applications: just say no by ZDNet’s Phil Wainewright — The CEOs of NetSuite, WebSideStory and WebEx all agree with the majority of TalkBack posters — ad-funded on-demand business applications make no sense at all.

Sounds like Microsoft would have some opposition to it’s plans….again. Really, who would think a business would want it’s work force looking at ads, instead of working?

RSS extensions, not really simple

Anyone that’s heard the hype (C|Net, eWeek, BetaNews), or read the sepc on Microsoft’s “Simple Sharing Extensions for RSS and OPML”, aka. SSE, will realize that it also adds lots of complexity to RSS.The real question is, why RSS? Microsoft’s “extension” is more like a whole new XML beast than RSS.

Why? Publicity. RSS is fairly well known, so why say something like XML-SSE, when you can say “extended RSS”, or fib and call it just “RSS”? The fact is, THIS ISN’T RSS, it might somehow be based on it, but it’s not Really Simple Syndication in any way.

This is just marketing hype by Microsoft, and I hope people won’t get sucked into saying “Microsoft is supporting RSS standards now”…JScript…need I say more?