Ray Ozzie: Microsoft is not threatened by netbooks, Google Wave is ‘anti-web’
Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s chief software officer, spoke tonight at a meeting of the Churchill Club about a wide range of topics related to cloud computing, but the most memorable discussion came when he was asked about the effect of netbooks. One might think those cheap, low-end laptops that exist primarily to access the Internet (rather than use powerful desktop software) might be a threat to the software giant. But that’s not the case, Ozzie said.
“In… Continue Reading
Microsoft starts E3 by bringing out the surviving Beatles
Time was Microsoft couldn’t get big stars to show up at its press conferences at E3, the big video game trade show. Not anymore.
Microsoft launched its E3 press event today with a tribute to the Beatles, as it gears up to launch the MTV Harmonix game The Beatles Rock Band this fall.
And Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr came out to take a bow on the acid-green stage to say they loved the game.
Though it was… Continue Reading
Anticipating E3: the video game giants prepare to show their cards
The E3 video game trade show gets under way Monday, and is expected to draw more than 40,000 people with a new grandiose format.
Held at the Los Angeles Convention Center, it will be much more like a Las Vegas extravaganza than the boring, press-focused shows that drew 4,000 or so people last year. And yes, those booth babes (below) will be back, as well as 3,500 journalists.
(Listen to my NPR Weekend Edition interview on E3).
There will be… Continue Reading
Screenshots: Microsoft Bing would be awesome if I could use it
Updated Did you hit bing.com today? If you got a blank page from Microsoft’s new search tool, it’s not because Bill Gates is blocking your non-Internet-Explorer browser. Microsoft has confirmed to VentureBeat that it’s working on fixing technical glitches that sometimes deliver a blank page. Sometimes you get a Coming Soon page.
While we wait for Bing’s servers to stabilize, the best read on what Bing is and does is Microsoft’s reviewer’s guide, a downloadable Word… Continue Reading
Stanford’s Bill Dally leaps from academia to the computer graphics wars
Bill Dally recently made the jump from head of the computer science department at Stanford University to being chief scientist at graphics chip maker Nvidia. Now he has to be the chief visionary for the products that Nvidia will make in the future. His expertise is in parallel computing, which he believes will come to dominate the picture. If he’s right, we’ll see a shift of billions of dollars of sales from one part of… Continue Reading
Microsoft announces Vine, a location-based service for emergencies
Microsoft plans to release the test version next month of a new product called Microsoft Vine that will allow users to share reports and updates tied to real-world locations, a tool that could be particularly useful for communication during a disaster.
At least, that’s what it sounds like from the relatively scant details released so far by the Redmond, Wash. company. I haven’t had a chance to see the product in action, but Microsoft says there… Continue Reading
Will the game industry slow, or is it just getting started?
I’m giving a speech today in Berlin, Germany at the Quo Vadis game conference. I was asked to talk about the state of the game industry and the prospects for game startups. Here’s an abridged version of the speech for those who want an overview of investment in games.
I love games. I played the original Pong when it first came out. I played Wing Commander in the early 1990s until my right arm became too… Continue Reading
Graham Hopper expands Disney’s video game kingdom
Graham Hopper, executive vice president and general manager of Disney Interactive Studios, gets to see a broad swatch of the video game business, since his video game titles range from hardcore titles such as the upcoming racing game Split/Second to the Toy Story game for the Wii that will accompany the release of Pixar’s next big film. Disney is in the midst of tripling its investments in video games and Hopper now oversees 1,200 employees… Continue Reading
February U.S. game sales slow to 10 percent, but growth rate still up
The game industry is humming along. The U.S. video game industry grew 10 percent in February, slower than a month before but still enviable considering the weakness in the rest of the economy.
The sales of console games and hardware grew 10 percent to $1.47 billion in February from $1.34 billion a year earlier according to NPD Group, a market researcher. In all of 2008, the industry grew 19 percent.
Sales in January were up 13 percent…. Continue Reading
Sources confirm Microsoft is buying 3DV Systems
A report surfaced last week that Microsoft was buying 3DV Systems, a company that makes motion-detection technology, for $35 million. My sources confirm that this is true.
Microsoft and 3DV declined to comment to me last week.
Motion-detection will be big for the future direction of Microsoft, as it reacts to the Nintendo Wii, which revolutionized the game console industry with its motion detection technology.
As I’ve mentioned, buying 3DV would be the opening gambit in a next-generation user… Continue Reading
Live blogging CES opening keynote: Steve Ballmer admits, “I am a PC and proud of it!”
Ballmer’s first CES keynote was a little light on hard news. There was no Zune phone announcement (rumor was Microsoft would do it to compete with the iPhone), and he didn’t address the pending layoffs that are rumored at the company. But he did announce the Windows 7 beta, including some cool features with Windows Live Essentials, and he took the crowd into a cool demo of how we could use computers in the future… Continue Reading
Grudge match: Microsoft’s Gears of War 2 vs. Sony’s Resistance 2
The great grudge match of video games in 2006 was Microsoft’s Gears of War versus Sony’s Resistance: Fall of Man. Now the sequels to those console games are battling for the hearts of gamers.
The games industry is one of the few that’s still growing in the down economy, so the battle’s bound to be a big one.
Last time, the duel between those two games went a long way toward settling the outcome of the console… Continue Reading
Report from AlwaysOn Venture Summit: We’re not dead yet!
About 500 people converged this week on the AlwaysOn Venture Summit West at the luxurious Ritz Carlton hotel in Half Moon Bay, Calif. Apparently shell-shocked investors, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs still want to commiserate and await the upturn in a group setting.
The conference itself is a kind of barometer for the economic downturn and what its impact will be for Silicon Valley. After sitting through the survivor tales for a day and a half, I… Continue Reading
Interview with Robbie Bach, part 3, on Windows Mobile
Robbie Bach has to put on a happy face when he talks about all of his children. Of all of the businesses in his Entertainment & Devices group at Microsoft, Windows Mobile is one of the toughest businesses to run. It has more than 20 million units in the marketplace, but it’s up against competitors such as Apple, Nokia, and pretty soon Google. This is the third and final edited transcript of a recent gathering… Continue Reading
Dash Express debuts as Web 2.0 meets GPS navigation
Navigation 2.0 arrives today with Dash Navigation’s Dash Express GPS navigator (global positioning system). The gadget represents a new generation of smarter car navigation devices because it has two-way communication between Dash and the user.
One-way GPS systems from the likes of Garmin, Mio Technology, Magellan, and TomTom and can only be so helpful to you. They can show you where to go, using satellite signals to fix your location as you drive. You can search… Continue Reading