July 28, 2003

End of a great Tour de France

Well, as I’m sure most know, Lance made it to number five.

Congratulations on joining the Five-Timers-Club

Congratulations also to the awesome Postal Team!

Speaking of Lance, here’s a great quote from the recent Washington Post article by Sally Jenkins who co-author of the Lance Armstrong book, “It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life”

July 25, 2003

Focus on the Process not the Feature

I alluded to this the other day, but the following from Jupiter Research sums up MSFTÂ’s marketing positioning strategy for the new Office System, which will also include Longhorn and I suspect enterprise search.

Basically, they are not selling features or services, but “solutions” to very specific business processes.

“Microsoft is putting less emphasis on individual applications and product features and more emphasis on what people can do with Office System. The strategy also synchs with other products, such as development of Windows Longhorn. Earlier, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates discussed “scenarios” the company is using to develop Longhorn. One scenario might be a teenager interested in listening to music. Microsoft has taken a similar approach to Office System, looking at information scenarios Office users confront daily.”

July 24, 2003

Study shows blogs are under-represented in Google

Interesting study released by Microdoc News debunking (mathematically) that blogs are clogging Google

[Estimations show] “there are about 150 million webpages that belong to blogs. Out of 3.8 billion webpages 150 million is about 3.9% of all pages in Google and blogs appear in the top ten results only 2.1% of the time. It seems to me that blogs are being under-represented and not over represented in Google.

Link to Microdoc News via Anil Dash

July 23, 2003

Tyler Hamilton Wins His First Tour de France Stage

Stage 16: Armstrong still retains the Yellow Jersey, but …

“With a fractured collarbone, Tyler Hamilton has battled on to become the sixth American rider to win a stage of the Tour de France.”(via Le tour en direct

I know I keep saying it, but what an awesome race!

Go Tyler!

July 21, 2003

Armstrong Now Leads By 1’07”

Kudos to all the riders in “Le Tour” this year!!

I was on the edge of my seat, even while reading the live updates online of today’s stage 15.

All I can say is WOW! I can’t wait to watch the replay tonight!

“At the end of the 15th stage, Armstrong has increased his lead over Ullrich. The American is now 1’07” ahead of the German in the generall classification. Vinokourov began the day within 18″ of the overall lead, he finished it with a deficit of 2’45”.

July 18, 2003

Ullrich is lurking

At least Armstrong still retains the overall lead with 34 seconds over Ullrich, but …

“Ullrich … powered across the 29 miles of rolling vineyards in 58 minutes, 32 seconds to take the Tour’s 12th stage. He was the only rider of 167 to finish in less than an hour.”(via ESPN)

And…

“Immediately after crossing the finish line in fifth place, American Tyler Hamilton — competing with a broken collarbone — stumbled off his bike, lurched forward and vomited.”

July 17, 2003

Enterprise User Experience

Building on the ubiquity of Office in the enterprise, I think Microsoft
is promoting a very compelling trend and something to seriously consider in
regard to delivering an enterprise user experience that feels
seamless or natural.

Essentially, it’s
an obvious goal: Give users an interface that they already know and use daily.

Specifically the key to
providing this enterprise utopia is with Microsoft’s soon-to-be released “Office
2003 System”. IMHO and if all goes well, Microsoft will finally deliver a
malleable front-end framework that lets developers tap into the specific work-flow
processes that people accomplish everyday in each of the main Office
applications (Word, Excel, Outlook and perhaps PowerPoint and Access)

July 16, 2003

Unsung Hero of the Tour

Catherine sent me the following quote from Tyler Hamilton’s latest journal entry about his current status at the Tour:

“The pain in my collarbone is now being matched by pain in my spine. I started feeling a jabbing pain in my back and rib cage a couple of days ago. We just figured it was a bruise making its way to the surface and that it would get better each day. But the problem is it’s been getting worse.”

July 15, 2003

Neighborhood Area Networking

I just read the following via Wi-Fi Networking News:

“Speakeasy’s NetShare service … allows a DSL or T-1 customer to share their connection with anyone they like and have Speakeasy bill their sharers directly, while rebating 50 percent of those fees against their direct customers’ bill.”

Awesome!

Heh, and I was just debating the validity of Neighborhood Wi-Fi with Ed. So naturally I found the timeliness of this to be a bit ironic, but interesting nonetheless.

July 14, 2003

SharePoint 2.0 and Search.Microsoft.com

Over the weekend Microsoft released a new site-wide search engine for Microsoft.com that utilizes the soon-to-be-released SharePoint 2.0 and Windows 2003 Server. (Thanks for the link Martin)

In what I think is a related note, for search results.

Although I can’t seem to find the interface to this yet, but you can customize the query by changing the “search keyword” value after the “q=” in the above link. (via Anil Dash)