Well, no. Last week Robert Scoble, formerly part of Microsoft's "evangelism group," laid into his old employer when he posted on his influential blog, Scobleizer (scobleizer.com) a rant in response to an event at which Microsoft's "Most Valuable Professionals" were told that the Seattle software behemoth is "in it to win."
"The words are empty," Scoble blasted. "Come on. Ship a better search, a better advertising system than Google, a better hosting service than Amazon and get some services out there that are innovative. Where's the video RSS reader?"
Scoble has a point about Microsoft's Web delivery. When you think about Web searching, blogging tools, cool software such as Picasa and Google Earth and online apps, you think of Google.
Microsoft's Live Search barely registers on the radar, while we struggled to remember what its clone of Google Earth is called (it's Microsoft Virtual Earth, since you asked). Windows Live One care, offering online protection and maintenance for your PC, hasn't exactly set the world on fire.
However, the thing about Microsoft is that it's like a tanker: slow to get on course, but once it does, there's no stopping it. Back in the day, there used to be all sorts of productivity software. Remember Lotus 123, the spreadsheet that changed the world? It was a killer app for the early IBM PCs. But what's the dominant spreadsheet now? It's not Lotus 123, it's Microsoft's Excel.
And how about WordPerfect and WordStar? The latter these days is mostly used by the WordStar Users Group, while the rest of the world has moved on to -- yup, Microsoft Word. And WordPerfect, once the de facto word-processing app, has gone the same way. Now part of Corel's suite, its user base is tiny compared with the millions who fire up Word every day.
Microsoft was late to the party with a Web browser, left behind by Mosaic, the first clunky app that got you online, and then lagging behind the Netscape browser. But where are they now? Various flavors of Internet Explorer have been less than perfect, but the consensus is that IE7 has got it mostly right.
History shows that Microsoft can be tardy. But once it gets there, it sweeps others aside. So Scoble might one day have to eat his words.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique