Comments on: the blue monster

By: Alex James

Alex James — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 11:46:58 +0000

Hugh,
Now that I’m packing up my family and leaving little old NZ behind to join MS, I for one will definitely be attempting to live the Blue Monster mantra…
Alex

By: Maria

Maria — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 13:05:46 +0000

I think you are very creative and artistic, Hugh. I like that. I love business cards...I have quite a collection. Gotta say, all those teeth on that Blue Monster make me think it wants to eat up the world.... There's this movie...The Langoliers - book by Stephen King where similarly shaped but more rounded objects do just that...eat up the world.....can't shake it....but I'm trying to think out of the box....gotta say you got me thinking...thinking, thinking....man it's hard to think out of the box......darn! that Langoliers movie image just won't die... I found a youtube excerpt..... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui1Gixpx1cI&mode=related&search= .I like making odd connections... filling the gap so to speak.....:)

By: Danny_pb

Danny_pb — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 18:35:45 +0000

Goddag!
Check this out!
*

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 21:01:08 +0000

Bert — Apple and Google with the UI fanboy comments, okay, I may disagree but I can see where you are coming from… But Adobe? Are you kidding? Acrobat and Photoshop have the steepest learning curves of any creative application I’ve used! What sells them is that they are (A) very powerful and (B) industry standard.

By: steve clayton

steve clayton — Wed, 30 May 2007 06:40:40 +0000

Bert — we heard you. Two words back, Microsoft Expression.

By: Bert

Bert — Tue, 22 May 2007 14:25:40 +0000

Two words: User Experience. Apple understands it better than any other software or hardware company. Google understands it better than anyone in the information business. Adobe understands it better than most companies producing creative software. All three know that understanding the user's needs is one of the most critical keys to success, and spend far more time and money on this than most people realize. They've hired the best people in the world to work for them, and it shows. Microsoft has consistently ignored this critical aspect to doing business in the modern age, and they're finally starting to pay the price for developing unoriginal products that repeatedly kick their users in the crotch. It's not that MS is evil, it's mainly just that they've never paid enough attention to the very thing that has made these other companies so successful. Sure, they may throw the term "user experience" around as it becomes more and more widely used, and will probably even try to trademark and license it at some point. At the end of the day, though, their products will continue to be as unreliable, counterintuitive, and infuriating to use as they've always been. In my opinion, Microsoft is gradually becoming more and more irrelevant in a world where truly innovative companies understand user experience, and that's why they're starting to freak out. It's Microsoft's well-founded insecurity that drives campaigns like this. How about: "Microsoft: It's not what the user does. It's what the software does."

By: JT

JT — Tue, 22 May 2007 03:01:28 +0000

Yeah, BIG problem here Hugh. Change the world, not “improve the world”. Change the world has already happened for Microsoft. And change can be truly awful — DRM and such. A great idea, but the wording? Gives me nothing but a feeling of dread.

By: Sam

Sam — Tue, 22 May 2007 02:43:32 +0000

How about “Shamelessly rip off Apple some more on our way home.”

By: J2

J2 — Sun, 20 May 2007 23:24:51 +0000

The funny thing is Microsoft has never been a world changer in the true sense of the term. World changers invent things, create things — they don’t merely modify or acquire things. World changers swim against the current, cut against the grain, do things differently. Microsoft has never done this. I will give them credit for doing one thing really well, they are consistently the best marketer of copied ideas. What surprises me the most is that their copied ideas are successful on a mass level even though they are almost always very late to market.

By: karthikeyan

karthikeyan — Fri, 18 May 2007 23:02:11 +0000

Guys, Believe me it is the "first bouncer" from Google to Microsoft.But Ya its true its a nasty one .But i believe that Microsoft can really come back with a bang.If they change their attitude from "Being Evil"-- monopolistic to "Don't be evil" Guys Check out my Google Spirit guys

By: Chris Sells

Chris Sells — Wed, 16 May 2007 01:38:38 +0000

The things MS does to tell its own story:
–Channel 9 & Channel 10
–MSDN & TechNet
–PDC, TechEd, MiX, etc.
–every magazine article or book an MS employee writes or reviews
–every blog post, public forum email or USENET post an MS employee writes
It used to be that the only folks that told the real story for MS were the Developer’s Relational Group (the famous “DRG”), but those days are gone and every single MS employee is now empowered to tell their story in a huge number of MS-supported venues.
That’s not to say that we always have the right stories or even that we all agree on the stories we’re telling, but we’re sure telling the hell out of the stories we’ve got.

By: hugh macleod

hugh macleod — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 22:01:12 +0000

“Change the world to suit Matteo’s stringent definition of ‘for the better’ or go home”.… Not sure if it has quite the same ring to it

By: Matteo

Matteo — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 21:29:49 +0000

No mention whatsoever about changing the world *for the better*??? I’d rather they just disappear.

By: Lindsey

Lindsey — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 04:23:42 +0000

“This apply to google even more.” Right, if changing the world = improving Web search enough to put libraries and yellow pages out of business…and providing free, feature-crippled versions of Microsoft products online. But even such feats are overshadowed by the profound social impact of uber-innovative (and anti-evil) Apple Inc.‘s white vs. black plastic!

By: Perry

Perry — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 23:03:29 +0000

I just find this kind of weird. I’m new to this site, but everything seems to talk about how stupid, backwards, and screwed every company is.…. and yet here is this project for Microsoft. I guess they ‘get it’ but everyone else is doomed.