An Aussie geek stuck in Texas

Can someone please tell me what all the excitement about Windows Live and Office Live is all about? Windows Live looks like another pathetic attempt at a portal and Office Live looks like Microsoft’s attempt to get into the canned website and hosting business.

Firstly portals have been tried many times and they have never taken off so why will Windows Live? What makes it different? Ooooh it uses AJAX and you click & drag things around, whoopy friggin do. Oh it has an AJAX instant messenger client, haven’t they seen Meebo? Oh and it has an AJAX email client, uhm say hello to Gmail. The one thing I will give them credit for although it is still an unreleased feature with no details on pricing is the ability to make outgoing VOIP calls to a POTS line through Windows Live, surely that is going to have to be a paid service or are they going to inject ads into that as well?

Microsoft Office Live will provide your company with its own domain name, Web site, and e-mail accounts for free.

Oh really? Free, eh? So does that mean your site will have Microsoft branding and/or advertising all over it or what? Maybe it will be free in conjunction with some yet to be announced license for one of their other products?

Why does all of this look like something hastily thrown together by a bunch of developers being forced to get something “live”? haha I made a funny! Seriously though reading the blog that I refuse to link to (the Microsoft geek one on Wordpress.com) it actually does sound like developers have just stayed back late one night to throw this stuff together.

I just love how they have big launches where it is just an announcement for a beta that will start sometime in early 2006 that you can register online for a chance to participate in, give me a break!

I almost forgot the Microsoft Gadgets:

Well, there are different kind of gadgets, Desktop Gadgets which are small applications written in WPF for example (will be able for windows vista beta 2’s sidebar (which will hopefully be compatible with windows xp)), Start.com/Live Gadgets which are written in DHTML + Javascript and allows you to personalize it and add the stuff you want, and there are auxillary gadgets for laptops.

Who the heck uses a sidebar? The majority of people are still using 1024*768 or less as their desktop resolution so how is a sidebar going to be usable?

Woohoo! You can also write your own gadget to add to your portal on Windows Live! I’m so excited I almost peed in my pants!

What the heck is an auxillary gadget for a laptop? Something that can work offline like a calculator or what?

I think Microsoft should just exhange a ga for a wi and be done with it.

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