Being a new PM at Microsoft

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYjgfs1JE7I TVS is a big brand in India - they make some truly awesome motorcycles. This is one of their latest TV commercial. Few things I love about the ad Entertaining - after seeing the ad, you have a smile on your face...

Push email has always been a matter of pride for the road warriors. Having email delivered to your mobile device the instant it lands on your mail server - that's like ultimate nirvana! RIM had the first popular commercial implementation with their BlackBerry...

Imagine yourself in a racing car, driving along the streets of Seattle (or San Francisco) and seeing all the real life street pictures. Navigate using keyboard of a mouse, just like you are playing Need for Speed, but instead of a game, you are seeing...

Windows Live local is Live!! Check it out at http://local.live.com . New features (delta from the VE beta) 1. Bird's Eye view - this is plain gorgeous. Check out NY, DC, Seattle, Las Vegas and many more cities 2. Custom pushpins - Right click...

Zdnet has an article titled Gartner: Ignore Vista until 2008 . It was an interesting read in the sense it made me write after a long hiatus. It talks about Vista being evolutionarily better that XP. Very little was mentioned about the features that are...

The team blog for RMS just went live at http://blogs.msdn.com/rms . Currently we only have the welcome post by our Product Unit Manager, Keith but soon we hope to have the team contributing blos posts on all the categories mentioned in Keith's welcome...

We just shipped Rights Management Services (RMS) SP1. It is Microsoft's latest release in the Enterprise Rights Management (ERM) space. It comes with a host of new features to improve deployment, support for high security environments like air-gap networks...

Looking for a fun and exciting way to entertain your friends and wish them a hilarious April fool's day? Check out MSN Search's unique idea of creating customized spoof search results with your friend's names at http://www.msnsearchspoof.com . I just...

Now the really popular people can find solace. MSN just upped the limit on the contacts in your contact list from 150 to 300 . The change is live for everyone right now, regardless of which version of Messenger you're running. So go ahead and add all...

Till now, corporate communication has heavily relied upon email and phone to get the message across. IM has been popular as a consumer communication medium for quite a while, but its uptake in the corporate world has not been dramatic. Lately, with improved...

I like to think of myself as a geek. As a geek, I pride upon the fact that I have never been infected with a virus (besides cold, of course). Imagine my geek pride taking a hit when the bad guys came up with a new set of tools - tools to get past the...

Playing with cool software has always been something I really enjoyed. Primary reason being it allows you to admire the works of a talented set of people. They are a manifestation of the fact that there are so many problems in the tech world which I am...

Scenario: My dad is a metallurgical engineer in India. The only time he use he makes of a computer (my old Pentium I with 32MB RAM) is to send/receive emails, browse news websites and call me using Net2Phone service. But he is one enthusiastic individual...

v1 products generally suck. Beta of v1 products surely suck. That was my belief till today. MSN Spaces has changed that. For the uniniated, MSN Spaces is Microsoft's foray into the Blogging arena ( http://spaces.msn.com ). And the balance they have struck...

Henry Longfellow inspired me to write a whole poem on Microsoft PM, borrowing from his lovely composition. The Village Blacksmith . Disclaimer - this is purely for creative purposes and no money is being made. So here it is - In the evergreen state of...

Program management is the most talked and the least understood position in Microsoft from an outsiders perspective. A number of blogs about PMs talk about this art (and science) and they make a fascinating reading Joel on Software , KC Lemson , Vernal...

If you followed me till now through the seemingly nonsense journey of how and what, well you are in for a surprise. Today I answer the question that has troubled generations of men. And if you wish to know my qualifications for making these esoteric statements...

WHAT is something everyone worries about. Everyday we wake up wondering what to do today. A trip to the supermarket is a treasure cove for what. Which shaving cream to buy, what about the new 2% fat milk, what is more cheaper, etc. The more choices we...

Words have always eluded me (well, except Microsoft Word). Never thought I'd embark on a journey which had to deal with lot of words (and even more important was to coherently link them together to form meaningful statements that depicted somewhat accurately...