//steve clayton: geek in disguise

 
[image credit – Engadget]

I just read on Twitter that Apple is blogging – with Steve Jobs apparently asking one of his staff to post daily about the MobileMe debacle. I was about to welcome them in to the warm blogging waters but one thing is missing from this “blog” – no ability to comment.

Shame really as I’d love to see some of their customer comments – you can get a sense over at Engadget though.

I know….maybe I could go shoot a video though – Mojave style – asking what people think of MobileMe? If I really wanted to have some fun I’d shoot a video “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC style” with MobileMe and LiveMesh. Oh but they’re not the same thing….tempting all the same. Meanwhile, Windows Live just works. For several hundred million users – for free.

Seriously though, as I’ve said before this cloud computing stuff is very, very hard – especially when you want to do it at scale and especially when you want to charge someone for it. Google do a great job with free services like GMail and we do pretty well too with Hotmail, Messenger and others. When the financial analysts asks why we’re sinking money in to online services and vast capital outlay in datacentres and their efficient operation, this is why.

[update 1] Last100 does a pretty good job of rounding up the feeling from the blogosphere and tech reporters.

Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt asks the question, “Who is to blame for MobileMe?” calling it “Apple’s worst product launch in the 10 years since Jobs returned from exile.”

Ouch.

[update 2]

Just noticed  new follower on Twitter is a MobileMe engineer. I get the feeling I’m being watched.

www.mojaveexperiment.com

image credit - New York Times

Everything it getting cloudy at the moment – right in the middle of our UK summer too. Fortunately it’s not affecting the weather here today at TVP towers (our UK HQ).  Network World highlighted some of the issue in their post on Cloud computing's dark side examined and one in particular interested me – data location.

In the era of massively distributed Internet clouds, how important is it that you know where your data is? My Flickr photos – frankly I don’t care if they’re on a server in Dublin, California or Timbuktu as long as I can access them anytime, any place. If you’re a business customer you may care more though. If you’re a government you care a lot and it’s something we think about here at Microsoft.

As we rollout Microsoft Online Services this becomes a crucial factor especially when you begin to delve in to the laws and regulations of each country and how they implement data privacy.

What’s my point here? My point is that all clouds are not made equal and it’s not a simple thing to flip from being a consumer cloud vendor to an enterprise cloud vendor. The rules and expectations are very different. Flipping the other way, enterprise to consumer is a damn sight easier I’d say.

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

another fun cloud cartoon and accompanying blog post from Brandon Watson

Welcome to Mr Pattern Matcher.

At around 22 mins in to Ray’s talk at FAM today he gets a great question from Rick Sherlund – check out the smile on Ray’s face when he answers. He seems kinda pleased to be able to answers all the nuances of Rick’s question. It’s also clear that Ray loves dialogue much more than presenting.

A slide from Steve Ballmer’s FAM presentation. Me like :)

Oh dear…Uncle Walt sings the death knell for Apple’s MobileMe. It’s a shame as the concept is great but as Apple has found, implementation of cloud services at scale may mean they need to take a few “Geniuses” off the bar and back to the datacentre. Meantime, Live Mesh which is in Tech Preview is pretty solid – but the Tech Preview moniker is there for a reason. This stuff is hard. It needs user testing – especially before you try to charge people for it.

Does this sound vitriolic? Well only in the same way it did when Apple announced this and people said they’d beaten Live Mesh to the punch :) Frankly they’re not the same but right now I prefer the Ozzie approach to cloud computing over the Jobs one.

You would think the Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting (aka FAM) would be a tedious, boring affair but for the last two years it’s been a proving ground for Microsoft execs and it’s where you can find the seeds of Ray Ozzie’s Software plus Services plans. That’s why later today I’ll be tuned in to see what Ray in particular has to say.

Let’s just remind ourselves of Ray’s FAM presentation from last year – concentrate on the slides above for the most fun.

[image credit - Rui Curado Silva]

Does the answer to Vista lie in the desert? Brad Brooks talked at the Worldwide Partner Conference about drawing a line in the sand and maybe this is what he was referring to. I was fascinated by a post from Ian Fried at CNET today on Mojave. Here it is in nutshell

Microsoft last week traveled to San Francisco, rounding up Windows XP users who had negative impressions of Vista. The subjects were put on video, asked about their Vista impressions, and then shown a "new" operating system, code-named Mojave. More than 90 percent gave positive feedback on what they saw. Then they were told that "Mojave" was actually Windows Vista.

Now we’re talking. This is the kind of grass roots, real advertising we should be doing. Not the canned actors (or paid comedians) telling people what Vista is like. Ina suggests this may get an airing today at the FAM or perhaps later this week. I hope so and note to the marketers – make the video “embeddable”. Give us that embed code and let’s spread it around the web.

On a personal note, it doesn’t surprise me to hear that Dave Webster is behind this with Veghte (according to CNET). Smart cookies IMHO.

Fantastic – I expect to be using this in my presentation a lot over the next year.

Hat tip to Rob Cottingham at RWW

Wow, I just found out from lilich and frankarr that Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley mentioned my blog when asked which Microsoft employee blogs she reads. I’m honoured!

Todd Bishop has audio of his interview - Mary Jo Foley on 'Microsoft 2.0' where she talks about her book, Windows 7, SteveB, StevenSi and more. I suspect someone in the audience asked which blogs Mary Jo reads.

I’m hoping to get my book signed at the PDC and catch up with MJF. If you’re interested at all you should read the book – there are some great insights in it and stories I’d not picked up on. As Mary Jo says in the audio, with a 90,000 person company one way to keep up is to follow the stuff she writes. If nothing else if gives you an “outside the borg” perspective :)