Is Microsoft finally investing in quality?

By pandu

I have used Microsoft software through out my computing career and am no fan of it. In fact my expectation for software had been pretty low. I would be happy if it crashed only once a month. With marketing factoids like how many millions of lines of code Windows has, I was lead to believe that software design is rocket science, no even more complex and its just not possible to build good software. Things changed dramatically in the last few years thanks to amazing software like Google search, ajaxwhois, backpackit, etc. Its as if someone lead me out of a bubble, except this bubble was filled with crappy software. That is when I started building a resentment against Microsoft. All along they could have built good software but for whatever reasons they shoved junk (like Windows 9x, Windows 2000, XP, etc) down our throats. It was made especially worse considering Microsoft employs the best computer scientists and programmers in the world.

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Proximity services – the next convenience from the Internet

By pandu

Today TechCrunch is reporting about a German social networking service for mobile phones called Aka Aki. Aka Aki has two components – a web and mobile phone component. First you sign up on the Aka Aki website and enter relevant information. You will find the usual social networking features like friending, messaging, profiles, etc.

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A manifesto for web application development

By pandu

Web development has produced some of the most elegant software I have ever seen – things like wordpress, backpackit, ajaxwhois and even this widget to the right side of this blog that shows real time visitors to my blog. Such exquisite software – easy to use, pleasing to the eye, elegantly responding to mouse movements, focused functionality – cannot simply be a result of great coding skills. It must be driven by an underlying philosophy.

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Some people wish the Internet would go away

By pandu

Elton John is one of those who wouldn’t mind seeing the internet go away. At first I thought Elton might have been misquoted or was being “rich and famous” and perhaps not knowing things normal folks use. But after reading New York Times’ fantastically brilliant story about Rick Rubin’s attempts to save Sony’s music business, I understand Elton’s sentiments better.

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Watch out digital media entrepreneurs – more money coming

By pandu

Velocity Investment Group was formed recently by former AOL CEO Jonathan Miller and former Fox Interactive President Ross Levinsohn. The group will invest in small Internet companies, bring them under an umbrella group and after strengthening their ad revenues, resell them as part of a larger company. The group will initially focus on digital media companies. This is likely in direct response to the spate of buyouts in digital media – WPP bought 24/7 Real Media, Google bought Doubleclick, Microsoft bought aQuantive and Yahoo bought Right Media. The big loser was Valueclick, which was the only free-standing digital ad company that did not get bought out and is now too small to compete. Velocity might end up buying Valueclick.