microsoft

Predictions for the future generally come in two flavors: blighted hellscape or techno-utopia. Last week, Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop introduced Microsoft’s vision of 2019 with a slick new video, and it is a future that falls decidedly in the later, more optimistic category.

The problem? The 2019 Microsoft details with this video is almost identical to the 2004 predicted in this video produced by Sun Microsystems in 1992.

Is Microsoft finally admitting that Windows Vista is a lost cause? Well, that’s certainly not the official company line, but it does kind of seem that way to me. The embattled OS’s successor, Windows 7, wraps up a public beta in a few days and speculation is that Microsoft is planning to crown its heir to the Windows kingdom as early as the Fall. By then, Vista will have been on store shelves for less than three years. That’s not a very long time compared to XP, which was top dog for five years before being replaced by Vista—if it was ever really replaced at all.

Developing PC and video games is a crapshoot at best. My own self-published Heavyweight Thunder took a year to build, cost a small fortune, and ultimately tanked with critics. But if Microsoft has its way, literally anyone, regardless of technical know-how, will soon have the opportunity to create jaw-dropping digital diversions.

As part of my ongoing, personal economic bailout plan, this week I began tinkering around with a couple of the free, online office suites that are available. After all, why shell out a few hundred clams for Microsoft Office when others are giving it away for free? Unfortunately, after a week of getting to know Google Docs and Zoho Writer, here I am typing this week’s column from the comfort and safety of a bought-and-paid-for copy of Microsoft Word. Why? Because I came to realize something about myself over the course of this week: At 30 years old, I’m already an old fart.

More on that later.

I suffer from a near-debilitating fear of tech commitment. Early adopter, I am not. With pre-orders of the first Google Android phone rumored to be kicking off any day now, early adoption is a topic I’ve been burning a lot of brain cells on lately. I mean, should I or shouldn’t I? That’s the eternal question of this transistor-dependent existence I lead. Unfortunately for my own technological evolution, I find early adoption to be a lot like playing Russian Roulette with a bullet lodged in all six chambers: I can’t possibly win.

I often wonder what goes on inside the mind of an early-adopter.

A lot has changed since the 1990s when the search engine of choice was AltaVista, when Internet connections ran through a phone line, and when Netscape battled Internet Explorer for browsing supremacy. Now Google, apparently nostalgic for the days of Presidential impeachment and O.J. Simpson, has reignited the wars with the roll out of its new application, a browser named Chrome.

There was some wisdom behind that stoner pop-culture game you used to play in college, but it turns out the “six-degrees of separation” hypothesis was a few tenths off the mark. According to data gleaned from Microsoft’s Messenger IM service, all human contacts in a social network can be connected in 6.6 degrees.

If you subject yourself to as many RSS feeds as I do every morning, then you might be wise to the fact that there’s a bit of mutiny percolating in parts of the blogosphere—a mutiny against tech darlings Apple and Google. Yes, Microsoft is, has always been and will for the foreseeable future continue to be the big bad wolf of the tech world. But as each new version of Windows comes out antiquated or broken before it ever goes on sale, and the company comes up short in the search, advertising and online services sectors, it seems as though the wolf may be losing its bite.

Just when you thought you couldn't waste enough time on your Xbox 360, Microsoft has decided to add another way to get you to stare at your tube for longer, by streaming movies and TV shows through its popular game console. The tech giant announced its partnership with the movie-rental company Netflix this week at the E3 video game convention in Los Angeles. While video-gamers were leaping for joy at the convention when Square Enix announced Final Fantasy XIII for the Xbox 360, avid movie fans were leaping even higher to hear about Microsoft's movie deal.

Bill Gates is taking over the Olympics. The supposedly retired CEO of Microsoft has taken his antitrust antics to new heights with the launch of NBC Olympics on the Go. Using a dedicated video player provided by TVTonic, users can specify their viewing preferences and events will download automatically when they're available. Commuters taking public transit can even watch saved video without an internet connection.

Speaking at yesterday's CEO Summit in Redmond, Washington, Bill Gates - that guy from Microsoft - demonstrated the TouchWall, a four foot by six foot touch-screen computer prototype. TouchWall uses infrared and laser technology to register your manual input, and turn it into action. One writer described it as a giant version of Microsoft's Surface technology oriented vertically.

After much anticipation, Microsoft Research today released a new, free online tool designed to open up the world of astronomy to the masses. Microsoft describes the WorldWide Telescope as a "Web 2.0 Visualization Software Environment" - but don't worry, the tool is easier to use than it is to define.

Remember Surface, the magic coffee table and massively multi-touch screen that we awarded a Best of Whats New award in December? Well it looks like its finally set to debut, as a shopping kiosk debuting at six AT&T cellular phone stores on April 17.

Yahoo surprised analysts yesterday, announcing that it is on track to meet its expected earnings for 2008. This changes the fight between the Sunnyvale-based company and Microsoft, which recently offered to pay $42 billion to swallow it up. Now Yahoo has a bit more leverage, and may be able to convince investors that its not in such bad shape after all. The company says it expects to double its cash flow and increase its revenue by 50 percent, mostly from banner and video advertising.

Touch-screen interfaces have an inherent problem—you can't see through your fingertips to see the spot you're trying to touch. After abandoning its controversial efforts to breed humans with transparent fingers, Microsoft came up with another novel solution, a system that lets you touch the back of a device and see an overlay of virtual fingertips on the front display.