Kansas City Tech Guide

As you’re undoubtably aware, Bill Gates is set to retire on June 27th at the ripe old age of 52. Bill’s Harvard bud, Mr. Dancin’ Steve Ballmer, also 52 and a notable fan of the developers, has been itching to take over since his appointment as CEO back in 2000. Speaking at an event on Tuesday, we now know that he intends to remain in command, “for another nine or 10 years… until my last kid goes away to college.” Still, as easy-going as the relationship appeared at D, the transition was forged in fire. In fact, the power conflict was reportedly so severe, according to the Wall Street Journal, that it “paralyzed business strategy decision that the company still wrestles with today.” The tension at least once unravelled into a public shouting match (no really, from Ballmer?) between the two. The struggle was apparently resolved in 2001 when Bill finally accepted that he was number 2, “I had to change,” says Gates. Keep in mind that Bill will continue “working” for Microsoft one day a week and serve as the chairman of the board after his so-called retirement. And with Ballmer packing up Gates with a parting quote like, “I’m not going to need him for anything. That’s the principle. Use him, yes, need him, no,” well, let’s just say things don’t seem 100% resolved.

Read — Retirement
Read — Conflict

We didn’t think it’d take too terribly long to make it happen, but Albatron is taking Microsoft’s heed and is already demonstrating a prototype 22-inch monitor with multi-touch, intended for use with whatever Windows 7 will eventually come to be called. The early verdict on the 1680 x 1050 display? TG Daily says it “works much better than we expected,” but we said the same thing about Surface when it debuted last year — so maybe it simply works as well as it should.

That 80GB Zune above looks mighty familiar, now doesn’t it? At least it does if you checked out our totally wild guess mockup that we created upon hearing of this gem. The limited edition Joy Division-themed Zune has finally been pictured (officially) and priced, with just 500 of ‘em to be offered up through the Zune Originals website. Of course, we have no idea how quickly these will (or won’t) go, but if you’re looking to grab one, we’d have that trigger finger ready to roll on June 17th.

Don’t want to wait until March for Windows Vista SP1, but not feeling the whole torrent thing? Microsoft has posted a disc image to its OEM partner site with a full copy of SP1 on it, and the download is free — if a bit slow at the moment, thanks to all y’all grabbing a copy. The 1.2GB disc image requires you run it as a clean installation, so you’ve gotta ask yourself it’s just worth waiting a few more weeks for an easy peasy update courtesy of Windows Update. Decisions, decisions.

[Via Download Squad; read link is the disk image]

At this point all the snazzy new websites and re-focused marketing efforts in the world aren’t going to get Google, Microsoft, and the other members of the White Spaces Coalition anywhere if they don’t actually demonstrate the broadband-in-between-TV-signals tech in action — and it looks like that’s proving to be harder than expected. For the second time in seven months, a prototype device has failed testing at the hands of the FCC, although this time it wasn’t because it was interfering with TV signals — it just wouldn’t stay powered on. Microsoft says the power issue is “unrelated to the technology points we’re trying to prove,” but as usual, those prickly pears at the NAB aren’t being shy about this latest setback, calling it proof that white space broadcasts are “risky technology that has proven to be unworkable.” At this point we’re honestly torn — we hate to side with the NAB and we had high hopes for the white spaces concept, but it just doesn’t look like it’s panning out. Maybe it’s time to move on to bigger and better things, eh?

Sorry Microsoft and Apple, you may have had some fancy smartphone sales this year in your cute little American way, but globally there’s no question who’s the real leader in this segment: the Symbian OS shipped on 77.3 million units in 2007. That’s a 50% growth over 2006 sales, with over 141 different phone models from eight licensees. If the new hotness from Nokia this year at MWC is any indication, those numbers aren’t going to go away very soon, but Sony Ericsson’s adoption of Windows Mobile for its flagship XPERIA X1 certainly spells a modicum of trouble for Symbian land. Of course, there are many more low-end Symbian smartphones than there are cheap Windows Mobile phones, and Apple’s iPhone is still a premium product , but the line is becoming increasingly blurred.

Hey, it’s not Microsoft’s fault that 2011 sounds like the realm of jet pack VR massage cars, but it’s certainly a long ways away any way you slice it. Contrary to previous rumors of Microsoft planning a Windows 7 release sometime in 2009, Microsoft has apparently gotten in touch with WinVistaClub and set the record straight: Windows 7 is in “planning stages,” and development will take approximately three years. Microsoft wouldn’t comment on that supposed leak we spotted last week, and of course denied any implications that development was being accelerated to make up for Vista shortcomings. We can’t help but wonder how different the OS landscape will look three years from now, with Linux rapidly reaching feature and usability parity, while Apple plugs away at OS X and cloud computing lands everywhere, but we’re sure Vista SP1 won’t be the last bid Microsoft makes at this generation.

[Via The Inquirer]

Update: Other quotes from Microsoft has the date set at 3 years from the launch of Vista, which would indeed land it around 2009, so perhaps all hope is not lost. No date is set yet, and our money is on 2010 at the earliest.

We’ve wanted a long time to get our old pal Major Nelson on the Engadget podcast, and what better occasion than CES? Ok, maybe E3 — but there’s been no dearth of 360 news at and prior to the show, and no shortage of questions we’ve been dying to have answered on the air. If you’re not down with the Xbox, you’ll probably want to wait for a little bit until our next podcast, because in this one we’re talking about the recent Live outages, how the console’s been doing in the market, the persistence of the integrated HD DVD player rumor, the announcement of the 360’s first IPTV rollout, and even waxing nerd about our favorite titles of late.

Get the podcast
[iTunes] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in iTunes (enhanced AAC).
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Hosts: Peter Rojas and Ryan Block
Producer: Trent Wolbe
Guest: Larry Hryb, aka Major Nelson
Music: Solvent - Instructograph (Ghostly International)

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Contact the podcast: 1-888-ENGADGET, Engadget (Gizmo Project) or podcast at engadget dawt com
We’ve wanted a long time to get our old pal Major Nelson on the Engadget podcast, and what better occasion than CES? Ok, maybe E3 — but there’s been no dearth of 360 news at and prior to the show, and no shortage of questions we’ve been dying to have answered on the air. If you’re not down with the Xbox, you’ll probably want to wait for a little bit until our next podcast, because in this one we’re talking about the recent Live outages, how the console’s been doing in the market, the persistence of the integrated HD DVD player rumor, the announcement of the 360’s first IPTV rollout, and even waxing nerd about our favorite titles of late.

Get the podcast
[iTunes] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in iTunes (enhanced AAC).
[RSS MP3] Add the Engadget Podcast feed (in MP3) to your RSS aggregator and have the show delivered automatically.
[RSS AAC] Add the Engadget Podcast feed (in enhanced AAC) to your RSS aggregator.
[RSS OGG] Add the Engadget Podcast feed (in OGG) to your RSS aggregator.

Hosts: Peter Rojas and Ryan Block
Producer: Trent Wolbe
Guest: Larry Hryb, aka Major Nelson
Music: Solvent - Instructograph (Ghostly International)

LISTEN (MP3)
LISTEN (AAC)
LISTEN (OGG)

Contact the podcast: 1-888-ENGADGET, Engadget (Gizmo Project) or podcast at engadget dawt com

It really shouldn’t be a surprise that execs from AT&T, Microsoft, and NBC and several content filtering companies spent part of a CES panel about piracy talking about filtering at the network level — it’s definitely a tempting solution for Big Content, and one we’ve already seen Comcast kinda-sorta implement to general hue and cry — but it’s still somewhat disheartening. According to AT&T SVP James Cicconi, current anti-piracy efforts “haven’t been working,” and “a network-based solution is the optimal way to approach this.” Of course, having your ISP monitor every bit that goes down the tubes is pretty damn creepy, but come on — you know that’s not stopping fools like NBC’s Rick Cotton from saying that the volume of P2P traffic itself is unacceptable because it’s “dominated by copyrighted materials.” That’s a little ridiculous, but AT&T’s Cicconi tried to spin it positively regardless: “Whatever we do has to pass muster with consumers and with policy standards. There is going to be a spotlight on it,” he said. Damn straight — it’s called “all of your customers switching to an unfiltered provider.”

Since Microsoft knew you were tired of having your holiday break marred by the annoyingly frequent news of Xbox Live outages, they’ve decided to redefine the verbage, newspeak style. Apparently the term “Status: Up and running” has now been expanded to include a laundry list of “intermittent issue” caveats some users might be experiencing, including but not limited to trouble with: “Tournaments, Storage Downloads, Gamer Tile, Statistics through Arbitration, Match Making, and Messaging.” If you’re hoping to play Halo 3 or Call of Duty 4 online (you rebel, you) you’re most likely even more out of luck. There are also far-reaching problems that trace back to Windows Live IDs, so there’s a decent chance that your Zune account is on the fritz at the moment as well. But don’t worry, it’s all up and running.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

We’re starting to think Xbox Live’s holiday strategy was modeled after Newtonian physics: what goes up must come down. Although the Live support site shows the service as being “up and running”, apparently users are still experiencing intermittent issues, sometimes more dramatic than those officially listed. We don’t know about you, but even though only some of us on we were able to get on, even they have been seeing a lot of stalling and freezing — and the unlucky ones are just completely shut out of Live. How are things going out there? Any XBL issues of which to speak?

P.S. -Microsoft, congrats on the great holiday season. You obviously sold a TON of Xbox 360s and Live service contracts. Now be a doll. Give everyone a week (or, say, a month) of free Live service for the ugliness over vacation, ok? These people paid for their service when the other guys offer it up for free.

Read - Live support site: still having problems
Read - Our post about problems from last weekend
Read - Our other post about outages on Christmas day

Update:
Our broham Major Nelson says the Live engineers have identified a fix for the issues and things are on their way to being back on the up and up. Hopefully this time for good!

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For those of you that don’t know it Microsoft and Google have been at each others throats for the last 3 years or so. Microsoft always has annoyed Google with MSN.com who’s search feature takes up a very low third place in the search engine race between Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Google who’s supposed number one rule is “do no evil” which was always a direct jab at Microsoft who so many feel is an evil corporation because they’re good at what they do (even though they’re one of the most generous companies ever when it comes to donations, school projects, and just generally helping people) started off a war with Microsoft however a few years back when Microsoft first started work on “Longhorn” which you guys now know as Windows Vista (yeah, I was around and monitoring very closely the progress of Longhorn and it will forever be just that to me, I know it’s a codename but you get attached when you were around these things from their beginnings) Google announced that they were making their own operating system to compete with Microsoft. They’ve been at war ever since throwing punches back and forth, buying companies, bidding wars, and lawsuits. Microsoft’s first punch back after the announcement of the Google Operating system was to kill off one of Google’s pet projects Google Reader, which was originally supposed to be a program much like library’s work where Google took every publication (books, magazines, you name it) was scanning them and offered them for free online. Microsoft being the only company with enough power and money to do anything about it took Google to court and destroyed the program in almost unpublicized lawsuits. The war had begun, Google with their cocky attitude pushed ahead full steam, and Microsoft let them. Recently the war has gone to the new playground of the internet social networking websites. Google and MSN fought a short lived battle over MySpace where Google won out rights to put advertisements on the site with a several hundred billion dollar deal. It appeared Google had been winning out with it’s deal with Double-Click going through it seemed they were gaining steam, their stocks soared to almost $800 a share and everyone predicted that they would break the $1,000 mark by the end of the year. Most companies would of taken this opportunity to split stocks and release some more to make sales of stocks jump, but Google with their big head and go get ‘em attitude wanted to be the next Berkshire-Hathaway (The company that Warren Buffet, good friend of Bill Gates, works for) who has never split stocks and currently to get a single share of Berkshire-Hathaway you’ve got to fork over $141,100. As the rest of the economy was dropping especially in the technology departments Google seemed to be on top, until that fateful day December 11, 2007 Everyone’s stocks dropped like a rock when Google was brought back to reality with $600 a share stock prices, but Microsoft continued to climb with the release of SP1 for Office 2007 and SP3 release candidate for Windows XP Microsoft was able to pull off the impossible and do what they do best, making gains in a bare marketplace. Before this Microsoft and Google had been at it over purchasing a minority stake in Facebook, Microsoft won out which started the decline of Google’s stock, then came the 11th, and now Microsoft is flaunting the fact that they may be very slow moving, but that doesn’t stop them from being THE slow moving behemoth of our time. Even though Google has all rights to text advertisements with MySpace all of your music on MS is now brought to you courtesy of the Zune, which is Microsoft’s MP3 player that inspired the Ipod, and once again Microsoft still won out that battle too. I’ll never own an Ipod being that they’re a direct rip-off of the Zune, which has STILL even with the Ipod’s popularity and publicity beat out the Ipod in both unit sales, and profits. Maybe that explains why Microsoft moves so slow at what they do, they fight on so many fronts, and they hate to lose. Take that Apple, and Google!!! I actually really like Microsoft fot those of you that don’t know… I can respect them as a corporation, a lot of companies I can’t even come close to respecting their business practices or company models, but M$ I can.