On March 15, Steve “Eccentric” Ballmer visited his former school of Stanford University Graduate School of Businesss to talk about Microsoft and his experiences as CEO. The hour-long discussion included topics such as competition, technology, growth, business presidents, management, innovation and pretty much everything else business-related. Sprinkled throughout the talk are in-jokes about Steve’s failure to complete second year – where he would have learned about everything he needed to know to become a better CEO, and he’s accomplishments at a maths competition – highlighting his mathematical talents.
Students of the GSB were also invited to ask questions to Steve, and here is a clip of the first of these questions, also one of the highlights of the entire talk which the infamous tongue makes an appearance.
“I’m really curious about how you made the decision to drop out of Stanford and join Microsoft. And especially what you saw in them, and how you were thinking about that decision, and how exactly it happened.”
Overall, it is a very entertaining and informative talk that provides a different perspective on Steve, one who the media doesn’t portray very often – a person who doesn’t stick his tongue out when excited, sweat when shouting words repeatedly, talk very loudly or clap hysterically when amused. Apparently, he’s just human, with a very big paycheck.
If you have an hour to spare, and there’s absolutely nothing else better to do, check out the full webcast or transcript yourself. If I can watch it (with a little enthusiasm), so can you!
Found on the Microsoft Windows Vista Communities frontpage, if you navigate through the “featured columns”, you will find the following picture for an article on “Comparing Windows Vista Editions“. At first look, it might seem like another standard line-up of Windows Vista boxes, but there appears to be two new ones attached to the right.
My best guess is the light cyan one is for Windows Vista Starter edition, and the dark blue one is for Windows Vista Enterprise. Also to note, these packages are slim-versions of the standard fold-out packs, which some are similar to the ones some professional Office tools use as well.
Update: Apparently they’re not as new as I thought, as it is prominently featured on the Vista Starter page.
Microsoft Germany must have a pretty big marketing budget to pull off a few of the most extravagant presentations I’ve seen. Only yesterday I wrote about their interactive presentation at CeBIT 2007 but today I’ve found another Microsoft event in Germany that deserves to be applauded.
Back in January, Microsoft hosted the launch event of Windows Vista at the HVB Forum in Munich, which featured one of the demanding installation of Ventuz solutions to-date. In it, was some of the coolest interactive displays I’ve ever seen, including a wall of interactive content displayed on touch-sensitive plasma displays using light barriers totaling a resolution of 4608×1366. Oh, and did I mention the giant interactive projection controlled by nothing but your hands?
Even an otherwise stupid downhill collect-em-things racing game becomes awesome on a motion-controlled giant projection screen spanning at least 100-inches. Credits to Second Unit Services for the above video and all the post-production work showcased at the event.
If Microsoft is ever in need of photography talents for wallpapers in future releases of Windows, they now have quite a list spanning from Kuwait to Singapore.
Microsoft Singapore recently ran a “PhotoVista” competition from last December to January to find unique photos vistas of Singapore to be used as wallpapers. It attracted over 2,200 entries in under 60 days within the two categories of amateur and youth photography for under-18s.
The rules of the event stated entrants must be a permanent resident of Singapore and their submissions must be a scenery of Singapore, which gives the competition more authenticity to reflect the artistic visions of Singaporeans and the beauty of the Singapore landscape. The 30 from winners (15 from each category) received prizes ranging from S$3000 (US$2000) computers to S$1500 (US$1000) software packs.
Microsoft should also be commended for respecting the work of amateurs by agreeing to a non-perpetual license, giving Microsoft only exclusive rights until December 2008.
If you like Minority Report style interfaces, then quickly go to the toilet and come back. Microsoft has again raised the bar of innovation in presentations to a whole new level. Building on the foundations of interactive presentation solutions provided by Ventuz solutions and their previous experiences at CeBIT, Microsoft showed off their concept for the future of interactive presentations at the 2007 CeBIT exhibition in Germany.
In this presentation for Office 2007, the presenter uses a giant touch-sensitive display to navigate between ‘chapters’ of the presentation, and then uses the motion of her hand to control the progress of the slides itself. Apart from touch and motion, the system is also capable of detecting distance, weight, heat and sound, according to the Ventuz website.
Here’s a pretty low-resolution movie I found of the presentation on YouTube. Understanding German is a plus. If anyone knows of a higher-resolution capture of this presentation, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
How cool is that giant Office orb that she can ‘push’ to turn to the next slide?
I’m not sure if the command line format tool still works or not. Not that curious to test it. Update: Thanks to Christopher “Brave” Hawkins for trying out the command line tool, which fortunately does not work.
I guess all the elite 12-year-old hackers need to find a new hacking tool.
On March 15, Steve “Eccentric” Ballmer visited his former school of Stanford University Graduate School of Businesss to talk about Microsoft and his experiences as CEO. The hour-long discussion included topics such as competition, technology, growth, business presidents, management, innovation and pretty much everything else business-related. Sprinkled throughout the talk are in-jokes about Steve’s failure to complete second year – where he would have learned about everything he needed to know to become a better CEO, and he’s accomplishments at a maths competition – highlighting his mathematical talents.
Microsoft Germany must have a pretty big marketing budget to pull off a few of the most extravagant presentations I’ve seen. Only yesterday I wrote about their interactive presentation at 
If Microsoft is ever in need of photography talents for wallpapers in future releases of Windows, they now have quite a list spanning from Kuwait to Singapore.
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