I do a podcast -- PowerUser.TV. It's a tech podcast but with a lot of tongue in cheek. I play up my more offensive side of things with lots of weekly rants.

We really enjoy doing the podcasts, but the problem is that the work vs. reward is just not there.

Here's some of the problems with podcasts:

1) The sites that syndicate the feeds are the ones who get all the rewards. ITunes, PodNova, Yahoo, they're the ones who make all that advertising revenue without having to create the content. It costs Stardock thousands of dollars each week to do the podcast. Even the Neocast version costs Stardock money too even if it's not producing it, it runs/maintains the site for it. But the iTunes of the world merely have to link to the MP3 file leaving the content providers out in the cold.

2) The effort vs. reward is totally not there in terms of listeners. Take PowerUser.TV -- it involves 3 salaried people plus 1 volunteer to produce the show plus another salaried person to maintain the website. That same staff could put together a pretty impressive website. A popular website like Neowin.net might get a million visitors PER DAY. A popular podcast might get 100,000 listenres PER WEEK. It's not even remotely as effective a means.

3) Podcasts aren't sticky. You can't say in the middle of a podcast "Hey, go check out this post on Neowin.net" and the user be taken to the website somehow.

Can you imagine me saying http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?show...#entry587710294 on the air?

"I repeat, that's st=0%#..."

4) Bandwidth costs. A page view on Neowin.net might use up 60K. A download of a podcast might be 60 MEGABYTES PER LISTENER. Ack.

5) Podcasts are being crowded out by radio shows and other NON-podcasts (i.e. things that were produced with a totally different audience in mind and then tossed onto the web as an MP3 with an RSS feed and called a "podcast"). You can't even find most real podcasts anymore.

Of the top 50 podcasts on Yahoo, nearly HALF of them are now NPR (that's National Public RADIO) shows that have been tossed onto the net as "podcasts" despite them not really being podcasts. It really aggravates me because a) they're paid for by taxes and they're abusing the medium. It would be like Electronic Arts submitting games into the independent games festival.


That doesn't mean podcasts are doomed. It's too early by far to say that. What is really needed first off is a way to filter out the NPR's of the world off the various podcast lists so that people can actually find genuine podcasts.

Secondly, we need to learn who the listeners really are. The lack of raw numbers could be made up for if the listeners are "industry influencers". For example, Neowin.net may not get even a fraction of the traffic of a Digg.com but the difference is that (I believe) Neowin.net's average viewer has a lot more influence over what kind of technology people around them use over the average Digg.com viewer (and the average Digg.com viewer has a lot more influence than say the average MSN home page viewer and so forth).

It will be interesting to see what happens to podcasts. I don't think it'll be going away but I think it may become like blogging where at first everyone was starting to have blogs (and just as annoying then was on-line columnists turning their articles into "blogs") but now it's found its own particular niche.

This past week the EU put another $357 million fine on Microsoft over anti-trust issues. This is on top of the previous $300+ million fine and the on-going $2+ million per day ongoing fine.  When it comes to dealing with the global threat posed by American software giant, Microsoft, the EU is quite brave.

Meanwhile, Europe heads towards year 4 of completely unproductive negotiations with Iran, a country that has made it clear that they are pushing to have nuclear weapons.  Iran, as you may recall, has publicly promised to annihilate Israel in a ball of fire and whose missiles are likely able to reach Europe.

Luckily for Iran, they are not bundling a media player with their nuclear program or else the EU might then finally take the threat seriously.

Neelie Kroes, the "competition" commissioner for the European Union, apparently earned her nickname "Nickel Neelie" because she's tough in the same way as the "Iron Lady" Margaret Thatcher -- at least that's what pundits are saying.  Really? REALLY?

No, I don't see the similarity. One was a leader in the war against terrorist forces, tyranny, and oppression around the world even when it was unpopular.  The other is a beareucrat who is sticking it to a foreign software company for reasons I doubt she fully grasps in a move that is very popular with "the people".

Kroes claims that what Microsoft has to do to comply with the ruling is "crystal clear".  Microsoft disagrees.  I would be interested in the "crystal clear" camp to come forward and demonstrate that clarity. As a software developer, I find the EU's demands to be vague in the extreme. You can read the official document here.

For example, the ruling demands that Microsoft "disclose complete and accurate interface documentation" so that their cmopetitors can achieve "full interoperability" with Windows PCs and servers.  What the hell is "interface documentation"? What exactly is the official excuse of its competitors in not being able to work with Windows PCs and servers? 

Tiny software developer Stardock, where I work, has managed to create software that seamlessly extends the feature set of Windows as if it's part of the OS.  Heck, we have software that actually can alter the Windows GUI -- a pretty low level part of the OS -- to look like whatever we want. And we did that without "interface documentation" let alone source code or any other special help. 

The only aspect of the ruling that seems clear is that Microsoft has to provide OEMs a version of Windows without Windows Media Player.  But even that is vague if you're a software developer. Does that just mean the player app or the underlying codecs and libraries that are relied on by thousands of programs?

My point isn't to make Microsoft out to be an angel. They're not. They've been quite ruthless over the years.  But it strikes me as absurd to see the court jump on Microsoft with massive fines while playing footsie with nations like Iran.  Heck, the EU had a lot more patience with Saddam Hussein -- a decade of UN security counsel resolutions -- and still didn't want to do anything particularly strong.

From an outsider's point of view, it just strikes me as ludicrious to see how quick the EU can muster significant sanctions against a computer software company but demand "patience" if the threat against them is actually, you know, real.

Kroes writes:

I must say that I find it difficult to imagine that a company like Microsoft does not understand the principles of how to document protocols in order to achieve interoperability.

Spoken like a true non-technical person. It takes two to, ahem, interoperate. I suspect that there are plenty of people at Microsoft scratching their heads wondering "What more do these people want? Do we have to actually code up the software used by our competitors for them, hand it to them and provide a developer to sit there and answer CS 101 questions?"

How about answer this question: What specifically is the problem that these unnamed competitors are having? What specifically do they need in order to interoperate?  If the answer includes "source code" then they need to start hiring software developers who have training in...software development.

Lest someone think I'm some sort of Microsoft fanboy, I spent the first several years of my career as an OS/2 developer. I saw some pretty unsavory tactics used by Microsoft to win the OS market. If the EU (or US courts for that matter) had gotten involved then, they could have made specific requirements that would have made sense not just to lay people but software developers as well (such as "You can't charge an OEM $6 to bundle Windows for Workgroups but then charge IBM $20.50 for every WinOS2 license used in OS/2."). 

But the EU isn't doing that. They are basically asking Microsoft, after the fact, to magically make its competitors more effective and at some point, the competitors have to step up and...start competing.  And by levying such massive sanctions, it only brings into stark relief how weak the EU is on real tyranny, oppression, and danger in the world.  The whole situation would appear a little less ridiculous if, for instance, the EU could muster up some sanctions against say Iran.  The Iron lady would certainly support that. 

I dig gadgets. I really do.

Well, okay, I lie. As someone who has DesktopX installed, I think objects are vastly inferior to widgets. I see the plus of objects not needing DX installed, blah, blah, blah. But for those of us who have DesktopX already, gadgets just really, really suck. Oh, and as an aside, it would appear I feel like whining today.

Why do I think gadgets are inferior to widgets? There are a number of reasons:

1) They don't auto-install. A small point, sure, but a point nonetheless. If I download a widget, open the zip file and double click, the widget runs AND drops itself in my Widgets folder. It is all about convenience, and in my sloth I can't tell you how many gadgets never stayed on my system because I double clicked from the zip, then closed the zip, only to realize I didn't manually extract that gadget somewhere.

2) They don't respond to F9 and F10. This is huge for me. Widgets responding to these keys (either to bring to the front or to hide completely) was actually the functionality that got me to finally use DesktopX. I don't like lots of things cluttering my desktop, so I love being able to hit F10 and make them all go away. And when I want to change the song, see the temp, date, news bit, etc. I love to be able to hit F9 and have my widgets come to the front. With gadgets I have to manually bring it to the front, or minimize all my other windows. Again, a HUGE step back in terms of convenience when it comes to gadgets vs. widgets.

3) You can't customize them. Heck, this is WinCUSTOMIZE, so this should be a no brainer. There are a number of widgets that I have downloaded, imported, looked at their scripts and then changed something small, or changed a font, a color, or an image, to make the widget behave a little more how I would like. All for personal use, of course. But the fact that I can't import a gadget, tweak it a little to make it fit my personal style a bit more, or even get scripting ideas, means they are far inferior to widgets IMO.

Again, I understand the reason behind gadgets. But I don't understand the reasoning behind only releasing the gadgets over here at Wincustomize.com. Isn't that what DesktopGadgets.com is for? It is a shame to head to the WIDGET section, only to seem some nice, new toy is actually a castrated widget (aka gadget).

Bring on the "shut up and make it yourself" bitch-slaps.

I've shown friends my beta of Windows Vista and they love the clean look, the glass UI, the dark Start bar.

But I wonder how they'll feel about it say a month after they've been using it.  As I've begun to mess around with the betas more and more, the sexiness starts to wear off and my desire to personalize my experience for my own preferences returns.

What looks like glass at first starts to just be a bitmap that's at 20% opacity with a blur effect on it.  Sure, I can change the opacity or the color but essentially, from a customization point of view, Windows Vista is actually a step back from Windows XP in some ways in my opinion.  Even XP users could hack uxtheme.dll and apply hacked msstyles to their system.  This time, the story isn't quite the same. Now, at best, you'll have someone hacking bitmaps to replace the border and button PNGs/BMPs with another and even then, what do you do about things like Office 2007 which are literally hard-coded.

My prediction is that skinning, which has been steadily growing in popularity to the point of being mainstream (which has not been completely good news for skin sites -- as skinning becomes mainstream, cottage sites become less needed), will take a new turn with the demand increasing even further.

I think WindowBlinds and other Stardock programs will likely see real competitors because the demand for customization will grow much higher.

And I haven't even touched on Microsoft's gadgets which are definitely going to need third party help to be viable IMO.  As it stands now, the Microsoft gadget platform is in desperate need of third party attention to expand what developers can do easily so that worthwhile content can be made.  DesktopX 4 will likely step up to the plate when it's released but I think you'll see a whole cottage industry for that.

But what do you think? Do you think Vista will be good for skinning or do you think the cool, clean look of Vista will be enough?

I don't usually blog about computer related topics.  My hubby does more than enough of that for the both of us   I felt compelled to write about Natural Desktop though.

I am one of those people who can't function when there is silence.  I usually have the radio or TV going in the background when others aren't up and about making noise.  Last week my boys had left Natural Desktop running on their computer and I heard wonderful sounds of birds chirping when I got up in the morning.  I enjoyed it so much I didn't bother turning the radio on.

Throughout the day and night Natural Desktop changes sounds according to the animal noises and local weather.  The other night there was a forecast for scattered thunderstorms so I got to enjoy the sounds of the rumbling of thunder and the pitter-patter of rain.  I love it!  I highly recommend it too!!

Microsoft has released the public betas for Vista and Office 2007.

You can download Office 2007 here - http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/beta/download/en/default.mspx

Vista download will be available soon here - http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/get_it.mspx

 

Anyone who's been around Stardock's various websites knows the pattern.  We find a new way to make things faster or upgrade some piece of hardware to make the sites run smoother and the traffic instantly jumps which brings back the problems for the regulars.

The #1 performance hogging feature on all of Stardock's sites (whether it be JoeUser or WinCustomize or GalCiv2.com or TotalGaming.net) is the same thing -- the referrals.  That is, all items actually look at where a visitor is coming from and then adds to a massive table in a massive database on where that referral came from and what the URL was to get back to it. 

When you have, literally, hundreds of thousands of people coming to the site every day (which is thousands per hour) it's a significant strain.  There's no OFF button for it, it would be a lot of changes in a lot of places in code. 

But people feel the pain of that database being hit because it's tied to the article database -- commenting timing out being one of the most common. 

We have a new server for the database that is a real monster. It has 12 gigabytes of memory, 4 dual core CPUs, you get the picture. But it will take some weeks to migrate things to it.  The same person doing the migration could be asked to go and turn off the referrals which would make things nicer but that would delay the migration which will make everything faster.  Hence the dilemma.

I am tending to just let it suffer so that the migration goes quicker and refrain from writing articles like this one (that is why today was so slow) until the migration is done.

An aritcle on www.pcworld.com talks about Symantec suing Mircosoft to stop development of Vista...

A Vista of the Leopard

Let me start this article by saying that I think Windows Vista is the most important version of Microsoft Windows since 1995.  If Windows 95 had been a disaster for Microsoft, we might all be running some flavor of IBM's OS/2 today.  Most people take for granted that if you run a PC, you run Microsoft Windows.  But as Windows XP nears its 5th birthday, such assumptions start to be called into question.

Apple's "BootCamp" enables users of Intel-based Macs to boot between Windows XP (or Vista) and MacOS X.  Look carefully at Apple's ads and you will find that they are promoting the hardware quality even more so than the OS.  Who they are targeting is clear -- performance minded PC users who might buy that PowerBook to put Windows XP on. Some percentage of those Windows users are likely to end up as Mac users.

The next version of MacOS X "Leopard" is scheduled to essentially come out at the same time as Windows Vista (roughly beginning of next year for general availability).  Two brand new operating systems (as far as the public is concerned) running on the same kind of hardware. It will be impossible to ignore the comparisons.

However, where Leopard will be the 5th revision of a very modern OS architecture, Windows Vista will be a brand new OS designed to look like previous versions of Windows.  Windows Vista is a major change from Windows XP.  It is not as much of a departure as MacOS X was from OS9, but it is a much bigger change than Windows XP was from say Windows 2000.

This means the level of polish in Windows Vista is going to be crucial.  The slogan for Windows Vista is "Clear, Confident, Connected".  And I must say, Windows Vista has the pieces to make that slogan true.  The question is whether Microsoft can deliver those pieces with the polish, integrity, and reliability that users expect.

When users start to get their hands on Windows Vista Beta 2, they need to remind themselves of these 3 facts:

1. Most users of "Whistler" (the beta of Windows XP) beta 2 (May 2001) were able to use it full-time as their main OS.
2. Windows Vista's RTM is probably around the end of October with a general availability in January 2007 for mortals.
3. A 32-bit PC can address up to 4 gigabytes of memory per process (really 2 gigabytes in practice).

Yes, Microsoft does "get it"

Sometime in 2003 someone with power at Microsoft got fed up with Microsoft getting tagged as making "mediocre" operating systems.  They got sick of Mac zealots and Linux advocates chanting about the ancient architecture and outdated design of Windows.  And they decided that the next version of Windows would truly be state of the art.

Microsoft lists a bunch of features to highlight for Windows Vista.  As far as I'm concerned, there are 4 features of Windows Vista that have the potential to change the world.

1. The Desktop Window Manager (DWM).  Outside techies, you won't hear about this.  But your entire Windows Vista experience runs in 3D now.  Oh, it looks 2D. Your apps and the desktop itself looks similar to Windows XP right? But it's all a 3D surface. It would be like loading up a PC game where the GUI is made to look like Windows XP but you know you're inside a game. 
   
   The reason that's a big deal is because it means all those great features on your video cards can finally be used seamlessly as part of your desktop applications.  In Windows XP, users are usually quite conscious when they're switching to a full screen DirectX application.  Now, the desktop IS a full screen DirectX application. You're always in DirectX now essentially (via Milcore).  I can't even begin to tell you all the goodies Stardock has been cooking up that make use of that. For users, it means a radically improved user experience.
    
2. Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). Microsoft will be touting the security of Windows Vista a lot. But a lot of the security going forward will be the result of Microsoft's totally new networking foundation. The network code in Windows XP is, essentially a heavily patched version of what's been in Windows since around the Windows for Workgroup days. 
   
   Remember the early 90s? Nice times? Kumbaya? Before we all realized that there were jerks on the Internet with nothing better to do than to write malicious viruses, malware, DDOS clients, adware, etc?  Microsoft has worked hard on Windows XP to keep patching things.  But Windows Vista represents a new direction, a networking infrastructure built from scratch with today's security issues in mind.
    
3. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). This was called Avalon.  This goes a bit with item #1. But the reason why WPF is important is that it allows software developers to write new programs that make use of the fact that the Windows environment is now essentially a full-screen 3D DirectX application.  Microsoft has a bunch of tools and a whole development infrastructure that had to be built in parallel in order to pull this off.  XAML and other terms will become increasingly mainstream over the next few years as we see developers creating radically better looking, more friendly software.
    
4. Live Anywhere.  Jason Cross has a great article about Live Anywhere. Essentially, one can picture a world in which Microsoft's "points" become the digital currency of choice.  In 5 years, if Microsoft pulls it off (and I think they have a good chance of doing it) people will be able to buy games, software, music, movies, etc. with Microsoft points via Live Anywhere. 
   
   Before anyone gets "big brotherish" about this, there are some real benefits to this -- as Live on the Xbox has proven, it opens the door to independent content providers to be able to make money on the Internet. It dramatically lowers the barrier to entry.  Right now on the PC there are 3 PC game digital retailers of note (4 if you count Gametap).  Direct2Drive, Steam, and TotalGaming.net. Live Anywhere could end up replacing or complementing these services. But games would be just the beginning. Combined with things like Urge and the upcoming demand for HD video content and you have consumer demand for what Live Anywhere could do.

All of this has been put together into an OS that has a much cleaner, better organized,  more polished interface and environment.

Those 4 features have far-reaching consequences if Microsoft pulls them off well.  Each one really deserves a long article on their own to explain their potential.  Any single one of these features would have been justification for a "new" version of Windows.

And yet, Microsoft is not just putting these 4 major things together into Vista (either bundled or as part of its overall move forward), it's including dozens of minor (and not so minor) features in there as well as well as having to put together a support structure for developers and users and hardware vendors to make use of this stuff.  And on top of that they're trying to release this with 6 different SCUs that amount to "Windows Vista crap" and "Windows Vista Ultimate" and 4 versions in between.

A Vista of the precipice

So Microsoft gets it. But great ideas and great designs really hinge on execution.  And that brings us to where we are right now in May 2006.

Right now, Windows Vista has a few serious problems.  Perhaps my concerns are overstated and this article will be merely a foot note of "doom and gloomers" who were wrong.  I hope so. I want Windows Vista to succeed. So let me put forth my concerns and you be the judge of whether I'm making a mountain out of a molehill.

Disclaimer: This is based on my experiences with beta 5381.  I was recently invited by Microsoft to a briefing of what's new in Windows Vista which is one of the reasons why I'm so excited about the concept of Windows Vista.  I also made sure to specifically ask on the first day if we could now publicly talk about this beta build and show screenshots since previously we were not supposed to put up screenshots.

Problem #1: Memory is cheap but we're at the end of the 32-bit line..

For the last several years, I and other people's response when a new OS or application used a lot of memory was to respond "memory is cheap, just add some more..."  Well, the good news is that thanks to Physical Address Extensions on most modern CPUs, your PC can theoretically handle up to 64 gigabytes of memory.

The bad news is that most motherboards stop at 4 gigabytes and each process can only use up to 2 gigabytes of memory (3 with tweaking) unless they use AWE (Address Windowing Extensions) which is not something most developers want to get into. 

So why should you care? Because Windows Vista uses a lot more memory than previous versions of Windows right now. 720 Megabytes are used on a fresh boot (on my test box) vs. around 250 Megabytes on Windows XP.  And that's before third parties get their hands on it and put on their stuff. 

To be fair, I could probably get this down to 500 megabytes with some power user trimming (just as power users can get XP down to under 100 megabytes).  But you're talking about a lot of memory. For most people, tossing on 8 gigabytes of memory onto their machine isn't an option.  Going to 64-bit is the next step but that may prove harder than most people think because many applications require 64-bit specific versions.

The point of this is that this all seems to point that these cool new features have a significant memory overhead in order to make use of. And that 4 gigabyte limit could really become an issue sooner rather than later.

Problem #2: Handles? What are they? The new Resource limit.

Most people don't know what handles are. Most people don't need to care about them.  But unless Windows Vista is able to do something about them, the term "user handles" will start to become something people know about, read about, buy utilities to deal with.

Right now, hit Ctrl-Shift-Esc on your computer. This brings up the task manager on Windows XP.  Go to the Performance tab.  How many handles are you using right now?  I've got a ton of programs going right now and I'm using 18,000 handles.  When my machine boots, it's using around 2,400 handles. 

What does that number mean?  Depending on your configuration, somewhere around 25,000 handles your Windows machine will start to slow down dramatically and eventually programs will fail to launch, weird errors will start to show up and eventually things will start to crash or not function.

My Windows Vista box starts out at around 12,000 handles on boot up and quickly climbs to 15,000 without really doing anything.  Loading up Internet Explorer 7 takes it up rather quickly to 800 megs of memory and a lot more handles being used.

My concern is that non-power users are going to start bumping up against the handle limit.  The 64-bit version of Vista doesn't seem to have a problem with lots of handles so there is an escape path for the long term.

What I am hoping is that if someone with clout at Microsoft will have this issue brought to their attention and have it dealt with. The handle issue is already a problem for many power users on Windows XP.  It's probably the most common cause of system instability.  With Windows Vista having built in search (which consumes a lot of handles just as Google Desktop does), handles could become a serious problem.

Problem #3: Compatibility

The radical architectural improvements to Windows may come with a price -- compatibility.  First, let me say loudly that it is not fair to judge the final product based on the beta.  But I do know what the compatibility was on Whistler at this stage versus Vista.  And if your response to that is "Yea but Vista is a much bigger change" then realize this -- it doesn't matter to users how big the change is under the covers if their programs don't run.  Windows Vista is supposed to be going to manufacturing in a few months.

Users submitting bugs (and feel free to ask anyone in the beta to verify this) can tell you tales of reporting a bug or compatibility problem to have it closed with a "working as designed".  I know our guys are getting frustrated turning in a well documented, repeatable bugs only to have it seemingly blown off and having it continue to show up month after month (Hey, Logon team, we're all waiting for a replacement API to the Winlogon notify stuff, it's been half a year!).

If you stick with the built in apps in Windows Vista along with very mainstream apps, things are fine.  But as soon as you start venturing out, things get murky.  And I don't refer to desktop enhancement programs (WindowBlinds is running fine on Windows Vista).  It's usually "little things".  My Verizon connection program or some shareware program or whatever. 

As an evil capitalistic developer, poor compatibility is good news "New version! Now works on Windows Vista! Pay up! Whohaaha (singing) I'm getting a boat..a brand..new..boat (/singing)"  But as a user, I am concerned that early adopters may find that many tools and programs they rely on have problems.

This may simply be something that Microsoft can't solve or shouldn't solve. But if that is the case, then Microsoft needs to spread the message that Windows Vista is a truly new version of Windows and some legacy software may need to be updated. I think users will understand that as long as it's communicated effectively before hand.

But for users who can't get their scanner to work or some custom gizmo, or applet that came bundled with their printer or whatever, it's going to be annoying if they had no idea that going to Vista was going to mean that a noticeable chunk of their programs don't run correctly.

Let me show you a screenshot that shows the excellent potential of Vista as well as the current problems:

What a cool utility and yet it also implies we have a long way to go.

Problem #4: Unowned Slop

What the heck is all this crap in my task list on boot up? SVChost wasn't funny in Windows XP when there were 5 of them and it's a lot less funny when there are a dozen of them -- ON A FRESH BOOT UP!  Look at this stuff.  These are all the processes running on a fresh boot up of Windows Vista beta (5381).

Microsoft talks about security but it's just not acceptable that Windows Vista should have a generic process name like svchost anymore.  Each thing that wants a piece of my memory should have to have a name so that we know what it is. A third party could certainly write an application that digs into each svchost and then refeeds it into task list but this really should be part of the OS.  I think it would also put more pressure on the various empires within Microsoft to justify their existence as part of the initial boot.

Most of all, it just looks sloppy.  Clean? Clear? Confident? Some early adopters are going to open this up, see this mess and think "Bloated, sloppy, kludged". Feel free to comment on what your thoughts are on that.  Am I just being anal? Maybe. But I suspect there's a lot of people out there who are going to take having 41 processes on bootup of which a dozen of them are called svchost.exe (as well as various duplicate process names) and not think kindly.

Problem #5: It's Annoying!

There are so  many new "security" oriented dialogs that the entire experience, when coupled with the above mentioned issues take out the "fun" of using the OS.  Want to empty your recycle bin? You need to go through multiple dialogs to do that including a security prompt! Even as a so-called administrator, you can't get into all the folders on your system.  And some of the folders you can get into, you can't write to files in them! Admins have certainly lost a lot of power it seems. See the screenshot of trying to get into "My Pictures" as an admin.

It's really hard to describe in words how annoying it is to constantly be prompted to enter a password or to boost your privileges to do seemingly trivial things.  It interrupts ones workflow, train of thought and well, it just goofs up my groove, man.  Microsoft is working on these issues and they are aware of them, but the recycling bin debacle makes me wonder how such obvious issues could make it so far into the beta process.

So what should be done?

Windows Vista is more important than Windows XP or Windows 2000.  It is an ambitious project that demonstrates Microsoft's ability to innovate.  A lot of people unfairly criticize Microsoft for not being innovative.  Sometimes the criticism is fair but Windows Vista truly is innovative. Even if some of the ideas in Windows Vista got executed elsewhere first, Microsoft had come up with many concepts and ideas first (gadgets may seem similar to Apple's widgets which were similar to Konfabulator's widgets but were all predated by DesktopX by years which was predated by Active Desktop and other concepts as well for instance and the Sidebar gadgets were in the earliest Longhorn builds long before Konfabulator showed up -- though after DesktopX).

But what we need to know is that Microsoft will not rush Windows Vista out for some arbitrary marketing date.  That, if necessary, Microsoft will move the Windows Vista date back even if that makes PC manufacturers scream bloody murder. 

I am not suggesting that Microsoft can't address the concerns I point out there by the time they hope to release to manufacturing.  But I am saying that I think it is going to be a very tense summer in Redmond in order to make the date given where the OS is right now.  When Windows Vista beta 2 comes out for the public, people will be able to judge for themselves and decide what the status of the OS is. 

What are your thoughts?

Andre from Windows Connected has spilled the beans on Microsoft's "Urge" (our NDA wouldn't let us talk about it). 

Urge is a new music service that will come with Windows Media Player 11.  It is a team up of Microsoft, MTV, VH11 and CMT. According to Andre, the goal is to provide a better experience for users to download music with more detail about the content, albums, and artist information.

Another interpretation is that it's a "better iTunes than iTunes" though the model seems to be more akin to a combination strategy where users have the choice of subscribing or buying content per piece.  Other information we cannot say due to our NDA (we can only repeat what's been made public so far).

It appears iTunes is going to have some serious competition. Windows Media Player 11 not only has key features such as this, it also has a streamlined user interface that makes using it far more appealing than previous versions.  The WMP team has really outdone themselves this time.  

We'll have more details on Urge as they're made public.