open source at microsoft

It is interesting to know that the URL www.microsoft.com/opensource actually exists!

Most literature in open source software uses Microsoft as examples of the other side; representing either an old business model in software industry or a closed innovation practice. Microsoft sells software as a product, whereas firms like Google or Flickr provide software as a service etc. Also even Google is not an open source software company, they do support the openness ideology which embedded in a lot of their services via publicly accessible APIs. Even Microsoft has a Shared Source Initiative started some time ago, it does not capture much attention from the academic nor the business worlds. Until now. According to O’Reilly they are trying to certify their shared source projects (around 650 projects) as open source projects! That means finally they would use the “official” label that everybody understands.

No matter how they explain in their website, I think this is a big change for them. They acknowledge the need for open source development in some places (i.e. has something to do with supporting their customers), and they have intention to incorporate open source into their business strategies and models. From the open source community surely this looks like a victory. On the other hand, it is quite possible for Microsoft to find a new business/innovation model that sits between complete close source and complete open source. It is unknown how much or how fast change would come along when the software giant has decided to go with this direction, but definitely is going to be exciting.

word 2007 mouseless edition

What would you do when the mouse click fails to work in Word?

It started two days ago when I found my computer restarted itself in the morning after some “critical updates” from Microsoft on Vista, Office etc. Then Word 2007 failed to open document properly by the traditional double click on the icon, and even I opened the document using the menu, the mouse failed to work inside the content area (it worked fine with the menus). Left click, no reaction; right click, no reaction too. I could not edit a document properly at all. Closing Word itself would trigger some sort of exception every single time, just to make me even more nervous what was going on. None of the other applications in Office 2007 suffered the same problem.

So I try a few things –  repairing Office 2007, not working; uninstall and reinstall Word 2007, not working; uninstall the “critical updates” and try everything again, not working. In deseparate moment I also try to use WordPad to update the document but it threatens me about losing all the formatting information if I dare to save, of course I surrounder.

My favourite friend, I mean Google, tells me that there are a few other people suffering similar problem like mine (some occurs exactly after the “critical updates”, but some had it a few months back). I could not find a recent solution so I decide to try this which was written like 5 months ago. I don’t know exactly why, but it worked. Here are the steps I have taken:

1. Start Word in safe-mode and check if it works normally (i.e. use the command line and type winword /a in the application folder)
2. In my case the mouse click is working in safe mode, so that means it may be something wrong with some add-ins that affect the loading behaviour of Word. Use regedit (i.e. from the command line) to navigate the registry and locate all add-ins for Word from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Office\ Word\ Addins
3. Change the value associated with LoadBehavior from 3 to 0 for each addin

Not sure why this starts to happen to me after those “critical updates”, but I am happy that my mouseless days with Word are finally over.

social networking services

I wonder where this is going to lead us.

Yeah social networking is huge and we know that because News Corp bought MySpace for US$580 million a few years ago and there are like over 100 million registered users (which means in terms of population it is the 11th largest country in the world). Even for tools that originally designed for instant messenging (e.g. Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger), blogging (e.g. Blogger, WordPress), file sharing (e.g. Flickr, YouTube) or even gaming (e.g. XBox Live), they all have built-in social networking features now to make sure you stay in touch with updates from your friends, or friends of your friends, or just pure strangers you want to be friends with. Everything leads to social networking, almost no exception if that particular service or tool is “popular” among web users.

But how many accounts have you registered over the last 5 years with all these services which apparently now servicing pretty much the same purpose? For me I use Windows Live Messenger as my principle IM tool (which is on most of the time when I am in front of a computer or when I play my XBox360), and I seldom use the Hotmail and Space features which come with it. I do use Live.com to read blogs but I login with a different account (which ties with a different profile I use for work purpose). I have 3 accounts with Google – one for my private GMail, GoogleTalk, Blogger (not used recently), Calendar, Google Reader etc; one for teaching purpose including a Google Group and a blog for the BBIM; and one just reserves for now doing nothing except receiving spam emails. Recently I am trying out the Google Apps which again creating another new account with even a different domain, I don’t know what to do with it yet. For blogging obviously I am using WordPress now, but before that I use to host my own blog with CommunityServer and before that is just Blogger. For working in collaboration I have tried out Forumer, Basecamp and Thinkfree etc but probably I would stick with Google for the moment. I also have accounts with Yahoo!360, Flickr, Delicious, YouTube and many others that I cannot remember. For pure social networking services I am a member in Friendster but not being active at all. After reading this and also a couple of invitations I join Facebook. I don’t have an account in MySpace yet, not even sure if I want to. The two services that I think are “still” pretty unique right now are Microsoft’s Popfly and Pipes from Yahoo!. They allow ordinary users to “mash up” different content (i.e. text, photos, video etc) with different presentation (i.e. news reader, slideshow, map etc) that are widely available on the web. Yup both of them also operate in social networking mode which is hardly surprising. I like Popfly better coz it is very graphically interactive as the whole thing is built on top of their Silverlight technology.

Honestly I lose count of how many accounts, logins, passwords etc I have with all these services. The classic data anomaly problem arises when these services do not talk to each other when I am updating my details to only one of them. They seems to serve different purposes but they also look very similar. It can easily become a social network overloading problem to us when there are just too many of them. Is there a better way we can integrate our identify to these services?

from paul potts to web 2.0

A few weeks ago I watched this from Youtube. It is a show called Britains Got Talent which is not showing in NZ yet. The guy (Paul Potts) there was a cellphone salesman, and he performed a little bit of opera in front of the judges in his audition. I had no idea what he was singing about coz they were not in English; but still thru that little window in YouTube I could feel the amazing power of his voice and it was absolutely sensational. After that I searched a lot about him, the show and also the song that he sang. I know these extra knowledge perhaps serve no direct purpose in what I am doing, but I feel good that Youtube + Google allows me to have this instant learning experience.

Also when I think about it, the only reason I can watch Paul’s performing is because the company producing the show does not ask Youtube to take down the content as a violation to IP or copyright. Why dont they do it while on the other side we can see the movie and music industries are like crazy when they react to similar matters? It is because the TV industry finally gets it – there is no point in opposing the trend of Web 2.0 which is consolidating towards a more sharing and engaging online experience for web users. Following O’Reilly’s concept, the TV broadcasting companies are aiming for “some rights reserved” rather than “all rights reserved” as long as the video clip releases on Youtube of their shows create positive effect for them. I mean no one in UK would prefer watching the show from Youtube instead of the TV if they have the choice; so hardly it impacts on TV ads revenue. But having it on Youtube would gain millions of viewers from everywhere of the world, and they provide good indications for the TV show owner to decide which country to sell their broadcasting rights to. It is only a win-win situation for both the company and all the viewers when we embrace Web 2.0 and the openness philosophy.