Carl Setzer

I'm a little behind in my reading, so just got to this GeekWire piece: Internal Memo: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sets new diversity plan after ‘humbling’ experience . I am very pleased to see Mr. Nadella grow as a leader after Karmagate. It's very easy, in this society, for a leader to hide behind PR until any particular kerfuffle blows over. And I was worried that's what would happen this time, too. I'm pleased to be wrong. His plans going forward match very well to my advice , which, I must say, also pleases me greatly. It takes wisdom and humility to learn from criticism, and move FORWARD. This memo demonstrates something very unique, something very visionary. To risk, learn from failures and change, then adapt is critical to a vibrant culture. Microsoft might just be at the edge of something amazing. I'm eagerly watching.

My started with a few chums wishing me a happy birthday. Problem? It's not my birthday (October, if you care). Turns out, my Skype profile was displaying today is my day of happiness and aging acknowledgment. My profile in Skype was right. So, after a brief, and fruitless, web search, it finally occurred to me, "check the website". Sure enough, my profile at Skype.com was pretty weirdly messed up. My full name appeared in my First Name spot, my picture was gone, and my birthday was today. Oddly, I made the edits, clicked save, then pinged a friend to see if they'd taken. Nope. Then I tried the slow approach. Changed the profile pic. Saved. Clicked out, then back into my profile. Edit. Change Name. Out. Then back. Change birthday. Out. Back. I've logged out, then back in. The changes seem to be holding. We'll see. My theory is something got mucked up during the port over the Microsoft. Perhaps with the interconnection with my Hotmail account. Or, well, who ...

Just read a few of the stories about the Xbox. I'm pretty jazzed at what the 'Soft is up to. I'm wondering about a few things: 1) Will any of these features be part of the current Xbox ecosystem? Or just limited to the new machine?  2) Will there be changes to the current pricing setup? There were a few other random thoughts that have fluttered away. I'll update as more floats back. 

This week's news about the Kindle updates has me wondering about MSFT. Something not talked about much, but strikes me as critical:  Amazon's line-up and array of price-points. Allow people of "lesser means" get into this ecosystem. People will iterate up. Google Android and Kindle understand this. Get us in, get us great content (which we happily (?) buy), let folks iteratively (I guess that is a word) upgrade; long-term, sustainable growth. Looking back at Microsoft, I worry they won't get this. They didn't with the Zune. Every Zune came with premium pricing. Perhaps now with tablets? Plenty of MSFT devices are coming down the pike ( here's a big run-down  of different MSFT Windows 8 tablets & the Surface ) and that gives me some hope. Right now, though, there are several Android-eque tablets out there for < $100...( really ) and even more for < $200. Without something in this price range, I worry that MSFT will not even be close to releva...

Office 2010 , originally uploaded by carl.setzer . A little swag for the launch of Office 2010. Perks of wandering around on campus.

I'm exploring Microsoft's latest effort in the search category, Bing . As there has been a number of articles, and some ads touting its features, I felt it was time to give it a test-drive. M$ has learned from Google. The interface is nice and clean, very much like Google's. Currently, they have a lovely background of Normandy. This is filled with hyperlinks to D-Day topics, but done in a rather unobtrusive way. Anyway, the main thing to check is search. For my first effort, I decided to try and find a BusinessWeek article that I'd just read and wanted to seed to Newsvine . My search terms were the title of the article ("Microsoft's Search Savior") with "BusinessWeek". In Bing , sadly, the article didn't appear in the first page of results. Google had the article as it's first link. Trying a vanity search, I find my LinkedIn profile first, followed by my main website, Setzers.org second. Not too bad. I do like the list on the left s...

One thing that I would love to have seen, and that would have made me run out and by Vista, or any OS, is a focus on speed and efficiency. I'm quite sure that Vista is in the same boat as all the rest of the MS OS offerings. More features, more bloat, more RAM, less efficiency and S-L-O-W. At some point, I want all the OS options to focus on using less resources. Use what I have better! Of course, then I wouldn't NEED to run out and buy something new every few years (months?). Sigh, I'm back to cynicism again...

Here’s a little gem put together by the folks at shmula.com. It shows all the acquisitions by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo over the past few years. It’s a very well done and thought provoking thing. Thanks to Marketing Pilgrim for featuring this.