I received a surprising voicemail from Microsoft Legal - they demand that I take down the content at www.theultimatebug.com since it points to a promotion that’s no longer running. Click below to hear the voicemail, courtesy of GrandCentral:

There’s only one problem (actually more): this is not my content, it was set up and is controlled by Microsoft, or an entity that created the promo for Microsoft. The promotion it refers to, The Ultimate Steal was actually quite generous, giving MS Office away to students for $60. My post on the subject was partly promotional, partly poking fun at MightySoft since they could not even get the promo site up working properly:

The countdown reached zero, and started again. And again… several times, even after the advertised opening of the promotion, users were not able to get in, they were just staring at the recycled counter. A commenter @ CrunchGear called it The Ultimate Publicity Scam. I thought it was just a bug, so I created www.theultimatebug.com and pointed to to the MS promo site.

Now they want me to take it down. I can’t, since it’s not my site. The Ultimate Bug domain points to 209.162.191.152, which appears to belong to Peek Consulting LLC, in Louisville, KY. Perhaps MS or Digital River worked with them to create the promotion … I have no clue. Ultimatesteal.com is owned by Microsoft, and while they rerouted the main page to an end-of-life notice, the original content, the one Microsoft Legal wants me to take down is still available here: http://www.theultimatesteal.com/store/msshus/ContentTheme/pbPage.microsoft_office_ultimate

Dear Microsoft, feel free to take your content down any time. And perhaps next time use a smarter agency.

Of course this makes me wonder: what if I really had duplicated the content on my site? Could MS legally force me to remove it, even though it clearly identifies the end-date as May 16 2208? I know some attorneys who read this blog, perhaps you’ll be kind enough to jump in with your comments. Thanks in advance.

Update (6/13) : Someone at Microsoft is reading this blog, after all.  209.162.191.152 which theultimatebug.com was pointing to now shows ‘under construction’.  The “bug” lost its meaning after MS fixed the error anyway, and now the promotion itself is over… I need to figure out what to do with this cool domain.  In the meantime I am redirecting it to the original post that started it all.

Tags: copyright, grandcentral, Humor, legal, microsoft, Microsoft Office, ms office, take-down, theultimatebug, theultimatesteal, Ultimate Steal

There’s some renewed chatter about Microsoft’s plans for a subscription-based Office and even a free, ad-based alternative. Some rumors put the subscription price in the $12/ month range, which I believe is way too expensive for basic productivity tools, hence the need for another business model: offering MS Works for free, supported by advertising.

MS Works is nowadays widely considered a “dumbed down” version of its big brother, the real MS Office suite, but I beg to disagree.

Two decades ago MS Works was my main productivity suite: I was happily crunching numbers, generating charts, including them as well as data from my database in word-processing documents. In other words, I had a perfectly working and lightweight integrated office suite at the time when Word, Excel and Powerpoint were fragmented individual applications not talking to each other. For all its capabilities Works was very lightweight, I could use it on a laptop with 640K memory (that’s K, not MB!) and two 720k floppy drives - no hard-disk at all.

I can’t say this enough, Microsoft had a perfectly working integrated suite 20 years ago, which should have become what Office is today. But I guess you need bloatware to charge bloated prices, so Microsoft shoved Works aside, favoring the higher margin, high-end but fragmented products, which took years to become a true Office Suite.

The 80/20 rule applies for the MS Office Suite, in fact I’d rather say 90/10: 90% of users only need 10% of the functionality. MS Works has that - but now that it’s making a comeback (?), an ironic situation develops: the new online challengers like Google Docs and the Zoho Suite were targeting the mainstream Office Suite, and while in terms on features (needed or not) they are still behind Word, Excel..etc, the comparison to Works would quite possibly have a different outcome. I wouldn’t be surprised if Zoho Writer, Sheet and Show turned out to offer richer functionality than Works, and then we did not even look at the collaboration, mobility offered by the fact that they are Web-based.

Conclusion: MS Works should have been a winner 20 years ago, and ever since. Now it’s too little, too late.

Tags: google docs, microsoft, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Works, MS Works, office suite, web office, zoho

Outlook read backwards is Kooltuo. Wow, it would make a good startup name. No, I did not go crazy, but TechCrunch reports that Microsoft just signed a letter of intent to acquire Xobni. And Xobni = Inbox, backwards.

Not that it’s a surprise: I wish I could predict everything with such certainty. This is what wrote in February, when Bill Gates presented Xobni for Outlook as “the next generation of social networking” at the Microsoft Office Developers Conference:

What does it mean when Bill Gates presents your product, a super-cool Outlook plugin to his crowd of developers?

1. Gates’s message: now go back and copy this fast. That would be the classic Microsoft style, as many software startups can attest to. It would also put the market introduction to somewhere … around 2015? Unlikely.
2. Microsoft will acquire Xobni in no time. Sweet and fast deal. Congratulations to the Xobni team and investors!

So, yes, congratulations to the Xobni team! On a personal note, I regret I can’t try Xobni, as I long ago ditched Outlook along with a lot of desktop bloatware, and am in happier land now, using Web-based applications. I’m perfectly happy ( and productive) with the combination of Gmail and the Zoho apps, and if I ever leave Gmail, it will be for another web-mail, not back to the desktop. The air is fresher in the Cloud.

Tags: bill gates, cloud computing, email, gmail, Google, microsoft, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook, Outlook, SaaS, xobni, zoho

It’s really refreshing to see Microsoft sell Office 2007 at its true value. $60 is fair value, IMHO - although college students might still opt for pirated versions, or the free Open Office, or the also free Web offices. They certainly have choices.

MS labels this promotion The Ultimate Steal. Hm… that may be so in more than one way. www.theultimatesteal.com was supposed to go live early afternoon… I saw it count down less than two hours before lunch. Then later in the afternoon I saw it at 4 hours to go. Now, 11:10pm PST. the countdown is at 14 hours and 5 minutes, definitely stretching into tomorrow!

A commenter called it The Ultimate Publicity Scam. I think it’s just a bug. A lousy one. What was I even thinking complaining about Vista bugs, when MightySoft can’t even get a promo site up working properly?

Check it out yourself: www.theultimatebug.com.

Update: As of 9:15am on the 13th the site is now fixed.

Related posts: One Microsoft Way, CyberNet Technology News, Tom Raftery’s Social Media, Microsoft Watch, CrunchGear, Mobility Site, InfoWorld, Compiler, Forever Geek, istartedsomething, BetaNews, ParisLemon, All about Microsoft, AccMan Pro, WinBeta, GigaOM, PaulStamatiou.com, HipMojo.com, Good Morning Silicon Valley, Download Squad , gHacks and Windows Connected

Tags: Humor, microsoft, Microsoft Office, ms office, theultimatebug, theultimatesteal

The announcement is not a surprise (update: Sun kept the surprise for tomorrow) since Google Operating System outed it days ago: Google now includes Sun’s StarOffice, previously costing $70 in their free Google Pack. As you could expect, reactions range for labeling it as Google goes after Microsoft again (the New York Times) through shrugging it off to declaring a Microsoft victory.

Microsoft’s Don Dodge asks:

What has changed? Star Office has been around for 8 years and has gained no traction.

I can’t believe he does not know the answer: it’s mass distribution, getting installed “by default” (even if selectable), that’s what’s changed.

Donna Bogatin, Defender of the Faith (in Microsoft, that, is) goes further, claiming this move a victory for Microsoft:

Who needs Microsoft Office? Who needs the Microsoft Desktop? StarOffice, Google do. WHAT ARE THE SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS FOR GOOGLE PACK? You must have Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Vista. SO, every Google Pack download with, or without, Sun StarOffice, is a MICROSOFT WIN!

Wow, what a discovery, the OS monopoly means a victory for Microsoft even as their applications are replaced by competing products … I don’t think Microsoft would have loved this argument in the antitrust case. She goes even further:

Sun StarOffice itself needs Microsoft Office, big time. The StarOffice value proposition is Microsoft Office dependent: “Now you can have a full-featured office productivity suite that’s compatible with Microsoft Office at just a slice of the cost.”

Donna obviously mixes compatibility with dependency. Of course Office app vendors strive for MS compatibility, that’s simple due to the Microsoft monopoly no-one (other than Microsoft) would question. But to call the fact that these products are actually replacing MS Office a win for Microsoft is a stretch to say the least. In fact Donna spins so masterfully, is she ever goes into politics, she’ll have a safe place at the O’Reilly Factor on FOX News. Oh, and Donna, how about opening up comments on your blog?

Dan Farber at ZDNet is a lot more balanced, and he asks the right question:

But is StarOffice, Google Apps or whatever Adobe, Zoho, Zimbra, ThinkFree and others are doing a game changer, massive disruptors that will eviscerate Microsoft’s super-profitable Office business and free users from .doc and .xls tyranny?

Tyranny is the key word here. The Office monopoly means that millions of people are using it out of fear - fear of losing compatibility, or perhaps simply due to inertia. StarOffice will not be an absolute “winner” by itself, nor will the rumored Adobe product - but, along with the web-based offering from Google, Zoho and ThinkFree, together they make a dent… lots of small dents, for that matter.

Personally I am a big fan of Web-based services, and I don’t ever want to see bloatware that needs to be installed and constantly upgraded on my computer - unless it provides vital functions that are not available online (yet). But I understand it’s a matter of preferences. If I still was a world traveler like Vinnie, I’d probably prefer to have my apps and data “in a box”, too. Offline or online, the choice will largely depend on our lifestyles, and the need to collaborate or not.

What’s important is a behavioral, cultural change, the fact that business and millions of individuals - employees, students, freelancers, moonlighters, small business workers.. anyone - realize that they no longer need a Microsoft product to stay compatible.

You and I are likely using different email products or services. Yet we can email to each other flawlessly. Why wouldn’t the Office market be the same? If When we have a market with several capable products, when users don’t accept the default, but select based on features, service, price … you name it, i.e. when they have choice - we all win. Be it offline or online.

Update (8/16): Oh, you Fools, don’t you know that mindshare is everything?

Tags: Google, google docs & spreadsheets, google pack, Microsoft Office, ms office, office 2.0, openoffice, staroffice, sun, sun micro$, sunw, thinkfree, web office, zoho