I’m guessing a significant number of people who visit this site regularly are going to be testing Windows Vista. That number should shoot way up in a few months when the public beta is available.
So, for all of us brave souls, I’ll be collecting resources to drivers, support files, and the like. I’ll try to keep this post updated, and if it gets big enough I’ll move it to its own page.
The default mouse pointer in Windows XP is relatively small and relatively subtle. For most people, it’s big enough. But if you have anything less than perfect vision, you may benefit from a bigger, brighter mouse pointer.
To see the alternatives and experiment with different pointers, open Control Panel and double-click the Mouse icon.
On the Pointers tab, click the drop-down list under the Scheme heading. The 3-D Bronze scheme, shown below, adds a touch of color to the pointer but doesn’t change its size.
To add motion and extra color to your mouse pointers, try the Windows Animated scheme. If you want bigger arrows and hourglasses, use the Magnified scheme with its thick borders, or choose the Large or Extra Large versions of the Windows Default, Windows Black, or Windows Inverted schemes.
Preview the pointers in the list at the bottom of the box and choose OK or Apply. (For an explanation of the difference between these two buttons, see this tip from the archives.)
Change your mind? Go back to the Mouse Properties dialog box and click Use Default.
I missed this last month, I guess. Microsoft’s Bryan Starbuck spills the beans:
The name of Outlook Express will be renamed Windows Mail when Windows Vista is released.
This is a newer and simplier name, and it resolves confusion with Outlook.
About time!
In defense of his inaccurate story on Microsoft’s nonexistent “cheap, disposable pre-recorded DVDs,” Technology Editor Tony Glover of The Business Online makes still more errors. Here’s one:
Last week’s story … also sparked a bushfire of debate across the internet by thousands of web bloggers, with many claiming this newspaper had been hoaxed.
Thousands? Thousands? Wow. According to Technorati, which is widely regarded as having the most exhaustive index of weblogs (19.1 million sites, according to their About page), the number of blog posts since the publication of the original, inaccurate story that contained the words Microsoft, disposable, and DVDs was … 40. And that includes pickups from “spam blogs” that steal and repurpose other people’s content as well as a few duplicate posts. A Technorati search for “one play only” DVD Microsoft turned up only 18 blog posts.
Memeorandum.com, which is pickier about its index, found four blogs that linked to the original story (including mine) and seven blogs that linked to my follow-up post.
So, thousands of blogs? Heh. Nice try.
Oh, and while I don’t usually call people out on typos (anyone can make a mistake), one of the things I learned in J-school was just how important it is for a professional journalist to spell names correctly, especially when the name in question belongs to one of the most powerful and well-known executives in the technology industry and said journalist has the title Technology Editor. Tony Glover, in this week’s story about how search engines are changing the face of business, spells the name of the CEO of Sun Microsystems wrong. Twice. Tony, you might want to make a mental note that the company’s CEO has the unlikely name of Scott McNealy, not McNealey, as you wrote. Twice. You could fact-check it yourself here if you’d like.
All those people who are jabbering about the color, shape, and text or lack thereof on the button that identifies an RSS-based Web feed are missing the point. Which is:
What happens when you click that button?
Today, in most browsers, if you click the orange (or blue) XML/RSS/whatever button you get taken to a Web page that is an ugly, stripped-down version of the page you were just reading.
Here, for example, is what you get if you click the orange XML button on Dave Winer’s home page in Firefox:
Not very helpful, is it? It could fairly be described as user-hostile.
If you click the XML link on this page, you get a page that’s much prettier, thanks to the fine work of those wonderful folks at FeedBurner.
But it’s still dauntingly technical. If you’ve set up an account at My Yahoo, NewsGator, Rojo, or Bloglines, it’s easier to figure out what to do, but an RSS newbie will run screaming from either page unless they are determined and not easily intimidated.
In fact, when people click on the orange XML button now, what do they learn? Don’t do that again.
When IE7 ships, it needs to have a really great way of dealing with RSS feeds. If it’s successful in that regard, then people at all technical levels will have a good experience when they click the button, regardless of its color, shape, or text. And they’ll be likely to do it again.
Neowin has three screen shots of Windows Vista Build 5231. According to the Web site, this update (which is not Beta 2, but an interim release on the road to Beta 2) will be released to official beta testers next week.
The changes in the Audio Devices and Sound Themes Control Panel application are interesting, as is the preview of Windows Media Player 11.
If history is any guide, Neowin may shortly be asked to pull these screens from their site, so go look now.
Tony Glover of The Business Online delivered his promised follow-up on the single-play DVD story one day early. Read it for yourself here:
The Business, the bloggers and Microsoft’s ‘one-play’ DVD
It doesn’t start out well:
One blogger going by the unlikely name of Ed Bott claimed to have carried out a piece of investigative journalism of his own to prove the story was a “hoax”. Though dismissed by other online commentators, Bott’s blog found favour with a hard core of dissenters on the internet.
I’ll have to tell my parents all about the unlikely name they chose for me. I certainly didn’t expect a professional journalist to start a serious defense of a controversial news story by making fun of my name, although I will give him credit for spelling it correctly. But let’s carry on…
Glover’s defense of his story is almost comical. Last week, he wrote, “Microsoft has developed a cheap, disposable pre-recorded DVD disc that consumers can play only once.”
This week, he unmasks his source and provides a quote:
Alistair Baker, Microsoft’s UK managing director, told The Business: “Microsoft’s digital rights management [DRM] software generates a licence key to give the DVD content owner total control over how the content is viewed. This could mean watching a film only once, or over a limited period.” [emphasis added]
Yes, it could mean that, exactly as I said in my earlier posts. But it certainly doesn’t mean that Microsoft is poised to unleash a new disposable disc format on the world, which was what the original story screamed. (It referred to the alleged new disposable disc format as a “revolutionary product.”)
I don’t see anything in Mr. Baker’s quote about “cheap” or “disposable” DVD discs. In fact, given the retooling costs involved and the greater complexity of the dual-layer HD DVD media, the new discs will probably cost somewhat more to make than current DVDs.
As I pointed out earlier today, the DRM components in the Windows Media format can be used in a variety of ways. Using the DRM toolkit, a content provider could choose to create digital media files that can only be viewed on the 28th day of any month between 1300 and 1400 GMT. Why they would choose to do so is another question completely. It would be a bad business decision, in my opinion, just as building a business around disposable DVD discs would be.
The real story, the one that Glover should have printed last week, goes something like this:
Next year, new optical disks in the HD DVD format will begin hitting the market. This format, a competitor to the Sony-backed Blu-Ray Disc, can be used to produce a hybrid disc that includes standard-definition content and high-definition versions on different layers. Consumers who play the new disks in standard DVD players won’t be able to view the new high-definition content. For that, they’ll need a new player or a personal computer running Microsoft’s Windows Vista, which is also due out in 2006.
[update: Some details in the following paragraph have been revised based on discussions with representatives of Microsoft’s Windows Media group]
The most controversial aspect of digital media is its support for Digital Rights Management (DRM). Microsoft’s Windows Media DRM strategy, which has been widely debated among experts in the digital media community, gives content distributors a wide range of tools to lock down content that is released in Windows Media format. They can limit the number of plays, or specify that a promotional video can’t be played past the date the film is released. These DRM technologies are used in online content distribution. Some content providers (MovieLink and CinemaNow) already offer Internet-based services that allow consumers to download movies on a pay-per-view basis; future services could take the form of all-you-can-watch subscriptions similar to the Napster and Yahoo music services.
Windows Media DRM is not, however, used in the HD DVD disc format. It uses the Advanced Access Content System (AACS), currently under development.
That’s the story I would have written [and then rewritten!], and I would have proudly tacked my “unlikely” by-line on it. But Slashdot wouldn’t have been interested in it, because it’s not news.
So, what’s missing from Glover’s story? How about a quote from one of the content providers who are dying to flood the market with these revolutionary new disposable DVDs? Somehow I think it’s highly unlikely that anyone from a major content producer has any such plans.
Microsoft’s previewing its new RSS icons:
The choice of what icon to use is challenging because it should be universally symbolic, but today there is no single icon for that represents feed. Instead there’s a variety of mostly orange rectangles with the words “XML”, “RSS”, “ATOM”, “FEED”, or “Subscribe.”
Our goal is to make sure that the icon is something that is understandable by all of our users: novice, advanced, developer, business, international, etc.
The whole concept is thought-provoking. I’m not sure Dave Winer is going to like this.
I’ve posted some additional thoughts here.
Updated to add: As predicted, Dave thinks Microsoft should “stop re-inventing.” I think Dave’s reaction is arrogant and short-sighted. It’s typical of the reaction of a lot of engineers and designers who are unable to think like users. I wrote this back in August when Winer was complaining about Microsoft’s public attempts to decide which name would be most helpful for users trying to subscribe to RSS-based Web feeds:
Winer thinks this is a battle, and that Microsoft is trying to change the name of a feature because they want to screw him. (I’m not making this up. That’s really what he said.) News flash: Microsoft is in business to sell software. The reason some people at Microsoft are exploring alternatives to RSS is because people don’t understand the term. You put an RSS button on a Web page, and most ordinary people just slide right by it. I’ve been to Microsoft’s usability labs, where they test features like this. My guess is that they’ve been testing RSS features in the labs, and they’re trying to find the words that will help people understand and use this technology. Software developers who’ve seen their features go through usability testing usually get a big wake-up call from the experience. Dave, you should schedule a visit to the usability lab and see for yourself.
When I worked for PC Computing in the 1990s, we spent over a million dollars building a state-of-the-art usability lab and conducting regular tests in it. The results radically changed the way reviews were written. An editor couldn’t just say that a feature was better or worse than its competition; he or she had to defend the conclusion based on watching the hands-on experience of real people who actually used the products under review.
If someone at Microsoft is reading this, I would love to see a public invitation to Dave Winer to review the video tapes of previous sessions involving the orange XML icon and to see a live test or two. In fact … maybe Scoble should stop in at the User Experience facility and tape one of those sessions for Channel 9, with or without Winer.
Earlier this week, I posted an item debunking a story that claimed Microsoft is on the verge of introducing a “cheap, disposable” single-play DVD.
Yesterday, Wall Street Journal columnist Jeremy Wagstaff, in his loose wire blog, says he doesn’t know what to believe:
I contacted the author, business editor Tony Glover, who says the online publication “stand[s] by the story 100% and will be running a follow-up on Sunday naming sources”.
Well, that should be interesting. Glover’s original story appeared in The Business and its online edition, under the headline Microsoft invents a one-play only DVD to combat Hollywood piracy. (And his by-line lists him as Technology Editor, not business editor.)
The story is unsourced and lacks any details that would allow an independent reader to do any further investigation. It also makes a bold assertion that is thoroughly contradicted by known facts:
Computer software giant Microsoft has developed a cheap, disposable pre-recorded DVD disc that consumers can play only once. … The revolutionary product could be on the market as early as next year, with the new DVD players needed to view them.”
Break it down:
Microsoft has developed a new DVD disc? That’s just plain wrong on its face. Microsoft doesn’t develop optical disc formats. Anyone who follows digital technology knows there are two next-generation optical drive formats due out next year. One is the Blu-Ray Disc, from a Sony-led consortium, and the other is the HD DVD format, from a consortium led by Toshiba. Both formats have been under development for some time and are due to be introduced next year. Microsoft didn’t develop either format, although they recently threw their support behind the HD DVD, which was approved by the DVD Forum in December 2003.
Disposable discs that can be played one time only? This is almost certainly a reference to digital rights management features in Windows Media. If a content provider chooses to use the DRM features in the Windows Media format, they have all sorts of options, including the ability to specify an expiration date for a media file, or to specify how many times it can be played, or to require a subscription. Again, there’s nothing new here; the DRM-enabled Windows Media video format has been around for more than two years. (See the Digital Media Timeline here, and note that WMV HD was added in January 2003. For details on what content providers can do with Windows Media DRM, see “Enabling DRM on Windows Media High Definition Video DVD ROM Discs,” available in Word format here, for more details.)
The rest of the story was a complete mishmash, jumping from discussions of downloadable content to the fortunes of Netflix without ever making much of a point. It’s exactly what one might expect from a business writer who is trying to write about a complex technology he doesn’t really understand. (That’s why I avoid stories about the business side of Microsoft or its stock price. I’m not an expert.)
Wagstaff says my story was “intemperate”:
When a writer finds a story they believe to be untrue, they should try to contact the author for comment when publishing their ‘knock-down’ story. At the very least, they must show they have authoritative sources who contest the story’s accuracy or veracity (not the same thing) and make this clear. They might also choose careful language which allows for the possibility of gray between the black and the white — “source X said he knew of no such meeting/product/agreement”, or “company X denied the story and said on the contrary it had no plans for xxxx”. Saying something is a hoax/has no truth to it/is bogus without enclosing the comment in quotes is not only a tad extreme, it’s not good journalistic practice. Imagine if someone did it to you.
Contact the author? Please. When a journalist publishes a story, it stands on its own. If the story is wrong, the story is wrong. This sensational story was picked up by dozens of sites, none of whom bothered to contact the author or Microsoft before amplifying it. The story took on a life of its own and it should be judged on its own merits, which are sorely lacking.
I will agree that “hoax” was a poorly chosen word. That implies deception on the part of the author, and the more likely explanation was that the author simply jumped to unwarranted conclusions based on an inadequate understanding of the technology. It’s also possible that he was deliberately “spun” by a source. But without giving any details of where the story came from in the first place, all we can do is guess.
I’ll publish a link to the follow-up story when I see it posted.
Update: Tony Glover posted his reply a day early. Here’s the follow-up.
Here’s one I never finished reading…
Ed Bott 