Year: 2004

MSN Desktop Search now in Beta

mike Lookout

As you may have heard by now, MSN Desktop Search has now shipped to beta! This is the product I’ve been working on with a team of great engineers at Microsoft.

I could write a gushing review of the product, but I’m too close to the product to be credible anyway. Perhaps a better way to do it is to quote from another blog (this one is from Sriram Krishnan), but many others are saying similar things as well:

Mr. Krishnan writes:
So what is the answer to the big question – who has the better desktop search product (taking into consideration that both of them are beta products and may change radically) ?

Answer: Microsoft. Totally. MSN Desktop Search takes Google Desktop Search to the cleaners. And here’s why (apart from the major points covered by all those reviews)

Lastly, you can check out the MSN Search Blog for the latest tips & tricks.

“In praise of full inboxes”

mike Lookout

I didn’t write that, it was written by Slacker Manager, and its a fun little read. You’ll see I even posted a comment on his blog….

But, its really fascinating to watch email evolve when people are given a tool like email search. The first reaction people have is, “cool!”…. But then, over the coming weeks and months, people’s habits actually change. Slowly, our shackles (folders) become unnecessary, and we’re free to not worry so much about where we left stuff. After 3-4 months, users invariably report back that they don’t rely on folders nearly as much.

I’m no genius; I didn’t think of this brilliant idea. But its nice to know that something you had a part of could actually change the world (gross over-dramatization there), even if it is in just some small way.

Rojo Newsreader

mike Technology

If you read a lot of RSS, you should definitely check out a new service from a company called Rojo. Its “RSS Mojo”, they say.

They are still in beta, and they took a lesson from Gmail for how to gain users – you need to be part of the “in” crowd and get an invite from someone that is already a user!

But once you are in, there are several cool features. First, its a server side aggregator; but more than that, it allows you to tag and comment on articles which are interesting. You can also create a network of friends and share your content with them and they with you. Rojo’s engine then works hard to present to you the most relevant articles that others have found useful as well. Its a cool concept – I look forward to having more buddies using it so we can really get a try for the network effects of sharing RSS commentary.

Rojo was co-founded by Chris Alden, who is the co-founder of Red Herring magazine.

MSN Search Products

mike Technology

In case you are wondering what the MSN team (which I am part of) is working on, here is some info.

You may or may not know that we at Microsoft launched our new MSN Search Beta this week. There has been a lot of press coverage on it, of course. Many people still like Google, but the new MSN product looks reasonably compelling too. There is a cool blog from Microsofties which you can read for the latest info on the web search.

So what’s so great about the beta search?

Whats not as good?

  • Still can’t find decent Microsoft APIs. OpenMsgStore
  • Every so often reports “temporarily unavailable”

Turned off Blog Comments

mike Editorial

I had to turn off comments on this blog today.

90% of the comments received are spam, and last night I received about 10 new spam comments.

Rather than trying to keep the blog clean manually, I just had to disable them all.

This is an area where Movable Type could have better software – the comment processing is really primitive. Don’t get me wrong, though, Movable Type is great!

The Presidential Election is Random

mike Politics

I don’t usually write about politics, but politics is a big topic right now, is it not?

So here is Mike’s Wild Postulus on Presidential Elections in the US: The result is random.

Is it not lost on people that the race is about a 50/50 split, and that if we randomly just picked two people out of a hat to run as the only two candidates, we’d probably expect a 50/50 split between them? This has happened two elections in a row.

My theory is that with all the mis-information out there, common folk (including myself) really don’t know who would make a better President. Kerry says bush is bad because of X, Y, and Z, and Bush says that Kerry is bad because of X, Y, and Z. But when both say the opposite things, only one can be right, and how can most people know? Well, we end up using our gut and guessing. And guess what, at the end of the day, we come out about 50/50 – the same as if we just did a blind election.

Prior to stumbling across this statistical fact, I used to think we should be moving toward a popular vote and away from the Electoral College. However, now more than ever I think our forefathers had it right – common folk aren’t really ready to decide who should sit in the Oval Office. Rather, we should probably beefen up the Electoral College. The people should decide who the candidates are (via the Republican and Democratic nominations), and then the electoral college should decide who is a better lawmaker, commander-in-chief, and leader of the United States. Unfortunately, the citizens of America just don’t have the data to know whether Senator Kerry has the right attributes or President Bush does. Maybe people closer to the two – people that know them personally and have worked directly with them – would be better able to make an informed decision on this very important role.

Is this pessimistic? Maybe it is. But the election speaks for itself- its a 50/50 split across the US. Isn’t that an amazing coincidence? The people of America are collectively voting “we don’t care – the two are about the same”. Its pretty amazing that while each of us can argue so fervently for our position, on the whole, we all wash each other out.