The "Weekly WassUp" is a brief weekly overview of what has been showing up in "the feeds" in the last week.
In this issue:
- Jan. 7: Windows 7 as a free download
- Jan. 7: Microsoft Tag launched
- Jan. 17: Mechanical Turk abused by Belkin
- Bad bad ad: Microsoft Songsmith ad
Jan. 7: Windows 7 as a free download
At CES 2009, Microsoft released the successor to the controversial Windows Vista operating system ... as a free download! Or better: they offer the beta version of Windows 7 for free for a limited amount of time. And a success it was: even so much so that -when the news got out- the Microsoft servers couldn't cope with the traffic, making it virtually impossible to download the goods. Microsoft responded by posting a mea culpa on their blog, removing the 2.5 million limit on downloads and extending the period until January 24th.
And the first feedback is good: it's faster than Vista, easier to use, has less annoying security pop-ups, ...For a full list of features check out the Windows 7 website.
It's important to note that Windows 7 also comes together with the Internet Explorer 8 browser (now in beta 2 version)! Although no real release date for IE8 is set yet, Microsoft did announce they will release it as soon as possible through Windows' Automatic Update system. If you don't want it, you can download a blocker application from the MSDN website to prevent the automatic update.
Key take-aways for Internet Explorer 8:
- more secure through tab isolation (one tab cannot cause another tab to crash), crash recovery (re-open your tabs after a crash), smartscreen filter, ...
- inprivate browsing (aka 'porn mode'): surf the web without leaving a trace on your computer
- quick access to web services through accelerators: select some text and send the text to a web service, eg an address to a mapping service instantly showing it on a map
- subscribing to parts of a web page through web slices (these have to be implemented during website development using the hAtom microformat)
and for developers:
- a faster Javascript engine,
- full web standards compatibility! That's right: no more special tweaking for Internet Explorer. And for the sites that are still tweaked for IE7 there is a compatibility view mode that can render your website in IE8 as if it were viewed using IE7. This compatibility mode can be set by the end-user visiting the website, or can be forced by the website developer.
- IE8 also already supports some elements of the HTML5 specification: cross-document messaging, a client-side storage API, network connection awareness (so you can for instance store a blog post locally when your connection drops), ...
Jan. 7: Microsoft Tag launched
Also launched at CES 2009, Microsoft Tag is a competitor to QR codes, linking the real and virtual worlds together by tying a predefined (virtual) action (visiting a website, making a call, showing text or sending an electronic business card) to a 2D barcode printed on a poster, in a magazine or anywhere else. When someone takes a picture of the 2D barcode (or 'tag' as Microsoft calls it) using his mobile phone's camera, and if that someone has the downloadable mobile tag reader application installed, the website will be loaded or the call will be initiated.
For instance: the Microsoft tag below will take you to the mobile website of 'The Standaard' (dutch) when you take a picture of it with your mobile phone (and provided you have the reader application installed):
The differences with QR codes (which basically do the same thing) are:
- Microsoft tags are in color, making it possible to encode more data on a smaller space
- Every time someone uses a Microsoft tag, it is logged by Microsoft. Despite an obvious Big Brother move, this also allows them to offer reports of the tag's usage.
- you can define start- and end-dates, which is quite useful for marketing campaigns (eg. e-coupon offers)
Jan. 17: Mechanical Turk abused by Belkin
Mechanical Turk is a service by Amazon to outsource repetitive tasks to 'the crowd'. They call it 'artificial artificial intelligence'. If you want to have a database cleaned, or some images tagged, you can put the job (or 'HIT': Human Intelligence Task) on the Mechanical Turk website together with a description and a budget. Every Mechanical Turk registered user then can offer to do the job for you.
Now CE manufacturer Belkin had the great idea of countering some bad reviews they got on the Amazon website by writing out a HIT for posting good reviews. For every good review, Mechanical Turk workers got 65 cents. Soon however, this highly unethical practice came to light and Belkin was forced to remove the HIT and apologize.
The original HIT description looked like this:
Bad bad ad: Microsoft Songsmith ad
Seriously: what on earth were they thinking??
The icing on the cake is the use of the not-so-cleverly-disguised Mac laptop for a software that doesn't even run on Mac 
...
