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Your questions: Who do you work with in COSD at Microsoft?

A question received this afternoon from a friend in SiValley (thanks, Kim P.)



“So, who do you work with these days at Microsoft in Windows COSD?”


BTW, COSD = the Windows Core Operating System Division, the group that develops the core bits of Windows technology that ultimately becomes Windows Client (XP, Vista) and Server (2003, Longhorn). (See this article in the Seattle PI and on CNET News for more details.)


I’m still working my way around the Windows buildings and meeting people in the groups, just getting back into the thick of things following my tour of duty on Daylight Saving Time (please, no more “what time is it?” jokes). But for more details on our management team in COSD, one needs to look no further than Channel 9, with a couple of videos of people on the team including this one just posted of…







Mark Russinovich: From Winternals to Microsoft, On Windows Security, Windows CoreArch
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A more technical video, I learned a lot about how Mark spends his days. Of interest to me were…



46.11 – why he’s at Microsoft and how he started as an “Apple II Internals” guy long before Winternals and then to Microsoft, and
48:10 – what he does in COSD


Mark was a co-founder of Winternals and is now a Technical Fellow and on the CoreArch team. For more on Core Architecture, Rich Ward from Core Arch is featured in this video from last year (we need an update). Rich leads Core Arch, focused on the architecture of the Windows system.


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Last summer, Scoble sat down in this Channel 9 interview with Jawad Khaki. Jawad is super passionate about working with our customers and partners: I had the opportunity to work with Jawad in the past when I first joined Windows back in 2003. 








 


We’ll have to get the rest of the management team from COSD on a Channel 9 session one day, with the Windows Core System Team including Ben Fathi (Dev), Darren Muir (Test) and Chuck Chan (PM), as well as Wael Bahaa-El Din from the Engineering System and Services Team (ESS). Pam and Lou, too. 😉


And of course, Scott Charney, know for one of his infamous quotes: “If we don’t do security well, people will migrate away from us. And if we don’t do security right, they should.”


On the customer satisfaction and experiences part of my job, I have the opportunity to work with more of the best and brightest people across the company in the product groups as well as the field and services organizations. Toby Richards in Kathleen Hogan’s group is my partner on Customer and Partner Experience (CPE) and leads the extremely effective and dynamic team across the Sales & Services organization. Gayna Williams joined our team in the prodict groups from Windows, only to return to Windows. 😉


More on that later, as I must now tend to a child (who should be fast asleep) looking for a glass of water.


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BBC reports: the new Xbox 360 Elite, coming in April ’07

Back from the eye doctor, and ‘though I thought my vision was off… Black is the new black: this just in from the BBC on th enew Xbox 360 Elite… “Xbox revamp aims at digital home.”  



The sleek Xbox 360 Elite is a digital entertainment powerhouse.“The long-awaited revamp of the Xbox 360, designed to store and display high definition video, has been launched.


“The black Elite console has a 120GB hard drive and will go on sale in the US in April for $479.99 (£255). No details of a UK release were announced.


“…Microsoft has said it will include the necessary cables with its Elite machine. But users will have to pay extra for a high definition HD-DVD player…


Perhaps we’ll also see an improvement of the media playback software as well, allowing the now-larger HDD to aid over-the-home-network viewing to content, or better, allowing me to designate the Xbox 360 Elite HDD as a repository of TV content from my Media Center PC.


More on the Xbox 360 Elite is now available on Xbox.com at http://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/xbox360elite/default.htm.
 
Although there’s no mention of the Xbox 360 HD DVD player on this new Elite page, the BBC reports it will continue to be an add-on.


Does that mean we’ll see both a white and a black HD-DVD peripheral on store shelves?


Perhaps to drive the interest in HD-DVD one might think that you would include it in the Xbox 360 hardware. But given the price premium still for HD-DVD playback, this certainly leaves room to have a follow-on Xbox 360 system SKU at a future date that includes HD-DVD playback: as there are more titles, the players will undoubtedly appear in more places, including in PCs (in what has commonly been slotted for DVD). That would drive me to buy a new Xbox system for Christmas 2007… just one less piece of CE hardware in our collection of devices.

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Your questions: which software applications work with Windows Vista?

A question from a customer last night:



“Is there a list of software applications that work with Windows Vista?”


Check out Microsoft Knowledge Base article 933305, “Applications that have earned the “Certified for Windows Vista” logo or the “Works with Windows Vista” logo.”


And if you are wondering about current Adobe products that support Windows Vista, check out Adobe’s Vista-compatible products list.


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PC World’s “35 Things Every PC User Should Know” and other Windows Tips

Christopher Null of PC World shares 35 Things Every PC User Should Know in his column, now up on MSN Tech and Gadgets, as well as Preston Gralla’s Windows Tips for Everyone.



Want to speed up your broadband connection? Diagnose mysterious crashes? Move massive files across the Internet? Sooner or later, you will — and you’ll find step-by-step instructions for these and other common PC tasks right here.


A few goodies include PowerToys for Windows XP and Speakeasy’s speed tester to test your broadband download and upload speeds.

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Thoughts on Microsoft Search and the big News/NBC Web Video deals

A few random thoughts.


BusinessWeek has an interesting article this week on “Where Is Microsoft Search?” The author observes that Microsoft has stumbled in an effort to provide a better comprehensive mousetrap on the Web, and prevent others from undermining core businesses, as is often cited thee days with companies offering competition to many of our products and services. 



“There’s plenty of pressure to make this fix stick. Last May, Microsoft launched adCenter, a technology that takes demographic data (gender, age, Zip Code) of Web surfers who sign up for various MSN and Windows Live services and lays it over their search queries. That lets advertisers tailor ads to specific types of customers and should allow Microsoft to charge more. But the strategy packs a punch only if Microsoft boosts its share of search.


“Microsoft could still do that. It is betting search will move beyond the all-purpose Web site where users plug in a query for any bit of information. That’s not a bad idea; many analysts believe the search world will fragment into vertical sites that focus on niches. The eye-popping success of YouTube Inc., now owned by Google, is one example. More than just a place to show off your creations, YouTube has become a place to search for videos. Microsoft announced plans in February to buy Medstory Inc., a health-care search engine for consumers. And on Mar. 14 it said it would buy Tellme Networks Inc. for what one analyst estimated to be more than $1 billion. Tellme should give Microsoft a leg up in the emerging market for voice-activated search over a mobile phone.”


Now look at the deal between News Corp. and NBC reported in the NY Times is significant, and requires an alignment of the content owners with distributors and advertisers.



“All the advertising in the video programming will be sold by either the media companies themselves or the new Web venture, and shows and clips will be displayed on a video player that will be embedded in sites like MSN and AOL. For the Internet companies who are distributing the shows, it allows them a new way to tap into the surging popularity of Internet video and vie with YouTube for viewers.


“The impetus for announcing the business now, executives involved said, was the conclusion of deals with AOL, Yahoo, MSN and MySpace. The partners had also spent several months trying to recruit other media companies including Viacom, Walt Disney and CBS to join their start-up.”


Perhaps the connection via MSN (and ultimately services like the one offered on Xbox Live) is one way for MS to participate. Just as I blogged earlier this year, ABC’s apparent success at providing free ad-supported TV shows via the web was a good entree, balancing a good customer experience balanced with a reasonable business model is as important as meeting the needs of teh viewer, in this case with content that they want to watch (TV shows, movies) in a format that’s appealing (reasonable quality streaming video) and at an acceptable price point (free with ads). Perhaps MSN and ultimately Live could be the go-to destination to search for and view video content, providing Microsoft opportunities to apply value-adds that are more than just selling ads: video search, tagging, metadata, social ratings and targeted advertising enhance the video library and ultimately the customer’s experience. 


More to think about this weekend.


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