Category: Uncategorized

Last week I wrote on my personal blog about how I wanted to see more on-demand tv (I try to keep my personal editorials on MySpaces). When it comes to technical content, Microsoft.com offers a great selection in our archive of on-demand webcasts; a large number of TechNet and MSDN webcasts included in the archive. For our customers, it’s great because you can easily search the complete archive by audience (whether you’re an IT Pro, a home PC user, a developer…), Microsoft product and event type (in-person, live or on-demand webcasts).

For instance, I did a search for On-Demand Webcasts for All Audiences related to Windows XP 64-Bit Edition and found the The .NET Show: Win64 from last June, where Larry Sullivan, Volker Will and Kevin Frei talk about the move to 64-bit and what it might mean to your development efforts.

I enjoy music downloads from MSN Music, as well as radio plus for streaming music. I would really like to see MSN offer unlimited downloads as Napster and Yahoo do today. And the real benefit will come when I can view (and perhaps download) shows we miss at home from http://tv.msn.com/. <rant on> We were able to find and purchase a missed episode of one NBC show on (gasp) iTunes, which wasn’t very straight forward, with the video clips selection somewhat hidden in the iTunes UI. I’d rather download the shows in WMV format rather than QuickTime — and with the clean msn TV UI — so I might have increased availability of the show on my Windows devices. You’d think that with the relationship MSN has with NBC that we’d be proactive in the space. If Dateline can offer a video gallery on MSNBC.Com, then why not allow downloading of clips, even with DRM?</rant>

Tags: microsoft blogs on-demand webcast

BTW, given the rainy weekend in Seattle, here’s a little light reading from Steven Sinofsky on what is a Program Manager (PM) at Microsoft. I have great respect for him and his work in the IW business group, and I have seen how he and his group make customer satisfaction a priority in Office. I wanted to call attention to this blog post again as the PM has a close partnership with the development team, sales & marketing and management teams, and provide a “listen and respond” channel for customer feedback and suggestions (which is also a requirement of product managers in SV) in the product lifecycle. As noted, Steven says that the PM is “the advocate for end-users and customers.”

I come from Silicon Valley where the Product Manager is the closest thing many companies have to a Microsoft PM. Steven asserts in his comments that there is a closer tie to in the “associate product manager” title in SV. I disagree, having managed product management teams there, that the role is more of the classic product manager and that additional tasks are being added to the associate role, but that is splitting hairs.

The work that he eludes to in our career framework is truly different in many ways from how companies in the Valley think about the role than we do at Microsoft, but there are a greater number of common denominators in MS PMs and product managers than there are differences – but that is my opinion based on my work in smaller, lighter organizations (vs the 60,000+ at MS) where product managers wore several hats filled by multiple roles in MS. And given Chris_Pratley’s comment on how there has been an incredible “increasing complexity of solutions” I believe that we will see more and more companies — especially as they grow — adding MS PM-type roles in their own organizations to deal with the scope of the project.

Tags: microsoft blogs program management product management

I enjoy listening to Sir Richard and find him to be refreshing and insightful.

Which is why I was interested to read his thought today Branson’s quote today at the World Economic Forum in Davos on the potential global impact of the Avian influenza A (H5N1), should it become a pandemic flu.

“Statistically, there is about a 6 percent chance that in any one year of the next 10 years this becomes a person-to-person problem, and we just have to hope it is not this year,” Branson said.

Tags: richard branson pandemic

When you need community assistance for a Microsoft product or technology, visit the Microsoft Community Web Site where you will find links to informative webcasts, community sites, technical chats and blogs. Some of the interesting technical chats coming up over the next month that I follow include…

And speaking of feedback (thank you, Toby), I received some good feedback that I had taken a consumer electronic tone over the holidays. Point taken. To clarify… I posted several entries over the holidays to the issue that most people emailed me about, the one that was apparently top of mind when it came to their satisfaction with Microsoft. In this case, satisfaction was impacted with the inability to find the Xbox 360 at retail in time for Christmas/ holiday gift giving. And add to that much of my free time December was spent working and thinking about our consumer efforts.

I will return to a state of balance and harmony. ; )