Microsoft Surface

Microsoft has created a nice piece of furniture: a table. Unlike regular wood or steel tables we know of, this table has a touch screen on it's surface. The new product is call Microsoft Surface. Unlike early touch screens which allowed a person to use one finger to manipulate objects on the screen, the Microsoft Surface allows one to use to fingers simultaneously to manipulate screen objects.

Google Developer Tools

Google has attacked Microsoft head-on through it's Google Apps which is positioned to take over Microsoft Office. Although Google has not create an operating system to compete with Microsoft Windows, yet, it has tried to push the open source Linux operating system. Google also has given big support to Firefox to compete with Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser. Google Desktop and its Gadgets are also present a strong blow attempting to take ground from Microsoft.

How about Microsoft Visual Studio? Will Google be trying to give a blow to that too? Well, Google has already started this by releasing the Google Web Toolkit. What's interesting is Google's between-the-lines announcement today that it needs to hire engineers at its Chicago branch to join other "Chicago engineers [who] are currently working on Open Source and developer tools." So it seems Google is focusing more and more on releasing developer tools. Let's see if that will have any effect on Microsoft Visual Studio's future.

Microsoft Fights Back with Silverlight

Having succeeded in pushing back Java applets and thus avoiding the threat Windows not being as important to users due to ability to use just any platform (aka Linux) to run rich applications, Microsoft had not been able to fight AJAX wich poased a similar threat. Despite Microsoft's attempt evade AJAX and metigate supporting it in its development tools, the great popularity that AJAX has come to have made it impossible for Microsoft to ignore it.

Now Microsoft is fighting back with Silverlight, a new technology from Microsoft that allows the development of rich web applications. Microsoft is hoping that it can make people dependent on its technology once again.

Google PowerPoint

30 days ago I've been asking if Google will be adding a presentation component to its Google Docs & Spreadsheets web application suit as a parallel application to Microsoft PowerPoint.. Google finally gives us the answer, yes they are.

ReactOS - A Microsoft Windows Alternative

Linux has been promoted as the free alternative to Microsoft Windows. Despite years of heavy promotion by its dedicated fans, Linux still remains a competitor to Windows only for server machines but looses ground when it comes to desktop computers. Linux started to gain some ground on the desktop computer front, yet it still has a long way to go.

The two main obstacles facing Linux when trying to gain ground in the desktop area are first that a large number of users are already familiar with using Windows and second because there is a huge amount of software applications that run on Windows yet does not run on Linux.

Enter ReactOS. ReactOS attempts to become an open source alternative to Microsoft Windows. An alternative in the real sense of the word, that is it can run all software applications that have been developed for Windows! That's a freakingly interesting idea. If they succeed in achieving their goal, I believe that could deal a heavy blow to the Windows operating system. I wonder then how will Microsoft React.

Google and Microsoft Fight for Egypt Students

Egypt's Business Today magazine has an interesting article this months titled Bit-by-Bit in which it sheds light on how Google is following in the footsteps of Microsoft trying to grab a share in Egypt's huge education pie.

Microsoft Egypt is Hiring

Microsoft is launching its new CMIC, Cairo Microsoft Innovation Center, in the Smart Village. They are recruiting bright Egyptian software engineers in their CMIC. If you got what it takes to work at Microsoft, apply for a job at the Microsoft Egypt.

Mona Hired by Microsoft USA

Mona was among several FCIS Ain Shams 2005 graduates whom joined Microsoft in USA.

Windows Vista Launches

Microsoft has finally launched its full range of Windows Vista editions.

Google Uses Microsoft Colors

Blue, red, yellow and green are the distinctive Google colors. Those same four colors have been Microsoft's colors ever since Windows was launched. Why is Google using the exact same four colors that have been Microsoft's for long? Was it a coincidence? Of course not.

My guess is that grouping those four colors represents a product made to be used by everyone. Windows was launched to be the easy operating system for everyone, not for an exclusive group. Google was launched to be the same, a service that is easy to use by everyone, not an exclusive group. I don't know why those four colors in particular convey this meaning, but sure marketing research experts are the ones that have the answer.

MDC 2007 in Cairo

Last year they've learnt the lesson, Microsoft's MDC attracted an extraordinary number of attendees. This year they are making the MDC 2007 attendees fee for 100 LE! That's interesting. This will help reduce the number of attendees, and make some cash at the same time *smiles*.

Trying Microsoft Office 2007

Perhaps I'm now a late adopter when it comes to Microsoft technologies and products, yet I just managed to try my hands with Microsoft Word 2007. I have not yet grasped the big change from the previous version of Microsoft Word except for the neater and sleeker interface. The interface looks and feels really cool. I believe also getting rid of the age-old concept of menus is a relatively big step. After all ever since the days of DOS, we've been used to programs using menus. Till this days almost every desktop program uses menus. So replacing traditional menus with this neat new way is quite cool and kind of a change in long standing concepts. This said, I still would like to say that the new way of getting about your tasks done in Microsoft Office 2007 is similar to a great extent to the old menu system, except that you see icons organized in front of you instead of a pull down menu. So in terms of programming, it's not really that different, yet in terms of usability, I believe it is a far concept from the age old pull-down menu style.

Internet Explorer 7 - Final Push

Microsoft is pushing Internet Explorer 7 now to the rest of the people who have not installed it yet. They are pushing it via the Windows Update feature so that everyone will be automatically updated. Looks like a response to the release of Firefox 2.