Rafi Ali Khan: September 2009

Monday, September 14, 2009

Knock Knock - It's Windows 7 on October 22 2009

Well, I'm a big Microsoft fan and anyone who is in the User Experience and UI domain will tell you that no one can beat Microsoft at UI and usability and the experience once you get over all the hang ups and hurdles is one of the best and easiest. (Ok. Mac lovers dont bash me - never had an apple in my life, except of course the iPhone - love it, own it.).

Don't think i work for Microsoft just yet, coz I love Google for the simple and neat application they have rolled out (especially Gmail / Chrome) and for buying out Youtube before Microsoft or even worse News Corp. But when you look at it from a developer's perspective you have to lean towards the tools and toys that Microsoft gives vs all the unintuitive softwares out there except the exception of Adobe.

Anyways,I currently use Windows Vista, and love every bit of the user interface and the cool things they have added but Windows 7 is obviously going to be the XP killer replacer as a lot of my people including my friends shied away from an XP upgrade to Vista. From what I have heard from both friends at Microsoft and OS lovers (who experiment with every OS out there) is that Windows 7 is on a high dose of my favorite energy drink : Red Bull (i.e. its got wings and really flies).

So here you are, the Windows 7 Ad. (this is really cute - for the Indian readers, will remind you of Salman Khan's Maine Pyaar kiya number)

Want more insight into the Ad? Read the review on CNET

Sunday, September 13, 2009

You can always Bing me.

Well most of you "I love only Google" guys out there and those who use Bing only because they are worried about Google's evil world domination plans, to them i say "Bing em on". Bing is great for a lot of things and its really fast as well. Its been my default search engine on my default browser (Google Chrome) for a while, so you cant say I'm a Microsoft loyalist or anything. Truth is what do users want, simple answers to their queries and Bing does as brilliant as a job as Google does (even better with Videos) except maybe when it comes to News, where Google does a better job.

Like i said before : "Bings marketing strategy is on the mark calling it a decision engine than a search engine, coz then they would have to explain, Bing formerly Live Search which was formerly Windows Live Search and before that MSN Search powered by Inktomi which earlier was powered by AltaVista. "Bing & Decide" - is a great catch line for bing and the team that came up with the Ad, surely deserves applause."

See the Bing Ads.

At times I do have to shift to Google on some rare occasions coz I am looking for a link I know I visited before and its maybe there in Google's list of search results or when I want to double check why Bing did'nt get me exactly what i wanted (well Google didnt either)- so its fairly a great alternative to Google and I havnt lost much being on bing for the last few months. Thought i love Bing's image view and the presentation - great features, i just cant get away from the easy image listing on Google and keep going back to it for images - coz i like to randomly check out a couple of images by opening them in new windows which Bing Image view sort of does'nt allow me to open a new window from the image listing page. (Note to Bing Developers -please fix this)

Then there is WolframAlpha the Answer engine according to Wikipedia or in their own words, its a Computational Knowledge Engine (everything is an engine now a days- well whatever works - coz I'm designing a UI strategy for a Metrics Engine at work) anyways love it too for its simple brilliance in giving you answers you would have to search at 10 different places and put it together. I know a lot of people hate it (same people who said Gmail, facebook, twitter sucked) and its being reported that 1/2 the search on WolframAlpha does'nt bring up results because it cant interpret the linguistic of the query, which WolframAlpha team is reportedly fixing in a hurry.

But the thing thats been at the back of my mind about these two new Decision & Answer engine was, why don't they just collaborate to give the Search Engine (Google) a run for their money. Well some one is reading my mind and its official now, Bing has struck a licensing deal with WolframAlpha. Also given that Microsoft has seen potential in WolframAlpha's technology and the value it can add to their Bing strategy, gives me satisfaction that my excitement with WolframAlpha was well placed. Also the fact that Bing will power search across Yahoo properties is also a big deal. But to ever imagine that Bing from Microsoft would ever stand face to face with Google (preference and im used to Google apart) is really a stunning tale in itself and may some day tell tales of how Bing turned it all around. And i want to be right there saying, hey - I told you so.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Bing Ads :Updated

Bings marketing strategy is on the mark calling it a decision engine than a search engine, coz then they would have to explain, Bing formerly Live Search which was formerly Windows Live Search and before that MSN Search powered by Inktomi which earlier was powered by AltaVista. "Bing & Decide" - is a great catch line for bing and the team that came up with the Ad, surely deserves applause.

Lost in the Links? Bing & Decide