Journey so far

This Blog post at Consumerist struck a chord in me. I'm too guilty of wasting money in many of the ways that are mentioned.

 

But the only thing that never applies to me is the "forgetting to pay bills". All my bills are setup to be automatically paid with my credit/bank accounts. I have not paid a bill via US-Mail for years now and that is pure bliss.

 

Plus I use Microsoft Money to view all my financial accounts to make sure that all bills DO get paid in time.

 

This is something I would recommend to everyone.

 Well..its been months I blogged. I changed my product group within Microsoft some months back and so it has been a rollercoaster journey since then.

 

The seminal article that started the Web 2.0 buzz word. I read it today for the first time so had to share it.

 

 

My take on it-

I think the paper is an excellent commentary on what is succeeding on the Web today. There is a reason why Ebay, Yahoo, Amazon survived the Dot Com bust. They understood the power of the long tail of customers to add value to their products. Yahoo Finance has similar data as most of the other Financial web sites but still is miles ahead in daily usage because of the community bulletin boards. Many years back Google bought Deja news which now powers the Google Group Searches. The Internet winners have always valued the power of consumer created content and have actively worked to improve on it.

My own company- Microsoft has struggled to have a similar network effect with their web properties. There are some successes like MSN-Spaces but many other products do not embody the Web 2.0 principles.

So what will Web 3.0 have? I think it will definitely enable users to have a unified communication experience in which their one web identity works seamless for any communication medium-Voice, Email or IM.

I'm taking the HCI course for winter quarter and this week the paper that we had to read was written in 1991 by the father of ubiquitous computing Mark Weiser.

In that excellent paper, I found this quote very noteworthy->
"The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it. "

 

Just last week I had written a paper for my course on why I consider Microsoft OneNote's usability, the best for personal productivity. My closing thought in that paper was->
"When a software UI lets you do exactly what you want without it coming into your way, then I believe we have a breakthrough design."

 

Which technology has blended into the fabric of your life?

Start.com is live in 9 markets outside US. Check it out!

 

In other news->

- Next week my Graduate program officially starts. The course which I'm taking this quarter is Cyber security. I really liked the course contents and I'm looking forward to it.

 

- I have been writing my next speech for my toastmaster's club. I'm going to talk on how I have gone completely paperless. I will be posting that speech and my previous one's soon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Start.com is an incubation effort in MSN which has a cult following among some internet enthusiasts. For some days I have been part of team that works on it. Yesterday night we released a feature in which I contributed too.

 

I have been amazed at how much user feedback we have got for the feature since then. A lot of the feedback has been positive and encouraging.

 

Check out Start.com and let me know what you think of it.

 

Its been a busy 2 weeks. I just got back from the MSN UK office. There I was working on releasing the MSN international Home pages for certain markets like Malaysia. I will be part of the development team that will ship the future version of many of the international MSN home pages.

 

I also got accepted in the MS Computer Science Program from University of Washington. My classes start in late Sep. It is a part time program so I will be juggling work and studies for next 2 years.

 

I also started blogging so that should keep me busy too.