The Next Microsoft

“I think Google has in the works a global strategy so sweeping and audacious that it is breathtaking, but that’s for a future column. This week I want to point out where Google is screwing up, why, and what they should do about it.”

More – by Robert X. Cringely (wikipedia)

Office Wars

A overview of the “Office suite” struggle between Microsoft and Apple from an “Apple-POV.”

Office Wars 1: Claris and the Origins of Apple’s iWork
Office Wars 2 – Microsoft’s Outrageous Office Profits
Office Wars 3 – How Microsoft Got Its Office Monopoly
Office Wars 4 – Microsoft’s Assault on Lotus and IBM

PowerPoint Turns 20

“One of the most elegant, most influential and most groaned-about pieces of software in the history of computers is 20 years old. There won’t be a lot of birthday celebrations for PowerPoint; the program is one the world loves to mock almost as much as it loves to use.

While PowerPoint has served as the metronome for countless crisp presentations, it has also allowed an endless expanse of dimwit ideas to be dressed up with graphical respectability. And not just in conference rooms, but also in the likes of sixth-grade book reports and at PowerPointSermons.com.

As it happens, what might be called the downside of the culture of PowerPoint is something that bemuses, concerns and occasionally appalls PowerPoint’s two creators as much as it does everyone else.”

More at WSJ.

More Peter Norvig’s Gettysburg Powerpoint here and here.

Garr Reynolds has a blog on presentation in general at Presentation Zen with posts like Contrasts in Presentation Style: Yoda vs. Darth Vader.

The best single source of PowerPoint commentary, pro and con, can be found at Robert Gaskin’s website (Robert is one of the creators of the original PowerPoint program).

 

 

Microsoft’s Big Ass Table

A sarcastic remix of Microsoft’s Surface video that ties in with my previous post Do Designers Dream of Computer Sheep.