Cloudiness » Microsoft http://www.cloudiness.com Just like the old cloudiness, but bloggier Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:54:49 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Windows Phone 7 Series http://www.cloudiness.com/2010/02/16/found/windows-phone-7-series/ http://www.cloudiness.com/2010/02/16/found/windows-phone-7-series/#comments Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:08:08 +0000 Art http://www.cloudiness.com/?p=471 Very pretty and pleasing to look at, but why can’t it show me today’s date entirely? Aggressive styling becomes a low-grade irritation when routine information is obfuscated, even where the full message is easy to guess.

(Update: Luke Wroblewski considers this in more detail, via Daring Fireball)

]]> http://www.cloudiness.com/2010/02/16/found/windows-phone-7-series/feed/ 0 It’s time to stop using IE6 http://www.cloudiness.com/2010/01/19/found/its-time-to-stop-using-ie6/ http://www.cloudiness.com/2010/01/19/found/its-time-to-stop-using-ie6/#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:50:41 +0000 Art http://www.cloudiness.com/?p=456 I’m filing this under “ZDNet Imitates The Onion”.

I wish security vulnerabilities were the only reason why people should stop using Internet Explorer 6. Web developers have been campaigning steadily and conducting user outreach for many years to instigate upgrades. IE 6 support inflates web development budgets (because of the added work necessary to support an outlier platform), results in websites that aren’t as good and useful as they could be (because of client demands for full feature parity across all supported browsers), and a host of entrenched attitudes regarding web design that should have been shaken loose six or eight years ago. Unfortunately, as a web developer working on contracts I rarely have the option of arbitrarily cutting off IE 6 users, and currently most IE 6 users are themselves unable to upgrade.

]]> http://www.cloudiness.com/2010/01/19/found/its-time-to-stop-using-ie6/feed/ 0 Interview with an adware author http://www.cloudiness.com/2009/01/14/found/interview-with-an-adware-author/ http://www.cloudiness.com/2009/01/14/found/interview-with-an-adware-author/#comments Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:21:38 +0000 Art http://www.cloudiness.com/?p=115 Fascinating, detailed interview with the programmer behind Direct Revenue, responsible for the adware on several million Windows computers whose owners didn’t know better.

]]> http://www.cloudiness.com/2009/01/14/found/interview-with-an-adware-author/feed/ 1 Songsmith promo video http://www.cloudiness.com/2009/01/08/found/songsmith-promo-video/ http://www.cloudiness.com/2009/01/08/found/songsmith-promo-video/#comments Fri, 09 Jan 2009 02:39:15 +0000 Art http://www.cloudiness.com/?p=90 “Microsoft, huh? So… it’s pretty easy to use?”  Apparently the research prospectus required finding a karaoke game to glue to one of Apple’s iLife products. Update: Songsmith freestyling over David Lee Roth’s vocals in “Runnin’ With the Devil“.

]]> http://www.cloudiness.com/2009/01/08/found/songsmith-promo-video/feed/ 0 Microsoft uses very large words http://www.cloudiness.com/2008/07/09/microsoft/microsoft-uses-very-large-words/ http://www.cloudiness.com/2008/07/09/microsoft/microsoft-uses-very-large-words/#comments Thu, 10 Jul 2008 04:07:20 +0000 Art http://www.cloudiness.com/?p=21 Microsoft support document 955020 addresses the possibility that Vista’s spellchecker may mistakenly claim the names Friendster, Klum, Nazr, Obama, and Racicot are misspelled. It offers an updater which will fix this problem.

The package which adds five additional words for the built-in dictionary consists of eight DLLs totalling 56 MB. By comparison, William Shakespeare’s complete works contains over 905,000 words and is 5.3 MB.

The manual workaround is to type a word, right click it and select “Add to Dictionary”.

In older news: Microsoft addresses software accessibility.

]]> http://www.cloudiness.com/2008/07/09/microsoft/microsoft-uses-very-large-words/feed/ 0