Microsoft earlier this year committed to delivering a standards compliant browser when they launched Internet Explorer 8 at some undetermined future point.

According to this article at the Register today, Microsoft has broken this promise with the release of IE8, Beta 2:

This week, the promise was broken. It lasted less than six months. Now that Internet Explorer IE8 beta 2 is released, we know that many, if not most, pages viewed in IE8 will not be shown in standards mode by default. The dirty secret is buried deep down in the «Compatibility view» configuration panel, where the «Display intranet sites in Compatibility View» box is checked by default. Thus, by default, intranet pages are not viewed in standards mode.

This is yet another reason why more than five years ago, I switched to using Firefox.

Everyone has been trying to figure out the future business model for Twitter - BusinessWeek believes that it will be advertising - and soon:

Yet, putting such personal conflicts aside, I predict Twitter will begin selling ads outside Japan, which is no doubt a usability test. American users will see banner ads soon, and don’t be surprised if your message on dining out gets side-saddled with an ad for a local restaurant. And to be fair, Microsoft’s deal valued Facebook at 100 times its then-$150 million in estimated revenues. Similar hyperbole could turn Twitter’s $28 million revenue potential into a $2.8 billion valuation.

But response rates will be low, since other social media, such as Facebook and MySpace, have fared poorly selling stuff to their users. It seems social media users are too busy being social to pay much attention to ads. As marketers see poor results, they will move their ad budgets to other, more responsive ad media. The social media value bubble will be pricked by reality.

The article covers a number of possible revenue streams for the short-messenging service used by millions worldwide… but in the end predicts that they will be acquired by a company like Google or Microsoft as a “hood ornament” to their other services.

Never since the days of the net bubble has the web held its collective breath (or prepared the popcorn) regarding the Microsoft-Yahoo drama.

The affair has become so large (or bad, depending on your point of view) that non-geeks are even starting to talk about it (at least around this author anyways). But while some argue in favor of the “inevitable merger,” the Microsoft-Yahoo deal (aka MicroHoo) may potentially affect the entire blogosphere–for the worse.
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The future is clear. The future is here. But is it something that bloggers need to fear?

The new Internet Explorer browser is out, after being highlighted at the Microsoft Mix Keynote event over in Las Vegas.

While the beta browser is not recommended for the masses, geeks and bloggers (or both) will probably want to install it on their machine in order to see if their site passes the “beauty test” (translation: does IE8 make my blog look fat ugly?).

After downloading the browser (which is only for Vista and Windows XP users) I noticed that the beta browser had different effects on different blogs.
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A recent web server statistics report by Netcraft shows that Apache showed a small gain in market share during the month of December 2007, taking back some of the ground it lost to Microsoft and Google in the previous two years.

Interestingly (for web server statistics, at least) some of that could be attributable to the increased popularity of WordPress. The report singles out WordPress.com as a contributor, though I would have thought standalone implementations of WordPress (via WordPress.org) would also play a significant part.

In mid-2006, Microsoft’s own blogging and social networking platform, Windows Live Spaces, saw a revival which is attributed to the increased usage of Windows Server.

Google’s shift of Blogger to its own servers also enabled it to make modest gains, albeit on a much smaller scale.

It would be foolish to conclude that blogging software alone could be a deciding factor in the market share of web servers, but it does seem to have some significance.

(Via Ars Technica)

When it comes to the blog world, Google is king. Whenever the search engine giant makes a move of any kind, bloggers (like the media) are quick to echo their praises, or their rebukes. All this free advertising makes Google one of the most popular names on planet Earth, with one father naming his kid after the company (how weird is that?)

If there is one company with the desire (and ability) to dethrone Google as the topic of the century, it would be Microsoft. Having lost important employees, and business deals, not to mention threats against its bread and butter–twice, Microsoft is probably eager to gain the eyeballs to show the world what it can do.

And what better way to do this than to get some positive attention from the blogosphere (for a change)? So, without further delay, here are seven tips for the software juggernaut.

1) Avoid buying Facebook: Huh? Why would anyone avoid purchasing a company that even Google feels threatened by? Aside from the fact that Mark Zuckerburg is not interested in selling it (which must tick Google off), it would be much easier for Microsoft to maintain its ad presence on Facebook than to shell out $10 billion for the social network.

Not to mention the fact that they would avoid the legal messes of running a social network, something both Google and MySpace are all too familiar with.

2) Purchase Digg: With Google launching its own social linking service and Yahoo! purchasing Del.icio.us two years ago, Microsoft may find itself with its pants down if they waste too much time deciding what to do in this field. Digg is already popular with many (if not most) bloggers, and an early buyout could ensure Microsoft’s dominance in this arena.

Since they are already running Microsoft Ads, why not add it to the family?
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It looks as if everyone’s favorite company (unless you are into open source, Linux and that whole “freeware” thing) has decided to take on Google in the realm of web analytics.

Code named Gatineau (which ironically is the name of a city in Canada), Microsoft hopes to be able to compete against the new version of Google Analytics.

But while Microsoft admits that its software is very similar to Google’s, they boast that their new analytics tool will be able to break down visitor stats by age as well as gender.
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We don’t appear to have written about this worthy cause before, and now there’s just over one week remaining to get Microsoft to donate a bit more of its wealth to the global good.

For those who haven’t already heard, Microsoft teamed up with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and has promised to donate money to the ninemillion.org project, which helps the estimated 9 million refugee children and youth around the world, for every search made at click4thecause.live.com.

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When it comes to marketing your companies image as “good,” Microsoft seems to fail miserably within this department. It seems that Microsoft, upset about certain inaccuracies within Wikipedia, is paying blogger Rick Jelliffe to sift through and correct the “technical errors” that appear on everyone’s favorite Wiki. Is it me, or does anybody sense a potential conflict of interest here?
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