How Microsoft can regain its mojo
This piece is in response to The Register’s “A decade to forget – how Microsoft lost its mojo“
Microsoft is not cool. From Windows and Office, through server products and the Zune, the Redmond-based firm currently exudes an air of creatively running on empty. It’s not broke, of course, it released results of $12.92bn for the quarter to September 09 (http://www.redorbit.com/news/business/1774268/microsoft_reports_firstquarter_results/index.html), but it doesn’t feel like it has the mojo it once did.
Indeed it’s hard to escape the feeling that we’re seeing the start of the demise of this once all-powerful organisation. Many of the core products mentioned above seem naturally at odds with the way the world is moving, with online Office-replacements moving centre stage with Google Docs and their ilk.
So here, in my utterly uneducated wisdom, are my top five ways Microsoft can claw back some of that indefinable good feeling for the beleaguered brand.
Make IE9 the best it can be
MS will unleash Internet Explorer 9 sometime next year. You can see where it’s going here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/11/18/an-early-look-at-ie9-for-developers.aspx
Some good headline features here, but where’s the commitment to HTML5? Further, how is it possible to brag about an Acid3 score of 32/100? The lack of HTML5 canvas support in particular means that mainstream developers won’t be able to use this most revolutionary of HTML5 tags for years to come.
So, as a list within a list, here’s what needs to happen:
- Proper CSS3 support
- Proper HTML 5 support
- Proper standard @font-face support
Further, testing your site on IE is problematic because you can’t easily install multiple versions of IE side by side. So Microsoft, how about a developer tool that allows side-by-side installs of all the IE browser releases since version 6? Just that one simple thing would bring some very disgruntled web developers back on side, and save us all having to run multiple PCs for testing and indulging in massive hacks to get alternative versions running side by side.
All this is possible, with corporate will.
Ship the Courier
This thing is seriously amazing:
http://gizmodo.com/5369493/leaked-courier-video-shows-how-well-actually-use-it
It’s an “infinite journal” with dual screens and what looks like a lovely shiny OS. If they actually got this thing out the door without the Windows team screwing it up it would be a complete win. I would actually buy this so long as it worked, and never purchase another Moleskine as long as I lived. It’s innovative and exciting; just what MS needs.
Win big with Mobile 7
Microsoft’s mobile operating system is in tatters. Mobile 7 has slipped to 2010, and meanwhile, 6.5 has been released as a stopgap measure. With handset makers defecting in droves to Google’s Android platform and the iPhone stealing marketshare like a fox in a henhouse, Microsoft are in real danger of their mobile offering dropping off the cliff.
Windows Mobile 7 has to be spectacular to bring this one back from the edge.
Replace Steve Ballmer
I’m sorry, but the man’s a joke. Even non-techys think so. From the “Developers, developers developers” debacle to his sorry premonitions about what will happen to competing technologies (”There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share“) he has become a byword for what’s wrong with MS.
Get some taste
One of Microsoft’s big issues is very simple: they have no taste. From Windows 7 to Office to IE, MS proves time and again that there’s no-one at the helm with a sense of what makes a product really lovely. Sure, it’s all very shiny these days, but that’s not the same thing at all. Indeed, whilst this surface-level sheen gets them by, the lack of taste shines through.
Whilst the issue is simple, the solution is complex. It requires putting taste at the centre of things. I’ve no idea if MS has an overarching Creative Director or similar, but they could do with one who has the power to stop a product shipping. Sack all the ad agencies who make you a laughing stock and encourage a sense of the aesthetic at every level, including developers.
The Courier mentioned above displays a sense of taste somewhere in the bowels of Redmond. Find those people and promote them.
Fin
I have no idea how MS works internally, but from an outsider’s perspective it’s beginning to feel distinctly over the hill. I believe the world is better off with a strong, innovative Microsoft, so come on Redmond, how about a solid kick up the arse?
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Updates 05.02.09:
The NYT: Microsoft’s Creative Destruction
Microsoft answers the NYT (kind of)
New Work for Vicinitee.com
Recently, I’ve been working on some designs and Information Architecture for the new Vicinitee.com corporate and marketing site. Vicinitee create corporate intranets for buildings in the city of London, spanning everything from visitor security to community-based offerings.
The site’s not live yet, but it’s been a very interesting journey into reworking the information from the old site into a new format, with new hierarchies and structures. The site should be live soon, when I’ll post more about it.
Glasnost is Live!
A long time ago, we wondered how best to update our old client / project management system. We called it Glasnost, and we’d built it ourself in HTML/Cold Fusion. It did the job in a kind of back-end, gets it done kind of way, and this was, of course, in the days before nice javascript libraries and Web 2.0 interfaces. It used tables, select boxes and all manner of repulsive code to get the job done.
We wanted better.
And we got it. For the last year we’ve been beta-testing the new version of Glasnost, created entirely in Adobe Flex and boasting a sexy new interface and inbuilt Contact/Project/Document and Image Management systems. It’s so different to the last version, we’re calling it Version 1. As far as we’re concerned it’s not even close to the same product.
And from today, you can get it too:
Yes, Glasnost is out of beta, gone public and available for everyone to use, with prices starting from £15/month and a free month’s trial. Get it while its hot!
A Public Service Music Label?
The record companies don’t get it. I think we can all agree on that. If they can’t monetise a unit sale then they can’t make their old business model work, and with the unit price of music online close to zero, (iTunes at al notwithstanding), the labels’ old model is probably dead, or at least waving its feet in the air twitching uncontrollably. They also appear to not be able to move to a new model, instead attempting to lobby and sue their way back to the good old days before Napster came along.
Presumably, at some point, we’ll see labels signing fewer bands, and certainly fewer good bands, instead concentrating on the sure-fire X-Factor end of the market and the long tail of their back catalogs. This leaves a pretty epic cultural gap for genuinely good music to be heard by lots of people.
It’s okay for Radiohead and Trent Reznor to not have labels; they’re leveraging the profile that their old labels bought in the earlier years of their careers. New bands can’t do that. It’s easy to say that there are opportunities for new bands to come along and use the interwebs to kickstart their careers, but without that crucial initial marketing spend, it’s still practically impossible to launch an actual career without the backing of a label.
So if the labels won’t bring us great new music in the future, who will? How can bands generate that level of media profile where people will come out on a wet night to watch them play, generating money through merchandising and ticket sales? Without label backing, you’re screwed.
How about a system of non-profit-driven promotion, handled by an culturally aware organisation which has a vertically-integrated structure handling content creation and delivery? Fat chance. Oh… hang on. What’s that you say auntie?
Yes, the BBC has all this in droves, so here’s my plan in a nutshell; the BBC should become a sort of public-service label.
It already dabbles of course. Lamacq will play something once from some band in the middle of nowhere, and a few people will hear it, but there’s no coherence or conviction, it’s just messing about. If there were a few people at the BBC genuinely seeking out new talent (A&R, effectively), rather than playing what the labels spoon-fed them, the BBC could coordinate its entire network to promote new music. It would put a whole new spin on the phrase “in new music we trust”.
Wouldn’t it be great if a band featured on Lamacq had a chance to be nurtured by the BBC, to be guaranteed some kind of rotation on the BBC radio network? At the higher echelons, there’s Jools Holland and Radio 1. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if an “unsigned” band got a slot every week on Jools, and corresponding daytime rotation on a national radio station? Profile that would previously have cost the label (and by extension, the artist) massive amounts of money could then be had for free.
Hell, it could even rejuvenate Top of the Pops, which everyone wants back, but which the BBC can’t seem to find a way to reformat so it’s convincing. Regular prime time TV exposure for unsigned acts alongside label-sponsored bands? How fucking cool would that be?
The BBC could even release music. Really, there’s not a lot of difference between shifting a “Blue Planet” DVD and releasing an album by a band, and CD sales could subsidise the system to a degree. Also, music fans are willing to pay for music, and if you sign genuinely good music, you’re in with a decent chance of tapping into that market.
There are downsides. Should the taxpayer pay for this kind of thing? I don’t know. I speak as a music fan and a musician, and the niceties of whether this would be public money well spent are slightly lost on me. I think so, but then I would, wouldn’t I? I would imagine also, that Offwatch, Offcom and their ilk would have something of a cow. Competing with the labels? How dare they?
And yes, there couldn’t be that many new acts “signed” to the BBC every year, but with a cultural brief, rather than an overtly commercial one, they’d probably be pretty good.
It’s only a thought. But isn’t it an exciting thought?
More newspaper stuff: We edge closer
I note with interest we now have on-demand book printing:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/apr/24/espresso-book-machine-launches
How long can it be before my plan for newspapers comes around? Admittedly the machine costs £175k, but that’s for a book machine. Maybe it’d be cheaper to make newspapers?
Surely, surely, this is the future?
New Music for TH2
I was recently asked to write some original music for the diffusion range of the rather swish Taylor Howes. You can hear it on their site (created by the ultra-talented team at Camber):
I was of course happy to oblige. It’s always weird doing music for websites, since you never know quite how it’s all going to gel together. I think though that the end result is really nice, and has the desired effect.
Banging on about Newspapers again
I just watched Jacek Utko do a TED talk:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jacek_utko_asks_can_design_save_the_newspaper.html
His point was that design can save newspapers, and certainly the work he’s done is great, and has yielded massive business benefits to the circulation of the papers he works on, presumably because the papers become such lovely desirable objects.
There is, though this unfortunate truth that the paper-based model as we know it has had its day. I would refer you to my perennial rant about how best to do newspapers. But imagine if we applied Jacek’s design philosophies to the “vending machine” model.
How cool would that be then? Bang up to date news, with the desirability of a wonderful object. Seriously, give me the money and I’ll turn newspaper fortunes around inside a year.
The Commonwealth Expedition on the BBC
Recently, i helped set up a website for The Commonwealth Expedition, and I noticed today that they have a write-up on the BCC News site:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7962311.stm
This is great news for the endlessly-energetic Felicity Aston, who’s running the show, since publicity is always helpful. The idea is to take eight women from the Commonwealth countries to the South Pole.
Good luck Felicity et al!
Delivery of the Cool
In the post this morning courtesy Amazon : Miles Davis’ Birth of the Cool.
Seriously. Look at the typography and imagery. Nothing that looks like this can ever be uncool. It’s the epitome of cool. I don’t need to tell you what it sounds like because clearly, it’s going to be cool.
The Future of Newsprint : Revisited
Three years ago in February 2006, I wrote the blog entry below for a previous incarnation of this site. Having read “The Scotsman’s Insanity is an industry problem” I still think I nailed it. This is a good idea, so I’m resurrecting and “reprinting” it, if only to be able to say “I told you so” if and when it happens.
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The Future of Newsprint (First published 15/02/06)
There was a piece in Creative Review last month regarding the new Observer redesign. All mostly the usual “it’s great”, “it sucks” stuff. Amongst the industry bitchfest though, were some very forward thinking ideas from Jon Hill (http://www.jonhilldesign.co.uk/ [URL Now Defunct]). His premise is that within a few years, amongst other things, you’ll see newspapers being printed sectionally on-demand. This article just takes this idea and builds on some of the practicalities of that.
The current problem for the newspapers is that with the advent and spread of 24-hour news channels, internet news and the ever-expanding blogosphere they’re becoming irrelevant. People consume news online, on their phones, even waiting around for trains on big screens, all for free. The prevailing view is that newspapers will become more focused on in-depth reporting and almost become “viewspapers”.
But what if you could do something a little cleverer than this? Imagine getting a newspaper on your way to work that was right up to the moment, cheaper than what you pay now, and tailored to what you wanted to read.
A vending kiosk at stations, garages etc with a touchscreen interface could dispense only the elements of the normal paper that you wanted, charging accordingly. The paper would be printed A4 on-demand in the kiosk itself. The clever element though would be a web link that would allow the paper to be constantly updated “live” throughout the day, so you’d never have an out-of-date news story on the way home. And in a twist of fate, this would no doubt be done using XML feeds, thereby competing with the bloggers and news websites using their own technology.
A handy side-effect would be the ability to constantly update advertisements within the paper, which would be great from advertisers perspectives, allowing them up-to-the-moment tie-ins with events, as well as a new segment for the creative industry to exploit.
Taking it a step further, customers could sign up for an more in-depth personalised newspaper on a website, and then pick it up on the way to work from the kiosk. Again, this would enhance the advertising potential of the papers, and potentially allow customers to pay a premium to be rid of adverts too.
A system like this would allow news editors to keep their papers up to date, and maybe claw back some of that depleting market share. It provides an elegant and innovative approach to news distribution which could run alongside traditional papers and online/24-hour tv outlets.
Lastly, it’s worth noting that people are still reading newspapers. Why? Because reading from paper is still so much nicer than reading from screen, plus people like them because they mean something to us. Newspapers have a future, and the public want to see it.