Lemak Lemang

MIX and REMIX

Jun 23, 2006 09:13

Déjà vu Web1.0? With Bill Gates opting for semi-retirement to be a full-time philanthropist in two years' time, what's the landscape for technology's iconism?

As usual, many marques beat Bill to the gates when it comes to first-mover league. Andy Grove (Intel) gave up his chairman's post last year; Scott McNealy (Sun Microsystems) has stepped down as CEO but retains the chairman's post, Michael Dell (Dell) is expected to cease as chairman soon; and Larry Ellison (Oracle) is slated to cede day-to-day operations to his lieutenants. Among the Web 1.0 peers, Steve Jobs (Apple) may well be the last notable man standing.

So, the curse of Tim O'Reilley (Web 2.0) is actually fermenting?

Tim O'Reilley at MIX06 (Jeffooi.com pix, copyright reserved)

That was the Big Question I asked myself when I attended MIX06 in Las Vegas, in March this year as a guest of Microsoft Corp, taking a peep at its next-gen solutions. At that time, we didn't have any inkling that Gates would be fading away.

In Singapore on June 29, when MIX06 is reprised albeit on a smaller scale renamed REMIX, we should start looking at Microsoft from a new... window, and try to figure out how the battle is going to be fought out.



I am honored to be invited to speak as a panelist, alongside Isabelle Chan (ZDNet Asia) and Pierre Hennes (Upstream Ventures) at the Business Track session: Opportunities in the Next Web and Beyond, which will be moderated by veteran IT journo Raju Chellam.


So, post-Bill Gates, where else is there for Microsoft to conquer? I would think the battleground is still Internet and Web-delivered services that converge on numerous form factors seamlessly.

Fact one: There is absolutely no Internet surfer experience without a browser. Are there any violent objections?

Microsoft has spent so much firepower to dislodge Netscape, and its IE 6.0 was so epoch-making that it effectively "forced" the premature retirement of Netscape and Internet visionary Jim Barksdale. But the problem was that Microsoft, after winning the first round in Web 1.0, had allowed its Internet Explorer (IE) to age for the last five years without fundamental upgrades.

Instead, Microsoft retreated to the comfort zone of shrink-wrapped software strategies, and invested extensively in Xbox game consoles and asp.net development platform. Now, we hear of Microsoft announcing the beta release of IE7.0 scheduled for the later part of 2006, and its final release during the early half of next year.

Have alternative browsers Firefox and Safari threatened IE's dominance? Not really. As far as user traffic log can tell, IE still remains the browser of choice for more than 65 percent among readers at my other blog. So, what has O'Reilley told us that we don't already know?

In Las Vegas' MIX06, O'Reilly, no doubt a proponent of open standards, reprised his role as the conversation partner to Gates who delivered a keynote address on Microsoft's gameplan in the near future.


Gates and O'Reilley at MIX06, Las Vegas (Jeffooi.com pix, copyright reserved)

O'Reilly, noted for his polite but no-holds-barred questioning of his guests and hosts like, provided the sparks to Microsoft's well-rehearsed marketing speak. What have you got this time, he asked the Microsoft chairman and chief software architect point blank.

Apparently, Microsoft has revisited the neglected Web development market, and has put together a showcase of ready-to-launch Web user experience and Web developer tools that include IE7, developer tools on Microsoft platform like Atlas (as usual, the Microsoft-flavored version of AJAX), Microsoft Presentation Foundation, and the long-awaited Windows Vista.

Those who have signed up to participate in REMIX will get a sneak preview of things I talked about.

Perhaps, in the last two years that Microsoft has procrastinated, we have crossed a crucial point that the Web surfing experience has been further enhanced by the adoption of AJAX, or Asynchronous JavaScript And XML.

What common Internet users did not realize was that, with AJAX, Web pages were made to "feel" more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes, so that the entire Web page did not have to be reloaded each time the user made a change. This was designed to increase the Web page's interactivity, speed, and usability.

When I first heard about this, a reader of mine enlightened us that most people aren't aware of one important thing-- that Microsoft itself was one of the earliest adopters of AJAX technologies, making use of it in the Outlook Web Access component in Exchange 2000. It was said that XMLHTTP, a core API of AJAX, was originally developed by Microsoft for its Internet Explorer 5.0 browser (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHTTP), which was available since 1998. But the irony was it took companies like Google to popularize it via GMail, Google Earth, etc.

Evidently, there are many more new chapters being written live in the evolving Web 2.0. In other words, all old dogs have to keep on learning new tricks in order to stay relevant.

Microsoft is evidently no exception.

For a change, it nice to see Microsoft's Dean Hachamovitch wearing a pretty funky T-shirt to introduce IE7 at MIX06. The morning after, we were told Dean's IE7 teaser T-shirt was up for bid on eBay. Tagline: Get a piece of history.


Jeffooi.com pix, copyright reserved

Now, Steve Jobs has competition in the fashion department--if he's still the last icon standing.

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