10 wrong things tat Microsoft did in 2009

Earlier today, I posted "10 things Microsoft did right in 2009." I originally planned to post the did-wrong list tomorrow. But in view of today's news about Microsoft's out-going chief financial officer, Chris Liddell, I changed the timetable. Liddell's departure is one of the things Microsoft did wrong in 2009 (He will become CFO at GM).

The did-wrong list was way too much easier to compile than the did-right list. I could easily put 20 items here. The year 2009 was perhaps the most difficult for Microsoft since Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded the company nearly 35 years ago. Company executives can thank economic turmoil for the hardships. But Microsoft could have handled 2009 much better than it did. Hopefully, 2010 will be better.

I present the list of 10 things Microsoft did wrong in 2009 in no order of importance. They're all important. Microsoft:

1. Let Chris Liddell get away.
Liddell has proven to be an exceptionally adept Microsoft CFO. He managed Microsoft finances in better times and bad, doing a resounding good job overseeing difficult cost cutting as global economic crisis sapped software sales. Liddell has an excellent relationship with Wall Street analysts and -- until January (see #4) -- he offered continually conservative guidance to them. His departure is a huge loss at Microsoft's highest executive level.

There is simply no excuse for Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and his board of directors letting Liddell leave for General Motors. No incentive should have been enough to keep him, although given Liddell's tight-fisted financial operations during the econolypse, as CFO he might not have allowed it. How ironic is that?

2. Offered no direct Windows XP to Windows 7 upgrade.
Some Betanews readers will be surprised to read that this only marginally makes the list. From a customer relations and software sales perspective, the Windows XP upgrade path to 7 is a frak up. Windows XP users shouldn't have to backup everything, do a clean installation and restore data from backup. For many enterprises, a fresh image would be business as usual. For consumers and small businesses, Microsoft has placed a huge deterrent to Windows 7 upgrades.

But like with Zune HD (see #7 in the did-right list), Microsoft backed away from the shackles of its longstanding practice of putting backwards compatibility before anything else. From that perspective, the Windows XP to Windows 7 upgrade is something Microsoft did right -- and hopefully foreshadows more of it. Microsoft can't support every customer running any old version of its software. Such practice keeps Windows from being the modern operating system it needs to be.

3. Laid off Don Dodge.
Microsoft's January announcement of 5,000-plus layoffs showed how quickly the economic crisis waylaid the company. Or did it? In a future post I will apply a magnifying glass to Microsoft layoffs, which appear to have been more about firing highly paid, tenured staff than making necessary cuts of employee fat. Microsoft's ambassador to Silicon Valley, Don Dodge, was the most surprising of the layoffs -- and yet from the perspective of lopping big salaries it was not. Microsoft lost three things with Dodge:


Vital experience sussing out good startups
Someone well respected in Silicon Valley
An ally, who became a competitive enemy

In mid November, less than two weeks after being laid off by Microsoft, Dodge took a job with Google. How the frak did Microsoft executives not see that one coming?

4. Withheld financial guidance.
Starting in January, Microsoft stopped giving financial guidance to Wall Street. It was simply a disastrous decision that established an even worse precedent. Sure, the guidance couldn't be good (given sagging sales) and risked further run on the stock, as if the last quarter of 2008 wasn't bad enough for Microsoft and nearly every other public company. But bad guidance would have been better than none. Successful public companies don't just manage finances, they manage perceptions about their performance.

By withholding guidance, Microsoft let uncertainty and gossip determine perceptions about its sales and earnings performance. By comparison, Apple continued to release guidance and, combined with marketing and product launches and leaks, generated positive perceptions. These perceptions helped to lift Apple's share price to new heights. Meanwhile, Microsoft shares remained in the doldrums, even while quarterly results remained relatively buoyant considering economic conditions. Microsoft lost opportunity to generate really positive perceptions on Wall Street during Windows 7's late development and October launch.

5. Botched the mobile phone strategy.
Earlier this month, I encouraged Microsoft not to hang up on its mobile phone strategy. But the company has fewer options by the day, as hardware manufacturers hang up on Windows Mobile and shift to Google's Android. In October and mid-December posts, I observed how Google has put together a winning mobile strategy -- in third quarter, according to Gartner, reaching 3.5 percent smartphone market share, up from zero a year earlier.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has got simply nothing to offer. Windows Mobile 6.5, which launched in October, lags behind Android and iPhone OS in critical areas of innovation. Meanwhile, Windows Mobile 7.0 is MIA, with rumors running about delays into late 2010 or early 2011. Microsoft's mobile browser is oh-so early century, and the company is rapidly losing developers to Apple and Google. With sophisticated handsets and smartphones poised to be, with cloud services, the next-generation computing platform, Microsoft's disastrous, run-aground mobile strategy is just short of corporate malfeasance against shareholders.

6. Chased Google in search -- again.
Microsoft should just give up its pursuit of Google in Web search from PCs. Google's search share lead is insurmountable. Microsoft's only real hope is mobile, which will be the future of search, but the company's mobile strategy is hosed (as explained in #5). Microsoft frittered away 2008 chasing Yahoo, only to bag a Yahoo search deal in July of this year.

I called the agreement "Google's Christmas-in-July present." As I predicted then, and as recent ComScore numbers show, Microsoft can only take search share from Yahoo; when the deal is complete and implemented, Microsoft will cannibalize Yahoo share rather than combine with it. Microsoft's Google search obsession distracts the company from what's important: Mobile and the cloud, which will be the next-generation computing platform.

7. Retrenched into enterprise.
Microsoft responded to the economic crisis by doing exactly what Ballmer recommended against. In January, during his Consumer Electronics Show 2009 keynote, Microsoft's CEO extolled the importance of investing during hard times -- that historically successful companies reaped from research and development and other investments sowed during recessions. But Microsoft did something else: Retreat to the enterprise. Microsoft also killed vital incubation projects (see #9).

Nearly as bad (reiterating #6), Google continued to set the development agenda, with Microsoft again chasing the search giant's every cloud software or service. Aside from some modest Bing features and user interface changes, Microsoft failed to leap ahead of its rival.

8. Allowed netbooks to grow unchecked.
Netbooks are a plague, sucking the margins out of the PC industry and from Microsoft. The company should have used every means imaginable to discourage these pesky, cheap underpowered portables. But somewhere inside the hallowed halls of Microsoft's corporate campus, someone freaked about all those early netbooks running Linux, resulting in the disastrous 2008 decision to license Windows XP Home for the little buggers. If Linux on netbooks is so bad an experience, as Microsoft product managers claim, sales collapse should have been the future without Windows licensing.

Instead, Microsoft encouraged netbooks' continued sales surge by licensing Windows 7 Starter Edition for them, all the while pushing costlier, thin-and-light laptops as the better alternative. Cheap rules the day. Gartner predicted that netbooks -- and not Windows 7 -- would lift sagging 2009 PC sales.

9. Killed incubation projects.
Microsoft didn't just wield the cost-cutting axe against valuable employees, it whacked vital incubation projects. The nastiness started in earnest with April's gutting of Live Labs. As I blogged then: "Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. Did I not say stupid?" Microsoft continued jettisoning projects all year, again, contradicting Ballmer's January assertion "that companies and industries that continue to pursue innovation during tough economic times will achieve a significant competitive advantage positioning themselves for growth far more effectively than companies that hold back. That's why Microsoft continues to focus on R&D."

Oh, yeah? How is killing incubation projects investing in R&D? Some of Microsoft's best product development over the last three years came from incubation groups that acted more like internal startups. Who's running this company, if the CEO says one thing and underlings do something else -- or, worse, he is the contradiction?

10. Licensed ActiveSync to Google.
Synchronization is the killer application for the connected world. So why in hell would Microsoft license its synchronization protocols to competitor Google? Perhaps someone at Microsoft saw advantage for Exchange Server. That's one way Google used ActiveSync, but not where the company got the real bang.

Immediately, Google used ActiveSync for e-mail, calendar and contact synchronization from its cloud services to iPhone and Windows Mobile handsets. Google also used the technology to provide Exchange Server sync with Google Apps, so that businesses could use the hosted service instead of Outlook. Sync is quickly defining Google's mobile handset and mobile cloud strategies, and Microsoft helped move it along faster.

10 right things tat Micosoft done in 2009

The year 2009 was pretty good to Microsoft, even as the weak economy ravaged sales. Microsoft actually did a few things right. The did-wrong list will come later today (not tomorrow as previously posted). For now, I present the list of 10 things Microsoft did right in 2009 -- in no order of importance. They're all important. Microsoft:

1. Flawlessly launched Windows 7.
There's a metaphor somehow in Microsoft launching Windows 7 during the 40th anniversary year of the Apollo moon landing. Microsoft's precision reminds of NASA sending man to the moon. While the human risk wasn't as great and many of the engineering challenges were far less than Apollo 11, Windows 7 needed perfect launch and delivery, from testing to release candidate to voluming licensing availability and retail release. Microsoft pulled it off.

It's clear that Microsoft re-engineered the engineering process. The mistakes that led to overlong development of Windows Vista, the dumping of well-publicized features and late delivery (How could Microsoft miss Holiday 2006?) didn't reappear. Microsoft successfully executed a taunt development schedule, improved performance in the right places (like startup and wakeup), made better the user interface and insured that most drivers would be available for popular devices.

Microsoft's success was as much about managing perceptions as developing and delivering a good product. The company clearly worked the blogs that Microsoft influencers, IT managers and some consumers read, as well social networks and forums they might participate in. Early positive reviews and some kick-ass "Laptop Hunters" marketing helped Windows 7 to pull free from the negative reaction gravity that kept Windows Vista from achieving escape velocity.

2. Opened retail stores.
Coordinated with Windows 7's launch, Microsoft opened retail stores in Arizona and California and a café in France. The stores are a first step that will need many more to follow. During his Consumer Electronics Show 2009 keynote, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that companies most likely to succeed after a recession make investments during one. Retail stores are one such investment. Apple opened its first retail stores during the 2000-01 recession. Microsoft's situation and timing remind of Apple in May 2001, for starters during a recession. Microsoft's retail strategy will require commitment, if necessary, including running stores at losses for their greater marketing benefit.

3. Offered crapware-free PCs.
Microsoft started selling Windows 7 PCs through its online and brick-and-mortar stores in October, free of the preloaded software -- crapware -- that can bog down the performance of even a new system. It's an important change to giving Windows 7 PC users the experience Microsoft engineered out of the box.

4. Launched Bing.
Microsoft's "decision engine" may never catch Google. Bing will cannibalize Yahoo search share first. But as a consumer product, with excellent user interface and simply exceptional advertising, Bing already is helping to revive Microsoft's brand outside of the business market. Search is the most popular activity on the Web. By being there with a solid product and big brand, Microsoft can snatch some of the good consumer feeling that Apple or Google gets.

5. Released Security Essentials.
Microsoft finally did the right thing by customers and the Windows brand by offering free malware protection. No doubt, Microsoft long resisted the inevitable for the benefit of its anti-malware software partners and for concern about antitrust problems. Security Essentials is reliable malware protection that doesn't overtax Windows. For 2010, Microsoft could make the software better by making it even easier for consumers to get -- say, on new PCs.

6. Promoted Steven Sinofsky.
The man who methodically led the team that turned around Microsoft's flagship operating system now leads the Windows & Windows Live division. Sinfosky hugely deserved the promotion to president of the division (see #1). Next up: Turning around Windows Live. Can Sinofsky and team deliver? First answer may come at MIX 10, in March.

7. Released Zune 4.0 software and Zune HD.
It's too bad iPod is so popular. Zune 4.0 and Zune HD are both kick-ass products. Microsoft showed that Xbox 360 and Xbox Live aren't flukes. Microsoft can provide good end-to-end solutions in other markets. The company also learned, hopefully, an important lesson: Backwards compatibility isn't everything. Microsoft broke backwards compatibility, by providing new features in Zune HD not available for older devices.

8. Settled antitrust case with the European Union.
Last week's browser "Choice Screen" agreement with the EU's Competition Commission is much bigger than it seems. Microsoft's concessions did more than end the browser antitrust case, they effectively sidelined another open investigation, by the company agreeing to release additional interoperability information -- and for products broader than Windows, including Office and SharePoint Server.

9. Improved advertising.
Microsoft advertising has long been major lame, particularly the persistent and pointless corporate commercials. From February, Microsoft hit a series of marketing home runs, each stronger than the last:


"The Rookies," featuring cute kids using Windows Live Photo Gallery.
"Laptop Hunters," where people shopped for a PC, which they could keep if within their pre-agreed budget.
"Bing," which commercials made real the limitations of search keywords.
"Windows 7 was my idea," what anyone's idea of good Microsoft advertising should be.

If 2010 advertising is this good, or even better, Microsoft will get a good branding start for the new decade.

10. Debuted Silverlight 4.0.
Microsoft continued making its nearly annual updates to Silverlight, releasing v4 beta during Professional Developers Conference 2009. Sadly, Silverlight 4.0 was the only real light coming out of PDC. Internet Explorer 9 is vaporware and Azure has morphed into last year's Amazon Web Services. But Silverlight promises Adobe AIR-like capabilities, support for microphones and Webcams, standalone Silverlight containers and better HTML support, including HTTP streaming, among other new features. A good thing is getting even better.

Microsoft's 'whitelist' helps hackers, says Trend Micro-->Open tlak of Microsfot

By recommending that users exclude some file extensions and folders from antivirus scans, Microsoft may put users at risk, a security company said today.

In a document published on its support site , Microsoft suggests that users do not scan some files and folders for malware as a way to improve performance in Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7 , Server 2003, Server 2008 and Server 2008 R2. "These files are not at risk of infection. If you scan these files, serious performance problems may occur because of file locking," Microsoft states in the document.

Among the files and folders Microsoft tells users to exclude are those associated with Windows Update and Group Policy, and files with the .edb., .sdb and .chk extensions contained within the "%windir%\security" folder.

Trend Micro took exception -- not with the list itself, but with Microsoft making it public. "Although it actually makes sense to stop checking Windows Update and some Group Policy-related files if you really want to speed up the system, we are concerned by the fact that this was released publicly," said David Sancho, a malware researcher with Trend Micro

Worms are most prevalent security problem

The Conficker worm continues to be one of the most prevalent threats facing PCs running Windows, according to a new security report published by Microsoft.

For the first six months of the year, Microsoft found that more than 5 million computers were infected with Conficker, according to its latest Security Intelligence Report.

Conficker spreads either by exploiting a vulnerability in the Microsoft Windows Server service, through infected removable media or brute-forcing weak passwords on other PCs.

Conficker alarmed Microsoft so much when it appeared that Microsoft issued an emergency patch in October 2008 for the software vulnerability that allowed it to spread rapidly.

The worm is still circulating, mainly in enterprises, said Vinny Gullotto, general manager of the Microsoft Malware Protection Center. Due to its password-cracking ability, if Conficker gets on one PC in a company, it can often then rapidly spread.

Microsoft collects data on infections from its free security products such as Windows Defender, the Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT), Security Essentials as well as ones the company sells.

Another worm -- called Taterf -- took the number two spot for the most infections at 4.9 million. Taterf steals authentication and account information for massively multiplayer online games such as World of Warcraft and Lineage, among others, and spreads through infected drives such as a USB stick or an infected network drive.

Microsoft did see a decline of machines infected with Zlob, a notorious Trojan horse that spread by tricking people into believing it was actually a media codec, which is software used to encode and decode audio or video.

Microsoft's free tools such as MSRT will remove Zlob. For the first half of the year, Microsoft saw only 2.3 million infections, dropping drastically from the 21.1 million infections the company counted for the same period a year prior.

Gullotto said that Microsoft received an e-mail from the supposed creators of Zlob saying that they were now "closing soon." The e-mail, in broken English allegedly from "Russia," complimented Microsoft on responding quickly to the threats.

But it's just a small victory, as there are plenty of other security problems. Fake antivirus programs are among those.

Small thing about Hacking....

As i know Hacking is de interesting for user who using & Danger one for against whom it s used... The tricks may vary, but the aim mostly common...

Let's come to the point....-->>>

It’s one thing to know that your systems generally are under fire from hackers around the world. It’s another to understand specific attacks against your systems that are possible.

Many information-security vulnerabilities aren’t critical by themselves.
However, exploiting several vulnerabilities at the same time can take its toll.

For example, a default Windows OS configuration, a weak SQL Server administrator password, and a server hosted on a wireless network may not be major security concerns separately. But exploiting all three of these vulnerabilities at the same time can be a serious issue.

Nontechnical attacks

• Exploits that involve manipulating people — end users and even yourself —are the greatest vulnerability within any computer or network infrastructure.
• Humans are trusting by nature, which can lead to social-engineering exploits.
• Social engineering is defined as the exploitation of the trusting nature of human beings to gain information for malicious purposes.

Network-infrastructure attacks

Hacker attacks against network infrastructures can be easy, because many networks can be reached from anywhere in the world via the Internet. Here are some examples of network-infrastructure attacks:

• Connecting into a network through a rogue modem attached to a
  computer behind a firewall
• Exploiting weaknesses in network transport mechanisms, such as TCP/IP and NetBIOS
• Flooding a network with too many requests, creating a denial of service (DoS) for legitimate requests
• Installing a network analyzer on a network and capturing every packet that travels across it, revealing confidential information in clear text configuration
• Piggybacking onto a network through an insecure 802.11b wireless

Operating-system attacks
Hacking operating systems (OSs) is a preferred method of the bad guys. OSs comprise a large portion of hacker attacks simply because every computer has one and so many well-known exploits can be used against them.

Occasionally, some operating systems that are more secure out of the box — such as flavours of BSD UNIX but hackers prefer attacking operating systems like Windows because they are widely used and better known for their vulnerabilities.

• Exploiting specific protocol implementation
• Attacking built-in authentication systems
• Breaking file-system security
• Cracking passwords and encryption mechanisms

Application and other specialized attacks
Applications take a lot of hits by hackers. Programs such as e-mail server
software and Web applications often are beaten down:

• Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) applications are frequently attacked because most firewalls and other security mechanisms are configured to allow full access to these programs from the Internet.
• Malicious software (malware) includes viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and spyware. Malware clogs networks and takes down systems.
• Spam (junk e-mail) is wreaking havoc on system availability and storagespace. And it can carry malware.
• Ethical hacking helps reveal such attacks against your computer systems.

Try Windows 7....

The research firm NPD Group says, retail sales of boxed copies of Windows 7 are 234% higher than Vista's were at launch, absolutely crushing the older operating system’s launch sales figures (which, admittedly, the older operating system pretty much deserves).

Windows 7 launched on October 22, and unit sales of Windows PCs between October 18 and 24 were up 49% over the same period a year ago, and 95% over the preceding week. But it says far more about how great Windows 7 is, and how smart Microsoft's marketing was in the months leading up to launch day.

One important point to notice is --> Microsoft's strategy of offering free, pre-release versions of Windows 7 (90 days trail version) paid off, giving consumers plenty of time to learn that what is new in dis OS and more or less this trail version used to practice , finding best features with others OS s . I’ve personally had that build running on my laptop for months with no issues whatsoever.

But the Microsoft advertising strategy worked as well, concentrating on the features and strengths of the OS rather than whining about Apple. And compared to the insipid and pompously hip Apple “I’m a Mac” ads, their ad strategy has been a real relief (the recent Apple ads that attempt to blunt the positive responses to Windows 7 are particularly pathetic and irritating: weak an unimaginative, they ought to have their tag lines changed from “I’m a Mac” to “I’m a douche”).

And let me mention one thing before you claim I’m simply a Microsoft Kool-Aid drinker: For years....

But I made the switch to Windows 7 on my home office system in early October (yes, I was geeky enough to be selected to host a launch party , not only has it been a pleasure both functionally and aesthetically, it's robust as hell: not one single crash or issue of any kind since I installed it.

Finally, Microsoft has released an operating system that deserves to be called great. And people have apparently noticed....

Try this dis new version make your s/m work efficiency...

These are my small creations....

IE su..ks...

'On the surface, the campaign against IE may seem like a cult of disgruntled techies who are angry at Microsoft or want to gripe about people who lag behind the technological curve.

But that analysis is too simplistic, said Dan Oliver, editor of .net, a UK magazine about Web design.

"This isn't an anti-Microsoft campaign," he said. "Microsoft makes some fantastic products. The latest version of their browser is a good browser. But with regards to IE ... [it] is an awful browser and no one should be using it."

He added: "Ultimately, we've kind of waited long enough. That's why there's a big movement of support for it because the geeks out there have known about this for years and have been waiting for big sites to jump on and push it forward."

In a statement to CNN, Microsoft said it also wants people to turn away from IE.'

I completely disagree with the "The latest version of their browser is a good browser." statement, but the point that people should use it over IE definitely still stands.

My opinion is FIREFOX 3.5 is de best VS any other browser...

FIREFOX 3.5 contains all de add-ons which is in all others browsers...