In what can be described as a potential game-changing piece of software, the Live.com team at Microsoft has demoed a new widget gadget that allows users to get personalized TV show recommendations and then record them remotely with the click of a button…on their home PC Media Center. The demo occurred at the annual Search Champs Conference held in Redmond.

Here’s a screenshot…

Continue Reading: Potential Game-Changer: TV Recommendations on Live.com

First, the podcast: Microsoft, Google, and the DOJ Privacy Case (7.21 MB mp3 )

During a meeting today at the Microsoft Search Champs Conference in Redmond, WA, Yusuf Mehdi, Senior VP of MSN Information Services, discussed the recent blowup involving the U.S. Government’s subpoena of personal information from major Search Engines including MSN, Yahoo, Google, and AOL. This was not the first time that the U.S. Government has requested information from corporations in this manner. It was, however, one of the most talked about, spurred on by a press release from Google, who announced that they had turned down the request. Soon after, it was revealed that both Yahoo and MSN has complied with it, casting an instant shadow over those companies. In response, Ken Moss, general manager of MSN web search, provided a few relevant details of the case on the MSN Search Blog.

Continue Reading: Microsoft Didn’t Give User Data to DOJ in Privacy Case (podcast)

Alex Barnett and I were fortunate enough to get two of the foremost Identity thinkers on board at the same time for a podcast recently. Dick Hardt is Founder and CEO of Sxip Identity, and is well-known for his Identity 2.0 talk he gave at the OSCon and Web 2.0 Conferences. Kim Cameron is the […]

Continue Reading: Identity/Attention Podcast

I love reading Robert Cringely’s column over at PBS. He’s always got some amazingly interesting conspiracy or takeover theory that gets you thinking way beyond where you currently are.

Here I was imagining that Google would try to create a content platform with Google Base. Cringely, on the other hand, thinks Google is planting 20ft hardware boxes at 4.5 petabytes each at locations all along the Internet, to co-opt everyone’s data and put every other company on a platform below it, effectively taking over the Web. How do they do this? With their black fiber, of course!

That whole Google Office thing? That’s a laugh. It will be a small piece of their world-dominating technology. And he’s got links to get you thinking that he may just be onto something. I would love to be there when Larry or Sergei (the Google Guys) read this.

Cringely is either crazy, brilliant, or both. Whatever he is, he’s fun to read.

Update: Robert Scoble has addressed my question in a post this evening. He says that I’m asking the wrong question, but then goes on to say that Microsoft should become more trustful anyway…(so apparently my question wasn’t completely wrong). It is certainly the right one for me, anyway. I think I get his point, though…that […]

Continue Reading: Why Should I Trust Microsoft with My Attention Metadata?