Will giving customers a little inside information keep them loyal or let them take advantage of you? The immediacy and interaction of blogs have caught the imagination of employees who want to talk about their work with peers, customers and anyone who's interested.
Some companies have embraced the idea: research directors and analysts at Jupiter and Gartner publish their thoughts in official blogs. Others are more suspicious, and last week Borland blogger Danny Thorpe ruffled feathers internally by talking about future features and pinning a version number on the product they might be in. So who is saying what?
Ask Microsoft about the specifics of future versions of Office or Windows and you tend to get the reply that the company doesn't discuss unannounced products -- or that until a product is finished, it's not possible to say what's in it. But you can get a good idea of what's happening with the technical underpinnings of Longhorn, the next version of Windows, and developer tools such as Visual C++, by reading developers' blogs.
There are around 400 Microsoft employees blogging. Some are informal, personal journals where you might read about conference speeches and interesting Web pages, just like any other blog. Most are full of technical information about how to work with the latest developer tools, discussions about the architecture of Longhorn, or explanations of how the features in Word and OneNote are developed.
The Channel 9 Web site combines blogs from five Microsoft employees who want to give developers "a way to listen in to the cockpit at Microsoft."
Several senior developers at Macromedia, including the chief software architect, Kevin Lynch, have blogs covering the products they work on. Ray Ozzie, chief executive of Groove Networks and the man behind Lotus Notes, debates his software products and technology developments with customers and critics alike. Software pioneers Dan Bricklin (VisiCalc) and Mitch Kapor (Lotus 1-2-3) have blogs that cover their current projects.
Read the right blogs and you can get the unofficial or semi-official inside track. For example, a post from prolific Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble mentioned Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 (and complained that the real name was far less interesting than the codename Lone Star). That version of Tablet PC is tied to Service Pack 2 and the 2005 means it will come out in Microsoft's 2005 financial year, which starts in July. A few days later came the official announcement that the service pack wouldn't be out for June as planned but "in the third quarter" -- July at the earliest.
In general, Microsoft's attitude is relaxed and employees police their own blogs. As recent convert Chris Pratley, a group program manager, puts it in his blog: "We have small teams of dedicated people who don't need rules ... to make them perform."
Scoble proposed a "corporate weblog manifesto" last year, with 21 tips for making a blog worthwhile (three are about being open with information, and most are common sense). He's working with the PR, legal and corporate teams at Microsoft to rewrite it as "Blogging Best Practices," to help other employees.
But the Channel 9 team points out that some things won't be discussed: "This has nothing to do with censorship, but with working within the reality of the system that exists in our world today. You will not change anything by taking on legal or financial issues, you will only shock the system, spook the passengers and create a negative situation."
The Taipei MRT is open all night tonight following New Year’s Eve festivities, and is offering free rides from nearby Green Line stations. Taipei’s 2025 New Year’s Eve celebrations kick off at Taipei City Hall Square tonight, with performances from the boy band Energy, the South Korean girl group Apink, and singers Gigi Leung (梁詠琪) and Faith Yang (楊乃文). Taipei 101’s annual New Year’s firework display follows at midnight, themed around Taiwan’s Premier12 baseball championship. Estimates say there will be about 200,000 people in attendance, which is more than usual as this year’s celebrations overlap with A-mei’s (張惠妹) concert at Taipei Dome. There are
LOOKING FOR WHEELS: The military is seeking 8x8 single-chassis vehicles to test the new missile and potentially replace the nation’s existing launch vehicles, the source said Taiwan is developing a hypersonic missile based on the Ching Tien (擎天) supersonic cruise missile, and a Czech-made truck has been tentatively selected as its launch vehicle, a source said yesterday. The Ching Tien, formerly known as Yun Feng (雲峰, “Cloud Peak”), is a domestically developed missile with a range of 1,200km to 2,000km being deployed in casemate-type positions as of last month, an official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The hypersonic missile to be derived from the Ching Tien would feature improved range and a mobile launch platform, while the latter would most likely be a 12x12 single chassis
UP AND DOWN: The route would include a 16.4km underground section from Zuoying to Fongshan and a 9.5km elevated part from Fongshan to Pingtung Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday confirmed a project to extend the high-speed rail (HSR) to Pingtung County through Kaohsiung. Cho made the announcement at a ceremony commemorating the completion of a dome at Kaohsiung Main Station. The Ministry of Transportation and Communications approved the HSR expansion in 2019 using a route that branches off a line from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung’s Zuoying District (左營). The project was ultimately delayed due to a lack of support for the route. The Zuoying route would have trains stop at the Zuoying Station and return to a junction before traveling southward to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝).
Parts of the nation, including in the south, could experience temperatures as low as 7°C early tomorrow morning, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. A strong continental cold air mass coupled with the effect of radiative cooling would bring cold weather to several northern cities and counties, and could even affect areas as far south as Tainan early tomorrow, the CWA said. Keelung, Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan, and Hsinchu, Miaoli and Yilan counties would experience temperatures below 10°C until this evening, according to cold surge advisories issued by the weather agency. The weather across the nation is forecast to remain
RSS