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Microsoft Adding Blogs to Longhorn?

prostoalex writes "A Microsoft Research project called 'Wallop' has weblogging and document-sharing features and will be integrated into the next-generation Microsoft OS. In related news, MSN is being split into two subdivisions, one of which will take care of communications tools (Messenger, Passport, Hotmail, ISP service), while the other will deal with Web properties (MSN.com, etc.)"

4 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. staggering by selderrr · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates said Microsoft will spend about $6.8 billion on research and development this year.

    Amazing... they can spend all this money (without hardware R&D like Apple) and still don't get anywhere near MacOSX in terms of userfriendlyness.

    I always wondered : do MS programmers/unit managers get a bonus for every feature they come up with ? In the past 10 years, bloat has been the only constant in redmond IMHO

  2. research, review... by Empiric · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Blogs are Microsoft Research?

    This just seems like a relatively trivial application-level chunk of code. But then I suppose any technologies existing anywhere which Microsoft wishes to integrate into the operating system are best-marketed as coming from "research". Observing as R&D... enviable position.

    --
    ~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
  3. Re:For keeping better track of Employee blogs? by ScottSpeaks! · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Maybe it'll also have content restrictions embedded in it. Rememember the Frontpage 2002 EULA which forbade its use "in connection with any site that disparages Microsoft" (to say nothing not allowing the user to "promote racism, hatred or pornography")? Which would be even more problematic if applied to the OS itself. The racism and hatred provisions wouldn't be a problem for me (unless you count general misanthropy), but between the other two, I'd have to cut my blogging in half.

  4. remember windows '98? by mstamat · · Score: 2, Insightful

    With Windows '98 Microsoft was proudly proclaiming that they integrated the browser with the OS, thus unifying and enhancing the user experience. I remember hearing stupid quotes like "The browser is the OS" and other crap from these days.
    Microsoft said that because in '98, surfing the web was supposedely the coolest thing around. Today weblogs are considered cool, so Microsoft goes that way. They just want to make the "average" user eager to pay them to get the new "cool" features.
    Personally I don't expect anything exciting from Longhorn's weblogging features.