Wait … Microsoft Had Its Own Version of YouTube?

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Microsoft LogoIs there any industry where Microsoft isn’t competing with bitter rival GoogleGoogleGoogle? Think about it: Bingbingbing vs. Google Search, Google DocsGoogle DocsGoogle Docs vs. Microsoft Office (soon to be online), GmailGmailGmail vs. Hotmail, Windows Mobile vs. AndroidAndroidAndroid, and let’s not forget Windows vs. Google Chrome OS.

With all of these high profile battles, you really can’t blame us if we’re saying “meh” to the news that Microsoft is closing Soapbox. Wait, what’s Soapbox you ask? Why, that’s their version of YouTubeYouTubeYouTube, and part of the far more popular MSN Video website.

The YouTube clone opened up in early 2007, not long after Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion. It just hasn’t gained much traction though – thus why you’ve probably never heard of it. And when you’ve had a product out for over two years and you fail to make any inroads on your much larger competitor, it’s a good time to quit.

But hey, I hear Microsoft’s embarking on a new venture: retail stores. Maybe they’ll have better luck there.


Tags: bing, microsoft, Soapbox, youtube
iMashable > Social Media news blog covering cool new websites and social networks: Facebook, Google, Twitter, MySpace, Microsoft and YouTube.

How Bill Gates Uses Office and Three Monitors - Bill Gates - Lifehacker

How Bill Gates Uses Office and Three Monitors - Bill Gates - Lifehacker

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Bill Gates drops a lengthy blog post explaining how he gets things done, Microsoft style, using three monitors to watch an inbox, read or write documents, and browse the web. Spoiler: He also digs SharePoint, LiveMeeting, and other MS apps.
Photo by batmoo.
Gates writes that he gets at least 100 emails per day from Microsoft employees, and "many more" from customers and partners. How does he filter all that information across three large flat-screen displays?

I keep my Outlook 2007 Inbox open on the screen to the left so I can see new messages as they come in. I usually have the message or document that I'm currently reading or writing in the center screen. The screen on the right is where I have room to open up a browser or look at a document that someone has sent me in e-mail.

That's not so atypical from the standard three-monitor setup, but it is interesting how he devotes two entire screens to message streams and the messages themselves. A lot of the rest of the post reads like endorsement copy for Office products like SharePoint, LiveMeeting, and other peripheral Office apps, but we don't doubt that Gates truly does appreciate the "unified communications technology" that puts everything into one Outlook bin. Next time you're up for blogging, though, Bill? Post screenshots.
Do you get things done like Gates, or do you find his methods a bit too integrated? Read through his work routine description, then tell us your thoughts in the comments.

Office Hours: How Bill Gates uses Office [Inside Office Online blog via Lifehacker Australia]

iMashable > Social Media news blog covering cool new websites and social networks: Facebook, Google, Twitter, MySpace, Microsoft and YouTube.

UK Government Writes Twitter Guide...in 20 Pages

A tweet can have a maximum of 140 characters. A guide on how to use Twitter, well, that’s another matter. The UK government has one, and it took its author, Neil Williams, 20 pages and 36,215 characters to create it.

The guide, embedded below, is actually quite an interesting read. Besides giving a clear cut explanation of what TwitterTwitter is and how (and why) the UK government should go about using it, it enumerates a number of third party tools (for example, bit.lybit.ly is to be used for links because it offers traffic analysis), talks about risks of using Twitter (for example, publishing embargoed news too early), and discusses the value of retweeting. Unlike some other Twitter guides, like the one from Wall Street Journal, it’s not focused on forbidding things and telling employees what NOT to do, which is a good example of how these types of guides should be done.

While we’re at on the subject of very long Twitter guides, you might want to check Mashable’s Twitter Guide Book, a collection of resources which helps you understand what Twitter is and how to make the best of it.

Template Twitter Strategy for Government Departments

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Tags: Guide, twitter

WARNING: TwitViewer May Be a Phishing Scam

Want to know who visits your Twitter () profile? Sounds potentially interesting, and it’s the premise of TwitViewer.net, a site that is being shared by thousands of Twitter users this afternoon with the message “Want to know whos stalking you on Twitter?”

Unfortunately, it appears that TwitViewer may be a phishing scam, or at the least, is probably not doing what it promises. Upon entering your credentials, it does show you a list of users that supposedly visited your profile – but it seems likely this is simply fake, as a dummy account we created just to test the app showed 200 recent visitors seconds after registering. The app also automatically tweets out the “want to know whos stalking you?” message (and yes, the message itself is spelled wrong).

It’s unclear that this is phishing, as the site does let you know that it will send out the auto-tweet. It’s almost certainly not doing what it promises though, as there would be no conceivable way for it to know who has been visiting your Twitter profile. In short: be wary of this app, and if you logged in, you may want to consider changing your password (Twitter suggests you do the same).

Shirts Taste Good: YouTube Viral Hits Become Priceless T-Shirts

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: Shirts Taste Good

Quick Pitch: Shirts Taste Good sells YouTube () inspired t-shirts.

Genius Idea: Some things just go together. Milk and cookies, peanut butter and jelly, bagels and cream cheese, and now your favorite YouTube videos on t-shirts. Shirts Taste Good is a simple but genius t-shirt site that brings viral YouTube videos to life in t-shirt form. You’ll immediately recognize the Rick Astley/Rick Roll tees, the visual depiction of Bill O’Reilly’s shining web moment (this one’s an internet meme), and the new classic I’m on a Boat featuring Andy Samberg.

Shirts Taste Good releases a new tee every week starting at $14.95, with the oldies but goodies costing $17.95 (plus shipping). Designs are pretty colorful and clever interpretations of videos we’ve all come to know and love (or at least recognize). Should a memorable video escape your recollection, you can click the t-shirt icon on the homepage to watch the video for a quick refresher.

We think their starting stock is pretty priceless as is, but should your favorite viral video moment be absent from their inventory list, you can submit your suggestions for consideration. We already have our eyes on a few favorites, but we’d love to hear the Shirts Taste Good tees you want to wear right now. Share your personal favorites with us in the comments.

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Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

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BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP () app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”

Number of Social Networking Users Has Doubled Since 2007

With Facebook, Twitter (), LinkedIn (), and other social networking sites growing rapidly, it’s not too surprising that on the whole, the number of social networking users has doubled since 2007.

Specifically, 55.6 million adults – or just less than 1/3rd of the population – in the US now visit social networks at least monthly, according to a new report from Forrester Research. That’s up from just 15 percent of adults in 2007, and around 18 percent last year.

At that level, social networking is now more popular than instant messaging among adults, which 54.3 million people report using. However, watching video, online shopping, and email (contrary to other reports we’ve seen) are still more widely used than social networks.

Here’s the breakdown:

Image courtesy of iStockphoto (), Dalaj; DNY59

Can a Search Game Help Bing Beat Google?

Bingbing is trying a lot of different things to market itself and may even end up powering Yahoo’s search results, but at the end of the day, its quality needs to be superior to GoogleGoogle if it’s going to win over the masses.

One interesting new effort to improve search results is a game – Page Hunt – that shows a series of web pages, asking users to guess which query would show each page in Bing’s top 5 results. Users score points based on their answers – 100 points if you guess a query that shows the page #1, 90 points if it’s in the #2 slot, etc.

You’ve got 3 minutes to get as many points as possible, with some pages being really easy to guess (like the official site of a celebrity) and others being seemingly impossible.

MIT’s Technology Review explains how this could help Bing improve search results:

“The idea is to gather useful information on user search habits which could be used to fine tune search algorithms and ranking scheme … Page Hunt is a clever twist on “human computation”–using people to perform tasks that computers find difficult to do.”

Essentially, Page Hunt is trying to figure out “what would users type to get to this page?” and then identify trends and habits. Judging from my experience in running through the game a few times, it’s hard to say whether Bing doesn’t understand me, or I just enter weird search terms, because I ran into a bunch of dead ends where I simply had to “skip” the page that the game was showing me.

However, that seems to be the point – if enough people play Page Hunt, Bing will conceivably get some interesting data that can help them refine their results for the better. A small but potentially useful step in trying to build a better search engine.