ray ozzie and msft

I can believe it Bubba, I just want your teams to succeed. I was fortunate enough to be in a focus group the other day, and I can say that its the best thing that Microsoft can do. We actually felt like we had a say in what was going on. Being in the tech field like so many others we develop a love-hate relationship with MS, but for my part its mostly a love thing right now. I really think that a new direction for MS would be to identify markets that they should wade into and others that should be left to hardware manufacturers. I know it might seem threatening to some of your partners, but a lot of them have dropped the marketing "ball" so to speak. (I say this being a former sales rep that had to make marketing pitches on the fly). I see so many things that MS is ahead of the game on, only to be eclipsed by someone that has a new marketing gimmick. I really think that the x-box team has really set an example the rest of the company could follow. I am still heartbroken that MS no longer makes the broadband wireless router. I could have ordered about ten of those last week. Keep up the good work Bubba, I look forward to reading the rest of your posts.

Branding at Microsoft is a funny thing...you should see some of the names products get because of trademark & international legal implications!

Ray is a SUPER smart guy and I'm happy to have him in the company, but come on, he didn't invent live. I love how history gets written...

Thanks for the link to the great article, Bubba. I do think that you should shorten the Windows Live name to just plain LIVE. Make it a flashy logo and have on the bottom in smaller print "part of the microsoft network". It seems like all the big internet companies have just one word names, for example, Yahoo, Google, Ask, etc. Considering the rebranding of MSN music to URGE, its not a large leap. Maybe Microsoft can get its "sexyness" back.