Microsoft Musings

G-mail does a wonderful job of scanning your e-mail for street addresses…..

although it doesn’t do so good with dates..

PCWorld.com reports:

Microsoft says that it will begin charging $1.50 for users to download a copy of the Office 2007 beta 2.

“In just the past two months since its launch, more than 3 million people have downloaded the 2007 Microsoft Office system beta 2,” the company said in a statement sent via e-mail.

“Given how dramatically the beta 2 downloads have exceeded our goals, we have made the business decision to implement a cost-recovery measure for downloading the beta.”

Microsoft will begin charging users starting Wednesday, it said. The company released beta 2 of Office 2007 in May.

3 million people??? WOW!! I have a feeling that this release of Office will be a huge success. Personally, I think it’s a lot more intuitive than Office 2003 and I predict that openoffice.org will have a long hard road ahead.

(Written by Philipp Lennsen)

Wouldn’t it be nice to see Google’s top secret ranking formula? The piece of source code that makes a web page stand or fall in rankings, rumored to contain over 100 different factors? A piece of source code like…

function getPagerank(url)
{
// start off with a random low PR
pagerank = randomNumber(0, 3);

if ( pageHostedOn(url, 'google.com') ) {
pagerank++;
}
else if ( pageHostedOn(url, 'microsoft.com') ) {
pagerank--;
}

if ( pageValidates(url) ) {
pagerank *= .5;
}

tag_value['b'] = 1;
tag_value['h2'] = 2;
tag_value['h1'] = 3;
tag_value['strong'] = -1; // W3C sux!
pagerank = calculateTagsPr(tag_value, pagerank);

// Sergey said good news sites have
// lots of nested tables
tablesOnPage = getTagCount('table');
if (tablesOnPage >= 50) {
pagerank += 2;
}

if (pagerank >= 5) {
pagerank = 4; // helps selling AdWords
}

if ( linksFrom('mattcutts.com', url) >= 4 ) {
// I link to "clean" sites only
// – Matt, Feb 2006
pagerank += 2;
}

pagerank += countBacklinks(url) / 10000;

blacklist1 = getList('government.cn/censored.txt');
blacklist2 = getList('c:larry-page-hatelist.txt');
if ( inArray(blacklist1, url) ||
inArray(blacklist2, url) ) {
pagerank = 0;
}

d = dashesInUrl(url);
pagerank = (d >= 3) ? pagerank -1 : pagerank + 1;

if ( inString(url, "how to build a bomb") ) {
// added on request. 2004-12-01.
recipient = "peter@homelandsecurity.gov";
subject = "You might wanna check this...";
sendMailTo(recipient, subject, url);

// page might still be relevant
pagerank++;
}

if ( month() == "June" || month() == "October" ) {
// makes people talk about
// PR updates, good publicity
pagerank -= randomNumber(1,3);
}

if ( linkCol(url) == WHITE &&
pageCol(url) == WHITE ) {
// spammer!! Googleaxe it!!
pagerank = 0;
}

if (url == "http://www.nytimes.com") {
// just testing, pls remove tomorrow
// – Frank, June 2003
pagerank = 10;
}

return pagerank;
}

[Thanks Alek for the idea!]

Some Rights Reserved by Philipp Lennsen at Google Blogoscoped.

Everything is finally all cleared up!! I received an e-mail from Google yesterday stating that my orders have been both canceled, I checked and sure enough they finally are!! (and a great big thanks for the gifts that you all at Google sent, that made my day! ) According to an earlier e-mail from Google it was a technical issue that created the problems.

 We understand that you have been unable to cancel the order placed on 7/7 and have since purchased this product through buy.com. A technical issue prevented this transaction from being completed. As for your order on 7/12, unfortunately due to the same issue affecting your order on 7/7, we are unable to process this transaction and will need to cancel it as well. Our engineers have been alerted and are working to resolve this issue.

So far I’ve placed two orders and they have both been plagued with the technical difficulty. Now my question is, Has the issue been fixed? Am I free to order with Google Checkout once again, or should I continue to avoid it??

Remember when I complained about Google Checkout?? Well, I came home from work yesterday, and a fedex package from Mountain View, CA was awaiting me. Look what I found!!!!

Dear Mr. Witmer,

I do apologize for the trouble you experienced using the Google Checkout system. In an attempt to make it up to you, I have included some Google goodies.

I hope you enjoy the gifts and have a great day!

Sincerely, Libby Neville

(Click on thumbnails for higher resolution pictures)

Thank-you sooo much, Google and Libby!!! You guys are the best. I already feel much better! I’m Feeling Lucky!!

Digg it!!

AMD has agreed to buy ATI for $5.4 Billion. This is a good marriage in my opinion. Intel makes its own graphics chips, and its only fitting that AMD makes its own as well, and buying a well-established company like ATI gives AMD a big jump start. In other related news, AMD has slashed some of its dual-core processor prices in half. That’s even better news.

I know, it was just a couple of weeks ago that I was crowing about how slick Google Checkout is, but I’ve changed my mind. Here’s the deal. I placed an order with Buy.com on July 7, 2006. No problem, very slick. I received an e-mail from both Google and Buy.com thanking me for my order. Days came and went, and I kept checking the status of the order and always it said In progress. It was an in-stock item as far as I know, and Buy.com has always been very prompt in my experiences with them, so this was strange. So finally, on July 11th I sent an e-mail using the send message to seller wizard in Google Checkout. No response. Not even an automated reply. Finding no phone number on Buy.com to contact them, I did a web search and found a customer service number. After holding briefly, I was connected to a customer support person, and he informed me that they have not yet received payment. With the limited information available to him, he couldn’t tell me what the problem exactly was, but encouraged me to contact Google Checkout to find out more details. HELLO??? I paid for this on the 7th of July, and received an order confirmation from Google Checkout. By the way, this is July 19th, 12 days later. Why did I not receive an e-mail from Google stating that my credit card number or billing information is wrong?? I’m fairly certain it’s not, and besides doesn’t Google verify your billing info when you place an order?? Needless to say, I’m not very happy with them. I submitted an e-mail to cancel the order (we shall see if that ever happens), and I placed the order again, only this time I did NOT use Google Checkout.

P.S. I also placed an order on the 12th of July from Buy.com (before I realized what was going on), and it also shows “In Progress”. I’m suspicious the same problem is going on there as well, and the friendly customer support fellow at Buy.com also agreed with me, although he didn’t look it up and verify it.

Update 07/20/06 – I received a reply to my e-mail from Buy.com.

We request you to contact Google Checkout regarding the order. Please contact us with any further questions you may have. Your satisfaction is important to us.

Update 07/20/06 – I sent an e-mail to Google Purchases. We shall see what they say.

Your message has been sent. We read every message that we receive, and will continue to post new information on our Help Center.

Update 07/27/06 – received an e-mail from Google Purchases.

Hi Kirby,

Thank you for contacting us regarding your Google Checkout orders with Buy.com on 7/7 and 7/12. We’ve noticed that there’s been some delay in processing these two orders. We’re sorry for any inconvenience that you may have experienced and we’d like to address any questions you may have:

- We understand that you have been unable to cancel the order placed on 7/7 and have since purchased this product through buy.com. A technical issue prevented this transaction from being completed. As for your order on 7/12, unfortunately due to the same issue affecting your order on 7/7, we are unable to process this transaction and will need to cancel it as well. Our engineers have been alerted and are working to resolve this issue. As a result, we’re following up with Buy.com to ensure that both of your orders are cancelled and refunded promptly.

- Also, we’ve confirmed that your current billing information in your Google Checkout Account is in good standing.

Again, we apologize for any inconvenience this issue has caused. If you have any additional concerns, please feel free to respond directly to this email.

Sincerely, The Google Checkout Team

Update July 25 – received e-mail from buy.com. Hello?? This order was supposed to be canceled by now, at least according to Google.

Hello Kirby,
Just a note to let you know that we are still working hard on filling your order #28434304. We have placed an urgent order with our suppliers and are waiting on the backordered or preordered product(s) below.

You’ll receive an email from us once your item is on its way.

Order #28434304

sku – 202179556 : description – LM742 17IN BK LCD 500:1 8MS 1280X1024 ANA

If you wish to cancel your order for this item please visit https://secure.buy.com/corp/support/login.asp, or if you have any questions please contact customer support at http://www.buy.com/support.

Sincerely,
Customer Support Team

Update July 25 – I sent an e-mail to buy.com and the google checkout team explaining that this order was supposed to be canceled long time ago. Here is an e-mail from buy.com.

Hello Kirby,

We have received and processed your cancellation request regarding your order #28434304.

We have cancelled the following item(s) from your order:

Order #28434304

sku – 202179556 : description – LM742 17IN BK LCD 500:1 8MS 1280X1024 ANA

Items not listed above may still ship to you after they have entered the shipping process.

You will not be billed for any unshipped items on this order if your method of payment was a credit card. If you used another method of payment such as a check, money order, or PayPal account, please allow a few business days to process your refund to that method of payment.

We regret that you had to cancel and hope you come back to Buy.com very soon!

If you have any questions, please contact customer support at http://www.buy.com/support.

Sincerely,
Customer Support Team

Update July 27 – Google sends me Goodies. :)

You can now download Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 Beta 3 from Microsoft’s Website. I tried installing it, but you need to uninstall Beta 2 first, and I can’t for some reason. It gives me an error saying I have to uninstall it from the account that installed it. Why can’t the installer uninstall it??

Hey… it works!! I sent a message from Windows Live Messenger to Yahoo Messenger. Now that’s cool….

This looks interesting. http://www.freecsscart.com/

* Ajax driven
* Mass Email
* Payment options/Paypal or merchant account
* Shipping module
* Integrates Visually with existing site
* Custom Modules For mambo, wordpress, Text Pattern, Stats Widget
* Sweet Admin Panel
* FREE!!!

I can’t wait until I can get my hands on a beta.