Microsoft has announced that they will be scrapping Internet Explorer. Spartan will be their now browser, and it will be more similar to Chrome and Firefox.

Big news. it probably makes most of us happy.

I think though that this must be an anti-Israel decision. Perhaps even an attempt to overthrow our government.

I mean, how will our government continue to function without Internet Explorer?  All government websites that allow user interaction, for paying bills, for downloading and uploading form, issuing payments, etc. all require Internet Explorer.

I can see the government collapsing over this. I can see civilian uprisings, as we will no longer be able to do our government business online, but will have to go stand in line at government offices. I see chaos.

I did not know that Microsoft was so anti-Israel. Until now.

(this post should be taken with a grain of humor)

I have been told by a few people that Life in Israel crashes when being viewed in Internet explorer 8.

My first response was that this is just another reason to not use Internet Explorer but to switch to Firefox or to Chrome (or to a Mac).

But some people won't do that, so I tried to find out what was casing it to crash. I found that Blogger has a bug with their "Followers" widget that causes pages to crash in IE8. I only added the Followers widget when I installed my new template, which is when it started crashing for people.

So, assuming that is the cause of the problem, I have removed the Followers widget. If you use IE8, please let me know if it is still crashing or if that solved the problem. Maybe when Blogger fixes the bug I'll put the Followers widget back.

This is really cool. I think I want one!

This really has nothing to do with Israel (o.k. it does because we use computers in Israel), but I feel like writing about it anyways.

According to this, Microsoft has begun telling computer makers that they will be phasing out Windows XP by the end of the year.

It seems that the new Windows Vista which was recently released into the marketplace has not been received warmly by the adoring public. Microsoft does not know what to do because they cannot move the boxes of Vista from their warehouses. So they are going to try forcing people to buy it. They will not be able to buy XP any longer, after the end of the year, and will have to go to Vista.

I will add that we have one computer at work with Vista and it is horrible. The user hates it and I hate it. None of our internal applications work on it. The interactivity on it is horrible and annoying.
I have yet to find anybody who is happy or even just satisfied using Windows Vista.

If Linux has not yet been a big enough threat to Windows, they now have the opportunity to make a move. Consumers will not be happy about this latest development. In the end I would guess that Microsoft will be forced to capitulate and not cancel XP.

I went to a Microsoft conference today. The objective of the conference was to introduce to IT professionals some of the new generation applications being released right now. Those include Windows Vista, MS Exchange 2007, and Office 2007 with Sharepoint Services. Overall the conference was great and the new programs have really nice features, which I will not go into here. Unfortunately I could only go to one track so I went to the MS Exchange track because it is most relevant for me. I really would have liked to go to the Vista track as well, but it was not meant to be...

A few interesting points from the conference.

The conference opened up with a dedication to Nimrod Segev. Nimrod Segev was one of the prime developers and a major contributor in the development of Windows Vista. Nimrod was killed in the Lebanon War II.

Danny Yamin, the CEO of Microsoft Israel gave an introductory speech to the conference. He started off the speech by comparing it to his bar mitzvah speech, and then went on to thank numerous people who were involved in putting together the days events, along with teams involved in the development of the applications.

Danny Yamin, in his speech, was very hesitant when he did this, but he wished everybody well for the new year. He was cautious and even said it might not be appropriate as it is not really our new year but because it is the new calendar year he wished everybody a successful year. He mentioned an anecdote that his daughter is studying in Bar Ilan University and was sitting in a lecture next to a pregnant woman. She asked the lady when she is due to give birth and the response was, "in Cheshvan (the Hebrew month rather than mentioning the English month)".

Efi (I don't remember his last name), one of the heads of the development teams on Exchange 2007, was showing some and explaining some of the new features. He mentioned a movie clip that had been going around virally by email. The clip was one in which somebody used the Windows beeps to play a Christmas song. He mentioned it and then showed us what he did using the new version - he used the Windows beeps to make a Hannuka song instead!

And last but not least, there were the typos throughout the slideshows. It is a bit surprising considering these were senior people in Microsoft Israel, yet they had spelling mistakes in their presentations. The funniest of the mistakes was at the end of the day. The presenter was describing a case installation his team did in the Prime Ministers Office with the new applications. He was going to concentrate on one specific feature called Unified Messaging. The title of the slideshow presentation said, "Unified Massaging". It was pretty funny (I do not know how many people noticed it, but it was funny for me) picturing this guy installing a massage system for the Prime Ministers Office.

I am at a Microsoft conference today. The topics under discussion are the new operating system Windows Vista and the new version of the mail server, Exchange 2007. It is taking place at the David Intercontinental Hotel in Tel Aviv.

While waiting to go in I found this corner where they offer free wifi access. I won't be connected much today, but maybe will have another chance or two over the course of the day.