The Innovations of Internet Explorer →
A pretty cool walkthrough of IE's history of making the web better including innovations including the DOM, CSS, AJAX's XMLHttpRequest, and many elements now being codified in CSS 3. Some eye-opening stuff in here. It's too bad Microsoft stopped innovating between IE 6 and IE 8.
Nation Celebrates Full Week Without Deadly Mass Shooting →
It's sickening that this had to be updated to correct that as of this morning the headline is no longer true.
Immigration and Skilled Workers →
...and the Olympics. In the same way the U.S. trains Olympians before shipping them off to other countries to compete against us, we train doctors, lawyers, and engineers that can't get visas to stay and work in the country. The number of employment-based visas is still capped at a hundred and forty thousand a year despite bipartisan support for reform.
The idea is to make the perfect engineering space: one giant room that fits thousands of people, all close enough to collaborate together.
— Mark Zuckerberg as a comment on Facebook's campus expansion announcement..
Doesn't sound anywhere close to my perfect engineering space, much less a comfortable one...
Jury Awards $1 Billion to Apple in Samsung Patent Case →
Samsung was found guilty of infringement on six of seven Apple patents asserted against them and was found willfully infringing in several cases for a total damage award of $1.051 billion.
Why Waiting in Line Is Torture →
The psychology behind waiting in line and why forcing customers to walk six times farther to get their bags at an airport reduced complaints about baggage slowness to almost zero.
Sorting and Searching at the Library →
A cool exposition of how libraries have built optimal sorting and searching algorithms for humans. It's a neat parallel between the physical and the digital.
The TIME Mobility Poll →
Some interesting data on mobile phone and mobile technology usage around the world and our attitudes toward it.
Introducing Outlook.com →
Two weeks ago Windows Live Hotmail became Outlook.com. I've spent two years working on infrastructure for this release, and many many others have been working for the last year on the redesign and updated features:
- A completely new Metro-style UI redesign keeps buttons and menus out of the way and your email front and center
- Integration with Facebook and Twitter makes your inbox truly social (not just with Google+)
- Chat history and SMS sync to Windows devices like Windows 8 and Windows Phone
- Sweep, scheduled cleanup, instant actions, pinning, and a newsletter category keep your inbox clean
- Better integration with Office Web Apps and Skydrive give you the real Word and Excel and anywhere access to documents
As excited as we are about the release, we're even more excited about the press coverage we've gotten and the amazing response from users:
- "[W]ith a new brand and some impressive features, Microsoft's Web email service might finally be cool again." -David Goldman, CNN
- "Hotmail just pulled off the biggest victory in the inbox game since Gmail" -Sam Biddle, Gizmodo
- "[W]hen it comes to social features, Outlook does Gmail one better. Where Gmail narrowly focuses on Google+, Outlook includes deep integration with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other networks." -Christina Chaey, Fast Company
- "It's the best-designed Web email service I've ever seen." -Farhad Manjoo, Slate
We hit the top of TechMeme two days in a row and even ended up on the front page of the paper version of the Wall Street Journal! You can read glowing reviews from The Verge, Wired, ArsTechnica, TechCruch, Engadget, Read Write Web, Ed Bott at ZDNet, and GeekWire, among others.
We're all really excited about the launch, about the new brand and the new product, and especially all the great comments and press about the redesign. I'm definitely very proud to have been a part of this, and I hope you go give it a try.