As Microsoft, we are the Persian forces, coming to the free land of Yahoo to ask for submission or some such nonsense. Sunnyvale gets to be the bastion of liberal thought, while Redmond is portrayed as a uninspired collective wanting nothing more than to grow in size.

I can really only appreciate the design of the joke, because as a part of Microsoft, I have a more humane view of the company than the rest of the world. The part of this that upsets me is how handcuffed we are. There’s no effective way we at Microsoft can comment on this sort of thing with the same tone; it’d only be funny to my co-workers, while for anyone else it’d be in extremely poor taste.

As a postscript, you’ve got to enjoy the irony of an ad for this parody appearing on Facebook.

My Friday started as innocently enough. Email and breakfast at my cafe, then a long slow mass transit trip to the airport for a flight to LAX. The Red Bull HQ wasn’t the sort of place LA cabbies seemed familiar with (but really, are they familiar with anything?), but I got myself there nonetheless. The Code Trip vs. Red Bull Party was largely an exercise in drooling over the gorgeous office space Red Bull calls home in Santa Monica (many thanks to Nate Warner for rolling out the waving wooden carpet).

After a riveting demo of SQL Data Services from Dave Robinson, I adjourned for the evening. Saturday was spent with my good friends Josh Fulton from Incase and the Nemesis of Evil and an early night of sleep.

Today began, well, just watch…

I rolled over an add on Facebook just now, and the URL caught my attention (though I must be honest, the temptation to slim my belly was there for the clicking). Look at that URL!

This is probably not going to get noticed by the majority of FB users, but it’s certainly one of those things; calling the users who actually click on your ads, and therefore generate revenue for your company, probably isn’t wise.

This screen is so human, so soft, so downright fucking cuddly, I just love it. Props should also be given to whomever on the Fuego Sparrow team came up with this privacy ping function. As the default is for the site to email you monthly to check that it’s still OK for them to share your location data, this is a great way to protect against irrate users. Nice work team Flame Heron; now just tell me what I’m supposed to use this Backdraft Canary thing to do.

PS - Yea, I think the name is funny, and I would’ve loved to be in the room bouncing those ideas off the walls.

The new MacBook Air is very slim and very pretty. Check out the photos of Steve’s keynote I shot for Engadget. Now it’s time to finally wrap up my grand CES story.

Steve Caravaial points out the existence of a sweet and free little add-on for Outlook that enables Live Mail accounts to be managed within your big, burly enterprise mail client:

For those that want to manage their Hotmail account (now known as Windows Live Hotmail) from Outlook 2003 or 2007, you can download the Microsoft Office Outlook Connector free of charge. You can also view your Windows Live Hotmail contacts in Outlook with the connector. So go check out all the benefits. I just installed it and it works great.

Social networking is Facebook’s core business, while it’s a side project for Google. Although Google has just attempted to add social networking to Google Reader (via Scoble), and is trying to take on Wikipedia with Knol, it remains to be seen whether they can be a great social networking platform. Even Umair Haq, the perennial Google fan-boy, admits that Google might not have the right DNA.

The revised site looks more polished and is easier to read than its previous incarnation. Duncan and the development team also included a shiny new media player with embed code for spreading your favourite videos far and wide.

In the last week, Laura has recommended a great video compression tool, Sarah found a very cool panoramic desktop viewer, and Max linked to a Media Center DVD library tutorial. Stop over and spend some time poking around 10, and don’t be afraid to feed them back ;)

Beginning tomorrow and running through the end of this month, Jonny Knoxville and the Jackass crew will be available online to entertain and gross out for the grand price of zero dollars (which could mean you’re theoretically being paid half a Euro to watch it). After the initial ad-supported run at Jackassworld, the film will be available for purchase online for the truly passionate fan of absurdity. Thank you Silverlight!

(Tim Sneath)