Ray Ozzie- “looking forward”

Ray Ozzie: “If 2005 was a year of “changeâ€? for me, 2006 will be a year to “buildâ€?.  Much of what I seek to accomplish here is already clear; some is emergent thinking.  As plans gel, I very much look forward to interacting with some of our largest customers so they can play an active role in shaping the ‘services transformation’ of enterprise systems in a way that’s material and meaningful to their businesses.”

A lot of interesting comments from Ray. Like many MSFT employees, I’m very much looking forward to more of Ray’s input as the finishing ‘build’ touches are put onto the next wave of products and the rapid feedback of the Vista and O12 beta cycles drive improvement to the products shipping in 2006 and also provide ideas for the next generation of products. Ray’s input into our RTC products, as evidenced by the “always-on ‘portals’” he describes in his post, should be very exciting to see as well. Here’s to 2006 and some exciting product shipments.

Update from Web 2.0 Explorer- Ray Ozzie’s Christmas Message

More predictions on Google

Interesting predictions this year, especially surrounding Google. In this one, Dave predicts Google’s Hailstorm.

Blogging’s naked truth

InformationWeek has named Robert Scoble as a change agent that will affect IT in the coming year. He’s changed Microsoft to be sure- I’ll be interested to see what he does in 2006.

Advances in PowerPoint

Brendan Busch: Welcome to PowerPoint 12!

Xbox Live Diamond Card

There’s a perks program for Xbox Live users- check it out.