Srikanth_t

I guess I am repeating the same old point I made in previous Live Communications/ Office communicator threads.

Many of the features in Office communicator are directly plagiarised from Verizon's IOBI product. I guess this once again proves Microsoft's tradition of not being the original innovator. What's even worse in this case is, Mr. Bill G  himself invited a VZ exec to showcase the IOBI functionality on stage with him at a COMDEX show couple of years ago only to steal it later. Geez....

Was it this board or someother... someone said that MSN maps offer better zoom than Google's.

 That's NOT true.  The best zoom on MSN is 150 yards. Whereas google can zoom up to 110 yards. Also the majority of the best zoom level images on google are full color while it's not so in MSN.

 
 I also like the "Hybrid" feature in google. Somehow it feels much more seamless and neater than MSN's "with labels" images.

 Finally i got to say this, imitiation is the best form of flattery.

 Winning hearts and minds ???

 Hire more people like Sheila 

" I don't know how you can call office communicator a copy of these other two application you mention just because it does the same thing. "

So a Verizon executive gets invited to demo their product... and the next thing you know Microsoft copies their product and peddles it as "innovation". And according to you that's not a copy ...  riiggght.


"Upon your very own logic I could call firefox a copy of IE because it surfs the web like IE does... "

 errrrr.... bad example... don't you know that Firefox is the original Mozilla that was developed by the same guys who created MOSAIC ? Geez man... IE still continues to license MoSAIC.


 "Office communicator goes beyond trillian or basic communications. It goes to that next level."

  Oh it goes to the next level alright.... plagiarizing that is..


 "Where consumers can communicate on a larger level in the enterprise world."

  LOL! ....  how are consumers coming in to the picture here ? please tell me you don't know the basic difference between consumer applications and Enterprise applications.


"If you want to use verizon's application then use it."

 I am using it. The consumer version that is. And it's got much better cool UI than Office communicator. Oh.. and by the way...  Office communicator, as it is designed now, doesn't work in the consumer space.  So as far this type of application is concerned, Verizon currently has total monopoly in the consumer space.


 " not fair it will not have the interop that Office Communicator has with all the MS applications"

 What Interop ?   did you miss the point until now ? The complaint here is about the copying THE BASIC PRODUCT IDEA itself... nobody cares about the insignificant "interop".

 By the way, i hope LCS is not copying this idea. Because if it does....

Oh man... this office communicator ( Live communications server ) is a total copy of Verizon's Iobi product  ( http://www.verizon.com/iobi ). 

 I am trying to remember this... it was 2 or 3 years ago, one senior executive from Verizon shared the stage with BillG at COMDEX ( or was it Consumer Electronics show ) and gave a presentation of Iobi product. And now i am seeing it being copied. Totally unbelievable.

 So you guys copied Iobi concept from Verizon and all three IMs integration from Trillian concept ( www.trillian.cc )  and made a product out of it ?

Also I was wondering if VS 2005 has anything similar to "Code Audits" feature of  Borland's Together Product suite built right in to the dev environment.  I remember seeing a video about FxCop couple of weeks ago but don't remember if it is intended to be integrated right in to Whidbey.

Oh I loved the "real-time" data grid control. At my previous job, I worked on creating a high performance, non-flickering level-II stock quotes for an equities trading house and I can understand how difficult it can be. I developed it entirely using Win32 API and the whole thing consumed less than 30% of processor time even with 10 high volume level-II windows running simultaneously. It's nice to see somebody doing a managed version of level-II quote control.

I was wondering how this Class designer compares with Borland's Together Product suite. From what I have seen on Borland's website, their solution appears to be much more superior. They have got the entire UML2 plugged right in to the Visual Studio 2003 environment and that too for a nominal price. Also, John mentioned about plugging in Design patterns in to the development environment in this video. Well... Together product has already got that.