Sean Alexander (and others) - Windows Vista Sidebar and Gadgets

There's much to be said for form following function, but tell me, "Where's the form?" Where are the UI and graphic people? MSN Search is just a visually ugly product. I can hardly stand to look at it.
I think if the interface was much cleaner - doesn't have to be as sparse as Google, just cleaner - people might actually use it.
The ad looks better the product:
http://www.searchenginelowdown.com/images/msn-search-email.gif
This is just ick. Color gradients and bright colors and fat buttons and . . . it's just not serious:
http://www.komotv.com/news/images/msn_search_020105.jpg
I also think MS should spin off the entire product, not unlike Expedia. I would love to be able to type a few character and press CTRL + ENTER instead of the "search.msn.com", which is 8 characters more than "google".
fooey wrote:I got a weird vibe from this. When I think Google, I think of a huge company with 4000+ employees working on search realted products and services. Then I see this video, and I think "MSN Search - 2 guys in an office." Not the best advertising, is it?
Nata1 wrote:Scoble - that would be a great idea - so far the only thing that's come out of MSoft on the search side that's impressed me has been Selberg's work, and the Virtual Earth team has impressed me as well.
I'm sure there's got to be some other impressive people over there... ???
If you haven't noticed, EVERY video features 1 or 2 guys (I've never seen more than 4 or 5). But these projects have dozens of developers working on them, it's just that only the Project Managers from each project are on the video.fooey wrote:I got a weird vibe from this. When I think Google, I think of a huge company with 4000+ employees working on search realted products and services. Then I see this video, and I think "MSN Search - 2 guys in an office." Not the best advertising, is it?