Is it possible to develop a product without this stigma, or better, one that is felt to enhance pleasure? If so, would such a product lead to substantial benefits for global health, both in terms of reducing the incidence of unplanned pregnancies and in prevention of infection with HIV or other STIs?A statement on the Grand Challenges for Global Health website • Discussing an initiative for a next-generation condom which recently received $100,000 in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The initiative, despite its potential to help global health worldwide, understandably leads to some jokes. “To say that Bill Gates is calling for new development on high-tech condoms might be a bit of an overstatement,” snarks PC Magazine’s David Murphy, “given that it conjures up the idea of Wi-Fi-friendly prophylactics running a stripped-down version of Windows 8 or something to that effect – we’ll let you make your own jokes on whether they’d be touch-friendly.”
Today, a single Apple product — the iPhone — generates more revenue than all of Microsoft’s wares combined.Vanity Fair • In a blog post previewing Kurt Eichenwald’s upcoming piece on the downfall of Microsoft, which has seen better days. Despite being years ahead on many technologies, including smartphones, e-readers and tablets, a bureaucratic culture often at odds with innovations cost them this lead. The company also rejected ideas which became bigger deals years later: For example, when a status-update feature was pitched for MSN Messenger years before Twitter and Facebook became huge, the idea was rejected out of hand. Now it’s 2012 and Microsoft is trying to right the ship. Can they?
whobutwbstilwell asks: I might be wrong here, but didn't Bill Gates also receive this honour a few years ago? Just thinking about your comment about Windows users here haha.
» SFB says: Yes, you’re right. — Gates received a KBE honor in 2005, but here’s where Ive and Gates differ. See, Ive will be called “Sir” because he’s British. Gates is American, so his title didn’t change. The joke was faux-arrogance to be honest. Heh. — Ernie @ SFB
Bill Gates to testify in antitrust lawsuit today: You may be too young to remember this, but in the early 1990s, Wordperfect was the word processor of choice for millions of people — a major player in the pre-Windows era. But around the time of Windows 95, the owner of Wordperfect at the time, Novell, had an opportunity to bundle the word processor with copies of the forthcoming operating system, but then Microsoft pulled support over what they claimed were crash-related issues. As a result, nobody uses Wordperfect anymore, Word is the 900-pound gorilla, and Novell lost a crapload of money. And 16 years later, Bill Gates has to testify in front of a federal court. Sounds like a fun day already.
At one point during that meeting in early 2010 at Gates’ waterfront offices in Kirkland, Wash., Gates asked Allard how users get e-mail. Allard, Microsoft’s executive hipster charged with keeping tabs on computing trends, told Gates his team wasn’t trying to build another e-mail experience. He reasoned that everyone who had a Courier would also have a smartphone for quick e-mail writing and retrieval and a PC for more detailed exchanges. Courier users could get e-mail from the Web, Allard said, according to sources familiar with the meeting.
But the device wasn’t intended to be a computer replacement; it was meant to complement PCs. Courier users wouldn’t want or need a feature-rich e-mail application such as Microsoft’s Outlook that lets them switch to conversation views in their inbox or support offline e-mail reading and writing. The key to Courier, Allard’s team argued, was its focus on content creation. Courier was for the creative set, a gadget on which architects might begin to sketch building plans, or writers might begin to draft documents.
“This is where Bill had an allergic reaction,” said one Courier worker who talked with an attendee of the meeting. As is his style in product reviews, Gates pressed Allard, challenging the logic of the approach.
It’s not hard to understand Gates’ response. Microsoft makes billions of dollars every year on its Exchange e-mail server software and its Outlook e-mail application. While heated debates are common in Microsoft’s development process, Gates’ concerns didn’t bode well for Courier. He conveyed his opinions to Ballmer, who was gathering data from others at the company as well.
While Steve Jobs was releasing the iPad, Steve Ballmer was killing the Microsoft Courier, possibly the most innovative product concept ever to come out of Redmond. Ballmer was on the fence about the Courier until he talked to Bill Gates. Not long later, the exec behind the idea, J Allard, left the company (though he claims this wasn’t the reason). This is a corporate culture that prints money, but when presented with an amazing idea, kills it. Our heart sinks.
I’m truly saddened to learn of Steve Jobs’ death. Melinda and I extend our sincere condolences to his family and friends, and to everyone Steve has touched through his work. Steve and I first met nearly 30 years ago, and have been colleagues, competitors and friends over the course of more than half our lives. The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come. For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it’s been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.Bill Gates Remembers Steve Jobs - Ina Fried - News - AllThingsD (via henrycooke)
No innovation in the past 200 years has done more to save lives and improve health than the sanitation revolution triggered by invention of the toilet. But it did not go far enough. It only reached one-third of the world. What we need are new approaches. New ideas. In short, we need to reinvent the toilet.Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation global development program president Sylvia Mathews Burwell • Offering two things: One, an opportunity for toilet humor (we’ll pass), and two, an honest argument by Bill Gates’ group that perhaps the sanitation industry hasn’t gone far enough in the third world. So they want to figure out a way to take a device which the first world has taken for granted and improve its weaknesses, so that it works without a nearby sanitation mechanism, it’s cheap and human waste is treated and somehow recycled or changed into a form which is harmless and doesn’t spread disease. He has the money to do it, guys — let’s just hope there aren’t any blue screens of death that hit when you have to go. source (via • follow)
The motto of the foundation is that every life has equal value. There are more people dying of malaria than any specific cancer. When you die of malaria aged three it’s different from being in your seventies, when you might die of a heart attack or you might die of cancer. And the world is putting massive amounts into cancer, so my wealth would have had a meaningless impact on that.Bill Gates • Discussing his philanthropy organization, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and why it chooses to focus on malaria over cancer. Gates, the world’s second-richest man, doesn’t give a lot of interviews, but when he does, he makes them count. In this Daily Mail piece, he avoids focusing too much on his past and more on what he’s doing now — working to ensure his money gets used in ways that can positively affect people’s lives. His 85-year-old dad even helps. And he doesn’t do it from a distance, either: “It is important to see places. When you go into a ward with kids who have cholera, it’s horrific. They are losing their vital fluids and their brains are shutting down. As a father, as a human, it’s just horrific.” Gates’ work as a philanthropist could one day overshadow his work with Microsoft. It’s that important. source (via • follow)
» Widening his lead: Carlos Slim has not only benefited by expanding his own personal wealth (we’re sure that New York Times investment was a huge part of all that … heh), but the two guys directly behind him – Bill Gates and Warren Buffett – have been giving away much of their wealth lately. Slim has too, but he’s kept a tighter grip on it than those two.
» The only name people care about: Is it us, or does the Mark Zuckerberg one seem designed to make people look for ulterior motives? Because it seems that’s what people are already doing. You know, nobody ever questioned BILL GATES for this, and he had a lot more public relations work to do after that antitrust stuff than Zuckerberg ever did.
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