#76: What might have been, Microsoft?

Posted on May 22, 2025 (Updated May 22, 2025) by ewand

Firstly, sympathy goes out to the 3% of Microsoft workers who are leaving sooner than planned – best of luck in whatever comes next, and remember the old saying that when you step out from under the umbrella, you might realise it wasn’t actually raining.

Let’s not shed too many tears for the world’s most valuable company: Microsoft Corp is doing “not bad”. Back in Redmond, those AI chips won’t buy themselves and that shiny new office Campus (with such world-beating things as public transport to reach it) might expect everyone who is nominally based there to be physically present a bit more often, even while publicly saying that’s not the plan.

(by market capitalization, at time of writing, investments can go down as well as up, blah blah blah).

Microsoft has been successfully riding the AI hype wave, with the largest revenue source being a solid second-place in the public cloud market. They also have the benefit of other well-established and highly profitable businesses like Office/Microsoft 365, Xbox and LinkedIn. Oh yes, and Windows.

Coulda Woulda Shoulda

But what of all the others that could have been contenders? Well, proof that dominance in one market does not always translate into outright success in an adjacent one, there’s …

Windows Phone 7 Launch Round-up | Windows Central

In many ways, Microsoft led the early Smartphone wave, alongside some long-forgotten players like Symbian; the idea that the millions of Windows developers could use the same tools and languages to write applications for the growing range of Windows-based handheld devices was quite a compelling one.

Sadly, the devices were a bit too limited in capability in the days of Windows CE software (also, a bit too clunky for small form factors), and application distribution was finicky. Microsoft wanted to shackle everything to “Windows”, even charging OEMs a per-device license model to buy the software, just like on the PC.

The early Pocket PC Phone and “Microsoft Smartphone” era ultimately hit the skids when Apple’s iPhone arrived with better hardware, a stoic resistance to the mobile operators calling the shots, and eventually, with easy-to-distribute apps.

Windows Phone 7 was an attempt to tear up the existing ecosystem and take a leaf from Apple’s (and increasingly, Android’s) book – and even though it grew from Windows Phone 7 through Windows Phone 8.x and the short-lived Windows 10 Mobile, there was no room in the market. Some fans still bemoan its death and there are tools to try to replicate some of the nicer bits of WinPhone on Android. Sometimes, even the best don’t win – see BetaMax vs VHS. And Windows Phone was V2000. RIP.

Could it have succeeded or even survived? Not really. Although the app model was almost an accidental afterthought by Apple, by the time Windows Phone 7 was due to launch, Android was already established – especially outside of the US – as the alternative. Even if Microsoft had almost perfect execution, it would still have been waiting for Google and/or Apple to drop the ball.

The entire Windows App model was predicated on the same apps being written for phones, tablets and desktops/laptops – leaving aside that people don’t really want giant touch-first apps on their desktop. Remove the phone platform and the whole raison d’être of the UWP model fell apart.

There are many other “Killed by Microsoft” topics previously covered on ToW – some in #24: Googly Embalmer, and others from years ago, 350 – Killing me Softly, part I (and part 2).

One recent high-profile closure is…

Yep. If you have the Skype app already, you’ll be told to use Teams and going to web.skype.com redirects straight away to a Teams web login page. The web UX for Skype is fairly recent – previewed in 2018 and launched 6 months later.

In fact, Skype was still being actively updated until only a few months ago – see the blog here, and the 2023 post celebrating 20 years since Skype arrived. It’s certainly more active than some other official blogs, like OneNote – which has tumbleweed blowing through by comparison, if you take out the “wooohooo, Copilot!” type posts.

Skype’s 1:1 video calling should have been a USP when people started having mobiles with forward-facing cameras, but it was outmanoeuvred by Apple’s FaceTime and WhatsApp.

Skype was a big-deal acquisition by Microsoft – costing $8.5B back in 2011, and the company’s largest to date. The then-popular MSN Messenger service was killed a couple of years later, trying to migrate to users to Skype, but that was the beginning of the end for the consumer messaging business which has now been ceded to Facebook, WhatsApp et al.

Where would we be now, if these plans had worked out? Running around with Surface Phone Copilot+ Mobile 15 Edition devices, using MSN (it’s back after all) Video Messenger to keep in touch with our friends?

525 – Day nnn in the Big Brother House

Posted on April 17, 2020 by ewand

As the developed world stays in and starts to go a bit stir crazy, life beginning to feel like an episode of Big Brutha, we’re increasingly turning to streaming and video conferencing apps typically used for business, to keep in touch with friends and family, go dating, virtually visit a museum and many other things.

When you’re only allowed one walk a day and you can’t go for a drive, turn to virtual tours and motoring videos instead. Allez!

Captain Slow is hosting an online pub quiz and there are plenty of others you can join or even run your own quiz offline.

Online conferencing app Zoom has seen huge take-up over recent weeks, though its security has been questioned & tested by Zoom Bombing, leading the company to quickly release updates to give more control.

Microsoft Teams has announced some feature updates too – though there’s still more to do. Custom Backgrounds will be rolled out very soon, so users can replace their messy kitchen backdrop with a scene of serenity.

It’s getting easier to schedule and join Skype video meetings, too – from within the Skype app or even in a browser, you can Meet Now and quickly generate a URL that can be shared with others, who can join as a guest without needing to have an account or signing in.

Skype still has a huge user base, with over 40 million daily users of late.

Teams and Skype have started interoperating more, too, though it’s a limited experience at the moment. Expect Teams for Consumer, due to arrive later this year, to have tighter integration – and perhaps may eventually replace Skype.

Tip o’ the Week 392 – distract with GIFs

Posted on August 18, 2017 by ewand

We’re all used to file formats being associated with programs and the data they work with. Some, like .TXT, have been around for so long and are so cross-platform, they transcend association with any one application, whereas .PPT will always be PowerPoint – though that app has gained notoriety in such phrases as “Death by PowerPoint” (which we’ve all been subjected to, even if not completely fatal), or “PowerPoint Karaoke” (reading out the words on slides without adding anything).

One long-used file type goes back to 1987, the GIF – standing for Graphics Interchange Format, predating the eventually prevalent JPEG format by 5 years. GIFs were relatively poor quality – only 256 colours could be used; 30 years ago, that wasn’t an issue but in recent decades, it’s more limiting. Most people, however, will be familiar with GIFs due to a sub-variant – the Animated GIF. This is a series of frames which are played like a simple video – with low frame rates & no sound, yet they have occupied a niche in the way people use the web.

Applications tend not to render animated GIFs well – Outlook, for example, simply inserts a static image, but browsers do show them properly. If you have an email in Outlook that you know has animated GIFs, look for the Actions submenu on the Message tab and select View in Browser.

Adding animated GIFs to chat applications is a good way of making a point more vociferously than with smilies… though it can be even more distracting. Skype (the consumer version) added some featured videos (with sound), but both Yammer and Teams have added GIF buttons to make it easy to seach for amusement from online animation repository, GIPHY.

Try pepping up boring Yammer groups or Teams sites, by looking for the GIF logo on the message box, then searching for a 2-3 second loop that underlines your point. Just make sure the content is suitably Safe For Work or you may find the consequences of sending jokey GIFs to be less than ideal.

Facebook has the same kind of thing on comments boxes, from a variety of sources and also not entirely SFW.

Finally, Outlook.com has unveiled a new beta mode that is available for some users (& rolling out to more – look for a “Try the beta” toggle switch on the top of your Hotmail/MSN/Outlook.com mailbox) – and one feature will be animations that can be easily embedded in mail.

The “expressions” feature lumps emojis & GIFs together to make it simpler to annoy your recipients.

Read what Thurrot has to say about the other bits of the beta.

Tip o’ the Week 391 – Smile, control your emoticons

Posted on August 11, 2017 (Updated August 26, 2021) by ewand

“Smileys” have been around in one form or another for a surprisingly long time. The use of the original 🙂 smiley goes back 35 years, but written symbolism to convey emotion goes back to the 17^th century, maybe even in the days of Lincoln.

In modern times, the smiley has evolved; after the grinning yellow dot being used in various waves of popular culture, the textual facial-expression-on-its-side became more common as people flocked online and started using email and instant messaging. Gradually, icons of a variety of smileys helped convey a wider range of meaning – becoming known collectively by the portmanteau, “emoticons”. Or the Japanese-based variant, emoji. If you’re bored sticking pins in your eyes, you could be watching a Turkey at the flicks, though you’re more likely just an end-user of the emoji symbols.

Over recent years, emoji have become more mainstream and therefore the interpretation of symbols across different platforms has grown in importance – if you enter 🙂 into many apps, you’ll get a – as configured in the AutoCorrect function in Office, and natively supported in lots of other applications, and if you send a text message with emoji in it, you’d hope that it gets interpreted correctly at the other end.

To insert emojis into your mail, IM or whatever, you could type the foundation characters – like 🙁 or 😀 – or copy & paste the relevant symbol from a source such as http://emojipedia.org/microsoft/.

If you’re using Skype (consumer, and Skype for Business), though, there’s a shortcut for each emoticon, that you can type to insert the relevant symbol – eg. (t) or (call) will insert the symbol to the left, or (c) or (coffee) will show the cup symbol. Just hover over the symbol and you’ll see the shortcut you can type.

Other handy shortcuts for Skype for Business include (b), (d), (y), (n), (cic), (!), (e), (run), (k) – careful, mind… Why not try them out on your colleagues next time you’re IMing?

The consumer Skype app has lots more emoji/emoticons than the Business version, as you might expect – generally speaking, there’s not a lot of business need for 💩 or dancing gran icons.

Well, unless you know differently? ‍✋

Tip o’ the Week 338 – And now for something completely different

Posted on July 26, 2016 by ewand

If you’re a Skype user – desktop, consumer Skype, or the various mobile platforms (including the Skype Preview on Windows 10 Mobile), as opposed to Skype for Business, you may know about smileys and emojis, but have you used “mojis”?

Put simply, they’re short, often pithy and funny, video clips that can be quickly inserted into conversations. You can shut up your colleagues. Or they could retort back at you. There are hundreds of mojis, from naff Hollywood to Bollywood, Macca to the Muppets.

Now, Skype has released a whole selection of the finest Monty Python clips, as mojis. Click on the smiley icon in the bottom right of a Skype conversation window, then look for the new “foot” icon, and you’ll see an array of classic Python videos.

Try not to waste all day mucking around with it.

If you don’t see the icon, make sure you’re running the latest version of Skype.

Tip o’ the Week 326 – Skype for Business, meet Skype consumer

Posted on May 13, 2016 by ewand

Power Skypers will probably know this week’s tip already, but it’s a fair bet that it’ll be news to others, even though it’s been possible since Lync gave way to Skype for Business (and was available in a slightly different form prior to that).

Put simply, Skype for Business has the ability to communicate with users on the consumer Skype platform, as well as to federate with other parties, and Office365 has it enabled by default. This means you can exchange IMs and see presence for Skype for Business users outside your organisation.

The simplest way to check if you have Skype for Business federation set up with a customer or partner’s own Skype for Business estate, is to double-click on their name/address in an email, and you’ll see the Outlook “Contact card”. If you’re signed into Skype for Business, the speech bubble icon will be shown, giving you the option of IMing with them: click that icon to start an IM conversation.

Now, if you’re not federated (or maybe depending on the privacy settings your contact’s organisation has set up), then you’ll just see “presence unknown” as their status within the IM window, and attempts to send messages will fail. If you are federated with them (again, subject to privacy settings), then you’re likely to see their email address change to their actual name, and their job title and status should get completed too. If they’re offline, you obviously still can’t IM them but at least you know they should be available at some stage.

If you have contacts who use Skype the consumer service (and Skype helpfully positions the consumer and business offerings together, here), you can add them as contacts and have IM chats with them just like you could do with internal users too. Click on the little add contact icon on the right of the Skype for Business client, and you can include contacts from a number of external sources (the list may vary depending on your own profile or setup).

An even easier way is just to start typing the person’s name, Skype ID or Microsoft account, into the “Find someone…” search box within Skype for Business and click the Skype Directory button: you might well see them listed, profile pic & all – right-click on their profile to add them as a contact (which will kick off a contact request just like in consumer Skype).

Once someone has been added from consumer Skype to your contact list, you can IM them, see their presence, and even fire up an audio or video call with them, without needing to use the consumer Skype client yourself. Nice if you’d prefer to keep your business contacts and your personal ones separate, but if your customer is asking to have a Skype chat with you…

You can try this out by running both Skype and Skype for Business side-by-side and adding your contact, sending yourself a test IM, even cracking open a video or audio call.

If you’re in a call between the two worlds, it’s literally 1:1 – you can’t convert it into a conference call by adding other people, nor can you invite your Skype contact into an existing Skype for Business call or meeting. When you’re in a 1:1 call from Skype for Business with a consumer Skype user, you just don’t see the options for inviting others etc, and if you’re in Skype for Business on an existing conf call and try to bring in a Skyper, sadly, you’ll just get an unhelpful error message. Too bad.

Options are to ask the Skype user to join using the Skype for Business Web App, or use the consumer Skype client to call the phone number the Skype for Business meeting offers to regular phone users.

For more details on how to set up and use Skype for Business federation, see here. Check this post for instructions about getting it working with consumer Skype (or here). And another.

Tip o’ the Week #293 – STOP SHOUTING ON CONF CALLS

Posted on September 11, 2015 by ewand

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Keeping track of the characters on conference calls could be a new type of buzzword bingo – from the people who stay muted the whole time (the only word they say being “bye”, at the end), to the unmuted furious typer/clicker/lunch eater/talker-to-somebody-else.

This brilliant spoof of conference calls in real life features most of them, but not the blast-radius shouter that is probably more of a nuisance to people physically sitting next to him/her than to others on the call. Sure beats real meetings, mind.

Thanks to Brett Johnson, for pointing out that there’s a feature in Windows that might help reduce the volume of the well-meaning noise pollutant, something known as Sidetone. Turns out, this has been in Windows for ages, if you have a headset that supports it.

clip_image004 What Sidetone does is to play your own voice back into the audio stream you’re listening to, so if you have a headset that covers your ears entirely and blocks out background noise, you don’t completely isolate yourself and end up shouting to compensate.

To access the setting, plug in your headset then right-click on the volume icon in your system tray and select Playback devices to open the Sound settings applet, then double-click on your headset and look in the Levels tab.

Try it out and have a play with the levels, with a willing guinea pig: it’s a surprisingly subtle effect, but one that you won’t want to overdo.

Now, all we need to do is to build a Skype addin for meeting organisers to subvert the Sidetone on chosen attendees, to put a bit of a delay into the replay of their spoken voice, which could effectively deal with some of the other characters on the calls… and now we know how Garth from Wayne’s World achieved his effect.

Tip o’ the Week #274 – Hello, Skype for Business

Posted on April 17, 2015 by ewand

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Instant Messaging (and later, voice/video calling) has been with us, in the corporate world, for 15 years – the first real enterprise IM platform was Exchange 2000 Instant Messaging, which used a variant of MSN Messenger as its client, and some workers had been using MSN and AOL for a while before that.

The Exchange 2000 IM server was a one-off; it was superseded by Microsoft Office Live Communication Server (released at a time when everything at Microsoft was seemingly prefixed or suffixed “Live”, and somehow linked to Windows or Office) and latterly Office Communications Server (when the edict came around to ditch the practice of sticking “Live” in every product name), and later acquired the much groovier name of “Lync”.

And now the next phase has rolled out; just as the original MSN Messenger gave way to Windows Live Messenger (see?) and then went away in favour of Skype, Lync has now given over to Skype for Business – though SFB is effectively a technology update, rebranding & a new UI, rather than the wholesale change of underlying technology that MSN/Live Messenger to Skype was.

So now we have Skype for Desktop (the traditional Windows, Mac etc application, which uses a Skype ID or Microsoft Account to sign in), there’s Skype for a variety of mobile & TV platforms, Skype for Outlook.com (the plugin to Outlook.com online email, you know, the email service that was once Hotmail). And for Windows 8.x users, there’s also Skype the Modern Application, now also being referred to as Skype for Tablet.

D’ya follow?

And now the spangly new Skype For Business client has been distributed via Windows Update, as an update to Lync – so you may already have received it. If you haven’t, and you’re still on Lync, you could either:

Try downloading the update to turn Lync into Skype, from KB2889923
If you’re running Office in “Click to Run Mode”, you can check for updates by going into (for example) Word and choosing File / Account, then select Update Options / Update Now. See here for more.

Or maybe you’ll get it automatically via a corporate deployment. It may even have been pushed out to you already,

Whatever, you’ll have a cracking new updated UI compared to Lync, and the emoticons will be better again… in fact, most of the animated icons from the regular consumer Skype app have made it over to the corporate one, with a few of the less work-oriented ones removed.