Bye Bye Ballmer

Signing off from Seattle

Steve Ballmer, current CEO of Microsoft, has recently announced his retirement and will be winding down his tenure this year. When this finally happens sometime in the next twelve months, the holy trinity of Seattle's tech-lords will witness the loss of its last remaining member and the end of a hugely important geek-era. While the company was co-founded by computer dorks Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975, fellow Harvardian and apparent arithmetic genius Steve Ballmer (he scored 800 on the math portion of his SAT and beat Gates's score on an exam given by the Mathematical Association of America) joined his old collegiate buddies at the company in 1980 where his business acumen and wacky, non-tech attitude helped rocket the company to its now legendary status and, of course, its mountains and mountains of riches. Allen left Microsoft back in 2000 and Gates later in 2008, leaving the door open for Ballmer to step in as CEO of the company. However almost since the day he took over, industry pundits have been regularly casting doubts on his ability to lead the company into a new world and new generation that's more interested in tablets and set-top boxes than notebooks and desktop boxes. While the rumors are currently running rampant about whether or not Steve's announcement was voluntary or if he was ousted by the board, one thing's for sure, there's never been a tech-industry magnate quite like him before, and I doubt that there ever will be again.

A rare shot of the uber-nerd triumvirate (from left): Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates and Paul Allen

BONUS VIDEO: MY FAVORITE STEVE MOMENT

The Roxbury Geeks

Officially sanctioned display of levity and whimsy.

Remember those endlessly-recurring "Roxbury Brothers" sketches that used to plague that once great showbiz behemoth called Saturday Night Live?  The now infamous sketches were created by super-duper-movie-star Will Ferrell and creepy-as-shit comedian Chris Kattan and were passably funny at first, and then they got less funny, and then they got way, way less funny and kind of predictable, at which point they thought it would be a good idea to make a movie. Well, here's a short Microsoft spoof from that era featuring none other than top dogs Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer standing in for the regular SNL duo. Apparently this is what Microsoftees did to let off steam and express their wacky and creative sides at conferences back in the late 90s. Sadly, due to a total lack of YouTube, little retro video gems like this one never really got a chance to go viral back when they first appeared. However thanks to some bitchin' software technologies like RealVideo, they did manage to cause a bit of a rash and some light itching. Enjoy!



BONUS VIDEO: THE ROXBURY BROTHERS WITH JIM CARREY


Roxbury guys (What is Love?) [HQ] from Viktoras Štanga on Vimeo.

iSteve: the first Steve Jobs Movie

Even though Hollywood bigshots like Ashton Kutcher and Aaron Sorkin figuratively falling over themselves to bring the Steve Jobs story to the silver screen, Funny or Die has taken their own 78 minute stab at it and having done so, now relish in the fact that they've done it first. Starring the fat guy from Lost and that snotty hipster from those "I'm a Mac" commercials, iSteve is a worthy watch for both its hilarious (and intentional) inaccuracies and its firstness. But you don't have take my word for it...CLICK HERE TO WATCH JUSTIN LONG AND JORGE GARCIA IN iSTEVE

XBox 720?

Ok, it's not exactly retro, but Microsoft, the company behind the XBox, has been has been a presence in the video gaming world since the days of Broderbund, Sierra Online and Infocom. Well in 12 short years since the introduction of its runaway hit, the XBox, Microsoft has managed to make quite a dent in the world of gaming with innovative technologies like the Kinnect, and they show no signs of slowing down now. Check out this CES demo of the new projection system called IllumiRoom, slated for release as a feature of the forthcoming XBox 720, and witness the next possible step in the evolution of home gaming.

Microsoft Mixes It Up...A Little

Today, our beloved old dinosaur, Microsoft, unveiled their first logo redesign in 25 years, taking the familiar multi-colored flag and squaring it off to form more of a, well, window.  It’s one of the many changes the company is making in preparation for the Windows 8 launch, said Jeffrey Meisner, general manager of brand strategy.

“Starting today, you’ll see the new Microsoft logo being used prominently. It will be used on Microsoft.com – the 10th most visited website in the world. It is in three of our Microsoft retail stores today (Boston, Seattle’s University Village and Bellevue, Wash.) and will shine brightly in all our stores over the next few months,” Mesiner wrote on the company’s blog.

The new logo is inspired by the company’s brand values, fonts and colors, he explained.

“The symbol is important in a world of digital motion … the symbol’s squares of color are intended to express the company’s diverse portfolio of products.”

The revision comes, Meisner said, ahead of “one of the most significant waves of product launches in Microsoft’s history.”

Frankly, it looks to me like the breeze died down and the old wavy flag logo came to a sudden stop. In light of what Meisner said about "digital motion" I'd say that the new symbol expresses less energy compared to the fanciful designs of Microsoft's past, and since the company has been around since 1975, they are no strangers to logo changes. Check out some of the previous designs that Bill and company had to offer.