Martin Wells

Microsoft’s recent “awakening” to open beta programmes pleasantly suprised. The fact that anybody could jump on to their site and just download Office 2007 or Vista was a refreshing opening of the doors to new Microsoft products. I was happy for things to not work, happy to provide feedback, happy to listen to Scoble rant (I mean that in a nice way Robert).

But now, sigh, they plan to start charging for this privilege (and they’re closing it down for aussies — but I’m not going to go into that).

Three steps forward, two leaps back. Hey, maybe I should renew my MSDN subscription, it might be needed again soon.

Instead of shutting things down, embrace your new openess even more. Open up all those subscription docs and libraries you have. Give us betas across the board. You need to recapture the hearts of the early adopters, and there’s no better tool to do that than giving them access to the latest and greatest, bugs ‘n all. And to hell with the cost.

Getty is showing off the latest work from its photographers. Stunning… Check out Gallery 1 and Gallery 2.

I wonder when Getty will get it (no pun intended) and start posting this promotional stuff on a Flickr stream (a fleam?) — would love to get daily feeds of new Getty images.

So I’m a gamer too, and whilst I don’t have a 360 (yet). I have to appreciate Dead Rising, the new game from Capcom.

In the true spirit of Dawn of the Dead, the game places you in a giant shopping mall in the process of being overrun by a couple of hundred thousand (or so) zombies. There are no preassigned weapons, you have to run through the hundreds of shops and grab whatever you can: frying pan, chainsaw, plates, jewelry, books, blow up dolls. All of which have unique ways of dolling out punishment to the living dead.

During the game you need to collect a series of items in order to make your escape - not suprisingly, some of these items are in dark places (car parks, basements, storage rooms), which happen to be riddled with brain eaters.

Simple, brilliant, can’t wait… someone hand me my boomstick.

There’s another web 2.0 Sydney dinner this Friday night. Ping me if you didn’t get an invite.

Someone sent me a google calendar invite. Check out the response URL below. Wow… maybe they encoded a small novel in there or something…

http://www.google.com/calendar/event?action=RESPOND&eid=NW8
3Z3JyczJsY245cmg5Y2d1aXVwYTQzODggbWFydHlAdGFuZ2xlci5jb20
&rst=2&tok=NTIjbzdobGE5cmZqNXVvamEwM2UzcHNndGM1WYWNA
Z3JvdXAuFY2FsZW5kYXIuZ2f9vZX2xlLmNvbThj1NjAzY2VkZGTkxZWV
kZTZh3NzBiYzA5YTWVjOTk2YzAyNG5ZiNzViYTI&ctz=America%2FL
os_Angeles&lcl=en_USSomebody decode it for me.