Ina Fried

Recent Posts by Ina Fried

Even Microsoft’s Analyst Meeting Looks Like the New Windows (Enjoy the Slideware)

Microsoft is clearly in love with its new Metro look.

After embracing it first on the Zune, it has spread to Windows Phone and now to Windows itself. However, it is now spreading through Redmond like a virus. Even the slides for Microsoft’s financial analyst meeting are designed to look like the “live tiles” that are the focal point of the new Windows.

Here, for example, is the agenda for the Financial Analyst Meeting, which we are liveblogging now.

Many of the introductory slides for each speaker also share the tile look, as does the signage for the event.

The rest of the slides are a bit less tile-like, but still have a Metro feel. I think everyone in the room wants to see Metro contribute to the bottom line, not just be used to illustrate it.

I’ll be posting more of the key slides throughout the liveblog.

Update, 1:50 pm PT: Here are two key slides from Kevin Turner’s presentation, one showing Windows 7 adoption by businesses and the other charting Bing market share:

2:05 pm PT CFO Peter Klein touted the company’s balanced approach to cash management. I have a feeling if these tiles were really live, most of the Wall Street analysts would be pushing the middle button (and pushing it so many times that they would be leaving fingerprints on the screen, to borrow a phrase from Steven Sinofsky).

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There’s a lot of attention and PR around Marissa, but their product lineup just kind of blows.

— Om Malik on Bloomberg TV, talking about Yahoo, the September issue of Vogue Magazine, and our overdependence on Google