Microsoft Launches 'Channel 9' Blog

Decaffeinated Jedi writes "As reported by News.com, Microsoft quietly launched Channel 9, a blog/discussion forum aimed at improving communication with outside developers, on Tuesday. Named for the audio channel that many airlines use to let passengers listen in on crew conversations during flight, Channel 9's creators state the following in a welcoming message: 'Five of us in Redmond are crazy enough to think we just might learn something from getting to know each other...Join in, and have a look inside our cockpit and help us fly the plane.'"

The top video

[Zegnar]

That 'Bill Hill' guy is very charismatic...

Two points: 1: I really like to see this sorta thing from big companies, gives them a personal touch. That's why Google is so good - not afraid to be more personal and real.

Also, M$ must be sucking bandwidth streaming those videos to every slashprole. :) Every byte helps up their server bill (Anyone got any info on how much bandwidth microsoft/msdn.com uses? And what it's hosted on?)

the irony of this

[dr]

When listening to Channel 9 on United, you aren't actually listening to the internal cockpit communications you are listening to the cockpit's communications with the terminal and centre controllers. And that's where the irony is; the controllers are telling the pilot(s) where to go and what altitude to fly at, etc, that is, ATC has the real control of how things pan out. So while you might be helping to fly the plane [into the ground] you really have no say in how the plane gets to it's destination. And, furthermore, the real irony is that all this communication and procedures that the passenger is listening to is something that basically hasn't changed in the past several decades.

Maybe you have to be a pilot to fully understand what I mean.
-dr

I hate this ...

[Anonymous Coward]

'Five of us in Redmond are crazy enough to think we just might learn something from getting to know each other...Join in, and have a look inside our cockpit and help us fly the plane.'

This sort of "gee whiz we're just regular guys, we're going to let you peek under the tent" sort or pr-marketing speak rings so false and just raises my BS detectors to max.

I spent years dealing with Apple's evangelists and while they'd do this sort of thing occasionally usually they were smart enough enough to treat their developers as being vaguely intelligent

Don't bother visiting with Firefox

[lazuli42]

Here's a few things I noticed after spending about three minutes on the site.

1. The site doesn't present well in Firebird 0.8. The fonts are tiny and distorted.
   
2. Many of the quotes on the page are, at best, sycophantic. "Great job Bill!" gushes one 'impartial developer'.
   
3. Voting for the third option in the poll (this site sucks, but I'll be back later to see how it develops) causes Firebird 0.8. to immediately exit.
   
   Bleagh...

Spooky.

[Trejkaz]

Channel 9? The funny thing is Channel 9 television in Australia merged with MSN to become NineMSN. It seems that Microsoft have this weird nine fetish.

Video Blog

[niai]

The videos are much more interested to watch than the text is to read. I get a much better feel about what the person is saying through expression, tone, etc. It's obviously more natural to get information from someone in this way than through text.

That site is crap!

[AstroDrabb]

What a crappy site. It doesn't render properly with Mozilla/Firefox and as soon I went to the page, I was hit with a bunch of ActiveX controls trying to run. No thanks. Maybe if they want to try to interest other developers in MS, they should NOT REQUIRE MS stuff. The main page has more then 300 HTML errors according to W3C [w3.org]. Come on now. It is not hard to make a little HTML, honest! There is no coding involved. Oh, and this site is .Net. You can see what great standards compliant HTML MS's Web Forms spit out.

Re:That site is crap!

[Anonymous Coward]

you're complaining about a site's html validation on slashdot??? [w3.org]

talk about throwing stones in glass houses.

The Other Channel 9

[mercuryresearch]

I realize the the CB craze pre-dates most slashdot subscribers (and perhaps technical evangelists)...

On CB radios, channel 9 is the channel used for emergencies. Pretty interesting double entendre.

Free Long Distance to India?

[twitter]

We get to listen to the developers? Hopefully, we will get to listen to the guys who are really writing the software these days. That means my classmates will be able to talk to their classmates in Hyderabad, India [bizjournals.com], who are busy replacing workers in Redmond. Five years and growning [microsoft.com]. Use Microsoft and help Bill make money for these guys, but mostly himself. It's the American thing to do!

Or you could do the evil commie thing and keep your money to yourself and help people all around the world by using free software. Hire that uneployed IT guy on your block and help a programmer make a living. You won't be sorry you did.

Yep, that business about closed source helping programmers make money WAS A LIE. If 70 billion dollars in the bank, pema-temps and H1B slaves were not evidence enough of where this "Intelectual Property" BS was going, Hyperbad should be.

Reel cool guys.

[sharph]

Wow, they are reel cool.

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID= 13

I recognize half those things (perticularly the CPU fan and the soda can "graveyard") as part of my life at some point in time, and I'm sure other /.ers can as well. Like I said, these guys are reel cool.