Bing's the Thing (and more....)

If you told me a month ago that I would have 2 posts in a row about Microsoft I would have thought you'd been Rickrolled a few too many times.

But try Microsoft's answer to Google. It's called Bing and it is downright impressive. Roll your curser down the right side of the results. Watch the window's preview pop up so you can see it before you click. And it is aesthetically beautiful. The company's new priorities are search and netbooks. This might make sense after the Vista calamity. But the anticipation of Windows 7 doesn't excite me (although getting rid of Vista does). Here's a great memo from Best Buy. When all is said and done, as Steve Ballmer says, the growth is in mobile computing and that's where they hope Bing will fit. 10-20 million iPhones and Blackberries are sold per year vs. 300 million PCs. Marketing Math 101. In five years, as he says, we will look back and say the market has tripled or quadrupled. We will not be saying that about PCs.

Walt Mossberg thinks the Palm Pre is beautiful with some drawbacks. Nobody is a big fan of the very sharp (it can slice things?) edge of the keyboard, but he had mostly good things to say about it. I haven't seen it yet.

Walt Mossberg thinks the new iPhone is wonderful - although it looks very similar to the older model. I don't get the feeling we're getting candy colors this time. Increased processing power and video capabilities will be the upgrades worth paying for.

My opinion? I don't know any Sprint fans, and for 6 months it is the only option with the Pre.

I say forget them all and get a phone you can type on easily with a full, tactile, QWERTY keyboard, has a beautiful clear screen, works well as a phone, has an app store, Wi-Fi, easy messaging whether it is text or email, and immediate push notification of messages, and even Evernote, Twitter, and Facebook applications. Go back to the beautiful basics of communications and if you want to, you can also buy a Netbook or better yet an Apple Tablet if they introduce it. I know I am not alone in feeling this way (@fredwilson and @howardlindzon and my buddy @greenskeptic are all loyal Blackberry users). We just need to communicate and love our Curves.

SIMS3 is now for sale. Another virtual world. We'll see how it takes off. At least there is no monthly subscription fee. Doesn't this make you want to run out and get it? Sorry to the kids in my household, not me. Are we still doing "virtual worlds" or can we finally say our lives are virtual, whether they are on the screen or our phone or in our offices?

I was never a big fan of BPL (Broadband over Powerlines). If somebody gets how this will work with our already overtaxed Grid, I am open minded and happy to hear any thoughts or defenses.