Summary: "SideShow" pretty much dies quietly and Microsoft's identity management gets delayed for at least another year

THERE ARE MORE SIGNS of weakness at Microsoft and some readers say they appreciate knowing about them, so here is a quick roundup.

Last week we saw Microsoft shutting down yet another product/service. It is part of an ongoing process or trend (cost-cutting). It appears as though another quiet death that almost nobody noticed is Vista's "SideShow". Does anyone even remember SideShow?

In the run-up to Vista's launch, industry observers and journalists expressed a great deal of interest and even excitement about the concept. But then a funny thing happened: Manufacturers didn't add SideShow displays to their products. With rare exceptions (such as one Dell XPS desktop), they ignored it outright.

[...]

It's not that the PC industry is resistant to change; it just doesn't appear to want to follow Microsoft's lead. The most significant change in the shape or function of personal computers in recent years -- cheap, ultra-light "netbook" laptops -- not only didn't happen on Microsoft's watch, it outright threatens Microsoft, since so many of these machines run the open-source Linux operating system.

Eventually, GNU/Linux sort of took over where Microsoft had failed. For example, here is a something very recent:

The device, manufactured by mini-box.com, € also has Linux drives that work with LCDproc, a software package that pioneered Sideshow-like concepts by using small LCDs to display bits of information through a variety of plugins.

Going back to the news, Mary Jo Foley has identified a product that Microsoft sort of hid and failed to deliver on time.

Microsoft identity-management product running a year late

Microsoft is telling customers and partners that it has pushed back the final delivery date of its “Identity Lifecycle Manager 2 from early 2009 to the first quarter of 2010.

Why is nobody else covering this major delay?

Well, while Microsoft AstroTurfs Twitter using Waggener Edstrom and using Federated Media it pretty much controls what people think about and talk about. The Inquirer is not terribly impressed by it, either. Yesterday it published:

Twitter takes the Microsoft shilling

WIBBLESOME HOME OF SMALL UTTERANCES, TWITTER has taken Microsoft money to launch a web site called ExecTweets.com

When will Microsoft join the ranks of honourable companies that do not AstroTurf? This only shows that there is no "new" Microsoft. ⬆

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• Microsoft May Have Bribed India for OOXML Pressure
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