by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2008/04/25 03:01 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2008/04/25/8423117.aspx
Content of Michael Kaplan's personal blog not approved by Microsoft (see disclaimer)!
Regular readers should keep in mind that all I said in The End? still applies; the allusion to the X-Files continues for people who understand such references....
I tend to prefer doing all of my Instant Messaging in Windows Live Messenger rather than Office Communicator.
Nothing personal, it is just more something that fits me (in truth Windows Messenger was an even better fit, but once you install either of these other two you can't ever launch Windows Messenger again, even if you uninstall them -- it is treated like a post 2009 analog TV set in the US!).
Why? Well, it is like a dozen little things like that which just drive me to the other product. I just don't want to know so much about the people who hang up or whatever else it pays attention to. And so on....
Now I still have to have Office Communicator on my machine, since that seems to be the only way I can forward calls from my office phone1, which means I launch it, set it (or unset it) and then exit.
One amusing thing about Communicator is the words it puts into the status column, such as
and then there is my favorite, the one that comes up if a person is online and not occupied in any of these or various other ways:
Available
I find the "Available" thing to be awfully presumptuous -- available for what, exactly?
Especially at Microsoft, and then especially squared with some of the people on my contact list, there is if nothing else a certain emotional unavailability that is inherent to many of the listed. It just seemed very weird (and perhaps a tad amusing!) to see some of them listed as being "Available"....
To be safe I think I will stick to Windows Live Messenger, though. The more neutral Online is really more up my alley for when I happen to be online, without admitting any particular type of availability. :-)
1 - This is really important when I want to see what the voice recognition software on the Microsoft autodialer is misunderstanding as "Michael Kaplan" during a given week. There have been some amusing ones lately. :-)
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Santhosh Pillai on 25 Apr 2008 5:45 PM:
Available for "communication", perhaps?
Michael S. Kaplan on 26 Apr 2008 12:58 AM:
Well, that might be what they meant... but a bunch of under-socialized designer creating social networking software for people with a potentially much wider view on life should choose their words with more care (and tact!)....
Erzengel on 27 Apr 2008 3:09 AM:
"There have been some amusing ones lately"
Liiiiike? Inquiring minds must know! ;-)