Fashion advice for Bill Gates. A new operating system that could rival … Vista. And how Seattle compares to Bangalore, India — just with nicer utilities.

That was some of the chatter that caught our attention this past week in the comment threads of GeekWire. The big talker of the week was Todd Bishop’s story on Windows 8, which could become a radical overhaul of Microsoft’s franchise operating system.

Thanks to everyone for jumping into the comments, and sharing your two cents on the latest technology news.


Seattle area dignitaries showed up in force the opening of the new $500 million headquarters of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation this past week. But one reader thought that Bill Gates should have bee stopped by the fashion police.

Melinda should have spent $50 dollars on a nice sweater for Bill. Or $500 on a nice suit. Seriously, look what he is wearing in this video. Did he think he was going to a hockey game?

Full story and discussion: Video: Bill Gates wrote the checks, and Melinda drove the vision for foundation campus


A number of readers were impressed with the efforts of Postcardly, a new Seattle startup that lets users send physical postcards from their email. One early tester of the service had this to say:

I used postcardly during the Beta test to send a postcard to my husband in Afghanistan, and even though I email him pics all the time, postcards are tangible.  And a big hit at “mail call (to show off the babies and all that).  And it was so easy, click click, done!

Full story and discussion: Startup Spotlight: Postcardly brings a high-tech twist to the old-fashioned postcard


Some readers took me to task for pointing out that the Seattle tech community hasn’t produced any high-profile, billion dollar tech companies in the past 10 years. One reader asked why I hate Seattle more than The Wall Street Journal. But Victor noted the lack of positive exits too, placing the blame on Microsoft’s culture.

Seattle feels a lot like Bangalore, with cleaner running water and steady electricity. It has fallen from the center of the tech universe in the 1990s to a glorified outsource center for the Bay area companies. Much of this I blame on the large pool of brainwashed current and ex-Microsofties, with their defensive and closed-mindedness.

Full report and discussion: WSJ report: A wave of Silicon Valley giants arrive on Seattle’s shores


Will Windows 8 get reposition Microsoft as an innovation leader? That was the debate after details emerged this past week showing off an operating system that GeekWire’s Todd Bishop noted feels more like a mobile phone or a tablet.

One reader — commenting under the name “Don’t Do This” — doesn’t have high hopes:

This will be (a) bigger failure than Vista.

But another reader, rtpHarry, held out more hope:

This is just a very thin layer of eye candy so that casual observers can start to get excited about it. This clearly isn’t what is going to take them all another year to develop. They are re-architecting everything from the sounds of it and we wont see the real benefits and potential of this until they start releasing more technical details over the coming months.

Full story and discussion: Windows 8: A radical change for Windows, and a huge gamble for Microsoft

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