Jaa


Microsoft language, in a cloud

This is only tangentially related to technical writing, but a post by Matthew Stibbe brought to my attention an interesting analysis of Microsoft language over the years. It's an interactive tag cloud, covering 1976 to 2006, on Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog. I dragged the slider back and forth for awhile, first looking to see what leaped out at me, and then looking for how often "computer" or "Windows" or "Internet" were the big message.

Some of the timepoints are taken from documents on a narrow topic (such as an email from Bill Gates on "Our smartphone strategy - responding to Symbian"), but many are from product launches, keynotes, finanacial analyst meetings, and interviews. In April 2004, "radino" caught my eye. I didn't click through to read who was really being referred to -- I prefer to think they were discussing Blue Oyster Cult. In the same cloud are "silly", "hey", "huh", and "blah".