14 DAY TRIAL // Just in case you were wondering why it was taking Microsoft so long to deliver on its initial promises with an exclusive collection of content for Windows Vista Ultimate, the answer is rather simple. The Windows Ultimate Extras team has vanquished in thin air (although Long Zheng has another theory)! Just imagine the scale of the Live Search parties over at the Redmond campus for the team. Microsoft managed to lose the entire Windows Ultimate Extras group on the way to the final version of DreamScene. This is not good, no matter how you'd try to look at it.
But is not just a matter of perspective. Windows Vista Ultimate users are the one that have to suffer. However, there are little details available over the faith of the Windows Ultimate Extras team. The last known sign of life and activity was towards the end of March 2007. Alex Kipman, the Ultimate's Group Manager posted a blog entry back in March highlighting future content designed to integrate with the DreamScene technology. Essentially, Kipman was promising that the Ultimate Extras team would deliver an animated version of the Windows Ultimate Wallpaper - Start, as a video background for DreamScene.
But Alex Kipman is no more, and the video version of Windows Ultimate Wallpaper - Start has also disappeared. Well, in all fairness, the Ultimate Wow(!) Windows Vista video wallpaper never existed in the first place outside of the Redmond campus, but the video published by Kipman is no longer available. Has Microsoft, in this manner, succeeded in failing to keep yet another promise made to Vista Ultimate users? Or is the project still in the works? And if it is, who is working on it?
I can tell you who is not... Aaron Hare, software engineer; Connie Missimer, user researcher; Erik Neuenschwander technical Program Manager; Mitch Gatchalian, Senior Product Manager on the Windows Vista Ultimate team; Octavia Petrovici, Ultimate features developer; Will Poole with the Microsoft's Market Expansion Group; Mike LaManna, user experience (UX) designer on Ultimate; Robert Williams head of the Ultimate team; Alex Kipman Ultimate's Group Manager; Bill Mitchell running Microsoft's Mobile and Tailored Platforms (MTP) division; Craig Campbell working on speech recognition software for Microsoft and Paul Liddell Ultimate's first Program Manager were the initial Windows Ultimate Extras team. All that is left is Barry Goffe, Director, Windows Vista Ultimate and yet another promise that Ultimate Extras will come by the end of this summer.
