In case you missed it (Part 2): Microsoft history revisited

Here are a few more holiday-season posts you might have missed if you were away from your PC the past couple of weeks. Microsoft historians are likely to find these links especially well-worth a read.

Redmond Developer News has a long but interesting Q&A with Brad Silverberg, the former Microsoft Windows 95 and Internet Explorer chief who went on to help found the Ignition Partners venture-capital firm (whose employee roster reads like a who's who of former Softie big-wigs).

The RedDevNews folks got Silverberg talking about his philsophies of managing large development projects, as well as his critique of the Windows Vista development project/process. Among the Silverberg sound bytes:

"(Vista's development) was Cairo all over again. It failed for the same reason Cairo failed. I am a believer in incremental development. Get the biggest risk things out of the way first and then just continually develop on it; get something done and then build on it. Get the next thing and build on it, get the next thing and build on it. Instead of a big bang. It never works. I worked on a big bang earlier in my career called the Lisa at Apple. It was a big bang-it failed in spectacular fashion."

(Those who remember tales of Silverberg and Vista leader Jim Allchin's head-to-head disagreements over the future of Windows and the Web might take Silverberg's critiques with a grain of salt.)

Over on LiveSide.net, Harrison Hoffman provides an insider's look at the not-so-long, but winding history of Windows Live. If the myriad Windows Live codenames and (non)announcements have left you confused, this post is for you.

Meanwhile, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Todd Bishop has created an analysis, using cloud tags, of Microsoft executive speeches and articles from 195 to the present. If you want a quick, graphic way to compare what was/is top-of-mind for Microsoft's leaders, this is a cool tool.