I worked at Atlas Solutions, a subsidiary of aQuantive, from October 2005 to July 2007.

Google bought our largest competitor, Dou­bleClick, for $3 Billion in April 2007. In the following five weeks, all the other major web ad­ver­tis­ing companies were bought up, cul­mi­nat­ing in Microsoft paying the stupendous sum of $6.3 billion for aQuantive. The Microsoft-aQuantive deal closes in mid-August.

To put it mildly, I was not excited at the thought of becoming a Microsoft employee yet again. Cu­mu­la­tive­ly, between 1992 and 2005, I spent 10 years at Microsoft as an employee or contractor, including a year and a half on Cairo, seven years on IIS, and a year on FlexGo.

Nev­er­the­less, I had absolutely …continue.

Microsoft announced today that it was buying aQuantive for $6.1 billion. I work for Atlas Solutions, a division of aQuantive, so I will once again be an employee of Microsoft when the deal closes.

I, for one, welcome our new corporate overlords.

More truthfully, I can't honestly say that I'm overjoyed to be part of the Borg again. Anyone who's ever read MiniMsft realizes that many MS employees find Microsoft to be deeply dys­func­tion­al.

Atlas has a pretty good corporate culture and a sane work-life balance. I've heard plenty today about our people are our greatest asset and that Microsoft will be mostly leaving things alone.

At this point, it's impossible …continue.

Mon­ey­Cen­tral is reporting that our Video On Demand product is running a major pilot:

Cable television operator Sunflower Broadband and MTV Networks today announced that they are launching a market-leading campaign to dy­nam­i­cal­ly insert national ad­ver­tise­ments into on-demand cable television. Sunflower will begin dy­nam­i­cal­ly placing ads into MTV Networks on-demand pro­gram­ming this week. The first campaign, created and managed by the agency Mediaedge:cia, promotes the theatrical release of Paramount Pictures' and MTV Films' major motion picture "jackass number two", in theaters nationwide on September 22. Ads for the movie will be inserted into Comedy Central On Demand programs at the moment that viewers request the free on-demand shows.

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In mid-July, most of the Atlas Solutions developer teams moved from our old offices at Fifth and Jackson in the In­ter­na­tion­al District four blocks west to swanky offices in Pioneer Square. The new offices are at the State building on the corner of Occidental and Main, the pedes­tri­an­ized block with the antique stores and art galleries. Occidental Park across the street has been re­fur­bished. There are three coffee shops within two blocks, and Elliott Bay Books is one block west of us. It's all very pleasant, with the exception of the large number of homeless people.

The only thing that I miss from the old offices is that we're further from the large number of …continue.

The latest issue of Busi­ness­Week covers Atlas On Demand, the product that I've worked on for the last six months, in a piece called TV Eyeballs Close-Up

Ever since the advent of commercial television, ad­ver­tis­ers have wondered exactly what they get for the megabucks they spend on 30-second spots. After all, the networks and cable companies offer only a crude ap­prox­i­ma­tion of who is watching what. With such thin in­for­ma­tion, ad­ver­tis­ers can't target specific neigh­bor­hoods or consumer tastes. As for converting ads directly to sales, well, that's virtually impossible. Yet the Web, with its so­phis­ti­cat­ed per-click metrics, does all of that billions of times a day. "The problem," says Yankee Group analyst …continue.

Back in October, I joined Atlas Solutions as a senior software engineer. The company just held its first "partner summit", to educate some of our key partners on the kind of work we're doing and new de­vel­op­ments. An attendee blogged it. I'm working on video on demand, the stuff that Scott Ferris talked about.

I saw some of the pre­sen­ta­tions being rehearsed last week, but a lot of this is stuff that I've never seen before. I come from a software background, after all, not an ad­ver­tis­ing background.

Two weeks ago, I completed a year as a contractor at Microsoft. After the permatemps lawsuits, no contractor may work more than 12 months at Microsoft without taking a 100-day break. (Con­trac­tors are free to work elsewhere, of course, during the break.)

Emma quit her job at washington Mutual the same week in order to set up her own business. It will be months before she starts making money, so it seemed prudent for me to find a full-time job.

Last week, I in­ter­viewed with Amazon. This week, I in­ter­viewed with the group at Microsoft that I just left, Atlas DMT, and Google.

Microsoft and Atlas both made very attractive offers. This …continue.