Squawkbox: Corporate Use of MSN Spaces– check out CNBC. Rant alert

Who’d a thunk it – a corporate blog on MSN Spaces.

Check this out.

Big problems a gwan though. The CNBC site does a horrible job of supporting Firefox. No pictures and so on. No buttons.

Please stop the madness. I evidently had not been thinking through the implications of Microsoft’s "extensions" in Spaces clearly enough in the past. I tried to give Dare and the folks at MSN the benefit of the doubt, but this is just bad. Fie on you and your toolkits! AJAX is about small pieces loosely joined, that’s where richness comes from – Flexibility. Did you notice flickr migrate from Flash to DHTML? No. There is a reason for that. "User interface problems" – yeah my heart bleeds.

Give with one hand and take with the other.

A new IE lock in on corporate web communications. That’s just what we all need. The squawkbox is actually a reasonable enough web site in IE, but the browser lock is bad bad bad. I have said some positive things about Spaces in the past. My line had been somewhat like Allistair‘s.

"MSN Spaces is a great product within the context of the MSN package"

I hereby recant. Feel free to burn me now.

I am also a bit surprised that the Spaces license suits CNBC, but that’s another story.

I wish Microsoft would stop "extending the power" of simple powerful things. I want to call the firm a good citizen. I really do. Its like Gurdeep telling me Communicator will support Firefox, which i am beginning to doubt.

Repeat after me: Small pieces, loosely joined, small pieces, loosely joined…. or maybe not.

Just once it would be nice to see a change in the modus operandi. Play nicely with others like Yahoo. I wasn’t sure i followed Sam’s post today, but the whole extensions thing is such a drag.

Is there a role for integrated innovation – sure. Check out the Scoblephone on the Orange network. But this Spaces thing is integrated aggravation. I guess we need more Firefox Only sites to even the balance…

CNBC has shut itself off from at least 10% of the market, many of whom are influencers of stature. Shrewd. Definitely lame site of the week.

Please include me as an agitator for Open Media Standards. That is a club i will happily join.

It seems Steve Rubel got there first and its interesting to see the defence from MG:

"And although some may say Spaces is for kids…its the largest Blogosphere out there…and I am sure other shows will follow our lead. "

Blogospheres as walled gardens. I hope not.

Squawk. End of Rant.