OpsanBlog

30 Years Since Jonestown

Michael Coates - Microsoft Pragmatic Evangelist — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 03:24:00 GMT

Thirty years ago this week, some 900 people following the “reverend” Jim Jones either killed themselves, or were murdered by other followers from the “Peoples Temple” community in Guyana.

Tim Reiterman (then of the San Francisco Examiner) was the primary author of a 1982 book of his year-plus investigation of the cult. The book, “Raven: The Untold Story of The Reverend Jim Jones and His People” was re-published recently (link to Amazon).

You can catch up on the history thanks to BoingBoing for this series of posts:

Pretty wild stuff.

“Deep Space" Internet

Michael Coates - Microsoft Pragmatic Evangelist — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 03:14:00 GMT

With the costs and limited routing paths associated with broadcasting data packets across interplanetary distances, a “deep space” Internet could not rely on TCP/IP practices (reroute or discard, for two) when communicating with remote nodes.

NASA has been working with something they’re calling a “Disruption-Tolerant Network” (DTN), where data packets won’t be discarded if a destination path cannot be found. Instead, network nodes will retain information until it can communicate with the next node. Our Military has used DTN concepts for battlefield communications.

In the news:

CIO: “NASA Successfully Tests First Deep-Space Internet”.
JPL: “NASA Tests First Deep-Space Internet”.

Some very interesting concepts herein,

A Corner Lamp

Michael Coates - Microsoft Pragmatic Evangelist — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:24:00 GMT

A rather “bright” idea, unearthed from Designspotter:

Online Versions of Exchange and SharePoint Now Available

Michael Coates - Microsoft Pragmatic Evangelist — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:13:00 GMT

We launched online versions of Exchange and SharePoint in San Francisco today. The subscription services offer businesses a new way to purchase, deploy and manage these industry-leading products without having to deploy their own hardware.

Businesses can try out the the new services from the Microsoft Online Services page.

MSPressPass: “Exchange Online and SharePoint Online Out of Beta and Ready for Purchase”.

Live Labs: Seadragon AJAX

Michael Coates - Microsoft Pragmatic Evangelist — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:04:00 GMT

Those Live Labs guys just never quit! They’ve now taken the Deep Zoom functionality (you likely saw this most recently in the Hard Rock Memorabilia demo at MIX08) and made it available to the web at large in AJAX, written from the ground-up in JavaScript.

Deep Zoom also powers functionality in Photosynth, and in Silverlight. The AJAX implementation enables you to embed Deep Zoom images on your blog or page and give your users a closer look at an enabled image .. without writing any code!

Imagine an image in an EBay auction that lets you look really, really closely at the item you’d like to buy. Or, a good look at items in a collection (much like the Hard Rock application).

Take a look at the Seadragon AJAX page for an cool bicycle image example.

The team has a page where you can Embed the Viewer and create your collection, either using PhotoZoom on the web or by downloading the Deep Zoom Composer.

Worldwide Broadband Subscribers top 400,000,000

Michael Coates - Microsoft Pragmatic Evangelist — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:03:00 GMT

That’s 400 MILLION, worldwide. The majority are DSL, but some 45 million are fiber.

The convergence of readily-available broadband, improved browsers and viewer interest made it possible for headlines like: “Videos: more than ten billion served”, illustrate viewer demand.

More importantly, the availability of broadband has allowed the likes of YouTube and Skype to appear according to Om Malik, in “Globally, Now 400M Broadband Subscribers”.

Malik also points out that newly-instated policies on bandwidth limitations by the likes of Time Warner Cable and AT&T may just stifle these kinds of innovations, in “Will Incumbents Stifle Innovation?”.

Five Games you MUST Have ..

Michael Coates - Microsoft Pragmatic Evangelist — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:57:00 GMT

.. of course, I’m still trying to beat “Starcraft”.

In my defense, I keep re-paving machines before I finish the last chapter. This weekend, perhaps?

Hrm. I should hide this link from Connor and Hunter.

Extremetech posts: “Five Must-Have (but Lesser Known) Games”.

On to Mars, with Channel 9

Michael Coates - Microsoft Pragmatic Evangelist — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:55:00 GMT

I’m not kidding.

During PDC08, Charles Torre had the opportunity to travel to Pasadena to JPL and meet a number of the folks behind the Mars Exploration Mission. Check out the video on Channel 9: “Channel 9 on Mars: Inside the Mars Exploration Mission - Past, Present and Future”.

Hey: we even had “Robots at PDC?” .. be sure you visit us next year: you never know what the team has up their collective sleeves (and tank tops).

I’ve a great passion for this stuff, following the Rovers as they wend their way around the Martian landscape. A few posts:

The Story of the Mars Rovers (very fun, very lively discussion with Charles Elachi)
Life on Mars, Alien Artistry, or the Wind?
The Little Rovers that Could (and could, and could)”.

Thanks to Charles for an amazing inside view of life on Planet JPL.

Traffic Data Collection via Cell Phone Signals

Michael Coates - Microsoft Pragmatic Evangelist — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:53:00 GMT

Traffic monitoring is nothing new. The passive collection of data using cameras, radar and other devices has been going on for years.

Mapping services from Microsoft (Windows Live Maps and Windows Live Search for Mobile, pictured at the left), Yahoo! (Yahoo Maps) and Google (Google Maps) even provide convenient overlays for the state of traffic atop their maps.

Oh. Live Search also shows traffic on secondary roads, giving you a true opportunity to select a different route.

I posted “Tracking Movement and Progress via Bluetooth” back in May, citing the intent of the Indiana DOT to track vehicles and pedestrians using Bluetooth transmissions. Even though Bluetooth is a very close-range signal (less than 10 meters in most low-power situations), sensors could be placed to collect information from passing vehicles (or people).

This kind of crowdsourcing is very powerful; big globs of data collected by ambient means (sensors listening for signals) can be presented to a system ready to aggregate and report status in real time.

Note that I didn’t say “analyze”. Real-time analysis is left to the user (you need to look at the roads you might travel and decide which routes to avoid). Ideal use of mobile device, I’d say.

Analysts and engineers could rehydrate and create models with the collected data after the fact. Performing BI and data mining operations, they could advance some hypotheses to improve traffic.

Long story short: the better the data (quality and quantity), the higher the likelihood analysts the opportunity to evaluate current patterns and applying this knowledge, make improvements to the traffic systems.

To improve quality, we want reasonable accuracy (over time) of a signal’s direction and location. From this, we can calculate average speed over distance. Knowing this speed will help analysts decide if there are enough lanes based on volume and average speed.
Applying ambient and environmental data will also improve data quality: the time of day, weather conditions and events / activity at the traffic endpoints will help analysts identify anomalies that may affect overall averages.
To improve quantity, we want more signals. We can improve this with more sensors and with collecting multiple types of signals. Rather than limiting collection to Bluetooth signals, add GPS and Cell signals to the dataset.

Comparing improved quality and quantity metrics to existing data collection methodologies will improve the ability of analysts and engineers to design better solutions and speed us on our way.

The folks at University of California, Berkeley are considering tapping the signals of GPS-enabled phones to improve the capture of traffic data.

Technology Review reports: “Tracking Traffic with Cell Phones”.

Are you ready to MIX it up?

Michael Coates - Microsoft Pragmatic Evangelist — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 22:47:00 GMT

I sure am (but since when am I not ready to go to Vegas?).

MIX09 is March 18 through the 20th at the Venetian in Las Vegas, and you can save $200 off the conference price by signing up early.

This is the fourth year for MIX, our technology conference that connects web designers, developers and business professionals to explore the next-generation Web.

As “I'm in danger of being obsessed with time, distance and location”, I chose the lat / long badge to show my MIX loyalty.

Silverlight Updates

Michael Coates - Microsoft Pragmatic Evangelist — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 22:33:00 GMT

Since the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the Democratic National Convention (both served to the Web atop the Silverlight technology), the need to trumpet other wins as they occur has become, well, a bit passe.

Silverlight is out there. You probably already have it, providing you the best Web experience you’ve ever had.

Umm .. did I say “I told you so?” I’m guessing I did: charm is a strong suit of mine I don’t deploy with too much frequency.

That said, it’s been a while since I’ve bragged about some of our wins in the RIA space, and some of the successes we’ve had.

Here are a few:

The Streaming Media Blog reports: “Adobe's CEO Underestimating Microsoft's Ability To Compete With Flash”, quoting an article in The Guardian: “which appears on the guardian.co.uk website”.
USA Today had an article last week: “Microsoft's Silverlight heats up fight for online video players”.

Is it a fight, or just a better way to extend developer resources to the web? I choose the latter. Silverlight provides an extension to Visual Studio developers, enabling them to participate in the RIA space with their existing skill set.

Here’s some sites you can check in the wild:

Want to buy / sell a car? Check out the Kelly Blue Book (KBB) Photo Edition. You’ll find user-friendly navigation (try unchecking everything but “van”) and a great use of our Deep Zoom technology.
SmoothHD is the Akamai showcase for our new IIS7-powered Smooth Streaming adaptive streaming technology. With enough bandwidth, you can scale up to 720p for true HD display.
If you’re in The States, you can look at the NBCOlympics site and re-live the Games.

If you’ve a project that can benefit from our developer-designer workflow and extend your vision to the web, please reach out to me .. I’ll connect you to the right folks.

Jerry Yang Steps down (Yahoo)

Michael Coates - Microsoft Pragmatic Evangelist — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:52:00 GMT

Jerry Yang, CEO of Yahoo is stepping down.

All Things Digital has the entire internal memo in “Jerry Yang’s Entire Memo to His Employees on Stepping Down as CEO”.

Why stop at Web 2.0?

Michael Coates - Microsoft Pragmatic Evangelist — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 20:57:00 GMT

Actually, I believe the web to be stateless; continually iterating and evolving. To try to attach a major- or even minor-release identifier is an exercise in futility.

That said, Kevin Kelly (speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit) skips 3.0 through 9.0 talks about Web 10.0. Some very nice insights in this ten-minute video.

Thanks to BoingBoing for pointing me to “Web 10.0”.

Six Months of Live Search Cashback

Michael Coates - Microsoft Pragmatic Evangelist — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 18:40:00 GMT

The Live Search Cashback program lets you earn rebates by using Live Search to find and purchase items. I posted “The Live Search Cashback Program LIVE on EBay”, when the team announced EBay was on board. EBay users will see ‘gleams’ when a vendor is offering a Cashback rebate.

That’s not all, though: if you use Live Search Cashback to find items on the web, you’ll see rebate opportunities all over the place.

The team is encouraged at this six-month point, users are collecting rebates, vendors are reporting increased sales and traffic and many more vendors getting on board.

Psst: Christmas is coming .. you are likely going to be making some purchases; why not get paid?

For review:

The Live Search Blog reports: “Six months in, Live Search cashback is cashing in”.

The Microsoft Store Launches in The States

Michael Coates - Microsoft Pragmatic Evangelist — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:18:00 GMT

We just launched our first store in The States (Microsoft Store has already launched in Germany, UK and Korea).

You can access (and, of course, buy) our entire consumer catalog, including desktop software, the Xbox console and games, Zune and accessories, as well as all of our hardware. Software can be downloaded or ordered on media (it’s about time!).

Pricing is MSRP (you might find better deals on Amazon). However, the presence is about making direct connections with you, our customers.

More stores follow. In the coming year, we’ll be opening in Japan, France, Spain and the Netherlands.

Microsoft Web: “Microsoft Launches First U.S. Store”
MSPressPass: “New Microsoft Store Opens Virtual Doors”

Visit the Microsoft Store and see for yourself.

Big News for you Exoplanet-Seekers

Michael Coates - Microsoft Pragmatic Evangelist — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:42:00 GMT

We found one.

Well, two, actually ..

I mean, don’t we all want to know about planets that revolve around other suns?

Well, of course we do.

Thanks to the Hubble Telescope, NASA reports the first visible-light snapshot in “Hubble Directly Observes a Planet Orbiting Another Star”.

For the story on the second planet (circling another star), see Discover Magazine blogs: “HUGE EXOPLANET NEWS ITEMS: PICTURES!!!”.

Check your Reality

Michael Coates - Microsoft Pragmatic Evangelist — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:19:00 GMT

I have NO idea what this decorative coolness is.

Somehow it captured my attention.

I’m guessing it’s Friday. :P

The description in the post doesn’t do me much good, either.

If you can sort it, please send me an email.

Thanks to Designspotter for posting “Reality Checking Device”

Windows Live comes Alive with Social Activities

Michael Coates - Microsoft Pragmatic Evangelist — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:44:00 GMT

User at the center: Information Snacking at it’s best.

Not a social network, mind you (that’s so 2005), but an aggregation of social activities. Things like:

Email
Instant Messaging
Photos
Social
Online storage

This is the first entree to Microsoft becoming a Web 2.0 Citizen (per Microsoft Watch); APIs are exposed, access from multiple browsers and devices and multiple-site goodness is now under user control.

In the news:

Get the latest bits and customize your home page at the Live Home Page.

52 and 48

Michael Coates - Microsoft Pragmatic Evangelist — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:15:00 GMT

On the touching side, actually; testament to on our being members of the American club: “From52to48withLove”.

Starbucks, the iPhone and Wi-Fi Access

Michael Coates - Microsoft Pragmatic Evangelist — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:07:00 GMT

Just yesterday, I posted “Free Wi-Fi from Starbucks” .. likely old news (as I’ve been seeing the adverts for a while) to everyone but me.

Turns out, the iPhone is going to enjoy some special privileges as well.

Kevin Shawver posts “Free Wi-Fi for Apple iPhone users at Starbucks” on the Starbucks blog, giving us step-by-step instructions for iPhone user sign-up.

The Story of the Mars Rovers

Michael Coates - Microsoft Pragmatic Evangelist — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:52:00 GMT

Speaking at Art Center College of Design “Serious Play 2008” conference, Charles Elachi (director of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory) shares his history with JPL, and a bunch of stories and video from the Mars Rover Project.

I love this quote from the video:

“We really only expected the rovers to last 100 days, and here we are four years later”.

Yes we are: I was elated to link to this back in 2006 in “The Little Rovers that Could (and could, and could)” .. but it’s SO much better hearing it from the source!

It’s a short video (about 28 minutes) and is well worth a look. Mr. Elachi is an energetic and interesting speaker and shares a lot of behind-the-scenes action, making for time well spent.

Ted Talks: “Charles Elachi: The story of the Mars Rovers”.

IE6 for Windows Mobile Announced

Michael Coates - Microsoft Pragmatic Evangelist — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:28:00 GMT

I’m glad to see this! We have long since needed an improvement to the browser that ships with Windows Mobile devices. Some of the improvements:

Support for full fidelity desktop rendering
Mobile screen layout fixes
Enhanced Script and AJAX support
Improved multimedia experience (I’m hearing Flash support)
Deeper search
Gesture support
Multiple zoom levels

Developers can get started building and testing their applications thanks to the Internet Explorer Mobile 6 Emulator, which is available right now.

In the news:

Watch (and nag .. which I’ll be doing) your device manufacturer to get the updated bits when they’re released.

MSN Toolbar Ships with Java Runtime

Michael Coates - Microsoft Pragmatic Evangelist — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:18:00 GMT

When you next download Java Runtime from Sun Microsystems, you’ll be offered our MSN Toolbar.

The Silverlight-powered toolbar delivers one click access to Windows Live Search, news, entertainment, finance and more. The Silverlight platform makes for a spiffy UI, thus improving the user experience when searching and sorting results.

This is great news for Live Search and Silverlight; giving users yet another way to acquire the bits for the best user experience on the web.

In the news:

Download the Java Runtime from Sun Microsystems.

Report Storms, Floods and Dangerous Weather

Michael Coates - Microsoft Pragmatic Evangelist — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 13:35:00 GMT

ReportStorms.com is a Silverlight-enabled, Microsoft Virtual Earth-hosted application powered by WeatherCentral and you, the user.

The application allows you to look at areas in which you’re interested by navigating to the location on the map. Further, it enables users to report on weather and weather-related conditions in their area by right-clicking appropriate place on the map and filling out a forms.

Thanks to LiveSide for posting a good run-through (complete with screenshots) of the application in “How's the Weather?”

Election Analysis from The Onion

Michael Coates - Microsoft Pragmatic Evangelist — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:39:00 GMT

The Onion provides a bit of election analysis for us in a post titled “The Election: How It Works”.

Well, tongue-firmly-in-cheek, to be sure.

If you follow stories in The Onion, suffice to say: it’s about what you expect.

I was tickled by a few items; check out the map in the article (be sure to read the legend for maximum effect) ..

.. I’m guessing that you will be too.