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Microsoft PDC: Will the real cloud platform please stand up?
At the upcoming Microsoft Professional Developers Conference, "platform" will be the watchword of the day. I'm going to be interested to see which cloud platform of the many that Microsoft... Continued »
October 10th, 2008
Live Services as Microsoft’s consumer Web platform
It’s been tricky keeping separate all of the “layers” in the Microsoft cloud strata. One of those layers, Live Services, has been especially amorphous. But now Live Services is a little clearer, thanks to a new Web site detailing an upcoming series of Microsoft events.
Live Services Jumpstart 2009 — a paid event Microsoft is planning to host in 11 cities worldwide starting in November — offers a lot of clues about how Microsoft is planning to position and explain Live Services to developers at the upcoming Professional Developers Conference (PDC).
From the Jumpstart 2009 agenda (cached), it looks like Microsoft is lumping these technologies into the Live Services bucket:
- Windows Live ID
- Live Messenger
- Live Search
- Virtual Earth
- Silverlight Streaming
- Live Sync (which those sneaky LiveSide geniuses, with the help of LiveSino.Net, figured out was the new name for FolderShare)
Powering these services are a variety of Cloud application-programming interfaces (APIs) — for things like virtualization, storage, networking, management, etc.., no doubt — along with the .Net libraries.
Here’s how Microsoft describes the Jumpstart event in the overview:
“Live Services Jumpstart provides in-depth technical training sessions (level 300-400) on Microsoft’s cutting edge consumer web platform technologies that help developers / partner organizations build rich web applications, sync and share them across devices and more importantly, build audience for the web applications.”
“Upon attending this event, you should be able to Jumpstart your web application development with the power of Live Services.”
Here’s another description of how Microsoft intends to describe/position its Live Platform, courtesy of an October 10 blog post by the US ISV Developer Evangelism Team:
“Microsoft’s Live Platform lets you easily put the social and collaborative capabilities into your website to create rich experiences online, and helps consumers keep those experiences synchronized, online and off, across all their devices. Live platform enables you to add compelling, sticky web capabilities, and dramatically increase audience engagement on your site. You can make your web site more ’social capable’ by integrating
- Presence and awareness
- Representing data in visual, geographic ways
- Sharing info across mobile workforces who are occasionally connected
- Storing data in a distributed, peer to peer fashion and delivering in an event driven manner”
I’m sure all of these postings will disappear from the Web real soon now. So check them out while they are still findable if you’re interested in learning about Windows Live Services before Microsoft peels back the covers in another two weeks.
October 10th, 2008
Microsoft expected to release Silverlight 2 next week
It sounds like Monday October 13 is the day that Microsoft will announce that Silverlight 2 is done.
(Update: I originally said “Silverlight 2.0 in this post. But I’ve heard from a couple of Softies they are calling the next version plain old 2.)
Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President of the .NET Developer Division is slated to make “a significant announcement related to Microsoft Silverlight” on October 13 at 9 a.m. PT, according to Microsoft.
Microsoft released the near-final test build of Silverlight 2 for both Windows and Mac OS X clients at the very end of September.
Silverlight 2, unlike the 1.0 version of Microsoft’s competitor to Adobe Flash, includes a cross-platform, cross-browser version of the .Net Framework.
Silverlight enables developers to write applications using any .Net language, including JavaScript, IronPython and IronRuby. Silverlight 2 also features a Windows-Presentation-Foundation-based UI framework for building rich Web apps, and out-of-the-box support for REST, WS*/SOAP, POX, RSS, and standard HTTP services.
October 10th, 2008
Microsoft Big Brains: Gary Flake
Just before retiring from day-to-day responsibilities at Microsoft, Chairman Bill Gates said that he expected Microsoft’s 22 Technical Fellows to get a lot more publicly visible — now that they wouldn’t be living in his shadow. While some of the Microsoft fellows already have been active on the public-speaking circuit, many of them are not widely known outside the company.
I’m launching this series — “Microsoft Big Brains” — to help remedy that shortcoming. In the coming weeks, I am hoping to profile as many of the company’s tech fellows as to whom I can get access.
Microsoft’s Technical Fellows came to the company via a variety of different routes. Some of them run divisions inside the company; some focus on particularly thorny technical issues that may span a variety of product units. Regardless of where they sit in the organization, the fellows all have been charged with helping Microsoft craft its next-gen products and strategies, much the way that Gates used his regular “Think Weeks” to prioritize what Microsoft needed to do next.
This Week’s ‘Big Brain’: Gary Flake
Claim to Fame: Director of Live Labs, Microsoft’s MSN-Research mash-up
How Long You’ve Been With Microsoft: 2 years
More About You: Before joining Microsoft, founded Yahoo! Research Labs, ran Yahoo!’s corporate R&D activities and was Overture’s Chief Science Officer. (I asked him what he thought about Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo and he decided not to answer, in case you were wondering what a former Yahoo thought about the on-again/off-again Yahoo courtship.)
Your Biggest Accomplishment (So Far) at Microsoft: Creation of Live Labs
Team(s) You Also Work With:MSN, Web search, desktop search, online advertising
Why Stay at Microsoft? “The Internet has not historically been Microsoft’s priority, but has become such a big part that I have no hesitation about staying here for the long haul.”
“I didn’t originally intend to build another lab. It just happened,” concedes Gary Flake, the head of Microsoft’s Live Labs incubator.
“It’s hard building a new lab,” Flake says. He describes the process as being similar to upgrading a highway from two lanes to five. “You can’t just tear the highway down. Traffic still needs to flow.”
So far, the “traffic” flowing through Live Labs has been fairly light — at least in terms of the number of projects out in the public domain. (The best known of them is PhotoSynth, Microsoft’s photo-stitching technology which Live Labs recently released in Verion 1.0 form.) But there are another 100 or so Live Labs projects that aren’t public yet, Flake says.
“I want to remind people it’s the early days of Web search and online advertising. The best is yet to come, not just from Microsoft, but from the industry as a whole,” he says.
Flake notes that the user interface for search hasn’t changed a whole lot over the past ten years. The number of new innovations can be counted on one hand, he claims.
“We are really hard at work on evolving these paradigms in a way that i not incremental. It is a set of problems you have to spend years on. I think we are going to shock and surprise people” when we finally go public with what we’re working on, he says.
Inside Live Labs, “at any given time, there can be 40 active projects going on, ranging from having a partial person dedicated to them, to a 20-person team,” he says.
While creating the culture, vision, mission and strategy of Live Labs is a big endeavor in and of itself, Flake says that he is actually spending most of his time working with other teams at Microsoft.
“I do a lot of technical work alone or with other (corporate and product) groups on spcific technology products,” Flake says. The work “can be about company strategy, or a deep technical dive, or assembling a SWAT team, or managing hundreds of people.”
The result can be anything from a new product, to the “secret sauce,” never acknowledged publicly, that is part of a larger product from Microsoft.
“Live Labs is about spanning a big part of the continuum from ‘live’ to baked. We’re trying to fill in the gap between Microsoft Research and the product groups,” Flake says.
For all of the “Microsoft Big Brains” profiles, check out the Big Brains page.
October 10th, 2008
Microsoft renames its ‘D’ language ‘M’
Microsoft is continuing to slowly trickle out details about its Oslo modeling strategy. The latest info with the Connected Systems Division (CSD) has gone public are the names of the three Oslo components it will release in Community Technology Preview (CTP) form at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC).
Oslo — which Microsoft initially outlined as encompassing everything from Visual Studio 2010, to System Center Version 5 — now is comprised of just three elements, according to the Softies:
- The modeling language, known until fairly recently as “D” (seemingly for “declarative”), which is now known as “M.” M will let developers express models in text.
- The visual modeling tool, known as Quadrant, for more complicated modeling tasks
- A shared repository, based on SQL Server, for storing models, schema and metadata. Developers can use Access, Excel, report writers and/or analytics tools to aceess and manipulate the information in the repository.
Robert Wahbe, Corporate Vice President of CSD, said Microsoft intends to deliver the final version of all three of these components as part of a future release of Visual Studio. (He didn’t specify whether it would be Visual Studio 2010 or not).
While Microsoft expects most of it users to edit their models in Visual Studio, the company also will offer a standalone editor (Intellipad) as an option.
Models are no longer just about describing applications; they are part of the applications, Wahbe said during a press tour this week.
“Every large existing application already has a model. Today, it’s hard to author the models and it’s hard to integrate the models. That is where Oslo comes in,” Wahbe said.
October 9th, 2008
Microsoft Live Labs launches politically focused social-media site
Microsoft’s Live Labs — the Microsoft incubation lab that combines Microsoft researchers with MSN product managers — has launched a new technology preview, just in time for the U.S. presidential election.
Live Labs released on October 9 “Poltical Streams,” which the company is describing as a way for individuals to receive “at a glance, a more complete picture of the information and opinions on the Web on a single page.”
Political Streams is the first of what is likely to be a number of vertically focused streams built atop Live Lab’s new “Social Streams” platform that is designed to index “social media” from around the Web, including blogs, newsgroups, news sites and discussions. Social Streams builds on new data-mining, inference and higher-order patterning technologies under investigation by Live Labs team members.
While there are no publicly available Social Streams programming interfaces, at least so far, Microsoft isn’t ruling out the possibility that it might allow third party developers to create Social Streams, too.
Here’s how the new site works, according to an e-mail I received from a company spokesperson:
“Political Streams mines a stream of political content from both web sites and blogs in real time and then ranks that content, as topics, people and places mentioned rise and fall in popularity across the Internet. Headlines let you click down to an abstract of the story, along with graphs tracking the trends of people and places mentioned, as well as a link letting you click down to the full text of the story from there. This provides a broader context, allowing people to understand how the mainstream media and social media are discussing the issue, person or place.”
Microsoft’s plan is to close the Political Streams site once the election is over so that members of Live Labs can analyze usage data.
I noted recently that Microsoft’s much-touted Live Labs seemed to be short on projects. But it seems there are quite a few in the hopper. Stay tuned for more on that front.
October 9th, 2008
How much would an $800 Apple laptop hurt Microsoft?
Just when the Windows marketing team thought things probably couldn’t get much worse, there’s word that Apple may be gearing up to launch a new Macbook with a low-end $800 price point.
One of the biggest selling points for new Vista PCs is price. There are more than a few decent Vista laptops out there for under $1,000.
Apple’s PC marketshare is hovering around eight to nine percent in the U.S. For many, Apple machines are still just too expensive — even though the lowest end Macbooks can be had for about $1, 099. But if users could get an Apple laptop for $800, I’d think many would think longer and harder about whether to go with Windows or Mac OS X.
Microsoft — and its PC partners — aren’t sitting idly by waiting for Apple to eat its lunch. Microsoft execs have stated repeatedly that the company, going forward, is working more closely with OEMs to create better out-of-the-box experiences for Windows PC users. It sounds like this will go beyond reducing and/or removing crapware.
There are other projects hatching in other groups at Microsoft, too. Microsoft Corporate Vice President Bill Mitchell and his PC|3 team, which is part of Microsoft’s Core Operating System Division (COSD), is working on “improving the mobile PC experience” for users in the developed and developing worlds both. From what little I’ve heard about PC|3, it sounds like at least part of its mission involves picking up where the Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC) folks at Microsoft left off.
Microsoft has been mum on when/how/if it can get Vista and its successors to run on ultra-low-cost PCs (ULPCs). Currently, because of system requirements, Microsoft allows ULPC makers to ship with Windows XP, not Vista, and will do so through 2010. Given that magic 2010 cut-off date, I’d expect that the Windows team is working to produce some Windows 7 SKU that will be customized to run on ULPC systems.
Don’t forget, coming up from the other end of the market, there’s also a skunkworks effort inside Microsoft to port Windows Mobile to Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs). No word on what’s happening on that front….
If Apple does, indeed field an $800 laptop, do you think Microsoft will lose much market share? What else should and could Microsoft be doing to steel itself for a possible Apple price attack?
October 8th, 2008
No surprise: Microsoft to fine-tune UAC in Windows 7
In the latest post on Microsoft’s “Engineering Windows 7″ blog, Microsoft officials acknowledge what everyone’s been assuming: Microsoft is going to fine-tune the User Account Control (UAC) feature with Windows 7.
UAC, which debuted with Windows Vista, provides users with standard user rights, as opposed to uber administrative rights, by default. Microsoft argued that this change would help save users from themselves, so that they wouldn’t accidentally modify system settings, disable antivirus software, etc. When UAC is turned on, users receive many, poorly explained notifications when the system believes they are engaging in “risky” behavior.
With Windows 7, Microsoft is not going to do away with UAC, according to the October 8 post by Ben Fathi, president for core OS development (and others on his team) on the E7 blog. But it is going to “address the customer feedback and satisfaction issues witht the (UAC) prompts themselves,” Fathi blogged. He said with Windows 7 Microsoft has two overriding goals when it comes to UAC. From his post:
“We’ve heard loud and clear that you are frustrated. You find the prompts too frequent, annoying, and confusing. We still want to provide you control over what changes can happen to your system, but we want to provide you a better overall experience. We believe this can be achieved by focusing on two key principles. 1) Broaden the control you have over the UAC notifications. We will continue to give you control over the changes made to your system, but in Windows 7, we will also provide options such that when you use the system as an administrator you can determine the range of notifications that you receive. 2) Provide additional and more relevant information in the user interface. We will improve the dialog UI so that you can better understand and make more informed choices.”
With Windows 7, Microsoft is endeavoring to reduce unneeded and duplicate prompts; to make prompts more informative; and to provide “better and more obvious control over the (UAC) mechanism,” Fathi’s blog post said.
Fathi said he’s confident the revamped UAC system will be less hated than the original UAC lockdowns introduced with Windows Vista in the name of better security. More from his post:
“We’ve already run new design concepts based on this principle through our in-house usability testing and we’ve seen very positive results. 83% of participants could provide specific details about why they were seeing the dialog. Participants preferred the new concepts because they are ’simple,’ ‘highlight verified publishers,”provide the file origin,’ and ‘ask a meaningful question.’”
UAC seems to be one of the most hated features of Vista. (Just do a Web search for “how can I disable UAC” for unofficial proof of that contention.) From what Microsoft has shared so far, do you think the proposed UAC changes for Windows 7 go far enough to undo the damage to Vista’s reputation done by UAC to date?
October 8th, 2008
Windows Strata = Microsoft’s layered cloud OS
Nice find by blogger Kit Ong (which I saw via Long Zheng): Microsoft’s cloud operating system platform is named — or at least codenamed — “Windows Strata.”
Microsoft is indirectly confirming the name on its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) Web site, where all of its cloud-related sessions are now lumped under the “Windows Strata” heading. (Update: Microsoft pulled all the PDC site references to Strata as of October 9.)
Another naming tweak that the company has made on the PDC site: The Live Mesh Platform is now called the “Live Framework.” One session, entitled “Live Services: Building Mesh Applications Using the New Live Framework” is described as follows:
“Come learn how to build a new type of application designed from the get-go to live and breathe within Live Mesh. ‘Mesh Applications’ can be accessed from anywhere through a web browser as well as run locally (and offline) on user’s desktop and can take full advantage of many Mesh value-add services such as a dedicated sandbox, online and offline synchronized storage, auto deployment and update, identity, application catalogue, social computing and more. Learn about the Mesh Application architecture and lifecycle as well as how to build Silverlight 2 and JavaScript Mesh Applications from ground up.”
(I wouldn’t be surprised if one of these “mesh applications” we see being accessed from a Web browser during the PDC demos is PowerPoint or another of the Office family of apps… How would Office in a browser differ from how Office Live Workspace currently works? Another PDC mystery left to solve.)
But back to Strata. Is Strata the product currently codenamed “Red Dog”? I’m not sure. But I think Strata might be the Red Dog plus a layer of cloud infrastructure services (like management, virtualization, networking, storage, etc.). There’s another whole layer of cloud services — which Microsoft has been calling Live Platform Services — that is going to ride atop this lower-level “strata.” The Live Platform services are where Live ID authentication, device synchronization, workflow, P2P networking, etc., fit in.
(“Strata,” as Wikipedia notes, has to do with layers: “In geology and related fields, a stratum (plural: strata) is a layer of rock or soil with internally consistent characteristics that distinguishes it from contiguous layers. Each layer is generally one of a number of parallel layers that lie one upon another….”)
October 7th, 2008
Microsoft Live Search now embedded in Facebook
When Microsoft announced it had struck a deal with Facebook to integrate its Live Search technology into the Facebook platform, the Redmondians were reluctant to share details.
But as of today, October 7, Live Search is now part of Facebook.
The Redmond Pie site has more on how the Live Search-Facebook integration works.
As News.com notes, it’s not clear how or even whether searches done from inside Facebook will grow Microsoft’s overall query share, as these are Intranet, rather than Internet, searches.
I’ve asked Microsoft for more information. No response yet.
Update: There is a bit more info on the Live Search blog — with Microsoft promising it will have “more to share on this (Live Search-Facebook) partnership in the weeks to come” — which I found thanks to a link on LiveSide.Net.
October 7th, 2008
Microsoft quietly halts sales of third-party activation offering
Microsoft has halted — temporarily, according to company officials — sales of its Software Licensing and Protection (SLP) Services product.
SLP Services is set of technologies designed to allow third-party developers to add code protection and activation mechanisms, akin to those Microsoft embeds in Windows as part of its Genuine Advantage technologies, to their own software.
An astute reader sent me a note today, advising me to try clicking on the “How to Buy” link on the SLP Services Web page. When I did, I got the following message:
“We appreciate your interest in SLP Services, however we are currently not taking any new orders at this time. Current customers will continue to have access to the service and support for the SLP Services product through our SLPSInfo@microsoft.com email alias and our MSDN site.”
I contacted Microsoft to see what gives. I received the following statement from Thomas Lindeman, Director of Marketing for SLP Services:
“SLP Services as a business does not structurally fit within its business unit where it currently resides. We are actively looking for a home for SLP Services and will post that information once it becomes available. In any scenario, we will continue to support SLP Services for the duration of customer contracts. We will not be taking on any new customers at this time.”
(I asked for further clarification, in terms of which business unit the SLP Services group has been part, as well as whether Microsoft might opt to kill SLP Services completely if it doesn’t find a new home. No word back yet. Update: A company spokesperson said the SLP Services team was part of the Windows business unit. “It’s hard to say specifics about the future of the program, though the company is looking to see where it might make sense to live from a broader company perspective now,” the spokesperson said.)
Microsoft rolled out SLP Services in October 2007. The underlying technology was based on assets Microsoft bought when it acquired Secured Dimensions in January 2007.
When Microsoft first unveiled its “Genuine Software” initiative four years ago, company officials said they planned to license to third parties some of the same anti-piracy technologies that Microsoft was baking into Windows and Office. Instead, Microsoft decided to provide external developers with a separate, parallel offering, namely, SLP Services.
Does the suspension of SLP Services indicate Microsoft is moving away from activation and digital-rights management? I’m doubtful. But it is interesting that with Windows Vista Service Pack 1, Microsoft killed the Genuine Advantage “kill switch”….
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