Ok, so there wasn't an energy summit on Vashon Island - but it felt that way after a few encounters with forward thinking energy movements. 

We spent the weekend on Vashon Island, hoping to recharge from a busy M2 workload [the platform is coming together nicely, beta on schedule].  Vashon Island is like our Martha's Vineyard without the Martha.  If you live in Seattle [not the region, the city] like we do, it's a simple and short ferry ride to the island.  Once you land, it's like another world.  There's still more open, undeveloped land than Seattle - most of it filled with active, thriving farms - with several facing the water.  A select few farms face Mt. Rainier in all it's glory.  If you're into this kind of lifestyle, this might be the one place on the planet to get away, and never come back. 

This past weekend was the annual Strawberry Festival; apparently a big deal on Vashon Island because rooms and cabins were booked and [foreign to this Seattle outpost] traffic was jammed with limited parking available downtown.  No matter.  The walk was worth it; especially on a hot summer day in July.  Can't beat this type of weather in the Pacific Northwest [it's why I advise NW newbies to not vacation this time of year - stay home and leave in the winter]. 

Anyway, while strolling the Strawberry Festival offerings, stumbled onto a booth for Zenn Motors.  This company has been quietly selling elecric cars in Seattle; the company is based in Canada.  We ran into a very happy owner of their two door hatchback a couple weeks back; so it was encouraging to see them setup a booth on Vashon Island, the word is starting to spread. 

Later we stumbled upon another electric car booth; but this time it was a DIY effort from a Vashon High School student.  He converted a VW Rabbit from gas to electric power; the specs for his project are impressive [thanks to Deborah for taking notes]:

• Up to 65 mph speed
• 40 miles on a full charge [but not at 65mph :> ]
• 8-10 hrs to recharge when fully discharged
• Can drive to work and charge enough to get home in less than 8-10 hours, if you don't commute 40 miles; then drive home
• Converted from gas to electic power in 6 days

It's not trivial to pull off this kind of project; even more so given he did it in a somewhat isolated location [wouldn't think of Vashon Island as an energy research community].  And yet this young man succeeded in proving to himself, peers, Vashon Island that perserverence has it's rewards.  We need more of this to meet the demands of the next generation of energy innovation. 

Later still, we stumbled upon an electric truck, owned by a local farmer who needed a way to get his produce to market.  Believe the truck was customized originally from a Zenn Motors vehicle.  Our daughter commented [as it drove away from Monkey Tree - great cafe/bakery on Vashon Island BTW] that it didn't make any noise or smell.  How nice to solve air and noise pollution with the electric vehicle movement.

So one weekend on Vashon Island has me thinking this electric power movement might actually take off.  Batteries are still the weak link but after seeing what a Vashon High School student can do; I think we'll solve it soon enough.

con paz,

frank          

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/thearts/2004425254_shaniqua20.html

There was a story in the Seattle Times last week about a children's dance program emphasizing an outlet for inner city kids to express themselves in a healthy way.  The story wanders into the self esteem benefits of giving these kids a venue to not only explore performing arts talent but how to manage the growth of their personality in the process.

I was reminded of self esteem benefits and managed growth after checking out the Search Share on Facebook release.  In many ways, hanging out on FB is a time waster, certainly wouldn't call the site [or is it a platform?] a productivity suite.  Search Share gives Facebook a great search story, it also makes the site [or is it a platform?] useful - because searches found with Search Share can be immediately connected with friends in the network; and saved for further collaboration [uh oh, just used a word hinting at productivity]. 

In my opinion of the moment; Facebook is going to need more of this to manage their growth from cool site [or is it a platform?] of the year to locked in tool for getting-stuff-done-with-people-in-my-network.  The self esteem points should be high if this happens [go feel good about yourself Facebook, sing about it even!]. 

con paz,

frank    

I'm a muy grande fan of web app features that - well - just appear, make common sense, and work without any education.  Here's one I stumbled onto while sending a link from the New York Times to my sister, via Facebook.

You go to a person's profile [in Facebook]; scroll down to their wall.  Then you enter a URL in the wall text box; and the application exposes this widget allowing you to choose which pic [or image] from the URL you want to include in the wall post.   

Here's an article from MSDN for a related capability using Popfly:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2725518&SiteID=1 

Sounds like fun.

Next is my rave for a word lookup feature on the New York Times site.  The implementation isn't as sweet as the FB wall app; but the usefullness is equally high.  Basically you double-click any word and a new browser window opens up with the word defined - and this is the cool part - based on the context of the sentence.  The site help text is as follows:

Tips

To find reference information about the words used in this article, double-click on any word, phrase or name. A new window will open with a dictionary definition or encyclopedia entry.

I would have preferred a pop-up window; but they might get it right next time :>

con paz,

frank     

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2211221/microsoft-unveils-singularity

Imagine being a computer hardware scientist; trying to figure out where to start experimenting with implementation ideas.  At some point you might need to rough out an OS or hand solder a motherboard, add some memory, ports, etc. into a crude computer.  Instead you might want to check out the Singularity OS and the BEE3 hardware platform.  These [as I think of them] starter kits can help accelerate experimentation in both areas [OS and hardware]. 

Wish I had these available back in my CompSci days.  Con paz.

frank

This will be my second year attending TechFest as part of Microsoft Research.  It's an honor to see the great innovation showcased during the event.  For IP and legal reasons I can only share impressions on projects publicly available [where press has been pre-arranged]. 

For these projects, expect updates from my blog about what I believe to be the impact the project has on our industry and for observers of Microsoft Research overall.  Note: these are my impressions only and do not represent Microsoft Corporation or Microsoft Research. 

Look for the first update Wednesday!

con paz,

frank   

http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/#/154/

Working at Microsoft Research is already a dream job; but it gets even better when someone on your team gets featured at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.  Gavin recently travelled there to be part of a show which included his High Capacity Color Barcode project.  This is a great example of Microsoft Research innovation; and the broad impact it can have beyond traditional technology communities.

Nice work Gavin!

frank    

We took a break last week from the white hot heat of building a web platform, to check out "Golden Compass".  The timing was interesting for me because I happened to be reading "Galileo's Daughter".  In both stories science combats control imposed by a large body of [percieved] powerful people, and their fear of distributing knowledge. 

We are fortunate at Microsoft Research to explore new worlds without constraints imposed by a large body of [fill in the blank, depending on where you might have encountered opposition to new ideas].  Instead, distribution of knowledge and collaboration with communities interested in this knowledge is expected in all facets of our work at MSR.

But let's bring it back to the web.  I've been thinking about control as it relates to any person who uses the web [for the sake of this blog post, will defer 'internet' to transport supporting the web].  How much control does any person have on the web?  And this gets more complicated as the web strives too become conversational, or transactional.  APIs are talking to other APIs; do humans have a say in all this cross platform chatter?  Have they been marginalized by a large faceless [not to be confused with facebook :> ] body making decisions in real time about what each person wants. 

If I can ask for an industry shifting gift [during this holiday season], it would be to return control to those who use the web everyday.  Give them the power to control their identity, their read/write operations against any platform, their data collected from searches and other discovery activity.  What would the web look like if this happened?  How would web platforms need to evolve, to support power returned to those who use the web?  

 More on this later... con paz,

 frank    

One of the great joys of a PM is to gather an audience into a room, fire up a laptop, point it at a screen - say a quick prayer - then unveil an idea come to life.  It's what you live for in this [software] business, why I love working at Microsoft and especially Microsoft Research.  Not all demos go well; sometimes the ideas are ahead of their time or not enough time was available for fit/finish, and the idea gets lost in translation.  But when a demo does go well all the digital stars seem to align in one magic moment.

In the coming weeks we'll be doing some demos, get the feedback loop started on a few ideas we've been incubating all summer.  I'll update the community when there's internet facing bits we want your feedback on.

Thanks to all who made our demo days perfect, no matter what happens. 

frank

Hi,

I'm the Lead Program Manager on the team building the next generation of research.microsoft.com and related services.  We decided months ago [long before I arrived] to re-think what a web presence should be for Microsoft Research.  Building a web 'site' isn't necessarily difficult.  In contrast, developing a conversational platform to distribute assets across web and other end points is an exciting journey.  I use the word conversational to suggest there is dialog between people interested with Microsoft Research - they use the web to maintain this interest - and the platform which feeds their appetite for more information. 

There are other terms [or phrases] to suggest what we're up to: semantic, read/write, 2.0, service oriented.  Yet none of these terms suit the problem we're faced with - distributing information as it's desired in the context for which it will have the most meaning and relevance.  With the next generation of research.microsoft.com we intend to explore new ways to match the intent of 'people interested with Microsoft Research' with a response [from the platform] to complete [or perhaps get started] the conversation.

con paz,

frank