David Strome's Blog : Microsoft

Live Search Mobile

dstrome — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 09:13:49 GMT

I ran across a nifty little utility for my cell phone over the weekend: Live Search Mobile. It’s a small application that you can install on Windows Mobile and Blackberry devices that

provides a slick front-end to the Live Search service. When you open the app, it tries to determine your location automatically. For me its consistently located me to within a block or two without having to turn on GPS. You can then select from a bunch of different options – Movies, Gas Prices, Traffic, etc. Clicking on an icon brings up search results based on your location. I find the movies really useful given that we practically live in movie theatres. Clicking on Movies opens up a page that has two tabs, one that lists the theatres in your area, the other that shows all of the movies playing. I use the theatre tab which lets me browse through each location and pick what movie i want to see. Show times, length, rating and reviews are all shown.

While you’re in the context of a particular entry you can perform a location based search on that entry. So, for example you can choose a movie theatre to go to and then search for restaurants around that location to find a place to go for dinner. Nifty.

In addition to the options on the main page, you can also click on Categories to view several dozen different categories from Restaurants to Arts and Entertainment and Fitness. As with movies, you can drill down into the details of each entry and perform related searches, bring up phone numbers, or get directions from your location to the place you want to go via turn-by-turn GPS (and grab traffic info while you’re at it).

If you don’t want to navigate through menus to find what you want, you can also click on Speak and say what you’re looking for. The client has surprisingly good voice recognition. Most of the time it goes immediately to a search for the term I want but if it needs to it’ll display a list of possible choices to choose from.

Live Search for Windows Mobile is available in the US, the UK, France and Italy. If you don’t have a supported device or you aren’t in a location that is currently covered by Live Search Mobile, you can always use the mobile version of the online Live Search service at http://m.live.com.

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End of an Era

dstrome — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 05:02:26 GMT

You think some things will never end...you think your parents will live forever, that a relationship will never fade, that you have all the time in the world. And then reality hits. Today that reality hit for me again when Bill Gates officially ended his 33 year full-time job at Microsoft.

Back in the early 80's my parents bought an IBM PC. I think it had an 8086 processor in it. It had a monochrome monitor, two 5 1/4 drives, a Fujitsu dotmatrix printer, and DOS. The moment my dad powered the computer on and that little A:> prompt came up I was hooked for life. I was too young to really do much with the machine for a while so I watched my parents do work on it. How could they type stuff into it and have it display an answer? I had to find out. I was tinkering with DOS and BASIC and all sorts of other programs, understanding the file system, figuring out how the peripherals worked.

Back then my favorite game was F-15 Strike Eagle. I can't remember if it ran on the 8086 or if we'd upgraded to the 286 by then. It was an awesome game where you flew around in a virtual cockpit and aimed at little triangles as targets. The engine sound was this godawful high screeching sound that came out of the PC speaker. Click here for a screen shot of the game. (We've come a weeee bit since then) We'd collected more programs and even a modem. I was mesmerized by the fact that I could play a game on it one time, my mom could type up a report, and my dad could phone into his computer at the office to work with the mine control software. And I could write little programs to do simple things like calculate data, store it on a drive, print it out, etc. I think it was DOS 4 or DOS 6 that introduced the menu system. I set up the computer so that my family simply had to make easy choices to launch their favorite apps without having to figure out the file system. I loved DOS. I was a master of Edlin and batch files :) It felt powerful to be able to simply life for my family.

When we bought our first copy of Windows I realized where DOS and Windows came from - this company called Microsoft. And that Bill Gates ran it. I became even more fascinated with computing, seeing what plans they had. Dealings with IBM, this new graphical interface that let you manipulate stuff as little pictures, making it easy for my mom to create docs and pictures, eventually OS/2 and Windows 3. This Gates guy seemed so incredibly smart and forward thinking. I remember telling my parents at some point to buy Microsoft stock in the late 80s. They obviously didn't because I'm working :). oh well. But back then I knew that something big was happening, Microsoft was at the center of it, and I wanted to be part of it. My goal in life from that point was to work for Bill. I considered him then, and still do now, a visionary.

Fast forward a decade and a half during which I'd had a few jobs (including an obligatory dot-bomb job were my wife and I both got laid off within four days of each other right after New Years - from separate companies), moved cities, etc. Microsoft released Windows 95, Office, Exchange and SQL Server, Windows NT, and more. Exchange Server eventually became the thing that would get me in the door. After almost two decades of waiting I would finally be able to work with people who'd really revolutionized how we live. I figured I'd spend the next several years in the company with Bill at the helm.

Then came June 2006. Less than a year after I'd been hired - Bill announced he'd retire in two years. Umm. DOH! Just like people expect your parents to always be there, I kind of always expected Bill to be in charge. June 2006 was a pretty big shock but 2008 was still kind of far off, right? Then today strolled by. Cue reality. Up until now, Microsoft was Bill Gates. From today forward, Microsoft is heading out on its own. We have amazing leadership in Steve Ballmer, Ray Ozzie and others. I'm confident that the next 33 years will be as equally incredible as the last 33. And I hope to be part of the company for that entire time. But still, it'll be just a little different with Bill gone. It really is the end of an era.

Here are a few stories and videos of Bill's time at Microsoft:

WorldWide Telescope Part 2

dstrome — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 08:43:37 GMT

Robert Scoble posted his interview with Curtis Wong from Microsoft Research. The interview includes a demo of the phenomenal WorldWide Telescope project. You can view the video here: http://www.fastcompany.tv/video/exclusive-first-look-worldwide-telescope.

Spring can't come fast enough.

WorldWide Telescope

dstrome — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 09:23:12 GMT

On Wednesday, Microsoft Research announced a new product called WorldWide Telescope (let's call it WWT). Imagine exploring images from the best telescopes across the globe and in space, calling up related data, stories and statistics on objects that you want to know more about. Zoom in until a galaxy fills up your screen in high resolution or create a tour that takes you through the Big Dipper. Seamlessly pan across the sky and search for objects you would never see in a city or see constellations that you can't see from your hemisphere. And do it all for free :)

I absolutely can't wait to get my hands on WWT when it gets released later this Spring. I've always loved looking up at the stars but haven't been able to because I live in such a light-polluted city. Admittedly it won't be like sitting on our deck at my dad's home back in Canada where we can take the whole night sky in. But I will be able to explore the sky like I never could have before. I'll never be able to get to the big telescopes of the world or be able to afford running all over just to look at the sky. But now I will be able to look at the images they produce. And all the data that's available about them. And the stories of the people who've researched them. And so will you. And elementary and high schools, colleges and universities around the world. It's incredible!

Today, a video of the announcement of WWT was released with a small preview of the imagery it contains. Visit the WorldWide Telescope site for more information about the project and some videos from those who've seen it or will be impacted by it. As Curtis Wong mentions in the video, the project is an extension of Jim Gray's work and it is dedicated to him. Jim went missing January 28th, 2007 and worked for Microsoft Research.

Be sure to try out WWT when it's released.

Campus Expansion

dstrome — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 09:40:25 GMT

Microsoft is currently going through one of its biggest campus expansions, well, ever. Back in 2006 we announced that we were spending $1Billion to add 3.1 million square feet of office space around our main campus and the Puget Sound area. A major portion of this expansion is the West Campus. The West Campus will add seven new buildings by 2009 and will house, among other things, our Entertainment and Devices Division (the people responsible for Xbox, Zune and all sorts of other cool stuff). In November 2007 we opened building 99 which is the home of Microsoft Research. I'm seriously jealous of those guys :) I went over and wondered around the week it opened and - wow - what an amazing building. Lots of natural light, lots of open spaces, an amazing atrium and pretty nice offices too. I'm in a pretty nice building myself but I might have considered (ok just for a couple seconds if my boss is reading this) applying for a job with Research. :)

The reason I'm writing this is because I received permission to post a fairly cool picture that was recently posted internally. It's of the future heart of the West Campus, currently under construction (click the picture below to see the full sized version):

I'm pretty fascinated by construction stuff. So when I looked at that picture my jaw just dropped. The picture offers a really unique view of the construction site - from the air. When you look at the site from the ground you think - "well, that's big". But you only see the real size of the project from the air. I mean, look at the freeway below and find a car. You know, the little specks? Now compare that to the construction site. It's huge! In the middle of the picture is the 5000 car parking garage that'll live below the new campus. There are six tower cranes and a few smaller cranes being used in the construction. The sheer amount of work being done in that small space is massive. Hundreds of workers, dozens of trucks, thousands of tons of cement a day...I just find that amazing.

There are four buildings under construction in addition to the parking garage (called a parkade in Canada by the way). On top of the parking garage will be the commons buildings. The former Eddie Bauer building that we purchased is the large aircraft carrier looking building sticking into the middle of the site. When finished, from the drawings and artist renderings, it looks like it'll be a beautiful area. There will be a sports field, wandering paths, lots of trees and buildings with unique architecture. I have a strong feeling I'll be taking the shuttle over to the West Campus once or twice a week for lunch (eh, and probably dinner I have to admit) just to experience it all.

I think it would be interesting to view the changes over time so if more aerial pictures are taken in the future I'll see if I can post them here.