innovation | Shepherd's Pi

Enabling Eureka via Citeability

Posted on April 8, 2010 by lewisshepherd

The story of Archimedes resonates with everyone, because we all regularly feel that rush of excitement that he famously felt when discovering the principle of water displacement: “Eureka!” he shouted, “I have found it!”

Whether it’s car keys or the perfect birthday present for a loved one, we know that feeling. But how often do you feel like shouting “Eureka” when you’re surfing the web looking for a particular piece of government information?

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Filed under: Government, innovation, Microsoft, Society, Technology | Tagged: accountability, Apture, Arcive.org, ASP.NET, Azure, citation, Citeability, cites, Codeathon, CodePlex, coders, data, Drupal, Eureka, gov20, govdata, Government, government 2.0, hackers, HTTP/REST, ideas, information, interop, interoperability, java, Javascript, knowledge IT, League of Technical Voters, LTV, microformats, Microsoft, open source, open source software, opengov, opensource, OSS, permalink, permalinks, php, python, REST, ruby, Ruby on Rails, SharePoint, Silona Bonewald, software, software development, Sunlight Foundation, tech, Technology, transparency, URL, URLs, Windows, Windows Azure | 7 Comments »

Simon Moves On

Posted on January 31, 2010 by lewisshepherd

Jim Simon at the Library of Alexandria, Egypt

One indulgent use of a personal blog is to drop a nod in the direction of a salutary individual, and I’d like to do so for my departing boss, Jim Simon.

Jim has been the founding Director of the Microsoft Institute since 2004, when Bill Gates and Craig Mundie personally decided to establish a small outfit to use the benefits of Microsoft’s advanced research and development activities against intractable problems for the global public sector. They had been talking with Jim for several years, back when he was a senior executive at the Central Intelligence Agency and after, to understand how to improve government’s adoption of modern technologies.

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Filed under: Government, innovation, Intelligence, Microsoft, R&D, Technology | Tagged: 9/11, analysis, Bill Gates, Cairo, CIA, Clinton, Craig Mundie, DHS, DNI, FCW, Federal Computer Week, George Tenet, Homeland Security, In-Q-Tel, Intelligence, Jim Simon, Microsoft, Microsoft Institute, Microsoft Research, MSFT, MSI, ODNI, pyramid, R&D, research, Sphinx, tech, technical, technologies, Technology, terrorism, terrorist, VC, venture capital | 18 Comments »

Slate of the Union Day

Posted on January 27, 2010 by lewisshepherd

Today is “Slate of the Union” day, when the two most charismatic individuals in recent American history go on stage and attempt to reclaim mantles as innovators. I’ll leave aside the fellow with lower poll numbers for now (President Obama). More eyes in the tech world will be watching as Steve Jobs makes his newest product announcement, the Apple tablet/Tabloid/iSlate thing iPad (it’s official).

Back in the late 1980s I worked for the legendary “Mayor of Silicon Valley” Tom McEnery (he was actually the mayor of San Jose), and we did many joint projects with Apple, particularly with CEO John Sculley, a great guy.

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Filed under: Government, innovation, Intelligence, Microsoft, R&D, Society, Technology | Tagged: Apple, Apple iPad, Apple Newton, Apple Tablet, AR, augmented reality, Berkeley, defense intelligence agency, DIA, Disney, enterprise, handwriting recognition, IC, information, innovation, Intelligence, iPad, islate, John Sculley, Knowledge Navigator, media, Microsoft, Microsoft Research, mobile, MSR, multitouch, Obama, Pictionaire, SCIF, slate, Steve Jobs, tablet, tabloid, Tom McEnery, Toshiba, touch, UC Berkeley, UCB, video, Wikipedia, Win7, Windows 7, wireless | 8 Comments »

Total Recall for Public Servants

Posted on December 21, 2009 by lewisshepherd

MyLifeBits is a Microsoft Research project led by the legendary Gordon Bell, designed to put “all of his atom- and electron-based bits in his local Cyberspace….MyLifeBits includes everything he has accumulated, written, photographed, presented, and owns (e.g. CDs).”

SenseCam - Click to enlarge

Among other technical means, Bell uses the SenseCam, a remarkable prototype from Microsoft Research. It’s a nifty little wearable device that combines high-capacity memory, a fisheye lens passively capturing 3,000 images a day, along with an infrared sensor, temperature sensor, light sensor, accelerometer, and USB interface. My group has played with SenseCam a bit, and shared it with quite a few interested government parties and partners. More info on SenseCam here, and more on its parent Sensors and Devices Group in MSR.

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Filed under: Government, innovation, Microsoft, R&D, Society, Technology | Tagged: Abraham Lincoln, Ben Nelson, CD, citizen-journalism, computer, computer science, computers, data, Data.gov, devices, Donna Rice, E.J. Dionne, GAAP, Gary Hart, Gawker, Gordon Bell, gov20, Government, government as a platform, HD, Huffington Post, HuffPo, internet, JFK, Jim Gemmell, John F Kennedy, journalism, lifecasting, Mark Drapeau, Memex, Michelle Obama, Microsoft Research, MSR, MyLifeBits, Nancy Pelosi, National Defense University, NDU, PBS, politician, politicians, politics, Posterous, Poynter, SenseCam, sensor, sensors, Socrates, Steve Outing, Total Recall, Twitter, University of Missouri, URL, Vannevar Bush, Washington Life, web, Wikipedia, www, youTube | 6 Comments »

Intel and AMD Think Outside the Box

Posted on December 19, 2009 by lewisshepherd

Everyone in Washington DC is indoors today because of the season’s first snow, or venturing only within an easy snow-shovel’s carry from the front door. DC always comes to a near-halt with even a dusting of snow, so with a foot or more last night and today, folks are immobile. Here are my photos of our snow fun today, and below to entertain the snowbound I have three separate videos of innovation from Intel, Microsoft, and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

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Filed under: innovation, R&D, Technology | Tagged: 2001, Al Enger, AMD, antitrust, cannon, Cray, data center, Data Center Knowledge, data centers, datacenter, datacenters, engineer, Finland, FTC, green, greenDC, HAL, HAL 9000, human cannonball, intel, Intel Chimes, Intel Finland, Kraken, Kubrick, lawyers, Martti Roth, Microsoft, national labs, Oak Ridge, Opteron, ORNL, snomg, snow, Stanley Kubrick, supercomputer, TechFest, Top 500, Washington, youTube | 4 Comments »

Gunning the Microsoft Semantic Engine

Posted on December 15, 2009 by lewisshepherd

New Bing Maps Beta with embedded data layers from Twitter and other social feeds, click to enlarge screenshot

There’s a lot of information on the Internet already. Every day, more is added – a lot more. And while there are a concomitant number of new analytic or sense-making tools on the web, they butt up against the fact that the data – the all-important data – is held in multiple places, formats, and platforms.

How are we going to deal with all this? One approach is almost mechanical: ensuring that datasets can be accessed commonly, as in our new Microsoft Dallas platform associated with the Windows Azure cloud platform. In the government realm, the anticipated reliance on “government-as-a-platform” (a meme popularized by Tim O’Reilly) holds promise in allowing somewhat aggregated datasets, openly accessible.

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Filed under: innovation, Microsoft, R&D, Technology | Tagged: Alien, API, BI, Bing, Bing Maps, data, database, desktop search, developer, Duncan Davenport, GAAP, Google, Government, IDC, information work, information worker, Intelligence, internet, KM, knowledge management, Los Angeles, Microsoft, Microsoft Semantic Engine, MSE, Naveen Garg, PDC, REST, search, search engine, semantic, SQL, SQL Server, T-SQL, text, Tim O'Reilly, UI, unstructured data, UX, web, Windows 7, www | 3 Comments »

Why a Cloudlet Beats the Cloud for Mobile Apps

Posted on December 13, 2009 by lewisshepherd

Sure, you know cloud computing. You also know a bit about so-called “private clouds,” which enterprises and government agencies are exploring as an option to combine the power and scale of virtualized cloud architectures with security and control over data.

But what do you know of Cloudlets? They may just be a key to the future of mobile computing.

That’s a possible conclusion from the results so far of a Microsoft Research family of projects called MAUI, short for Mobile Assistance Using Infrastructure. The MAUI approach is to enable a new class of CPU-intensive, and data-intensive, applications for mobile devices – but enable them in a new way. Today’s mobile devices can’t run such apps, at least not well. And if they stick to the cloud they may never do so.

I’ve just read a fundamental MAUI paper published last month in the IEEE’s Pervasive Computing journal: “The Case for VM-based Cloudlets in Mobile Computing” (November 2009, co-authored by MSR’s Paramvir Bahl along with colleagues from Carnegie Mellon University, AT&T Research, and Lancaster University).

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Filed under: innovation, Microsoft, R&D, Technology | Tagged: AT&T, bandwidth, Carnegie Mellon, cellphone, cloud, cloud computing, cloudlet, CMU, internet, IT, Lancaster University, latency, Microsoft, Microsoft Research, mobile, mobile computing, MSR, Parambir Bahl, private cloud, R&D, research, smartphone, tech, Technology, virtual, virtual machine, virtualization, VM, VMs, wan | 8 Comments »

The Purple History of Intelink

Posted on December 13, 2009 by lewisshepherd

When I first began talking with DIA CIO Mike Pflueger and Deputy CIO Mark Greer in the fall of 2003 about the work I’d be doing with them inside government, most of the ideas were big ones: let’s re-architect the DoDIIS enterprise, let’s find and deploy revolutionary new analytical software. One of our thoughts was a little one, but for me personally it turned out to be a most valuable project. They let me pull together a panel for the upcoming 2004 DoDIIS Conference called “Geeks and Geezers,” featuring some of the grand old names of intelligence technology. The panel was a success, and in organizing it, I spent quite a bit of time talking to those giants, or should I say listening to them. I learned an enormous amount about “the early days.” This post describes the important work of one of those fellows.

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Filed under: Government, innovation, Intelligence, Technology | Tagged: 9/11, Air Force, Army, Chris Rasmussen, CIA, cio, Dawn Meyerriecks, DCI, Defense, Defense Department, Department of Defense, DIA, DISA, DNI, DoD, DoDIIS, Fred Harrison, GCN, gov20, Government, government 2.0, IC, Intelink, Intelligence, Intelligence Community, Intellipedia, Intellipublia, internet, ISS, James Peak, James Woolsey, John Deutsch, John Hale, joint, JWICS, Mark Greer, Mike Pflueger, military, Navy, NCES, network, O'Reilly, ODNI, Pentagon, purple, SecDef, Steve Schanzer, tech, Technology, wan, web, Web 2.0, web20 | 8 Comments »

A-Space Past and Future

Posted on November 24, 2009 by lewisshepherd

This week marks the second anniversary of the first live internal demo of the intelligence community’s A-Space project, groundbreaking for the IC in its goal of collaborative use of social media across agency lines. Somewhere in Maryland, a remarkable government employee and friend named Mike Wertheimer should pause and quietly celebrate the fruition of his early evangelism for it.

I was still a government employee then, but wrote about the effort at the time here on Shepherd’s Pi (“A-Space: Top-secret social networking“). It makes me chuckle to remember back to those days when it was still mostly unheard-of for IC employees to blog openly on the public web about current technology projects. Now you can’t shut ’em up! 🙂

It made sense, I thought, to set down a few notes at the time for several reasons: Continue reading →

Filed under: Government, innovation, Intelligence, Technology | Tagged: A-Space, Ahmad Ishaq, analysis, ASpace, Chris Dorobek, Chris Rasmussen, CIA, collaboration, computer, computers, DHS, DIA, DNI, Econsultancy, enterprise, espionage, Facebook, FCW, Flickr, GCN, Gizmodo, Google, Google Wave, gov20, Government, government 2.0, Homeland Security, IC, Intelligence, Intelligence Community, Intellipedia, IT, Joab Jackson, Mark Drapeau, Microsoft, Mike Wertheimer, ODNI, Office 2010, semantic, semantic web, SMS, social media, social network, social networking, social networks, social software, software, spies, spy, tech, Technology, transparency, Twitter, Wall Street Journal, Web 2.0, web20, Wikipedia, WSJ | 14 Comments »

Data in the Cloud from Dallas to Mars

Posted on November 17, 2009 by lewisshepherd

There’s a lot going on at this week’s Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC 09); it’s a traditional launchpad for cool new stuff. I thought I’d point out several of the government-relevant announcements and technology roll-outs.

I specifically want to spotlight something called Codename Dallas, and how NASA and others have begun using it. In the keynote this morning Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie told PDC attendees (and his streaming-video audience) that a landslide of new sensors and observational systems are changing the world by recording “unimaginable volumes of data… But this data does no good unless we turn the potential into the kenetic, unless we unlock it and innovate in the realm of applications and solutions that’s wrapped around that data.”

Here’s how we’re addressing that, with a bit of step-by-step context on the overall cloud-computing platform enabling it. The steps are: 1. Azure, 2. Pinpoint, and 3. Dallas.

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Filed under: Government, innovation, Microsoft, R&D, Technology | Tagged: AP, Azure, browser, cio, Citysearch, cloud, cloud computing, cloud services, computing, Dallas, data, data as a service, data services, Data.gov, database, Eclipse, ESRI, Excel, financial, Google, GUI, infoUSA, internet, IT, java, Mars, Michelle Viotti, Microsoft, Microsoft Semantic Engine, NASA, National Geographic, Navteq, news, PDC09, Pinpoint, PowerPivot, Ray Ozzie, RiskMetrics, semantic, semantic computing, semantic web, semantics, SKD, SQL, tech, Technology, Tim O'Reilly, TOPO, UN, Vivek Kundra, WaveMarket, weather, web, Windows Azure, Windows Dallas | 4 Comments »

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