Opening Doors to Interoperability

Posted on February 21, 2008 by lewisshepherd

I had to write a freshman term paper on Immanuel Kant, and chose as a topic his role in sparking the German Enlightenment, from which I at least learned the word Aufklarung … which surprisingly doesn’t come up much in normal conversation, even when I’m in Germany. But I’ve been thinking about that movement and its ramifications quite a bit, because of the ongoing technology enlightenment driven by “open-source” approaches.

When I announced I was joining Microsoft, several of my friends in the open-source-software “movement” raised their eyebrows and ribbed me for joining the dark side… although the brighter ones also pointed out several important trends and markers through 2006 and 2007, changes in Microsoft behavior and approach which appeared to signal that the company was tacking in a much more open direction. Ray Ozzie’s joining of the company, and his announced projects, were taken as significant, along with several software launches (both in the Live world and elsewhere) with fundamentally open foundations.

Today the company is making public what Steve Ballmer and Ray Ozzie are calling “important changes to our technology and business practices that will enhance the interoperability of our products and expand the technical information we share with developers, partners, customers, and competitors.” All to the good, including more comprehensive information about the new “Interoperability by Design” approach.

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Social (Network) Science

Posted on February 19, 2008 by lewisshepherd

Fact: The social-networking site LinkedIn claims as users “17,000,000+ Professionals, 500,000+ Senior Executives, Executives from 498 Fortune 500 companies, [and] 65,000 new Professionals every week.”

Analysis: Since I hold the title of “chief technology officer” for my group at Microsoft, I regularly check the widely-read blog CTOvision, written by Bob Gourley, CTO of Crucial Point.

CollaborationlogosYesterday he posted a very solid summary of several social networking tools, including my preferred LinkedIn.  If you’re not up to speed on the genre it is a helpful cheatsheet and “buyer’s guide.”

The technology area deserves the attention. There are a dozen or more such sites for each that Gourley covers, and he chooses the ones that have shown growth and potential longevity; why invest any time adding personal data to a site just to watch it disappear? We’ve all had that happen. And yet hockey-stick growth has to be managed – LinkedIn for example has come in for some critical attention for some snafus along the way.

Let’s look at some efforts to understand more about the science behind the software….

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Mashup Markoff

Posted on February 10, 2008 by lewisshepherd

popfly.jpgJohn Markoff has a great story (that phrase belongs on a cut-n-paste clipboard) in today’s NY Times about PopFly, one of my favorite new Microsoft programs because it is so darned fun, and easy, and flexible – and potentially revolutionary.

I’m both a friend and fan of Markoff, but read his piece and you’ll see what I mean, as the examples he cites are pretty cool – or jump to the site itself.

PopFly is getting a lot of attention and coverage, landing on PCWorld’s list in December of “25 Most Innovative Products of the Year.”

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Seeking Business Intelligence

Posted on February 6, 2008 by lewisshepherd

I had breakfast this morning with Gartner’s Lisa Gross and we were able to talk about her continuing work in support of my old haunts – the agencies of the Intelligence Community. She’s first-rate at understanding the IT needs of large-scale government enterprises, and has always been known as a trusted adviser for CIOs, CTOs, and senior IT executives across many federal agencies.

I was recounting to her that when I first started at Microsoft (oh these many weeks), I was ecstatic at finding on our corporate intranet seemingly total unfettered access to Gartner research reports and white papers (along with similar access to Forrester research and reports).  The mother lode! 

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Driving during the Super Bowl? Use a Mashup First

Posted on February 2, 2008 by lewisshepherd

Fact: According to a report, “Taking Back the Airwaves” in the Buffalo News last month, “Listeners’ relationship with radio has changed in the last 25 years. Radio used to be the main source of music, … but now, like other industries, radio is fighting to reinvent itself in a digital age.”

Analysis: Let’s say you were an Air Force mission planner, and wanted to plan a particular flight over enemy territory.  Time-honored practices (and traditionally clunky but powerful software built custom for the purpose) allow you to overlay the enemy’s known radar-emitting sites, using circles or shapes to indicate the covered and non-covered areas, and to do the same with anti-aircraft missile ranges, allowing the precise planning of a safe flight route.

Now let’s look at a nifty adaptation, showing that there are much more fun and practical everyday uses of such an approach – and now new technologies make it much easier and faster to accomplish! Continue reading →

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A Quick Long-Term Analysis of GOOG, YHOO, MSFT

Posted on February 2, 2008 by lewisshepherd

Fact: According to Forbes, writing after yesterday’s close of trading, “Unable to topple Google on its own, Microsoft is trying to force crippled rival Yahoo into a shotgun marriage, with a wager worth nearly $42 billion that the two companies together will have a better chance of tackling the Internet search leader…. Microsoft’s $31-per-share offer represented a 62 percent premium to Yahoo’s closing price late Thursday, although it’s below Yahoo’s 52-week high of $34.08 reached less than four months ago.”

Analysis: Most of the buzz about the Microsoft-Yahoo commentary yesterday was simply noise, bleating about the immediate impact (or not) on Google, as if the salience is a snapshot rendered in instantaneous who’s-up-who’s-down.  Yet I had a reader comment yesterday very perceptively on my post, saying “Whether the deal is timed well, overpriced or not, is for time to decide. Which may even take a couple of years!”

That got me to thinking about the value of these three companies over the long-term looking back.  Thanks to the web that’s easy to quantify, at least in terms of stock price; you can do it at MSN or on Yahoo Finance, but just for grins let’s do it at …

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Microsoft becomes Microsoft!

Posted on February 1, 2008 by lewisshepherd

Everyone in the blogosphere will light up today on the topic, so not much needs to be said, but I’m glad that at last I can break out the exclamation mark and call my company: Microsoft!

Regarding the purchase of Yahoo!, Dennis Kneale, CNBC’s Business News Media and Technology Editor, had the most vivid word-picture early this morning on the air: “The one guy in America who can’t eat breakfast this morning without feeling sick to his stomach is the Google CEO, Eric Schmidt,” referring to Google’s previous attempts to snag Yahoo!.

I’ve been one of the 400 million users who have a Yahoo! account, for years, with lots of personalized interests and preferences willingly shared in exchange for great user experience like the pioneering MyYahoo portal, which I still like and use, though I also have a tricked-out iGoogle site (eight tabs worth) and now a pretty robust Live Search, Online Live Workspace, and Live Spaces environment.  Imagine the experience and gutsy experimentation that’s coming to Microsoft(!), joining up again with former Yahoo himself Gary Flake (now head of Microsoft’s Live Labs)… it’s pretty exciting.

Keeping score will have to be a longterm effort, of course – start here.

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Punk Rock & Moore’s Law

Posted on February 1, 2008 by lewisshepherd

Fact: Intel’s CEO says “We have new processors that have 250 million more transistors, and yet are 25 percent smaller than today’s version and don’t require more electricity to run.” (Interview published 2/1/2008 )

Analysis: Moore’s Law: immortal, or destined to be broken?  Punk Rock: dead, or in revival?  And why were Johnny Rotten and one of the legendary Traitorous Eight in the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose on the same night back in 1989?

Once-and-future Sex Pistol John Lydon (Rotten) was there after playing a gig up the road, and I happened upon him in the bar, where he proceeded to buy round after round of Heinekens for me, him, and his roadies. He latched onto me because he wanted to talk about American politics, and to his delight I reminded him of some caustic things (surprise) he had had to say over the years about politicians like Reagan and Carter. That just got him started, and we wound up laughing pretty drunkenly into the night in the Fairmont’s swanky lobby bar.

But earlier that evening, I had shown up at the hotel with friends to attend the Silicon Valley Business Hall of Fame dinner, where Bob Noyce, co-founder of Intel, was being honored along with others….

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Wall Street Journal – Peering into the Future, Dimly

Posted on January 28, 2008 by lewisshepherd

The Wall Street Journal ran a collection of think-pieces today on “Thinking About Tomorrow: How will technology change the way we shop, learn and entertain ourselves? How will it change the way we get news, protect our privacy, connect with friends? We look ahead 10 years, and imagine a whole different world.”

My take on the story, though, was “ho-hum.” Looking ahead 10 years should get the mind a little further than easily predictable stuff such as this: “Mobile devices will get smaller and more powerful, and will connect to the Internet through high-speed links. The result: People will be able to do anything on a hand-held that they can now do on a desktop computer. In fact, they’ll be able to do even more, as mobile gadgets increasingly come equipped with global-positioning-system gear that can track your every move. As you drive around, for instance, you might get reviews of nearby restaurants automatically delivered to a screen in your car — maybe even projected onto the windshield.”

Aside from the safety aspect of that type of projection, this scenario surely is only a year or so away – not 10.

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Patents, Microsoft, and the Future

Posted on January 28, 2008 by lewisshepherd

Fact: According to the latest annual report on patents released this month, the number of patents awarded in 2007 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office was down a full 9.5 percent from 2006’s all-time high. In addition, some 80 percent of the companies on the list of top recipients (including IBM, repeating for its 14th straight year at the top of the list) received fewer patents than they had the year before.  Only one American company in the top 25 earned more patents in 2007 than it had the year before: Microsoft.

Analysis:  One of my minor hobbies is reading patents, for example in the field of information retrieval, and I got the bug as an undergrad from my idol Thomas Jefferson, founder of both my alma mater and the U.S. Patent Office and the first patent examiner himself.  Patents are a great indicator of the future – the future of an idea, a technology, a company, a nation.  I enjoyed a great visit to IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center last year, and was enthralled by one design element in the hallways: the wallpaper in the tech demo area was actually small-type listings, floor to ceiling, of the previous year’s patents.  Amazing!  And plenty of fun to read. But in 2007 IBM Corp. received 3,148 patents, down more than 500 grants from the previous year. By contrast, as Network World reported “Microsoft charged into the top 10 with 1,637 patents [and] ranked No. 6 on the annual list after failing to crack the top 10 the previous two years,” with an increase of nearly 12 percent in its patents from the year before.

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