I posted recently about the 3rd Keynote at PDC 2008 – one line mentioned a demonstration of the World Wide Telescope (WWT). More details for those who are interested…

The demo was total eye-candy. Visually impressive. 

http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/

A few details about it:

- Basic concept - From Microsoft’s research arm – they’ve compiled 21 Giga Parsecs of visual information from telescopes all over the place into a tool that you can use on your PC to surf the universe visually

- How to get started: Download the tool and then surf the universe visually – key thing here to get started: there are canned “guided tours” you can use to check things out in a slightly more structured fashion (otherwise you might find yourself off in the Gamma quadrant with no clue of your whereabouts)

BTW – what on earth is a giga parsec? It’s 1,000,000,000 (giga) x ~30 trillion kilometres (parsec). Hard to wrap your head around.

Press Bio: Rick Rashid, SVP of Research, Microsoft

Editors note: Day 3 keynote started out a bit dry (overview of MS Research) and ended with the whiz-bang stuff. But as I baked on this, I thought that some of the points he made were still interesting/relevant (esp. the question "Why do basic research?"). So I've included both. Skip down to the "Whiz Bang!" section to hear more about the crazy fun stuff. Also, please forgive the roughness of the notes - I know some of the details are light here, but feel free to ask me more questions about this stuff.

Overview of MS Basic Research

• What's the Mission of Microsoft Research?
  • Expand the state of the art in each area we do research
  • Rapid transfer of innovative technology into production
  • Ensure Microsoft Products have a Future

• How is MS Research Organized?
  • University org model:
    • Flat structure, critical mass groups
  • Open Research environment:
    • Aggressive pub of results in peer-reviewed lit
    • Frequent visitors, daily seminars
  • Strong ties to Uni. Research: Nearly 15% of basic research budget directly invested into Universities worldwide
  • 850 PhD researchers across 6 campuses
  • List of many partnerships with universities and institutes around the world, but I noticed they seemed to not have any partnership with the University of Waterloo (I was curious about why - too bad huh?)

• What's the Value of Basic Research?
  • Source of IP and new product tech - 25% of all MS tech, more fundamental in nature
  • Problem solving
  • Early warning system

• Why do basic research?
  • Agility & ability to survive when things go bad
  • Having a basic infrastructure of smart people and wealth of technology to deal with and survive/change quickly
  • Vannevar Bush - Father of modern basic research justification (post WWII)

Whiz-Bang!

• Looking forward to 2020 - what is MS Research working on?
  • Provable systems?
  • SLAM - static driver verifier as part of the Vista DDK - used for analyzing large scale software components - allowed you to take orig program, things you wanted to prove expressed mathematically and conver into a new binary program of True/False --> Vista static driver verifier
  • Prove that programs terminate - lets us prove whether programs halts or not - "liveness" properties - eg every Acquire() must eventually be followed by a Release()
  • Concurrency analysis - "CHESS" ; code contracts; PEX - figure out what you should be testing; Z3 - ???; Proved Church's thesis (70 year open problem)
  • DryadLINKQ and Dryad - harness power of cluster computing - automatic query plan generation by DRYADLINQ and Automatic distributed exe by Dryad --> Executes across 1000s of nods, terB of Data
  • Presenter - Feng Zhao - energy use and the environment - Product: small battery-op wireless sensors and SensorMap software to aggregate and analyze data
    • Use of sensing, sensors for efficiency
    • Energy cost of applications - it used to be "how much mem does your program use?" - question is shifting to "how much power does your program use?"
    • Demo - sensors in a box
      • Sensor-Map - 90 sensors in the main hall
  • World Wide Telescope - virt. Observatory - 1.5MM active users - Sick!! 21 Giga Parsecs of visual information
  • Demo - Boku - lightweight programming language (for kids) - integrated gaming and coding on an XBox 360
    • Programming as a fundamental life skill
    • Demystify and engage
  • Demo: 2nd Light - Crazy! Goes beyond MS Surface - multiple surfaces - pre-distorted - crazy!

2nd year of Movember wraps up on a great note. Here’s the pic of my esteemed colleagues in the Mo-Down:

And for the 2nd year in a row, the winner for “Most Creative”…

Thanks to all who generously supported me and the other iMOson team members.

Classic – Adam Cohen, graphic-designer-extraordinaire decided to have some fun with my last blog post. The results are posted for your enjoyment. Adam has taken up the mantle of Rob V.’s unique photoshopping skills.

Update on the Mo - it's filling out nicely :-)

When defining custom fields for Work Items in TFS, I kept running across this “reportable” attribute and was curious so I looked it up – kinda neat…

Summary: Data from work item fields that have the “reportable” attribute will be exported to the data warehouse and can be included in reports.

Three Options for this Attribute (copied from MSDN):

1. Dimension
   Use the dimension type only for Integer, Double, String, or DateTime fields. The data in this field enters the relational warehouse database and the cube as an attribute of the Work Item dimension so that the data can be used to filter reports. Use this for fields that have lists of valid values. Work Item Type and State are good examples of a dimension.
2. Detail
   Use the detail type only for Integer, Double, String, or DateTime fields. The data in this field is moved into the relational warehouse database in the Work Item History and Current Work Item tables, but not into the cube. This is a good choice for unrestricted text fields because it lets you use them in reports, but avoids making the cube significantly larger. Any reports that you build using these fields, however, will have to use the relational database instead of the cube. Summary, a string field that summarizes the work item, is a good example of a field that should be a detail when it is reported.
3. Measure
   Use the measure type only for Integer and Double fields. Measures are the numeric values in your reports. Each measure will appear in both the Current Work Item measure group and

My Source: Google >> Steve Lock’s blog post [1] >> MSDN [2]

[1]  http://geekswithblogs.net/slock/archive/2007/07/18/114006.aspx

[2] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms194942(VS.80).aspx

OH MY GOODNESS – I have a secret passion, and it is Burritos – during my stint living in the US, by far, the most amazing burrito I’ve had was at the chain called Chipotle (full disclosure: owned by the evil empire, McDonalds) The location at Grand Central in NYC is jammed out the door every day with the lunch crowd. Don’t want to set expectations beyond reach, but if you enjoy burritos, you have to check out their first Canadian location in Dundas Square.

http://www.toronto.com/restaurants/listing/624705

http://www.chipotle.com

With a strong award-winning tradition last year, this week was about building a base...

(think world's itchiest sweater wrapped around your face & neck)

And now, for this year's Movember, I give you... The Forked Mo

Stay tuned for updates. :-)

Authors: Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman

This is a book that I read a number years ago on what makes the difference between good managers and great managers, base on mountains of data gathered by Gallup Organization. In a recent convo I was reminded about it so I've dug it out to summarize one of the interesting parts.

Measuring the Strength of the Workplace:

According to the book "Measuring the strength of a workplace can be simplified to twelve questions. These 12 don't capture _everything_, but they do capture most & most important..." (pg28)

1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day (Scott/Jeff: Unique ability?  :-))
4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or priase for doing good work?
5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?
8. Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel my job is important?
9. Are my co-workers committed do doing quality work?
10. Do I have a best freind at work?
11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?
12. This last year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

There's more valuable info, but I recommend grabbing the book and skimming through it. :-)