At the PDC last year, you may have seen that NASA and Microsoft made a number of announcements. New data apis in Codename Dallas, a Silverlight+ASP.NET MVC 2 site on Azure.... but did you realize they also launched a programming competition?
NASA has hundreds of thousands of images from their missions to Mars. With the Pathfinder Innovation Challenge, they want to enlist your coding skills to help them classify them. This is a unique opportunity where you can help NASA and win some great prizes by utilizing your existing .NET skills.
The Pathfinder Innovation Challenge consists of four different “leagues”. In the Global Cooperation League, you’ll build casual games that will allow every day citizens to help classify images in a game environment (similar to the counting craters application that can be found online here – http://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov/maproom) and do so using Silverlight and NASAs Azure-hosted APIs in codename Dallas. In the Intelligence League, you’ll use the power of the Azure cloud to attempt to solve the same problem by programmatically examining and classifying the images.
In addition to helping mankind and being able to brag that your code was helping NASA, PIC winners will also win amazing prizes ranging from NASA swag, to ZuneHDs, to trips to see the launch of the next Mars Rover.
I looked at the blog the other day and realized it'd been over a year since I'd last blogged. I've had a crazy year (mostly crazy good), so my publishing has been kept to random bursts of 140 characters (over on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/marcmercuri)
Since I've last blogged, my last team disappeared (merging into the Patterns & Practices group) and I moved back to the Platform Strategy Team. I've had a chance to bring some of my ideas to life and have been quoted everywhere from our hometown paper here in Seattle to around the world - from the BBC to the Himalayan Times. Since my last blog post, I've envisioned/architected/built/piloted/delivered/release a social media platform called LookingGlass, worked with the Windows 7 team to build something called the Social Media Hub on top of it, and then did a *ton* of work with NASA in the cloud. Crowdsourcing apps, HD Video, community software, reputation systems, etc. Mix in 12 patent applications, and you can start to get an idea of where the time has gone.
I've got a number of blog posts 'in the can' that go into some of these projects in more detail and have a number of other interesting posts brewing, so you can expect posts to be somewhat more frequent than annually going forward.
Today is a very historic day in the U.S, and Microsoft technology will play a role.
CNN is hosting an amazing project called 'The Moment' at http://www.cnn.com/themoment. Attendees at the inauguration are encouraged to take and send photographs when Barack Obama takes the oath of office. Those photographs will be stitched together into a PhotoSynth capturing the event.
If you're unable to see the event from your current location, you can also see the inauguration broadcast live via Silverlight (and in HD). You can find the Silverlight stream here http://www.pic2009.org/page/content/live.
Today we announced the release to web of both an updated Windows Azure SDK and Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio. While there may be some debate on how it's pronounced, there's little disagreement that Azure is a great step forward and can enable some great scenarios. I've been doing some work with Azure as part of a new project, so expect some Azure content to make it's way into the blog soon.
The Windows® Azure SDK provides developers with the APIs, tools, documentation, and samples needed to develop Internet-scale applications that run on Windows Azure. Using the Windows Azure SDK, developers can create applications and run it in a local development fabric even without a registered account*.
Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft® Visual Studio® extend Visual Studio to enable the creation, building, debugging, running and packaging of scalable services on Windows Azure.
If you've read the blog for awhile, you've heard some of my thoughts on context. It's important. It's valuable. Context plays largely into the future of where value will come from.
One place where it could be extremely beneficial is in social networks. Some social networks, like Linked In, have explicit contexts. Others, like Facebook, are a bit more nebulous. Many people are starting to wonder what their definition of a 'friend' is. Others just want some simple buckets - friends, family, and work - so that Mom and the boss don't see their Spring Break photos and friends don't see the pics from that presentation you did in Omaha. For the latter, you'd think it would be in the social networks best interests to add context. Context = better targeting = better monetization, an area where allot of the social networks could use some help.
In addition to providing better targeting, it will also help to avoid user attrition. Take myself for example. I'm a technology early adopter who works with customers, speaks at conferences, writes blogs/articles/books, and does interviews with the press. I was on Facebook early, and as a result of my interactions had alot of folks 'friend' me on Facebook before my non-tech friends and family hopped on the FB bandwagon. This past year saw the birth of my first child, a deep engagement in presidential politics, and an embrace of micro-blogging. Do my co-workers really need my n-times daily status updates? Do I alienate customers because I aligned myself with a political party? Do I really feel comfortable sharing photos of my child with people I've in some cases never met?
The answer to these and many questions like them were no. Without context, we go through what I call the four stages of Social Network Friend Grief, and either move some of our traffic to another network or drop out of social networking altogether.
I've defined the Four Stages of Social Network Friend Grief as :
(1) Friend censorship (hey friend, don't post those videos on my wall, they might offend people at work)
(2) Self censorship ( Maybe I shouldn't post this pro-Obama article, it might be problematic with any customers who've friended me and are Republican)
(3) Anger (It's my account, why the hell can't I post what I want!?!)
(4) Acceptance (Friends stay in Facebook, business colleagues move to linked in, and I call Mom on the weekends)
The following clip from the TV show Seinfeld, shows George going through Stage 3
For myself, I reached stage 4 over the holidays and a did a manual move of a number of my professional contacts to LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/1/aa3/624) and set up a Twitter feed for those interested my micro-blogging (http://www.twitter.com/marcmercuri). When there was a question on whether a contact belonged on Facebook or LinkedIn, I asked three simple questions: Have we had a drink or shared a meal that wasn't paid for by a corporate entity? Have we ever played a game on Xbox Live? Have you ever met my wife or son? If not, I moved the connection to LinkedIn.
Let's hope adding context is at the top of the social network's new years resolutions, it's in everyones interest.
I jumped on the twitter bandwagon early, and wrote alot of Twitter-related code shortly after the API was released. I wrote Twitter libraries for .NET, Twitter activities for WF, and I believe I was the first person to ever hook twitter up to a robot (http://www.twitter.com/robotonxt) BUT I was never actually on Twitter myself.
On Friday, Microsoft released Windows 7 Beta and the response was overwhelming. Literally. Initially, there was a plan to limit the number of beta participants to 2.5 million, but per the Windows team blog:
Due to an enormous surge in demand, the download experience was not ideal so we listened and took the necessary steps to ensure a good experience. We have clearly heard that many of you want to check out the Windows 7 Beta and, as a result, we have decided remove the initial 2.5 million limit on the public beta for the next two weeks (thru January 24th). During that time you will have access to the beta even if the download number exceeds the 2.5 million unit limit.
The good folks over at ZD Net have provided some info on how to burn the ISO, as well as provide guidance on how to get the Windows 7 Beta installed via Virtual PC 2007. That article can be found here: http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3317
As someone who's been using the pre-beta and the beta, I'd encourage you to check it out. It's incredibly stable, fast, and has a number of cool new features.
Not content to just relax over the holidays, I've decided to upgrade my blog. We're now running on a new host and with a new blogging package (Grafitti CMS by Telligent).
Graffiti imported all of my old content from DasBlog (my previous blogging engine), so all of the old links should stil work. If for any reason you notice any issues, please send me an email.
I'm the Director of Business Innovation for Microsoft's Platform Strategy Group, based in Redmond, WA. I've been in the software industry for over 19 years, working with Fortune 500 companies, governments, and ISVs to solve tough business problems with next generation technologies.
I'm the author of Beginning Information Cards and CardSpace: From Novice to Professional, and co-author of the books Windows Communication Foundation Unleashed! and Windows Communication Foundation: Hands On!
