It's not quite the end of January, but there's already alot of "new" in my new year. There's a new car, some new gadgets, and on the work front a new project and a new team.
As you may have heard, Charles Fitzgerald, left Microsoft to head to a startup. Charles was the GM that my old team, platform incubation, reported into. Charles set the mission for that team, and was the major stakeholder for Tafiti and several other internal facing projects that I worked on. Charles was a great GM, and while this is a loss for MS, I'm confident we haven't heard the last of him.
With Charles' departure, Scott and I will be moving to different roles in the company. I am happy to report that I am now officially part of Simon Guest's team.
One of the few negatives about my last role in incubation was that it was inherently secretive, as parts of the work could be patented. As a result, after delivering my book on CardSpace I mostly dropped off the public scene, save for promoting Tafiti. With Simon's team having a key focus on talking about architecture with the broader community, this is something that will change, and you'll see me engaging more publicly on architecture related subjects. Simon's team has a big focus on Software+Services, which if you've read the blog for awhile know is something I've been looking at for some time in and outside of Microsoft. Expect to see me blogging more, podcasting/screencasting more, and writing the odd article or two. (No more books for awhile, though. Having written or co-written 3 books in 2 years, I've committed to my wife not to start another one until 2009)
I also mentioned there's a new project. I'll be carrying over a project with me from incubation to Simon's team as well. Nothing I can share at the moment, other than it will be public focused and it's going to be a key focus for me for a good portion of 2008.
While this project is big, there's another project I'll be working on that's even bigger. This is a longer term project, estimated to last decades with a budget estimated to be in the seven figures. Oh, and it has nothing to do with software. My wife and I are expected our first child, a son, to literally arrive any day now. While there's alot of great 'new's in 2008 already, this will surely be the best.
Here's hoping your 2008 is going well, and I look forward to engaging with the community more broadly once again. If there's anything you'd like to see me engage on - be it in blog, article, or podcast, let me know. As always, I can be reached at mmercuri@microsoft.com
Being on an incubation team, many of the projects I'm attached to are not discussed with the public. Today, however, is a great exception to that rule.
I'd like to introduce you to Tafiti.
Tafiti, which means "do research" in Swahili, is an experimental search front-end from Microsoft, designed to help people use the Web for research projects that span multiple search queries and sessions by helping visualize, store, and share research results. Tafiti uses both Microsoft Silverlight and Live Search to explore the intersection of richer experiences on the Web and the increasing specialization of search.
You can try Tafiti following these steps:
· Go to http://www.tafiti.com
· Enter a search query
· Drag interesting results to the shelf on the right. Each box on the shelf can be used to save a related set of results. Shelf contents can be saved and shared.
· Use the carousel at the bottom left to do different types of searches (image, blog, etc.)
· Visualize your results using the Tafiti Tree View.
I did a video interview with Channel 10 on this that has just been posted here.
http://www.on10.net/Blogs/larry/first-look-microsoft-tafiti/
I also did a standalone walkthrough you can get to here:
http://www.tafiti.com/walkthru.html
More to come as the week progresses....
RSS. Really Simple Syndication. Great for identifying your available content, great for sharing content that can be consumed by aggregators and readers.
What it's not great at is providing a monetization model. Sure you can use ads on your website, but I think there's a better way.
I put together a screen cast that talks about syndication and the opportunity to leverage information cards and CardSpace to monetize RSS and OPML.
Watch it by clicking on the link below.
http://www.marcmercuri.com/downloads/MonetizingRssWithInformationCards.wmv 
In case you missed it, Microsoft just released some great new downloads, specifically new versions of VS 2008, Silverlight, and Expression Blend.
As someone who started writing what are now called AJAX apps since 2000, I *really* appreciate how Silverlight and Blend make RIAs much easier to develop.
Links to all the bits-
Just about a year or so ago, I was down in Tulsa working with the good folks at Dollar Thrifty Auto Group, who were doing some great stuff with WF and WCF. If it sounds familiar, I chatted about what they were doing in an ARCast wit Ron Jacobs, and Ron also did an interview with them from Tulsa. (both recordings are available over on http://channel9.msdn.com or http://www.skyscrapr.net.)
Earlier in the week I was talking to Jim Arrowood, a friend and architect at Dollar, and he asked how I'd like a free trip to Tulsa. A s I told him, there are no free lunches in life, and I'm sure no free trips to Tulsa. It turns out there's a CodeCamp event coming up (http://www.tulsacodecamp.com) and was curious if I might be interested in speaking.
A couple hours later I had a ticket to Tulsa and was slotted in for two sessions, an hour in the afternoon and the closing keynote.
I'm looking forward to it, as codecamp is focused much more on code. Last year ,when I was speaking at events, I had to spend a good amount of my sessions doing intro stuff. With the framework having been released for awhile now, I'll be able to dive right in and show some cool stuff I've been working on. If you've seen my previous sessions, expect all new content for this.
The timing of the event is literally days before the release of the updated WCF: Unleashed and I should be wrapping up the Understanding CardSpace and Information Cards book.
If you're going to be in Tulsa and there are particular aspects you're interested in, let me know and we'll see if we can squeeze it into the sessions.
Going through my email this morning, I received my official Mix07 confirmation. Last year, I had a number of customer commitments so was really not in the loop on Mix, this year, though, I've had some overlap with some of the things I've been working on and have had a chance to get involved in various aspects of the event.
Earlier this year I went to another web conference(which shall remain nameless), and was so dissapointed I left the conference (and Vegas) a day early. (Me, leaving Vegas early? unheard of, I know).
Mix, though, is a different story. From what I've seen of the sessions, this is actually an event I'd pay out of pocket to go to. It's got a good mix of folks from MS, as well as from third parties. I may or may not be delivering a session, that's something that'll get decided in the next month or so, but will be onsite either working in certain areas of the event, or attending sessions.
One of the great things about conferences is that I get a chance to meet up with former colleagues and people I've chatted with via email and blogs. If you're going to be in Vegas the 29th - 2nd and want to chat about WCF, CardSpace, Mashups, or whatever - shoot me an email and we'll make some plans to sync up.
Between some exciting day job work, updating WCF content for the WCF Unleashed book, and writing 15 chapters for the CardSpace book (this time as a sole author) things have been pretty hectic. Mix in the storm that flooded the first floor of the house, and it got even crazier.
The blog has been fairly dark for awhile, but that's about to change. In a few weeks, the CardSpace book will be handed in, and I can start focusing on other activities. In addition to weekly updates here, I'm also going to be starting a sister blog to this one, more details on that in the weeks to come.
So what's coming? Lots of stuff.
Like what?
I talked with the good folks at APress (my publisher for the CardSpace book), and I'm going to be able to release some of my code from the CardSpace book early, and put it into CodePlex. This will include ASP.NET controls that integrate with membership. This will also include Windows Workflow Foundation activities and some utilities for creating managed cards. These will hopefully be in CodePlex, which will include source, so you'll be able to get source and enhance them as you need to. I need to stress that these are from my book written as my 'night job', these are not official controls from Microsoft and should not be viewed as such.
I've actually been pretty busy on some other stuff during the day, and we're looking at what we can release of that (unrelated to CardSpace) to CodePlex as well.
Plus.. I've written about 6 labs in the past couple of days for an internal event. I'm looking to release those as well, likely with the launch of the sister blog to this one.
Oh, and some InfoCenter Controls may just find there way into CodePlex as well (and if not, I'll release them as binaries from my blog). And I might just include a reference app that shows how to snag podcasts for your Zune 
I saw this over on Engadget this morning. It looks like the Nissan Nav system will include the ability to read RSS feeds out loud.
If you look at the picture in the article, you can distinctly see an antenna and a number of bars. Not sure if this would be WiFi or GSM, but definately interesting.
Posted Sep 31st 2006 4:05AM by Cyrus Farivar
Filed under: Transportation
 Wouldn't it be great if your car could actually read information to you? We're not just talking about reciting driving directions (that's so 2001), but rather an audio version of RSS feeds, specifically Yahoo Japan, Sony's So-net "lifestyle blog" and Nissan's travel guide blog. (C'mon Nissan, no love for Engadget Japanese?) It appears that this new addition to the Carwings system, which already provides ho-hum GPS navigation will also pack a 30GB hard drive so you can rock out to Pizzicato Five if you get bored of that mechanical voice. If you attend the Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies (October 3 - 7) to be held at the Makuhari Messe in Chiba, you can check out the updated Carwings system -- if you do, be sure to let us know how distracting the synthetic voice is while zooming down the road.
There's a blogger from Australia who had run across the DotNetRocks podcast, and had some questions about what InfoCenter is and what InfoCenter isn't. Quite frankly, I've been amazed at the response, considering the CTP isn't yet evailable.
At any rate, one of the questions that came up was around the value and/or role of the aggregator of feeds - not just software, but the humans who inject domain expertise and experience in putting together an aggregated blog. People who involve software and people to bring together a noise-free, targeted feed.
For this, I look to the last letter in RSS? That S stands for Syndication. Effectively, the way I see the world is that every blogger is a production company, generating syndicated content. While we can broadcast our own content via our blogs, there's also interest in repackaging our content and leveraging it in other places.
Just like in television, people generate revenue by hiring program directors / editors that compile a group of syndicated content into a product or programming schedule and sell ads based on viewership.
While the underlying value is in the content, there's tremendous value in the aggregation of particular content by people we trust and who we hold up as experts in a particular area.
We all have the opportunity to become program directors of RSS content, what needs to be figured out is how the revenue stream works back for the creator of the content. In the syndicated television world, you buy rights to a show for a particular period, for a particular market. The payment, as I understand it, is established up front.
On the web, it would seem this would be more fluid, and as a result there needs to be a way for either the syndicator to specify ads to be shown in conjunction with their content, or for networks/program directors to provide incremental revenue back to the networks/program directors.
If you've seen/heard the latest podcast by the great folks over at DotNetRocks, you've heard the first public talk about a pet project of mine called InfoCenter. If you haven't - then it might be worth checking out here - http://dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showID=189.
While this is the first public discussion/showing of InfoCenter, the UI has undergone a very interesting set of changes recently. The .NET Rocks podcast was actually recorded close to a month ago, at which time this announcement was targeted to go live on the 18th. Unfortunately, the original UI for InfoCenter (below) was similiar enough to a certain next-generation gaming console that it was ...err.. politely suggested (strongly too ), that the interface be changed before sharing outside the company. Fortunately, those same next generation console folks offered to re-design the interface for me for free. The UI also incorported alot of feedback I had from folks inside Microsoft who took a look at the original design / navigation flow.
You can see the original and the new UI below:
The original, and the released UI
 
Before we get to the introduction, I want to stress that InfoCenter is a pet project of mine - it is not an official Microsoft product, there is no sku for it, and until someone tells me otherwise, it's free.
Without further ado, the introduction........
Introduction
In the early days of Windows, discovery of Microsoft related content – be it new product announcements, documentation, guidance/how to’s, downloads or community – was relatively straightforward. There were four key areas to look – Microsoft.Com, MSDN, ftp.microsoft.com, and UseNet newsgroups.
During this period, Microsoft excited, educated, and enabled a legion of developers and developer-hopefuls to become part of the profitable software economy. UseNet Newsgroups provided a forum that had not yet been corrupted by spammers, and provided a unique opportunity for individuals to audit a master class, a class where the professors were some of the more well known names in the industry.
Today, things are significantly different. There are more products, more places to look for information, more categories of information, and less time in which to find it.
Today’s reality has Microsoft releasing more new products and new product versions than in the entire history of the company. There are new versions of Windows, Office, Server, Mobile, Web, and Live. There are first class server products like Biztalk, Speech, SQL, and MOM. There are great new technologies like WCF, WF, WPF, and CardSpace.
With more products comes more content, and in the intervening years the number of locations where content can be found has exploded. When looking solely at Microsoft web properties, Microsoft.com and MSDN have been joined by Channel 9, ASP.NET, GotDotNet, and CodeZone. There are also numerous community sites now online, such as WindowsCommunication.NET, WindowsWorkflow.Net, IIS7.NET,MSDomino.net, etc.
Looking beyond 1 Microsoft Way, there are a multitude of other sites that are providing articles, downloads, code, and communities as well. Beyond the sites, there are hundreds of blogs that are driven by individuals both inside and outside the company. Discoverability of content is a major issue.
In addition to more locations to find more content, there are also new categories of content available. Due to the adoption of broadband in the intervening period, it is now realistic to distribute audio and video content in both streaming and downloadable varieties. This opens up new opportunities to both serve and distribute this content to various devices and formats.
Our customers need our help, specifically they need a mechanism by which top tier content is identified, categorized, aggregated, and searchable from a single interface. And that mechanism needs to be automated, such that fresh, targeted content finds its way to the Enterprise consumer.
To enable this, we need to build the ultimate mash-up, a truly Live application that leverages aspects of both the Windows OS and the web, with an engine powered by RSS. Through RSS, we can empower our clients to consume not just the feeds that we provide – but also the ability to mix in those of third party vendors as well as their own internal corporate blogs and best practices.
Just as we created a Media Center to harness the growing amount of media content enabled by software, we need to now do the same for information. Essentially, we need to build an Information Center.
By harnessing information for our customers and providing them the ability to readily find and consume content of interest to them, we have an opportunity to once again educate, excite, and enable our next generation of customers.
Getting InfoCenter
With the late breaking design change, I've had to make some changes in the layout and the flow, and am just wrapping up the revised CTP. The link for the bits will officially be listed here next Wednesday, August 2nd. If you'd like an email sent if this is available sooner, if you'd like to chat suggest 'channels' for InfoCenter, or if you want to chat about InfoCenter, click here or send an email to mmercuri@microsoft.com with the following subject "[RequestFromBlog][InfoCenter][CTPNotification]"
Very best regards, Marc Mercuri
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