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