If you're going to TechEd this week, we want your feedback.

Specifically, my colleague Michael Lehman will be hosting focus groups on Software Factories and S+S Blueprints projects. I know most of you would do this out of the goodness of your heart, but I should point out that Michael has told me there's schwag for participants that won't be available anywhere else at the event.

Here's the description and details for each group:

S+S Blueprints Focus Group (max 20 attendees)

Orange County Convention Center N329
Thursday June 5, 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM

Building Software-plus-Services applications involves combining multiple platforms and technologies. As new technologies and architectures evolve Microsoft is building more Software-plus-Services Blueprints to help bridge the gap between vision and technologies, reduce friction and show you how to build great S+S applications.  We will also be sharing our expanded plans for Software Factories and how they relate to S+S Blueprints.

Software Factories Focus Group (max 20 attendees)

Orange County Convention Center N329
Friday June 6, 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM

Software Factories help reduce the cost, time and risk in building complex applications.  Designed to help harvest and reapply development knowledge, provide patterns and apply best practices they deliver guidance, code and tools.

Microsoft is expanding its Software Factories Initiative to cover more of the application life cycle, to include more guidance and tools to help in building factories as well as developing more factories to help build Software-plus-Services applications.  We will also be sharing our plans for new Software-plus-Services Blueprints and discussing how they relate to Software Factories

Check out Michael's blog for more details  -

http://blogs.msdn.com/mglehman/archive/2008/05/29/you-are-invited-to-the-s-s-blueprints-and-software-factories-focus-groups-at-teched-2008.aspx

http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=399952

http://www.on10.net/blogs/tina/Robo-Champs-My-robot-is-bigger-then-your-robot/

A pre-interview I did with Tina Wood just launched over at on10.net.  This has some footage of some of the 3d environments we'll be delivering.

For the past several months I've been working on a new project - it involves Silverlight 2.0, ASP.NET 3.5, WCF 3.5, REST, S+S, LiveID, Linq, SQL, IIS, .NET Framework 3.5, and..... robots.

That's right, I've been working on a worldwide robotics program called RoboChamps. The key thing here is we found a way for anyone to participate - we use simulation, we release content via rich commnity site chock full of training, videos, and other goodness, and we're using Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008, which means you can code robots in .NET. 

RoboChamps is a league, and like sports leagues, will have a regular season comprised of a series of challenges. As RoboChamps is based in simulation, we can provide you with access to environments and robots most people could never get access to - from a trapped filled maze,  to city populated with driving cars and working trffic lights, to a city struck by an earthquake, a huge soccer stadium - even the surface of the planet Mars! We'll conclude the season with a single elimination tournament, where we'll continue until we've found four finalist and.... well, I'll talk about that more later in the season, but I'll give you a hint, it involves real robots and a major event.

If you're wondering "How much is this going to cost me?", I've got good news - there's no cost to join RoboChamps, no requirement to buy software, and we'll be giving away great prizes like real robots all season long. And I almost forgot, because this is based on MIcrosoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008, there's no huge learning curve - you can use the .NET skills you already have.

If you're not into competing but want to be part of the community, that's ok too. Check out the forums, our videos, get yourself a RoboCard with a cool animated avatar, and the fun stuff we've made available in our download area. In the fun stuff section, you'll find a Vista Sidebar Gadget, desktop backgrounds, even some blog bling. And don't forget to check out 'RoboChamps - The Show', our machinima-style video podcast. Currently hosted on our homepage, 'RoboChamps - The Show' will bring you updates on what's going on in the league and check out what's new and cool in the world of robotics.

Ready to get started? Go to the website at www.robochamps.com and click on the appropriately named 'Getting Started' link on the top left of the screen and you'll be programming robots before you know it!

Marc Mercuri
RoboChamps League Commissioner
mmercuri@microsoft.com

And for those of you who think robotics has nothing to do with your day job. Think again. I'm a services guy (remember those books on WCF?), and this stuff has it's applications outside of robots. It's distributed by default, scales to the compact framework and microframework, and has a rocking asynchronous messaging library called the Concurrency and Coordination Runtime (CCR) - or as I like to call it 'ManyCore for Mere Mortals'

At RoboBusiness today, Microsoft announced the release of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 CTP1.

Get the free download here -

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=EB00C558-2163-45A5-BEFE-531AD48BC525&displaylang=en

Mary-Jo Foley has an article on why you should care ('Why business users should grab a copy of Microsoft's new robotics' toolkit')

See that here - http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1325

The folks who attended the conference also saw some videos from my new project. CNET references it in the article - "Microsoft's new gig: Virtual host to robot competitions".

See that here - http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9914959-7.html.

Outside of this, mum's the word until the clock at www.robochamps.com hit's 0's across the board.

http://www.robochamps.com

If you were at TechReady in Redmond last month, you know what my new project focuses in on. For those of you who didn't, I'll can share that my new project is robotics-related.

After transferring Tafiti over to Angus' team earlier this year, I've been focusing the vast majority of my time on robotics (via Microsoft Robotics Studio and it's underlying technologies CCR and DSS). While you may think this a big shift from my historical work in services and workflow - but it actually isn't. Most people have an emotional reaction to the word robot, typically connected with a robot from their favorite films. They get caught up in the science fiction and not the science fact.

When you begin looking at robotics, you realize that everything on a robot is a serivce and there is an orchestrating service that recieves information, analyzes it and when appropriate calls other services in response. Hmmm... sounds like services and workflows, doesn't it? :-)

More details soon...

The sessions recordings from Mix08 are now online. If you weren't able to make it to Mix, you should head over to http://sessions.visitmix.com/.

It's that time of year again - another year, another birthday.  My in-laws from the UK were kind enough to send me a gift card for Amazon this year. While browsing the Amazon site, I was looking at books and remembered I'd asked my publisher to update the description for my most recent effort (Beginning Information Cards and CardSpace from Novice to Professional). The bad news is that they hadn't. The good news is that I ran across an interesting statistic at the bottom of the page - it looks like readers have chosen it as their favorite on the subject by a ratio of 4:1. Alot of time and effort went into the book, so that news was quite a nice birthday present indeed. As a thank you to readers, I'll be working on some new content I'll make available free via my blog.

I'm working from my home office today, and when trying to send a 55M file to my desktop (via VPN), I was greeted with this dialog. Initial estimate to transfer the file? Just over 135 years. That's right, the initial swag was close to a century and a half.

Less than a minute later, this time was listed in minutes. :-)

(Filename obscured for confidentiality reasons)

If you're like me and couldn't get away to the Mix conference this year, be advised that doesn't mean you need to miss out on the great content. 

Check out Jeff's "Watching Mix Online From Your Desk" post on VisitMix.com for more details

http://www.visitmix.com/blogs/News/Watch-Mix-Online-From-Your-Desk/

The BBC has posted an article today on Nokia's support for Silverlight. Specifically, they'll be adding Silverlight support in their Symbian-based S60 platform. The S60 platform is not only used by Nokia, but also in phones by Samsung and LG. Nokia has 53% share in the smart phone market, so this is a big win for Silverlight that will give it a strong presence in the mobile space. 

You can find the article here - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7276907.stm

(and yes, that is a screenshot of Tafiti with the article ;-) )

Awhile back we transitioned Tafiti over to Angus Logan's team, and I've been hinting there was some cool functionality coming.  Well, today's the day.

The latest version of the Windows Live Quick Apps was released today, and with it an update to the Tafiti Search code that includes messenger integration. You can now perform searches, save your results and share that experience with your Windows Live Messenger friends and colleagues. The best is that with all the quick apps, you get the source code for this as well, under the very flexible MS-PL license.

  try it   | watch it | get it

For more details on QuickApps, as well as the technology underneath (inc. the new Windows Messenger library), be sure to check out Angus' blog, http://www.anguslogan.com

Note: This is not yet live on the Tafiti.com domain, but is ;ove at the http://tafiti.mslivelabs.com

My colleague Arvindra Semhi blogged today about the CCR and DSS. Both of these are very interesting technologies, and play a central role in my current unannounced project.

While these currently live inside of the Microsoft Robotics Studio today ( a free download which can be found here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=73092ff6-e37b-45c6-8e5e-c23d5d632b1e&DisplayLang=en), the potential applications and impact outside of Robotics (read: Enterprise) are significant. 

Check out Vin's post here (http://msdnrss.thecoderblogs.com/2008/02/26/distributed-computing-gets-spruced-up-with-ccrdss/), and expect to see coverage on CCR, DSS, and related topics here in the coming weeks.

The latest issue of Wired arrived over the weekend, and I was pleased to see it included an article by Chris "The Long Tail" Anderson. The article, titled "Free! Why the $0.00 Is the Future of Business", is effectively a preview of his new book and and an enjoyable read.

The issue is available online here , and someone mentioned today that they're actually making the print version of Wired available for free.

Just over three weeks ago, Katie and I became parents. My in laws are over from the UK helping out, which has afforded me a few minutes to blog about it.

Little Nicholas Edward Mercuri was born on January 28th, 2008 at Evergreen Hospital in Kirkland. A big thank you goes to our doctor and the staff at Evergreen, they were fantastic and not a thing could have gone better. As you can see from the picture below, he's already a gadget guy like his dad, having negotiated a gaming laptop as a sign on bonus :-)

My new project, currently underwraps, will make a brief appearance today in one of the TechReady sessions. If you're a MS employee, swing by and check it out.

The details..

Session Code: ARC325

Time: 3pm – 4:15pm

Location: WSCTC 3AB

One of the great things about Microsoft is that we have a number of distribution lists (dls) on every topic under the sun, from product or technology specific discussions (biztalk, wcf, silverlight), broader topic discussions (architecture, marketing), to the completely non-technical (concert tickets, people from country x, new college hires, poker players at MS, etc.).

On one of these DLs there was an interesting thread this week about architectural content. Specifically, someone was preparing a presentation and asked the DL audience (a mix of corp and field staff) what our architecture audience would expect. Most people immediately get the thought of "that's silly, it's obvious that it should include '[insert here]'". If we asked that question to 20 different people in the industry, you'd likely end up with multiple different responses. In a side conversation, I told someone that this was the 'Costanza Dilemma', and after describing it to him, he suggested I share it on the blog.

Part of the challenge is that the word architect is a loaded term. The terms architect and architecture mean a number of things to a number of people. Sure, at the top level there are some straightforward designations and areas of speciality - infrastructure architect, product architect, solutions architect, platform architect. From a presentation perspective, you could determine your top level audience and startup powerpoint, right?

Not so much. If you're targeting a small audience, you may have enough context you can make a decent go of it. But what if you were working on a presentation for a wide audience where you likely don't have that context?  Unlike the architecture of physical structures, where there are industry accepted definitions, degrees and professional certifications broadly available internationally, we don't have the same for software.

If you've ever seen the US television program Seinfeld, there's a character named George Costanza who's had a number of interesting positions (real estate agent, hand model, bra salesman), but what's interesting is that in several of the episodes he identifies himself as an architect. George's knowledge of architecture is confined solely to the few issues of Architectural Digest that he's read. But George aspires to be an architect, and if he were at a conference he might attend an architecture session or if on a site might read architecture-focused blogs. But if you're developing for a breadth audience, where you may have George, an aspiring architect, and one of the worlds top architects, say Frank Ghery, what content should you include? This is what I refer to as  the 'Costanza Dilemma'.

There are some folks doing a great job to address this very issue as we speak, and I also have some ideas on how to address it with context, personalization and collective intelligence. I'm working on my new project at the moment, so this is not a primary focus, but with the new public facing role I expect to do some additional blogging about this in the coming months.

What are your approaches to solving the 'Costanza Dilemma'?

Not sure if you caught the mention of this last week, but the Syndicated Client Experience Starter Kit Beta & Reader SDK was released last week.  This is a "a Starter Kit designed to make it easy to create rich, syndicated multimedia and content experiences which engage the user, from documents and photos to videos and podcasts."

If you've seen the Architecture Journal Reader, the Times Reader, or the MSDN Reader you're already  familiar with what this starter kit can do for you. If you want a rich presentation of RSS content (regardless of whether it's coming from outside or inside the firewall), it's definately worth a look.

You can find out more details on it here:

http://windowsclient.net/wpf/starter-kits/sce.aspx

Interested in a course on Silverlight but not sure what to start? Mike Harsh has recorded five hours of video training for Lynda.com, which you can access for free.

It covers the following topics -

1. Understanding Silverlight
2. Discovering Silverlight Experiences
3. Silverlight Tools: Expression and Visual Studio
4. Getting Started with XAML, JavaScript, and HTML
5. Advanced XAML
6. Advanced JavaScript Techniques for Silverlight
7. Asset Preparation for Designers
8. Working with Media in Silverlight
9. Creating a Media Player with Silverlight
10. Creating Programmatic Animations
11. Silverlight Deployment
12. Conclusion

You can check it out here:

Steve Maine has done a beautiful thing, and put together a list of links for learning about the new web programming model features in WCF 3.5

Check it out here : http://hyperthink.net/blog/2008/01/18/WCF+Web+Programming+Model+Documentation.aspx

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

I saw on Amazon that Vittorio, Garrett, and Caleb's new CardSpace book, "Understanding Windows CardSpace" has shipped.

As Vittorio and I were teammates when our respective CS book projects began, some people asked me if there were any competitive juices flowing. Not at all, the reality is that I had signed the deal with my publisher for my book after finishing WCF Hands On! and before hearing from Vittorio he was working on a book on the subject. Rather than being competitive, the hope was the end results would be complementary. From looking at Amazon, it looks like that may just be the case, which is greatness.

Congrats to Vittorio, Garrett, and Caleb all on this latest addition.  Hopefully this encourages more folks to write books on the subject.

Angus is already making Tafiti cooler. There's now a drop of the source that supports Sharepoint as a search data source. Rich Silverlight interface, the shelf functionality, web and intranet aggregation, all running in Sharepoint. And as it's shared source, you can take it, mod it, ship it, sell it, etc.

Read more about it here

http://blogs.msdn.com/angus_logan/archive/2008/01/12/tafiti-can-now-use-sharepoint-as-a-datasource.aspx

Before the holidays I sat down with Catherine Heller from Channel 9 and Max Zuckerman from Channel 8 to talk about the new shared source release of Tafiti. 

The Channel 9 video can be found here http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=371527

The Channel 8 video can be found here http://channel8.msdn.com/Posts/tafiti/

These videos will be my last for Tafiti, the code has now officially been transferred over to Angus Logan and his team. Angus & co. are already hard at work on a new release with some really cool new functionality.

If you've not seen Angus' blog before, it's worth checking out for all sorts of Live goodness. You can find it at http://www.anguslogan.com

Because I do work for Microsoft, I do need to preface this entry with the disclaimer that while I do work for Microsoft, the views or opinions expressed here are my own.

---------

In my group of family and friends, I'm seen as the 'gadget guy', and every holiday I end up getting phone calls and emails for feedback on what to get people for Christmas.

This year, there were two recurring themes - Xbox360 vs. PS3 and HD DVD or BluRay. Part of what prompted the discussion was the fact that the PS3 is a new addition, an early Christmas present from my wife. 

The general response was "You got a PS3? Why? Don't you have 3 Xbox360s?"

The answer I gave them was one they found interesting, and someone suggested I blog about it to help other folks looking to make the same decision this holiday.

The first thing I told them was that my mindset when buying each device was different. I bought my Xbox360 primarily because it was a great next generation gaming console. I bought my PS3 primarily because it was a low-cost BluRay DVD player.

I bought the 360 for games, and I was very happy with the graphics and with the onling gaming in Xbox Live. The backwards compatibility with the original XBox is also good. There have been multiple updates to add more games to the 'supported' list, so for gaming overall the 360 rocks.

What was interesting was that I was pleasantly surprised with the non-gaming functionality. I can use it as an 'extender' for my computer, allowing me to watch the TV shows, pictures, and videos on my computer. I can also use the 360 to listed to music on my computer, including the music on my Zune player.

The 360 also allows me to download movies - regular and HD versions - directly to the hard drive. It also lets me download arcade games, music videos, game demos and game trailers directly to the device.

I later bought the HD-DVD drive add-on for the 360, and was really pleased with it. I'd won one of the first gen Toshiba HD-DVD drives, so I was familiar with HD-DVD, and to be honest I was more impressed with the Xbox360 version than the standalone player I had.

Last winter, we had a flood, and as a result our media room with the HD TV was out of commission for months. The Xbox360 and the HD-DVD worked fine upstairs and allowed me to watch my HD movies on SD while construction continued downstairs.

At Thanksgiving this year, we found another great feature. We bought the camera add-on for the 360, and sent one to my sister who lives on the east coast.  The 360 let us do video conferencing via the TV, allowing for us to see and talk to our relatives and vice versa. This is a great feature that doesn't get alot of press, but another pleasant surprise.

On top of all of this functionality, the interface for accessing everything on the 360 was super easy to use and I've just been super pleased with my 360. I purchased it as a gaming console, and ended up with an HDDVD player, real-time video conferencing, online gaming, and access to all of my photos, pictures, and video.

Now onto the PS3. 

Now, I wanted the PS3 primarily as a low-cost BluRay player, and for that function it works great. I brought the device home, installed it, and watched the new James Bond film (Casino Royale), and was very pleased. The remote (purchased separately) was not backlit like the one for the 360, which made it a bit challenging to control if you had the lights out/dimmed while watching the film. Otherwise, as a BluRay player, it works great.

Moving beyond BluRay, let's start with the upfront purchase. I had an old PlayStation2, and if we were going to get a PS3 for BluRay, it would be nice to have it's touted backwards compatibility. Fortunately, I read tech blogs which pointed out what a tricky proposition this was and showed the right path.  The PS3 sells in 80, 60, and 40 gig varieties. The 60 gig has full, hardware based backwards compatibility. The 80 gig has software based compatibility (not all games), and the 40 gig ships with no backwards compatibility. (I got the 60). I tried a couple of PS2 titles and they seemed to play fine.

But unlike the 360, I was generally disappointed when I went outside of BluRay use. 

First, there was the interface. While the 360 had a simple, easy to use interface. The PS3's interface was horrible. It is not user friendly at all.

Next, I tried a game. Resistance: Fall of Man. was a good looking action/shooter. I had a PS2 previously, and that was primarily to play games that were exclusive to the PS2. In the new generation of consoles, there aren't as many high profile exclusives on the PS3. The result many games are available on both consoles and some (like Halo3) are exclusive to the 360. When looking at the online reviews of games on both the 360 and PS3, the 360 seemed to consistently be better rated (this years Madden football game was the first big example). The reality was that because the game developers have had the Xbox360 longer they seem to be more knowledgeable and take better advantage of it than the PS3. I've heard that from a developers perspective that the PS3 is harder to write for, so I'd expect it would be awhile before there's a comfort level and parity in the games. So while Resistance was good, for anything that's out on both PS3 and Xbox360, there's no question I'll buy it for the Xbox.

I then decided to try their online store and download some game trailers and demos. The store itself was ok, but the interface was a different experience than what was on the core PS3. I decided to download one of the game demos available, Conan. The download experience was again disappointing in comparison to the 360. On the 360, games download and then they're all set to play. On PS3, it's almost like downloading it on your PC, you need to download it and then install it. Unfortunately, Conan downloaded ok but failed during installation. This has never happened on the 360. So disappointed overall.

Next, onto the media functionality. It could see my PC, and while it could show the pictures on my PC, it had trouble accessing the recorded TV shows and music on my PC. Again really disappointing.

So from a Xbox360 vs. PS3 perspective, I bought the Xbox360 for games, and ended up getting alot more. With the recent price drops on the 360, you can now get it and the HD-DVD drive for a price comparable to the PS3. When people ask me which of the two they should buy for their kids or their spouse this year, I emphatically endorse the 360.

So the next question is BluRay or HD-DVD. Sometimes this is the determining factor for their Xbox360 vs. PS3 purchase decision, other times they're looking at standalone players.

My thoughts on the matter is that eventually, HD content will be delivered on demand, eliminating the need to pick a particular format. Based on that, I lean more towads the Xbox, as they have the infrastructure in place to deliver HD content and are delivering it well today.

For picture quality, I have HD-DVD via my Xbox360 and BluRay via my PS3, both using HDMI cables to a Pioneer receiver going to a 62" 1080i screen. They both look great. If you're a hardcore film afficionado, folks debate which format is better with people siding with one of the two formats. The reality is for most people, you'll end up with a great picture regardless. The decision here is really based on content, as certain studios are releasing content only on HD-DVD, others on BluRay, and others still releasing on both. HD-DVD appears to have more studios on board (Universal, NewLine, Paramount, Warner, Image, The Weinstein Company, Rhino, Bandhi, Dreamworks, and Canal Studios), in addition to their own studio, BluRay also has Disney and 20th Century Fox.

One thing to point out about HD-DVD is that alot of discs are shipped in a hybrid format that lets you play one side in a regular DVD player and the other in HD. This is great if you travel and want to be able to watch a disc in your portable DVD player or your laptop.

From a cost perspective, HD-DVD players overall are significantly less than BluRay players. WalMart has had advertised prices below $150 vs $399 for a BluRay.

So, for the format war, my recommendation to family and friends is that unless themovies that you want in HD are only available on BluRay, HD-DVD seems the be the way to go. And if your budget can afford a BluRay player, I'd look at the Xbox360+HDVD. You'll get alot more value of it and they've consistently delivered.