Slate of the Union Day

Today is “Slate of the Union” day, when the two most charismatic individuals in recent American history go on stage and attempt to reclaim mantles as innovators. I’ll leave aside the fellow with lower poll numbers for now (President Obama). More eyes in the tech world will be watching as Steve Jobs makes his newest product announcement, the Apple tablet/Tabloid/iSlate thing iPad (it’s official).

Back in the late 1980s I worked for the legendary “Mayor of Silicon Valley” Tom McEnery (he was actually the mayor of San Jose), and we did many joint projects with Apple, particularly with CEO John Sculley, a great guy.

Gunning the Microsoft Semantic Engine

New Bing Maps Beta with embedded data layers from Twitter and other social feeds, click to enlarge screenshot

There’s a lot of information on the Internet already. Every day, more is added – a lot more. And while there are a concomitant number of new analytic or sense-making tools on the web, they butt up against the fact that the data – the all-important data – is held in multiple places, formats, and platforms.

How are we going to deal with all this? One approach is almost mechanical: ensuring that datasets can be accessed commonly, as in our new Microsoft Dallas platform associated with the Windows Azure cloud platform.  In the government realm, the anticipated reliance on “government-as-a-platform” (a meme popularized by Tim O’Reilly) holds promise in allowing somewhat aggregated datasets, openly accessible.

Once you get past Filter Failure

How do intelligence analysts handle the long-discussed problem of information overload? (The same question goes for information workers and government data of any kind.)

Comparing Apple and Microsoft as Platforms for Developers

I missed October’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles this year because of a couple of other conferences and meetings in other cities. But of course I was happy to see the coverage in the technology press and blogs, so much of it positive about our announcement on Windows Azure and the Azure Services Platform.

Then I read Joe Wilcox over on his “Apple Watch” blog at eWeek, on “What Apple Needs to Know about Azure, Windows 7.” It’s striking in its conclusions, particularly coming from a longtime Apple watcher:

Lucky 7, as in Windows 7

When there’s neat stuff nearing release, it’s both professionally fulfilling but also no fun being a Microsoft employee, because you’re (rightly) constrained from blogging about some of the cool technology being cooked up in MSR or in advanced development labs among the product groups.

It means that I wind up passing along links to open stories in the media written by outsiders who wind up getting an early story (mostly) right, through good solid reporting and insightful addition skills, i.e. 2+2=4.

I faced that several months ago when Live Mesh was in the batter’s circle, before its public announcement; I wrote what I could because I was so impressed with the technology and approach, as were the reviews after its unveiling.  Before, I wrote this post among others; and after the announcement I wrote this one. 

Same scenario now, with “Windows 7.”  You don’t have long to wait (October 27) for the public announcement, but if you’re curious about some of the technical approaches, there are several generally reliable bloggers already writing about “technical details” of the multi-touch, parallel-processing, and cloud-services S+S integration points in the new release. A couple of good quick examples are Mary Jo Foley, “Windows 7 to Get Parallel Processing Tweaks” (she’s not as snarky as usual) and TechRadar’s “Seven Things You Need to Know about Windows 7“).

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