Channel 9 - Entries tagged with MS Research Microsoft http://mschnlnine.vo.llnwd.net/d1/Dev/App_Themes/C9/images/feedimage.png Channel 9 - Entries tagged with MS Research http://channel9.msdn.com/Tags/ms+research Channel 9 keeps you up to date with the latest news and behind the scenes info from Microsoft that developers love to keep up with. From LINQ to SilverLight – Watch videos and hear about all the cool technologies coming and the people behind them. http://channel9.msdn.com/Tags/ms+research en Sun, 26 May 2013 02:08:50 GMT Sun, 26 May 2013 02:08:50 GMT Rev9 129 6 25 Drawbridge: A new form of virtualization for application sandboxing Drawbridge is a research prototype of a new form of virtualization for application sandboxing. Drawbridge combines two core technologies: First, a picoprocess, which is a process-based isolation container with a minimal kernel API surface. Second, a library OS, which is a version of Windows enlightened to run efficiently within a picoprocess. Drawbridge combines two ideas from the literature, the picoprocess and the library OS, to provide a new form of computing, which retains the benefits of secure isolation, persistent compatibility, and execution continuity, but with drastically lower resource overheads.

The Drawbridge library OS is an experimental Windows 7 library OS - a research project and proving ground for a larger concept: application virtualization and sandboxing. Drawbridge is capable of running the latest releases of major Windows applications such as Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and Internet Explorer with very little overhead compared to the traditional virtualization techniques. The experiment is going well! Now, what's going on here, exactly?

Drawbridge research team members Galen Hunt, Reuben Olinsky and Jon Howell dig into some of the details, including project rationale and OS architecture, of research project Drawbridge.

Paper: http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=141071

 

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Drawbridge-An-Experimental-Library-Operating-System Drawbridge is a research prototype of a new form of virtualization for application sandboxing. Drawbridge combines two core technologies: First, a picoprocess, which is a process-based isolation container with a minimal kernel API surface. Second, a library OS, which is a version of Windows enlightened to run efficiently within a picoprocess. Drawbridge combines two ideas from the literature, the picoprocess and the library OS, to provide a new form of computing, which retains the benefits of secure isolation, persistent compatibility, and execution continuity, but with drastically lower resource overheads. The Drawbridge library OS is an experimental Windows 7 library OS - a research project and proving ground for a larger concept: application virtualization and sandboxing. Drawbridge is capable of running the latest releases of major Windows applications such as Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and Internet Explorer with very little overhead compared to the traditional virtualization techniques. The experiment is going well! Now, what's going on here, exactly? Drawbridge research team members Galen Hunt, Reuben Olinsky and Jon Howell dig into some of the details, including project rationale and OS architecture, of research project Drawbridge. Paper: http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=141071   2812 http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Drawbridge-An-Experimental-Library-Operating-System Mon, 17 Oct 2011 17:27:19 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Drawbridge-An-Experimental-Library-Operating-System Charles Charles 28 http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Drawbridge-An-Experimental-Library-Operating-System/RSS Kernel Microsoft Research MS Research Operating System OS Security Windows 7 experimental ICSE 2011: Danny Dig - Retrofitting Parallelism into a Sequential World Dr. Danny Dig is a Principal Investigator at the Universal Parallel Computing Research Center (UPCRC Illinois). UPCRC's stated mission is to make parallel programming synonymous with programming. Dr. Dig leads research on refactorings that retrofit parallelism into existing sequential code. How do you retrofit parallelism into a sequential world? Wolfram Schulte interviews Dr. Dig at ICSE 2011 to find out... Tune in.

[My apologies for the poor lighting. The conversation, on the other hand, is very bright!]

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/ICSE-2011-Danny-Dig Dr. Danny Dig is a Principal Investigator at the Universal Parallel Computing Research Center (UPCRC Illinois). UPCRC's stated mission is to make parallel programming synonymous with programming. Dr. Dig leads research on refactorings that retrofit parallelism into existing sequential code. How do you retrofit parallelism into a sequential world? Wolfram Schulte interviews Dr. Dig at ICSE 2011 to find out... Tune in. [My apologies for the poor lighting. The conversation, on the other hand, is very bright!] 1029 http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/ICSE-2011-Danny-Dig Tue, 28 Jun 2011 18:35:14 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/ICSE-2011-Danny-Dig Charles Charles 2 http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/ICSE-2011-Danny-Dig/rss Computer Science Microsoft Research MS Research RiSE Software Engineering Research ICSE 2011 ICSE 2011: Victor Pankratius - Developing Manycore Applications with Concurrency Auto-Tuners Continuing on with our coverage of ICSE 2011, meet Dr. Victor Pankratius. Dr. Pankratius heads the Multicore Software Engineering investigator group at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany. He also serves as the elected chairman of the Software Engineering for parallel Systems (SEPARS) international working group. Dr. Pankratius' current research concentrates on how to make parallel programming easier. His work on multicore software engineering covers a range of research topics including empirical studies, auto-tuning, language design, and debugging.

In this video, Wolfram Schulte joins Victor to discuss the challenges of making concurrency easier for developers. One of the really interesting approaches that Victor and team are investigating is concurrency auto-tuning, and the example discussed here involve adding OS kernel-level support for auto-tuning user mode applications for manycore processor architectures. This is very fascinating research with great potential. Concurrency auto-tuner in an OS kernel? Concurrency-enlightened operating systems? Why not? Always great to meet young innovators with no fear of failure. I hope to see this type of thing materialize. Very interesting research and real world problem.  Go Victor. Go!

Thanks to Wolfram and Victor for another great conversation. Tune in.

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/ICSE-2011-Victor-Pankratius-Developing-Manycore-Applications-with-Auto-Tuners Continuing on with our coverage of ICSE 2011, meet Dr. Victor Pankratius. Dr. Pankratius heads the Multicore Software Engineering investigator group at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany. He also serves as the elected chairman of the Software Engineering for parallel Systems (SEPARS) international working group. Dr. Pankratius' current research concentrates on how to make parallel programming easier. His work on multicore software engineering covers a range of research topics including empirical studies, auto-tuning, language design, and debugging. In this video, Wolfram Schulte joins Victor to discuss the challenges of making concurrency easier for developers. One of the really interesting approaches that Victor and team are investigating is concurrency auto-tuning, and the example discussed here involve adding OS kernel-level support for auto-tuning user mode applications for manycore processor architectures. This is very fascinating research with great potential. Concurrency auto-tuner in an OS kernel? Concurrency-enlightened operating systems? Why not? Always great to meet young innovators with no fear of failure. I hope to see this type of thing materialize. Very interesting research and real world problem.  Go Victor. Go!Thanks to Wolfram and Victor for another great conversation. Tune in. 1155 http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/ICSE-2011-Victor-Pankratius-Developing-Manycore-Applications-with-Auto-Tuners Mon, 20 Jun 2011 21:21:02 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/ICSE-2011-Victor-Pankratius-Developing-Manycore-Applications-with-Auto-Tuners Charles Charles 0 http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/ICSE-2011-Victor-Pankratius-Developing-Manycore-Applications-with-Auto-Tuners/rss Computer Science Concurrency Kernel Microsoft Research MS Research Operating System Programming RiSE ICSE 2011 ICSE 2011: Conversation with Andreas Zeller ICSE, the International Conference on Software Engineering,® is the premier software engineering conference, providing a forum for researchers, practitioners and educators to present and discuss the most recent innovations, trends, experiences and concerns in the field of software engineering.

Thankfully, I got to attend ICSE 2011 and, even better, got to record a bunch of Expert to Expert episodes that feature the great Wolfram Schulte leading the conversations with specialists in various areas of computer science and engineering. What a treat! Thank you, Wolfram.

In this video, we meet Andreas Zeller, the creator of delta debugging and, in some sense, the world's preeminent debugger mind. His book, Why Programs Fail, should be on the shelves (and not collecting dust, mind you!) of all software developers. Dr. Zeller is very passionate about the discipline of software engineering—the craft of writing software, of making software systems. In particular, Dr. Zeller is a champion of code assertions! If you can't assert what you mean, then what do you really mean? What does Dr. Zeller really mean with this assertion business? Tune in.

As developers, we know how much time we spend debugging compared to composing. For some of us, all nighters are more a result of bug chasing than feature building or algorithm construction/optimizations—Andreas has a great perspective on debugging and what all developers should do in order to work 9-5 and get plenty of sleep Smiley

Enjoy.

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/ICSE-2011-Conversation-with-Andreas-Zeller ICSE, the International Conference on Software Engineering,® is the premier software engineering conference, providing a forum for researchers, practitioners and educators to present and discuss the most recent innovations, trends, experiences and concerns in the field of software engineering. Thankfully, I got to attend ICSE 2011 and, even better, got to record a bunch of Expert to Expert episodes that feature the great Wolfram Schulte leading the conversations with specialists in various areas of computer science and engineering. What a treat! Thank you, Wolfram. In this video, we meet Andreas Zeller, the creator of delta debugging and, in some sense, the world's preeminent debugger mind. His book, Why Programs Fail, should be on the shelves (and not collecting dust, mind you!) of all software developers. Dr. Zeller is very passionate about the discipline of software engineering—the craft of writing software, of making software systems. In particular, Dr. Zeller is a champion of code assertions! If you can't assert what you mean, then what do you really mean? What does Dr. Zeller really mean with this assertion business? Tune in. As developers, we know how much time we spend debugging compared to composing. For some of us, all nighters are more a result of bug chasing than feature building or algorithm construction/optimizations—Andreas has a great perspective on debugging and what all developers should do in order to work 9-5 and get plenty of sleep Enjoy. 1474 http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/ICSE-2011-Conversation-with-Andreas-Zeller Wed, 08 Jun 2011 15:00:00 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/ICSE-2011-Conversation-with-Andreas-Zeller Charles Charles 8 http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/ICSE-2011-Conversation-with-Andreas-Zeller/rss Computer Science Debugging Expert to Expert Microsoft Research MS Research RiSE Software Engineering Research computer science ICSE 2011 How to Shop for Free Online Web applications increasingly integrate third-party services. The integration introduces new security challenges due to the complexity for an application to coordinate its internal states with those of the component services and the web client across the Internet. In this paper, we study the security implications of this problem to merchant websites that accept payments through third-party cashiers (e.g., PayPal, Amazon Payments and Google Checkout), which we refer to as Cashier-as-a-Service or CaaS. We found that leading merchant applications (e.g., NopCommerce and Interspire), popular online stores (e.g., Buy.com and JR.com) and a prestigious CaaS provider (Amazon Payments) all contain serious logic flaws that can be exploited to cause inconsistencies between the states of the CaaS and the merchant. [Source]

Interesting, captain. What exactly does this mean? How are these flaws in programming logic exploited by evil shoppers? Most importantly, how can I shop for free?!?? Smiley

In all seriousness, with the online world becoming increasingly complex with its distributed services communicating over various protocols, information that materializes on end points as plain text, and non-uniform payment service policies—with the cherry on top being non-uniform identity of communicating parties—well, business can get messy. MSR researchers Shuo Chen and Shaz Qadeer, as well as PhD student and key author of this really interesting research paper, Rui Wang, join me for a conversation about the implications of this research(another author of the paper is XiaoFeng Wang of Indiana University Bloomington). Most importantly, however, I try to get them to give me the details about how I can fool online merchants into shipping me goods for free (just kidding!) and what they think is needed to fix this problem in a mathematically precise fashion (static/dynamic analysis, security-based policy languages for CaaS, etc.).

 

 

 

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Web-Security-Cashier-as-a-ServiceCaas-and-How-to-Shop-for-Free-Online Web applications increasingly integrate third-party services. The integration introduces new security challenges due to the complexity for an application to coordinate its internal states with those of the component services and the web client across the Internet. In this paper, we study the security implications of this problem to merchant websites that accept payments through third-party cashiers (e.g., PayPal, Amazon Payments and Google Checkout), which we refer to as Cashier-as-a-Service or CaaS. We found that leading merchant applications (e.g., NopCommerce and Interspire), popular online stores (e.g., Buy.com and JR.com) and a prestigious CaaS provider (Amazon Payments) all contain serious logic flaws that can be exploited to cause inconsistencies between the states of the CaaS and the merchant. [Source]Interesting, captain. What exactly does this mean? How are these flaws in programming logic exploited by evil shoppers? Most importantly, how can I shop for free?!?? In all seriousness, with the online world becoming increasingly complex with its distributed services communicating over various protocols, information that materializes on end points as plain text, and non-uniform payment service policies—with the cherry on top being non-uniform identity of communicating parties—well, business can get messy. MSR researchers Shuo Chen and Shaz Qadeer, as well as PhD student and key author of this really interesting research paper, Rui Wang, join me for a conversation about the implications of this research(another author of the paper is XiaoFeng Wang of Indiana University Bloomington). Most importantly, however, I try to get them to give me the details about how I can fool online merchants into shipping me goods for free (just kidding!) and what they think is needed to fix this problem in a mathematically precise fashion (static/dynamic analysis, security-based policy languages for CaaS, etc.).       2089 http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Web-Security-Cashier-as-a-ServiceCaas-and-How-to-Shop-for-Free-Online Tue, 17 May 2011 17:01:38 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Web-Security-Cashier-as-a-ServiceCaas-and-How-to-Shop-for-Free-Online Charles Charles 0 http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Web-Security-Cashier-as-a-ServiceCaas-and-How-to-Shop-for-Free-Online/rss Computer Science Microsoft Research MS Research RiSE Security Web Services Chris Hawblitzel and Juan Chen: Introduction to Typed Assembly Language (TAL) Typed Assembly Language (TAL) extends traditional untyped assembly languages with typing annotations, memory management primitives, and a sound set of typing rules. These typing rules guarantee the memory safety, control flow safety, and type safety of TAL programs. Moreover, the typing constructs are expressive enough to encode most source language programming features including records and structures, arrays, higher-order and polymorphic functions, exceptions, abstract data types, subtyping, and modules. Just as importantly, TAL is flexible enough to admit many low-level compiler optimizations. Consequently, TAL is an ideal target platform for type-directed compilers that want to produce verifiably safe code for use in secure mobile code applications or extensible operating system kernels. [Source]

You've met Microsoft research scientist and operating system expert Chris Hawblitzel before. He's the architect and lead researcher of the Verve operating system research project from MSR. As you learned in that interview, typed assembly language and Hoare logic were employed to verify the absence of many kinds of errors in low-level code. Chris et al. use TAL and Hoare logic to achieve highly automated, static verification of the safety of Verve. We didn't spend much time on TAL during the Verve interview, so we decided to remedy that. Enter computer scientist and RiSE team member Juan Chen who did much of the TAL work for Verve. After you watch this video, you should read this paper to go much deeper.

Tune in and get a sense of what TAL is, how type verification works for assembly code, benefits, trade-offs, and much more. Enjoy.

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Chris-Hawblitzel-and-Juan-Chen-Introduction-to-Typed-Assembly-Language-TAL Typed Assembly Language (TAL) extends traditional untyped assembly languages with typing annotations, memory management primitives, and a sound set of typing rules. These typing rules guarantee the memory safety, control flow safety, and type safety of TAL programs. Moreover, the typing constructs are expressive enough to encode most source language programming features including records and structures, arrays, higher-order and polymorphic functions, exceptions, abstract data types, subtyping, and modules. Just as importantly, TAL is flexible enough to admit many low-level compiler optimizations. Consequently, TAL is an ideal target platform for type-directed compilers that want to produce verifiably safe code for use in secure mobile code applications or extensible operating system kernels. [Source]You've met Microsoft research scientist and operating system expert Chris Hawblitzel before. He's the architect and lead researcher of the Verve operating system research project from MSR. As you learned in that interview, typed assembly language and Hoare logic were employed to verify the absence of many kinds of errors in low-level code. Chris et al. use TAL and Hoare logic to achieve highly automated, static verification of the safety of Verve. We didn't spend much time on TAL during the Verve interview, so we decided to remedy that. Enter computer scientist and RiSE team member Juan Chen who did much of the TAL work for Verve. After you watch this video, you should read this paper to go much deeper. Tune in and get a sense of what TAL is, how type verification works for assembly code, benefits, trade-offs, and much more. Enjoy. 2611 http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Chris-Hawblitzel-and-Juan-Chen-Introduction-to-Typed-Assembly-Language-TAL Wed, 11 May 2011 16:33:41 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Chris-Hawblitzel-and-Juan-Chen-Introduction-to-Typed-Assembly-Language-TAL Charles Charles 9 http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Chris-Hawblitzel-and-Juan-Chen-Introduction-to-Typed-Assembly-Language-TAL/RSS Compilers Computer Science Microsoft Research MS Research Operating System Programming Languages RiSE One of the inventors of Human Skeletal Tracking - Jamie Shotton Jamie Shotton is one of the inventors of Human Skeletal Tracking—he works in Microsoft Research Cambridge and dropped by the states, and our studio, to chat about this great invention. Human skeletal tracking employed in Kinect is a great example of collaboration between MSR and Microsoft product teams. The Kinect team provided a significant amount of the basic research of this technology in addition to implementing it in the shipping product. MSR provided some of the basic science research. Great partnership. Incredible product!

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/TechWithTina/The-Inventor-of-Human-Skeletal-Tracking-Jamie-Shotton Jamie Shotton is one of the inventors of Human Skeletal Tracking—he works in Microsoft Research Cambridge and dropped by the states, and our studio, to chat about this great invention. Human skeletal tracking employed in Kinect is a great example of collaboration between MSR and Microsoft product teams. The Kinect team provided a significant amount of the basic research of this technology in addition to implementing it in the shipping product. MSR provided some of the basic science research. Great partnership. Incredible product! 467 http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/TechWithTina/The-Inventor-of-Human-Skeletal-Tracking-Jamie-Shotton Sun, 20 Mar 2011 08:05:12 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/TechWithTina/The-Inventor-of-Human-Skeletal-Tracking-Jamie-Shotton Tina Tina 5 http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/TechWithTina/The-Inventor-of-Human-Skeletal-Tracking-Jamie-Shotton/RSS Kinect Microsoft Research MS Research Countdown to MIX11: Research, Design, and Bicycling Innovation is an overused buzzword these days. What does it mean, really? Well, Microsoft Research is in the business of scientific discovery which often leads to innovations that end up in the hands of computer users (or not in the hands of the computer users as the case may be). One area of scientific focus at Microsoft Research, Computer Vision, has brought us the popular gaming controller device Kinect. Kinect has changed the evolutionary path of human computer interaction. It is in some sense a peripheral device used to control computers, like a mouse or keyboard, but it turns the user into the controller and enables the computer to understand natural user intention. Come learn from the scientists behind Kinect what it means for all of us going forward. There’s much more to this brave new world of human computer interaction than playing games on the Xbox 360. Microsoft Research will also present and demo new prototype development technologies for JavaScript analysis and automatically improving web site performance, plug-in free, of course. 

We also talk about our design content at MIX, called the UX Lightning Series.  We’ve lined up 12 expert speakers to present on various design and UX topics to stimulate creative thinking in a compelling format that will keep things moving along very quickly with a new speaker hitting the stage every 10 minutes. The result? Less fluff, less syntax, and much more creative and inspiring content!

So, what’s the biking about?  Nothing other than our studio got a new green screen and we thought it’d be fun.  But, if you watch very closely, there is a difference between Mike and Jennifer’s cycling.  If you can be the first to guess correctly what that variance is by posting in the forum below, a MIX11 shirt could be yours.  Good luck!  http://live.visitmix.com

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Counting-Down-to-Mix/Countdown-to-MIX11-Research-Design-and-Bicycling Innovation is an overused buzzword these days. What does it mean, really? Well, Microsoft Research is in the business of scientific discovery which often leads to innovations that end up in the hands of computer users (or not in the hands of the computer users as the case may be). One area of scientific focus at Microsoft Research, Computer Vision, has brought us the popular gaming controller device Kinect. Kinect has changed the evolutionary path of human computer interaction. It is in some sense a peripheral device used to control computers, like a mouse or keyboard, but it turns the user into the controller and enables the computer to understand natural user intention. Come learn from the scientists behind Kinect what it means for all of us going forward. There’s much more to this brave new world of human computer interaction than playing games on the Xbox 360. Microsoft Research will also present and demo new prototype development technologies for JavaScript analysis and automatically improving web site performance, plug-in free, of course.  We also talk about our design content at MIX, called the UX Lightning Series.  We’ve lined up 12 expert speakers to present on various design and UX topics to stimulate creative thinking in a compelling format that will keep things moving along very quickly with a new speaker hitting the stage every 10 minutes. The result? Less fluff, less syntax, and much more creative and inspiring content! So, what’s the biking about?  Nothing other than our studio got a new green screen and we thought it’d be fun.  But, if you watch very closely, there is a difference between Mike and Jennifer’s cycling.  If you can be the first to guess correctly what that variance is by posting in the forum below, a MIX11 shirt could be yours.  Good luck!  http://live.visitmix.com 656 http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Counting-Down-to-Mix/Countdown-to-MIX11-Research-Design-and-Bicycling Tue, 15 Mar 2011 17:26:19 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Counting-Down-to-Mix/Countdown-to-MIX11-Research-Design-and-Bicycling Larry Larsen Larry Larsen 3 http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Counting-Down-to-Mix/Countdown-to-MIX11-Research-Design-and-Bicycling/RSS Microsoft Research MS Research UX MIX11 TechFest 2011: 3D Scanning with a regular camera or phone! 3-D television is creating a huge buzz in the consumer space, but the generation of 3-D content remains a largely professional endeavor. Our research demonstrates an easy-to-use system for creating photorealistic, 3-D-image-based models simply by walking around an object of interest with your phone, still camera, or video camera. The objects might be your custom car or motorcycle, a wedding cake or dress, a rare musical instrument, or a hand-crafted artwork. Our system uses 3-D stereo matching techniques combined with image-based modeling and rendering to create a photorealistic model you can navigate simply by spinning it around on your screen, tablet, or mobile device.
 
Click here for a deeper dive and RIN (Rich Interactive Narrative).
]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/TechFest-2011-3D-Scanning-with-a-regular-camera-or-phone 3-D television is creating a huge buzz in the consumer space, but the generation of 3-D content remains a largely professional endeavor. Our research demonstrates an easy-to-use system for creating photorealistic, 3-D-image-based models simply by walking around an object of interest with your phone, still camera, or video camera. The objects might be your custom car or motorcycle, a wedding cake or dress, a rare musical instrument, or a hand-crafted artwork. Our system uses 3-D stereo matching techniques combined with image-based modeling and rendering to create a photorealistic model you can navigate simply by spinning it around on your screen, tablet, or mobile device. Click here for a deeper dive and RIN (Rich Interactive Narrative). 341 http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/TechFest-2011-3D-Scanning-with-a-regular-camera-or-phone Thu, 10 Mar 2011 02:39:35 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/TechFest-2011-3D-Scanning-with-a-regular-camera-or-phone Laura Foy Laura Foy 14 http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/TechFest-2011-3D-Scanning-with-a-regular-camera-or-phone/rss Microsoft Research MS Research MSR TechFest 2011 John Platt: Introduction to Sho - A Playground for Data Sho is an interactive environment for data analysis and scientific computing that lets you seamlessly connect scripts (in IronPython) with compiled code (in .NET) to enable fast and flexible prototyping. The environment includes powerful and efficient libraries for linear algebra as well as data visualization that can be used from any .NET language, as well as a feature-rich interactive shell for rapid development. Here, we meet the lead researcher behind Sho - John Platt.  Sho is very, very cool and you can use it's powerful computational facilities from any managed language (or from C++/CLI). I highly recommend that you download and start playing with Sho, regardless of whether or not you program in Python. Props to John and his small team of talented developers!

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Charles/John-Platt-Introduction-to-Sho Sho is an interactive environment for data analysis and scientific computing that lets you seamlessly connect scripts (in IronPython) with compiled code (in .NET) to enable fast and flexible prototyping. The environment includes powerful and efficient libraries for linear algebra as well as data visualization that can be used from any .NET language, as well as a feature-rich interactive shell for rapid development. Here, we meet the lead researcher behind Sho - John Platt.  Sho is very, very cool and you can use it's powerful computational facilities from any managed language (or from C++/CLI). I highly recommend that you download and start playing with Sho, regardless of whether or not you program in Python. Props to John and his small team of talented developers! 1529 http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Charles/John-Platt-Introduction-to-Sho Thu, 03 Feb 2011 18:47:59 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Charles/John-Platt-Introduction-to-Sho Charles Charles 15 http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Charles/John-Platt-Introduction-to-Sho/RSS .NET .NET Framework IronPython Mathematics Microsoft Research MS Research Python data visualization MSR tackles image blur Microsoft Research posted a page about some work they are doing around getting better images through a "deconvolution" algorithm that deblurs images through detecting movement in the accelerometers. What does this mean for the future? Could mean better images in a future phone, SLR's that run Windows Embedded, or better face to face chats with mobile devices.

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/coolstuff/MSR-tackles-image-blur Microsoft Research posted a page about some work they are doing around getting better images through a "deconvolution" algorithm that deblurs images through detecting movement in the accelerometers. What does this mean for the future? Could mean better images in a future phone, SLR's that run Windows Embedded, or better face to face chats with mobile devices. http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/coolstuff/MSR-tackles-image-blur Mon, 31 Jan 2011 23:29:21 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/coolstuff/MSR-tackles-image-blur Larry Larsen Larry Larsen 0 http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/coolstuff/MSR-tackles-image-blur/RSS Microsoft Research MS Research MSR Photography Project Emporia on Windows Phone Project Emporia is brought to you by Microsoft Fuse Labs located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. This app for the Windows Phone (and also available on the web) re-defines what a newspaper is with the utmost in personalization and customization. Ralf Herbrich and Allen Jones give you the details of how they built it. Check it out- it's FREE!

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Project-Emporia-on-Windows-Phone Project Emporia is brought to you by Microsoft Fuse Labs located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. This app for the Windows Phone (and also available on the web) re-defines what a newspaper is with the utmost in personalization and customization. Ralf Herbrich and Allen Jones give you the details of how they built it. Check it out- it's FREE! 579 http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Project-Emporia-on-Windows-Phone Wed, 26 Jan 2011 04:12:37 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Project-Emporia-on-Windows-Phone Laura Foy Laura Foy 6 http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Project-Emporia-on-Windows-Phone/rss Business Apps Microsoft Research MS Research MSR Windows Phone 7 WP7 Verve: A Type Safe Operating System  

The Singularity project (an OS written in managed code used for research purposes) has provided several very useful research results and opened new avenues for exploration in operating system design. Recently, MSR released a paper covering an operating system research project that takes a new approach to building an OS stack with verifiable and type safe managed code. This project employs a novel use of Typed Assembly Language, which is what you think it is: Assembly with types (implemented as annotations and verified statically using the verification technology Boogie and the theorem prover Z3(Boogie generates verification conditions that are then statically proven by Z3. Boogie is also a language used to build program verifiers for other languages)). As with Singularity, the C# Bartok compiler is used, but this time it generates TAL. The entire OS stack is verifiably type safe (the Nucleus is essentially the Verve HAL) and all objects are garbage collected. It does not employ the SIP model of process isolation (like Singularity). In this case, again, the entire operating system is type safe and statically proven as such using world-class theorem provers. 

Here's the basic idea (from the introduction of the paper):

Typed assembly language (TAL) and Hoare logic can verify the absence of many kinds of errors in low-level code. We use TAL and Hoare logic to achieve highly automated, static verification of the safety of a new operating system called Verve. Our techniques and tools mechanically verify the safety of every assembly language instruction in the operating system, run-time system, drivers, and applications (in fact, every part of the system software except the boot loader). Verve consists of a “Nucleus” that provides primitive access to hardware and memory, a kernel that builds services on top of the Nucleus, and applications that run on top of the kernel.

Here, Microsoft research scientist and operating system expert (he worked on the Singularity project) Chris Hawblitzel sits down with me to discuss the rationale behind the Verve project, the architecture and design of Verve and the Nucleus, Typed Assembly Language (TAL), potential for Verve in the real world, and much more. This is a conversational piece (no demos, no whiteboarding), but if you are into operating research and strategies for building type safe systems at the lowest levels, then this is for you. If you are interested, perhaps we could get Chris into our studio for a lecture or two on OS design. Smiley

Niner Richard Hein's question is asked here.

Get the Verve source code here.

Enjoy. Learn.

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Verve-A-Type-Safe-Operating-System   The Singularity project (an OS written in managed code used for research purposes) has provided several very useful research results and opened new avenues for exploration in operating system design. Recently, MSR released a paper covering an operating system research project that takes a new approach to building an OS stack with verifiable and type safe managed code. This project employs a novel use of Typed Assembly Language, which is what you think it is: Assembly with types (implemented as annotations and verified statically using the verification technology Boogie and the theorem prover Z3(Boogie generates verification conditions that are then statically proven by Z3. Boogie is also a language used to build program verifiers for other languages)). As with Singularity, the C# Bartok compiler is used, but this time it generates TAL. The entire OS stack is verifiably type safe (the Nucleus is essentially the Verve HAL) and all objects are garbage collected. It does not employ the SIP model of process isolation (like Singularity). In this case, again, the entire operating system is type safe and statically proven as such using world-class theorem provers.  Here's the basic idea (from the introduction of the paper): Typed assembly language (TAL) and Hoare logic can verify the absence of many kinds of errors in low-level code. We use TAL and Hoare logic to achieve highly automated, static verification of the safety of a new operating system called Verve. Our techniques and tools mechanically verify the safety of every assembly language instruction in the operating system, run-time system, drivers, and applications (in fact, every part of the system software except the boot loader). Verve consists of a “Nucleus” that provides primitive access to hardware and memory, a kernel that builds services on top of the Nucleus, and applications that run on top of the kernel. Here, Microsoft research scientist and operating system expert (he worked on 4490 http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Verve-A-Type-Safe-Operating-System Tue, 07 Dec 2010 17:01:28 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Verve-A-Type-Safe-Operating-System Charles Charles 14 http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Verve-A-Type-Safe-Operating-System/RSS Architecture C9 Conversations Kernel Managed Code Microsoft Research MS Research Operating System Z3 Orleans: A Framework for Scalable Client+Cloud Computing
Orleans is a Microsoft Research (MSR) project and managed (.NET) software framework for building client + cloud applications. As outlined in the recently released paper on the topic: Orleans defines an actor-like model of isolated grains that communicate through asynchronous messages and manage asynchronous computations with promises. The isolated state and constrained execution model of grains allows the Orleans runtime to persist, migrate, replicate, and reconcile grain state without programmer intervention. Orleans also provides lightweight, optimistic, distributed transactions that provide predictable consistency and failure handling for distributed operations across multiple grains.

Here, we meet the Orleans team—Sergey Bykov, Alan Geller, Gabriel Kliot, James Larus, Ravi Pandya, and Jorgen Thelin—as they introduce Orleans and provide insights into the rationale and design decisions behind the project and also spend a fair amount of time focusing on the basic unit of isolated computation in Orleans, the grain. Very interesting and promising research! 

I highly recommend that you read the paper—it's very approachable and makes many aspects of Orleans crystal clear. In fact, that's the goal of the Orleans project: to make reliable and scalable distributed concurrent computing easier for developers to compose using tools and concepts they already understand (.NET). As we all know, it's hard to effectively program scalable distributed concurrent systems reliably. Orleans's goal is to change this fact by exploring and implementing new approaches (like grain-based programming) using novel combinations of time-tested programming models and technologies (actors, promises, transactions, etc). 

Tune in. Enjoy.

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Project-Orleans-A-Cloud-Computing-Framework Orleans is a Microsoft Research (MSR) project and managed (.NET) software framework for building client + cloud applications. As outlined in the recently released paper on the topic: Orleans defines an actor-like model of isolated grains that communicate through asynchronous messages and manage asynchronous computations with promises. The isolated state and constrained execution model of grains allows the Orleans runtime to persist, migrate, replicate, and reconcile grain state without programmer intervention. Orleans also provides lightweight, optimistic, distributed transactions that provide predictable consistency and failure handling for distributed operations across multiple grains.Here, we meet the Orleans team—Sergey Bykov, Alan Geller, Gabriel Kliot, James Larus, Ravi Pandya, and Jorgen Thelin—as they introduce Orleans and provide insights into the rationale and design decisions behind the project and also spend a fair amount of time focusing on the basic unit of isolated computation in Orleans, the grain. Very interesting and promising research!  I highly recommend that you read the paper—it's very approachable and makes many aspects of Orleans crystal clear. In fact, that's the goal of the Orleans project: to make reliable and scalable distributed concurrent computing easier for developers to compose using tools and concepts they already understand (.NET). As we all know, it's hard to effectively program scalable distributed concurrent systems reliably. Orleans's goal is to change this fact by exploring and implementing new approaches (like grain-based programming) using novel combinations of time-tested programming models and technologies (actors, promises, transactions, etc). Tune in. Enjoy. 3777 http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Project-Orleans-A-Cloud-Computing-Framework Thu, 02 Dec 2010 23:07:10 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Project-Orleans-A-Cloud-Computing-Framework Charles Charles 10 http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Project-Orleans-A-Cloud-Computing-Framework/RSS .NET 4.0 .NET Framework 4.0 Cloud Computing CLR 4 Concurrency Developer Tools Distributed Computing Microsoft Research MS Research Programming E2E: Concurrent Programming with Revisions  

 

Building applications that are responsive and can exploit parallel hardware poses an important challenge. In particular, enabling applications to execute various tasks in parallel can be difficult if those tasks exhibit read and write conflicts. Revisions are forked and joined much like asynchronous tasks. However, rather than accessing global shared data directly (and thereby risking data races or atomicity violations), all revisions execute on a (conceptual) copy of the shared state, a "global mutable snapshot" so to speak. Any changes performed in a revision apply to that snapshot only, until the revision is joined at which the [sic] changes become globally effective [source = http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/revisions/].

Here, Erik Meijer interrogates (in a nice way) computer scientists Daan Leijen and Sebastian Burckhardt, the researchers behind Revisions. As usual, Erik asks great questions and the scientists spend much of the time at the whiteboard, drawing and writing answers to clearly explain what revisions are, how they work, and why this model matters. In a nice twist of fate, Erik was Daan's PhD advisor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands (that must have been awesome—lucky Daan!).

Revisions are yet another example of the great work coming out of the RiSE group in MSR. You don't have to wait for a "CTP" of Revisions for C# -> Just go to http://rise4fun.com/Revisions and write some code! Thanks to Peli and the RiSE team developers for implementing such an awesome web-based experimentation sandbox.

Tune in. Learn. Enjoy.

 

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/E2E-Concurrent-Programming-with-Revisions     Building applications that are responsive and can exploit parallel hardware poses an important challenge. In particular, enabling applications to execute various tasks in parallel can be difficult if those tasks exhibit read and write conflicts. Revisions are forked and joined much like asynchronous tasks. However, rather than accessing global shared data directly (and thereby risking data races or atomicity violations), all revisions execute on a (conceptual) copy of the shared state, a "global mutable snapshot" so to speak. Any changes performed in a revision apply to that snapshot only, until the revision is joined at which the [sic] changes become globally effective [source = http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/revisions/]. Here, Erik Meijer interrogates (in a nice way) computer scientists Daan Leijen and Sebastian Burckhardt, the researchers behind Revisions. As usual, Erik asks great questions and the scientists spend much of the time at the whiteboard, drawing and writing answers to clearly explain what revisions are, how they work, and why this model matters. In a nice twist of fate, Erik was Daan's PhD advisor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands (that must have been awesome—lucky Daan!). Revisions are yet another example of the great work coming out of the RiSE group in MSR. You don't have to wait for a "CTP" of Revisions for C# -> Just go to http://rise4fun.com/Revisions and write some code! Thanks to Peli and the RiSE team developers for implementing such an awesome web-based experimentation sandbox. Tune in. Learn. Enjoy.   4238 http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/E2E-Concurrent-Programming-with-Revisions Thu, 11 Nov 2010 17:54:37 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/E2E-Concurrent-Programming-with-Revisions Charles Charles 18 http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/E2E-Concurrent-Programming-with-Revisions/RSS Concurrency Erik Meijer Expert to Expert Microsoft Research MS Research Parallelism Programming RiSE Developers: Rise to the Challenge at RiSE4fun.com If you've spent any time on C9 over the years, then you've probably met some of the people from the RiSE team in MSR and are familiar with at least some of the great technologies they've developed. RiSE, which stands for Research in Software Engineering, is a rock star research group with a mission to innovate and push the limits of software engineering in practice (so, it's not just a theory group, though RiSE scientists include some of the world's best practicing theoreticians and super talented developers). Of all the groups in MSR, and there are many incredible ones, RiSE is my favorite. Hats off to Wolfram and team for working so hard to make general purpose programming a more reasonable discipline on many levels.

At PDC10, you learned about some of the projects the RiSE group are working on and, if you attended the event, you got to meet many of the researchers behind the science. In any case, you should watch the C9 Live segment with Erik Meijer and Wolfram Schulte (the leader of the RiSE team) where we learn about several of the RiSE projects. Wolfram spent much of the time showing us the RiSE4Fun website, which invites developers to play around with various advanced software engineering technologies right from the comfortable confines of a modern web browser—no need to install anything, no plug-ins, no security prompts —> just learn, write code in the browser, and watch the magic happen. Make no mistake, RiSE4Fun is for developers. So, my engineering friends, RiSE up and have some fun learning about the future—now.

Check out the Intellisense! Smiley

 

Upcoming RiSE related content on C9 includes:

Keep on learning,
C

 

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Charles/Rise-t If you've spent any time on C9 over the years, then you've probably met some of the people from the RiSE team in MSR and are familiar with at least some of the great technologies they've developed. RiSE, which stands for Research in Software Engineering, is a rock star research group with a mission to innovate and push the limits of software engineering in practice (so, it's not just a theory group, though RiSE scientists include some of the world's best practicing theoreticians and super talented developers). Of all the groups in MSR, and there are many incredible ones, RiSE is my favorite. Hats off to Wolfram and team for working so hard to make general purpose programming a more reasonable discipline on many levels.At PDC10, you learned about some of the projects the RiSE group are working on and, if you attended the event, you got to meet many of the researchers behind the science. In any case, you should watch the C9 Live segment with Erik Meijer and Wolfram Schulte (the leader of the RiSE team) where we learn about several of the RiSE projects. Wolfram spent much of the time showing us the RiSE4Fun website, which invites developers to play around with various advanced software engineering technologies right from the comfortable confines of a modern web browser—no need to install anything, no plug-ins, no security prompts —> just learn, write code in the browser, and watch the magic happen. Make no mistake, RiSE4Fun is for developers. So, my engineering friends, RiSE up and have some fun learning about the future—now. Check out the Intellisense!   Upcoming RiSE related content on C9 includes: E2E with Erik Meijer and the scientists behind Concurrent Revisions Going Deep with Bart De Smet covering LINQ to Z3 C9 Lecture on Algorithms and Computational Complexity by Yuri Gurevich (Part 2 - See Part 1 here) Keep on learning,C   http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Charles/Rise-t Wed, 10 Nov 2010 19:00:32 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Charles/Rise-t Charles Charles 4 http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Charles/Rise-t/RSS Microsoft Research moles MS Research PEX Programming RiSE Software Engineering Research Z3 Microsoft's Adaptive Keyboard at UIST You may recall us thinking outloud about the idea of an advanced keyboard using LCD displays for each key and a touch LCD panel across the top. We call it our Adaptive Keyboard and it's an idea that Steven Bathiche has been thinking about for many years in our Applied Sciences Group. This year we gave prototype hardware to a group of students and asked them to present their ideas at this year's User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) symposium.

I headed out to New York to see what the students had come up with and there were plenty of good ideas. You can see the official winners here. A couple that stood out to me included WHACK, a system to dynamically remap keys so your passwords are always different and can't be captured by keyloggers, several visual clipboard applications,and one application that allowed the keyboard to be a visual interface for editing videos.

Watch the Microsoft Hardware Blog for more information.

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Microsofts-Adaptive-Keyboard-at-UIST You may recall us thinking outloud about the idea of an advanced keyboard using LCD displays for each key and a touch LCD panel across the top. We call it our Adaptive Keyboard and it's an idea that Steven Bathiche has been thinking about for many years in our Applied Sciences Group. This year we gave prototype hardware to a group of students and asked them to present their ideas at this year's User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) symposium. I headed out to New York to see what the students had come up with and there were plenty of good ideas. You can see the official winners here. A couple that stood out to me included WHACK, a system to dynamically remap keys so your passwords are always different and can't be captured by keyloggers, several visual clipboard applications,and one application that allowed the keyboard to be a visual interface for editing videos. Watch the Microsoft Hardware Blog for more information. 1435 http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Microsofts-Adaptive-Keyboard-at-UIST Tue, 19 Oct 2010 19:16:20 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Microsofts-Adaptive-Keyboard-at-UIST Larry Larsen Larry Larsen 19 http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Microsofts-Adaptive-Keyboard-at-UIST/rss Microsoft Research MS Research MSR A Look Behind MSR's Lightspace Lightspace is a project out ofMicrosoft Research that explores the integration of interactive surfaces across the real world. In this space, almost any surface can be an input device or display. As you watch this, you may notice similarities between Lightspace,Kinect, and Microsoft Surface. This is one of the areas that MSR is exploring and could influence decisions we make going forward.

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/lightspace Lightspace is a project out ofMicrosoft Research that explores the integration of interactive surfaces across the real world. In this space, almost any surface can be an input device or display. As you watch this, you may notice similarities between Lightspace,Kinect, and Microsoft Surface. This is one of the areas that MSR is exploring and could influence decisions we make going forward. 824 http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/lightspace Mon, 04 Oct 2010 16:26:03 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/lightspace Larry Larsen Larry Larsen 10 http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/lightspace/rss Microsoft Research MS Research MSR F# in use at Microsoft Research (#4 of 4) David Gristwood grabs his camera, and heads down to the Microsoft Research Centre in Cambridge with Dave Brown, an architect at the Microsoft Technology Centre, talks to several teams at Microsoft Research about their use of F# in part 4 of this video series. Projects discussed include:

•       Project Emporia, which filters updates from the Twitter public feed and automatically develops topic-based “lenses”.

•       AdCenter & AdPredictor, which determines the best adverts to display in Bing search results.

•       The Path of Go, an AI implementation for the popular, ancient Chinese board game on XBOX 360.

 Links:

•       Project Emporia, http://fuse.microsoft.com/project/project-emporia.aspx, http://www.projectemporia.com/

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/David+Gristwood/F-in-use-at-Microsoft-Research-4-of-4 David Gristwood grabs his camera, and heads down to the Microsoft Research Centre in Cambridge with Dave Brown, an architect at the Microsoft Technology Centre, talks to several teams at Microsoft Research about their use of F# in part 4 of this video series. Projects discussed include: •       Project Emporia, which filters updates from the Twitter public feed and automatically develops topic-based “lenses”. •       AdCenter & AdPredictor, which determines the best adverts to display in Bing search results. •       The Path of Go, an AI implementation for the popular, ancient Chinese board game on XBOX 360.  Links: •       Project Emporia, http://fuse.microsoft.com/project/project-emporia.aspx, http://www.projectemporia.com/ 2450 http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/David+Gristwood/F-in-use-at-Microsoft-Research-4-of-4 Mon, 27 Sep 2010 09:20:23 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/David+Gristwood/F-in-use-at-Microsoft-Research-4-of-4 David Gristwood David Gristwood 0 http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/David+Gristwood/F-in-use-at-Microsoft-Research-4-of-4/RSS .NET .NET Framework f# Microsoft Research MS Research MSR UKDevTeam F# and Windows Azure with Don Syme (#3 of 4) David Gristwood grabs his camera, and heads down to the Microsoft Research Centre in Cambridge with Dave Brown, an architect at the Microsoft Technology Centre, to talk to Don Syme, a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, about F# in part 3 of this video series. Don, who created F#, demonstrates the language with live coding examples in F# Interactive, focussing on Windows Azure.

Links:

•       Microsoft F# Developer Center, http://www.fsharp.net

•       Don Syme’s blog, http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dsyme/

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/David+Gristwood/F-and-Windows-Azure-with-Don-Syme-3-of-4 David Gristwood grabs his camera, and heads down to the Microsoft Research Centre in Cambridge with Dave Brown, an architect at the Microsoft Technology Centre, to talk to Don Syme, a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, about F# in part 3 of this video series. Don, who created F#, demonstrates the language with live coding examples in F# Interactive, focussing on Windows Azure. Links: •       Microsoft F# Developer Center, http://www.fsharp.net •       Don Syme’s blog, http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dsyme/ 1180 http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/David+Gristwood/F-and-Windows-Azure-with-Don-Syme-3-of-4 Mon, 27 Sep 2010 09:20:01 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/David+Gristwood/F-and-Windows-Azure-with-Don-Syme-3-of-4 David Gristwood David Gristwood 2 http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/David+Gristwood/F-and-Windows-Azure-with-Don-Syme-3-of-4/RSS .NET .NET Framework F# Microsoft Research MS Research MSR UKDevTeam Windows Azure An F# Tutorial with Don Syme (#2 of 4) David Gristwood grabs his camera, and heads down to the Microsoft Research Centre in Cambridge with Dave Brown, an architect at the Microsoft Technology Centre, to talk to Don Syme, a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, about F# in part 2 of this video series. Don, who created F#, demonstrates the language with live coding examples, such as analysing a real-time Twitter feed using F# Interactive.

 Links:

•       Microsoft F# Developer Center, http://www.fsharp.net

•       Don Syme’s blog, http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dsyme/

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/David+Gristwood/An-F-Tutorial-with-Don-Syme-2-of-4 David Gristwood grabs his camera, and heads down to the Microsoft Research Centre in Cambridge with Dave Brown, an architect at the Microsoft Technology Centre, to talk to Don Syme, a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, about F# in part 2 of this video series. Don, who created F#, demonstrates the language with live coding examples, such as analysing a real-time Twitter feed using F# Interactive.  Links: •       Microsoft F# Developer Center, http://www.fsharp.net •       Don Syme’s blog, http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dsyme/ 1606 http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/David+Gristwood/An-F-Tutorial-with-Don-Syme-2-of-4 Mon, 27 Sep 2010 09:19:50 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/David+Gristwood/An-F-Tutorial-with-Don-Syme-2-of-4 David Gristwood David Gristwood 3 http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/David+Gristwood/An-F-Tutorial-with-Don-Syme-2-of-4/RSS .NET .NET Framework F# Microsoft Research MS Research MSR UKDevTeam Aman Kansal: Inside Joulemeter Joulemeter is a software-based Microsoft Research project designed to measure the energy usage of virtual machines (VMs), servers, desktops, laptops, and even individual software programs running on a computer.

Joulemeter estimates the energy usage of a VM, computer, or software by measuring the hardware resources (CPU, disk, memory, screen, etc.) being used and converting the resource usage to actual power usage based on automatically learned realistic power models.

Here, we talk to MSR research scientist Dr. Aman Kansal about what Joulemeter is and how it works.

Download Joulemeter here. ]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Charles/Aman-Kansal-Inside-Joulemeter Joulemeter is a software-based Microsoft Research project designed to measure the energy usage of virtual machines (VMs), servers, desktops, laptops, and even individual software programs running on a computer. Joulemeter estimates the energy usage of a VM, computer, or software by measuring the hardware resources (CPU, disk, memory, screen, etc.) being used and converting the resource usage to actual power usage based on automatically learned realistic power models. Here, we talk to MSR research scientist Dr. Aman Kansal about what Joulemeter is and how it works. Download Joulemeter here. 2054 http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Charles/Aman-Kansal-Inside-Joulemeter Tue, 14 Sep 2010 17:56:00 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Charles/Aman-Kansal-Inside-Joulemeter Charles Charles 11 http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Charles/Aman-Kansal-Inside-Joulemeter/RSS Green Computing Microsoft Research MS Research Power Management Energy Smart Computing Joulemeter Microsoft Research Reveals Facebook for Scientists: ScholarLynk ScholarLynk is a new tool for scientists and other researchers which Microsoft Research is unveiling this week at ECDL, the European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries. The project has roots in Lewis Shepherd’s 2008 project called “Research Desktop” which combined semantic analysis with a Web 2.0-style interface. The new ScholarLynk social software prototype expands upon that earlier idea, offering its users the ability to create reading lists related to their interests which could entail emails, scholarly papers, web pages and local files. The lists can be private, shared or collaborative in nature and they support metadata, annotations and associations.

The program also has a Twitter and Facebook-like social element involving the ability to follow other users, write on their walls, engage in conversations, and provide feedback or rate each others’ research.

The prototype will become available for download in December.

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/coolstuff/Microsoft-Research-Reveals-Facebook-for-Scientists-ScholarLynk ScholarLynk is a new tool for scientists and other researchers which Microsoft Research is unveiling this week at ECDL, the European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries. The project has roots in Lewis Shepherd’s 2008 project called “Research Desktop” which combined semantic analysis with a Web 2.0-style interface. The new ScholarLynk social software prototype expands upon that earlier idea, offering its users the ability to create reading lists related to their interests which could entail emails, scholarly papers, web pages and local files. The lists can be private, shared or collaborative in nature and they support metadata, annotations and associations. The program also has a Twitter and Facebook-like social element involving the ability to follow other users, write on their walls, engage in conversations, and provide feedback or rate each others’ research. The prototype will become available for download in December. http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/coolstuff/Microsoft-Research-Reveals-Facebook-for-Scientists-ScholarLynk Mon, 13 Sep 2010 16:51:00 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/coolstuff/Microsoft-Research-Reveals-Facebook-for-Scientists-ScholarLynk Sarah Perez Sarah Perez 0 http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/coolstuff/Microsoft-Research-Reveals-Facebook-for-Scientists-ScholarLynk/RSS Facebook Microsoft Research MS Research MSR Research Science Social Networks scientists Social Networking research project Social Media Microsoft Reserach RearType: A Back Keyboard for Tablets OK, right up front, I’m not so sure about the name, but these are scientists and engineers, not brand marketers, over there at Microsoft Research, so I’ll give them a pass. In any event, the “RearType” project is definitely an interesting idea, whether or not it makes it into mainstream consumer gadgets one day.

In a new whitepaper, researchers James Scott and Shahram Izadi describes an input system for tablet and slate computers which involves halving a QWERTY keyboard, rotating the keys and then sticking them to the back of the device.

The idea is that this would allow you to have that physical sensation of typing on a keyboard without having to sacrifice touchscreen landscape to do so. Studies showed that users could reach 15 WPM after one hour of training and one user even got up to 47 WPM in the same timeframe. The speeds are “not statistically different” than a touchscreen keyboard.

Is this brilliant or is it crazy? What do you think?

(via Engadget, ZDNet)

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/coolstuff/RearType-A-Back-Keyboard-for-Tablets OK, right up front, I’m not so sure about the name, but these are scientists and engineers, not brand marketers, over there at Microsoft Research, so I’ll give them a pass. In any event, the “RearType” project is definitely an interesting idea, whether or not it makes it into mainstream consumer gadgets one day. In a new whitepaper, researchers James Scott and Shahram Izadi describes an input system for tablet and slate computers which involves halving a QWERTY keyboard, rotating the keys and then sticking them to the back of the device. The idea is that this would allow you to have that physical sensation of typing on a keyboard without having to sacrifice touchscreen landscape to do so. Studies showed that users could reach 15 WPM after one hour of training and one user even got up to 47 WPM in the same timeframe. The speeds are “not statistically different” than a touchscreen keyboard. Is this brilliant or is it crazy? What do you think? (via Engadget, ZDNet) http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/coolstuff/RearType-A-Back-Keyboard-for-Tablets Fri, 13 Aug 2010 13:54:00 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/coolstuff/RearType-A-Back-Keyboard-for-Tablets Sarah Perez Sarah Perez 1 http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/coolstuff/RearType-A-Back-Keyboard-for-Tablets/RSS Keyboard keyboards Microsoft Research MS Research MSR Research research project keypad Microsoft Research Shows off Street Slide View No, not Street “Side” view, Street “Slide” view.

Engadget (via MIT’s Technology Review) uncovered a cool Microsoft Research project called “Street Slide” view. The project attempts to create a new interface for viewing the street-level photos used in online applications like Bing Maps Streetside View.

As explained on the project’s homepage, today’s mapping applications enable users to virtually visit cities by way of “immersive 360 degree panoramas, or bubbles.” Users move from bubble to bubble, but this doesn’t necessarily provide the best visual sense of a city street.

With Street Slide, the researchers took the best aspects of the “immersive bubbles” and transformed them into multi-perspective strip panoramas. You can actually slide out of a bubble to see the street from a different perspective – a strip that’s viewed from a greater difference. When viewed in this mode, the empty space above and below the strip could be used for business logos and building numbers (addresses), or even ads.

According to the MIT article, the researchers have already made a version of this technology for mobile devices, including the iPhone. “It broadens out your visual sense to cover a two-block radius,” says Michael Cohen, a senior scientist at Microsoft Research.

Who’s hoping for a WP7 phone implementation of this tech? I know I am. In case I didn’t explain this too well, you can see Street Slide in action in the video here.

]]> http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/coolstuff/Microsoft-Research-Shows-off-Street-Slide-View No, not Street “Side” view, Street “Slide” view. Engadget (via MIT’s Technology Review) uncovered a cool Microsoft Research project called “Street Slide” view. The project attempts to create a new interface for viewing the street-level photos used in online applications like Bing Maps Streetside View. As explained on the project’s homepage, today’s mapping applications enable users to virtually visit cities by way of “immersive 360 degree panoramas, or bubbles.” Users move from bubble to bubble, but this doesn’t necessarily provide the best visual sense of a city street. With Street Slide, the researchers took the best aspects of the “immersive bubbles” and transformed them into multi-perspective strip panoramas. You can actually slide out of a bubble to see the street from a different perspective – a strip that’s viewed from a greater difference. When viewed in this mode, the empty space above and below the strip could be used for business logos and building numbers (addresses), or even ads. According to the MIT article, the researchers have already made a version of this technology for mobile devices, including the iPhone. “It broadens out your visual sense to cover a two-block radius,” says Michael Cohen, a senior scientist at Microsoft Research. Who’s hoping for a WP7 phone implementation of this tech? I know I am. In case I didn’t explain this too well, you can see Street Slide in action in the video here. http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/coolstuff/Microsoft-Research-Shows-off-Street-Slide-View Wed, 28 Jul 2010 15:52:00 GMT http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/coolstuff/Microsoft-Research-Shows-off-Street-Slide-View Sarah Perez Sarah Perez 0 http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/coolstuff/Microsoft-Research-Shows-off-Street-Slide-View/RSS Bing Maps Maps Microsoft Research MS Research MSR Photos Microsoft Reserach