Archive

January 30, 2006

categories: press, narcissism
comments disabled

Noted computer scientist leads Microsoft’s new Net unit

"To be perfectly blunt, we expect there to be things that we push out that will be very exciting, and things that we push out that are going to be very risky and may not work," Flake said in an interview last week, calling those types of risks necessary "to have rapid innovation" in the online world. ... "Microsoft, more concretely than anyone else, is at a crossroads, and I mean this in the best possible way," Flake said. "I like change, and I like being in the middle of change." —Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Software Notebook

My favorite part of the whole article: a photo of me with my two dogs on the front of the business section. My least favorite: the silly start of the story which suggests some PR clampdown at MS concerning our Seadragon acquisition (we just didn't close in time for the release, that's all, and someone pushed out the wrong copy to the website).

January 25, 2006

categories: press, narcissism
comments disabled

Microsoft Launches Live Labs

windows live logo

Quoting from the press release:

REDMOND, Wash. - Jan. 25, 2006 - Microsoft Corp. today announced the formation of Microsoft Live Labs, a research partnership between MSN and Microsoft Research. Under the leadership of Dr. Gary William Flake, noted industry technologist and Microsoft technical fellow, Live Labs will consist of a dedicated group of researchers from MSN and Microsoft Research that will work with researchers across Microsoft and the academic research community. Live Labs will provide consistency in vision, leadership and infrastructure as well as a nimble applied research environment that fosters rapid innovations.

We more or less announced the formation of Live Labs at MSN's Search Champs event, which means that a lot of bloggers got the story first. A snapshot of some of the coverage (and other items) includes:

The Live Labs website was rushed out the door in order to make the announcement, and it shows. Why did we announce if the site wasn't ready? The timing of the Ph.D. fellowships was tied to the academic year, so we either had to announce the launch of Live Labs a bit early or confuse people by announing a set of Ph.D. fellowships that were funded by an undefined entity. Either way was bad, but I think the early announcement was the lesser of evils.