Beyond Binary

REDMOND, Wash.--One of the key things in Microsoft's new WorldWide Telescope software has nothing to do with space.

Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope software offers several different ways to look at the heavens, including the Hydrogen Alpha view.

(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News.com)

The software uses a new Microsoft "visual experience engine" to gather and stitch together images from multiple data sets as well as allow a variety of users to author their own guided tour. While space was a good area to try out the technology, principal researcher Curtis Wong notes that it's not the final frontier for the visual experience engine.

"It's a core one to start with," he said, but noted that the idea of sharing a guided tour through a digital experience will have broader uses.

The technology has lived inside Microsoft's research group, but is moving on to one or more product groups within the company, though Wong said he couldn't give more details.

I'll have a variety of other postings from my tour through TechFest that will go up either later Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning. Later this week, I'll also have a video interview with Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer.

And, like many of the reporters at TechFest, I'm on a flight Tuesday night to Las Vegas to start posting bright and early Wednesday morning from the Mix 08 show.

Microsoft aimed to spice up its TechFest keynote event Tuesday by inviting actor and PBS science show host Alan Alda onstage to chat with executive Craig Mundie.

Former M*A*S*H star Alan Alda chats with Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, Craig Mundie, as part of this year's TechFest.

(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News.com)

Though perhaps an odd pairing, it's not uncommon for Microsoft to have celebrities and executives mingle onstage at its events.

During the talk, Alda and Mundie talked about how computer science is moving into new areas such as biology. One topic they adressed was the notion that at some point drugs may be able to truly be tested on computer cell simulations rather than living beings.

Alda pressed Mundie on whether Microsoft would keep funding projects that had no hope of becoming profitable products for the company.

"We will continue to look for ways to place things where the benefit will continue," Mundie said. For example, he said that if the company discovered something that would dramatically help farmers in Indonesia, but had limited application beyond that, "we might find a way to transfer that technology."

REDMOND, Wash.--When Microsoft releases its WorldWide Telescope this spring, the program will be a Windows-only download.

Much of the astronomical community, however, uses Macs and other Unix-based hardware. So, when principal developer Jonathan Fay shows off the program, he often uses a MacBook Pro. The telescope program itself, though, is running in Windows using the Mac's dual-boot Boot Camp software.

Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope software offers several different ways to look at the heavens, including the Hydrogen Alpha view.

(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News.com)

Other Mac users will have to use similar technology. The program can theoretically run using virtualization programs, such as VMware's Fusion or Parallels, but 3D applications often throw those programs for a loop.

Principal researcher Curtis Wong used a WinTel laptop running Vista on Monday night to demonstrate the program to journalists at a reception kicking off TechFest, Microsoft's internal science fair. Microsoft first demoed an early version of the software at last year's TechFest, while its current incarnation was shown last week at the TED conference in Monterey, Calif.

Given his penchant for Cupertino-designed hardware, I wondered why Fay was less than enthusiastic about prospects for a native Mac version. He said the type of programming needed to make the software a reality can be done vastly faster using Microsoft's .Net and C# programming tools.

To make it truly cross-platform, he said, "I'd basically be looking at three to four years of development." Plus, he quipped, "It doesn't hurt if a few people buy Windows."

Although Wong and Fay have done the actual software development largely over the last 18 months, the genesis of the project goes back to conversations Wong had years ago with now-missing Microsoft researcher Jim Gray, to whom Wong paid tribute.

"It's dedicated to Jim," he said, noting that Microsoft is making the software available free via a not-for-profit Web site.

Wong demonstrated a number of different ways to view the universe, including X-ray, hydrogen alpha and traditional imaging. The different views offer starkly different looks at the universe.

The images, as previously noted, are stitched together from a variety of sources including the Hubble and other Earth and space-based telescopes. Think of it as a "terapixel panorama," Fay and Wong said of the finished product.

Contrary to some reports, however, the program does not use Microsoft's PhotoSynth technology, but rather a different stitching technology and an internally developed projection method known as Toast.

Is flying through outer space from the comfort of your living room enough to make you cry?

It is for former Microsoft evangelist Robert Scoble. A couple weeks back he said on his blog that a new Microsoft technology made him cry. He didn't give many details, citing a confidentiality agreement, but he provided enough there for folks to connect the dots.

My new boss, Dan Farber, correctly predicted that it was an updated version of the WorldWide Telescope program, a fact later confirmed by TechCrunch.

Microsoft researcher Curtis Wong showed an early version of the telescope software at last year's TechFest, Microsoft's internal science fair. Sources tell me that Microsoft's desktop software is far more immersive than what was shown at last year's TechFest or than the sky feature in Google Earth. In particular, the software will let you get extremely close to celestial objects, enough so that the software might be useful not just to armchair astronauts, but also to serious researchers.

The technology features tens of millions of digital images from sources like the Hubble telescope as well as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a project championed by missing Microsoft researcher Jim Gray.

Attendees of the posh TED conference will get to see the new Microsoft software next week, while the company also plans to show it at TechFest, the internal science fair that takes place the following week.

I'll be traveling to Redmond for the event, but I'm going to take a risk and leave my hankies at home.