Beyond Binary

Updated 3 p.m. PT, with comments from Gary Flake.

Microsoft has decided to pare down its 3-year-old Live Labs effort, splitting the research-and-development team into different parts of Microsoft's online efforts.

The group was launched to some fanfare three years ago, with Gary Flake hired from Yahoo to lead the effort.

Gary Flake

Flake will remain head of the group, which will have roughly half as many people and will now focus more narrowly on search and Web experiences, such as deep zoom, and other navigational and organizational approaches. Other folks will be shifted to Microsoft's mobile or online-services units, but the company is not laying off anyone as a result of the shift, according to Microsoft spokeswoman Stacy Drake.

"Several teams are transferring directly to product teams that are in need of Live Labs' talents to accelerate existing projects," Drake said. The effort was announced to Microsoft workers on Monday.

Drake said the economy did play a factor in Microsoft's shift.

"It had a role," Drake said.

Apparently, the Microsoft sandbox was a little too big, given the current economic environment.

Several interesting projects lived in the unit, including PhotoSynth and SeaDragon, as well as lesser-known ventures like Listas, a list-sharing service, and Thumbtack, a sort of clipboard for the Web.

In an e-mail interview, Flake said that the changes will allow the group to things at a bigger scale.

"We've always done many small things, but in this climate we thought that it made more sense to focus on the bigger ideas and bigger bets," Flake said. "Over the next year, you'll see us launch the most ambitious projects we've ever done."

When he launched the project, Flake said his goal with Live Labs was to help Microsoft develop software faster.

"Historically, the software industry has been an industry in which it was fine to have months or years in between product cycles," Flake said. "That is something that has been part of Microsoft's processes as well."

The splitting up of the Live Labs team was first noted by PaidContent.org

REDMOND, Wash.--When Microsoft showed its Seadragon technology some time ago, it was clear that a bird's-eye view was a neat way to do photos. But Microsoft clearly thinks the "bird's-eye" view of content has applications way beyond photos.

On Friday, Microsoft is releasing a free add-on, dubbed Canvas for OneNote, that takes that same approach to viewing one's notebooks in OneNote.

Because it is an adjunct to OneNote, Canvas requires one really be a heavy user of that program to get the benefit. (It also requires Windows Vista and uses Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation graphics technology).

But I wouldn't be surprised to see the bird's-eye metaphor used more and more by Microsoft. Indeed, Microsoft also has a presentation tool, the one Stephen Elop is using in his speech today, that also lets a presenter easily zoom in and out of images as opposed to going from one PowerPoint slide to the next.

Others in the industry have also found that a good view for one type of content can be used broadly. Apple for example, used Cover Flow as a means of flipping through albums in iTunes, but later found uses for it for browsing documents in the Finder and, as of this week, for navigating through Web sites in Safari.

Microsoft also has a similar tool for PowerPoint, known as pptPlex.

As noted by ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft is launching yet another "Labs" effort.

This one is called Startup Labs, and according to a job posting Friday, it's part of Ray Ozzie's group. The posting didn't reveal much else, saying that the effort "will consist of multiple product development projects at varying stages of lifecycle."

Startup Labs joins other, seemingly similar projects, housed within specific business units, including , adCenter Labs and Office Labs.

I've asked Microsoft for more info and will update if I learn more.

A synth of images of the Lincoln Memorial. Click on the image for a larger view.

(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News.com)

WASHINGTON, D.C.--On Monday, I got a demo of how Microsoft was opening up Photosynth to consumers. On Wednesday, I put it to the test.

With my Canon Digital Rebel XT in tow, I headed to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to try it out. I quickly realized, though, that this would be a pretty tall order for the software, given that row upon row of names would be hard to separate. I decided to also take photos of the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument, which I thought the software would have an easier time with.

What Photosynth does is to look at a collection of digital photos of the same location, taken from different angles, and use those to create a 3D representation of the place. Assuming there are enough shots for the software to stitch together, one can pan and zoom through the different shots.

For those who have a Windows PC and are willing to install the Active X control needed to view it, here's a look at my synth of the Washington and Lincoln structures. For those who don't want to do the installation, you can see my work at the top of this post.

There were highs and lows of my personal experience. On the plus side, all I had to do was take the photos--I took about 150 of the Vietnam Memorial and another 150 of the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial combined. The software does all the figuring out of how the photos fit together.

That can also be a downside. The software couldn't quite piece together that the exterior of the Lincoln Memorial and the interior were of the same place, probably because the Lincoln sculpture itself shows up so dark in the exterior shots as I approached it.

It also took a long time to upload the shots and my laptop kept going to sleep. That said, the software seemed to always pick up where it left off.

I tried to upload just the Lincoln Memorial images to ease the transition, in hopes the software would stitch together the exterior and interior shots, but my "synth" hung just at the end. I then tried to upload my Vietnam Memorial shots this morning, but got a message saying that the service was handling too many synths at the moment.

I'll keep trying and post an update once I have more synths up. (Update 6:30 p.m. PT--So much for that. All my efforts today to upload further synths have failed as Microsoft's Photosynth site has struggled to keep pace in its first day of being open to the public.)

Meanwhile, you can check out this video, in which I chat with Microsoft's Gary William Flake to about what you can do with this new technology:

For those who have trouble finding their old commands in Office's new Ribbon interface, Microsoft has a new option: search for it.

On Monday, the company is releasing an Office add-on called Search Commands that lets users type the function they are looking to do. After months of testing it internally, Microsoft is ready to give the public a chance to try it out. But the new tool won't be found on Microsoft's main Web site.

Chris Pratley, who helped lead the development of Microsoft's OneNote, now leads the Office Labs effort.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Rather, it will be available via a new effort, dubbed Office Labs. Spearheaded by Microsoft veteran Chris Pratley, Office Labs is Microsoft's attempt to test out productivity ideas that may--or may not--be ready for prime time.

In an interview, Pratley said Office Labs is designed to try out anything from just a feature to an entire new product concept. The goal is to get feedback early on, before deciding where to put the big development dollars.

"It's kind of expensive to make an entire product and then put it out there and see if it's any good," he said. Pratley knows firsthand. He was among those who helped create the Office OneNote application earlier this decade after spending the 1990s working on Word and Excel.

Office Labs is not the first time Microsoft has tried to create a sandbox for new ideas. It already has its "Live Labs," which has served as an incubator for the online services business.

In contrast to the masses of developers who work on Office itself, Pratley leads a team of about 60 designers and developers. On Monday, Microsoft is going public with two of the group's projects--Search Commands and Community Clips, which is basically an attempt to create a YouTube for help videos.

A note on the Office Labs Web site warns that usage of the products downloaded from the site will be tracked.

(Credit: Microsoft )

Search Commands, also known by the code name "Scout," has been popular inside Redmond for some time. With Office Labs, Microsoft will get to see if the searching metaphor is a hit with average users.

Just because something seems like a good idea, doesn't mean users will jump on it. Pratley notes that in the 1990s, Microsoft experimented with--but never released--a Web browser-like approach to navigating for commands, offering hyperlinks to different dialog boxes.

In that approach, though, commands didn't have a fixed home, but instead could be accessed in any number of ways. That uncertainty didn't sit well with users.

"It was pretty clear people were uncomfortable not knowing where things were," Pratley said.

With Search Commands, though, the commands still have a home--the user just doesn't have to remember where that is. Microsoft is still weighing an option that lets users see where the command they are searching for "really lives" as well as a way to add it to their main toolbar for easy access.

Office Labs is working on about 10 or so ideas, Pratley said, but the remainder are either in the planning stages or only being tested internally.

For the ones that do see light of day, he said the goal is to get as much feedback as possible. In that vein, Microsoft tells users that it will be collecting information on how they use the Office Labs code. So those who don't like being tracked might want to forgo using their offerings.

"We're trying to be really upfront about the fact that we are doing that (tracking), and that (getting the feedback) is the only reason these things are available," Pratley said.

The goal, he said, is to figure out which ideas are actually worth pursuing.

"A lot of times that means that we won't end up coding them into a product because they weren't as good as we thought," he said.

Microsoft on Monday said it plans in July to open its sixth research lab, in Cambridge, Mass.

The new lab will focus initially on "core computer science, especially more algorithmically oriented areas, and the social sciences, with a particular emphasis on building connections between these two areas," Microsoft said, adding that there will also be a small team working on design issues.

Credit: Microsoft

Jennifer Tour Chayes

The lab will be run by Jennifer Tour Chayes, a veteran of Microsoft Research. The press release was quick to note that Chayes is the first woman to run one of the company's labs.

"The new lab will enable Microsoft Research to interact closely with the large community of scientists in New England, notably the faculty and students at the many premier academic institutions in the vicinity," Microsoft said in the release. "It will also provide researchers with the opportunity to interact with people in Microsoft's incubation centers and newly acquired companies in the region."

Chayes commented on both the importance of the lab and the significance of her appointment as a lab director.

"Breaking through barriers is what research is all about," Chayes said. "We're going to New England to break through barriers between core computer science and social sciences, and to do fundamental research that can lead to deeper insights and better computing experiences in an increasingly online world."

"But I'm also personally delighted that we're breaking through barriers for women in leadership positions in the scientific-research community," she added. "I hope my new role will serve as an inspiration for other women in scientific fields, and particularly for young girls who may be interested in math and science. I want to show them that math and science are cool, that research is creative and exciting, and that there is a path for women in technical fields at companies like Microsoft."

Microsoft's existing labs are in Redmond, Wash.; Silicon Valley; Beijing; Bangalore, India; and, confusingly enough, Cambridge, England.