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Deep technical evangelism and development team inside the DPE (Developer and Platform Evangelism) unit of Microsoft
It is a fantastic gig – we’re working with developers, designers, and IT pros from across the industry – from the consumer to enterprise to startups to hobbyists – helping them create amazing next generation apps, build the frameworks that make all this easier, and share our experiences with the community.
[John Shewchuk, Technical Fellow at Microsoft, Chief Technology Officer for the Microsoft Developer Platform]
Source: My New Gig [JohnShew‘s MSDN Blog, May 12, 2013] from which the following excerpts will add more information to the above mission statement:
To do this work I have an incredible team with people like Eric Schmidt, who leads our consumer applications efforts and has done ground-breaking work on projects like [NBC’s] Sunday Night Football (which is up for a Sports Emmy for Outstanding Live Sports Series).
[In fact on May 7 the Sports Emmy was awarded, already 5th time from which the last four awards were won with the program using technology started with Silverlight 3.0 and IIS Smooth Streaming in 2009 for Sunday Night Football live streaming with highly advanced and customized viewing experience. This lead to a continously evolving and expanding cooperation which culminated on April 9th 2013 in the announcement that Microsoft Corp. and NBC Sports Group are partnering to use Windows Azure Media Services across NBC Sports’ digital platforms, including NBCSports.com, NBCOlympics.com and GolfChannel.com. The new alliance aims to deliver live and on-demand programming of more than 5,000 hours of sporting events plus Sochi 2014 Olympic Games for NBC Sports’ digital platforms. More details about that see later on.]
Patrick Chanezon just joined us from VMware where he was driving their cloud and tools developer relations – he has a ton of expertise in the open source space which will be increasingly important given our new Azure IaaS support for Linux.
… we also get to play with all the newest and coolest technologies we’re delivering to developers these days – everything from Windows to Xbox to Windows Phone – and we connect it to the latest cloud services from Azure, Office, and Bing.
James Whittaker [now as Partner Technical Evangelist at Microsoft] – a known industry disruptor and incredible speaker joins us from Bing where he has been leading the development team making Bing knowledge available programmatically – many people may know him from his viral blog post on why he left Google for Microsoft.
As far as John Shewchuk himself is concerned he is describing his latest achievement in the same post as:
As many of you know, for the last few years I’ve been plugging away deep in the plumbing of enterprise identity and Reimagining Active Directory for the cloud. It’s been a great experience and I couldn’t be more proud of all the cool stuff that has gone on across the industry to enable the world of claims-based identity and identity as a service. Over the years I’ve gotten to know many identity leaders including Kim Cameron, Craig Burton, and Andre Durand and have worked with many other great people at companies like Shell, Sun, IBM, Google, and Facebook.
Building on all this collaboration, just a few weeks ago here at Microsoft we reached a major milestone with the official release of Windows Azure Active Directory (AAD). Today all of Microsoft’s major organizational cloud services build on AAD – this includes Azure, Office 365, and Dynamics. AAD supports almost 3 million organizations through 14 global data centers with 99.97% availability. This level of scale and availability is unprecedented for a turnkey identity management service – it’s a huge accomplishment. Although I love the SaaS and scale aspects of AAD, I’ve spent my career working with developers – so I’m stoked that we have made all this available to developers through new technologies like the AAD Graph API.
It is always sad to move on from a great project, but with the release of AAD it is an ideal time to transition and start a new role. So I’m happy to announce that I’m headed to Microsoft’s Developer & Platform Evangelism (DPE) team, working for Steve Guggenheimer. My role is to lead the team doing the deep technical evangelism and development here in DPE.
If one adds to that John Shewchuk’s all contributions from his Experience profile on LinkedIn:
Technical Fellow
Microsoft
March 2008 – Present (5 years 2 months)Current responsibilities include delivering Windows Azure Identity, Access, and Directory Services and defining platform strategy for Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS).
Recent deliverables include Windows Azure Access Control and Application Messaging / Service Bus Services, SQL Azure, and Active Directory.
Member of the Server and Tools Business (STB) Technical Leadership Team. Key participant in the definition of overall technical and business strategy for several divisions across STB.
Distinguished Engineer
Microsoft
2005 – 2008 (3 years)Delivered Windows Communication Foundation (WCF).
Responsible for Active Directory technical strategy. Worked to unify Active Directory product suite. Released Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS).
Software Engineer
Microsoft
1996 – 2005 (9 years)Member of architecture team that drove the first and subsequent releases of .NET.
Drove transformation of Visual Studio to enable web development.
Authored and drove technical strategy for Web standards. Responsible for key cross-industry collaborations with IBM, Sun, and many others. Key participant in defining strategy for enterprise development
Group Program Manager
Microsoft
1993 – 1996 (3 years)Drove the first release of Visual Studio.
Delivered web development tools including Visual InterDev. Later these became the basis for Visual Studio web tools and web execution platform.
Delivered advanced browser features including 2D layout and progressive rendering. Broad range of patents covering many core web technologies.
Vice President and Founder
Daily Planet Software
1990 – 1993 (3 years)Microsoft acquired Daily Planet Software in Q4CY93 [and morphed it into “Blackbird,” the online-content authoring system for MSN].
so after adding all those contributions, not only to Microsoft but to software engineering in general, only then one can really understand how much John Shewchuk is a true larger than life figure. Also note that Microsoft’s DPE unit never had such an outstanding contributor on its staff, not even the units organisationally preceding it (DRG (Developer Relations Group) formed in 1984, ADCU (Application Developer Customer Unit) introduced in 1997, evolved into DPE in October 2011). It is also the first time as Microsoft DPE has a developer related CTO organization properly staffed with excellent contributors. The size of this central to DPE team could be over 100 people and growing, this is the unofficial information. At the moment we know only the leadership figures of the CTO organization:
– James Whittaker for the partner activities (as coming from his new LinkdIn title given above)
– Patrick Chanezon “initially focused on the enterprise market” (as described by Chanezon in the below details)
– Eric Schmidt leading the consumer applications efforts (as explicitly stated by Shewchuk above)
So at this point we can understand this extremely important, we might say strategic addition to the DPE unit only via the professional stance of its leadership figures, including the leader of the team Shewchuk himself. This is why instead of the details sections I am providing here the following one:
More light on the leaders of the new the deep technical evangelism and development team:
– James Whittaker’s Quality Software Crusade from Academia to Microsoft, then Google and now back to Microsoft [this same ‘Experiencing the Cloud’ blog, March 14 – April 12, 2012]
– James Whittaker @docjamesw 8:19 AM – 8 Apr 13
I gave a blunt, incendiary talk at MS. My punishment: they made it my day job. Watch out world, Microsoft just gave me a speaking role.
– James Whittaker @docjamesw 3:54 PM – 8 May 13
I finally “met” the famous
@maryjofoley …nice talking to you today.
from which Mary Jo Foley published the following in her Microsoft builds a deep-tech team to attract next-gen developers [ZDNet, May 13, 2013]
Whittaker’s most recent gig at Microsoft was development manager for the Microsoft knowledge platform as part of the Bing team.
“When Microsoft talks about devices and services, that’s a two-legged stool,” said Whittaker. The third leg is knowledge. We’re embedding knowledge into everything from Xbox, to Office, to third-party products.”
Whittaker said “dev platform” is no longer simply the operating system and related application programming interfaces (APIs). It’s the whole ecosystem, he said, including information that Bing extracts from the Web, like catalogs, weather, and maps. The goal is to make this available inside applications built by both Microsoft and third-party developers.
“Actions can be performed on these entities. We have hundreds of millions of things we can provide that go beyond the blue links (in search engines),” Whittaker said.
– A New Era of Computing [Channel 9 video of the ALM Summit 3 plenary session by James Whittaker, Jan 30, 2013], click on the image to watch (highly recommended)
History will look back and identify September 2012 as the dawn of a new computing paradigm and the official end of the “Search-and-Browse” era [of the 2000s] that Google dominated. James Whittaker talks about this momentous event, shares some history about prior eras, and looks ahead to what this new era brings.
Explanation from the video:
[19:58] September 2012 is “when total search volume went down first. We don’t need to search anymore. It turns out that if you search long enough you find a bunch of stuff, and you hav’nt to search for it anymore.”
[21:00] “Apps are ingesting the web too. Apps are better at searching than browsers and search engines.”
[22:08] “Apps are fundamentally a better way to search because they’re only looking at the part of the web you’ve been interested in. How do we know you are interested in? Because you are using the app.
So our habits are changing and this era has ended.”
In more than the middle [38:26 – 40:00] he is emphasizing the 3 “Experiences” out of Google’s current Top 10 revenue earners rather than “Apps” in the era “when the web goes away” as leading to “Data is currency” for the new era:
…
In the very end of his presentation (from [46:09] to [52:20]), as forward looking “Know & Do” experience, he is describing and a kind of “screenshot demonstrating” the “I need a vacation” experience which should naturally start in one’s calendar and ending there as well.
– Hello Microsoft! [Patrick Chanezon’s blog, May 13, 2013]
On april 29th 2013, I joined Microsoft’s legendary Developer and Platform Evangelism team, where I will initially focus on the Enterprise market. I will report to Technical Fellow John Shewchuk, joining his new team of top-notch technical evangelists, like Xoogler James Whittaker and Microsoft veteran Eric Schmidt. Mary Jo Foley wrote a nice piece about our team on ZDNet today. I will be based in theMicrosoft San Francisco office.
How did it happen?
I spent most of my career competing with Microsoft, at Netscape, Sun, Google and VMware. Competition builds respect, competitors force you to question your assumptions and to constantly evolve. For many of my friends, this move came as a total shock. What made me open to the idea of joining Microsoft is a presentation from Scott Guthrie about Windows Azure at NodeConf 2012 last summer. He presented from a Mac laptop, launched Google Chrome, went to the Cloud9 IDE, edited a Node app pulled from Github, and pushed it to Azure from the cloud IDE: to me this indicated a real change of mentality at Microsoft, and a new openness. Clearly they had listened to what developers ask from a cloud platform. Later on, when my friend Srikanth Satyanarayana pinged me to start conversations with Microsoft, I was open to it. I met with Satya Nadella, and realized that our visions for where the cloud was going were very aligned. Further conversations with Scott Guthrie about Azure, John Shewchuk and Steve Guggenheimer about developer evangelism convinced me this was an adventure I had to take!
Why Microsoft?
Joining Microsoft boils down to 4 reasons: People, Learning, Technology, Impact.
People: in my late 30′s I realized that the people you work with, for and around are as important as what you’re working on. Microsoft has many people I have admired from the outside, like Dare Obasanjo, Eric Meijer, Scott Guthrie, Jon Udell, Scott Hanselman, Jeff Sandquist, Andrew Shuman or Anders Hejlsberg. The team I join has a fantastic roster of A-players with whom I’ll have fun and from whom I will learn.
Learning: I’m a learner at heart. I am curious, I read a lot, and I like to learn from people I work with. I also love to share what I learned with others. My kids loved this book called My Friends, by Taro Gomi, which goes like this: “I learned to walk from my friend the cat, I learned to jump from my friend the dog…”.
In my career it worked the same way: I learned algorithmic from my teacher Christian Vial, I learned internet protocols from my friend Nicolas Pioch, I learned open source from my friend Alejandro Abdelnur, I learned social media from my friend Loic Lemeur, I learned developer relations from my friend Vic Gundotra, I learned platform strategy and storytelling from my friend Charles Fitzgerald… I love doing developer relations, and my two mentors in this area over the past 8 years, Vic and Charles, both came from the Microsoft DPE team. I’m coming to the source for more learning. This team is more than a 1000 people worldwide, and over the past 10 years they defined what tech evangelism is about: they operate at a larger scale and cover a wider scope than any of the teams I worked with. I am very excited to join them.
Technology: Windows Azure is Enterprise ready, more open than people think, and is a complete platform, from infrastructure to services, mobile and Big Data. Azure has matured a lot in the past few years, it covers IaaS, PaaS and Saas, their Paas service is multi-framework and multi-service, with a marketplace of add-ons, it has a mobile backend as a service for Windows Phone, iOS, Android and HTML5, and includes Hadoop and Big Data services. It is in production today, has been battle tested for years as the base for many Microsoft first party apps and services, and is ready for the Enterprise, with a true public/private/hybrid solution: with Windows Server 2013, System Center and Azure you can start building your hybrid cloud today.. The team ships important new features regularly, my favorite being the point to site and software vpn features announced a few weeks ago, which will drastically lower the barrier to create hybrid clouds. Azure is not a Windows/.NET only platform, it is more open than people give it credit for: you can provision Linux VMs, and the PaaS supports .NET, Java, PHP, Node, Python, Ruby, with open source (Apache 2 license) SDKs on Githuband an Eclipse plugin, built by the Microsoft Open Technologies team. Scott Guthrie gives a very good overview of Windows Azure in this video from the Windows Azure Conf 3 weeks ago.
Impact: as a kid, I was reading a lot of science fiction, and got my first computer (a TRS-80) when I was 10 years old. As I explain in many of my presentations (like Portrait of the developer as The Artist), my childhood dreams were to change the world through technology, and more specifically computers. My dreams are far from being fulfilled today: it is true that we have more powerful machines and software tools, and technology changed the world in many aspects, but machines are still hard to program, and software engineering needs to evolve to let us work at a higher level of abstraction.
The move to a devices and services world is an important architecture change like we see every 20 years in the software industry. Cloud platforms have the potential to help developers build smarter applications faster, and change entire areas of the human experience. It has started to happen in the consumer applications space, but the next big wave of change is the consumerization of Enterprise IT, where developers and IT professionals can completely transform the way enterprises work, driving business value faster, enabling new capabilities and business models. My goal is to help them in this transformation, and Microsoft is the place where I can have the most impact.
Here’s a quick video to summarize it all: developers, developers, developers, think big and look up at the sky, its color is Azure!
Developers, Developers, Developers A homage to you, developers I interacted with around the world, in the past 8 years doing developer relations at Google and VMware. http://wordpress.chanezon.com/2013/05/10/goodbye-vmware/
If you have never tried Azure, or have tried it a year ago, sign up for a free trial and give it a go! I hope to see many of you at the Build conference in June in San Francisco.
– Mary Jo Foley published the following about Chanezon in her Microsoft builds a deep-tech team to attract next-gen developers [ZDNet, May 13, 2013]:
“We’re at a deep architectural inflection point right now in the enterprise,” said Chanezon. “Devs need new ways of working, new apps and new frameworks. There’s the whole dev-ops movement, plus the move to become more agile.”
Chanezon said he joined Microsoft because he felt the company’s new devices plus services strategy really embraces these changes. He said while Google had devices and services, too, it didn’t have the private/hybrid cloud component which Microsoft also brings to the enterprise-dev table. As a big believer in the power and potential contribution of open source, he said he was encouraged to see that Azure has become a very open-source-friendly platform.
– Mary Jo Foley published the following about Schmidt in her Microsoft builds a deep-tech team to attract next-gen developers [ZDNet, May 13, 2013]:
Schmidt joined DPE six years ago [as director of DPE’s Media and Advertising Initiatives team], bringing his media specialization to the media and entertainment, social and gaming verticals. These are “where people are thinking about attaching devices to a lifestyle,” he said.
A big target for Schmidt is mobile developers, specifically those writing for iOS and Android who may not know how their skills can be transferred to Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. “We’re showing them how what they already know is correlated,” he said, while playing up the message that the iOS and Android gold mines are drying up.
– Silverlight delivers online viewing experience for Sunday Night Football [Silverlight and Windows Phone SDK blog, Sept 10, 2009]
The NFL and NBC will be delivering the entire Sunday Night Football season by using Silverlight 3.0 and IIS Smooth Streaming. The first game of the season will be broadcast tonight, with the Tennessee Titans vs. the Pittsburg Steelers. Game starts at 5:00pm PST and you can watch online for free: http://snfextra.nbcsports.com/.
Here are a few of the benefits Silverlight delivers:
- A full screen video player that is capable of delivering 720p HD video. TV quality on the web.
- A main HD video feed, plus 4 user-selectable alternate synchronized camera feeds that allows users to switch camera angles themselves. Your TV can’t do that.
- Adaptive smooth streaming of live HD video, which enables the video player to automatically switch bitrates on the fly depending on networking/CPU conditions. No buffering/stuttering experience.
- DVR support of the live video, including Pause, Instant Replay, Slow Motion, Skip Forward/Back. You can pause and rewind on live video.
- Play-by-play data (touchdowns, fumbles, etc) inserted as tooltip chapter markers on the scrubber at the bottom allowing you to quickly seek to key moments. A smarter, contextual DVR.
- Highlights of major plays created within minutes of the play. NBC is cutting on-demand highlights and publishing them on-the-fly with Smooth Streaming.
- Sideline interviews with the players. No more channel surfing, you are one click away from additional content.
- Game statistics. These are live stats coming directly in real-time from the NFL.
- Game commentary and Q&A with the SNF hosts. Chat with the live TV broadcasters.
– Microsoft Silverlight and NBC Bring Winter Games to the Web in High Definition [Microsoft feature story, Feb 12, 2010]
Microsoft Silverlight is the player of choice for NBC’s online viewing experience of the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver.
REDMOND, Wash. —Feb. 12, 2010 — NBC and Silverlight have once again teamed up to bring Winter Games coverage to the Web – this time in high definition.
For the next 16 days, people all over the world will watch the Winter Games on television. Increasingly, they’ll be tuning in online as the world’s top athletes compete for gold and glory.
NBC will once again use Silverlight, Microsoft’s fast-growing, smooth-streaming video and animation plug-in for browsers, to bring full coverage and highlights to NBCOlympics.com. In 2008 for Beijing, the NBC-Silverlight partnership yielded not only revolutionary Web coverage of a sporting event, but a record number of viewers: 52.1 million people logged on to watch 9.9 million hours of video.
At that time the Silverlight platform was so new that NBC also offered Windows Media Player alongside it. After the success of Beijing and with nearly 50 percent of Internet-connected devices running Silverlight, NBC decided to consolidate on Silverlight for the Vancouver Games.
Microsoft employees Jason Suess (left) and Eric Schmidt take
a break in an NBC production studio.In addition, NBC and Silverlight teams are working together on other major sporting events such as Wimbledon and NFL Sunday Night Football.
“It’s really been amazing to see that partnership and friendship with NBC grow over the last year and a half,” says Jason Suess, principal technical evangelist for Silverlight. “I expect many more events as our partnership gets tighter and tighter.”
With Silverlight, viewers can rewind and fast forward the action, or use pause and slow-motion. The player also scales the quality of the video to whatever a user’s machine can handle, delivering up to 720p – the highest resolution possible under current digital television standards.
“After Beijing, what we heard loud and clear was if you can provide a higher quality experience, users will definitely spend more time in that experience,” Suess says.
The Silverlight team also worked with NBC to provide special behind-the-scenes tools for the network, including the ability to insert mid-stream advertising, and a rough cut editor that allows NBC personnel to quickly edit and post highlights on the Web.
“With Michael Phelps going for eight gold medals in Beijing, every time he’d win there would be a massive rush to the site to see him winning the latest gold,” Suess says. “The challenge there was for NBC to have the content on the site in time to meet the demand. Now editors can go in literally while a (video) stream is happening and cut a highlight.”
Suess said the Winter Games are at a different scale from the massive Summer Games, with far fewer events and more niche sports. Still, Microsoft has worked hard to provide the most engaging photo and video experience possible, he says.
– Silverlight Powered Emmy Nominated Sunday Night Football [Silverlight Team on Silverlight Blog, April 19, 2010]
This NFL season, NBC thrilled football fans by broadcasting Sunday Night Football on 2 screens – television and online. And now, as a result of this great work, Sunday Night Football Extra and NBC Sports have been nominated for a 2010 Sports Emmy® Nomination! NBC Sports teamed with Microsoft Silverlight and Vertigo to design and develop a visual stunning, interactive online video experience. The Sunday Night Football Extra Player featured Microsoft Smooth Streaming technology providing a customized viewing experience that smoothly and automatically adjusted to individual users’ bandwidth and computer’s performance in real time. The SNF Extra Player also touted an interactive user experience featuring an unprecedented five synchronized camera angles all in true 720p HD, slow-motion replay, full DVR controls, real time key plays integration, real-time statistics, and live interaction with commentators.
The Sports Emmy® Awards will be held in New York City on Monday, April 26, 2010, and will recognize outstanding achievement in sports television coverage. This nomination is really the culmination of the innovative thinking, hard work and dedication demonstrated by the team that NBC Sports, Vertigo and a select team of key partners brought together for Sunday Night Football Extra — and Silverlight is the engine that made it possible. If you want to learn more about the nomination, you can also visit Vertigo’s site at http://bit.ly/vertigo-snf.
The Result?
- Number of Games: 17 football games streamed via Silverlight
- Average time tuned in: 29 minutes (about 24 minutes longer than average time spent tuning in on broadcast TV)
- Number of Viewers: Over 2.2 million football fans tuned in on NBCSports.com to watch the Season live and in full HD
- Hours of Video: Approximately 1 million hours of video streamed
- Peak users: 38,500 total peak concurrent users
- What technology made this possible😕 IIS 7, IIS Media Services and Silverlight Rough Cut Editor
Tons of great information about how SNF came together online can be found in the case study and whitepaper live on Microsoft.com.
The Sports Emmy® Awards will be held in New York City on Monday, April 26, 2010, and will recognize outstanding achievement in sports television coverage. This nomination is really the culmination of the innovative thinking, hard work and dedication demonstrated by the team that NBC Sports, Vertigo and a select team of key partners brought together for Sunday Night Football Extra — and Silverlight is the engine that made it possible. If you want to learn more about the nomination, you can also visit Vertigo’s site at http://bit.ly/vertigo-snf.
– Interactive Media Player to Bring PDC to Developers Worldwide [Microsoft feature story, Oct 27, 2010]
A new interactive media player will enable developers worldwide to virtually attend this week’s Professional Developers Conference at microsoftpdc.com. Using Silverlight and Windows Azure, Microsoft is providing many of the features NBC used when broadcasting the Olympics online.
…
With the player, Microsoft is introducing a new way of bringing a live, in-person event to a much broader audience, said Eric Schmidt, Microsoft’s senior director of Developer Platform Evangelism. “The goal is to narrow the gap between audience and speaker,” he said.
Schmidt heads up the team that has helped stream a number of major events recently, including the 2010 U.S. Open Golf Championship, the 2010 Wimbledon Championship, and NBC’s Sunday Night Football. The team’s objective has been to reach large online audiences with immersive and interactive experiences. Along the way, they developed new ways of delivering multi-camera video and built new interactive models inside what has traditionally been just a video player. The team also built out frameworks so that customers and partners can create similar experiences leveraging Microsoft’s platform technologies in a turnkey manner.
With the PDC10 virtual player, Microsoft is doing things it couldn’t have done just a few years ago, said Schmidt. All session content will be available live and on-demand in HD quality, and viewers will have the ability to pause and rewind the video at any point. They also can toggle back and forth between different camera feeds, allowing a viewer to cut between a presenter and the presentation material.
The PDC player has a number of built-in interactive features. Real-time polling will enable speakers to query both the online and in-person audience for live feedback. Live Q&A will help the audience interact with the presenters while they’re delivering a session. And an inline Twitter feed will extend the conversation beyond the online player and into the Twitter domain.
…
– NBC SPORTS GROUP COLLECTS 11 SPORTS EMMY AWARDS, MOST OF ANY SPORTS MEDIA COMPANY [press release, May 7, 2013]
London Olympics Garners Five Awards, Including Outstanding Live Event Turnaround
Sunday Night Football Wins Fifth Consecutive Emmy for Outstanding Live Sports Series; Super Bowl XLVI Wins for Outstanding Live Sports Special
Bob Costas, Al Michaels, Cris Collinsworth and Pierre McGuire Honored
NEW YORK – May 7, 2013 – NBC Sports Group won 11 Sports Emmy Awards, the most of any sports media company for the third straight year; the London Olympics received five Emmys, including Outstanding Live Event Turnaround; Super Bowl XLVII won for Outstanding Live Sports Special; Sunday Night Football won its fifth consecutive award for Outstanding Live Sports Series; and Bob Costas, Al Michaels, Cris Collinsworth and Pierre McGuire were all honored in their respective categories at the 34th Annual Sports Emmy Awards, presented tonight by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences at Frederick P. Rose Hall, Home of Jazz at Lincoln Center.
MARK LAZARUS, NBC SPORTS GROUP CHAIRMAN: “We could not be more proud of our dedicated team. Tonight is particularly special because we were recognized for our coverage of the London Olympics and the NFL, two properties that touch virtually everyone in the NBC Sports Group – and our on-air commentators. It’s rewarding to know that our talent continues to be recognized year in and year out by our peers.”
Formed in January, 2011, the NBC Sports Group consists of NBC Sports, NBC Sports Network, Golf Channel, NBC Olympics, 11 NBC Sports Regional Networks, two regional news networks, NBC Sports Radio and NBCSports.com.
NBCUniversal’s coverage of the London Olympics was honored with a total of five Emmy Awards in the following categories:
Outstanding Live Event Turnaround;
The George Wensel Technical Achievement Award – NBC, NBC Sports Network, NBCOlympics.com, Bravo, CNBC, MSNBC, Telemundo;
Outstanding Technical Team Studio;
The Dick Schaap Outstanding Writing Award;
Outstanding New Approaches, Sports Programming – NBCOlympics.com.
For the fifth consecutive year, NBC Sports won Outstanding Live Sports Series for Sunday Night Football. NBC Sports has now won the award in six of the last seven years, also winning in 2007 for its NASCAR coverage.
NBC Sports was also honored with the Emmy for Outstanding Live Sports Special for its coverage of Super Bowl XLVI. NBC Sports also received the Emmy in this category for its coverage of Super Bowl XLIII.
Bob Costas was awarded his 25th career Emmy and fifth consecutive for Outstanding Sports Personality-Studio Host. Costas hosted the London Olympics, is the host Football Night in America, NBC Sports’ acclaimed NFL studio show, and Costas Tonight, which airs on NBC Sports Network. He won the Emmy in the same category last year for his work on Football Night.
Al Michaels was awarded the Emmy Award for Outstanding Sports Personality – Play-by-Play, for his work on Sunday Night Football. For Michaels, who received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 32ndAnnual Sports Emmy Awards in 2011, this marks his seventh career Emmy Award.
Cris Collinsworth was awarded his fifth consecutive Emmy for Outstanding Sports Personality-Sports Event Analyst. This marks Collinsworth’s 14th career Emmy, which includes wins in 2007 and 2008 in the Studio Analyst category for work on Football Night in America.
Pierre McGuire, NBC Sports Group’s “Inside the Glass” analyst for its NHL coverage, was awarded his first career Emmy for Outstanding Sports Personality – Sports Reporter.
– Microsoft Teams Up With NBC Sports Group to Deliver Compelling Sports Programming Across Digital Platforms Using Windows Azure [press release, April 9, 2013]
New alliance aims to deliver live and on-demand programming of more than 5,000 hours of sporting events plus Sochi 2014 Olympic Games for NBC Sports’ digital platforms.
LAS VEGAS — April 9, 2013 — Today at the National Association of Broadcasters Show, Microsoft Corp. and NBC Sports Group announced they are partnering to use Windows Azure Media Services across NBC Sports’ digital platforms, including NBCSports.com, NBCOlympics.com and GolfChannel.com.
Through the agreement, which rolls out this summer, Microsoft will provide both live-streaming and on-demand viewing services for more than 5,000 hours of games and events on devices, such as smartphones, tablets and PCs. These services will allow sports fans to be able to relive or catch up on their favorite events and highlights that aired on NBC Sports Group platforms.
“NBC Sports Group is thrilled to be working with Microsoft,” said Rick Cordella, senior vice president and general manager of digital media at NBC Sports Group. “More and more of our audience is viewing our programming on Internet-enabled devices, so quality of service is important. Also, our programming reaches a national audience and needs to be available under challenging network conditions. We chose Microsoft because of its reputation for delivering an end-to-end experience that allows for seamless, high-quality video for both live and video-on-demand streaming.”
NBC Sports Group’s unique portfolio of properties includes the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games, “Sunday Night Football,” Notre Dame Football, Premier League soccer, Major League Soccer, Formula One and IndyCar racing, PGA TOUR, U.S. Open golf, French Open tennis, Triple Crown horse racing, and more.
“Microsoft is constantly looking for innovative ways to utilize the power of the cloud, and we see Windows Azure Media Services as a high-demand offering,” said Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president at Microsoft. “As consumer demand for viewing media online on any available device grows, our partnership with NBC Sports Group gives us the opportunity to provide the best of cloud technology and bring world-class sporting events to audiences when and where they want them.”
Microsoft has a broad partner ecosystem, which extends to the cloud. To bring the NBC Sports Group viewing experience to life, Microsoft is working with iStreamPlanet Co. and its live video workflow management product Aventus. Aventus will integrate with Windows Azure Media Services to provide a scalable, reliable, live video workflow solution to help bring NBC Sports Group programming to the cloud.
NBC Sports Group and iStreamPlanet join a growing list of companies, including European Tour, deltatre, Dolby Laboratories Inc. and Digital Rapids Corp., which are working with Windows Azure to bring their broadcasting audiences or technologies to the cloud.
In addition to Media Services, Windows Azure core services include Mobile Services, Cloud Services, Virtual Machines, Websites and Big Data. Customers can go tohttp://www.windowsazure.com for more information and to start their free trial.
– Mary Jo Foley published the following about Shewchuk, the head of the team in her Microsoft builds a deep-tech team to attract next-gen developers [ZDNet, May 13, 2013]:
“‘The platform’ is now a collection of capabilities across all of our products,” said John Shewchuk, the head of the recently formed technical evangelism and dev team. Our job is “helping devs stitch together solutions with these technologies.”
“Devs” also is a much broader target audience for Microsoft than it once was. Back in the early DPE days, devs meant professional, full-time programmers. The target audience for Microsoft’s new deep-tech team includes anyone who writes a consumer, business or hybrid application. That means startups, enterprise customers and top consumer and business independent software vendors (ISVs).
The Microsoft toolbox from which devs can choose to mix and match includes many technologies that didn’t exist a decade, or even just a few years, ago. They include everything from Windows Azure technologies, to Bing programming interfaces and datasets, to the WinRT framework underlying Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. Microsoft’s next Xbox, Kinect, Windows Phones, Surfaces, Perceptive Pixel multitouch displays are among the targets for these technologies.
“This is a playground. We get to work with stuff from all the different Microsoft business groups,” said Shewchuk. “It’s like geek heaven.”
The idea of creating this kind of deep-tech team has been percolating since October 2012, when Microsoft veteran Steve Guggenheimer returned to Microsoft to head up DPE, according to Microsoft execs. Guggenheimer, in conjunction with Server and Tools Business chief Satya Nadella and with the blessing of CEO Steve Ballmer, set out to recruit some deeply technical evangelists with far-flung specializations.
Shewchuk, a 20-year Microsoft veteran and one of the company’s Technical Fellows, agreed to spearhead the team. (Microsoft isn’t saying how large the new team is, but I’ve heard it could be over 100 people in size and growing.) Shewchuk, who is now the Chief Technology Officer for the Microsoft Developer Platform, was working for the last several years on Windows Azure, where he helped the company build Windows Azure Active Directory, Service Bus and SQL services. Shewchuk also was a key contributor to a number of other Microsoft dev technologies, including .Net, Visual Studio, Windows Communication Foundation and the WIndows Identity Foundation.
“The idea is to bridge our inside developers to outside developers,” Shewchuk said. “We want to get the top developers to adopt our platform.”
Shewchuk described the new deep-tech team as a place where Microsoft pulls together its own “world-class” developers to exchange ideas among themselves and with the outside world. Because Microsoft’s new stack of technologies are all at different places, in terms of their maturity cycle, the Microsoft tech team will do everything from build new frameworks; develop code to tie together disparate products; and make available code and templates for external use using services like GitHub or CodePlex. In some cases, the “developers” who take advantage of these pieces may be Microsoft’s own product teams who may want to incorporate code (and even the developers who wrote it) directly into their units.
More information:
– John Shewchuk’s Profile [MSDN, May 2013]
John Shewchuk is a Technical Fellow and the CTO for the Microsoft Developer Platform. John leads the team responsible for technical evangelism and development in DPE; his team partners with developers, designers, and IT pros to build next gen applications using Microsoft’s devices and services and they share those experiences with the developer community. John has been with Microsoft for almost 20 years. Most recently John focused on Azure developing key platform services including Windows Azure Active Directory, Service Bus, and SQL services. He has been a key contributor on wide range of technologies including; Visual Studio, .NET, WCF, WIF, IE, and AD. John is an advocate and contributor to open source and Web standards – most recently he drove many of the contributions Microsoft made to OAuth 2. John has BS in Electrical Engineering from Union College and an MS in Computer Science from Brown University. He lives in Redmond with his wife and four children.
– Microsoft Big Brains: John Shewchuk [Mary Jo Foley for All About Microsoft blog of ZDNet, Nov 20, 2008]
Claim to Fame: One of the masterminds behind “Zurich,” a key component of Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure, and a key player in Microsoft’s Federated Identity work [see also: Ozzie foreshadows ‘Zurich,’ Microsoft’s elastic cloud [same author, same place, July 24, 2008]
– Bytes by MSDN: John Shewchuk and Rob Bagby discuss “Project Dallas” [on YouTube MrAbdoul9 channel, Jan 29, 2010; on Channel 9, Aug 29, 2010] this is where OAuth is first mentioned
– Microsoft unveils AD Azure strategy, ID management reset [John Fontana for Identity Matters blog of ZDNet, May 25, 2012]
After two years of work, Microsoft has unveiled details and its strategy around Active Directory for the cloud, anointing it the centerpiece of a comprehensive online identity management services strategy it thinks will profoundly alter the ID landscape.
The company said changes to the current concepts around identity management need a “reset” to handle the “social enterprise.” Microsoft says it is “reimagining” how its Windows Azure Active Directory (WAAD) service helps developers create apps that connect the directory to SaaS apps and cloud platforms, corporate customers and social networks.
“The term ‘identity management’ will be redefined to include everything needed to provide and consume identity in our increasingly networked and federated world,” Kim Cameron, an icon in the identity field and now a distinguished engineer working on identity at Microsoft, said on his blog. “This is so profound that it constitutes a ‘reset’.”
At the center is WAAD, which is in use today mostly with Office 365 and Windows Intune customers. WAAD is a multitenant service designed for high availability and Internet scale.
In a companion blog post to Cameron’s, John Shewchuk [see also Part 2 of that], a Microsoft Technical Fellow and key cog in the company’s cloud identity engineering, provided some details on WAAD, including new Internet-focused connectivity, mobility and collaboration features to support applications that run in the cloud.
Shewchuk said the aim is to support technologies such as Java, and apps running on mobile devices including the iPhone or other cloud platforms such as Amazon’s AWS.
Shewchuk said WAAD will be the cloud extension to on-premises Active Directory deployments enterprises have already made. The two are married using identity federation and directory synchronization.
He said Microsoft made “significant changes to the internal architecture of Active Directory” in order to create WAAD.
As an example, he said, “Instead of having an individual server operate as the Active Directory store and issue credentials, we split these capabilities into independent roles. We made issuing tokens a scale-out role in Windows Azure, and we partitioned the Active Directory store to operate across many servers and between data centers.”
Some analysts are already noting the challenges Microsoft will have with its cloud directory.
Mark Diodati, a research vice president at Gartner focusing on identity issues, told me in a conversation about changes the cloud is forcing on enterprise ID management that, “the addition of tablets and smartphones into the enterprise device mix exceeds Active Directory’s management capabilities and there is an impedance mismatch using Kerberos across the cloud.”
While Shewchuk laid out the set-up for a Part 2 [see here: Part 2 where OAuth 2 is first mentioned as: “we currently support WS-Federation to enable SSO between the application and the directory. We also see the SAML/P, OAuth 2, and OpenID Connect protocols as a strategic focus and will be increasing support for these protocols”] of his blog that will focus on enhancements to WAAD, Kim Cameron painted the bigger picture on cloud identity going forward.
He said companies adopting cloud technology will see dramatic changes over the next decade in the way identity management is delivered. “We all need to understand this change,” he stressed.
Cameron said identity management as a service “will use the cloud to master the cloud”, and will provide the most reliable and cost-effective options.
“Enterprises will use these services to manage authentication and authorization of internal employees, the supply chain, and customers (including individuals), leads and prospects. Governments will use them when interacting with other government agencies, enterprises and citizens.”
And he added that enterprises will have to move beyond concepts that have guided their thinking to date.
Identity & Access [MSFTws2012 YouTube channel, Nov 20, 2012]
Current state-of-the-art:
– Welcome to the Active Directory Team Blog [MSDN blogs, April 15, 2013]
– Announcing some new capabilities in Azure Active Directory Graph Service [Windows Azure Active Directory Graph Team blog on MSDN, May 15, 2013]
– BUILD 2013, Windows 8.1, and Microsoft’s Deep-Tech Team: Hopeful News for Devs [Tim Huckaby on DevPro, May 16, 2013]
It’s hard to change a culture. Having worked for or with Microsoft for over 20 years, I can tell you that I have a myriad of colleagues that are Microsoft employees, most of whom I call my friends and respect very much. Over the last several months, I’ve had several discouraging private conversations about where the developer goals, mission, and strategy were headed for Microsoft. I could see the problems and mistakes. Microsoft employees could see them, too. You probably saw them, too. It’s been frustrating. When the head guy in charge of Microsoft development ignores feedback that includes internal feedback from Microsoft and external feedback from folks such as me and you, then that builds a culture of secrecy and fear. Although that head guy is gone now [obvious reference to Steven Sinofsky, ex Microsoft: The victim of an extremely complex web of the “western world” high-tech interests [‘Experiencing the Cloud, Nov 13-20, 2012], it’s still taken a long time to change that culture back to where it should be.
In all honesty, I can tell you that I haven’t been encouraged about the developer platform at Microsoft in a while. However, today I’m encouraged for the first time in a long time. I see the culture changing. I hear people at Microsoft saying that the culture is changing. And there’s several encouraging announcements that are emerging. Suddenly, I’m now excited about the Microsoft’s BUILD 2013 developer conference that’s being held in San Francisco from June 26 to June 28, and I’m not the old guy saying, “Get off my lawn!” However, I’d first like to present you all with some background that made me discouraged in the first place.
Microsoft’s Development Woes
I painfully read a recent blog post about Microsoft’s developer issues. I don’t even know who wrote it. This guy or gal didn’t put his or her name on the blog post. It’s painful because this person makes a ton of good points. Within this blog post, the author goes far enough back to put Win16 into perspective. It’s a very interesting read if you want to talk about the context of Microsoft’s developer problems through time and the speculation surrounding those problems. One of the main points in this article is that Microsoft has hung onto an obsolete Win32 API even though, a decade ago Intel took a completely different tact with the GPU and multi-core processors when it could have picked several versions of Windows over time to start over. However, Microsoft didn’t choose to do this, which has caused developers a lot of pain.
Related: “Windows 8 Start Button Shenanigans“
Most recently that developer pain has manifested with the introduction of the modern API in Windows 8. The modern API has many developers so confused and angered. A lot of these developers are experiencing anger because the most successfully adopted and beloved developer technology in Microsoft history was seemingly killed by this new modern API: Silverlight. Also seemingly killed was XNA. Several developers are also confused because Microsoft seems to be pushing the message to get users to build enterprise applications in HTML5 and deliver them through the Windows Store.
But, alas, there is hope! Recent announcements and speculations have me really encouraged.
Encouraging Announcements from Microsoft
On May 14, Microsoft officially announced the long rumored Windows Blue, which is officially called Windows 8.1. It will be a free update to Windows 8. Windows 8.1 promises to fix several different problems that folks have been complaining about. It’s important to note that Windows 8.1 isn’t a service pack. It’s a full blown upgrade to the OS. Microsoft promises several exciting things for the developer to be announced at BUILD, which includes the public release of Windows 8.1.
This month a minor Internet hysteria phenomena occurred with the revelation of the Microsoft deep-tech team. Mary Jo Foley wrote it best describing it as Microsoft’s new plan for reaching out to top-tier developers of all sizes to get them to take a look at the new and expanded Microsoft toolbox. There’s several “big guns” who will be leading the effort.
John Shewchuk is one of those “big guns.” I know John from a prior life at Microsoft. He’s a 20-year Microsoft veteran and one of the company’s Technical Fellows. He’s leading the team and serving as the Chief Technology Officer for the Microsoft Developer Platform. This is good news.
My guess is that the deep-tech team was the brainchild of Microsoft veteran Steve Guggenheimer, who took the reins of heading the Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE) team in October 2012. Affectionately known as “Guggs,” Steve Guggenheimer has a long and storied career at Microsoft.
Patrick Chanezon is a new hire to Microsoft who will lead the enterprise evangelism efforts in Microsoft’s DPE unit from San Francisco. He joined Microsoft from VMware just weeks ago. This is a key hire that also seems to be really good news.
More about those Microsoft people I respect; the people who get it; the people who affect change. Scott Guthrie is one of them. But everyone knows who knows the Microsoft Platform knows who Scott Guthrie is. Another one of them is Gabor Fari. You probably don’t know his name. But Gabor is one of the many Microsoft folks who “gets it.” Internally, he’s willing to criticize the company he works for and loves when it deserves it. He’s also the first to garner praise where Microsoft deserves it. Gabor’s title is Director of Life Sciences Solutions, and his grasp of the developer platform at Microsoft is his passion. When discussing the problems of the past and the excitement of the future with Gabor he left me with this, and I believe it’s the perfect way to end this article:
“I am very excited about the latest developments and news that has been released, and I am eagerly anticipating additional news from the BUILD conference. The slumbering lion still has spectacular fangs and teeth; and now he has woken up and is ready to roar.”
Regarding Gabor Fari I will include here the following link:
– Sanofi: Global Healthcare Leader Deploys Intelligent Content Framework, Speeds Time-to-Market [Microsoft Case Study, April 16, 2013] from which the following excerpts describe Fari’s involvement and role in strategic developments the best:
In January 2011, Sanofi launched a program called CRUISE—Content Re-Use Information System for Electronic Health. Through CRUISE, the company set out to develop a content management solution that transverses the company’s research and development efforts. The program charter of CRUISE is to implement processes and tools that enable stakeholders to author, assemble, review, approve, reuse, publish, and deliver high-quality, consistent, and compliant content and documentation throughout the product development life cycle—aiding the submission to regulatory agencies and other industry audiences. “The idea is to find ways to intelligently and seamlessly manage content authoring and production,” says Bhanu Bahl, Senior Manager of Clinical Sciences and Operation Platform at Sanofi. “The key business objective is to reduce the effort required to prepare documents through a synergy of optimized processes and enabling technologies.”
CRUISE has three pillars. One pillar involves simplifying the documentation process in a way that makes it possible to reuse content in various materials. Another pillar revolves around services that involve the many different documentation deliverables. The third pillar focuses on the technology solution, which is designed as a content library that tags and classifies information so that it can be easily assembled and searched. “With CRUISE, we are not doing a process redesign,” says Bahl. “We’re building something more tangible, more simplified, and more standardized.”
To address the CRUISE mandate, Sanofi worked closely with Microsoft as well as two members of the Microsoft Partner Network, DITA Exchange and the ArborSys Group. Microsoft provided the Intelligent Content Framework (ICF) and underlying technologies based on Microsoft SharePoint Server and Microsoft Office. DITA Exchange delivered a solution that enables organizations to establish and maintain a “single source of truth” for their strategic content, and to deliver that content consistently across outputs. The ArborSys Group consulted on the tool and process redesign and helped achieve an end-to-end business and technology implementation for regulated industries.
…
Gabor Fari, Director of Life Sciences Solutions at Microsoft, served as an evangelist in helping to put together the CRUISE team. DITA Exchange had been working closely with Microsoft since 2008 to develop the ICF for regulated industries. It completed the first version of the XML-based solution in February 2009.
As the technology pillar of CRUISE and the engine of EnCORE, DITA Exchange software elevates SharePoint to an XML-based component content management and single-source publishing solution. It enables its customers to comply with regulatory requirements with tools for reusing content in a consistent and accurate way throughout the product development life cycle in the life sciences space. “Microsoft promoted our work to several pharmaceutical companies,” says Andersen. “It led the way in terms of bringing innovative ideas around SCM solutions.”
DITA Exchange began working on the CRUISE implementation in April 2011. The partner participated in planning and supplied the solution used to manage the document output maps, topics, and linking of topics to the maps. “DITA Exchange helped us with content design and the governance structures of information design,” says Allred. “The people at DITA Exchange are masters of their technological domain. They have experience in regulated industries and the knowledge required to get our vision into an operational model.”
The ArborSys Group joined the effort in April 2011. This partner provides business consultancy and technical implementation and helped Sanofi achieve measurable and sustainable results through the implementation of flexible IT solutions that can be adapted for change in a dynamic business climate.
The two partners collaborated on developing the EnCORE platform. The ArborSys Group scoped processes, integrated service management roles and extensions, and trained internal resources.
“Microsoft, DITA Exchange, and the ArborSys Group all provided expertise and leadership in terms of how we define processes and address the three pillars of CRUISE,” says Bahl. “The various disciplines they provided really helped us strategize our best opportunity in terms of development. We share a common vision that has resulted in a very rich, cutting-edge offering that other pharmaceutical companies will probably adopt three to five years from now.”
While many other regulated industries have embraced SCM in recent years, life science organizations have lagged. “It’s no secret that the pharmaceutical industry is conservative,” says Andersen. “People think very carefully before they start anything. Sanofi is absolutely the leader in innovating in the pharmaceutical content management space.”
…
Intel CEO (Krzanich) and president (James) combo to assure manufacturing and next-gen cross-platform lead
Update: excerpts from Intel’s CEO Presents at Annual Shareholder Meeting Conference (Transcript) [Seeking Alpha, May 17, 2013]
Andy D. Bryant – Chairman of the Board:
In his most recent role as Chief Operating Officer, Brian [Krzanich] led an organization of more than 50,000 people. This included Intel’s technology and manufacturing group, its foundry and memory businesses, its human resources and information technology groups, and its China strategy.
Brian M. Krzanich – Chief Executive Officer:
I thought I would start off our conversation this morning talking about three main topics. First, I thought I give just a brief update on our business conditions, just a quick financial look at the company, and really what it returns to shareholders.
The next topic I thought I would talk about are what is really the mega trends that are driving our industry and technology. And that really will lead into the final section, I’ll try and talk about, which is, what are our imperatives for growth as a company and what’s the response from these mega trends? So hopefully today, you’ll get a picture of a great foundation, how we see the trends driving where we’re headed, and what it takes for us to grow moving forward.
Let’s start with just where are we as a business. And as you probably saw in our earnings announcement and as we’ve been watching the company over the last couple of years, we really had a solid foundation. We had net income of over $53 billion, excuse me, net revenue of over $53 billion, 62% margin, and an operating profit of over almost $15 billion. That puts us in the top 15 of the S&P 500 for net income.
…. So this foundation, this financial picture is what we will use now to move forward and really drive additional growth. And so I’d like to transition now to what are these mega trends? Where is the industry headed? And as a result, how does that drive our imperatives for growth moving forward?
I don’t think we can start a discussion like that without first, having a quick discussion about one of the key real trends that have occurred over the last couple of years. And that’s really this ultra-mobile and move to tablets and phones that has occurred in our industry. We see that we’ve been a bit slow to move into that space, but what I want to show you today is that, we see the movement, we’re well positioned already and the base of assets that we have will allow us to really grow in this area at a much faster rate moving forward.
So let’s start with mega trend number one, which is just that, it’s about ultra-mobile. We see the is becoming more and more a connected computing environment. The people want their computing next to them. They want to carry it with them. And that really means you have to have connectivity, you have to have more power, you have to have integration, and you have to be in these new markets and new devices that are moving towards more and more connectivity, we see it. We believe we are well positioned. We have 15 phones in 22 countries already, excuse me, 12 phones in 22 countries, 15 tablets both Android and Windows, and so we’ve got a good base. We see this trend, and I’ll show you in a little bit with our imperatives, we’re well positioned to move forward.
The next one is one that I think is really driving great growth and is a great opportunity, in some place we’ve really established well, is really that the Datacenter is continuing to grow at phenomenal rates. It’s growing because of the move to cloud and tied to that connective computing environment, people want to keep more and more and have more and more access to the cloud.
And then you’re also seeing a move in the Datacenter around big data, that as all of these connective devices continue to grow, it provides a relative information that companies can now use to offer better services and better understanding of what consumers want, and that’s really what big data is about. It’s about providing answers as you increase the data rate that’s available to you. We see that, again, we believe our products and our services are well positioned for this, and we’ll talk a little bit about that in our imperatives moving forward.
And the third trend is really around the foundation of Intel. It’s around integration and innovation, and I believe this is really what Intel does best. When you look at our name and where we came from, Intel is Integrated Electronics, that’s what the name stands for and this is what we’ve always done best. This allows us to combine our silicon technology, our architecture, our software and services to really drive the SOC or the System-On-A-Chip environment to levels that nobody has seen before we believe moving forward.
It means really going out and bringing in new innovations, new technologies, new communication capabilities, bringing those into silicon and using that more as long leading edge technology to allow us to drive these in a way faster than anybody else on the planet can. So those are the three big mega trends that we see driving technology and the industry moving forward.
And what I’m going to show you now is that, we have the assets that we can apply towards these mega trends and then how those drive the imperatives for the company moving forward. Let’s first take a look at the assets. And I believe this is an asset base that any company in the world would be end user.
We have our manufacturing assets, something that’s been near and dear to my heart over the years, 4 million square feet of manufacturing clean room. We have leading edge technology. We have 22-nanometers in production, the world’s only Tri-Gate FinFET technology is our third generation of High-k Metal Gate. We’re in the final stages of development prior to production or 14-nanometers, our second generation of Tri-Gate transistors, our fourth generation of High-k Metal Gate, that’s an asset that everybody on the planet would love to have at – to apply towards those mega trends that we just talked about.
We have our architecture, which really ranges from the Xeon architecture for data center and servers all the way down to the Atom Architecture, which allows us into microservers, but into that connected computing, and what you will see is a move more and more as we go forward to continue to drive that continuum of computing capability into more and more markets. That’s really an asset, again, very few companies if any have.
And the last is to tie it all together, software and services, we’ve talked – you’ve seen our acquisition of McAfee and Wind River, we’ve built a services business. What this allows us to do is take all of those assets and apply into each one of those markets that I talked about in the mega trend. And what it allows us to do is provide more than just silicon. It allows us to provide a platform and a user experience that nobody else can, and that’s a secure and user-friendly experience that allows us to provide everything to the OEM, who wants to bring a product to market.
All of those are surrounded by the 105,000 employees that are always Intel’s greatest asset. The ability of these employees is to have, when we apply them towards these markets and these imperatives that you will see in a second here, is by far the greatest asset Intel has and we will continue to be moving forward. So I’ve shown you our base, I’ve shown you the mega trends, I’ve shown you what I believe is the greatest assets of the world to apply to those, and so let’s talk about what the imperatives are then moving forward.
The first one is to drive PC innovation. We’ve talked a bit about this. It’s the foundation of that financial picture that I showed you at the beginning. With Haswell coming out this year, it’s launching actually right now and throughout the year as the Haswell products come out, with ultrabooks, we have the greatest level of innovation in the PC in its history. You’re going to see ultrabooks, you see two in ones, which are convertibles, which are bringing that tablet and a PC together.
And with Haswell, you see the largest improvement in battery life and continuing capability that Intel has ever brought to production. So we believe that we are well positioned for what will be truly the PCs greatest time of innovation that we’ve all seen in our life.
The next imperative is that aggressively move into this ultra-mobile space. As I said at the beginning, we’re well positioned. We’re already shipping 12 phones in 22 countries. We have 15 tablets out there both windows and Android. We’ve got products that are specifically designed for this ultra-mobile space that have been in the works for a couple of years, now you saw the Silvermont announcement [SEE SECTION 6. ON ‘Low-Power, High-Performance Silvermont Microarchitecture’ IN THE DETAILS PART BELOW] earlier this week.
You are going to see, you see the Bay Trail will come out in the fourth quarter, which is really a product targeted towards tablets and low-power
CRAM[C-RAN: Cloud Radio Access Network] cells and convertible devices. You can see Merrifield, which is our next generation phone device. And just as important is our LTE technology, which is critical for that second part of connecting computing, which is the communication. We have data-based LTE coming out this summer, and we have multi-mode LTE, which allows voice, data, and voice over data at the end of this year, and that really opens up all the rest to the markets to our phones and our connected devices.So we believe we’re well positioned. We’ve made the move, but we believe also that our architecture and the moves we’ve made allow us to move even quicker into this market down moving forward.
The third one again tied to the trends I showed you at the beginning is to accelerate growth in the Datacenter. We have a great position in the Datacenter already. We believe that real trends like big data, movement to the cloud, software to find networks, all of those things allow for phenomenal growth in this space, and we believe our product line is well positioned to let us lead there.
We have the Haswell, which I talked about, our second generation of 22-nanometer architecture, we’ll be shipping Xeon level or server level class product in mid-2013. We have Avoton, which is Atom from microservers. We’ll be the first to this microserver trend. You hear a lot about it. You hear a lot of people talking about it. You should know that Intel was first to this space. We didn’t wait for it to be created. We’re going to go move that space.
We’re going to go define that microserver space, and we have Rangeley, which is product for network in comps infrastructure, which really allows us to move into the other sides of the Datacenter, where communications and that networking infrastructure occur. So those products combined, we believe we are well positioned to accelerate this growth into the Datacenter.
And then lastly, is to continue our silicon leadership, talked early on about 22-nanometers, the first technology to bring out the target transistor, but more importantly as we have a roadmap of Morris Law that continues, that we see us growing further in along the Morris Law transitions. We have 14-nanometer in its final stages of development, ready for production at the end of this year and moving into next year.
We understand what is beyond 14-nanometers for Morris Law. That silicon leadership allows us to drive the innovation in every one of these other areas and really bring it together in tri-sector of cost, battery, and performance that allows us to bring products to anyone of these markets that’s required.
So to bring this to closure, as my – this is my first presentation as CEO I guess. I’ve shown you that we have a great basis from which to grow on, but financially the company is sound in a very strong position. I’ve shown you that, we understand the mega trends and then we understand exactly how the market is moving into these data center areas, the connected computing and ultra-mobility, and I try to show you we have laid out the imperatives and assets to really allow these as to move into these new areas.
And so with that, I would just like to bring this to closure to show you that, I believe we’re well positioned. I believe that we have the best position in Intel’s history and a long last while to grow into these areas, and we really look forward to the coming years.
And with that, I would like to call back up Andy and Renée for Q&A.
Q: Question one, it has been two years since we purchased McAfee. How has McAfee contributed to the bottom line? What is the long-term plan with this company?
A: from Renée James – President
When McAfee and the acquisition of McAfee is hot of a broader strategy that we’ve had to increase the overall security not only of our products, but as we move into cloud-based computing, and into ultra-mobility that Brian talked about. We believe that one of the opportunities faces for Intel is to provide a more secure solution, more secure platforms around your data, around the devices that we build, and around your own personal identity and privacy.So McAfee is one of many assets that we have acquired, they have been doing a very good job, and you may have read that we’ve added two McAfee over the course of the last two years. We’ve recently announced a week ago that we made an additional acquisition, which was always part of our strategy to grow what McAfee offered around the network and the cloud, and we continued to evolve their product line and this week we made an announcement around a personal identity and data security products for consumers that is bundled with our new platforms. So we’re very happy with them. It is part of a much broader strategy that’s consistent with what Brian just talked about, and we should look for more in that area.
Q: Over the last decade, our stock has been flat. It’s more or less tracked Microsoft has underperformed S&P 500 compared to QUALCOMM. QUALCOMM is up 300%; Apple, up 6,000%. QUALCOMM, for example, is now worth as much as Intel. Apple and QUALCOMM focus on communication products and mobile products, whereas we mostly use the market.
What’s worse is that we have the huge manufacturing capability that you talked about, maybe 3.5-year lead on competitors. So if weren’t just now coming out with Haswell, sophomore products et cetera, our design side of the house must be behind by 3.5 years or so, and that’s not good, because now we’re in catchup mode, and that’s risky. And this isn’t the first time in the last dozen years I missed the industry trend. So I’m very concerned about the product design side of the house. This company has been very focused on manufacturing from pub noise aren’t down, the microprocessor, the 4004 was afterthought.
The products mattered to this company. So I’m wondering if you think that the Board, the top management and the comp packages focus on product development well enough and if you’ve seen any improvements in last few years to improve the effectiveness of product design likely to be true?
A: from Brian M. Krzanich – Chief Executive Officer
So I started my presentation with an acknowledgment that we were slow to the mobile market. And I wanted to do that purposely to let the shareholders know we saw, but they were moving much more aggressively now moving forward, and we believe we have the right products. What we have to do is really make some decisions around; you see we bought assets to allow us to get into the LTE space. We’ve made transitions in what we design for Atom, and we’ve looked at how do we design our silicon technologies to allow integration of those, because COMs and the CPU are a little bit different in the silicon technologies they require.So we do believe we are positioned well moving forward. But you are asking a more fundamental question about how do we see market trends and how do we really make sure that we understand how the market is moving. And actually we spent a lot of time with the board over the last several months, partly in just the normal discussions with the board, and partly in this process of selection. And both Renée and I talked about how we’re going to build a much more outward sensing environment for Intel, so that we understand where our architecture needs to move first.
We actually understand that integration is occurring more and more, that it’s important more about integration than almost anything else right now, and that’s really how these new devices are occurring. We have plans to build a structure that allows us to have consultants and people from the outside to help us look at these trends and look at our architectural choices and make sure we’re making the right decisions. And we’re trying to build a much closer relationship with our customers, so that we understand where they want to go. We spent, actually Renée and I over the last week, a lot of time with and they are all showing us here is where the market is moving and here is where we need Intel to move.
We are going to make adjustments in our architecture, and our product choices to align to those much, much closure moving forward. So we do believe, we see what you’re talking about how we made those choices, but we believe we’ve made the right decisions and we have the right process moving forward to make sure, I wish they are aligned.
Q: … question is about the Software and Services Group as compared to the PC Client Group. The Software and Services is certainly expected to grow and I’m particularly interested in the gross margin contribution not just today, I’m interested in your vision three to five years from now, how you see the gross margin contribution of the Software Group, comparing and either increasing or decreasing relative to the PCCG Group?
A: from Renée James – President
The Software and Services Group as you know is a new reportable segment in the last several years for us. Software business, in general, are good opportunities for growth and once that are aligned with the market segments that we’re going to provide products into or provide products into today is a good opportunity for us to enhance our offering to our customers.In general, we have a very, very good business. Brian talked about the margin profile business we have today. The businesses that we are pursuing in Software and Services are equally good opportunities, and we expect that those businesses will continue to contribute as software companies do in the market and about the same way that they do in the market today.
Q: For the first time as a shareholder of Intel, I’m kind of wondering and curious about and look forward a decade from now, and here is a context to the question.
The CapEx spending has more than doubled in the last two years. R&D has gone up by 53%, you are making a really significant investment in the future that you talked about CEO Brian, okay. And you’ve made a transition over the FinFET, last week as preparation for the meeting, I looked at the ITRS road map and about 2020, it indicates that gate lines would be running around 10-nanometers.
When I look realistically of that, the question I have is one, what device architecture would you be using there more than likely? And number two, isn’t it time for a transition, an inflection point as Andy might have said to either switching photons or quantum computing or something else. So maybe part of the question is directed towards you Brian, and the other part could we possibly hear from your CTO or Head of TD?
A: from Brian M. Krzanich – Chief Executive Officer
I’ll start. It was a pretty long question, so I’m going to see if I can get most of your points. Your first point was CapEx has gone up, we’re spending a lot more on technology and is there a time for a transition in that technology, and I would tell you that we are the – we typically have about a 10-year view of Moore’s Law and we’ve always had a 10-year view. If you went back 10 years ago, we had a 10-year view. If you went back five years ago, we have a 10-year view, that’s about as far out as you can see, and we believe that we have the right architectures to continue to grow Moore’s Law in a silicon environment for at least that period of time.That’s not to say we don’t have efforts in photonics, we actually have efforts in photonics and we’re going to bring products to markets in photonics, more about switching in the datacenter [SEE SECTION 7. ON ‘PHOTONIC ARCHITECTURES’ IN THE DETAILS PART BELOW], but the fundamental silicon technology and our ability to continue to drive it beyond 10 nanometers, to be honest with you, we plan to be on 10 nanometers much earlier than 2020, I can tell you that, is we believe sound and fundamental and it’s why we made investments you saw us make an investment in ASML last year for almost $4 billion in total. That was really to drive EV technology for lithography to allow to keep pushing well below 10 nanometers from the Moore’s Law standpoint. So we think we are pretty well positioned to keep moving at least for the next decade in the current technologies. I don’t know if Bill…
A: from William M. Holt – Executive Vice President
General Manager, Technology and Manufacturing Group [“semiconductor CTO”]But if you look back at the last three or four generation each one has come with a substantial innovation or change, there is no simple scaling in our business anymore. And that will continue, and so each time we plan to advance the technology, we have to make changes relative to photonics and our quantum computing. We do have – Brian said, have efforts in those, but those are clearly not something that are anytime in the near horizon. There is lots of interesting work going on there, but none of it really is practical to turn into a real computing devices.
Q: How do you expect the foundry market to impact margins short and long-term?
A: from Brian M. Krzanich – Chief Executive Officer
So I think Stacy has talked in some of the earnings calls that we currently see margins to be in the range looking forward to 55% to, I believe, 65% was the range she gave. Those were inclusive of our foundry business. So I would tell you that we’ve already built the foundry growth into our current projections for margin, and we actually believe we are being selective, we’re not going into the general foundry business, we’re not opening up to anybody. We’re really looking for partners that can utilize and make it take advantage of our leading edge silicon and that’s why we are able to stay in that range we believe moving forward.Q: I agree with the President’s vision of future is the customer interface and have LTE and good processing that all make sense. [SEE ‘TRANSPARENT COMPUTING’ AS THE OVERALL VISION, AND PERCEPTUAL COMPUTING AS AN ADDITIONAL ONE IN THE BELOW DETAILS, PARTICULARLY SECTIONS 5.+8. AND SECTION 4. RESPECTIVELY.] I would rather usher with these executions. If you look at the mobile world right now the ARMs Holdings, they have 95% of the market share. I understand Intel has 1,000, I think 1,000 researchers I think they are doing purely basic research.
And how come interference see this mobile way coming and that the ARM Holdings taking maybe 5% market share. On top of that, Microsoft going to RT, it’s high this Windows RT, which are ARM Holding and HP just announced a new tablet with NVIDIA tablet processor, also based on ARM. So everybody is trying to take the CPU share away from you. And I understand Intel is having this Haswell should coming out in June, some questions, are you confident this Haswell can hold ARMs Holding back?
A: from Brian M. Krzanich – Chief Executive Officer
First, I’d say, in my presentation I talked about the fact that yes, we missed it. We were slow to tablets and some of the mobile computing. We do believe we have a good base right, 12 phones, 20 countries, 15 tablets, Android and Windows 8, it gets important that we’ve looked at both of those, and then we have these products moving forward. I would tell you that it’s more than just Haswell.
Haswell is a key product. It’s going to extend quorum much further on both ends from a high performance Xeon space to the low power space. You are going to see single digit power levels on a core product, which will allow it move into very mobile spaces, but that alone would not go beat ARM or go beat the competition into those spaces you talked about. What you really have to do is extend into that Atom space as well, and that’s where you see products like Clover Trail and Clover Trail+ today, Silvermont [SEE SECTION 6. ON ‘Low-Power, High-Performance Silvermont Microarchitecture’ IN THE DETAILS PART BELOW] and then moving into the rest of this year you see, Bay Trail.
Bay Trail will be one of the biggest advances we made in Atom that allows us to move into the mobile space much stronger.
And then thirdly, with the assets we purchased a few years back, which was the Infineon mobile group, which gave us the comp side of this. And I told you that we have comps’ LTE data in the middle of this summer and multimode at the end of this year. We’ll actually be the next meeting person in LTE space and that’s critical to get into those markets. You don’t want to have to dependent on others to provide that comp and then as we move into next year, you’ll see us integrating that, which we believe allow us to move back on to that leading edge. So stitch back to that, do we have a good product roadmap to allow us to go, win share in that space, we believe we do.
Next question is do we have a good ability to view that space moving forward because whatever it is today won’t be what it is five years from now, and that’s what Renée and I are committed to go, put in together because we absolutely believe this connected computing will continue to move down and we’ll continue on the products going forward.
End of [May 17, 2013] update
Intel Chairman Interview on New Intel CEO Brian Krzanich [SBARTSTV YouTube channel, May 2, 2013]
Intel’s CEO Pick Is Predictable, but Not Its No. 2 [The Wall Street Journal, May 2, 2013]
The selection of Mr. Krzanich, who is 52 and joined Intel in 1982, suggests that Intel will continue to try to use its manufacturing muscle to play a broader role in mobile chips.
But he said that the board was mainly convinced by a new strategy—devised with Ms. James—to help take Intel chips into new devices.
“That is absolutely what won them the job,” said Andy Bryant, the Intel chairman and former finance chief who led the search. “Brian and Renee delivered a strategy for Intel that is pretty dramatic.”
…
While Mr. Krzanich doesn’t expect the “full strategy” to become visible until later this year, he said it would help move Intel chips beyond computers and mobile devices into more novel fields, including wearable technology.
The strategy “went from the very low end of computing to the very top end of computing,” Mr. Bryant said.
…
Intel directors met last weekend for a final round of interviews and then vote on Mr. Krzanich’s selection, the person close to the situation said.
On Tuesday, Mr. Krzanich suggested to Mr. Bryant the appointment of Ms. James, which the board approved Wednesday, the Intel spokesman said.
Mr. Bryant, who is 63 years old, said he has helped mentor both executives and agreed to stay on in his position for an indefinite period to help them in their new roles.
What already available from recently accepted by Intel board strategy is detailed in the below sections of this post, namely:
- Intel® XDK (cross platform development kit) with the Intel® Cloud Services Platform (CSP)
- Porting native code into HTML5 JavaScript
- Parallel JavaScript (the River Trail project)
- Perceptual Computing
- HTML5 and transparent computing
- Low-Power, High-Performance Silvermont Microarchitecture
- Photonic achitectures to drive the future of computing
- The two-person Executive Office and Intel’s transparent computing strategy as presented so far
I am quite impressed with all of those pieces, just to give my conclusion ahead.
There is, however, a huge challenge for the management as the new two-person Executive Office of Brian M. Krzanich as CEO and Renée J. James as president is to lead the company:
– out of Intel’s biggest flop: at least 3-month delay in delivering the power management solution for its first tablet SoC [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Dec 20, 2012]
– then Saving Intel: next-gen Intel ultrabooks for enterprise and professional markets from $500; next-gen Intel notebooks, other value devices and tablets for entry level computing and consumer markets from $300 [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, April 17, 2013] in short-term
– also capitalising on Intel Media: 10-20 year leap in television this year [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Feb 16, 2013] as a huge mid-term opportunity (with Windows Azure Media Services OR Intel & Microsoft going together in the consumer space (again)? [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Feb 17, 2013] or not)
– as well as further strengthening its position in the Software defined server without Microsoft: HP Moonshot [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, April 10, 2013] effort
– but first and foremost proving that the Urgent search for an Intel savior [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Nov 21 – Dec 11, 2012] did indeed end with this decision by the Intel board
– for which the litmus test is the company success against the phenomenon of the $99 Android 4.0.3 7” IPS tablet with an Allwinner SoC capable of 2160p Quad HD and built-in HDMI–another inflection point, from China again [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Dec 3, 2012] which is based on The future of the semiconductor IP ecosystem [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Dec 13, 2012] being a more and more viable alternative to the closed Intel system of design and manufacturing.
Indeed, Intel completely missed the huge opportunities presented by the explosion in the mobile computing end of the market during the last 3 years resulting in entry level smartphone prices as low as $72+, only 77% higher than Intel’s latest available in products Atom Z2760 processor chip for smartphones and tablets at $41, and 71% lower than Intel’s latest available Core™ i3-3229Y processor chip for lowest power consumption ultrabooks at $250, so by now Intel’s whole business model is in jeopardy:
despite sufficiently early warnings by: ![]()
More information: Apple’s Consumer Computing System: 5 years of “revolutionary” iPhone and “magical” iPad[‘Experiencing the Cloud’, July 9, 2012]:
1. Overall picture at the moment
2. Current iPhone and iPad products
3. Earlier products
4. iCloud
5. iTunes
6. App Store
Let’s see now in detail how the Intel Board decision could be the right one based on deep analysis of the available information so far:
1. Intel® XDK (cross platform development kit) with the Intel® Cloud Services Platform (CSP)
The Intel® XDK (cross platform development kit) can be used to create applications using HTML5 and web services. One such set of services are the Intel® Cloud Services Platform (CSP). The Intel® XDK supports the full spectrum of HTML5 mobile development strategies, including:
- Classic Web Apps – No device interface, no on-device caching (only works online)
- Mobile Web Apps – HTML5 Caching (works online/offline), some device interface (GPS, Accelerometer)
- Hybrid Native Apps – Full device interface, identical to native apps
Each of these strategies has pros and cons – Intel makes it easy to develop using HTML5 and JavaScript, regardless of the precise deployment strategy you choose. Intel’s App Dev Center makes it easy to build and manage deployments to all popular app stores.
With the Intel® XDK, developers really can “write it once, deploy to many.” Currently build for iOS Tablets, iOS Smartphones, Android Tablets, Android Smartphones, Google Play Store, Amazon App Store, Mozilla App Store, Facebook App Center, and the Google Chrome store.
Intel® HTML5 XDK Demo [intelswnetwork YouTube channel, March 25, 2013]
More information:
– Create World Class HTML5 Apps & Web Apps with the XDK [Intel’s App Learning Center, March 1, 2013]
– The XDK turbocharges PhoneGap [Intel’s App Learning Center, March 1, 2013]
– Developing Applications for Multiple Devices [Intel HTML5 development documentation, March 15, 2013]
It is likely that any of your apps fall into one of two broad categories. The first category of apps includes fixed position apps, like a game or interactive app where the layout is fixed and all the assets are placed in a static position. The second app category is a dynamic layout app, like an RSS reader or similar app where you may have content that is in a long list and viewing a specific item just shows a scrolling view to acommodate varying content size. For the second category, positioning and scrolling can usually be handled by simple CSS. Setting your div and body widths to “width=100%” instead of “width=768px” is an example of an approach that should help you use the entire screen regardless of resolution and aspect ratio.
The first category is a lot more complicated and we have added some functions to help you deal with this issue. It should be noted that there is no magic “silver bullet” solution. However, if you design your app with certain things in mind and have a plan for other resolutions, we can take care of some complicated calculations and make sure things are scaled for the best user experience possible.
Before we explain how to use our functions to help with these issues, let’s look at some real devices and their resolutions to get a clearer picture of the issues.
…
Conclusion
Scaling a single codebase for use on multiple devices and resolutions is a formidable challenge, particularly if your app is in the category of apps that are fixed position apps rather than an app that uses a dynamic layout. By designing your app’s layout for the smallest screen ratio expected, you can rely on us to help by performing proper scaling and letting you know the new virtual available screen size. From there you can easily pad your app’s background or reset your application’s world bounds to adapt to different screens on the fly.
For more information, documentation is available at http://www.html5devsoftware.intel.com/documentation. Please email html5tools@intel.com with any questions or post on our forums at http://forums.html5dev-software.intel.com .
App Game Interfaces is a JavaScript execution environment that includes a minimal DOM, primarily to provide access to a partial implementation of HTML5 canvas that is optimized for the Apple iOS and Google Android platforms. The App Game Interfaces augment the Canvas object with multi-channel sound, accelerated physics, and accelerated canvas to provide more realistic modeling and smoother gameplay, more like native capabilities and performance – with HTML5!
The Intel® HTML5 Game Development Experience at GDC 2013 [intelswnetwork YouTube channel, April 5, 2013]
More information:
– HTML5 and Mobile are the Future of Gaming [Intel’s App Learning Center, March 1, 2013]
– Graphics Acceleration for HTML5 and Java Script Engine JIT Optimization for Mobile Devices [Intel Developer Zone article, Jan 4, 2013]
– Convert an App Using HTML5 Canvas to Use App Game Interfaces [Intel HTML5 development documentation, March 4, 2013]
– Application Game Interfaces [Intel HTML5 development Readme, March 1, 2013]
App Game Interfaces uses: 1. Ejecta - Dominic Szablewski - MIT X11 license
(http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT) 2. Box2D - Erin Catto - Box2D License 3. JavaScriptCore - The WebKit Open Source Project - GNU LGPL 2.1
(http://opensource.org/licenses/LGPL-2.1) 4. V8 JavaScript Engine - Google - New BSD license
(http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause) 5. IJG JPEG - Independent JPEG Group – None
(http://www.ijg.org/files/README) 6. libpng - PNG Development Group - zlib/libpng License
(http://opensource.org/licenses/Zlib) 7. FreeType - The FreeType Project - The FreeType License
(http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/freetype/freetype2.git/tree/docs/FTL.TXT) 8. v8 build script - Appcelerator Inc - Apache License 2.0
(http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0)
The Intel Cloud Services Platform beta provides a set of identity-based services designed for rich interoperability and seamless experiences that cut across devices, operating systems, and platforms. The initial set of services accessed via RESTful APIs provide key capabilities such as identity, location, and context to developers for use in server, desktop, and mobile applications aimed at both consumers and businesses.
For more information, please visit the Intel Cloud Services Platform beta.
Intel® Developer Zone Cloud Services Platform [intelswnetwork YouTube channel, March 26, 2013]
Plucky rebels: Being agile in an un-agile place – Peter Biddle at TED@Intel [TEDInstitute YouTube channel, published May 6, 2013, filmed March 2013]
Intel® Cloud Services Platform Demo at GDC 2013 [intelswnetwork YouTube channel, April 5, 2013]
Intel® Cloud Services Platform [CSP] Technical Overview [intelswnetwork YouTube channel, May 3, 2013]
More information:
– Intel® Cloud Services Platform Overview (video by Norman Chou on Intel Developer Zone, March 19, 2013)
– Intel® Cloud Service Platform beta Overview (presentation by Norman Chou on GSMA OneAPI Developer Day, Feb 26, 2013), see the GSMA page as well
Build apps that seamlessly span devices, operating systems, and platforms.
Learn how you can easily build apps with this collection of identity-based, affiliated services. Services available include Intel Identity Services, Location Based Services, Context Services and Commerce Services. This session will cover the RESTful APIs available for each service, walk you through the easy sign up process and answer your questions. Want to know more? Visit http://software.intel.com/en-us/cloud-services-platform.
2. Porting native code into HTML5 JavaScript
Currently porting native iOS code to HTML5 is supported but via an abstract format which potentially will allow portinf from other OS code in the futures as well:![]()
This app porting relies (or would soon rely, see later) on App Framework (formerly jqMobi) as the “definitive JS library for HTML5 app development” for which Intel is stating:
Create the mobile apps you want with the tools you are comfortable with. Build hybrid mobile apps and web apps using the App Framework and App UI Library, a jQuery-compatible framework that gives you developers all the UX you want in a tight, fast package.
The Intel® HTML5 App Porter Tool Demo at GDC 2013 [intelswnetwork YouTube channel, April 5, 2013]
More information: Intel HTML5 Porter Tool Introduction for Android Developer [Intel Developer Zone blog post, April 5, 2013] which presents the tool as:
![]()
and adds the following important information (note here that instead of App Framework/jqMobi that version relies on the less suitable jQuery Mobile):
The next release is expected to have better integration with Intel® XDK (Intel’s HTML5 cross platform development kit) and have more iOS API coverage in terms of planned features.
2. Porting translated application to different OSs
A translated HTML5 project has a jsproj file for Visual Studio 2012 JavaScript project in Windows Store apps which you are able to open on Windows* 8 in order to run in case of successfully translated application (100% translated API) or continue development in case of placeholders in the code.
While in the associated Technical Reference – Intel® HTML5 App Porter Tool – BETA [Intel Developer Zone article, Jan 17, 2013] you will find all the relevant additional details, from which it is important to add here the following section:
About target HTML5 APIs and libraries
The Intel® HTML5 App Porter Tool – BETA both translates the syntax and semantics of the source language (Objective-C*) into JavaScript and maps the iOS* SDK API calls into an equivalent functionality in HTML5. In order to map iOS* API types and calls into HTML5, we use the following libraries and APIs:
The standard HTML5 API: The tool maps iOS* types and calls into plain standard objects and functions of HTML5 API as its main target. Most notably, considerable portions of supported Foundation framework APIs are mapped directly into standard HTML5. When that is not possible, the tool provides a small adaptation layer as part of its library.
- The jQuery Mobile library: Most of the UIKit widgets are mapped jQuery Mobile widgets or a composite of them and standard HTML5 markup. Layouts from XIB files are also mapped to jQuery Mobile widgets or other standard HTML5 markup.
The Intel® HTML5 App Porter Tool – BETA library: This is a ‘thin-layer’ library build on top of jQuery Mobile and HTML5 APIs and implements functionality that is no directly available in those libraries, including Controller objects, Delegates, and logic to encapsulate jQuery Mobile widgets. The library provides a facade very similar to the original APIs that should be familiar to iOS* developers. This library is distributed with the tool and included as part of the translated code in the
libfolder.You should expect that future versions of the tool will incrementally add more support for API mapping, based on further statistical analysis and user feedback.
3. Parallel JavaScript (the River Trail project)
RiverTrail Wiki [on GitHub edited by Stephan Herhut, April 2313, 2013 version] [April 23]
Background
The goal of Intel Lab’s River Trail project is to enable data-parallelism in web applications. In a world where the web browser is the user’s window into computing, browser applications must leverage all available computing resources to provide the best possible user experience. Today web applications do not take full advantage of parallel client hardware due to the lack of appropriate programming models. River Trail puts the parallel compute power of client’s hardware into the hands of the web developer while staying within the safe and secure boundaries of the familiar JavaScript programming paradigm. River Trail gently extends JavaScript with simple deterministic data-parallel constructs that are translated at runtime into a low-level hardware abstraction layer. By leveraging multiple CPU cores and vector instructions, River Trail achieves significant speedup over sequential JavaScript.
Getting Started
To get a feeling for the programming model and experiment with the API, take a look at our interactive River Trail shell. The shell runs in any current version of Firefox, Chrome and Safari. If you are using Firefox and have installed the River Trail extension (see below on how to), your code will be executed in parallel. If you are using other browsers or have not installed the extension for Firefox, the shell will use a sequential library implementation and you won’t see any speedup.
You need to install our Firefox extension to use our prototype compiler that enables execution of River Trail on parallel hardware. You can download a prebuilt version for Firefox 20.x [April 23] running on Windows and MacOS (older versions for older browsers can be found here). We no longer provide a prebuilt Linux version. However, you can easily build it yourself. We have written a README that explains the process. If you are running Firefox on Windows or Linux, you additionally need to install Intel’s OpenCL SDK (Please note the SDK’s hardware requirements.).
…
River Trail – Parallel Computing in JavaScript [by Stephan Herhut from Intel Labs, delivered on April 2, 2012 at JSConf 2012, published on JSConf EU YouTube channel on Jan 20, 2013]
River Trail Demos at IDF 2012 [intelswnetwork YouTube channel, Sept 24, 2012]
More information:
– River Trail – Parallel Programming in JavaScript [Stephan Herhut on InfoQ, March 29, 2013] a collection which is based on his latest recorded presentation (embedded there) that was delivered at Strange Loop 2012 on Sept 24, 2012 (you can follow his Twitter for further information)
– River Trail: Bringing Parallel JavaScript* to the Web [Intel Developer Zone article by Stephan Herhut, Oct 17, 2012]
– Tour de Blocks: Preview the Benefits of Parallel JavaScript* Technology by Intel Labs [Intel Developer Zone article by Stephan Herhut, Oct 17, 2012]
– Parallel JS Lands [Baby Steps blog by Niko Matsakis at Mozilla, March 20, 2013], see all of his posts in PJs category since January 2009, particularly ‘A Tour of the Parallel JS Implementation’ Part 1 [March 20] and Part 2 [April 4], while from the announcement:
The first version of our work on ParallelJS has just been promoted to mozilla-central and thus will soon be appearing in a Nightly Firefox build near you. … Once Nightly builds are available, users will be able to run what is essentially a “first draft” of Parallel JS. The code that will be landing first is not really ready for general use yet. It supports a limited set of JavaScript and there is no good feedback mechanism to tell you whether you got parallel execution and, if not, why not. Moreover, it is not heavily optimized, and the performance can be uneven. Sometimes we see linear speedups and zero overhead, but in other cases the overhead can be substantial, meaning that it takes several cores to gain from parallelism. …
…
Looking at the medium term, the main focus is on ensuring that there is a large, usable subset of JavaScript that can be reliably parallelized. Moreover, there should be a good feedback mechanism to tell you when you are not getting parallel execution and why not.
…
The code we are landing now is a very significant step in that direction, though there is a long road ahead.
I want to see a day where there are a variety of parallel APIs for a variety of situations. I want to see a day where you can write arbitrary JS and know that it will parallelize and run efficiently across all browsers.
– Parallel javascript (River Trail) combine is not a function [Stack Overflow, April 16-25, 2013] from which it is important to include Stephan Herhut’s answer:
There are actually two APIs:
the River Trail API as described in the GitHub prototype documentation
the Parallel JavaScript API described in the ECMAScript proposal
The two differ slightly, one difference being that the ECMAScript proposal no longer has a combine method but uses a flavor of map that offers the same functionality. Another difference is that the GitHub prototype uses index vectors whereas the proposal version uses multiple scalar indices. Your example, for the prototype, would be written as
var par_A = new ParallelArray([3,3], function(iv) {return iv[1]}); par_A.combine(2, function(i) {return this.get(i) + 1} );In the proposal version, you instead would need to write
var par_A = new ParallelArray([3,3], function(i,j) {return j}); par_A.map(2, function(e, i) { return this.get(i) + 1; });Unfortunately, multi-dimensional map is not yet implemented in Firefox, yet. You can watch bug 862897 on Mozilla’s bug tracker for progress on that front.
Although we believe that the API in the proposal is the overall nicer design, we cannot implement that API in the prototype for technical reasons. So, instead of evolving the prototype half way, we have decided to keep its API stable.
One important thing to note: the web console in Firefox seems to always use the builtin version of ParallelArray and not the one used by a particular website. As a result, if you want to play with the GitHub prototype, you best use the interactive shell from our GitHub website.
Hope this clears up the confusion.
4. Perceptual Computing
Intel is supporting developers interested in adding perceptual computing to their apps with theIntel® Perceptual Computing SDK 2013 Beta. This allows developers to use perceptual computing to create immersive applications that incorporate close-range hand and finger tracking, speech recognition, facial analysis, and 2D/3D object tracking on 2nd and 3rd generation Intel® Core™ processor-powered Ultrabook devices and PCs. Intel has also released the Creative Interactive Gesture Camera as part of the SDK, which allows developers to create the next generation of natural, immersive, innovative software applications on Intel Core processor-powered Ultrabook devices, laptops, and PCs.
How to drive experience with perceptual computing – Achin Bhowmik at TED@Intel [TEDInstitute YouTube channel, published May 6, 2013, filmed March 2013]
Head Coupled Perspective with the Intel® Perceptual Computing SDK [intelswnetwork YouTube channel, March 25, 2013]
Perceptual Computing Challenge Phase 1 Trailer [IntelPerceptual YouTube channel, March 28, 2013]
More information:
– GDC 2013: Perceptual Computing, HTML5, Havok, and More [Intel Developer Zone blog post, April 2, 2013]
– Introducing the Intel® Perceptual Computing SDK 2013 [Intel Developer Zone blog post, April 5, 2013]
– Perceptual Computing: Ten Top Resources for Developers [Intel Developer Zone blog post, Jan 4, 2013]
5. HTML5 and transparent computing
Why Intel Loves HTML5 [intelswnetwork YouTube channel, Dec 20, 2012]
App Development Without Boundaries [Intel Software Adrenaline article, April 1, 2013]
HTML5 Reaches More Devices and More Users, More Effectively
There are a lot of reasons to like HTML5. It’s advanced. It’s open. It’s everywhere. And, it’s versatile.
But Intel loves HTML5 because our vision for the future is a world where developers can create amazing cross-platform experiences that flow freely from device to device, and screen to screen—a world where apps can reach more customers and get to market faster, without boundaries.
HTML5 helps make that world possible.
…
Many Devices, One Platform [Intel Software Adrenaline article, Dec 11, 2012]
The Three Design Pillars of Transparent Computing
Welcome to the new, transparent future, where users expect software apps to work equally well no matter what device they run on, whether on an Ultrabook™ device or an Android* phone, a netbook or a tablet. This is the concept of transparent computing: with the assumed level of mobility expected, today’s consumers demand seamless transitions for a single app on multiple platforms. Developers must deliver code that works just about everywhere, with standard usability, and with strong security measures.
It’s a tall order, but help is available. As long as teams understand some of the simple design considerations and usability frameworks, which are outlined in this article, they can expand their app appeal across many profitable niches and embrace transparent computing.
There are three key design principles that comprise the transparent computing development model:
Cross-platform support
Standard usability themes
Enhanced security features
If developers can think in these broad strokes and plan accordingly, the enhanced effect of multiple platform revenues and word-of-mouth marketing can result in the income streams that your entire app portfolio will appreciate.
…
More information:
– Transparent Computing: One Platform to Develop Them All [Intel Developer Zone blog post, Sept 13, 2012]
– Transparent Computing with Freedom Engine – HTML5 and Beyond [Intel Developer Zone blog post, Oct 15, 2012]
– Intel Cloud Services Platform Private Beta [Intel Developer Zone blog post, Oct 18, 2012]
– App Show 33: A Recap of Day Two at IDF 2012 [Intel Developer Zone blog post, Nov 9, 2012]
– Cross-Platform Development: What The Stats Say [Intel Developer Zone blog post, March 7, 2013]
– Intel’s Industry Expert Examines Cross-platform Challenges and Solutions [Intel Software Adrenaline article, April 16, 2013]
– Security Lets You Make the Most of the Cloud [Intel Software Adrenaline infographic, April 10, 2013]
– Mechanisms to Protect Data in the Open Cloud [Intel Software Adrenaline whitepaper, April 10, 2013]
– Intel and VMware security solutions for business computing in the cloud [Intel Software Adrenaline solution brief, April 10, 2013]
– The Intel® HTML5 Game Development Experience at GDC 2013 [Intel Developer Zone blog post, April 5, 2013]
– Intel Developer Forum 2012 Keynote, Renée James Transcript (PDF 190KB)
… transparent computing is really about allowing experiences to seamlessly cross across different platforms, both architectures and operating system platform boundaries. It makes extensive use of technologies like HTML5 – which we’re going to talk a lot more about in a second – and in house cloud services. It represents for us the direction that we believe we need to go as an industry. And it’s the next step really beyond ubiquitous computing.
…
We need three things. We need a programming environment that crosses across platforms and architectures and the boundaries. We need a flexible and secure cloud infrastructure. And we need a more robust security architecture from client to the data center.
…
We believe that HTML5 as the application programming language is what can deliver a seamless and consistent environment across the different platforms – across PCs, tablets, telephones, and into the car.
… transparent computing obviously relies on the cloud to provide the developer and the application transparent services that move across platforms and ecosystem boundaries.
…
Intel is working on an integrated set of cloud services for developers that we would host that would give some of the core elements required to really realize our vision around transparent computing. Some of them would be location services, like Peter demonstrated this morning; digital storefronts, federated identity attestation, some of the things that are required to know who’s where on which device, sensor and context APIs for our platforms, and, of course, business analytics and business intelligence.
We will continue to roll these things out over the course of the year, so you should look for more from us on that. And as I said, these will be predominantly developer services, backend services for developers as they create application.
…
For the cloud, as we migrate resources across these different datacenters and different environments, as we move applications and workloads, we have to do it in a secure way. And one of the ways that you can do that on our platforms, on Intel’s servers, is using Trusted Execution, or TXT. TXT allows data operations to occur isolated in their own execution environment from the rest of the system and safe from malware.
…
In transparent computing, the security of the device is going to be largely around identity management. In addition to device management and application and software security, which we’ve been working on for a while, we have a lot of work to do in the area of identity and how we protect people – not only their data, but who they are at transactions, as they move these experiences across these different devices.
Identity and attestation we believe will become key underpinnings for all mobile transparent computing across different platforms and the cloud. Underneath it all, we’re going to have to have a very robust set of hardware features, which we plan to have, to secure that information. It’s going to be even more critical especially as we think about mobile devices and we think about identity and attestation that we’re able to truly secure and know that it is as safe and as known good as possible.
…
We will continue to provide direct distribution support for your applications and services through AppUp, and those of you that know about it, fabulous. If you don’t, AppUp is the opportunity to distribute through a digital storefront across 45 countries, around Intel platforms. We support Windows and Tizen and HTML5, both native and other apps.
In addition to all of that, we will be revitalizing the software business network, which we’ve used to pair you up with other Intel distributors and Intel hardware partners for exclusive offers and bundles. As we see more and more solutions in our industry, we want to make sure our developers are able to connect with people building on Intel platforms. And other additional marketing programs and that kind of thing are all going to be in the same place.
And in Q4, we will have a specific program launched on HTML5. That program will help you write applications across multiple environments. We’ll be doing training, we’ll have SDKs, there will be tools. We will be working on how you run across IOS, Android, Windows, Linux, and Tizen. So, please stay tuned and go to the developer’s center for that.
Finally, today is just the start of our discussion on transparent computing. In the era of ubiquitous computing, we had that industry vision for a decade, and now that’s become a reality. And just like when we first predicted there was going to be a billion connected computers – I still remember it, it sounded so farfetched at that point in time decades ago – transparent computing seems pretty far away from where we stand today, but we have always believed that the future of computing is what we make it. And we believe that the developers, our developers around our platform, can embrace a new paradigm for computing, a paradigm that users want us to go solve. And we look forward to being your partner for the next era of computing, and delivering it transparently.
Chip Shot: Intel Extends HTML5 Capabilities for App Developers [Intel Newsroom, Feb 25, 2013]
To complement and grow its HTML5 capabilities, Intel has acquired the developer tools and build system from appMobi. Intel also hired the tool-related technical staff to help extend Intel’s existing HTML5 capabilities and accelerate innovation and delivery of HTML5 tools for cross platform app developers. Software developers continue to embrace HTML5 as an easy to use language to create cross platform apps. Evans Data finds 43 percent of all mobile developers indicate current use of HTML5 and an additional 38 percent plan to use HTML5 in the coming year. App developers can get started building HTML5 cross-platform apps today at: software.intel.com/html5. Visit the Intel Extends HTML5 Capabilities blog post for more information.
Intel extends HTML5 capabilities [Intel Developer Zone, Feb 22, 2013]
Developers continue to tell Intel they are looking to HTML5 to help improve time to market and reduce cost for developing and deploying cross-platform apps. At the same time, app developers want to maximize reach to customers and put their apps into multiple stores. Intel is dedicated to delivering software development tools and services that can assist these developers. I am pleased to let you know that Intel recently acquired the developer tools and build system from appMobi. While we’ve changed the names of the tools, the same capabilities will be there for you. You can check these tools out and get started writing your own cross platform apps now by visiting http://software.intel.com/html5 and registering to access the tools. Developers already using the appMobi tools will be able to access their work and files as well. If you weren’t already using appMobi development tools, I invite you to try them out and see if they fit your HTML5 app development needs. You will find no usage or licensing fees for using the tools.
We are also excited to bring many of the engineers who created these tools to Intel. These talented tool engineers complement Intel’s existing HTML5 capabilities and accelerate innovation and delivery of HTML5 tools for cross platform app developers.
I hope you will visit http://software.intel.com/html5 soon to check out the tools and return often to learn about the latest HTML5 developments from Intel.
One Code Base to Rule Them All: Intel’s HTML5 Development Environment [Intel Developer Zone, March 12, 2013]
If you’re a developer searching for a great tool to add to your repertoire, you’ll want to check out Intel’s HTML5 Development Environment, an HTML5-based development platform that enables developers to create one code base and port it to multiple platforms. Intel recently purchased the developer tools and build system from appMobi:
“While we’ve changed the names of the tools, the same capabilities will be there for you. You can check these tools out and get started writing your own cross platform apps now by visiting http://software.intel.com/html5 and registering to access the tools. Developers already using the appMobi tools will be able to access their work and files as well. If you weren’t already using appMobi development tools, I invite you to try them out and see if they fit your HTML5 app development needs. You will find no usage or licensing fees for using the tools.”
You can view the video below to see what this purchase means for developers who have previously used AppMobi’s tools:
For appMobi Developers: How Does Intel’s Acquisition Affect Me? [appMobi YouTube channel, Feb 22, 2013]
What is the HTML5 Development Environment?
Intel’s HTML5 Development Environment is a cloud-based, cross-platform HTML5 application development interface that makes it as easy as possible to build an app and get it out quickly to a wide variety of software platforms. It’s easy to use, free to get started, and everything is based right within the Web browser. Developers can create their apps, test functions, and debug their projects easily, putting apps through their virtual paces in the XDK which mimics real world functionality from within the Web browser.
This environment makes it as simple as possible to develop with HTML5, but by far the biggest advantage of using this service is the ability to build one app on whatever platform that developers are comfortable with and then deploy that app across multiple platforms to all major app stores. The same code foundation can be built for iOS, Web apps, Android, etc. using just one tool to create, debug, and deploy.
As appMobi is also the most popular HTML5 application development tool on the market with over 55,000 active developers using it every month to create, debug, and deploy, this tool is especially welcome. The HTML5 Development Environment makes it easy to create one set of code and seed it across multiple cross-platforms, making the process of development – including getting apps to market – more efficient for developers.
HTML5 is quickly becoming a unifying code platform for both mobile and desktop development. Because of this, Intel and appMobi have teamed up to support quick HTML5 app development for both PCs and Ultrabook™ devices. The XDK makes developing apps as easy as possible, but the best part about it is how fast apps can go from the drawing board to consumer-facing stores. Developers can also employ the XDK to reach an ever-growing base of Ultrabook users with new apps that utilize such features as touch, accelerometer, and GPS.
The Intel HTML5 XDK tools can be used to create apps for a whole new market of consumers looking to access all the best features that an HTML5-based app for Ultrabook devices has to offer. For example, every 16 seconds, an app is downloaded via Intel’s AppUp store, and there are over 2.6 billion potential PCs reachable from this platform. Many potential monetization opportunities exist for developers by utilizing Intel Ultrabook-specific features in their apps such as touch, accelerometer, and GPS, features traditionally seen only in mobile and tablet devices. Intel’s HTML5 development tools give developers the tools to quickly create, test, and deploy HTML5-based apps that in turn can be easily funneled right into app stores and thus into the hands of PC and Ultrabook device users.
Easy build process
The App Starter offers an interactive wizard to guide developers gently through the entire build process. This includes giving developers a list of the required plugins, any certificates that might be lacking, and any assets that might need to be pulled together. It will generate the App Framework code for you.
Developers can upload their own projects; a default template is also available. A demo app is automatically generated. Once an app is ready to build, developers are given an array of different services to choose from. Click on “build now”, supply a title, description and icon in advance, and the App Starter creates an app bundle that can then be submitted to different app stores/platforms.
The XDK
One of the HTML5 Development Environment’s most appealing features is the XDK (cross-platform development kit). This powerful interface supports robust HTML5 mobile development, which includes hybrid native apps, enhanced Web apps, mobile Web apps, and classic Web apps to give developers the full range of options.
The XDK makes testing HTML5 apps as easy as possible. Various form factors – phones, tablets, laptops, etc. – can be framed around an app to simulate how it would function on a variety of devices. In addition to tablet, phone, and PC emulations, there is also a full screen simulation of different Ultrabook device displays within the XDK. This is an incredibly useful way to test specific Ultrabook features in order to make sure that they are at maximum usability for consumers. The XDK for Ultrabook apps enables testing for mouse, keyboard, and touch-enabled input, which takes the guesswork out of developing for touch-based Ultrabook devices.
One tool, multiple uses
Intel’s HTML5 Development Environment is a cross-platform development service and packaging tool. It enables HTML5 developers to package their applications, optimize those applications, test with features, and deploy to multiple services.
Rather than building separate applications for all the different platforms out there, this framework makes it possible to build just one with HTML5 and port an app to multiple platforms. This is a major timesaver, to say the very least. Developers looking for ways to streamline their work flow and get their apps quickly to end users will appreciate the user-friendly interface, rich features, and in-browser feature testing. However, the most appealing benefit is the ability to build one app instead of several different versions of one app and deploy it across multiple platforms for maximum market exposure.
Chip Shot: Intel Expands Support of HTML5 with Launch of App Development Environment [Intel Newsroom, April 10, 2013]
At IDF Beijing, Intel launched the Intel® HTML5 Development Environment that provides a cross-platform environment to develop, test and deploy applications that can run across multiple device types and operating system environments as well as be available in various application stores. Based on web standards and supported by W3C, HTML5 makes it easier for software developers to create applications once to run across multiple platforms. Intel continues to invest in HTML5 to help mobile application developers lower total costs and improve time-to-market for cross-platform app development and deployment. Developers can access the Intel HTML5 Development Environment from the Intel® Developer Zone at no cost.
Intel Cloud Services Platform Open beta [Intel Developer Zone blog post, Dec 13, 2012]
Doors to our beta open today. Welcome! For those who participated in our private beta, thank you. Your feedback and ideas were awesome and will clearly make our services more useful for other developers. We are continuing to work out the kinks in our Wave 1 Services (Identity, Location and Context) and your ideas help us build what you want to use. We are at a point where we feel ready to invite others to try our services. So, today we open the doors to the broader developer community.
Our enduring mission with the Intel Cloud Services Platform beta is to give you key building blocks to deliver transparent computing experiences that seamlessly span devices, operating systems, stores and even ecosystems. With this release, “Wave 2”, we introduce a collection of Commerce Services that provide a common billing provider for apps and services deployed on the Intel Cloud Services Platform. Other cool stuff we’ve added includes Geo Messaging and Geo Fencing to Location Based Services and Behavioral Models for cuisine preferences and destination probability to Context Services.
For the open beta, we are introducing a Technical Preview of Curation, Catalog and Security. These are early releases, so some features may change, but we want to get you coding around these, so you can tell us what you think. We know building apps that provide users with a high degree of personalization often means spending WEEKS of valuable development time. Also, developing apps that are truly cross platform, cross domain and cross industry is still extremely difficult to do. So, our objective with Curation and Catalog Services is to make it really easy for you to create complex functionalities such as schemaless catalogs, developer- or user-curated lists, and secure client-side storage of data at rest. Play around with these services and give us feedback.
In addition to new services, we have invested heavily in a scalable and robust infrastructure. You need to be able to trust that our services will just work. To help you out, we have created a support team that you’ll want to call and talk to. We have 24×7 support and various ways you can reach out to us. You can contact us by phone (1-800-257-5404, option 4), email or our community forums.
To get the latest on what’s new and useful, check out our community. If you haven’t checked out our Services – remember the door is open. Try them. If you have thoughts about our platform, I want to hear them. Find me on twitter (@PNBLive).
6. Low-Power, High-Performance Silvermont Microarchitecture
Intel’s new Atom chips peak on performance, power consumption [computerworld YouTube channel, May 7, 2013]
Intel Launches Low-Power, High-Performance Silvermont Microarchitecture [press release, May 6, 2013]
NEWS HIGHLIGHTS:
- Intel announces Silvermont microarchitecture, a new design in Intel’s 22nm Tri-Gate SoC process delivering significant increases in performance and energy efficiency.
- Silvermont microarchitecture delivers ~3x more peak performance or the same performance at ~5x lower power over current-generation Intel® Atom™ processor core.1
- Silvermont to serve as the foundation for a breadth of 22nm products targeted at tablets, smartphones, microservers, network infrastructure, storage and other market segments including entry laptops and in-vehicle infotainment.
SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 6, 2013 – Intel Corporation today took the wraps off its brand new, low-power, high-performance microarchitecture named Silvermont.
The technology is aimed squarely at low-power requirements in market segments from smartphones to the data center. Silvermont will be the foundation for a range of innovative products beginning to come to market later this year, and will also be manufactured using the company’s leading-edge, 22nm Tri-Gate SoC manufacturing process, which brings significant performance increases and improved energy efficiency.
“Silvermont is a leap forward and an entirely new technology foundation for the future that will address a broad range of products and market segments,” said Dadi Perlmutter, Intel executive vice president and chief product officer. “Early sampling of our 22nm SoCs, including “Bay Trail” and “Avoton” is already garnering positive feedback from our customers. Going forward, we will accelerate future generations of this low-power microarchitecture on a yearly cadence.”
The Silvermont microarchitecture delivers industry-leading performance-per-watt efficiency.2 The highly balanced design brings increased support for a wider dynamic range and seamlessly scales up and down in performance and power efficiency. On a variety of standard metrics, Silvermont also enables ~3x peak performance or the same performance at ~5x lower power over the current-generation Intel® Atom™ processor core.1
Silvermont: Next-Generation Microarchitecture
Intel’s Silvermont microarchitecture was designed and co-optimized with Intel’s 22nm SoC process using revolutionary 3-D Tri-gate transistors. By taking advantage of this industry-leading technology, Intel is able to provide a significant performance increase and improved energy efficiency.
Additional highlights of the Silvermont microarchitecture include:
A new out-of-order execution engine enables best-in-class, single-threaded performance.1
A new multi-core and system fabric architecture scalable up to eight cores and enabling greater performance for higher bandwidth, lower latency and more efficient out-of-order support for a more balanced and responsive system.
New IA instructions and technologies bringing enhanced performance, virtualization and security management capabilities to support a wide range of products. These instructions build on Intel’s existing support for 64-bit and the breadth of the IA software installed base.
Enhanced power management capabilities including a new intelligent burst technology, low– power C states and a wider dynamic range of operation taking advantage of Intel’s 3-D transistors. Intel® Burst Technology 2.0 support for single- and multi-core offers great responsiveness scaled for power efficiency.
“Through our design and process technology co-optimization we exceeded our goals for Silvermont,” said Belli Kuttanna, Intel Fellow and chief architect. “By taking advantage of our strengths in microarchitecture development and leading-edge process technology, we delivered a technology package that enables significantly improved performance and power efficiency – all while delivering higher frequencies. We’re proud of this accomplishment and believe that Silvermont will offer a strong and flexible foundation for a range of new, low-power Intel SoCs.”
Architecting Across a Spectrum of Computing
Silvermont will serve as the foundation for a breadth of 22nm products expected in market later this year. The performance-per-watt improvements with the new microarchitecture will enable a significant difference in performance and responsiveness for the compute devices built around these products.
Intel’s quad-core “Bay Trail” SoC is scheduled for holiday 2013 tablets and will more than double the compute performance capability of Intel’s current-generation tablet offering1. Due to the flexibility of Silvermont, variants of the “Bay Trail” platform will also be used in market segments including entry laptop and desktop computers in innovative form factors.
Intel’s “Merrifield” [aimed at high-end smartphones, successor to Medfield] is scheduled to ship to customers by the end of this year. It will enable increased performance and battery life over current-generation products1 and brings support for context aware and personal services, ultra-fast connections for Web streaming, and increased data, device and privacy protection.
Intel’s “Avoton” will enable industry-leading energy efficiency and performance-per-watt for microservers2, storage and scale out workloads in the data center. “Avoton” is Intel’s second-generation Intel® Atom™ processor SoC to provide full server product capability that customers require including 64-bit, integrated fabric, error code correction, Intel virtualization technologies and software compatibility. “Rangeley” is aimed at the network and communication infrastructure, specifically for entry-level to mid-range routers, switches and security appliances. Both products are scheduled for the second half of this year.
Concurrently, Intel is delivering industry-leading advancements on its next-generation, 22nm Haswell microarchitecture for Intel® Core™ processors to enable full-PC performance at lower power levels for innovative “2-in-1” form factors, and other mobile devices available later this year. Intel also plans to refresh its line of Intel® Xeon® processor families across the data center on 22nm technology, delivering better performance-per-watt and other features.
“By taking advantage of both the Silvermont and Haswell microarchitectures, Intel is well positioned to enable great products and experiences across the full spectrum of computing,” Perlmutter said.
1 Based on the geometric mean of a variety of power and performance measurements across various benchmarks. Benchmarks included in this geomean are measurements on browsing benchmarks and workloads including SunSpider* and page load tests on Internet Explorer*, FireFox*, & Chrome*; Dhrystone*; EEMBC* workloads including CoreMark*; Android* workloads including CaffineMark*, AnTutu*, Linpack* and Quadrant* as well as measured estimates on SPECint* rate_base2000 & SPECfp* rate_base2000; on Silvermont preproduction systems compared to Atom processor Z2580. Individual results will vary. SPEC* CPU2000* is a retired benchmark. *Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
2 Based on a geometric mean of the measured and projected power and performance of SPECint* rate_base2000 on Silvermont compared to expected configurations of main ARM*-based mobile competitors using descriptions of the architectures; assumes similar configurations. Numbers may be subject to change once verified with the actual parts. Individual results will vary. SPEC* CPU2000* is a retired benchmark; results are estimates. *Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
Software and workloads used in performance tests may have been optimized for performance only on Intel microprocessors. Performance tests, such as SYSmark and MobileMark, are measured using specific computer systems, components, software, operations and functions. Any change to any of those factors may cause the results to vary. You should consult other information and performance tests to assist you in fully evaluating your contemplated purchases, including the performance of that product when combined with other products. For more information go to: www.intel.com/performance.
For more information see the “Intel Atom Silvermont” Google search between May 6 and 8. From the accompanying Intel Next Generation Low Power Micro-Architecture webcast presentation I will include here the following slide only:
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about which it was noted in the Deep inside Intel’s new ARM killer: Silvermont [The Register, May 8, 203] report that:
Now that Intel has created an implementation of the Tri-Gate transistor technology specifically designed for low-power system-on-chip (SoC) use – and not just using the Tri-Gate process it employs for big boys such as Core and Xeon – it’s ready to rumble.
Tri-Gate has a number of significant advantages over tried-and-true planar transistors, but the one that’s of particular significance to Silvermont is that when it’s coupled with clever power management, Tri-Gate can be used to create chips that exhibit an exceptionally wide dynamic range – meaning that they can be turned waaay down to low power when performance needs aren’t great, then cranked back up when heavy lifting is required.
This wide dynamic range, Kuttanna said, obviates the need for what ARM has dubbed a big.LITTLE architecture, in which a low-power core handles low-performance tasks, then hands off processing to a more powerful core – or cores – when the need arises for more oomph.
“In our case,” he said, “because of the combination of architecture techniques as well as the process technology, we don’t really need to do that. We can go up and down the range and cover the entire performance range.” In addition, he said, Silvermont doesn’t need to crank up its power as high as some of those competitors to achieve the same amount of performance.
Or, as Perlmutter put it more succinctly, “We do big and small in one shot.”
Equally important is the fact that a wide dynamic range allows for a seamless transition from low-power, low-performance operation to high-power, high-performance operation without the need to hand off processing between core types. “That requires the state that you have been operating on in one of the cores to be transferred between the two cores,” Kuttanna said. “That requires extra time. And the long switching time translates to either a loss in performance … or it translates to lower battery life.”
Intel’s 1h20m long Intel Next Generation Low Power Micro-Architecture – Webcast is available online for further details about Silvermont. The technical overview starts at [21:50] (Slide 15) and you can also read a summary of some of the most interesting points by CNXSoft.
7. Photonic achitectures to drive the future of computing
TED and Intel microdocumentary – Mission (Im)possible: Silicon photonics featuring Mario Paniccia [TEDInstitute YouTube channel, published May 6, 2013; first shown publicly in March 2013]
[2:14] You can do now a 100 gig, you can do 200 gig. You can imagine doing a terabit per second in the next couple of years. At a terabit per second you’re talking about transferring or downloading a season of HDTV from one device to another in less than a second. It’s going to allow us to keep up with Moore’s law, and allow us to move information and constantly feed Moore’s law in our processors and so we will not be limited anymore by the interconnect, or the connectivity. [2:44]
Intel considered this innovation an inflection point already back in 2010, see:
Justin Rattner, Mario Paniccia and John Bowers describe the impact and significance of the 50G Silicon Photonics Link [channelintel YouTube channel, July 26, 2010]
Now as the technology is ready for commercialisation this year Intel is even more enthuasiastic: Justin Rattner IDF Beijing 2013 Keynote-Excerpt: Silicon Photonics [channelintel YouTube channel, May 6, 2013]
Silicon photonics uses light (photons) to move huge amounts of data at extremely high speeds over a thin optical fiber rather than using electrical signals over a copper cable. But that is not all: Silicon Photonics: Disrupting Server Design [DataCenterVideos YouTube channel, Jan 22, 2013, Recorded at the Open Compute Summit, Jan 17, 2013, Santa Clara, California]
More information:
– Intel, Facebook Collaborate on Future Data Center Rack Technologies [press release, Jan 16, 2013]
New Photonic Architecture Promises to Dramatically Change Next Decade of Disaggregated, Rack-Scale Server Designs
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Intel and Facebook* are collaborating to define the next generation of rack technologies that enables the disaggregation of compute, network and storage resources.
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Quanta Computer* unveiled a mechanical prototype of the rack architecture to show the total cost, design and reliability improvement potential of disaggregation.
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The mechanical prototype includes Intel Silicon Photonics Technology, distributed input/output using Intel Ethernet switch silicon, and supports the Intel® Xeon® processor and the next-generation system-on-chip Intel® Atom™ processor code named “Avoton.”
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Intel has moved its silicon photonics efforts beyond research and development, and the company has produced engineering samples that run at speeds of up to 100 gigabits per second (Gbps).
– Silicon Photonics Research [Intel Labs microsite]
– The Facebook Special: How Intel Builds Custom Chips for Giants of the Web [Wired, May 6, 2013]
– Meet the Future of Data Center Rack Technologies [Data Center Knowledge, Feb 20, 2013] by Raejeanne Skillern, Intel’s director of marketing for cloud computing
… Let’s now drill down into some of all-important details that shed light on what this announcement means in terms of the future of data center rack technologies.
What is Rack Disaggregation and Why is It Important?
Rack disaggregation refers to the separation of resources that currently exist in a rack, including compute, storage, networking and power distribution, into discrete modules. Traditionally, a server within a rack would each have its own group of resources. When disaggregated, resource types can then be grouped together, distributed throughout the rack, and upgraded on their own cadence without being coupled to the others. This provides increased lifespan for each resource and enables IT managers to replace individual resources instead of the entire system. This increased serviceability and flexibility drives improved total cost for infrastructure investments as well as higher levels of resiliency. There are also thermal efficiency opportunities by allowing more optimal component placement within a rack.
Intel’s photonic rack architecture, and the underlying Intel silicon photonics technologies, will be used for interconnecting the various computing resources within the rack. We expect these innovations to be a key enabler of rack disaggregation.
Why Design a New Connector?
Today’s optical interconnects typically use an optical connector called MTP. The MTP connector was designed in the mid-1980s for telecommunications and not optimized for data communications applications. At the time, it was designed with state-of-the-art materials manufacturing techniques and know-how. However, it includes many parts, is expensive, and is prone to contamination from dust.
The industry has seen significant changes over the last 25 years in terms of manufacturing and materials science. Building on these advances, Intel teamed up with Corning, a leader in optical fiber and cables, to design a totally new connector that includes state-of-the-art manufacturing techniques and abilities; a telescoping lens feature to make dust contamination much less likely; with up to 64 fibers in a smaller form factor; fewer parts – all at less cost.
What Specific Innovations Were Unveiled?
The mechanical prototype includes not only Intel silicon photonics technology, but also distributed input/output (I/O) using Intel Ethernet switch silicon, and supports Intel Xeon processor and next-generation system-on-chip Intel Atom processors code named “Avoton.” …
In fact this will lead to a CPU – Memory – Storage … disaggregation as shown by the following Intel slide:
which will lead to new “Photonic Architectures”, or more precisely “Photonic Many-Core Architectures” (or later on even “Photonic/Optical Computing”), much more efficient than anything so far. For possibilities see these starting documents in academic architecture research:
– Photonic Many-Core Architecture Study Abstract [HPEC 2008, May 29, 2008]
– Photonic Many-Core Architecture Study Presentation [HPEC 2008, Sept 23, 2008]
– Building Manycore Processor-to-DRAM Networks Using Monolithic Silicon Photonics Abstract [HPEC 2008, Sept 23, 2008]
– Building Manycore Processor-to-DRAM Networks Using Monolithic Silicon Photonics Presentation [HPEC 2008, Sept 23, 2008]
Intel made available the following Design Guide for Photonic Architecture Draft Document v 0.5 [Jan 16, 2013] where we can find the following three architectures:
3.2 Interconnect Topology with a ToR [Top of Rack] Switch
One particular implementation of the Photonically Enabled Architecture which is supported by the New Photonic Connector is shown below in Figure 3.1. In this implementation the New Photonic Connector cables are used to connect the compute systems arrayed throughout the rack to a Top of Rack switch. These intra-rack connections are currently made through electrical cabling, often using Ethernet signaling protocols at various line rates. The Photonically Enabled Architecture envisions a system where the bandwidth density, line rate scalability and easier cable routing provide value in this implementation model. One key feature of this architecture is that the line rate and optical technology are not dictated; rather the lowest cost technology which can support the bandwidth demands and provide the functionality required to support future high speed and dense applications can be deployed in this model consistent with the physical implementation model. This scalability of the architecture is a key value proposition of the design. Not only is the architecture scalable for data rate in the optical cable, but scalability of port count in each connection is also possible by altering the physical cabling and optical modules.
Figure 3.1: Open Rack with Optical Interconnect.
In this architectural concept the green lines represent optical fiber cables terminated with the New Photonic Connector. They connect the various compute systems within the rack to the Top of Rack (TOR) switch. The optical fibers could contain up to 64 fibers and still support the described New Photonic Connector mechanical guidelines.One key advantage of the optically enabled architecture is that it supports disaggregation in the rack based design of the various system functionality, which means separate and discrete portions of the system resources may be brought together. One approach to disaggregation is shown below in Figure 3.2; in the design shown here the New Photonic Connector optical cables are still connecting a computing platform to a Top of Rack switch, but the configuration of the components has been altered to allow for a more modular approach to system upgrade and serviceability. In this design the computing systems have been configured in ‘trays’ containing a single CPU die and the associated memory and control, while communication is aggregated between three of these trays through a Silicon Photonics module to a Top of Rack switch. The Top of Rack switch now communicates to the individual compute elements through a Network Interface Chip (NIC) while also supporting an array of Solid State Disk Drives (SSD’s) and potentially additional computing hardware to support the networking interfaces. This approach would allow for the modular upgrade of the computing and memory infrastructure without burdening the user with the cost of upgrading the SSD infrastructure simultaneously provided the IO infrastructure remains constant. Other options for the disaggregated system architecture are of course also possible, potentially leading to the disaggregation of the memory system as well.
Figure 3-2: Disaggregated Photonic Architecture Topology
with a ToR Switch.
This design shows 3 compute trays connected through a single New Photonic Connector enabled optical cable to a Top of Rack (TOR) switch supporting Network Interface Chip (NIC) elements, Solid State Disk Drives (SSD’s), Switching functionality and additional compute resources.3.3 Interconnect Topology with Distributed Switch Functionality
The Photonically Enabled Architecture which is supported by the New Photonic Connector cable and connector concept can support several different types of architectures, each with specific advantages. One particular type of architecture, which also takes advantage of the functionality of another Intel component, an Intel Switch Chip, is shown in Figure 3.3, shown below. In this architecture the Intel Switch Chip is configured in such a way as to support both aggregation of data streams to reduce overall fiber and cabling burden as well as a distributed switching functionality.
The distributed switch functionality supports the modular architecture which was discussed in previous sections. This concept allows for a very granular approach to the deployment of resources throughout the data center infrastructure which supports greater resiliency through a smaller impact from a failure event. The concept also supports a more granular approach to upgradability and potentially could enable re-partitioning of the architecture in such a way that system resources can be better shared between different compute elements.
In Figure 3.3 an example is shown of 100Gbps links between compute systems and a remote storage node. Both PCIe and Ethernet networking protocols may be used in the same rack system, all enabled by the functionality of the Intel Switch Chip (or Device). It should be understood that the components in this vision could be swapped dynamically and asymmetrically so that improvements in bandwidth between particular nodes could be upgraded individually or new functionality could be incorporated as it becomes available.
Figure 3.3: An example of a Photonically Enabled Architecture
relying upon the New Photonic Connector concept, Silicon Photonics
and the Intel Switch Chip (or Device).
In this example the switching between the rack nodes is accomplished in a distributed manner through the use of these switch chips.
Note that there is very little information about Kranich’s manufacturing technology winning cards. I found only this one although there might be several others as well.
8. The two-person Executive Office and Intel’s transparent computing strategy as presented so far
Newly Elected Intel CEO, Brian Krzanich Talks About His New Job [channelintel YouTube channel, May 2, 2013]
Intel Board Elects Brian Krzanich as CEO [Intel Newsroom, May 2, 2013]
SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 2, 2013 – Intel Corporation announced today that the board of directors has unanimously elected Brian Krzanich as its next chief executive officer (CEO), succeeding Paul Otellini. Krzanich will assume his new role at the company’s annual stockholders’ meeting on May 16.
Krzanich, Intel’s chief operating officer since January 2012, will become the sixth CEO in Intel’s history. As previously announced, Otellini will step down as CEO and from the board of directors on May 16.
“After a thorough and deliberate selection process, the board of directors is delighted that Krzanich will lead Intel as we define and invent the next generation of technology that will shape the future of computing,” said Andy Bryant, chairman of Intel.
“Brian is a strong leader with a passion for technology and deep understanding of the business,” Bryant added. “His track record of execution and strategic leadership, combined with his open-minded approach to problem solving has earned him the respect of employees, customers and partners worldwide. He has the right combination of knowledge, depth and experience to lead the company during this period of rapid technology and industry change.”
Krzanich, 52, has progressed through a series of technical and leadership roles since joining Intel in 1982.
“I am deeply honored by the opportunity to lead Intel,” said Krzanich. “We have amazing assets, tremendous talent, and an unmatched legacy of innovation and execution. I look forward to working with our leadership team and employees worldwide to continue our proud legacy, while moving even faster into ultra-mobility, to lead Intel into the next era.”
The board of directors elected Renée James, 48, to be president of Intel. She will also assume her new role on May 16, joining Krzanich in Intel’s executive office.
“I look forward to partnering with Renée as we begin a new chapter in Intel’s history,” said Krzanich. “Her deep understanding and vision for the future of computing architecture, combined with her broad experience running product R&D and one of the world’s largest software organizations, are extraordinary assets for Intel.”
As chief operating officer, Krzanich led an organization of more than 50,000 employees spanning Intel’s Technology and Manufacturing Group, Intel Custom Foundry, NAND Solutions group, Human Resources, Information Technology and Intel’s China strategy.
James, 48, has broad knowledge of the computing industry, spanning hardware, security, software and services, which she developed through leadership positions at Intel and as chairman of Intel’s software subsidiaries — Havok, McAfee and Wind River. She also currently serves on the board of directors of Vodafone Group Plc and VMware Inc. and was chief of staff for former Intel CEO Andy Grove.
Additional career background on both executives is available at newsroom.intel.com.
The prominent first external reaction to that: Intel Promotes From Within, Naming Brian Krzanich CEO [Bloomberg YouTube channel, May 2, 2013]
Intel’s Krzanich the 6th Inside Man to Be CEO [Bloomberg YouTube channel, May 2, 2013]
Can Intel Reinvent Itself… Again? [Bloomberg YouTube channel, May 3, 2013]
Brian M. Krzanich, Chief Executive Officer (Elect), Executive Office
Brian M. Krzanich will become the chief executive officer of Intel Corporation on May 16. He will be the sixth CEO in the company’s history, succeeding Paul S. Otellini.
Krzanich has progressed through a series of technical and leadership roles at Intel, most recently serving as the chief operating officer (COO) since January 2012. As COO, his responsibilities included leading an organization of more than 50,000 employees spanning Intel’s Technology and Manufacturing Group, Intel Custom Foundry, supply chain operations, the NAND Solutions group, human resources, information technology and Intel’s China strategy.
His open-minded approach to problem solving and listening to customers’ needs has extended the company’s product and technology leadership and created billions of dollars in value for the company. In 2006, he drove a broad transformation of Intel’s factories and supply chain, improving factory velocity by more than 60 percent and doubling customer responsiveness. Krzanich is also involved in advancing the industry’s transition to lower cost 450mm wafer manufacturing through the Global 450 Consortium as well as leading Intel’s strategic investment in lithography supplier ASML.
Prior to becoming COO, Krzanich held senior leadership positions within Intel’s manufacturing organization. He was responsible for Fab/Sort Manufacturing from 2007-2011 and Assembly and Test from 2003 to 2007. From 2001 to 2003, he was responsible for the implementation of the 0.13-micron logic process technology across Intel’s global factory network. From 1997 to 2001, Krzanich served as the Fab 17 plant manager, where he oversaw the integration of Digital Equipment Corporation’s semiconductor manufacturing operations into Intel’s manufacturing network. The assignment included building updated facilities as well as initiating and ramping 0.18-micron and 0.13-micron process technologies. Prior to this role, Krzanich held plant and manufacturing manager roles at multiple Intel factories.
Krzanich began his career at Intel in 1982 in New Mexico as a process engineer. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from San Jose State University and has one patent for semiconductor processing. Krzanich is also a member of the Board of Directors of Lilliputian Corporation and the Semiconductor Industry Association.
Renée J. James, President (Elect), Executive Office
Renée J. James is president of Intel Corporation and, with the CEO, is part of the company’s two-person Executive Office.
James has broad knowledge of the computing industry, spanning hardware, security, software and services, which she developed through product R&D leadership positions at Intel and as chairman of Intel’s software subsidiaries — Havok, McAfee and Wind River.
During her 25-year career at Intel, James has spearheaded the company’s strategic expansion into providing proprietary and open source software and services for applications in security, cloud-based computing, and importantly, smartphones. In her most recent role as executive vice president and general manager of the Software and Services Group, she was responsible for Intel’s global software and services strategy, revenue, profit, and product R&D. In this role, James led Intel’s strategic relationships with the world’s leading device and enterprise operating systems companies. Previously, she was the director and COO of Intel Online Services, Intel’s datacenter services business. James was also part of the pioneering team working with independent software vendors to port applications to Intel Architecture and served as chief of staff for former Intel CEO Andy Grove.
James began her career with Intel through the company’s acquisition of Bell Technologies. She holds a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Oregon.
James also serves as a non-executive director on the Vodafone Group Plc Board of Directors and is a member of the Remuneration Committee. She is an independent director on the VMware Inc. Board of Directors and is a member of the Audit Committee. She is also a member of the C200.
Chip Shot: Renée James Selected as Recipient of C200’s STEM Innovator Luminary Award [IntelPR in Intel Newsroom, April 13, 2013]
Renée J. James, Intel executive vice president and general manager of the Software and Services Group, has earned the prestigious honor of being the recipient of the STEM Innovator Luminary Award, presented by the Committee of 200 (C200). C200 is an international, non-profit organization of the most powerful women who own or run companies, or who lead major divisions of large corporations. A STEM Innovator is the leader of a technology-based business who has exemplified unique vision and success in science, technology, engineering or math-based industries, which James has continually demonstrated throughout her career at Intel. This includes growing Intel’s software and services business worldwide, driving open standards within the software ecosystem and providing leadership as chairman for both McAfee and Wind River Systems, Intel wholly owned subsidiaries.
Renée James keynote delivering Intel’s new strategy called ‘Transparent Computing’ at the IDF 2012 [TomsHardwareItalia YouTube channel, Sept 13, 2012]
IDF 2012 Day 2:
– Intel Developer Forum 2012 Keynote, Renée James Transcript (PDF 190KB)
– Intel Developer Forum 2012 Keynote, Renée James Presentation (PDF 7MB)
Intel to Software Developers: Embrace Era of Transparent Computing [press release, Sept 12, 2012]
NEWS HIGHLIGHTS
- Intel reinforces commitment to ensuring HTML5 adoption accelerates and remains an open standard, providing developers a robust application environment that will run best on Intel® architecture.
- New McAfee Anti-Theft product is designed to protect consumers’ property and personal information on Ultrabook™ devices.
- The Intel® Developer Zone is a new program designed to provide software developers and businesses with a single point of access to tools, communities and resources to help them engage with peers.
INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, San Francisco, Sept. 12, 2012 – Today at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF), Renée James, senior vice president and general manager of the Software and Services Group at Intel Corporation, outlined her vision for transparent computing. This concept is made possible only through an “open” development ecosystem where software developers write code that will run across multiple environments and devices. This approach will lessen the financial and technical compromises developers make today.
“With transparent computing, software developers no longer must choose one environment over another in order to maintain profitability and continue to innovate,” said James. “Consumers and businesses are challenged with the multitude of wonderful, yet incompatible devices and environments available today. It’s not about just mobility, the cloud or the PC. What really matters is when all of these elements come together in a compelling and transparent cross-platform user experience that spans environments and hardware architectures. Developers who embrace this reality are the ones who will remain relevant.”
Software developers are currently forced to choose between market reach, delivering innovation or staying profitable. By delivering the best performance with Intel’s cross-platform tools, security solutions and economically favorable distribution channels, the company continues to take a leadership position in defining and driving the open software ecosystem.
Develop to Run Many Places
While developers regularly express their desire to write once and run on multiple platforms, currently there is little incentive for any of the curators of these environments to provide cross-platform support. Central to Intel’s operating system of choice strategy, the company believes a solution to the cross-platform challenge is HTML5. With it, developers no longer have to make trade-offs between profitability, market participation or delivering innovation in their products. Consumers benefit by enabling their data, applications and identity to seamlessly transition from one operating system or device environment to another.
During her keynote, James emphasized the importance of HTML5 and related standards and that the implementation of this technology by developers should remain open to provide a robust application development environment. James reinforced Intel’s commitment to HTML5 and JavaScript by announcing that Mozilla, in collaboration with Intel, is working on a native implementation of River Trail technology. It is available now for download as a plug-in and will become native in Firefox browsers to bring the power of parallel computing to Web applications in 2013.
Security at Intel Provides an Inherent Advantage
Security at Intel provides an inherent advantage in terms of its approach. For over a decade, Intel has applied its technology leadership to security platform features aimed at keeping computing safe, from devices and networks to the data center. Today, the company extends the efficacy of security by combining hardware and software security solutions and co-designing products with McAfee. James invited McAfee Co-President Michael DeCesare to join her onstage to emphasize the important role security takes as the threat landscape continues to become more complex both in terms of volume and sophistication. DeCesare also highlighted the opportunity for developers to participate in securing the industry.
Touching on where McAfee is heading with Intel, DeCesare discussed the importance of understanding where computing is going overall. He noted examples including applications moving to the cloud, as well as IT seeking ways to reduce power consumption and wrestling with challenges associated with big data and the consumerization of IT. DeCesare also highlighted the value of maintaining the user experience and introduced McAfee Anti-Theft security software. Designed to protect consumers’ property and personal information for Ultrabook™ devices, this latest product enhancement is a collaborative effort with Intel to develop anti-theft software using Intel technologies that provide device and data protection.
DeCesare reiterated the opportunity for developers through the McAfee Security Innovation Alliance (SIA). The technology partnering program helps accelerate development of interoperable- security products, simplify integration of these products and delivers solutions to maximize the value of existing customer investments. The program also is intended to reduce both time-to-problem resolution and operational costs.
Developers’ Access to Resources Made Easy
James also announced the Intel® Developer Zone, a program designed to provide software developers and businesses with a single point of access to tools, communities and resources to help them engage with peers. Today’s software ecosystem is full of challenges and opportunities in such areas as technology powering new user experiences, expectations from touchscreens, battery life requirements, data security and cloud accessibility. The program is focused on providing resources to help developers learn and embrace these evolving market shifts and maximize development efforts across many form factors, platforms and operating systems.
Development Resources: Software tools, training, developer guides, sample code and support will help developers create new user experiences across many platforms. In the fourth quarter of this year, Intel Developer Zone will introduce an HTML5 Developer Zone focused on cross-platform apps, guiding developers through actual deployments of HTML5 apps on Apple* iOS*, Google* Android*, Microsoft* Windows* and Tizen*.
Business Resources: Global software distribution and sales opportunities will be available via the Intel AppUp® center and co-marketing resources. Developers can submit and publish apps to multiple Intel AppUp center affiliate stores for Ultrabook devices, tablets and desktop systems. The Intel Developer Zone also provides opportunities for increased awareness and discoverability through the Software Business Network, product showcases and marketing programs.
Active Communities: With Intel Developer Zone, developers can engage with experts in their field – both from Intel and the industry – to share knowledge, get support and build relationships. In the Ultrabook community, users will find leading developers sharing ideas and recommendations on how to create compelling Microsoft* Windows* 8 apps for the latest touch- and sensor-enabled Ultrabook devices.
Mobile Insights: Emerging Technologies [channelintel YouTube channel, Feb 26, 2013]
Mobile Insights: Software Development in Africa [channelintel YouTube channel, March 5, 2013]
Intel Developer Forum: Executives Talk Evolution of Computing with Devices that Touch People’s Daily Lives [press release, April 11, 2011]
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Renée James: Creating the Ultimate User Experience
During her keynote, James discussed Intel’s transition from a semiconductor company to a personal computing company, and emphasized the importance of delivering compelling user experiences across a range of personal computing devices. To develop and enable the best experiences, James announced a strategic relationship with Tencent*, China’s largest Internet company, to create a joint innovation center dedicated to delivering best-in-class mobile Internet experiences. Engineers from both companies will work together to further the mobile computing platforms and other technologies.James also announced new collaborations for the Intel AppUpSM center and the Intel AppUp Developer Program in China to help assist in the creation of innovative applications for Intel Atom processor-based devices. Chinese partners supporting this effort include Neusoft*, Haier* and Hasee* and Shenzhen Software Park*.
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Related presentation: Renee James: The Intel User Experience (English PDF 9.1MB)
How Intel’s new president Renee James learned the ropes from the legendary Andy Grove [VentureBeat, May 2, 2013]
Renee James became the president of Intel today. That’s the highest position a woman has ever held at the world’s largest chip maker. Alongside new CEO Brian Krzanich, James will be part of the two-person executive office running Intel. She rose to that position through tenacity and leadership during a career at Intel, but she was also part of a very exclusive club.
The 25-year Intel veteran was one of the early young employees who served as “technical assistant ” to former chief executive Andy Grove, the hard-charging leader who went by the motto “Only the Paranoid Survive.” In that position, she was not just an executive assistant. Rather, her job was to make sure that Grove always looked good and was up-to-speed on his personal use of technology. She helped him prepare his PowerPoint presentations and orchestrated his speeches. As a close confidant, she had close access to one of the most brilliant leaders of the tech industry.
Intel’s executives needed technical assistants in the way that contemporaries like Bill Gates, who grew up as a programmer, did not. Intel’s leaders were technically savvy manufacturing and chip experts, but they were not born as masters of the ins and outs of operating PowerPoint. So the company developed the technical assistant as a formal position, and each top executive had one. That position has turned out to be an important one; executives mentored younger, more promising employees. These employees then moved on to positions of great authority within Intel.
What makes James’s career so interesting — and a stand out — is that unlike Intel’s early leaders, she wasn’t a chip engineer or manufacturing executive. She has an MBA from the University of Oregon, and she pitched no-chip businesses for Intel to enter and became chief operating officer of Intel Online Services.
James will start her new position on May 16 and will report to Krzanich.
James served under Grove for a longer time than most technical assistants did, as she proved indispensable to him. James said that she learned a huge amount from Grove, and she took lots of notes on the things that he said that made an impression on her. Paul Otellini, the retiring CEO of Intel, also served as a technical assistant for Grove. The technical assistant job was one of those unsung positions that required a lot of wits. James had to pull together lots of Intel resources to set up, rehearse, and execute Grove’s major keynote speeches.
She was eventually given the more impressive title of “chief of staff.” During the dotcom era, she moved out on her own to set up an ill-fated business. She was in charge of Intel’s move into operating data centers that could be outsourced to other companies.
Under James’ plan, Intel would set up data centers with the same discipline and precision that it did with its chip manufacturing plants. It would build out the huge server rooms in giant warehouses and then rent the computing power to smaller companies. The business was much like Amazon’s huge web services business today. But Intel was too early and on the wrong side of the dotcom crash. When things fell apart in 2001, so did Intel’s appetite for noncore businesses. Intel shut down James’ baby.
But she went on to manage a variety of other businsses, including Intel’s security, software, services, and other nonchip businesses that have become more important as Intel takes on its mantle as a leader of the technology industry rather than just a component maker. That’s one of the legacies of Grove, who saw that Intel had to do a lot of the fundamental research and development in the computer industry, in part because nobody except Microsoft had the profits to invest in R&D.
As executive vice president of software and services, James managed Intel software businesses, including Havok, McAfee, and Wind River. During her tenure over software, Intel struggled in its alliance with Nokia to create the Meego mobile operating system, and it eventually gave up on it.
Among the other technical assistants at Intel were Sean Maloney, a rising star who retired last year after having a a stroke in 2010; venture capitalist Alex Wong; and Anand Chandrasekher, who left Intel and is now the chief marketing officer at rival Qualcomm.
Windows Phone 8: getting much closer to a unified development platform with Windows 8
After a broad but concise overview of the Windows Phone 8 development platform there is just one topic for me worth to consider in detail here:
How close is the Windows Phone 8 development platform to Windows 8?
First here is an illustration of what developers have in general:
I will proceed with that elaboration in the following sections:
- Windows Phone 8 development platform overview
- Native C++ and DirectX brought to the platform
- Partial WinRT support with phone extensions but no WinJS support
- Managed (.NET) code with XAML and a number of enhancements
– Core information
– XAML related information
– Code sharing between Windows platforms
– Code sharing with 3d party frameworks
– Cloud backends made super-easy: Windows Azure Mobile Services - Web based, HTML5/JavaScript et al, client applications
1. Windows Phone 8 development platform overview
Build 2012: Microsoft launches SDK for Windows Phone 8 [networkworld, Oct 30, 2012]
The full transcript of his speech is here, while the full video record of his announcement is in Keynote 1 BUT START AT [01:11:20] ESSENTIALLY AT [01:13:00]. Also read his blog post on Announcing the new Windows Phone 8 Developer Platform [Windows Phone Developer blog, Oct 30, 2012] from which it is especially important to draw the attention of developer oriented people to the referred from there Introducing Windows Phone SDK 8.0 [The Visual Studio Blog, Oct 30, 2012], Touring the Windows Phone 8 Dev Center [The Visual Studio Blog, Nov 2, 2012] and Announcing the release of the .NET Framework for Windows Phone 8 [.NET Framework blog, Oct 30, 2012] posts, and the following excerpts from the related keynote part:
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[01:19:38] Back in June I talked about how Windows Phone 8 was a foundational release, because we now share a common core with Windows. On top of this common core we have a common API set. You can now build shared components that are identical to both Windows and Windows Phone and use them inside of those apps. [01:20:00]
Following that: first a picture-sharing app is shown … already paired the phone and tablet using NFC … then it is shown how a photo image-editing app written 10 years ago in C++ can be wrapped as a Windows runtime component, so it could be called from C# in Windows Phone app … next how simple is to reuse the exact same code throughout the project inside of Windows 8 …
[01:24:17] talk about some of the new features coming to the Windows Phone 8 platform. …
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See all these other features that we’ve been adding to the platform over the last release. I want to highlight a lot of them there. I want to highlight a few. You asked us to make it easier to build fast and fluid UI. We delivered. We’re writing more controls to the platform and we’ve dramatically improved the performance of the existing controls. Your apps will be noticeably faster when you use them. You asked us to do more with Live Tiles. We delivered. We now support Live Tiles in three sizes. We also allow you to show notifications on the launch screen, and you can create and update the wallpaper of the phone directly from within your application.
You asked for speech support. We now support having full conversations in your app. So, not only can you launch apps, you can control them using speech. We’ve improved you’ve asked for us to improve our dev center and store. We’ve streamlined our store. It’s now more efficient to submit and update your apps, and you have more ways to monetize your apps in our store. You asked for deeper integration with the phone experiences. We delivered. We’ve opened up our camera and now we support a feature called Lenses. We’re actually better multitasking. We support location-based applications running in the background, as well as first-class support for VoIP and video chat.
You asked for us to improve and to give you advanced networking capabilities. We’ve heard your request. For Bluetooth data transfer, peer networking with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, as well as proximity connect with NFC. Our response is done, done and done. In total we’ve delivered on over 90 percent of the top developer requests. And over the next few days you will be able to have over 20 sessions to go into detail about how to use these in your apps. [01:26:40]
Then an AR Drone Quadcopter app is shown which comes with a native code library that allows communication with it and a front end built out in XAML. What follows that is a talk about native games, supporting C++ code, which allows to write high-performance physics engines, as well as audio libraries, and get access to low-level, hardware-accelerated APIs like Direct3D, with fully programmable shader support, both pixel and vertex shaders. … Then Unity is showing the first-ever demo of the Unity gaming engine running on a Windows Phone. …
After that Richard Kerris from Nokia is coming to the stage first making publicity for the Lumia 920 and finishing with the annoumcement that every attendee will get a Lumia 920. Finally Kevin Gallo is closing with the announcement that Microsoft will reduce the individual registration for their dev center from the normal $99 to $8 for the next eight days
For a general overview by the keynoter see: Windows Phone 8 developer platform highlights [Kevin Gallo on Windows Phone Developer Blog, Nov 5, 2012] which is drawing attention to the following capabilities
C++ … Introducing Direct3D app … New and expansive Windows 8 aligned APIs … XAML app improvements … XAML control improvements (LongListSelector control, Map control, WebBrowser control, Control performance) … Windows Runtime Components … C++ code reuse … XAML and Direct3D (<DrawingSurface/>, <DrawingSurfaceBackgroundGrid/>) … Text improvements … New gesture support … Multi-res support … Networking improvements … App performance (Compile in the cloud, Startup splash screen, Binary XAML, Off-thread input) … Camera and Lenses … Wallet … In-app purchasing … App-to-app communication … Lock notifications, wallpaper and new Live Tile support … Speech (Voice commands, APIs for in-app dialog, Text-to-speech) … VoIP platform … Enterprise app support … Contacts and calendar … Fast application resume … Location aware apps
As Kevin Gallo told on the keynote there were detailed sessions about the Windows Phone 8 development platform. Those sessions are the following ones:
When you click on the above image or HERE you will get an expanded PDF version of that which contains the abstracts to the sessions as well links to the Channel 9 video records and the associated PowerPoint slidesets. There is also another PDF document which contains related information excerpts from MSDN and elsewhere for those sessions.
There are certainly other reports on the new platform which are worth to link here:
– All the New Features for Windows Phone 8 Developers [DZone, Nov 4, 2012]
– What’s new in Windows Phone SDK 8.0 [blur blur blur, Nov 5, 2012]
– WP8 Developer Series–Getting to know Common API’s for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 [Nithin Mohan T K’s Blog Space, Nov 4, 2012]
– Windows Phone 8 unveiled: all the new features for developers [qmatteoq.com Diary of a Windows Phone develop, Oct 31, 2012]
– The Windows Phone 8 Features You Didn’t See Yesterday [RYANLOWDERMILK.COM, Oct 31, 2012]
– Nokia’s Marco Argenti on Windows Phone 8 [Nokia Conversations, Nov 1, 2012]
– HIGHLY RECOMMENDED What’s new in Windows Phone 8 [Nokia Developer Wiki, Nov 1, 2012]
– Windows Phone development – useful links [Nokia Developer Wiki, Nov 1, 2012]
– Nokia Developer – Learn [interactive webinars announced – Nov 14,15, 21,22, 28 and 29 – for Lumia Windows Phone 8 app projects, Oct 30, 2012]
– 8 days of Windows Phone 8 [by Geert van der Cruijsen, Oct 30, 31×2, Nov 2, 3×2, 4, ??]
And there are some very general guides from Microsoft and elsewhere as:
– Windows Phone 8 Reviewer’s Guide [Microsoft, Oct 17, 2012]
– What’s new in Windows Phone SDK 8.0 [Windows Phone Dev Center, Oct 26, 2012]
– WindowsPhone magazine Issue #1 [November 2012]
– Getting started with developing for Windows Phone [MSDN Library, 2012, Oct 26]
– Windows Phone 8 How-to [Windows Phone, Oct 29, 2012]
2. Native C++ and DirectX brought to the platform
Choosing the right project template for your game for Windows Phone 8 [MSDN Library, Oct 26, 2012]
Windows Phone 8 applications belong to one of two categories. Managed apps are based on managed code, but you can also invoke native code from this application type. The other application type is referred to as a “Direct3D app”. You cannot invoke managed code from within a Direct3D app. In Windows Phone 8, many of the phone features are exposed via Windows Phone Runtime APIs, which are accessible from both native and managed code. Many application scenarios can be achieved with either a managed app or a Direct3D app. But even though you can achieve similar results, there are some big differences in the structure, implementation, and available APIs for each application type. It’s important that you understand these differences and choose the right model for you app before you start coding.
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Direct3D – Direct3D apps are intended for apps for which the highest-possible performance is required, such as complex 3D games. There are no built-in controls or other user interface primitives. Pure native applications are easier to port to Windows 8 native applications as well as other platforms that support native code.
For more information on creating Direct3D apps, see Direct3D app development for Windows Phone 8.
Building C++ Apps for Windows Phone 8 [Channel 9 discussion video, Oct 30, 2012]
C++ and Windows Phone 8 Development – Ask questions about writing C++ components for Windows Phone 8 apps or writing DirectX apps for WP8 with Window Phone team members Peter Torr and Tim Laverty.
So it is not only for gaming: Speed: in which MSDOS meets Windows Phone 8 [Shawn Hargreaves Blog, Nov 1, 2012]
… One of our goals in supporting native C++ was to make it easier to port existing software and frameworks to the platform …
Porting Existing C++ Code to Windows 8/Windows Phone 8 [InfoQ, Oct 30, 2012]
When moving a C++ application to Windows 8/Windows Phone 8 the first consideration is the user interface. Few, if any, applications have a user interface that is appropriate for the touch-centric UI that Windows 8 showcases. There are four options for the UI layer:
- DirectX with C++
- XAML with C++
- XAML with .NET
- HTML5 over Windows RT
Since the UI needs to be rewritten rather than ported, coverage of these technologies it outside the scope of this report.
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Tarek Madkour of Microsoft [Bringing existing C++ code to Windows Store apps, BUILD, Oct 30, 2012] recommends that developers porting existing libraries to use the Windows Application Certification Kit instead of the macro. To do this, create a new XAML based application and reference all of the libraries you want to port. You then need to run it once so that it is deployed on the computer. Next you run the Certification Kit against the application to generate a list of API calls that need to be replaced or removed.
Another resource in this area is the Alternatives to Windows APIs in Windows Store apps list.
Threading
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Async
…
Exposing Libraries
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How Visual Studio Improves C++ Performance [InfoQ, Oct 30, 2012]
Today at Build Jim Radigan and Don McCrady gave a presentation [It’s all about performance: Using Visual C++ 2012 to make the best use of your hardware, Build, Oct 31, 2012] that discussed how the improved Visual Studio 2012 (VS2012) compiler can benefit developers programming in C++. Radigan began his talk, “Its all about performance: Using Visual C++ 2012 to Maximize Your Hardware”, by giving a brief historical overview of the increases in computer power since the introduction of the original Pentium.
That first Pentium had 3.1 million transistors while the current generation Ivy Bridge CPUs have 1.4 billion transistors. As McCrady would later note, C++ AMP allows developers to utilize everything with one single langauge– both the CPU, and the GPU that is increasingly present on CPU dies (in addition to the GPUs present in discrete expansion cards.)
While using code targeting C++ AMP can frequently provide the best performance versus generic code, Radigan continued by noting that the auto-vectorization and auto-parallelization optimizations present in VS2012 mean that in many cases recompiling existing C++ code can provide immediate benefits. As a result the optimizer present in VS2012 is double the size of previous versions.
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Apollo has landed [Shawn Hargreaves Blog, Oct 30, 2012]
The developer SDK for Windows Phone 8 (codename Apollo) is now available for download from an internet near you. Which means I can finally talk about what I’ve been working on this past year! I am dev lead for graphics, so I’ll probably have most to say about that area, but knowing me I’m sure I’ll find other topics to write about too.
This first post is basically just a bullet list summarizing the graphics capabilities of the platform:
- Write games in high performance native C++
- Or you can interop between XAML and C++/D3D, similar to the Silverlight/XNA interop feature in Mango
- Graphics APIs are a subset of Windows 8, so it’s easy to move code back and forth between phones, tablets, and desktop PCs
- Direct3D 11.1 API, targeting feature level 9.3 hardware capabilities
- DirectXMath provides high performance SIMD vector math, optimized for SSE and NEON
- XAudio2 provides game focused audio playback, mixing, and effects (ok, you got me, this one isn’t graphics)
- Not all Windows graphics components are supported on phone
- No WIC – use DirectXTex to preconvert textures to .dds format, thenDirectXTK to load them
- No Direct2D or DirectWrite – use DirectXTK instead
- No legacy features such as GDI, D3DX, or fixed function – parts of these can be replaced with DirectXTK
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So what notable D3D11 features are NOT included in feature level 9.3?
- No geometry shaders
- No hull/domain shaders
- No DirectCompute
- No resource arrays
- No BC4–BC7 compression
- No vertex texture fetch
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Anything else important you should know?
- Windows Phone 8 uses a tiled GPU architecture, so for best performance you’ll need to understand how to use the D3D11_MAP_WRITE and D3D11_COPY flags to specify DISCARD and NOOVERWRITE behaviors, and when to call ID3D11DeviceContext1::DiscardView (ooh, good topic for future articles)
- Native D3D apps handle their own rotation: this isn’t automatic like in XNA.
- Windows Phone 8 device manufacturers can choose one of three screen resolutions:
- 480×800
- 720×1280
- 768×1280
Windows Phone 8 includes the same hardware scaler feature as WP7. Use this to draw at the same resolution on all devices (simplifying development) or to draw fewer pixels for better performance. Use the new DXGI_SCALING_ASPECT_RATIO_STRETCHED mode.
See also: Differences in game development between the phone and the desktop [MSDN Library, Oct 26, 2012]
Starting with Windows Phone 8, Windows Phone apps can be created using native code and Direct3D. This means that a lot of code and programming techniques are the same when creating games for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. However, due to the smaller form factor, the different input mechanisms, and the set of available APIs, there are some significant differences that you need to consider when creating a game for the phone platform. This topic highlights the major areas where the phone platform is different.
This topic contains the following sections.
- Direct3D APIs
- Loading textures
- Drawing 2-D graphics
- Input
- Text input
- Background audio
- The Marble Maze sample for Windows Phone 8
- DirectX Tool Kit
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New tools for Windows Phone 8 save developers time and money [Windows Phone Developer Blog, Oct 30, 2012]
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Native gaming
One significant feature of the Windows Phone 8 development platform is support for the native C++ programming model. Native code offers a number of benefits related to code reuse, and it opens up opportunities for game engines, physics, animation, audio libraries, and more. The following organizations are announcing Windows Phone 8 support:
- Unity Technology demonstrated today on stage at //Build for the first time, the Unity tools and engine that they used to create a game for Windows Phone 8. Read the Unity announcement and if you’re at //Build visit Unity Technology on the expo floor.
- Havok, who showed an early preview of Windows Phone support last June, is showing off its Vision Engine at //Build in the Gaming session (which will be live streamed). Read Havok’s announcement. //Build attendees can visit Havok on Windows Phone Booth.
- Marmalade announced support for Windows Phone 8 with the Marmalade SDK. //Build attendees can visit Marmalade and see a demo on Windows Phone Booth.
- Cocos2d gaming framework is coming to Windows Phone 8. See the details.
- SharpDX, an open-source C#/Managed DirectX API for.NET, is now available for Windows Phone 8.
- Ogre, the popular open-source 3-D graphics rendering engine, is coming to Windows Phone Check the preview.
- FMOD Ex, the popular audio library, is coming to Windows Phone 8.
- Autodesk Scaleform is confirmed for Windows Phone 8.
- Audiokinetic Wwise audio pipeline solution is confirmed for Windows Phone 8.
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3. Partial WinRT support with phone extensions but no WinJS support
Windows Phone API reference [MSDN Library, Oct 26, 2012]
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Windows Phone Runtime API
Windows Phone Runtime is a subset of native API that is built into the operating system. It is implemented in C++ and projected into C#, VB.NET, and C++, making it easy for you to consume naturally in the language of your choice. Developers that are familiar with the Windows Runtime will find the Windows Phone Runtime easy to learn. The frameworks are very similar. The following diagram shows the relationship between Windows Phone Runtime and Windows Runtime in terms of the API surface area it implements.
The diagram has three distinct areas and these are described as follows:
The set of Windows Runtime API not supported on Windows Phone 8. The API surface area of Windows Runtime is very large, with over 11,000 members. We’ve adopted a subset for Windows Phone 8 that allows you to build compelling phone scenarios. Area 1 in the diagram above represents the APIs that are not available on Windows Phone 8.
- The set of Windows Runtime API adopted for Windows Phone 8. This is represented by area 2 in the above diagram and consists of approximately 2,800 members. For some types, we have not implemented certain members. For others we have added additional members to support phone-only features. In both cases, these differences are noted in the API reference documentation.
- We’ve added key APIs needed to build great apps for the phone. These are represented by area 3 in the diagram and total about 600 members. For example, we have brand-new APIs for speech synthesis and recognition, VOIP, and other features. Creating these as Windows Runtime style APIs means you can use them regardless of the programming language you use for your app.
The Windows Phone Runtime API consists of areas 2 and 3 in the above diagram. For more information, see Windows Phone Runtime API.
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Supported languagesThe following table shows what programming languages are supported in Windows Phone compared to Windows 8. Whether your development background is with native or managed code, you can build great apps for Windows Phone using your language of choice. JavaScript is not supported on Windows Phone 8.
4. Managed (.NET) code with XAML and a number of enhancements
Core information
Choosing the right project template for your game for Windows Phone 8 [MSDN Library, Oct 26, 2012]
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Managed – The UI framework for managed apps, including controls and page navigation, means application development is quicker and easier. Access to the Windows Phone Runtime library, the DrawingSurface control, which allows you to render graphics into a XAML page using Direct3D, and the ability to invoke native assemblies from managed code means that managed apps have comparable functionality and performance to native-only apps. There are several useful features, like Live Tiles, the Background Transfer Service, and several of the built-in Launchers and Choosers that can only be used in managed apps applications. Managed apps apps will also allow you to reuse most code from Windows Phone OS 7.1 applications.
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XAML and Direct3D apps for Windows Phone 8 [MSDN Library, Oct 26, 2012]
This topic describes the structure of a XAML and Direct3D app, and walks through the project template that’s included in Windows Phone SDK 8.0. This type of app uses the DrawingSurface control which allows you to use Direct3D to render graphics that are displayed behind or inline with XAML controls and content. The size and layout of your DrawingSurface are handled just as they are with other XAML controls.
A different app type is the Direct3D with XAML app which uses the DrawingSurfaceBackgroundGrid control. With that control, your graphics are displayed across the entire screen, below any other XAML elements on the page, including any elements in the frame. For info about choosing the control that’s right for your app, see Choosing the right project template for your game for Windows Phone 8.
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Announcing the release of the .NET Framework for Windows Phone 8 [.NET Framework Blog, Oct 30, 2012]
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Apps get (much) faster with Windows Phone 8
We’ve made many changes to the .NET Framework libraries and runtime in Windows Phone 8, including the introduction of the new async model. We also made substantial changes to the .NET Framework engine and to our ARM compiler. As a result, we’ve observed major performance improvements both in the lab and with actual Windows Phone Store apps. On average hardware, we have seen apps start up twice as fast as on Windows Phone 7.1 devices. End-users will notice and really appreciate the speed of your apps. We hope your apps see similar gains.
Async
The most important recent advance in the .NET Framework is the new async programming model, introduced by C# 5, Visual Basic 11 in .NET 4.5. We’ve enabled the task-based async model on Windows Phone 8, with changes to both the CoreCLR and the .NET Framework libraries. This change is particularly relevant since Windows Phone 8 will run on multicore hardware. You can take advantage of these improvements by using the new async and await language keywords or by also using the popular Task Parallel Library. As a result, it is now much easier to provide a highly responsive UI experience for your users by leveraging both the async model and the multiple cores on end-user devices.
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CoreCLR engine and garbage collector
Windows Phone 8 includes the CoreCLR engine instead of the .NET Compact Framework. The CoreCLR includes many of the same features and optimizations as the CLR in the .NET Framework 4.5. As a result, it is a lot faster and more efficient than the .NET Compact Framework. In particular, the CoreCLR includes our world-class auto-tuning garbage collector. These changes result in reduced startup time and higher responsiveness in your apps.
Much faster code with “Compiler in the Cloud”
For Windows Phone 8, we adopted a new code generation approach that is much better suited to the phone, both to deliver higher performance and to save battery life. Windows Phone 8 apps are compiled to high-quality ARM code before they are downloaded and deployed on end-user devices. They are compiled in the Windows Phone Store, with an optimizing compiler that does not have to satisfy the time and power constraints of a just-in-time (JIT) compiler. As a result, end-users will enjoy very fast app launch times on Windows Phone 8.
These changes are specific to Windows Phone 8, but they also improve launch times for Windows Phone 7.x apps. Both Windows Phone 7.x and 8 apps can be pre-compiled to high quality ARM code in the Windows Phone Store, before being downloaded and installed on Windows Phone 8 devices. You and your customers get the benefits of pre-compilation, without requiring you to make changes to your app. You can test out the pre-compiled binaries on your own Windows Phone 8 devices using Visual Studio 2012.
While these changes provide significant performance improvements for end-users, they also help battery life. In Windows Phone 7.x, app code was compiled every time the app was launched, and the CPU was used to compile that code, requiring battery power. With the new code generation approach in Windows Phone 8, apps are compiled in the Windows Phone Store with AC power generated from the Columbia River in Washington. That’s a better battery to use than yours! As you can see, we’ve removed an entire category of battery use on end-user devices.
Windows Phone 7.1 apps run on Windows Phone 8
Windows Phone 8 is designed to run existing Windows Phone apps unchanged. We’ve put in significant effort into maintaining application compatibility to ensure that your Windows Phone 7.1 app continues to run on the new Windows Phone 8 devices. It is recommended that you test your 7.1 app using the Windows Phone 8 device or emulator to ensure that you are getting a compatible experience.
In advance of new Windows Phone 8 devices coming to market, you may want to consider upgrading your existing Windows Phone 7.1 app to Windows Phone 8 to leverage new updates to the platform. The Windows Phone SDK 8.0 makes it easy to upgrade projects in Visual Studio 2012. Keep in mind that when you upgrade your existing Windows Phone 7.xapp to Windows Phone 8, you may see changes in API behavior (serialization and isolated storage are the major categories in .NET to watch for) when the upgraded app is run on the Windows Phone 8 device or emulator. You can read more about compatibility on the Windows Phone app platform compatibility MSDN page.
Writing Windows Phone 8 apps
Windows Phone 8 provides major new improvements for developers. I have already talked about the adoption of C# 5 and Visual Basic 11, particularly around async, which you can use in Windows Phone 8 apps. Another major improvement is Windows Runtime interop. You can call Windows Runtime APIs in your code to get access to new native OS APIs and third-party native APIs.
I expect that many of you are building both Windows Phone 8 apps and Windows Store apps. In many cases, you will be building versions of those apps that differ only slightly between the Windows Phone and the various Windows 8 form factors. You should find that you can share a significant degree of your app logic between these platforms.
Windows Phone Runtime interop
Windows Phone 8 exposes a new type of native API through the Windows Phone Runtime [WinPRT], much like the Windows Runtime [WinRT] in Windows 8, if you are familiar with that new API technology. Many new APIs exposed in Windows Phone 8, like the Windows Phone Runtime Location API, are exposed by the Windows Phone Runtime. The CoreCLR engine has been updated to enable you to call Windows Phone Runtime APIs in your apps. In addition, native code developers can expose Windows Phone Runtime APIs, making their native code functionality available to .NET Framework developers. You will notice that you can call Windows Phone Runtime APIs just as naturally as you would call any managed APIs.
The Windows Phone Runtime enables you to call native APIs in both the Windows Phone SDK and as exposed by third parties. In Windows Phone 8, you cannot expose .NET Framework code via the Windows Phone Runtime.
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Additionally, you can call native code from within a managed app, as long as the native code is packaged and exposed to callers as a Windows Runtime type. We expect that several third-party native gaming engines will be leveraged this way. Note that we do not enable you to create Windows Runtime APIs using C# or Visual Basic in this release of Windows Phone.
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HIGHLY RECOMMENDED Mani Ramaswamy and Peter Sollich: Inside Compiler in the Cloud and MDIL [Channel 9 video, Nov 6, 2012]
By now you’ve learned that the CLR, Windows Phone Client, and Windows Phone Services teams got together to develop “Compiler in the Cloud”. All Windows Phone 8 apps written in .NET technologies will get the benefit of this collaboration. The end goal? Really fast startup of Windows Phone 8 .NET apps.
“Compiler in the Cloud?”, you ask.
The idea is pretty simple. First, enter MDIL or Machine Dependent Intermediate Language or .NET hybrid assembly language. MDIL is all about compiling to native assembly instructions whenever possible, and compile the rest to pseudo instructions that can quickly be translated to native instructions on the phone. Thus, this assembly containing a mix of pseudo instructions and native instructions can be shipped to the device (and is portable across the same architecture – example, across all the ARM devices), and on the device we perform a light-weight linking step to convert the entire assembly to a native image. Most of the heavy lifting is done when we compile the IL assembly to the intermediate file between an IL assembly and a native image (this is what MDIL is).
“So what?”, you ask. The linking step on the device that converts MDIL assembly to a native image only takes 1/5th the time as traditional NGEN on device. Thus, we get some of the benefits of both pre-compilation (since we are executing off the native image where all instructions are assembly instructions) and JIT-compilation (no heavy compilation on the device during framework updates).
Tune in to meet the program manager for code generation in .NET, Subramanian (Mani) Ramaswamy, and one of the lead developers of “Compiler in the Cloud”, Peter Sollich. Peter is an expert in precompilation. We go quite deep here with plenty of whiteboarding. Peter teaches us exactly what MDIL is and why it’s designed the way it is. We also talk about the higher level meaning in this (apps start fast, at native speed!). All around, it’s a great Going Deep episode. Take the time to watch and learn. Thanks Mani and Peter!!
See Subramanian’s BUILD 2012 session [Deep Dive into the Kernel of .NET on Windows Phone 8] where he goes into detail on MDIL/Compiler in the Cloud and other performance/functionality improvement in .NET for Windows Phone 8.
The NET Perspective: Then and Now [InfoQ, Nov 1, 2012]
With the introduction of WinRT and the dimming of Silverlight, some NET developers are concerned that the platform’s popularity, and therefore support, at Microsoft may be on the decline. The platform’s flagship language is C#, but C# creator Anders Hejlsberg’s latest publicly released project is TypeScript. This turn of events brought a large audience to the presentation “The Evolution of .NET” by Brandon Bray to see what was in store for .NET.
Bray is the Group Program Manager of .NET and began his talk with an overview of the history of the platform: starting with its initial announcement at the 2000 Professional Developers Conference, and concluding with where it is today: marking the year of its 10 year annniversary as the .NET Framework 1.0 shipped in February 2002.
There are three enduring themes of the platform that Bray identified:
- Broadening support for platforms and industry trends
- Time to solution getting better
- Performance improvements: by improving the runtime and libraries
As Bray worked through NET’s history, he did observe that Silverlight has “done a lot of great things for .NET” and said that the lessons learned from Silverlight have been applied to Windows Phone and Windows 8.
Since .NET Framework 4.5 was released 3 months ago, it has recorded over 4 million downloads demonstrating its continued popularity. At this point in time, Bray observed that users want the following main features:
- Business compatible applications: Reflecting the consumerization of IT, the ability to bring your own device (phone/tablet/laptop) to work and in use it the corporate world is a growing trend.
- Fast & Fluid experience: This is not just a requirement that applies to the user interface’s performance, it also includes the necessity that users can easily figure out how to use their apps without requiring outside help.
- Modern connected apps: Getting data to and from their device to the web/cloud, desktop, etc.
From a developer’s perspective, Bray says that they want they ability to target multiple platforms: Windows Phone, web & cloud, and Windows 8. The needs of users and developers define what the .NET Framework is trying to serve.
Performance Improvements
So what are some of these available improvements? Bray highlighted .NET 4.5’s background garbage collection, multi-core JIT (just-in-time) compiler, and a reduced on-disk footprint. The adoption of this new background garbage collector by the Bing team saw them drop from an average 8% pause under the old GC to a 2% average pause with the new. Multi-core JIT is automatically used by ASP.NET, and developers can add it to their application by examining the ProfileOptimization class.
Developers seeing difficulties with DLL Hell as a result of thier upgrade to .NET 4.5 are encouraged by Bray to contact Microsoft as they are aware that there are problems and are actively working to resolve these issues.
.NET on Windows Phone 8: The Advantages of Compile in the Cloud
Moving to Windows Phone 8, Bray noted the following improvements that have been made:
- CoreCLR is now the foundation for NET on WP8
- Key NET4.5 capabilities are now on WP8
- Compile in the Cloud means your apps will launch faster
Using compile in the cloud the average phone app can expect to see a 2x gain in performance on WP8 launch hardware. Previously assemblies were deployed in a situation that in effect treated the phone as a compiler– which isn’t optimal for either performance or battery life. But with compile in the cloud, MDIL (machine dependent instruction language) is used to outsource the compilation. The MDIL compiler produces MDIL assembly which is then deployed to the phone.
The Future
Bray was reserved when discussing the platform’s future, as he clearly did not want to make any public announcements of new features. However he did reiterate that Microsoft cares about .NET and noted that it is an integral part of all MS platforms that are shipped. Bray went on record that “We (Microsoft) want .NET to be successful.”
Looking ahead, Bray observed that assumptions change and as a result so should the .NET platform. The new areas for future focus:
- Improving the device experience (Windows Phone, tablets, etc)
- First class cloud experience
- Heterogeneous development
- Targeting multiple platforms at once
Again, while no specifics were announced, some interesting clues were left. As it was claimed lessons were learned from Silverlight, so it seems that Microsoft’s Singularity project has also found its way into different projects. Looking at MDIL for WP8, Channel 9 user “Felix9” noted in August 2012 that MDIL had previously appeared with Singularity’s Bartok compiler.
XAML related information
Announcing Windows Phone 8 SDK–Design Great Apps with Blend for Visual Studio 2012 [BlendInsider YouTube channel]
Announcing Windows Phone 8 SDK–Design Great Apps with Blend [//blendinsider, Oct 30, 2012]
The Blend team is excited to announce our latest release of Blend and Visual Studio XAML design tools that support Windows Phone 8 development. In this release, our big focus was on unifying the XAML design support across Blend and Visual Studio, similar to the design experience available for other XAML platforms like Windows Store Apps, WPF, and Silverlight.
Blend is included with Visual Studio 2012. This makes it easy for you to create great Windows Phone 8 applications. The free Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows Phone 8 comes with Blend as well. For all you Visual Studio 2012 Pro, Premium, and Ultimate customers out there, installing the Windows Phone 8 SDK automatically enables Windows Phone 8 development in your installed version of Blend and Visual Studio.
A lot of the Blend features you have come to love in the previous edition of Windows Phone tools are now available in Visual Studio as well, including the Device Panel, better support for editing controls like the AppBar, and template editing.
In addition to these, we have added support for designing for multiple resolutions in the Device Panel.
All the features of Blend available in the previous edition of the Windows Phone tools are carried over to the Windows Phone 8 tools as well, including Behaviors, visual state editing, and sample data. If you have the Windows Phone 8 SDK installed, you also get full design support for building Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) apps in Blend and Visual Studio.
See also: Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Phone [MSDN Library, Oct 26, 2012]
Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Phone is a complete development environment for creating Windows Phone apps. Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Phone includes development features such as Windows Phone project templates, a code editor, a Windows Phone-based visual designer, and a Toolbox that contains Windows Phone controls. It also includes integrated testing features such as simulation, monitoring and profiling, and the Windows Phone Store Test Kit. With Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Phone, you can debug and deploy your apps on Windows Phone Emulator or a Windows Phone device.
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Supported features
With the exception of a few debugging features, the Windows Phone Add-in for Visual Studio 2012 has equivalent functionality to Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Phone. For detailed information about the supported debugging features, see Debugging apps for Windows Phone.
The projects that you create with either Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Phone or the Windows Phone Add-in for Visual Studio 2012 are compatible with Blend for Visual Studio. You can open these projects in Blend without any conversion issues or loss of functionality.
Unsupported features
Some features in Visual Studio 2012 Professional or higher are not supported when you are using the Windows Phone Add-in for Visual Studio 2012. These unsupported features include the following:
IntelliTrace
Lab Management
Testing
Data (add data source, schema compare)
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Writing Silverlight and WPF Apps with Windows Runtime XAML in Mind [Pete Brown in MSDN Magazine, Windows 8 Special Issue, Oct 12, 2012]
Windows Runtime (WinRT) XAML for new Windows Store apps is the latest member of the XAML and C#/Visual Basic family many of us have come to love. It all officially started in 2006 with the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 and “Avalon” (later named Windows Presentation Foundation, or WPF). After that came several more revisions of WPF, including the latest, WPF 4.5, and alongside we’ve had seven named versions of Silverlight (including 1.1 and 5.1), several versions of Windows Phone and more. You’ll even find part of the XAML stack available on .NET Micro Framework devices.
You might wonder why there are so many variations on XAML and the .NET Framework. Although many of the implementations have converged on similar uses (Silverlight to write desktop apps, for example), each platform was developed and optimized for different scenarios and target platforms. For example, Silverlight was designed to be cross-platform and Web-hosted. XAML on Windows Phone was designed for phone-specific scenarios and hardware, and WinRT XAML on Windows 8 was designed for high-performance, on the metal (x86/x64 and ARM), touch-first (but not touch-only) Windows Store apps.
Nevertheless, these implementations of XAML have far more in common than not. It’s because of these similarities that the differences seem so pronounced. Of course, tiny differences can cause a lot of development challenges, something I know from personal experience and from talking with other developers. However, the fact that we can even talk about compatibility at a detail level illustrates the similarity between the languages, libraries and markup.
In this article, I’m targeting two important scenarios: sharing code with a companion app and future-proofing your current development.
Companion App This is a simultaneous code-sharing, or cross-compilation, scenario for WPF and Silverlight application developers who want to develop companion Windows Store apps for Windows 8 at the same time.
Future Proofing In this scenario, developers are creating new WPF and Silverlight applications today but are not currently targeting Windows 8. When the organization adopts Windows 8, the developers want to be ready; they want to help ensure that appropriate portions of their apps will be more easily ported to the new Windows UI.
Decades of programming experience have taught us that reuse and portability are never free. However, with the techniques covered here, you’ll find much of the effort a minimal increment over what you would normally do to create well-architected apps.
Thoughtful Architecture Is Essential
Breaking large applications into smaller apps is possible only if you have good architecture to begin with. In fact, if your application has a lot of interdependencies between code modules, a lot of heavy class hierarchies, or otherwise feels like a ball of mud or throwaway code, reusing or porting anything will be extremely difficult. But don’t despair! Code can be refactored, and new code can be written with the new architecture in mind.
When designing new apps, I encourage XAML developers to follow a few key approaches: binding, the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern and service classes.
Binding The more you embrace data binding when developing in XAML, the easier it is to keep your logic separated from the UI. Ideally, you set the DataContext for the UI, and everything else is handled by binding with data or commands. In practice, few apps are able to attain this level of separation, but the closer you get, the easier your life will be.
The MVVM Pattern The MVVM pattern goes hand-in-hand with data binding. The ViewModel is what the UI will bind to. There’s a ton of great information (and toolkits, which I’ll cover later) available for free on the Internet and in books, so I won’t rehash that here.
Service Classes This approach is not to be confused with Web services. Instead, these are classes that provide reusable functionality on the client. In some cases, they might call out to RESTful or other services. In other cases, they might interface with your business logic. In all cases, they encapsulate potentially volatile code and make swapping out implementations easier. For example, in Figure 1, the ViewModel talks to service classes in order to use both platform services and to resolve external dependencies.
Figure 1 Relationship Between the ViewModel and Service ClassesI know. You’re thinking, “Ugh! Another layer diagram.” But you know how important these concepts are. The intent is to decouple yourself from the platform you’re on as much as is reasonable within your budget and time constraints. By factoring out code that, for example, makes COM or p-invoke calls into desktop elements such as Windows Imaging or DirectShow, you can more easily replace that implementation with the WinRT camera API in your Windows Store app. Service classes are also a great place to encapsulate other platform differences, such as contract implementations: sending an e-mail from your Windows Store app would use a contract, but on the desktop it would likely mean automating Outlook or hooking into an SMTP server.
Of course, it’s easy to go overboard with architecture and never actually deliver. Good architecture should make development easier, not harder. If you find your team struggling with the minutiae of a particular architectural pattern, you’re probably wasting time. Instead, understand the patterns and what they bring, and then make intelligent and informed decisions about the trade-offs. In most cases, implementing 85 percent of a great architecture is better than 0 percent of the same. Similarly, the cost involved in getting that last 15 percent implemented is often not worth it.
Once you separate out platform-dependent code, quite a bit of other nontrivial code can be reused.
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Wrapping Up
WinRT XAML, Silverlight and WPF have been created with different purposes in mind, but they’re more similar than different. Sharing code between them is easy, and sharing XAML is possible. There are lots of additional techniques you can follow to target all three platforms and move from the desktop to the new Windows Store UI. I’d love to continue this conversation on Twitter and on my blog at 10rem.net. If you’ve used other techniques for multi-targeting or porting code to the Windows Runtime, I’d love to hear from you.
Pete Brown is the Windows 8 XAML and gadget guy at Microsoft. He’s also the author of “Silverlight 5 in Action” (Manning Publications, 2012) and “Windows 8 XAML in Action” (Manning Publications, 2012). His blog and Web site are 10rem.net, and you can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pete_brown.
Thanks to the following technical expert for reviewing this article: Tim Heuer
XAML TV – Pete Brown: Windows 8 XAML for Silverlight/WPF Developers [xamltv YouTube channel, July 10, 2012]
Code sharing between Windows platforms
Maximize code reuse between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 [MSDN Library, Oct 26, 2012]
In this section, we will help you make the right choices to maximize code reuse in your apps. As a developer, you want to streamline your development and make maintaining your apps as efficient as possible. By working smarter, you give yourself more time to develop more apps and fill the marketplace with your creations. When building an app for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8, you should look for opportunities to share code, designs, and assets as much as possible so that you maximize the return on your investment. This section describes the sharing techniques that you can use when building you app for both platforms.
Sharing techniques to maximize code reuse
The following table shows some of the techniques you can use to share code between your Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 apps. Each is described in detail in the topics to which they are linked. The table calls out whether a technique applies to managed code, C# or VB, or native (C++) code. You can choose any of these techniques, or a combination of them.
Sharing technique
When to use
Separate UI and app logic using the Model-View-ViewModel pattern
This guidance is applicable to many app types, but particularly to apps that have a XAML UI. Separation allows you to write the app logic and to concentrate on user experience design separately. An added benefit is that your app logic is more likely to be common for your app on both platforms, and therefore is a great candidate for code sharing using the rest of the techniques described here. Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) is a great way to achieve this separation.
Share functionality using Portable Class Libraries
Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 share the same .NET Framework engine. In a XAML app, most of your app logic will be written in managed code. If you are using the MVVM design pattern, you have the potential to share your viewmodel and potentially your model. Note that Portable Class Libraries are a .NET Framework concept and don’t support C++.
Share code with Add as Link
Use this technique for code that is non-portable and therefore can’t be implemented in a Portable Class Library. For example, Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 can use the common Windows Runtime API surface to harness the power of each platform for networking, proximity, in-app purchase, and many other features. Portable Class Libraries don’t support Windows Runtime API. Instead, you can abstract this non-portable code, which is common to both platforms, into a class that can be shared using Add as Link in Visual Studio. In C++ projects files are added to projects as linked files by default.
Share using Windows Runtime Components
In addition to consuming the common Windows Runtime API available on both platforms, you can write your own Windows Runtime Component to make your functionality available in all supported languages. This can be written in C++ and consumed by C# or VB. This is a very useful technique for language interoperability or for when you want to write compute-intensive code in C++ and use it in all languages.
Sharing XAML UI
The UI in Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 is written in XAML. However, the XAML implementations are not portable between the platforms. But you can isolate some of your custom basic UI building blocks into UserControls and share those classes as linked files that will be compiled for each platform. This technique is limited and should be used only for simple, reusable parts of your UI. The core of your UI should be built and tailored separately for each platform.
Conditional compilation with preprocessor directives
If you have functionality that’s implemented differently for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8, you can use conditional compilation to compile the code suitably for each platform. You can’t use conditional compilation in a Portable Class Library. How much you adopt this technique will depend on your app complexity, but it can lead to more difficult code maintenance if used extensively.
Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 platform comparison [MSDN Library, Oct 26, 2012]
The release of Windows Phone 8 is a significant step toward convergence with Windows 8. Here, we compare the Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 development platforms, and discuss how developers can create apps for both platforms and maximize code reuse.
This topic contains the following sections.
Common native API
Windows Phone 8 now includes support for building C++ games using our new Windows 8 aligned Direct3D app model. The set of native APIs that are common to Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 are listed in the following table.
Common native API
- DirectX 11.1
- XAudio2
- MediaEngine
- STL
- CRT
- WinSock
For more info about native API support for Windows Phone 8, see the following:
- Supported Direct3D APIs for Windows Phone 8
- Supported Microsoft Media Foundation APIs for Windows Phone 8
- Audio Capture and Render APIs for native code for Windows Phone
- Games for Windows Phone
Common Windows Runtime API
Windows Runtime is a technology first introduced in Windows 8 and which offers a core infrastructure, a common type system, and a standard programming model. It’s implemented in C++ and projected into C#, VB, C++, and JavaScript, so it’s easy to consume naturally in the language of your choice. A significant subset of Windows Runtime is built natively into Windows Phone 8, with the functionality exposed to all supported languages. This gives you the ability to use the same API for common tasks such as networking, working with sensors, processing location data, and implementing in-app purchase. By using common Windows Runtime API in your app, you increase the potential to share code between your Windows Phone 8 and Windows Store apps to save time and improve the maintainability of your apps over time. The following table lists the Windows Runtime APIs that are common to both platforms.
Common Windows Runtime API
- Networking
- Sensors
- Proximity
- Storage
- DataSaver/Connection Manager
- Location
- Touch
- Online Identity
- Keyboard
- Launchers & Choosers
- In-App Purchase
- Sensors
- Threading
- Base Types/ Windows.Foundation
We’ve also added Windows Runtime APIs for the phone to enable more phone scenarios, including APIs for speech synthesis and recognition, and VoIP. The combination of Windows Runtime APIs adopted from Windows 8 and the additional Windows Runtime APIs we’ve added on the phone is called Windows Phone Runtime API. For more info about the Windows Phone Runtime API set, see Windows Phone Runtime API.
Shared .NET engine
You can leverage the same .NET engine in your XAML apps for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8, and use sharing techniques to maximize code reuse for these apps on both platforms. For more info, see .NET API for Windows Phone.
Similar XAML UI controls
Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 have similar but different design guidelines and building blocks used to create your UI. The core guideline for UI development in Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 is to design the user experience for your app tailored for each platform. It’s important to make your app look right and be immersive on each device on which it runs to create the best possible experience for your app users.
On Windows Phone 8 you’ll want to create your UI to target the phone form factor, supported screen resolutions, and unique user experiences such as lock screen integration, live Tiles, and the navigation model. Similarly, on Windows 8, your Windows Store app should adhere to Windows 8 user experience best practices, and take advantage of the platform’s support for different app views and navigation controls, and of integration with the device through contracts and the many other features that will enhance your app and make it a success.
You create your UI on both platforms using XAML. Your app will consist of one or more pages, and each page contains a UI created by and customized by UI controls. The set of controls available on Windows Phone 8 is available in the System.Windows.Controls namespace. The set of controls used on Windows 8 is in the Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls namespace. Although these are different namespaces and the types are different, there’s a lot of similarity in the controls that are supported. Most of the controls are named the same and will be familiar to you coming from either platform. This supports design reuse—you can design your app for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 with the same UI building blocks in mind. For a comparison of the control sets available on both platforms, see XAML controls comparison between Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8.
Cross Platform Development : Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 [Amit Dey MSDN blog, Nov 6, 2012]
Introduction
With the recent launch of Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, it is a great opportunity for App Developers to target these platforms. Both of these platforms provide multiple options to App Developers in terms of Programming Language and frameworks. Some of the languages and framework options are common across these platforms and hence facilitate cross platform development. If you are an App developer who would like to develop Apps for both these platforms then you should think about cross platform development. Think about Portable Common API Layer and minimal platform specific Layer. This will reduce development effort and increase consistency and maintainability. Let us analyze what option we have.
Following are the all Language + Framework options provided for both of these platforms
Windows 8
- C# + XAML
- Visual Basic + XAML
- C++ + XAML
- C++ + XAML + Direct2D
- C++ + Direct3D
- JavaScript + HTML5
Windows Phone 8
- C# + XAML
- C# + XAML + Direct3D
- C# + HTML5
- VisualBasic + XAML
- VisualBasic + Direct3D
- VisualBasic + HTML5
- C++ + XAML + Direct3D
- C++ + Direct3D
Cross Platform Development Options
The Options you have depends on the what kind of App you are making
Apps
If you want to make form based Applications with Event Driven User Controls like buttons, textboxes and labels then XAML is your best bet.
- C# + XAML
- Visual Basic + XAML
- C++ + XAML
You can read about this in more detail here Cross Platform Development : Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 : C# + XAML
Games
If on the other hand you are interested in 2D and 3D Graphics Intensive Apps like Games then Direct3D is the way to go.
C++ + Direct3D
Share functionality using Portable Class Libraries [MSDN Library, Oct 26, 2012]
This topic explains what a Portable Class Library is and how you can use it to share code between your apps for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8.
This topic contains the following sections.
- What is a Portable Class Library?
- How to use a Portable Class Library in your app for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8
- What to share in a Portable Class Library
- Portable Class Libraries and MVVM
- Related Topics
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Portable Class Libraries and MVVM
When you create your app for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 using the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern and using .NET APIs, you have the potential to share a lot of code in a Portable Class Library. Your ViewModel and Model can be designed to be portable and you should place these in a Portable Class Library. The views of your app, and the startup code, typically are platform-specific and should be implemented in your Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 app projects. This is illustrated in the following diagram.
If your ViewModel needs to call platform-specific code, you should abstract that functionality into the platform-independent interface and use the interface in the Portable Class Library. The interface can then be implemented in a platform-specific way in each app project. This is a very powerful code-sharing technique and allows binary sharing because the Portable Class Library is compiled once and then used in multiple platforms.
…
Create Cross-platform Apps using Portable Class Libraries [BUILD session, Nov 2, 2012] PPTX
…
[00:37:28]
This architecture is described in MSDN Magazine article by David Kean:
From: Create a Continuous Client Using Portable Class Libraries [MSDN Magazine, March 2012]
I feel lucky to live in the days of continuously connected devices. I love that I’m able to reply to e-mail using my phone while riding the bus home. It’s amazing to be able to Skype with my family on the other side of the world and team up with like-minded gamers across the country on my Xbox. However, in this world of permanent Internet connectivity, there is, as Joshua Topolsky puts it, “a missing link in our computing experience” (engt.co/9GVeKl).
This missing link refers to the lack of what Topolsky calls a continuous client; that is, a solution to the broken workflow that occurs today when you move from one device to another. As I switch among my PC, tablet and phone in a typical day, my current browsing session, documents, windows and application state should naturally flow to all of them. That way, I’d spend less time on context switching and more time on actual work and play.
In this article, I’ll show you how to build a simple continuous client application that spans multiple devices and platforms. I’ll make use of the new Portable Class Libraries (PCLs) to ease the development of a cross-platform application, and the cloud—in particular Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus—to handle the communication between the devices.
…[00:39:40]
With this kind of architecture we can build a Windows and a Windows Phone app and we can connect to the cloud, and sink data between them. … but in a lot of cases you want to target more platforms … you also need an iOS and an Android version of your application. … The pretty good solution to that is to use these tools from a company called Xamarin. … These basically will let you run C# code … platform specific user interface for these platforms …
[00:41:00] We will look at the demo of that: Twitter Search
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[00:44:38] In review: what we learned
How to create cross-platform apps that take full advantage of platform-specific features while maximizing code reuse for the rest of your app
- Share code across platforms with Portable Class Libraries
- Use the MVVM pattern to write cross-platform apps
- Put models and view models in portable libraries
- Create platform-specific views
- Create portable abstractions for non-portable functionality
- Implement the abstractions for each platform you target
- Consider using a service locator or IoC container to hook up implementations
… How much of a reduction actually is that? … People generally report from 60% at the low end to 95% at the high-end for the code that can be be shared between the platforms. … Using these patterns you can definitely reduce the work …
Code sharing with 3d party frameworks
New tools for Windows Phone 8 save developers time and money [Windows Phone Developer Blog, Oct 30, 2012]
…
Tools, cross-platform frameworks …
On the C#/XAML development side, partners and communities have been getting ready. Here are the early birds who are supporting Windows Phone 8:
- MVVM Light Toolkit gets a fresh new version that supports Windows Phone 8. Read the details on Laurent Bugnion’s blog.
- Telerik today released a new version of its RadControls, with new, unique controls for Windows Phone 8. //Build attendees can visit Telerik on the Expo floor.
- Infragistics now includes Windows Phone 8 support with its NetAdvantage offering. //Build attendees can visit Infragistics on the Expo floor
- XAML Spy, the visual runtime inspector debugging tool from First Floor Software, adds support for Windows Phone 8 today.
- Xamarin releases Xamarin.Mobile, a single API developers can use for common device services like contacts, camera, and geolocation, with Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 support. //Build attendees can visit Xamarin on the Expo floor
What is Xamarin.Mobile? [Xamarin, Ot 30, 2012]
Xamarin.Mobile is a library that exposes a single set of APIs for accessing common mobile device functionality across iOS, Android, and Windows platforms. This increases the amount of code developers can share across mobile platforms, making mobile app development easier and faster.
Xamarin.Mobile currently abstracts the contacts, camera, and geo-location APIs across iOS, Android and Windows platforms. Future plans include notifications and accelerometer services.
…
Release Notes
Release v0.6
Features:
- Windows 8 support for Xamarin.Media and Xamarin.Geolocation.
- Windows Phone 8 support.
Fixes:
- Fixed positioning issues with MediaPicker.Pick* on retina iPads and iOS6.
- Fixed MediaPicker presenting under certain view controller hierarchies.
- Fixed incorrect Position.Timestamp on Android.
- Fixed MediaPicker.Take* for Android devices with front facing cameras only.
Further release notes are available in the readme.txt file included in the download.
Real-World Software Development– Interviewing a Programming Guru about Mobile and Cloud [Bruno Terkaly’s MSDN blog, Aug 18, 2012] (this is also highly recommended from the overall best practices point of view)
…
There are numerous notification services that are needed to support all these device types.
…
Building Cross Platform Applications [Xamarin documentation, July 21, 2012]
Best Practices for Developing Mobile Applications with Xamarin
…
Xamarin is not just a “write-once, run everywhere” platform, because one of its strengths is the ability to implement native user interfaces specifically for each platform. However, with thoughtful design it’s still possible to share most of the non-user interface code and get the best of both worlds: write your data storage and business logic code once, and present native UIs on each platform. This document discusses a general architectural approach to achieve this goal.
Here is a summary of the key points for creating Xamarin cross-platform apps:
- Use C# – Write your apps in C#. Existing code written in C# can be ported to iOS and Android using Xamarin very easily, and obviously used on Windows Phone.
- Utilize the MVC design pattern – Develop your application’s User Interface using the Model/View/Controller pattern. Architect your application using a Model/View/Controller approach or a Model/View/ViewModel approach where there is a clear separation between the “Model” and the rest. Determine which parts of your application will be using native user interface elements of each platform (iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Windows 8/RT) and use this as a guideline to split your application into two components: “Core” and “UserInterface”.
- Build native UIs – Each OS-specific application provides a different user-interface layer (implemented in C# with the assistance of native UI design tools):
1. On iOS use the MonoTouch.UIKit APIs to create native-looking applications, optionally utilizing Apple’s Interface Builder.
2. On Android, use Android. Views to create native-looking applications, taking advantage of Xamarin’s UI designer
3. On Windows Phone you will be using the XAML/Silverlight presentation layer, using Visual Studio or Blend’s UI designer
4. On Windows 8, use the Metro APIs to create a native user experience.
The amount of code re-use will depend largely on how much code is kept in the shared core and how much code is user-interface specific. The core code is anything that does not interact directly with the user, but instead provides services for parts of the application that will collect and display this information.
To increase the amount of code re-use, you can adopt cross-platform components that provide common services across all these systems such as:
- SQLite-NET for local SQL storage,
- Xamarin.Mobile for accessing device-specific capabilities including the camera, contacts and geolocation,
- Using framework features for networking, web services, IO and more.
Some of these components are implemented in the Tasky Pro and MWC 2012 case studies.
SEPARATE REUSABLE CODE INTO A CORE LIBRARY
By following the principle of separation of responsibility by layering your application architecture and then moving core functionality that is platform agnostic into a reusable core library, you can maximize code sharing across platforms, as the figure below illustrates:
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Cloud backends made super-easy: Windows Azure Mobile Services
Getting Started with Windows Azure Mobile Services [windowsazure YouTube channel, Aug 28, 2012]
Announcing Windows Azure Mobile Services [Scott Guthrie’s blog, Aug 28, 2012]
… I’m excited to announce a new capability we are adding to Windows Azure today:Windows Azure Mobile Services
Windows Azure Mobile Services makes it incredibly easy to connect a scalable cloud backend to your client and mobile applications. It allows you to easily store structured data in the cloud that can span both devices and users, integrate it with user authentication, as well as send out updates to clients via push notifications.
Today’s release enables you to add these capabilities to any Windows 8 app in literally minutes, and provides a super productive way for you to quickly build out your app ideas. We’ll also be adding support to enable these same scenarios for Windows Phone, iOS, and Android devices soon.
Read this getting started tutorial to walkthrough how you can build (in less than 5 minutes) a simple Windows 8 “Todo List” app that is cloud enabled using Windows Azure Mobile Services. Or watch this video of me showing how to do it step by step.
…
Storing Data in the Cloud
Storing data in the cloud with Windows Azure Mobile Services is incredibly easy. When you create a Windows Azure Mobile Service, we automatically associate it with a SQL Database inside Windows Azure. The Windows Azure Mobile Service backend then provides built-in support for enabling remote apps to securely store and retrieve data from it (using secure REST end-points utilizing a JSON-based ODATA format) – without you having to write or deploy any custom server code. Built-in management support is provided within the Windows Azure portal for creating new tables, browsing data, setting indexes, and controlling access permissions.
This makes it incredibly easy to connect client applications to the cloud, and enables client developers who don’t have a server-code background to be productive from the very beginning. They can instead focus on building the client app experience, and leverage Windows Azure Mobile Services to provide the cloud backend services they require.
…
User Authentication and Push Notifications
Windows Azure Mobile Services also make it incredibly easy to integrate user authentication/authorization and push notifications within your applications. You can use these capabilities to enable authentication and fine grain access control permissions to the data you store in the cloud, as well as to trigger push notifications to users/devices when the data changes. Windows Azure Mobile Services supports the concept of “server scripts” (small chunks of server-side script that executes in response to actions) that make it really easy to enable these scenarios.
…
Manage and Monitor your Mobile Service
Just like with every other service in Windows Azure, you can monitor usage and metrics of your mobile service backend using the “Dashboard” tab within the Windows Azure Portal.
The dashboard tab provides a built-in monitoring view of the API calls, Bandwidth, and server CPU cycles of your Windows Azure Mobile Service. You can also use the “Logs” tab within the portal to review error messages. This makes it easy to monitor and track how your application is doing.
Scale Up as Your Business Grows
Windows Azure Mobile Services now allows every Windows Azure customer to create and run up to 10 Mobile Services in a free, shared/multi-tenant hosting environment (where your mobile backend will be one of multiple apps running on a shared set of server resources). This provides an easy way to get started on projects at no cost beyond the database you connect your Windows Azure Mobile Service to (note: each Windows Azure free trial account also includes a 1GB SQL Database that you can use with any number of apps or Windows Azure Mobile Services).
…
Summary
I’ve only scratched the surface of what you can do with Windows Azure Mobile Services – there are a lot more features to explore.
With Windows Azure Mobile Services you’ll be able to build mobile app experiences faster than ever, and enable even better user experiences – by connecting your client apps to the cloud.
Visit the Windows Azure Mobile Services development center to learn more, and build your first Windows 8 app connected with Windows Azure today. And read this getting started tutorial to walkthrough how you can build (in less than 5 minutes) a simple Windows 8 “Todo List” app that is cloud enabled using Windows Azure Mobile Services.
Hope this helps,
Scott
…
Tuesday, August 28, 2012 4:14 PM by ScottGu
@Vlad/@Mark,
>>>>>> Do you plan to offer HTTP/REST API as well at some point?
We are going to publish documentation for the HTTP REST APIs shortly – which will make it easy for anyone to consume them from any platform. We’ll then provide pre-built REST helper methods for Win8/iOS/Android/others for those who want to work with language libraries as opposed to raw REST ones.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012 4:16 PM by ScottGu
@FDanconia,
>>>>>> When you say “Windows 8 app”, do you mean a Metro app, or a Desktop app, or both?The language libraries we are providing today work with WinRT – so you’d use them within Windows 8 Store Apps. But the underlying features can be accessed by any app using the REST APIs (including desktop ones). [So even web based, HTML5/JavaScript et al, client applications – discussed in the last section – can use the Windows Azure Mobile Services.]
…
@Jeff,
>>>>>> I am confused. Scalability, user management, structured data – all of the features, with the arguable exception of push notifications, are useful for all types of applications. What about this is “mobile”?We support all of those capabilities with other Azure features today as well (web-sites, storage, databases, cloud services, etc). You can also build your own mobile backends today using those existing features/capabilities to power your mobile clients.
The reason we are introducing Windows Azure Mobile Services is because a lot of developers don’t have the time/skillset/inclination to have to build a custom mobile backend themselves. Instead they’d like to be able to leverage an existing solution to get started and then customize/extend further only as needed when their business grows. Azure Mobile Services makes it really easy for them to do this – while preserving the ability to easily extend it with other azure features in the future.
…
More information:
– Introducing Windows Azure Mobile Services AKA – The birth of ZUMO [on “the Joy of Code” blog by Josh Twist, Aug 30, 2012]
– Going deep with Mobile Services data [on “the Joy of Code” blog by Josh Twist, Sept 2, 2012]
– Understanding the pipeline (and sending complex objects into Mobile Services) [on “the Joy of Code” blog by Josh Twist, Sept 10, 2012]
– Windows Azure Mobile Services – doto sample [MSDN Code Sample by Josh Twist, Sept 25, 2012]
– Making HTTP requests from Scripts in Mobile Services [on “the Joy of Code” blog by Josh Twist, Sept 27, 2012]
It’s no secret that my favorite feature of our first release of Mobile Services is the ability to execute scripts on the server. This is useful for all kinds of scenarios from validation and authorization to sending push notifications. We made it very easy to send push notifications via WNS (Windows Notification Services), it’s basically a single code statement:
…
HTTP with request
It’s also no secret that the Mobile Services runtime uses NodeJS to give you the power of JavaScript on the server – with the ability to require some of the best modules in Node, including my favorite: request from Mikeal.
…
Now that we understand push and HTTP wouldn’t it be cool to pull the two together, and use the power of the internet to help us find an image to accompany our push notification. Imagine we want to send all our devices a live tile with an image whenever a new item is added to our list. And what’s more we want the image to be something that portrays the text of item inserted.
Enter Bing Search.
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BUILD 2012 – the week we discovered ‘kickassium’ [on “the Joy of Code” blog by Josh Twist, Nov 4, 2012]
[tl;dr – the code for my sessions is available further down in this post on my github]
It’s been a very long week, but a very good one. Windows Azure Mobile Services got it’s first large piece of airtime at the BUILD conference and the reaction has been great. Here’s just a couple of my favorite quotes so far from the week:
“Mobile Services is the best thing at BUILD, and there’s been a lot of cool stuff at BUILD” – Attendee in person
“I’m tempted to use Windows Azure #mobileservices for the back end of everything from now on. Super super awesome stuff.#windowsazure” – Andy Cross
“Starting #Azure #MobileServices with @joshtwist. I heard that in order to make it they had to locate the rare mineral Kickassium.#bldwin”- James Chambers
Hackathon
The BUILD team also hosted a hackathon and Mobile Services featured prominently. In fact two of the three winners of the hackathon was built on Mobile Services and you can watch the team talk about their experience in their live interview on Channel 9 (link to come when the content goes live). Again, some favorite quotes from the winning teams (some of which were mentored by the incredible Paul Batum):
“I was watching the Mobile services talk on the live stream, and as I was watching it I started hooking it up. By the time he finished his talk, I got the backend for our app done” – Social Squares, winner
“We got together on Monday and we did a lot of work – he did a service layer, I did a web service layer, we did bunch of stuff that would help [our app] to communicate, and then we went to Josh’s session… and we threw everything away and used Mobile Services. What took us roughly 2000 lines of code, we got for free with Mobile Services” – QBranch, winner
Sessions
I had three presentations at BUILD, including a demo at the beginning of the Windows Azure Keynote – check it out. Mobile Services is 10 minutes in: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2012/1-002
I also had two breakout sessions and I’m pleased to announce that the code for these is now available (links below each session):
Developing Mobile Solutions on Windows Azure Part I
We take a Windows Phone 8 application that has no connectivity and uses no cloud services, to building out a whole connected scenario in 60 minutes. There’s a lot of live coding, risk and we even get (entirely by coincidence) James Chambers up on stage for some audience interaction that doesn’t quite go to plan! The code for this is up on github here(download zip).
Also, be sure to checkout my colleagues Nick and Chris’ awesome session which follows on from this: Developing Mobile Solutions on Windows Azure Part II.
Windows 8 Connectathon with Windows Azure Mobile Services
In this session, I build a Windows 8 application starting from the Mobile Services quickstart, going into some detail on authentication, scripts and push notifications including managing channels. The code for is up ongithub here (download zip) and – due to popular demand I created a C# version of the Windows 8 client. The Windows Phone client was pretty easy – I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
Paul and I were also interviewed by Scott Hanselman on Channel 9 Live – right after the keynote. We had a blast talking to Scott about Mobile Services and got to answer some questions coming in from the audience.
One of the outcomes of the Channel 9 interview was we promised to setup a Mobile Services UserVoice. We never want to break a promise on Mobile Services so here you go: http://mobileservices.uservoice.com – so please log your requests and get voting! Don’t forget about our forums and always feel free to reach out to me on twitter @joshtwist.
Even more information:
– Introduction to Consuming Azure Mobile Services from iOS (in 5 parts) [Bruno Terkaly’s MSDN blog, Sept 26-27, 2012]
– Introduction to Consuming Azure Mobile Services from Android (in 4 parts) [Bruno Terkaly’s MSDN blog, Oct 3, 2012]
– What Windows 8 Developers Should Know About The Cloud [Bruno Terkaly’s MSDN blog, July 11, 2012]
– Windows Azure Mobile Services videos on Channel 9 (7 so far) [Aug 28-Nov 3, 2012]
– IMPORTANT: Windows Azure Mobile Services: New support for iOS apps, Facebook/Twitter/Google identity, Emails, SMS, Blobs, Service Bus and more [Scott Guthrie’s blog, Oct 16, 2012]
– IMPORTANT: Announcing the Windows Azure Mobile Services October Update [Windows Azure MSDN blog, Oct 17, 2012]
– IMPORTANT: Announcing Open Sourcing of Windows Azure Mobile Services SDK on GitHub, and Partnership with Xamarin [Windows Azure MSDN blog, Sept 20, 2012]
– IMPORTANT: Building out Mobile Services support to Windows Phone 8 [Windows Azure MSDN blog, Nov 1, 2012]
– IMPORTANT: Get started with Mobile Services (Windows Store, Windows Phone 8, and iOS tutorials) [Windows Azure site, Oct 25, 2012]
– IMPORTANT: Xamarin partners with Microsoft to support Windows Azure Mobile Services on Android and iOS [Xamarin blog, Sept 20, 2012]
Our friends at Microsoft recently introduced Windows Azure Mobile Services, a cloud platform that provides a scalable backend for mobile applications. It’s an easy way to add login capabilities and remote data storage to your application without building your own backend.
We are really pleased to announce that we have partnered with Microsoft to bring Mobile Services to iOS and Android developers, enabling them to easily use Microsoft’s cloud service from a common C# code base. While we have long enjoyed a productive relationship with Microsoft, we are excited to collaborating with Microsoft at a new level and to help Windows Azure Mobile Services and Microsoft reach additional platforms.
We are making a preview of our cross-platform Azure Mobile Services client framework available today on GitHub under a permissive open source software license. The framework, which is a port of Microsoft’s own Mobile Services client library, will make it easy for developers to use Microsoft’s hosted backend in their Xamarin-powered Android and iOS applications. You can start using it today in your own projects.
Azure Mobile Services offers elastic scalability, allowing you to get the capacity that you need as the popularity of your application grows. The client framework takes advantage of your favorite C# features to simplify data storage and retrieval. For example, you can access your remote data with LINQ queries instead of crafting your own REST API calls. Instead of dealing with a schema and parsing database output, you use attributes to associate remote data fields with class properties.
…
5. Web based, HTML5/JavaScript et al, client applications
Announcing Windows Phone 8 [Windows Phone blog, June 20, 2012]
… We’ve based the next release of Windows Phone on the rock-solid technology core of Windows 8. It means Windows Phone and its bigger sibling will share common networking, security, media and web browser technology, and a common file system. That translates into better performance, more features, and new opportunities for app developers and hardware makers to innovate faster.
This new shared core—along with all the extra work we’ve done on top of it—opens up a new world of capabilities, which you don’t have to be a techie to appreciate. Here’s a taste:
…
Internet Explorer 10: The next version of Windows Phone comes with the same web browsing engine that’s headed for Window 8 PCs and tablets. IE10 is faster and more secure, with advanced anti-phishing features like SmartScreen Filter to block dangerous websites and malware.
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Creating a custom Tile to link to your website [Windows Phone Developer blog, Oct 19, 2012]
This article guides you through the process of creating a custom pinned Tile that links to your website. This helps you control your brand when users pin your site to their Windows Phone Start screen. This works on phones running Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8.
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Welcome to Internet Explorer 10 [internetexplorer YouTube channel, Oct 26, 2012]
Internet Explorer 10 Wins (Again) on Performance [Exploring IE blog, Nov 6, 2012]
Internet Explorer 10 is fast and fluid, and built from the ground up for real-world performance. Growing evidence shows Internet Explorer as the fastest web browser on Windows 8.
1. Earlier today, New Relic published additional evidence showing that Internet Explorer 10 is the fastest Windows browser. New Relic monitors page views for thousands of Internet sites, and found that IE10 and IE9 have the “fastest browser response time on Windows, with IE10 showing a notable increase over IE9.”
ew
Relic blog showing Windows browser response times.
(Lower scores are faster.)Find your web browser on the chart above. Are you running the fastest Windows browser—or the slowest?
2. On September 24, 2012, Tom’s Hardware ran a story on RoboHornet, a set of open-sourced micro-benchmarks released with Google participation on Github. Not surprisingly, they found “Internet Explorer 10 smashes the competition, performing 37% better than even the latest version of Google’s Chrome.”
Our team built a demo using RoboHornet to run the micro-benchmark suite in the context of a real-world scenario, releasing the demo as RoboHornet Pro. We believe that this type of real world testing is much more representative of web browser performance than micro-benchmarks.
3. On September 18, 2012, Strangeloop Networks published a report showing performance results from 2,000 of the world’s top retail sites, finding that “Internet Explorer 10 rendered pages faster than other browsers” and that“IE10 served pages 8% faster than Chrome 20.” The tests used Webpagetest.org, an open-source project primarily developed and supported by Google.
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These unpaid, independent endorsements are just three votes in favor of IE10’s real-world performance. Since the arrival of Windows 8, millions more are using Internet Explorer 10 and learning first-hand that IE10 is fast, fluid, and perfect for touch.
Roger Capriotti
Director, Internet Explorer Marketing
Internet Explorer 10 Now Available with Windows 8 [Exploring IE blog, Oct 26, 2012]
Today, the Windows team shared that after much anticipation, Windows 8 is available to the world.
Windows 8 represents a tremendous step forward in reimagining what people can expect from the devices in their life – whether PC, tablet, or something that can be both.
The entirely new Internet Explorer 10 is a huge part of the reimagined Windows experience.
IE10 is the Windows 8 browser. Built specifically to make the web a first class citizen on your new Windows 8 device right alongside apps.
It is exceptionally fast and fluid when it comes to performance. Most importantly, IE10 is arguably the first browser that is perfect for touch.
With an entirely new modern touch-first UI, IE10 raises the bar for what we should expect from the web on new modern devices. The underlying platform innovations in IE10 around touch are allowing developers to create new experiences that rival their native app counterparts. Check out this video from the recently released Contre Jour HTML5 game in IE10.
Hauntingly beautiful, pleasantly challenging and strangely addicting – Contre Jour is now on the web! Swing, shoot, drop or fling Petit through 30 free challenging levels right in your browser. Optimized for touch, Contre Jour is at its best using the new Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8 devices. The game also works well in Internet Explorer 9 and other modern browsers. Find out if you have what it takes to help Petit reach his goal. Play now! at http://www.contrejour.ie[See also: Artistry of ‘Contre Jour’ Comes to the Web With Internet Explorer 10 [Microsoft Feature story for the press, Oct 9, 2012]]
There are a plethora of new features in Internet Explorer 10 that we are excited about, but we want to call out some of our favorites:
Full-Screen Browsing: IE10 lets you enjoy the web as it was meant to be – with all of the focus on the sites you love. The browser appears only when you need it, and quietly gets out of the way when you don’t. Once you’ve experienced sites like Pulse with IE10, it’s hard to go back to having any chrome around your sites.
Flip Ahead: With Flip Ahead, IE10 makes clicking “Next” obsolete. A simple “swipe” gesture allows you to advance to the next page, or article, or image on sites with “Flip Ahead” functionality. Try a Bing search on IE10 once you have enabled Flip Ahead and simply swipe forward or backward to navigate your results.
Pinning: IE10 allows you to pin your favorite sites to the Start screen just like apps. Simply tapping the “Pin to Start” button in the navigation bar will create a tile on the Start screen so you can put your favorite sites right alongside your applications in a beautiful display that will truly make “Start” your home. Trying pinning Facebook, Twitter, or CNN with IE10 to see how it works.
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Snapping: IE10 makes multi-tasking easy by allowing you to simply “snap” IE10 to one side of the screen, while having another application – such as Mail, Xbox Music or Microsoft Office – open on the other side. It’s small but awesome example of how the web, through IE10, just blends seamlessly into your Windows 8 experience.
Welcome to IE10!
Ryan Gavin
General Manager, Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer 10 for Windows Phone [From: Windows Phone 8 Reviewer’s Guide, Oct 17, 2012]
Your Windows Phone puts what the Web is about in your pocket, making it easy to find, view, and act on Web content. You’ll find Internet Explorer 10 for Windows Phone — the fastest version ever — on the Start screen and in the App list, and can tap a hyperlink from anywhere on your phone to launch the browser and go to that page. We think you’ll find your phone’s built-in browser to be fast, fluid, and perfect for touch.
Your phone’s built-in browser delivers many of the same features as Internet Explorer 10 in Windows 8, including a smart address bar, tabbed browsing, favorites, History, and the ability to delete your browsing history. Of course, we also optimized the browser for your phone, adding features such as multitouch zoom; landscape view; a Web-ready keyboard; and automatic recognition of street addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses on webpages.
Internet Explorer 10 for Windows Phone also includes a new SmartScreen Filter — just like the one in Internet Explorer 10 in Windows 8 — to help protect you from malicious websites. JavaScript performance is up to seven times faster than with Windows Phone 7.5 and twice as many HTML5 features are supported. We also added more ways to share, enabled you to get links via NFC, and re-enabled Find-on-Page.
A Fast, Fluid Browser (Improved)
Rapid Access to the Web
Mobile-Ready Browser
Less Browser, More Web
Smart Address Bar (Improved)
Web-Ready Keyboard
Optimized for Touch (Improved)
Tabbed Browsing
More Ways to Share
Receive and Share Links Via NFC (New)
Find on Page (New)
Help Protect Your Safety and Privacy (Improved)
SmartScreen Filter (New)
Advances in JavaScript Performance in IE10 and Windows 8 [IEBlog, June 14, 2012]
Thursday, May 31, 2012, we delivered the Windows 8 Release Preview and the Sixth IE10 Platform Preview. Windows 8 includes one HTML5 browsing engine that powers both browsing experiences (Metro style and desktop) as well as Metro style applications that use HTML5 and JavaScript. The release preview represents a major revision of the same modern JavaScript engine, Chakra, which first debuted with IE9. With each platform preview we make progress against our goals to create an engine that delivers great performance on the Web while ensuring that it is highly compatible, interoperable, and secure. This post will explore how the JavaScript engine has been enhanced to deliver great performance for emerging Web application scenarios.
Performance for Real Web Applications
Internals of Chakra
Fast Page Load Time (Bytecode Interpreter, Deferred Parsing)
Performance Improvements for JavaScript-Intensive Applications
Just-in-Time Compiler – Reconsidered and Improved
Faster Floating Point Arithmetic
Faster Objects and Property Access
Garbage Collection Enhancements
Summary
IE10 achieves dramatic performance gains for JavaScript-intensive applications, particularly HTML5 games and simulations. These gains were accomplished through a range of important improvements in Chakra: from new fundamental capabilities of the JIT compiler to changes in the garbage collector.
As we wrap up development on IE10 we celebrate the progress we’ve made, but we are keenly aware that performance is a perpetual quest. New applications emerge almost daily that test the limits of modern browsers and their JavaScript engines. Without a doubt there will be plenty to work on in the next release!
If you’re a JavaScript developer, we’d love to hear from you. If the new capabilities and performance advances in IE10 helped you create entirely new experiences for your users, or make existing applications better, please, let us know. If you’ve hit any performance limitations in IE, please, drop us a note as well. We carefully read all the comments on this blog, and we strive to make IE10 and Windows 8 the most comprehensive and performant application platform available.
—Andrew Miadowicz, Program Manager, JavaScript
Adapting Your Site to Different Window Sizes [IEBlog, June 20, 2012]
IE10 in the Windows 8 Release Preview supports the width and height properties of the W3C Working Draft CSS Device Adaptation. This gives Web developers a simple tool to control automatic content scaling across various window dimensions. In particular, it enables Web sites to easily adapt to Windows 8 Metro style browser in the snapped view and portrait orientation.
Auto-Scaling and When It Is Used
…
Working Well In a Narrow Window
…
Using @-ms-viewport
…
Moving the Stable Web Forward in IE10 Release Preview [IEBlog, June 7, 2012]
As part of Windows 8 Release Preview planning, we reviewed all the W3C draft standards supported by IE10. In particular, we looked for those specifications that:
- Are stable, that is, there were no recent additions or changes and no renaming or major changes are expected;
- Are supported by at least two browsers other than IE10;
- Are interoperable across all these browsers for the features’ core use cases;
- Are already used on the Web, including in their unprefixed form; and
- Reached Candidate Recommendation since Windows 8 Consumer Preview or are likely to become Candidate Recommendations in 2012.
The following W3C draft standard features match these criteria and IE10 now supports them in their unprefixed form:
- Gradients (CSS Image Values and Replaced Content)
- CSS Animations
- CSS Transitions
- CSS Transforms
font-feature-settingsproperty (CSS Fonts)- Indexed Database API
- Timing control for script-based animations (requestAnimationFrame)
For compatibility with sites and apps developed using the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, IE10 also supports these standards in their vendor-prefixed form using the Microsoft vendor prefixes (
‑ms‑/ms).IE10 also supports the following W3C draft standards in vendor-prefixed form. We believe these drafts do not yet meet the criteria listed above:
etc. ….
Web development for Windows Phone [MSDN Library, Oct 26, 2012]
Internet Explorer for Windows Phone is based on Internet Explorer for the desktop; however, there are differences that web developers should consider. This topic describes some of these differences on a high level for both Windows Phone OS 8.0 as it relates to Internet Explorer 10, and Windows Phone OS 7.1 as it relates to Internet Explorer 9. For general info about designing mobile websites, see Designing Web Sites for Phone Browsers.
This topic contains the following sections.
- Supported standards and technologies
- Controlling the viewport
- Adjusting text size using custom CSS
- Fixed positioning
- Unsupported plug-ins
- Related Topics
…
WebBrowser control for Windows Phone [MSDN Library, Oct 26, 2012]
Windows Phone provides a WebBrowser control that is based on the desktop browser. The WebBrowser control for Windows Phone OS 7.1 is based on Internet Explorer 9, and the WebBrowser control for Windows Phone 8 is based on Internet Explorer 10. Because of this, there are slight differences in the appearance of apps that use the WebBrowser control running on Windows Phone 7.5 compared to phones that run on Windows Phone 8.
The WebBrowser control can be embedded in an app and used for a number of purposes that include, but are not limited to, the following:
Displaying web content from the network. You can build an app that’s composed solely of an embedded WebBrowser control that points to your website, with custom branding around the outside of the control. For more info, see How to display web content from the network using the WebBrowser control for Windows Phone.
Displaying static web content. You can configure an app to save content locally in isolated storage, and then the user can view it later in an embedded WebBrowser control. For more info, see How to display static web content using the WebBrowser control for Windows Phone.
Displaying dynamically generated web content. You can point theWebBrowser control at HTML content that’s constructed dynamically in the app code. For more info, see How to display dynamically generated web content using the WebBrowser control for Windows Phone.
Script is disabled in the WebBrowser control by default. Set the IsScriptEnabled property to true if you want to enable scripting in your control. You can then call scripts using the InvokeScript method. The ScriptNotify event occurs when JavaScript in the WebBrowser control passes a string to managed code.
You can also use the GetCookies(WebBrowser) method of the WebBrowserExtensions class to retrieve a collection of cookies from a website that you can use in future web requests. For more info about working with cookies, see How to get and set cookies for Windows Phone.
Sample app
To view a sample app that uses the WebBrowser control, see How to create your first app for Windows Phone.
New tools for Windows Phone 8 save developers time and money [Windows Phone Developer Blog, Oct 30, 2012]
…
Tools, cross-platform frameworks, HTML5, libraries, and UI
We’re seeing growing support for Windows Phone 8 among cross-platform tools, frameworks, and libraries vendors. Many of them take advantage of extensive support for HTML5 in Internet Explorer 10. Here’s what’s new:
- Adobe PhoneGap framework (aka Apache Cordova) is coming to Windows Phone 8. //Build attendees can visit Adobe on the Expo floor.
- appMobi added support today for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8.
- Appcelerator announced its plans to deliver Titanium, its app development solution for Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8, in the first half of 2013.
- Scrirra Construct 2, an HTML5 game engine that lets you build games without writing code, now targetsWindows Phone 8.
- Trigger.io’s HTML5 development framework called Forge, now targets Windows Phone 8.
- YoYo GameMaker: Studio, an HTML5-based game development tool, is opening its Beta program for Windows Phone 8 soon. See the details.
- SQLite, cross-platform, open-source database engine is now available on Windows Phone 8.
- Sencha is announcing its Sencha Touch UI HTML5 framework, now supporting Windows Phone 8.
- A new jQuery Mobile theme for Windows Phone 8 is available.
- Trigger.io’s HTML5 development framework, Forge, now targetsWindows Phone 8.
…
jqMobi Becomes First High Performance Mobile HTML5 Framework To Support Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 [jqMobi press release, Nov 5, 2012]
jqMobi (www.jqmobi.com) today released the developer preview of jqMobi version 1.2, which adds support for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. jqMobi was the first JavaScript framework specifically designed for speed and continuity of user experience across mobile devices from different manufacturers. Since its introduction and open sourcing in January, jqMobi has been adopted by thousands of developers and powers millions of user sessions per day.
In this release jqMobi adds support for Internet Explorer, making it the first time an additional mobile browser has been supported outside of WebKit based browsers. All of jqMobi’s core and base plugins have been extended to support the IE10 browser in Windows Phone 8, including fixed headers and footers, CSS3 transitions and JS-based scrolling. jqMobi 1.2 also adds commands to allow the developer to detect which OS it is running on and adds the $.os.ie prefix to support IE specific commands.
“For HTML5 frameworks like jqMobi, the quality of the browser determines what we can deliver” said Ian Maffett, jqMobi lead developer. “Microsoft’s IE10 browser delivers really good performance that is competitive with the best browsers we’ve seen on Android and iOS. So that means that developers who want to take advantage of jqMobi to deliver iOS, Android, Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 apps can give their users an identically fantastic experience across all four device platforms.”
The preview version of jqMobi 1.2 is available free as an open source project at https://github.com/appmobi/jq.mobi. A demonstration video showing how to use jqMobi to create high performance Windows Phone 8 apps in Visual Studio is available at http://youtu.be/L_tz3juWzTk.
About jqMobi
jqMobi is the first JavaScript framework developed solely for use on mobile devices, and it is optimized for touch based interface and smaller screen sizes. It is significantly smaller and faster than other frameworks such as Sencha Touch and jQuery that were originally developed for desktop web. jqMobi was originally created by appMobi and open sourced in February 2012, and is being used in tens of thousands of mobile web apps and hybrid apps around the world. While most JavaScript app frameworks deliver a good user experience on iOS devices, many have difficulties with the highly fragmented Android platform. jqMobi offers developers a solid framework that delivers equivalent user experiences on iOS, Android, Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 platforms. More information is available at http://www.jqmobi.com
Announcing Windows Phone 8 support [The Typekit blog, Nov 1, 2012]
On Monday, Microsoft officially announced their new Windows Phone 8 operating system for mobile devices. It comes with a long list of new features, but we’re most excited about the new web browser: a new mobile version of Internet Explorer 10 that finally brings support for web fonts and the standard WOFF font format to Windows Phone. Today, we’re announcing official Typekit support for Windows Phone 8 and up.
…
BUILD 2012: Notes on Day 1 and 2 Keynotes
While the first day keynote fo BUILD 2012 event from Microsoft was far from developers’ hearts the second one was much closer. In the end of that it was disclosed that:
This BUILD is distinctly different: direct your imagination to exploit the platform capabilities.
Still the first day keynote served that purpose weakly while the second day’s one was quite good for that. So my recommendation is that after coming through these notes the developer-oriented readers could find more interesting materials in the associated Channel 9 discussion and session records. So go to the Build 2012 event site on the Channel 9 and select related videos of interest using the provided filtering capabilities.
Day 1 Keynote (Steve Ballmer)
Steve Ballmer and Steve Guggenheimer: Build Day 1 full transcript and video record of it on Channel 9
(There was also another keynote related to the announced Windows Phone 8 SDK by Kevin Gallo:
Build 2012: Microsoft launches SDK for Windows Phone 8 [networkworld YouTube channel, Oct 30, 2012] … full transcript and …the same video record of Keynote 1 BUT START AT [01:11:20] ESSENTIALLY AT [01:13:00] and read his blog post on Announcing the new Windows Phone 8 Developer Platform [Windows Phone Developer blog, Oct 30, 2012] from which it is especially important to draw the attention of developer oriented people to the referred from there to the Introducing Windows Phone SDK 8.0 [The Visual Studio Blog, Oct 30, 2012] and Announcing the release of the .NET Framework for Windows Phone 8 [.NET Framework blog, Oct 30, 2012] posts, and the following excerpts from those as well as from the keynote:
[from the keynote]
[01:19:38] Back in June I talked about how Windows Phone 8 was a foundational release, because we now share a common core with Windows. On top of this common core we have a common API set. You can now build shared components that are identical to both Windows and Windows Phone and use them inside of those apps. [01:20:00]
Following that: first a picture-sharing app is shown … already paired the phone and tablet using NFC … then it is shown how a photo image-editing app written 10 years ago in C++ can be wrapped as a Windows runtime component, so it could be called from C# in Windows Phone app … next how simple is to reuse the exact same code throughout the project inside of Windows 8 …
[01:24:17] talk about some of the new features coming to the Windows Phone 8 platform. …
See all these other features that we’ve been adding to the platform over the last release. I want to highlight a lot of them there. I want to highlight a few. You asked us to make it easier to build fast and fluid UI. We delivered. We’re writing more controls to the platform and we’ve dramatically improved the performance of the existing controls. Your apps will be noticeably faster when you use them. You asked us to do more with Live Tiles. We delivered. We now support Live Tiles in three sizes. We also allow you to show notifications on the launch screen, and you can create and update the wallpaper of the phone directly from within your application.
You asked for speech support. We now support having full conversations in your app. So, not only can you launch apps, you can control them using speech. We’ve improved you’ve asked for us to improve our dev center and store. We’ve streamlined our store. It’s now more efficient to submit and update your apps, and you have more ways to monetize your apps in our store. You asked for deeper integration with the phone experiences. We delivered. We’ve opened up our camera and now we support a feature called Lenses. We’re actually better multitasking. We support location-based applications running in the background, as well as first-class support for VoIP and video chat.
You asked for us to improve and to give you advanced networking capabilities. We’ve heard your request. For Bluetooth data transfer, peer networking with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, as well as proximity connect with NFC. Our response is done, done and done. In total we’ve delivered on over 90 percent of the top developer requests. And over the next few days you will be able to have over 20 sessions to go into detail about how to use these in your apps. [01:26:40]
Then an AR Drone Quadcopter app is shown which comes with a native code library that allows communication with it and a front end built out in XAML. What follows that is a talk about native games, supporting C++ code, which allows to write high-performance physics engines, as well as audio libraries, and get access to low-level, hardware-accelerated APIs like Direct3D, with fully programmable shader support, both pixel and vertex shaders. … Then Unity is showing the first-ever demo of the Unity gaming engine running on a Windows Phone. …
After that Richard Kerris from Nokia is coming to the stage first making publicity for the Lumia 920 and finishing with the annoumcement that every attendee will get a Lumia 920. Finally Kevin Gallo is closing with the announcement that Microsoft will reduce the individual registration for their dev center from the normal $99 to $8 for the next eight days.
[from the “Multi-Targeting Windows Phone 7.1 and 8.0 apps” of the Introducing Windows …]
With Window Phone SDK 8.0 and Visual Studio 2012 you can continue developing great Windows Phone 7.1 apps. These apps will run on Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 devices. The SDK comes with emulators for both Windows Phone 7.1 as well as 8.0 so that your apps can be validated on both these versions. … However, if you have an existing Windows Phone 7.1 project but wish to upgrade it to Windows Phone 8, you can do so with the new single-click upgrade feature. Once upgraded, apps will no longer run on Windows Phone 7.1 or earlier version devices.
[from the “Tooling support for ‘Compiler in the Cloud’” of the Introducing Windows …]
Windows Phone 8 managed application binaries are processed in the Store to improve your apps’ performance and to save battery life. As developers, you will be able to validate your apps’ real life installation and performance behavior. When deploying to the Windows Phone 8 device, tooling will automatically generate these processed binaries and use them for deployment and launching of the apps.
[regarding that see also my earlier Windows Phone 8 software architecture vs. that of Windows Phone 7, 7.5 and the upcoming 7.8 [June 22, 2012] post]
[from the “Much faster code with “Compiler in the Cloud”” of the Announcing the release …]
For Windows Phone 8, we adopted a new code generation approach that is much better suited to the phone, both to deliver higher performance and to save battery life. Windows Phone 8 apps are compiled to high-quality ARM code before they are downloaded and deployed on end-user devices. They are compiled in the Windows Phone Store, with an optimizing compiler that does not have to satisfy the time and power constraints of a just-in-time (JIT) compiler. As a result, end-users will enjoy very fast app launch times on Windows Phone 8.
These changes are specific to Windows Phone 8, but they also improve launch times for Windows Phone 7.x apps. Both Windows Phone 7.x and 8 apps can be pre-compiled to high quality ARM code in the Windows Phone Store, before being downloaded and installed on Windows Phone 8 devices. You and your customers get the benefits of pre-compilation, without requiring you to make changes to your app. You can test out the pre-compiled binaries on your own Windows Phone 8 devices using Visual Studio 2012.
While these changes provide significant performance improvements for end-users, they also help battery life. In Windows Phone 7.x, app code was compiled every time the app was launched, and the CPU was used to compile that code, requiring battery power. With the new code generation approach in Windows Phone 8, apps are compiled in the Windows Phone Store with AC power generated from the Columbia River in Washington. That’s a better battery to use than yours! As you can see, we’ve removed an entire category of battery use on end-user devices.
[from the end of the Announcing the release …]
We recognize that many of you have a C# XAML Windows Store app or plan to write one soon, and it may well be similar in form and function to the companion Windows Phone 8 app. To enable you to share code across the two apps, you can use a feature we announced a little while ago – Portable Class Libraries. Visual Studio 2012 Professional and Ultimate SKUs have built-in support for creating Portable Class Libraries. If you have not explored using Portable Class Libraries before, the Targeting Multiple Platforms with Portable Code blog post has a good overview. You can read more about how to architect your code and leverage Portable Class Libraries in the MSDN Magazine article titled Create a Continuous Client Using Portable Class Libraries.
See also: Nokia gives a Lumia 920 to all //Build 2012 attendees
[LeFinFinnois YouTube channel, Oct 30, 2012])
[1:35:45] Steve’s phone
[1:36:46] Start speaking:
Build 2012: 4M upgrades to Windows 8 in four days, says Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer [networkworld YouTube channel, Oct 30, 2012]
– in last 3 days 4 million Windows 8 upgrades sold
– 1981: launch of IBM PC … 1975: Windows 95 (also for Internet) … 2012: Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8
[1:53:09] experience demos on new “Windows 8 generation” hardware:
Build 2012: Steve Ballmer shows off an 82-inch Windows 8 slate PC at Build 2012 [networkworld YouTube channel, Oct 30, 2012]
- Perceptive Pixel, 82” “slate”: … OneNote, New Office with touch as 1st class citize built-in …
- Dell XPS One 27” all-in-one: … Jessica Alba on Xbox video and elsewhere (searching and sharing systemwide capabilities), lock …
- Smartphones: 4.8” Samsung ATIV S very personalized, HTC 8X with wide angle camera very thin very light, Nokia Lumia 920 with beautiful screen you can see very well in daylight with ink annotation earlier entered automatically rolled
- ASUS Vivo Tab RT: 1.15 lbs tablet (with Tegra 3) with detachable keyboard: … pinning to the start screen with live information (every developer can do and advized to do)
- Microsoft Surface: with TouchType … the best expression of the “PC meets the tablet” with Xbox Music built-into … built-in kickstand for …
- Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2: of 1.32 lbs which will be launched in next few weeks with Intel Atom processor: … with built-in stylus … new touch version of Microsoft Outlook .. making annotations
- Acer Aspire S7-191: … to surpise most of the people … with 2.38 lbs … very thin, very light notebook … also touch based … touch laptops are really cool … this type of machine will be also to do software development … new MSN for Windows 8, a website (not an app) optimized for IE10 and touch
all [groups in Microsoft are] in … video shown in connection with Xbox [2:19:23] VIDEO
[2:20:36] Steve Guggenheimer:
– last 5 years spent with OEMs: inflection point for hardware industry
– marriage of hardware, software and services in some case are demoed: … Disney game brought to Windows 8 (others from Disney coming) … (as other end of spectrum) from apps already built an Autodesk app for which making a complementary Sketch application (or service) … going to mobiler devices or from mobiles to … monetization (via Store or your own) with inapp purchase or advertising (PayPal to be released in a couple of weeks)
– reimagining software, the applications (bringing to the market brand new apps): e.g. the result of the “Windows 8 journey” of the new ESPN application (by VP on the scene)
[2:36:22]
(See more in Guggenheimer’s post on The Business Opportunity with Windows 8 [The Official Microsoft Blog, Oct 30, 2012] as well as the Making money with your app on the Windows Store session by Drew Robbins published as a Channel 9 video recorded)
Ballmer back:
– example of some brand new apps available in Microsoft Store
– today: SAP announced, DropBox announced, Twitter announced
– magic of “Live Kinect”
– Why write for Windows 8? … lot of reasons … but volume is perhaps the most important … Windows 8 takes less resource than Windows 7 … vitality and explosion brought to the PC market, 400 million new devices you could target … Windows Phone … Microsoft will do more marketing and better marketing for Windows 8 systems and Windows Phone … this is the market which will explode … the best opportunity to make money …
– for every attendee: 100 GB SkyDrive storage + Microsoft Surface RT
[2:046:00]
Day 2 Keynote (Satya Nadella)
Satya Nadella, Scott Guthrie and Jason Zander: Build Day 2 full transcript and video record of it on Channel 9
[16:00] … new era of Devices & Services … very similarly on back-end we are reimagining the “Other” Windows … webscale services everywhere with diversity (SkyDrive, Office 365, Bing …) …
(See also Nadella’s post on Reimagining the “Other” Windows [The Official Microsoft Blog, Oct 31, 2012]
Device-centric apps
– announced Windows Azure Mobile Services: Josh Twist to the scene … creation of an event buddy service etc. … full app [37:00]
– Windows Azure ISV usage examples
Web as the next application pattern
– … Scott Hanselman to the scene … videos on Windows Azure exposed as an ASP.NET application (from existing ASP.NET app into a touch enhanced one, both for web browsers and Windows 8 clients ) … [50:56]
– a lot of apps taking advantage of ASP.NET with touch enhancement
– make Scott Hanselman’s app and take it even richer … make building cloud-scale apps very easy
– Scott Guthrie to the scene … about Windows Azure Media Services (exposes REST API): in a ~1 min have a media service around which can program further … incremental publishing story … introducing a background service … have a built-in monitoring support … [1:18:20]
– Announced: Windows Azure SDK October Update etc. … huge opportunity to boost …
The new lifecyle of [cloud-scale] webapps
– GA of the Team Foundation Service [1:22:15]
– Jazon Zander to the scene … [1:27:26]
Cloud scale for enterprise apps
– tremendous amount of traction with enterprise adoption of Windows Azure
– 3 specific things (services) for that (very attractive for develeopers): 1. extending Office (SharePoint as a back-end especially) 2. service bus 3. identities (federation etc.)
– video clip of a SaaS ISV company using these services: Workday [1:35:22]
Data-centric
– building the data platform to do more: … all kind of data types … OLTP .. stream data … HADOOP … adding machine learning modules … loading into in-memory distributed database [1:38:11]
– Dave Campbell to the scene … how to listen to services making refinement etc. … (past year’s) BUILD sessions as viewed overall … last week announced HDinsight (… HADOOP …) … Hive (a structured query language) … a LINQ provider … integrated Hive ODBC into Excel … geocode the country names … >>> building a user-specific recommendation engine based on all that … [1:49:25]
– … Halo 4 on Windows Azure (Nov 6) also the first customer to use HDinsight … adding features based on recommendation stuff … so change the code base in a lot of ways
(See also the related Microsoft feature story for the press Meet the ‘Plumbers’ Powering ‘Halo 4’ Infinity Multiplayer published on Oct 31, 2012).
Wrap-up showing the progress and achievements
– a distinctly different of this BUILD: direct your imagination to exploit the platform capabilities [1:53:16]
Microsoft Tellme cloud service for WP7 ‘Mango’ and other systems
Microsoft Tellme Vision for Future Interactions [Aug 9, 2011]
Four Reasons We’ll Love Talking to Our TVs [Zig Serafin, General Manager, Microsoft Tellme, Aug 9, 2011]
Microsoft is making big bets on speech NUI. Microsoft Tellme is driving that forward, powering the speech experiences in Kinect for Xbox 360, Windows Phone, Bing Mobile and Microsoft Tellme IVR. Because speech fits well with NUI across devices of all screen sizes, Microsoft Tellme is truly at the center of the NUI evolution.
…
In developing the speech NUI, we’ve designed the Microsoft Tellme speech service as a system that continuously learns and adapts. The more you use it, the more it learns and improves — we hope meeting and often exceeding your expectations. It continually gets smarter through a natural feedback loop that spans mobile, entertainment, customer care and other interactions. It learns from the great diversity of ways people speak across these interactions. The Microsoft Tellme speech service currently processes more than 11 billion voice interactions a year; each one helping to improve the service and, along with it, your experience. It’s the ultimate crowd-sourcing example.
That the Microsoft Tellme speech service gets better with each interaction is important. But that’s not the coolest thing about the future of speech. We aspire to deliver services that are just as natural and easy as human conversation. We see a future where the service will know you: know your intent, your social and business connections, your likes and dislikes, your privacy preferences, and the things that define the context that’s important to you. The result will be a speech NUI service that helps you accomplish everyday tasks in a more natural and conversational manner. This service will simplify tasks that used to be tedious or impossible on a TV or other device, by combining an understanding of language and intent with a deep knowledge of you, the user. We envision a future where we build on the experiences we deliver today with Kinect for Xbox 360, Windows Phone, or Bing for iPad or iPhone apps, by enhancing the speech NUI experience to understand more layers of context: what you are doing, where you are doing it, the kinds of devices you are using and your historical preferences. Because this is a cloud-based service, your interactions will be able to persist over time, enabling you to pick up where you left off, regardless of what device you may be using. That is a pretty exciting future, and one where your TV experience will be as helpful and intuitive as it is natural today with Kinect for Xbox 360. In other words, you may never have to see another remote control on your coffee table again!
Look who’s talking: Speech in Mango [Bill Pardi, senior consumer writer in Windows Phone Engineering, Aug 3, 2011]
On a recent run around town with my wife to grab dinner and pick up one of the kids, a text message came in from my son. Not an unusual event in itself, but what made this message interesting is that my phone read it aloud to me — and I replied back with my voice.
Meet Voice-to-text, a new hands-free messaging feature coming this fall in Mangoand one that’s quickly become a personal favorite. And after seeing it in action on my test phone on our drive, my wife looked at me and said, “I want that for my car.”
Voice-to-text works for both text and instant messages, and it’s handy even when you’re not driving since it can slash the time you spend typing—a good thing at times even considering the fantastic keyboardon Windows Phone.
But the feature really shines when being hands-free is a necessity, like when I’m driving. My car has Bluetooth built in, and my Windows Phone is paired with it. When I’m driving and a message comes in, Windows Phone uses the Bluetooth connection and car’s sound system to narrate the message and record my response (pausing and resuming music or the radio if needed). The “conversation” goes something like this:
WP: [music pauses]You have a text message from Cody Pardi. You can say read it or ignore.
Me: Read it.
WP: “When will you be home?” You can say reply, call or I’m done.
Me: Reply.
WP: Say your message.
Me: “In about 20 minutes.”
WP: [The phone transcribes and repeats the message] You can say send, try again, or I’m done.
Me: Send. [music resumes]My initial thought when I used it for the first time was “this is a game changer” because it felt natural to use while driving without being a distraction. And it all just worked. In fact, I was so impressed with the technology I decided to sit down with Alex Perez Avila, a program manager for many of the voice features in Windows Phone, to get an inside look at how it all happens.
Speech dialog box
Alex works in the Microsoft Tellme team, which develops the voice recognition and text-to-speech technology found in a growing number of Microsoft products including Office, Windows, and Xbox. He told me that competing smartphones are adding some voice features, mostly for existing phone options. Alex and his team, meanwhile, wanted to create something seamless that felt natural for completing everyday tasks such as calling someone in your contacts list or finding a local restaurant. “We think this will set Windows Phone apart,” he said.
Windows Phone taps the Microsoft Tellme cloud service for voice recognition and transcription. “No one else has it,” Alex said, “and we think customers are really going to like it.” The service, he notes, has built-in ways to learn from itself and improve recognition and transcription accuracy over time–all without putting additional software on the phone. The feature, he says, “will just get better and better as more people use it.”
I mentioned to Alex that I noticed my Mango phone can speak modern-day abbreviations such as TTYL (“talk to you later”), LOL (“laugh out loud”), and even
(“happy smiley face”). I asked him if Windows Phone could translate those back if I spoke them while composing a text message. “Yep. We understand a limited set of key phrases and will transcribe them as abbreviations.” He demonstrated—and indeed it worked as advertised.
In addition to Voice-to-text, Alex walked me through several other Speech-related improvements on the way. In Mango, for example, Speech can be triggered even when the phone is locked by pressing and holding the Start button. You also have control over how and when text messages are read. By default, the phone reads messages aloud when connected to Bluetooth headset or stereo (which is how Windows Phone knows to read my text messages in the car).
Speech Interface: Windows Phone Mango Preview [July 25, 2011]
While you may have already seen some of the new speech interface features in our Ultimate Windows Phone 7.5 Mango Preview, we thought it would be fun to give you an even more in-depth demonstration of what exactly you can do without having to touch or look at your phone. While you may have already seen some of the new speech interface features in our Ultimate Windows Phone 7.5 Mango Preview, we thought it would be fun to give you an even more in-depth demonstration of what exactly you can do without having to touch or look at your phone. Windows Phone Mango’s updated speech interface is finally capable of performing all commands via a Bluetooth headset. This was not true with the original version of Windows Phone 7 which could only use a Bluetooth headset to make calls.There are some great new accessibility-related Speech features coming in Mango—using voice to forward calls and setup a speed-dial list. When Alex showed me these, I was impressed. In one very cool example, he stored a number in a speed dial location and then dialed it, hands-free. Other things you can use Speech for in Windows Phone include:
- Making a phone call by name or nickname
- Redialing a number
- Calling voicemail
- Searching Bing
- Turning on the speakerphone
- Starting an app while in a call
- Navigating Maps
All these features put together makes voice an incredibly integrated part of Windows Phone in Mango, and I think will it set the bar for voice-recognition technology in a smartphone. To finish the story I started this post with, I told my wife that if she wanted that voice feature in her car she’d have to get a Windows Phone because her smartphone doesn’t do that.
“OK, fine with me,” she said.
Now that was something really worth hearing.
——————————————————–
Windows Phone around the world: Language support in Mango [July 6, 2011]
- Voice-to-text and Voice-to-dialis available in 6 countries: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, and the Unites States.
- Voice search is supported in 4 countries: France, Germany, United Kingdom, and the United States.
Compare this to the previous speech capability:
How To Use The Speech Feature | Windows Phone 7 [Oct 11, 2010]
Learn more about using the Speech Feature: Use Speech on my phone [Oct 9, 2010]
Speech Recognition Integration in Windows Phone 7 [July 24, 2010]
OTHER SYSTEMS
TVs (via Kinect and Xbox)
E3: Xbox Kinect Voice Control [June 6, 2011]
Microsoft E3 2011 – Kinect Voice Control Dashboard [MS press conference, June 6, 2011]
Tellme and the Voice of Kinect [Aug 1, 2011]
There’s a great article on Microsoft News Centertoday that provides some interesting context around the development of the Kinect.
Back in the early 2000s, Bill Gates and other Microsoft execs had been talking a lot about enabling a connected media center for people’s homes, alluding at that time mostly to the Media Center PC. The problem? The traditional PC interface wasn’t widely accepted by people in their living rooms. Perhaps people didn’t want a keyboard on their coffee table.
At a certain point, the Xbox team realized they had a foothold in the living room like no other device, so their product was the natural one to bring Bill’s vision to reality. They built an entirely new kind of interface so people could access their entertainment in a more natural way – the result of that work was the Kinect, a big part of which is the audio or speech capability.
What’s interesting is the collaboration involved to create a device “that feels like Star Trek.” The underlying technologies powering Kinect’s speech interface had actually been in development at Microsoft for a long time, but no one had put them together in such a seamless way.
The Xbox team worked with one of the company’s senior researchers, Ivan Tashev, to “purify” the audio signal and allow our speech-recognition platform to do its job despite the often spacious and noisy characteristics of many people’s living rooms. As Tashev says in the article, “Basically in Kinect I have technologies that are a summary of the research I did for seven years.” You can read more about Tashev’s contribution to the project in this related article published by Microsoft Research and in a post here on Next.
The speech-recognition technology used in Kinect is provided by Microsoft Tellme, a flexible speech service also used to power the speech experiences in Windows Phone, Bing Mobile and other key Microsoft products. Microsoft acquired Tellme in 2007to add to the company’s already robust research efforts in speech recognition and to gain valuable expertise in running cloud-based speech services.
These guys make it sound easy, but applying chalkboard-sized algorithms to cancel out random noises in a microphone audio stream is an epic challenge, and just one of many the team had to overcome in building the first Kinect. This is kind of the technology version of a quest story, like Jason and the Argonauts. You have heroes like Microsoft Tellme and Tashev overcoming villains like ambient conversations and echoes. Fortune steps in, in the form of the keyword “Xbox,” which ends up being a unique phonetic construction and thus the perfect choice for an aural “push to talk” button. In the end, three separate technology threads have been woven together in a way that advances the entire industry.
This is what I love about technology — it may be geeky, but it’s never dull.
Listening to Kinect [Apr 25, 2011]
I’ve been telling anyone who’ll listen recently that Natural User Interfacesare more than just touch, gesture and speech – though Kinect, perhaps the hottest NUI tech around, does two of these exceedingly well. Much of the focus of tinkering with Kinect has been with gesture, using the skeletal tracking capability. The speech capability of Kinect has had less focus and a recent post by Rob Knies on the Microsoft Research site reminded me that it was perhaps time to give speech the spotlight for a moment.
The story starts with Ivan Tashevwho has been working for the majority of his career in Microsoft Research, always focused on the sound. He knew someday, we’d be talking to computers but didn’t quite know when the call would come. A few years ago, Alex Kipman from our Xbox team was looking for an audio capability that could be listening 100% of the time and didn’t rely on a button being pressed to signal “listening mode”. Added to this, Alex was looking for a system that could detect distinct voices in a noisy environment….oh and do this at 4 meters. Regular readers will know that Alex was the driving force behind Kinect. Ivan’s call had arrived.
He figured most of the above as possible but one big challenge remained. Stereo acoustic-echo-cancellation is a longstanding research problem that would be required to filter out the loudspeaker sound and zone in on user who were talking to the system. It turned out that acoustic-echo canceller 10 times better than normal industrial devices have.
In his MIX talk, Ivan talks about preferred modalities for input – noting that the combination of speech and gesture can deliver a powerful multimodal interface. You issue one command with speech (for example a search) and select from a short result set with gesture.
Many months of works ensued on the development of the audio pipeline with our Tellmegroup involved in building a solution that many thought was impossible. As Alex has reminded me on a few occasions, the development of Kinect is a story of making improbable (perhaps even impossible) things possible. Ivan says that Microsoft didn’t get in this position by accident – testament to the many years of investment in something we didn’t quite know what it would be used. That’s the risk, and reward of basic research and something I’m personally proud that Microsoft continues to invest in.
34 days before Kinect shipped to the public, the audio work was complete. That’s some high risk, high reward timing!
The story doesn’t end there. Very soon, the Kinect for Windows SDK betawill include the ability to take advantage of the four-element microphone array with the acoustic noise and echo cancellation that Ivan and the team developed. Right at the end of the talk, Ivan gives some insight in to the future capability of Kinect audio.
I’m looking forward to seeing what the tinkerers do with this audio wizardry.
‘Xbox: Play.’ — Microsoft Tellme and the Voice of Kinect for Xbox 360 [Microsoft feature story, Aug 1, 2011]
For years leading up to the launch of Kinect for Xbox 360, Microsoft was blending technologies for the connected living room, working toward its vision of a natural, powerful center for home entertainment.
At the same time, millions of people around the world had invited the newest iteration of video game consoles into their homes — the Xbox 360video game and entertainment system, which was capable of handling games, movies, TV, music and photos — and it opened a world of Internet-connected possibilities.
“Bill Gates spoke about Microsoft’s strategy for the living room, with an intelligent entertainment center to enable amazing experiences,” says Thomas Soemo, principal program manager lead for the Xbox platformat Microsoft. “We knew that the Xbox 360 system was going to be a prime component of this vision.”
The challenge was that no one had ever really found an interface that worked well in the living room. Other industry attempts featured a keyboard to input commands on screen, which never resonated with consumers. The Xbox 360 Controller was great for games but limited for searching media — and unfamiliar territory for nongamers. There had to be a better way to interact.
“How do we solve this problem?” Soemo says. “How do we enable a very natural form of interaction with this device that also fits the social atmosphere of the living room? How do we achieve what feels like Star Trek? That’s the challenge we took on.”
With that challenge in front of them, the Xbox team set out to create the next-generation human-machine interface, capable of understanding requests and commands the way humans do — through speech and gesture. The resulting product, Kinect, has brought speech service beyond the telephone voice prompt and into millions of homes worldwide.
“We are witnessing the beginning of a revolution today,” Soemo says. “Speech recognition is entering the mainstream and redefining how people find, consume and interact with their media content on the Xbox 360.”
The Living Room Challenge
In creating the Kinect, one of the biggest engineering challenges was the living room itself. Living rooms tend to be larger rooms, leading to an unprecedented design requirement for the Xbox team — the Kinect’s microphone array would need to work seamlessly up to four meters away from the couch, much farther than other speech-recognition systems in the industry could comfortably handle.
Another complication was the fact that living rooms are social gathering places and are often filled with ambient noise, such as conversations, movie soundtracks and music.
“Imagine if everything you said could be interpreted by the Xbox 360 as a command,” says Keith Herold, a senior program manager lead with Microsoft Tellme, the company’s speech-recognition service that also powers Windows Phone 7 devices and appears in an array of other products. “That’s the big problem in the living room — how do we get the device to ignore everything but actual commands?”
To solve this, the Xbox team reached out to Ivan Tashev, a Microsoft Research principal software architectwith more than a dozen patents related to helping machines capture and interpret sound.
Tashev had been prototyping technologies for speech enhancement, audio processing, microphone arrays and echo cancellation. For the Xbox 360 system, he went to work purifying the audio signal so the Kinect could understand what it was being told. He used his expertise in echo cancellation to subdue everything coming out of the console — soundtracks, movie dialogue, game audio — as well as room noise the microphone would pick up. This was an immensely challenging problem based on advanced mathematics, but Tashev relished the task.
“Basically, in Kinect I have technologies that are a summary of the research I did for seven years,” he says. “We know what’s coming out of the console — it’s a constantly shifting, dynamic signal. The trick was to remove that outbound signal from the incoming signal. And to do it in real time.”
Another challenge was to help the Kinect determine who is talking, focus on that source and ignore everything else. To solve this, Tashev used “beamforming” technology, which spotlights the person giving commands to the system.
“If there are four people in the room and one is talking, the spotlight goes to him or her, and if that person says ‘Xbox,’ then we start listening,”Tashev says.
In the end, the Kinect’s audio enhancement chain consists of six major stages that consecutively improve the quality of the speech signal, removing clutter, noise and reverberation from the room to help the speech recognizer do its job.
Making the Natural Interface Natural
With the audio pipeline in place, the next step was to integrate that signal with the Microsoft Tellmespeech service. For this phase of the project, the Xbox team turned to Herold’s team to bring Microsoft Tellme to the Xbox 360 platform.
The living room presents unique challenges for voice technology. Kinect’s microphone array needs to work seamlessly up to four meters away from the couch and contend with ambient noise such as conversations, movie soundtracks and music.
“Our job was to take the remaining audio, now at this point just a player’s commands, and do something rational with it,” says Herold. “This project required us to step up and push our boundaries well past telephony voice response and desktop speech, into a much more human environment. We needed to put ourselves in the mindset of the living room environment and all of the interactions that are possible there. We wanted to change the way people thought of speech technology.”
Adding to the challenge was the Xbox team’s allowable error rate, which seemed impossibly low for a system with so many variables.
“We never want a command to trigger random actions on the console,” Herold says. “The idea of ‘never’ is not achievable of course, but we picked a suitably small number for never.”
The solution to this problem was the software equivalent of a concept first developed for backpack-sized walkie-talkies in the 1940s — the transmit, or “push-to-talk,” button. This was embodied as the keyword “Xbox.”
“When you say ‘Xbox,’ the system knows you’re talking to it and what’s coming next is a command. If you don’t say it first, you haven’t pushed the virtual ‘push-to-talk’ button, and the system won’t listen,” Herold says.
Since the Kinect supports both speech and gestures, the combined Xbox and Microsoft Tellme team spent considerable time determining how to enable both forms of interaction in a way that was complementary and intuitive. Their guiding principal was the concept of the Natural User Interface(NUI), in which people communicate with machines in the most human way possible.
For example, speech might be the best modality to search through thousands of songs, since gesturing to scroll through such a vast list could be tedious. Telling the machine, “Xbox: Bing, The Beatles” allows the user to get what they want in the most natural way possible from the vast collection of content available through Xbox LIVE.
Once the list is narrowed, using gesture to select a specific song may be the most natural interaction. Graphics, text and sounds on screen help cue users to make the interface more intuitive and easy to use.
According to Herold, this is the strength of “multimodal” interfaces, which combine speech with touch, gesture or other forms of input: Each modality is used where it is stronger, and the combination becomes much more powerful.
Advancing the Platform
For the first iteration of the device, the Xbox team prioritized the commands that would resonate most with people in their living rooms. They decided that simple navigation functions and media playback controls— “Xbox: play. Xbox: pause.” — gave people something valuable, while also demonstrating the system’s potential.
“When you’re building a new product on new technology, you can try and do everything and it may work most of the time, or you can stay laser focused on the key scenarios and make them amazing,” Soemo says. “The first release of Kinect was about shipping a product that handled those key speech experiences extremely well.”
From the start, however, the team was thinking long term. When the Xbox team announced the next round of Kinect functionality at the recent E3 conferencein June 2011, it was the next step in a vision that began years ago.
“For the launch of Kinect, we leapt over some major technology hurdles on our way to ‘Xbox: play.’ and ‘Xbox: pause.’,” Soemo says. “Nobody had ever done highly accurate speech recognition from up to four meters away, without a physical ‘push-to-talk’ button, in an environment filled with ambient noise, all while playing in 5.1 surround sound. Because of the collaboration among the Xbox, Microsoft Researchand Microsoft Tellme teams, we were able to take science fiction and make it science fact.”
Soemo says the functionality announced at E3 is just the second iterationin the journey toward the Xbox 360 system becoming the entertainment hub for the home — redefining how people discover and use the range of media content available on Xbox LIVE and making the remote a thing of the past.
“We are laying a foundation that will transform how people interact with devices,” Soemo says. “We are at that cusp. With Kinect, we’ve put speech into the living room. Now, Microsoft will continue to push the boundaries of NUIs to enable seamless experiences that span devices and platforms.”
With that foundation in place, the Kinect’s latest functionality goes well beyond simple navigation and allows people to use voice commands to traverse very large media catalogs with ease, and the team doesn’t plan to stop there.
“What are the most amazing experiences with speech we can imagine?” Herold says. “Can we create technology that is as natural as talking to a friend? This is where we want to go, and it’s happening in front of our eyes.”
No keyboard necessary.
Autos
Ford SYNC
The driver’s seat just became a lot more powerful – now, get information on the go simply by asking. With Ford SYNC, drivers can ask for traffic reports, directions, local business, weather, sports scores, movies and more without taking their eyes off the road to look at a screen. Say the name of a business and Ford SYNC will tell you directions, turn by turn. Say “Home,” and Ford SYNC directs you back home.
Using Microsoft Tellme cloud-powered speech services, Ford SYNC connects you with the world outside your car.
Ford and Microsoft SYNC Up in Europe [Microsoft feature story, Feb 28, 2011]
Ford launches SYNC powered by Microsoft at CeBIT 2011.
More than three years ago Ford introduced SYNC, its award-winning connectivity technology built on the Windows Embedded Automotive platform to deliver rich, interactive experiences for drivers. Initially available only in North America, SYNC quickly became one of the industry’s most advanced voice-controlled connectivity and infotainment systems. At the end of 2010, Ford celebrated the installation of SYNC in more than 3 million vehicles.
This week at CeBIT, Ford President and CEO Alan Mulally will take to the stage to unveil the company’s global plans for SYNC. He will announce that, next year, European drivers will be able to benefit from a smarter, intuitive and simplified way of interacting with in-car technologies and their digital devices. The system will debut in the new Ford Focusnext year with the goal of being in more than 2 million vehicles in the region by 2015.
Microsoft and Ford have spent more than five years building innovative functionality into SYNC. Since Bill Gates first announced the partnership at CES in 2007, both companies have continued to work together closely to develop new experiences to surprise and delight Ford customers. This includes the addition of the MyFord Touch interface, the Microsoft Tellme voice-activated app for SYNC Traffic, Directions and Information (TDI)Services, and other new features.
MyFord Touchpowered by SYNC makes it easier to make phone calls, listen to music and get directions while in the car, while the voice-activated TDI system in Microsoft Tellme expands Ford SYNC’s cloud-based voice-command capabilities.
“We are pleased to announce that SYNC will soon be available to customers around the world,” Mulally said. “It is a smarter, safer and simpler way to connect drivers with in-car technologies and their digital lives. At Ford, we have always believed that the intelligent application of technology can help us deliver the very best customer experience and help us contribute to a better world, so we challenged ourselves to build technologically advanced cars that make driving greener, safer and smarter for all.”
MyFord Touch and the latest features of Ford SYNC demonstrate the flexibility of the Windows Embedded Automotive platform to offer Ford and third-party developers the opportunity to develop new and innovative features, such as mobile applications, an open API and Wi-Fi capability, while supporting the latest must-have consumer devices that are brought into the car.
Besides being able to play music the old-fashioned way — through CDs — users can also listen to all their favorite tracks via their smartphone, MP3 player and USB flash drives. They will also benefit from Internet “on the go” with SYNC’s Wi-Fi “hot spot” capability via a USB dongle or smartphone tether. Drivers are able to manage everything including climate control, mobile phone calls, satellite navigation and radio adjustments through voice control or an 8-inch, touch-screen LCD color display. They can even have e-mail messages read aloud and compose text messageresponses through voice command while on the move.
Some of the other features users will benefit from when SYNC launches in Europe include a voice-control system able to recognize 10,000 commands in each of 19 different languages.
Ford SYNC to be More Multilingual as Vocabulary Expands to Industry-Leading 19 Languages [Feb 27, 2011]
- Ford SYNC® to expand its vocabulary from three to 19 languages, as Ford announces global rollout of the in-vehicle connectivity technology
- New languages will be available first in Europe in 2012 with introduction in the Ford Focus
- SYNC language expansion sets an industry benchmark for automotive voice recognition capability
Ford is expanding the reach of Ford SYNC globally with the European launch of its popular voice-controlled connectivity system, with the capability of now offering 19 languages.
SYNC was originally launched in North America in 2007 with three languages. With the additional 16 vernaculars, Ford will offer voice recognition capability, powered by Nuance Communications, in more languages than any other automaker offering voice control.
The expansion brings the convenience of SYNC to a much larger audience of potential customers, said Ford President and CEO Alan Mulally, who kicked off the global launch of SYNC this week at the 2011 CeBIT technology show in Hanover, Germany.
“We are pleased to announce that SYNC will soon be available to customers around the world,” Mulally said. “It is a smart and simple way to connect drivers with in-car technologies and their digital lives.”
Teaching a car to speak
At the heart of SYNC is the speech engine, and Ford is working with its speech technology partner, Nuance Communications, to deliver a similar experience across the multiple languages.Ford leverages significant investments made by Nuance to support the broad dialect coveragerequired in larger regions such as the United States. Additionally, regions such as Europe present unique challenges, in part because of the proximity of different countries and the resulting need for multilingual solutions.
For the customer, that means SYNC can recognize 10,000 voice commands in any one of the available 19 languages, and can cope with variances in accents, vocabulary and local dialects.
If a German customer, for example, is driving in Italy, the system can provide directions in German but will use the correct Italian pronunciation for street names.
Within each international market, a unique set of abbreviations for text messaging also has been identified. For example, “cvd,” short for “Ci vediamo dopo,” was added for SYNC to read aloud, which basically means “See you later” in Italian.
“We had to make sure the system would behave as people expect in different countries and different cultures,” said Mark Porter, supervisor, SYNC Product Development. “That means we had to solicit local, native-speaking input for common abbreviations used in SMS messages as well as support different units of distance and date formats.”
Song titles and artist names posed further challenges. A German owner, for instance, may have songs by artists of German, American, Spanish and other nationalities on an MP3 player. Due to phonetic differences between the languages, the system must be able to recognize a name whether it’s pronounced in German or deep southern American English.
“The in-car experience needs to be global in nature, supporting a variety of languages to ensure all commands, addresses and song titles are recognized, whether you’re from Germany, Portugal or France. Localization should not equal limitations,” said Arnd Weil, vice president, Nuance Automotive. “Working closely with Ford, we’ve customized the SYNC experience across multiple languages to ensure drivers in all regions experience the simplicity and convenience that in-car voice technology has to offer.”
With the language expansion, SYNC with MyFord Touch will be available in:
- U.S. English
- U.K. English
- Australian English
- European French
- Canadian French
- European Spanish
- U.S. Spanish
- European Portuguese
- Brazilian Portuguese
- German
- Italian
- Dutch
- Russian
- Turkish
- Arabic
- Korean
- Japanese
- Mandarin Chinese
- Taiwanese Mandarin (supported through Mandarin Chinese)
Software, rather than hardware, solutions
As with many SYNC advancements over the years, the expanded language capabilities leverage the system’s flexible, software-based platform for a cost-effective and efficient solution.Using a single, common hardware module equipped with Wi-Fi®, SYNC can be easily configured for language on the assembly line. An on-the-line server connects with the SYNC module wirelessly, determines the appropriate software installation – including language – and downloads the information to the vehicle.
Using a common module and Wi-Fi installation avoids the logistics of stocking unique modules with every possible combination of language and capability offered by SYNC. In fact, Ford would have had to produce more than 90 different hardware modules to accommodate all of the different languages installed at assembly plants around the world.
Voice poised to become primary in-car communication interface
With independent research firms such as Datamonitor predicting that advanced speech recognition in the mobile world will triple by 2014 with similar growth for speech recognition in vehicles, Ford is ahead of the curve with the SYNC global language expansion plan.“Ford is committed to making voice recognition the primary user interface inside the car throughout the world, helping all drivers keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel,” said Jim Buczkowski, a Henry Ford Technical Fellow and director of Electrical and Electronics Systems for Ford Research and Advanced Engineering. “This expansion of SYNC language capabilities is a huge step forward in bringing voice technology to every market Ford serves.”
The Ford Focus will be the first vehicle to launch with SYNC in Europe in 2012.
2012 Ford Focus – MyFord Touch voice command tour [Feb 25, 2011]
FORD AND NUANCE ADVANCE VOICE RECOGNITION OF SYNC: NOW FASTER, FRIENDLIER, MORE PERSONAL [July 15, 2010]
- With the introduction of MyFord Touch™ driver connect technology, Ford makes it easier to control in-car systems with fewer steps and more natural language; customers can now speak more than 10,000 first-level commands, up from only 100 in first-generation SYNC®
- Working with voice control leader Nuance, SYNC will recognize more direct voice commands such as “Call John Smith,” “Find ice cream” and “Add a phone,” allowing users to do more with fewer steps
- Innovative features boost recognition accuracy and provide “Samantha,” the voice of SYNC, with smoother, more natural speech patterns
- Consumer acceptance of voice control is increasing; the Harris Interactive® 2010 AutoTECHCAST survey found an 8 point year-over-year improvement, and industry analysts predict continued segment growth
Ford SYNC Voice Recognition(PDF)
Video:
MyFord Touch – Faster, Friendlier Voice Recognition Control
DEARBORN, Mich., July 15, 2010 – Ford made in-car voice activation a reality for millions of drivers with SYNC, first introduced in 2007. Now, Ford engineers – working with voice technology pioneers Nuance Communications (NASDAQ: NUAN) – plan to once again raise the bar with the next generation of SYNC, a system that can understand 100 times more commands than the original, thus delivering a more conversational experience between car and driver.
The voice upgrades will be available on the next generation of SYNC powering the new driver connect technology, MyFord Touch, launching this year on the new 2011 Ford Edge. The system will make it easier for drivers to use voice control and get what they want more quickly using more natural phrases.
“Ford is committed to making voice recognition the primary user interface inside of the car because it allows drivers to keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel,” said Jim Buczkowski, director of Ford electronics and electrical systems engineering. “The improvements we’ve made will make it easier for drivers to use and interact with it, even those customers that have never used voice recognition before.”
Improved vocabulary
At the heart of SYNC is the speech engine, and Ford is working with speech technology leader Nuance to create and integrate a vast library of possible driver requests. This library will enable the SYNC speech engine to listen for and respond to more voice commands directly, recognize different words that mean the same thing (aliases), and integrate a vast number of point-of-interest (POI) names and business types into its navigation system.“With this latest generation of SYNC, users can control the system without having to learn nearly as many commands or navigate as many menus,” said Brigitte Richardson, Ford global voice control technology and speech systems lead engineer. “As we’ve gained processing power and learned more about how drivers use the system, we’ve been able to refine the interface. Customers can do more and say more from the top-level menu, helping them accomplish their tasks more quickly and efficiently.”
Examples of some improvements to SYNC powering MyFord Touch-equipped vehicles include:
More direct, first-level commands
- “Call John Smith” dials the phone number associated with John in a connected phone’s phonebook directly – the user isn’t required to say “Phone” first
- Direct commands related to destinations, like “Find a shoe store” or “Find a hotel,” place users in the navigation system menu where they will be walked through the POI search process
- The command, “Add a phone,” will enter the phone pairing menu and walk users through the connection process – users don’t have to enter a phone submenu to initiate the pairing process
Quicker, easier entry and search
- Navigation entries can be spoken as a single one-shot command; for example, “One American Road, Dearborn,” instead of requiring individual city, street and building number entries
- Brand names are recognized by the navigation POI menu, allowing drivers to look for chain restaurants, shoe stores, department stores and more, as well as regional and local favorites
- Direct tuning of radio stations by simply saying “AM 1270” or “FM 101.1,” or using SIRIUS station names or numbers such as “21” or “Alt-Nation”
Use of aliases
- Within the climate menu, users can voice-request the same function using several different phrases, such as “Warmer,” “Increase temperature” or “Temperature up” – helping reduce the need for drivers to learn specific commands
- When requesting a specific song from an MP3 player, users can now say “Play song [title]” in addition to saying “Play track [title]”
Personalized access
- If an occupant’s USB-connected device, such as an MP3 player, has been named, users can simply say the device name, such as “John Smith’s iPod,” rather than the less personal “USB” command
More friendly and adaptable
Ford voice engineers refined SYNC beginning with the two features customers interact with first: the voice recognition system and Samantha, the digital voice behind system commands.To help SYNC react to driver commands more quickly and accurately, the team integrated Nuance’s Unsupervised Speaker Adaptation (USA) technology. USA learns the voice of a driver within the first three voice commands, quickly creating a user profile and adapting to tone, inflection and even dialect for a 50 percent improvement in recognition performance. USA then continues to learn during that same trip, even picking out another user and creating a second profile if the voice is markedly different. Currently SYNC can actively adapt to voices in English, French-Canadian and Mexican-Spanish – with more languages on tap.
“The power of the SYNC voice control system is its ability to understand and respond to more natural language commands – and the advanced adaptability of the speech recognition technology enables the system to train itself with each successive use,” said Michael Thompson, senior vice president and general manager, Nuance Mobile. “The adaptability of SYNC is pretty remarkable – a feature functionality Nuance and Ford worked hard to develop to ensure seamless customer interaction with the system every time it starts up. So even if the car owner has a cold or someone borrows the car, SYNC will adapt to the changed voice and process spoken commands without missing a beat.”
Initial interactions also involve Samantha, the “voice” of SYNC. In an attempt to help Samantha sound less computerized, Ford boosted the size of her speech profile approximately fivefold. The additional speech units will help Samantha speak in a smoother, more human voice as she helps vehicle occupants accomplish their in-car tasks such as making phone calls, playing songs from a connected digital device and getting directions.
Voice poised to become primary in-car communication interface
With smart phones expected to replace desktop and laptop PCs as the primary web access point by 2015, some industry analysts believe voice control will replace touch devices like keyboards and screens as the primary method of search. Dr. Philip E. Hendrix, Ph.D., founder and director of immr and analyst with GigaOM Pro, says that a majority of smart phones will have optimized a Voice User Interface by the end of 2012.Research trends show strong consumer acceptance of voice recognition technology. The Harris Interactive 2010 AutoTECHCAST study found that 35 percent of drivers1 say they would be likely to adopt voice-activated controls or features in their vehicle, up from just over one-quarter (27 percent) in 2009. In recent Ford-conducted market research of SYNC owners, more than 60 percent reported they use the voice controls while driving.
Datamonitor, an independent research firm, predicts that the global market for advanced speech recognition in the mobile world will triple from 2009 to 2014. Market growth of speech recognition in vehicles is expected to grow at a similar rate, from $64.3 million in 2009 to $208.2 million in 2014.
Voice commands may reduce distracted driving
Ford knows that customers are increasingly using mobile electronics while driving, and studies show hands-free, voice-activated systems such as Ford SYNC offer significant safety benefits versus hand-held devices.According to a 100-car study conducted by Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, driver inattention that may involve looking away from the road for more than a few seconds is a factor in nearly 80 percent of accidents. The improvements to SYNC should help drivers accomplish tasks hands-free using natural speech patterns and fewer commands, enabling them to focus on the task of driving.
Ford SYNC Voice Recognition [July 13, 2010]
- With the introduction of MyFord Touch™ driver connect technology, Ford makes it easier to control in-car systems with fewer steps and more natural language; customers can now speak more than 10,000 first-level commands, up from only 100 in first-generation SYNC®
- Working with voice control leader Nuance, SYNC will recognize more direct voice commands such as “Call John Smith,” “Find ice cream” and “Add a phone,” allowing users to do more with fewer steps
- Innovative features boost recognition accuracy and provide “Samantha,” the voice of SYNC, with smoother, more natural speech patterns
- Consumer acceptance of voice control is increasing; the Harris Interactive® 2010 AutoTECHCAST survey found an 8 point year-over-year improvement, and industry analysts predict continued segment growth
FACT SHEET: FORD SYNC® VOICE-CONTROLLED COMMUNICATIONS & CONNECTIVITY SYSTEM [Sept 21, 2010]
Overview
Ford SYNC®, co-developed with Microsoft and using Nuance Communications voice recognition technology, allows customers to bring digital media players and Bluetooth®-enabled mobile phones into their vehicles and operate the devices via voice commands or with the steering wheel’s redundant audio controls. SYNC is an agnostic software platform that connects with the vast majority of makes and models of Bluetooth-enabled cell and smart phones from all network service providers, plus digital music players and USB memory sticks.Facts
- Launched in fall of 2007, first on the 2008 Focus, the most affordable Ford car at the time
- SYNC has since been installed on more than 2.5 million cars, trucks and crossovers
- SYNC will launch globally, in Europe and Asia-Pacific, in 2011 with the introduction of the new 2012 Focus
- SYNC voice recognition available in U.S. English, Canadian-French, and North American Spanish (expanding to 21 languages next year)
- In general, SYNC is installed on 70 percent of all Ford vehicles sold. More specifically, among 2010 models, it was selected by 81 percent of F-150 buyers, 85 percent of Fusion buyers and nearly 90 percent of Edge buyers
- Ford market research results:
- Post SYNC demonstration, non-Ford owners show a 3-fold increase in willingness to consider Ford
- Of SYNC owners:
- 32% see SYNC as having played an important or critical role in their purchase decision.
- 60% of owners use the voice commands
- 62% are completely satisfied with 80% of heavy users completely satisfied
- 77% would recommend – 92% of heavy users would recommend.
Availability
- SYNC, where optional, costs $395, the same price as when it launched in 2007.
- No subscription necessary
- On most Ford products, SYNC is optional on mid-level trim series (SEL and XLT) and standard on high-end trim series (Limited and Sport).
- SYNC is available on the following 2010 models: Focus, Fusion, Fusion Hybrid, Taurus, Mustang, Edge, Flex, Escape, Escape Hybrid, Explorer, Explorer Sport Trac, Expedition, F-Series, E-Series, Super Duty (plus new 2011 Fiesta and Edge)
- SYNC is standard on Lincoln models including the 2010 MKZ, MKS, MKX, MKT, Navigator (plus new 2011 MKZ Hybrid and MKX)
Standard SYNC Features
- Bluetooth connectivity for mobile phones – Voice-activated, hands-free calling including automatic phonebook transfer
- USB port for digital media players (such as Apple iPod and Microsoft Zune) and USB mass storage devices – Voice-activated access to digital music files including MP3, AAC, WMA, and WAV.
- Audible text message readback – Text-to-speech engine capable of reading aloud incoming text messages from compatible Bluetooth-paired phones
- Bluetooth streaming audio (A2DP) – Digital content, including music, podcasts, and Internet radio broadcasts can be played through the vehicle’s audio system
Standard SYNC Applications (for 2010 models)
- 911 AssistTM
- First launched for the 2009 model year (and available for 2008 models as dealer-installed upgrade)
- Commands SYNC to use the Bluetooth-paired cell phone to make an automatic call directly to a local 911 emergency operator in an air bag-deploying incident
- No subscription: Free capability for the life of the vehicle
- Video: http://www.youtube.com/v/sI3ixk5kDBM
- Vehicle Health Report
- First launched for the 2009 model year (and available for 2008 models as dealer-installed upgrade)
- Provides personalized report on command including vehicle diagnostics, scheduled maintenance, recall information, and dealership coupons
- Information sent via data-over-voice technology using Bluetooth-paired phone and accessed through the www.syncmyride.comwebsite
- No subscription: Free capability for the life of the vehicle
- Video: http://www.youtube.com/v/p-CaBKLltTA
- Traffic, Directions & Information
- Launched for 2010 model year along with the addition of a GPS receiver as standard SYNC hardware
- Delivers voice-activated, on-demand turn-by-turn directions, business search, traffic reports, and personalized information
- Information services include weather, news, stock quotes, movie listings, sports scores, horoscopes, and travel connections
- Leverages Bluetooth-paired and registered cell phone (smart phone or data plan not required)
- Free for the first 3-years of vehicle ownership; Continued access only $60 per year
- Videos:
- Directions: http://www.youtube.com/v/Lp5gckqsS40
- Business Search: http://www.youtube.com/v/3PW8qGWJJpc
- Traffic: http://www.youtube.com/v/inahwziGMM0
- Personalization: http://www.youtube.com/v/py2vcFTrDas
Coming Soon
- AppLink
- Industry-first capability providing drivers access and control of smart phone apps using voice commands and vehicle controls
- First launches on 2011 Fiesta
- Software will be available by end of 2010 for owners via download and installation directly from www.syncmyride.com
- Compatible with AndroidTM and BlackBerry® smart phones (Apple® iPhone compatibility coming in mid-2011)
- First SYNC-enabled smart phone apps: Pandora Internet radio, Stitcher podcast radio, and OpenBeak (a Twitter client)
- Standard SYNC feature; no subscription necessary (owner must have compatible smart phone and data service plan)
MyFord Touch™
The second generation of SYNC evolves the device connectivity system into the operating system behind the new MyFord and MyLincoln Touch driver interface launching on the 2011 Ford Edge and Lincoln MKX. MyFord Touch is a holistic approach to the driver interface replacing many of the traditional vehicle buttons, knobs and gauges with clear, colorful LCD screens and intuitive 5-way buttons on the steering wheel. In MyFord Touch-equipped vehicles, SYNC now controls the functions of phone communications, entertainment/audio, navigation/services, and climate. Voice recognition has improved ten-fold with SYNC now responding to over 10,000 commands at the first press of the “Talk” button.MyFord Touch, powered by SYNC, will migrate next to the 2011 Ford Explorer and 2012 Focus and eventually be available on over 80% of Ford products globally.
Voice Activated Navigation System on SYNC with MyFord Touch [Aug 2, 2001]
Ford Drops Price of SYNC by $100, Making Hands-Free, Voice-Activated In-Car Connectivity More Affordable, Available to All [Aug 1, 2011]
- Ford initiates new pricing strategy for SYNC®, making the hands-free, voice-activated connectivity system more affordable for customers; dropping option price to $295 makes SYNC the most capable and most affordable system on the market
- Launching first on the 2012 Ford Explorer and Edge, SYNC will now be available as optional equipment on base trim levels, marking broader availability and more choice for customers
- Making hands-free technology more affordable and available comes on the heels of Ford becoming the first automaker to announce its support for a nationwide ban on the use of hand-held mobile devices while driving
Ford is making hands-free, voice-controlled in-car connectivity even more affordable, announcing both a $100 price drop for Ford SYNC® along with expanded availability by offering it as an option on base trim levels for the first time.
“Ford SYNC is making a difference. Our customers love it and recommend it, and our dealers want it on more products,” said Ken Czubay, Ford vice president, U.S. Marketing, Sales and Service. “SYNC already has brought hands-free, voice-activated in-car connectivity to millions, helping keep drivers’ eyes on the road and hands on the wheel. Now, Ford is making it even easier for customers to afford exactly what they want.”
The move marks the company’s latest push to make voice control the primary and safest way for customers to access their favorite mobile devices while driving – a capability more and more drivers are clamoring for, according to the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA).
In a 2010 study, the CEA found that 55 percent of smartphone owners, for example, prefer voice commands as their primary in-car user interface. SYNC users agree, with internal Ford research showing more than 85 percent say they use voice controls while driving, up from 60 percent in previous studies.
This month, Ford became the first automaker to openly support the Safe Drivers Act of 2011, proposed federal legislation for a nationwide ban on the use of hand-held mobile devices while driving. To date, 10 states, including California and New York, have legally banned talking on a hand-held cellphone while driving, with many local municipalities also following suit enacting their own set of restrictions. Text messaging while driving is banned in 34 states.
The new SYNC pricing and choice strategy for 2012 ups the ante on how Ford is translating this trend into real-world actions that offer smarter in-vehicle connectivity solutions for customers.
“As the list of states banning hand-held calls and texting while driving continues to grow and legislators ponder a nationwide ban, Ford is strengthening its leadership position as the only full-line automaker with plans to offer available hands-free mobile device connectivity on 100 percent of its passenger vehicle lineup,” said Czubay.
SYNC has been installed already on more than 3 million vehicles since its debut in 2007.
The new pricing strategy makes SYNC the most capable and most affordable in-car connectivity system in the industry. The new pricing will be available first on the 2012 Ford Explorer and Edge base models. Customers who opt for SYNC will pay only $295 for the award-winning in-car connectivity system, previously priced at $395. In addition, SYNC will now be available on all trim levels, as the availability chart of the 2012 Ford Edge shows:
Ford Edge Trim Level 2011 Model SYNC Availability 2012 Model SYNC Availability SE Not available Optional SEL Optional Standard Limited Standard Standard Sport Standard Standard With the base SYNC package, customers will enjoy the core hands-free features and services that have quickly established SYNC as a must-have technology, with more than 76 percent of current SYNC users saying they would recommend the system to other customers. Those features include:
- Hands-free, voice-activated calling via a Bluetooth®-connected mobile phone
- Hands-free, voice-activated control of a USB-connected digital music player
- 911 Assist™, the automated emergency calling service that is free for the life of the vehicle
- Vehicle Health Report, the on-demand diagnostic and maintenance information service
In addition, customers who choose the base package will have the option to purchase a SYNC Services subscription, which expands voice-controlled features to include a cloud-based network of services. These include turn-by-turn directions, traffic reports, and business search information with available live operator assistance if needed. A SYNC Services subscription costs only $60 a year, besting the telematics services offered by the competition.
Ford dealers are excited about the prospect of being able to offer SYNC to a larger population of their customers.
James T. Seavitt, president of Village Ford in Dearborn, Mich., says he wouldn’t be surprised to see those rates soar even higher with the new SYNC pricing and base model availability. Seavitt admits that approximately 75 percent of the vehicles he currently sells have SYNC.
“Customers frequently ask about SYNC in our dealership as they continue to hear more about the benefits and convenience of hands-free connectivity while driving,” said Seavitt. “This move from Ford will help dealers put more customers in SYNC-equipped vehicles so they can experience why using their voice to control their favorite mobile devices in the car is a smarter choice.”
On Edge and Explorer alone, SYNC has already been a big hit on the showroom floor, with current take rates above 80 percent. With the new pricing strategy, SYNC is now expected to be installed on more than 95 percent of models sold.During the next three years, Ford will introduce the new SYNC pricing and choice strategy across the entire North American Ford vehicle lineup.
Vehicles next in line after the 2012 Ford Explorer and Edge include the 2013 Ford Taurus, Focus, Escape and Flex.
Microsoft Tellme Puts Ford Drivers on Cloud 9 [May 13, 2010]
With more than 2 million SYNC-equipped vehicles on the road today, Ford has shown that people want a simpler and easier way to make phone calls, listen to music and get directions while in the car. And now, a whole new group of drivers is about to experience SYNC as Ford launches the all-new 2011 Ford Fiestalater this summer.
The newest addition to the small-car segment, the Fiesta will be available with Ford SYNC, powered by Microsoft, a fully integrated, in-car communications and entertainment system that gives drivers hands-free, voice-activated control over their mobile phones and media players. SYNC includes Microsoft Tellme’s voice-activated Traffic, Directions and Information (TDI)system — an interactive voice-powered service that expands Ford SYNC’s voice-command capabilities. The introduction of the Fiesta is the first time that an economy car will be available with this level of technology.
According to Microsoft Tellme research, 93 percent of motorists want the type of speech services provided by Tellme and 80 percent say availability of the Tellme service would be a key factor in which car to purchase. Vehicle manufacturers like Ford recognize this demand and look to Microsoft for a differentiated product offering with a strong user appeal.
Ford SYNC with TDI breaks ground with in-vehicle infotainment by taking full advantage of the power of Tellme’s speech recognition platform and the Windows Embedded Automotive platform. The flexibility of the Windows Embedded Automotive platform enables automakers to build upon and create unique in-vehicle experience for their consumers.
Microsoft Tellme and the new Ford Fiesta
Microsoft joins Ford to celebrate the launch of the new Ford Fiesta with Ford SYNC TDI technology.In April, more than 200 media from all over the country participated in a two-day program in San Francisco where they got to kick the tires and test drive the Fiestas throughout the city, participate in demonstrations, and compete in some street-course activities. Representatives from Microsoft Tellme were also on hand to talk about its role in the Ford SYNC TDI system.
With coverage of more than 14 million business listings, personalized traffic information, turn-by-turn directions, and location-based search, Microsoft Tellme’s cloud-based voice applications give drivers access to real-time information that’s updated continually, ensuring that searches for businesses, addresses and routes are always current.
A question the Microsoft Tellme team gets often is, “How does it work?” SYNC automatically connects drivers’ mobile phones and media players with their vehicle’s in-car microphone and sound system, simply by pushing a button on the steering wheel.
To use TDI, it’s as simple as this:
- Press the Voice button on the steering wheel and say “Services.” When you hear SYNC’s greeting, say “Traffic.”
- When prompted, say the name of a personal saved destination, such as work or home or grandma’s house. You can even just say the name of a city.
- SYNC will respond with a custom traffic report — as determined by the in-vehicle GPS receiver — to your destination.
- When multiple routes are available, you will hear the estimated travel time on each route, based on distance and traffic conditions.
- This all happens through a connection with your Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone, in a regular voice call, so there’s no need for a data plan or for Ford to add a costly embedded cellular radio.
Customers are clearly excited about the Fiesta, with more than 1,000 retail orders already placed before the car is even available to the public. The Fiesta will make its debut on North American roadways later this summer.
KIA UVO
Stop reaching out to change the station while driving. With Kia UVO, use your voice to play a song or change the station, make or answer phone calls, send and receive SMS text messages and more. Say “Play artist Rolling Stones” and start listening. Turns out, you can always get what you want…it’s as simple as asking.
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Kia UVO is an innovative and intelligent in-car communications and entertainment system. Using UVO, drivers and passengers can quickly and directly access music files, change radio stations, make or answer phone calls, send and receive SMS text messages, and operate a rear-view camera when the driver shifts into reverse, all through voice-activated controls using Microsoft speech recognition technology.
Kia Motors unveils infotainment system for its vehicles powered by Microsoft(r) in the US[Jan 6, 2010]
- Kia UVO, short for ‘Your Voice,’ features a breakthrough user interface that provides simple and easy access to Kia vehicles’ multimedia and infotainment systems
- UVO is the first in-vehicle solution to integrate full Microsoft(r) intelligent speech engine technology
(SEOUL) January 5, 2010 – Kia Motors America (KMA) today unveiled an innovative and intelligent in-car communications and entertainment system, ‘UVO powered by Microsoft(r),’ to be available in select Kia vehicles in the US starting this summer. UVO provides consumer friendly voice- and touch-activated experiences for simple management of music files and hands-free mobile phone operation. Co-developed with Microsoft(r) and based on Windows Embedded Auto software, UVO is an easy-to-use, hands-free solution that allows drivers and passengers to answer and place phone calls, receive and respond to SMS text messages, access music from a variety of media sources and create custom music experiences.
Understanding drivers want and need intuitive controls, Kia Motors and Microsoft(r) designed UVO to enable a new level of voice recognition through Microsoft(r) speech technology. UVO users will be able to access media content and connect with people through simple, quick voice commands without having to navigate through menus. By supporting complex grammar, UVO needs only short voice commands to connect drivers and passengers with their desired functions. An interactive system, UVO responds to inquiries such as ‘What’s playing?’ and provides audible answers and related functions, helping to keep drivers’ eyes safely focused on the road.
UVO also brings advancements to in-car technology through an immersive user experience. The interface features a 4.3-inch, full-color display that provides detailed information on media content, phonebook data and vehicle information; the screen also doubles as a rear-view camera when the shifter is put in reverse. UVO is an open platform that seamlessly integrates with a wide variety of mobile phones, music players and other devices, making it easy for drivers to quickly pair devices.
“UVO powered by Microsoft(r) is a breakthrough for in-vehicle infotainment that helps allow drivers and passengers to safely and easily use all of their personal technologies to create personalized in-vehicle communications and entertainment experiences,” says Michael Sprague, Vice President, Marketing, KMA. “Collaborating with Microsoft(r), Kia Motors is able to offer drivers an experience that will provide our cars with a clear competitive advantage.”
“We are very excited with the customized approach Kia Motors is bringing to in-car infotainment,” says Kevin Dallas, General Manager of Microsoft’s Windows Embedded Business division. “Kia’s UVO system demonstrates how the power of Windows Embedded technology can keep consumers connected to the devices, information and entertainment that matters to them most.”
Based on the award-winning Windows Embedded Auto platform, UVO can be updated easily as new consumer devices continue to be introduced to the market.
UVO will debut this summer in the all-new Kia Sorento and will be extended to additional Kia vehicles as part of the brand’s technological evolution. Kia Sorento, Soul, Forte and Forte Koup already come standard and at no extra cost with Bluetooth(r) wireless technology connectivity, iPod(r)/MP3/USB connectivity, and a three-month SIRIUS(r) satellite radio subscription.
UVO will be shown for the first time at the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, January 7-10, in both Kia Motors and Microsoft(r) booths; representatives from both companies will be on-hand for demonstrations.
Key features of UVO, powered by Microsoft(r):
- Advanced Speech Recognition: Intelligent Microsoft(r) speech technology is trained to the system operator’s voice, creating a personal profile and allowing for up to two different voice profiles in various languages. Support for large grammar commands and faster response time means the content is delivered when you ask for it. Kia Motors’ UVO system is the first in-vehicle solution to integrate full Microsoft(r) speech engine technology.
- Natural Interface Advancements: A full-color, easy-to-use in-dash monitor allows occupants to quickly scroll through media and mobile device content through intuitive voice and touch-screen commands.
- Custom Media Experiences with MyMusic: UVO’s ‘Jukebox’ function features a 1GB hard drive for media storage, allowing users to rip music from CDs or an MP3 player into personal MyMusic folders and store up to 250 songs sorted by title and/or artist – all through voice commands. The system can shuffle through an MP3 player or AM/FM and SIRIUS(r) radio stations and instantly identify what’s playing all through simple voice commands.
- Rear Backup Camera: When the vehicle is put in reverse, a built-in rear backup camera uses UVO’s in-dash display to provide clearer images of the environment behind the car assisting the driver to identify certain objects that otherwise may be difficult to see.
- Ability to Continuously Update Features and Services: Based on a flexible Windows Embedded Auto platform, updates and services can be delivered in a number of ways (over-the-air, over-the-Web) for Kia to continue to provide a superior user experience after the system enters the market.
Kia Motors is in the midst of a dramatic, design-led transformation, which has been delivering dynamically styled vehicles in several important segments at exactly the right time contributing to the brand’s continued gains in market share. The launch of the all-new Sorento, the official vehicle of the NBA and the first vehicle to be built at Kia Motors’ first U.S.-based manufacturing facilities in West Point, Georgia, will further enhance the Kia lineup.
Kia Motors and Microsoft Usher in New Era of In-Car Technology [Jan 5, 2010]
Kia Motors America (KMA) and Microsoft today unveiled Kia UVO, powered by Microsoft, a new in-car infotainment system with advanced voice- and touch-activated features.
Kia UVO, Powered by Microsoft [Jan 7, 2010]
Microsoft’s Greg Baribault shows off Kia’s new in-car infotainment system, UVO, powered by Microsoft.
With UVO, drivers and passengers can quickly and directly access music files, change radio stations, make or answer phone calls, send and receive SMS text messages, and operate a rear-view camera when the driver shifts into reverse, all through voice-activated controls using Microsoft speech recognition technology. The hands-free system helps drivers stay focused on the road.
Features of UVO include advanced speech recognition; a 4.3-inch full-color display screen; and MyMusic, a jukebox-type function that enables drivers to shuffle between music sources including personal music folders, an MP3 player, or AM/FM and satellite radio.
Co-designed by Kia Motors and Microsoft, UVO is built on the award-winning Microsoft Windows Embedded Auto software platform. The system will be offered during the third quarter of 2010, starting with the 2011 Kia Sorento CUV.
Microsoft and Kia will demonstrate UVO at the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week.
Hands Free: Read & Reply to Email with Microsoft TellMe Speech [Oct 19, 2010]
Spread the Word: Speech Recognition Is the “New Touch” in Computing [Oct 28, 2009]
Keyboards and mice still are the dominant methods for working with a PC or laptop. But big leaps in speech-recognition technology mean that talking to a computer may soon be as natural as using a mouse.
Leading Microsoft’s charge to that audible future is Zig Serafin, general manager of the Speech at Microsoft group. Serafin says his team’s goal is simply to create the world’s most advanced speech platform, one that spans cloud-based voice services, mobile phones and world-class servers for enterprise customers. “Voice is the new touch,” says Serafin. “It’s the natural evolution from keyboards and touch screens. Today, speech is rapidly becoming an expected part of our everyday experience across a variety of devices. Bill Gates articulated this vision a decade ago, and we’re seeing it happen today.”
Two years ago, Microsoft acquired Tellme Networksand has subsequently merged Microsoft’s speech development team (formerly the Speech Components Group) with Tellme to form the Speech at Microsoft group. The group’s sophisticated speech-recognition technology and Web speech engine, which has been under development for more than a decade, is leading to a wave of voice-enabled products promising easier, faster interactions — spanning automobiles, smartphones, and personal productivity software.
For example, Ford Sync, powered by Microsoft and Tellme, provides in-dash voice-activated navigation and search. In addition, Bing for Mobile, Exchange Server 2010, Windows 7, and new Windows® phones such as the Samsung Intrepid from Sprint are all voice-enabled.
“See” Your Voice Mail
One of the most eagerly awaited features in Exchange Server 2010 is the new Voice Mail Preview, a capability that is poised to transform the way people retrieve and navigate voice mail. Using speech-to-text technology, Exchange 2010 automatically sends a text preview of voice mail right to the user’s inbox.
Instead of wondering whether the little red light on their phones is signaling an important call, people can scan text previews, right in Outlook, to determine message content and priority.
Exchange Server 2010’s voice mail feature turns an audio call into a text preview.
Click for high-res imageRajesh Jha, corporate vice president of Microsoft Exchange, says Voice Mail Preview in Exchange 2010 makes it dramatically easier to visually sift through voice mail on your PC, mobile phone, or any popular Web browser to quickly determine the importance of a call. “For me, this feature is invaluable during meetings or other situations when actually listening to voice mail is not a viable option,” says Jha.
Exchange Server 2010 will launch at TechEd Europe, which runs Nov. 9–13 in Berlin.
“Hands-Free” Calling, Texting and Search
The Bing for Mobile application is a free, on-the-go version of Bing with voice-enabled search. Using this application, people simply speak their search query to retrieve results on their Windows phone.
The Bing 411 service works for any phone. People call 1-800-Bing-411, speak their search, and hear the results or get a text message of addresses, directions and other information for easy access later. Both Bing 411 and the Bing for Mobile application help users safely access important information wherever they may be, when typing on a phone is slow, impossible or inconvenient.
With the newly launched Samsung Intrepid from Sprint, the first Windows phone to use Microsoft’s Tellme voice user interface, the experience gets even better. People can speak a search query or dictate a text message, making it dramatically easier to accomplish tasks on the go. Intrepid users simply press the Tellme button on the phone and say what they want — whether that’s to dial a colleague, text a friend, or search Bing for the nearest hardware store or best happy hour.
“When you’re on the go, using only keystrokes to search can be cumbersome, especially if you’re multi-tasking. It takes over 20 strokes of the keypad to find a restaurant on the Web,” says Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of the Online Services Division at Microsoft. “With Bing for Mobile or Bing 411, you simply speak your query to get results quickly, easily and safely. Using your voice to simply ‘say what you want and get it’ helps you do more when you’re in a mobile scenario.”
Talk to Windows 7
An improved speech recognition feature in Windows 7, launched last week, enables people to control their computer completely by voice or by touch and voice. Using Windows Speech Recognition, people can easily launch applications, access commands and even convert their voice into text in any application that runs on Windows 7. In addition, software developers can tap into these capabilities to enable rich, natural speech interactions between users and Windows-based applications.
Partners such as HP are already leveraging these capabilities in their Windows 7-based PCs with innovative applications that leverage speech and touch together to transform the user experience.
“By using the power of their voice, people can get their jobs done more efficiently,” says Ian LeGrow, group program manager for the Windows team at Microsoft. “With Windows Speech Recognition, the interactions between people and their computers can be more natural, not just in the future, but starting today.”
Voice at Your Service
The Speech at Microsoft group runs the Tellme platform, the world’s largest voice platform based on the VoiceXML standard, managing more than 6 million calls every day, helping businesses improve customer service.
This month, the Speech at Microsoft group introduced an enhanced Outbound IVR (interactive voice response) Service on the Tellme platform to provide proactive customer service. With this service, businesses can provide interactive outbound messages that allow customers to act upon the alerts — to pay a bill, rebook a flight, or schedule delivery for a missed package, for example. The Outbound IVR Service is optimized to work across the phone (as a call or text), e-mail, instant messaging and the Web to deliver a personalized, efficient experience.
Says Jamie Bertasi, senior director for Speech at Microsoft, “We are delivering a steady stream of innovations to our platform in order to continue to deliver the best experience for the caller and best performance for the enterprise. By leveraging the power of the cloud and the billions of interactions we see every year, we are able to fine-tune the way companies engage their customers, enabling them to improve customer satisfaction while significantly reducing costs.”
Looking Ahead: What’s Next
According to analysts, the growing demand across industries for speech technology indicates that voice is poised to transform the user experience on a variety of fronts.
“Speech-recognition technology has matured to a level where it’s a primary catalyst for the next wave of innovation in the unified communications space,” said Nancy Jamison, principal analyst with Jamison Consulting. “Microsoft’s recent advancements in speech really strike at the heart of what true unified communications is all about — improving the user experience.”
By combining Tellme’s speech optimization and deployment experience with Microsoft’s cutting-edge speech technology, this new group brings together a cross-functional team of domain experts to drive speech technology to new heights. By using cloud-based technology, the Speech at Microsoft group is envisioning a future where speech recognition rivals human understanding.
Serafin says that his team of experts will remain committed to applying their many decades of experience to push the frontiers of voice-enabled technology that brings speech into everyday use.
“For perhaps the first time in the history of Microsoft, we have our world-class speech scientists and highly respected software-plus-services experts under one roof, and I believe the resulting collaboration will lead to pathbreaking innovation,” says Serafin. “The climate in our R&D environment is optimally charged to accelerate advances, leverage the power of software plus services, and revolutionize the ways customers interact with a wide range of Microsoft products.”
Bolstering that expertise is the recent addition of Larry Heck to the role of chief scientist for the Speech at Microsoft group. Heck first joined Microsoft as the partner architect for the Online Services Division R&D. Before that he led the creation, development and deployment of the search and advertising algorithms at Yahoo!, and before that he was the vice president of R&D at Nuance. Heck has joined the Speech at Microsoft group to help chart the course of next-generation elements of Microsoft’s speech platform.
“Speech belongs in the cloud. Only there can you reach the scale, the enormous volume of interactions required to create a speech system capable of rivaling human understanding,” said Heck. “With the formation of the Speech at Microsoft group, the unrivaled breadth of our platform today, and our cloud-based approach, this future is within sight.”
Speech, the Experience Game-Changer [Aug 3, 2010]
The growth of connected devices, from automobiles to your mobile phone, coupled with the increase in data consumption is signaling the beginning of a broad shift in technology toward an era of more integrated, natural experiences driven by speech, touch and gesture.
Today at the 2010 SpeechTEKConference in New York, Zig Serafin, general manager of the Speech Group at Microsoft, delivered a keynote address describing Microsoft’s vision for speech and natural user interfaces (NUIs). Serafin demonstrated the latest in speech recognition technology that has been designed into upcoming Microsoft products. These products promise to deliver more elegant and accessible interfaces, allowing users to utilize their voices and, in some cases, their bodies to perform actions and access information.
During his address, Serafin demonstrated three speech innovations:
• Kia UVO. Microsoft is creating more natural and safer automotive experiences using the Windows Embedded Automotive software platform and Microsoft Tellme Speech technologies. Starting later this year, Kia will begin offering the Kia UVOmultimedia and infotainment system in its all-new Sportage, Sorento and Optima. The UVO system is the first in-vehicle solution to integrate full Microsoft speech engine technology, allowing users to easily access media content and connect with people through simple, quick voice commands without having to navigate through hierarchical menus.
• Windows Phone 7. Microsoft is raising the bar for mobile device interactions with the development of Windows Phone 7. Speech has been seamlessly integrated into the phone experience, for functions such as search, navigation and dialing.
• Kinect for Xbox 360. Microsoft is unlocking new communication and entertainment experiences with Kinect for Xbox 360. The Kinect system allows users to navigate the Xbox 360 experience and participate in new gaming challenges by using NUIs such as gestures and speech.
“Microsoft is creating rich, immersive and seamless experiences across devices, delivered from the cloud. Speech will become the tool we use to unlock the power of devices as their connectivity and capabilities accelerate,” Serafin told SpeechTEK attendees.
As NUIs become more advanced and integrated into today’s technology, customers will expect to be able to interact more naturally, whether in front of the TV, in the car, on the go with their mobile device, or when interacting with businesses through customer-care applications, Serafin explained.
Just as important as the NUI is the fundamental shift in the architecture of speech, a shift that is accelerating the rate of learning and innovation. Microsoft Tellme has embraced a cloud-based architecture for speech. This architecture takes the billions of speech interactions running on the Microsoft Tellme speech cloud and uses them to improve the underlying recognition engine and improve the understanding of a user’s intent. For example, in the upcoming release of Windows Phone 7, users of the Bing voice search technology will be able to ask, “Who is pitching for the Giants tonight?” and get a listing of starting pitchers as well as ticket and weather information for the game. This represents a more natural experience for the user.
Microsoft continues to make significant investments in NUI, and in the next 12 months will be delivering products and technologies that will fundamentally change, for the better, how users will expect to interact with their TVs, mobile devices, and cars.
For more information on Microsoft’s speech innovations, please visit the Microsoft Tellme pressroom. You can also read more about Microsoft Tellme’s recent partner win with Avis Budget Group.
Today at the SpeechTEK 2010 industry conference in New York City, Microsoft Corp. announced the addition of Avis Budget Group Inc. to its growing roster of enterprise customers using the Microsoft Tellme speech cloud platform. Avis Budget, parent company of Avis Rent A Car and Budget Rent A Car, two of the world’s leading rental car brands, recently deployed the first in a series of new customer care solutions. By taking advantage of Microsoft Tellme’s award-winning speech cloud platform, Avis and Budget are delivering improved service to their customers during the peak summer travel season.
“Delivering new, streamlined customer care experiences can help save our customers time while giving them greater control over managing their vehicle rental arrangements,” said Thomas M. Gartland, executive vice president, sales & marketing, Avis Budget Group. “By working with Microsoft Tellme, we are able to deliver immediate improvements to our customer experience, while also keeping long-term technology costs in check.”
The second phase of the solution will add new reservation booking capabilities and expand integration to customer data systems to deliver enhanced caller personalization. By choosing the Microsoft Tellme cloud-based speech platform, Avis Budget will be able to roll out additional services to customers in an accelerated timeframe with minimal demands on its own internal system.
Microsoft Tellme Receives 2010 Speech Engine “Winner” Award
Also at SpeechTEK, Microsoft Tellme was honored with Speech Technology Magazine’s 2010 Speech Engine “Winner” Award, which is given to the year’s best speech recognition engine. In naming Microsoft its Winner, Speech Technology Magazine noted the company’s strengths in cloud-based speech and its focus on the enterprise, mobile and automotive markets. In addition, Microsoft Tellme was named “Leader” in the Speech Self-Service Suite category, in which the company’s depth in functionality and customer satisfaction were highlighted.
“2010 is the year speech hits the mainstream. Speech is changing the way we interact with technology in our homes, in our cars, on our mobile devices and on our PCs,” said Zig Serafin, general manager of Microsoft Tellme. “We are honored to be recognized as leaders in speech technology and will continue our efforts to make speech a natural part of everyday interaction with technology.”
Microsoft and Toyota Announce Strategic Partnership on Next-Generation Telematics [Apr 11, 2011]
Microsoft Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp. (TMC) today announced that they have forged a strategic partnership and plan to build a global platform for TMC’s next-generation telematics services using the Windows Azure platform. Telematics is the fusing of telecommunications and information technologies in vehicles; it can encompass GPS systems, energy management and other multimedia technologies.
As part of the partnership, the two companies plan to participate in a 1 billion yen (approximately $12 million) investment in Toyota Media Service Co., a TMC subsidiary that offers digital information services to Toyota automotive customers. The two companies aim to help develop and deploy telematics applications on the Windows Azure platform, which includes Windows Azure and Microsoft SQL Azure, starting with TMC’s electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in 2012. TMC’s goal is to establish a complete global cloud platform by 2015 that will provide affordable and advanced telematics services to Toyota automotive customersaround the world.
As part of its smart-grid activities, aimed at achieving a low-carbon society through efficient energy use, TMC is conducting trials in Japan of its Toyota Smart Center pilot program, which plans to link people, automobiles and homes for integrated control of energy consumption. TMC believes that, as electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles become more popular, such systems will rely more on telematics services for achieving efficient energy management.
Microsoft has a long history of delivering platforms and services to the automotive market, including in-car infotainment systems built on the Windows Embedded Automotive platform, in-car mapping services with Bing and the Microsoft Tellme voice application, and many other consumer solutions.
“Today’s announcement of our partnership with TMC is a great example of how we continue to invest in the automotive industry and of our commitment to power the services that are important to consumers,” said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. “It further validates the power of the cloud, as the Windows Azure platform will provide the enterprise-grade, scalable platform that TMC needs to deliver telematics in its automobiles worldwide.”
“This new partnership between Microsoft and Toyota is an important step in developing greater future mobility and energy management for consumers around the world. Creating these more efficient, more environmentally advanced products will be our contribution to society,” said Akio Toyoda, president of TMC. “To achieve this, it is important to develop a new link between vehicles, people and smart center energy-management systems.”



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