Incremental Blogger

Gizmodo posts that Windows 7 supports recognition of handwritten math equations.

“You can now write in math equations. (I think this is cool, even though it’s been a very long time since I’ve actually written out any math more complex than a bar tab.)”

Also, in multi-touch news: “Windows 7 will have great native touch and multitouch benefits too—none shown here unfortunately: Menus subtly enlarge when tapped with a finger instead of a mouse cursor; the mouse cursor disappears when the finger touches the screen; and iPhone/Surface-style pinching and stretching are now part of the OS.”

I can’t wait to get a chance to try out Windows 7 for myself. Too bad I didn’t get to PDC. Oh well.

I’m going to be watching the live stream of today’s 8:30 AM (PST) keynote from PDC at http://www.microsoftpdc.com.

I’ll also be watching the real-time feed of the PDC2008 room over at FriendFeed for any comments.

This week is the grand reveal for Windows 7 to developers at PDC. Up to this point, Microsoft hasn’t said much about the release, in large part it says to avoid the mistakes it made with Vista. Well, all of this will come to an end this week and we’ll finally get a good idea as to what Windows 7 is going to be like.

Joe Wilcox gives his thoughts on what Microsoft needs to do to deliver on Windows 7. Here’s my abridged list (in terms of what I’ll be looking for as a developer):

1. We know that there’s going to be multi-touch support, but what we don’t know is how extensive it is and how open a platform it is. Developers like me want to know.

2. Lower cost PCs are all the rage–particularly in education. Unfortunately many of these devices are resource constrained and run XP better than Vista. Is Windows 7 destined to the same fate as Vista? I hope not.

3. How will the user experience continue to evolve and improve? Will the shell change much? Will management of Windows get easier?

4. What about better support for wireless broadband and ways of getting connected?

Of course, I’m open for surprises. Anything outside of these areas is welcome. Some of my favorites: better webcam support, improved boot times, improved multiple display support, and so on. But by no means is this my whole list :-).

Mary Jo Foley is reporting that Windows 7 isn’t going to be shown until Tuesday’s PDC keynote. Kind of illustrates the point that PDC isn’t as much about Windows anymore, doesn’t it? First up for those that are keeping score is a keynote on cloud computing that’ll take place Monday at 8:30AM Pacific time.

Here are the topics Mary Jo says we’ll see:

* Device Stage
* Action Center
* StreamOn
* A new animation framework for customizing animations
* New task bar and shell integration
* Multi-touch and gesture recognition
* Improved Bluetooth support
* Ribbons, ribbons everywhere.

She also adds, “I’m hearing Microsoft is going to show off a number of other features during the Tuesday PDC keynote that aren’t yet part of the pre-beta.”

Next week I’m going to be following the “room” called PDC2008 during Microsoft’s PDC event.

Hopefully people that attend will be posting, but I think with so many sessions being posted on the Internet even people watching from a distance can post interesting tidbits to the stream.

What’s really cool about FriendFeed is that it now has a realtime view, which you can use to watch posts, comments, and the like as they are made by anyone in the room. It’s like a live blogging tool. If enough people use FriendFeed this could be an interesting place to watch things.

The speculation is over. Oprah’s website makes it official. Her favorite gadget is the Kindle.

“This summer, Oprah received a gift that she says changed her life. “I’m telling you, it is absolutely my new favorite thing in the world,” Oprah says on her blog.

Did everyone get a Kindle in the audience? I don’t know, but all Oprah viewers are getting $50 off:

“As a special offer for Oprah viewers, Amazon.com is giving $50 off the price of Kindle. Enter the promotional code OPRAHWINFREY during the checkout process at Amazon.com to receive the discount. This offer is valid through November 1, 2008.”

I wonder if this will bump Kindle says–especially in economic times like now. After all the Kindle isn’t exactly inexpensive. Despite this, I think we’ll see a boost in Kindle sales. This is a good sign for widespread adoption of small devices like this. Good to see.

There’s a new blog on the msdn site called the “Windows 7 Developers Blog.” It’s goal:

“This blog will mainly focus on the development aspects of Windows 7 by providing valuable content for developers. We shall call this blog “The Windows 7 Blog for Developers”. By valuable content we mean that this blog will be a “one stop shop” on the road to get yourself familiar with what Windows 7 has to offer for developers and how you can “Light-Up” using Windows 7 features in your application.”

All I’ve got to say is: Excellent idea!

If Microsoft is planning on releasing Windows 7 within the next year or so, it’s going to need to get its developer story in gear and with PDC coming next week and this blog it looks like maybe, just maybe the wheels are beginning to turn. I’m sure lots of things have been happening behind the scenes and with select partners, but up to this point the vacuum has been disappointing to me as a developer.

I can appreciate Microsoft not wanting to oversell Windows 7 to itself, its partners, or to its customers as it did with Vista, but saying nothing as it has chosen to do, is just as bad. Exactly what am I supposed to do as a developer?

Am I supposed to wait for some Windows 7 inspiration switch to turn on so I can start coding? No way. By that time it’ll be too late. I know I have to keep moving, keep coding, keep innovating, and do my best to anticipate where things are going and then fill in the blanks/proxies/etc when information comes available.

I really wish over the last half-year or so that the Windows 7 team would have reached out more. At least I had an iPhone to develop for.

I had a dream about Steve Jobs announcing the release of an Apple Tablet called the “iOn.” Outside of its name I can’t remember anything else he said about it. It must be due to that reality-distortion field thingy.

Microsoft has tried its best to be as hush-hush as it can be about the forthcoming Windows 7. We know little about its features, nor its delivery date. Why the secrecy? Most importantly, Microsoft doesn’t want a repeat of all the criticism it got for Vista. The theory goes that Microsoft said too much, too early about Vista and consequently set expectations too high–both internally to the company and its customers and too-low for its partners.

So this time around, according to Windows lead Steven Sinofsky on his Engineering Windows 7 blog, Microsoft is keeping things under wraps and working with select partners rather than a larger pool of users and developers. Once they get it right, they’ll start releasing things to the public.

And we’re getting closer to that point. Next week, a community build of Windows 7 will be released to PDC attendees. We haven’t heard yet if the build will be under NDA, a la Apple style, but given that nothing’s been said to this point I can’t imagine that would be the case.

So expect the Windows 7 features lists to start cropping up across the blogosphere. Poeple will want to know what’s new. Actually, we may not know though. The build to be released at PDC is said to be more like a technology preview than a real beta. So it probably won’t be feature complete. Who knows, it may look exactly like Vista with a few twists here and there. Then again…

Now we do already know that there’s some form of multi-touch to be supported in Windows 7, though we have no idea how far Microsoft is taking this concept. Earlier this year Microsoft demoed some custom apps and Microsoft Paint using multi-touch. And the online PDC agenda speaks of “multi-touch gestures.” But what all this means, we’ll have to see.

What’s kind of surprised me is that despite this pending release, there’s very little chatter online about Windows 7. Yeah, Microsoft isn’t saying anything, so there’s nothing to report, but still I’m surprised. I would have thought there would be more enthusiasm.

The scarcity of information in itself, does not seem to have inspired that however. This may be in part because Microsoft has set expectations already via its statements that Windows 7 will not create undo instabilities (keep current driver models) and will address some issues in Vista. Nothing has been said by Microsoft that this is to be a knock-out, innovative product. That doesn’t appear to be the focus this time around.

I think people’s expectations are in line with this. I’ve informally been asking around and most people I know don’t seem to care one way or another about what’s in Windows 7–as long as it fixes the Vista issues they say. In other words, Microsoft doesn’t have to reach a very high innovation bar this time around. Instead it’s all about getting it to work–right out of the box.

This is all in Microsoft’s favor. Make things stable, fix up some loose ends, and keep it simple. A sustaining engineer’s dream job description if I ever heard one as well as an admins ticket to paradise.

I hang out hope though that Windows 7 will excite. Maybe there will be some amazing multi-touch demos. Maybe something about support for new, small form-factors. Maybe something about better wireless connectivity. Maybe something about better webcam support. Maybe…

So at least for this blogger, I’m eagerly awaiting what Microsoft has to show us. What do you think? Will PDC’s Windows 7 release ignite excitement?

At the User Interface Software and Technology Conference Microsoft Research is showing off a technology they call “SideSight.” Basically, it’s an IR proximity detector placed on the sides of small devices so that you can track finger gestures. This is kind of like the inverse of IR positioning systems that face toward the display direction to track touch points.

In a bid to outdo small device multi-touch, I think the SideSight team is missing the bigger picture here. What they are basically doing is using a linear array camera on the sides of the device. In other words, a true “side sight” technology could provide features that go beyond finger gesture recognition.

Gesturing is one form of user input and whether it’s a good idea to try to limit the gesturing like this or come up with a more generic solution, time will tell.

Laptop magazine has an interview with ASUS’ CEO about the future of the Eee PC family. Good news on the touch front. Not too sure how far the Tablet concept will be taken though. Looks promising.

I don’t normally point to stuff like this, but today, more than ever I think this comedian has it right. Sometimes we need to appreciate where we’re at more than we do.

Give yourself five minutes to watch this video. It’s worth it. I promise.

Rob Bushway has finally had it with the digitizer issues in the Dell Latitude XT Tablet PC. As I’ve blogged in the past, I’m frustrated by the false triggers, dead spots, erratic behavior of the digitzer too. It’s a pain if you use the Tablet features a lot.

Ideally it would be nice if Dell took the initiative here and recalled the product, offered refunds, or publicly stated that they will offer heavly discounted prices off of any updated Latitude Tablet PCs should there be one.

But all this goes beyond Dell. I’m very concerned about what might happen with the pending launch of Windows 7 betas. Here’s the problem: The Latitude Tablet PC is a rarity these days because it potentially can support multi-touch, which is a new, showcase feature of Windows 7. That’s great for Dell. The Latitude may be one of the main devices that people try Windows 7 out on for the new multi-touch features. However, if the digitizer fares no better under Windows 7 than it does now, this could be a bad beginning for Windows’ multi-touch.

In fact, the potential downside is so significant here, I’d suggest to Microsoft that if Windows 7’s multi-touch experience is poor on the Dell and there’s not any other consumer-available (and compelling) hardware that supports multi-touch, that Microsoft should pull multi-touch for now. There’s absolutely no reason to start out on the wrong foot–particularly in light of how familiar people are with multi-touch on the iPhone. If you can’t get close to this, the time is not right. Just wait a couple months for other hardware to catch up.

Digitimes is reporting that HP and ASUS are going to be releasing touch and multi-touch enabled notebooks in 2009. Mike Elgan of ComputerWorld thinks that this means we might see something as exotic as a dual screen multi-touch device in 2009. All this talk of multi-touch makes sense considering that Microsoft is set to publicly reveal the multi-touch-enabled Windows 7 for the first time at this month’s PDC event.

I’m still a bit skeptical where this is going though (in the short term)–even with my strong enthusiasm for Tablet and touch technologies. I guess we’ll find out part of the answer to this at PDC when a build of Windows 7 will be made available. How far will multi-touch be supported in Windows 7? Are we talking about extended mouse events that support multiple users? New gestures? Or might we be talking about new eventing that only apps written in let’s say the .NET platform might be able to take advantage of? And what about Microsoft’s apps, such as IE and Office? Any multi-touch support? Further, as of yet, we have no idea where the bigger picture is here. Microsoft has provided zippo leadership to the broader ISV community as of yet when it comes to multi-touch. Nada. For something like multi-touch that could be so interesting, I’m suprised Microsoft is playing it so quiet. It makes you wonder how committed Microsoft is to this user-interface approach. Are we talking of something that’s as innovative as the iPhone? Or something Surface inspired? Or might this be a “let’s get our feet wet in multi-touch and see how it goes” kind of feature?

The most important thing will be its utility, but even with that Microsoft’s success here depend on how much commitment it demonstrates to this model of interaction. Without leadership, or tepid leadership, the OEMs will muddle along, the ISVs will baulk, and the door will be left open for competitors to show how it’s done. Maybe I’m having an off day, but with the resounding silence I hear from Microsoft up to this point, the more I’m concerned I hear history repeating itself. Fingers crossed that my anxiety is poorly placed.

Longtime Windows developer, Larry Osterman, blogs about his impressions of working on Windows 7 versus Vista. His main point: Due to better processes the primary build is much more stable, more predictable, and manageable to work with. Sounds like Microsoft has done a good job of keeping the dynamics of developing a significant programming project in check. That’s a good thing for the dev team and forthcoming Windows 7 users. I expect we’ll see a quite impressive Windows 7 CTP at PDC this month because of it.

But for me, it points out something that I don’t talk about very much: At least for me, working in a large team like this, on a product that’s in large part in maintenance mode (yes, it is), doesn’t appeal to me. Yeah, I could write a gadget for a widget that attaches to a button on a dialog that’s burried in a manager accessible through the control panel, but eh, frankly it doesn’t interest me. I know I can do so much more. I’d rather do so much more.

I love the challenge of huge projects, but I’m very much a smaller team is better minded thinker and that’s not the way most well-established products, like Windows, get managed. It makes complete sense the way it is. It’s just not for me. It’s fascinating to read about what the Windows team is up to though.