Microsoft Research's Intelligent Memory Assistant

Dan Reed, CVP, Technology Strategy, Microsoft, talks about Intelligent Memory Assistant during the DLD Conference in Germany.

The DLD Conference in Germany: Sprechen Sie Cloud?

Here at Microsoft Research, we’ve worked on a project that illustrates this notion – the intelligent memory assistant. Think about all the times you’ve attended a conference and someone started a conversation with you, but you had no idea who he or she was. Imagine a world of inexpensive sensors that capture an image of that person and their voice, extract their features, query the cloud and then whisper in your ear, “This is Jane. You met her two years ago at the X meeting. Ask her about her son, John.” This is the kind of opportunity that a new world of interconnected devices and cloud services make possible. 

Signs of Bubble anyone??

Stark Reality Check. I was also surprised to learn Qwiki being chosen as TechCrunch Disrupt winner and receiving a $8M funding.

Hacker Shows It Doesn’t Take $8 Million to Clone Qwiki – Just 321 Lines of HTML Will do the Trick

Qwiki is an app that creates pretty slideshows based on Wikipedia entries. The service won the top award at the last Techcrunch Disrupt conference and just received $8 million in new funding from a group led by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin.

Personally, I never understood why putting together a text-to-speech engine with a Ken Burns effect was disruptive. The VCs on the Disrupt jury thought different, though, and chose this pretty but ultimately utterly useless service over really disruptive ones like CloudFlare. Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks so. Now, just to show how Qwiki didn’t merit the large new round of funding and how it doesn’t deserve the constant hype on tech blogs like Techcrunch, an intrepid hacker who goes by the name of “Banksy the Lucky Stiff” put together Fqwiki, a workable Qwiki clone in just 321 Lines of HTML.

How Google should build Groupon Competitor

I, Cringley has some advice on how Google could have come up with Groupon Competitor (which they seem to have now with Google Offers). It’s always fun reading I, Cringley.

Bring me the head of Eric Schmidt!

But the real killer for Eric Schmidt — the bonehead move that would have gotten him fired had I been on the board — was that $6 billion offer for GroupOn.

Here’s what Google could have done — should have done. First, take four top engineers and set them up like a startup in a rented apartment, denying them any access to the Googleplex. No free massages and definitely no unlimited Fruit Loops. Google has grown to the point where it is virtually impossible to get anything done. So just like IBM did with the PC, a GroupOn clone would have to be done as a completely separate renegade operation. Four engineers, two months, and GoogleOn would be ready to go.

Then simply pay every adult in America $10 to join.

That’s about 100 million members or $1 billion. See, I saved Google five billion dollars.

Buying companies yields far more instant advantage than building them, I know. In Groupon’s case Google would get effectively irrelevant, copyable technology along with their entire user base. But $6 billion? Really?

My plan is way better.

It's either Yin or Yang when it comes to Leadership

Premji then on Joint CEO approach.

These verticals and horizontals are headed by executives who were expected, after Paul's departure, to function as CEOs. But, Premji got roped into the day-to-day functioning, and inevitably he was overburdened. "It pushed too much of the operating load on me and was getting counter-productive," says Premji.

Premji is confident that the new arrangement will work. In an interview with India Knowledge@Wharton, he said, "We believe that two people who have worked together for more than 10 years and been in the company for more than 15 years would be able to work very well as a team. The fact that 75% of our revenues come from global markets, the fact that we are growing at 30% a year in a service, highly people-intensive industry, we figured that a two-man team at the top would be stronger than one man at the top. I continue to be executive chairman, but they are the joint CEOs of our IT business." (Read a transcript of the interview with Premji about the joint-CEO arrangement.)

Premji now.

Girish Paranjpe and Suresh Vaswani, the current Joint CEOs of the IT business have decided to step down from their responsibilities effective February 1, 2011. Acknowledging their contribution, Mr. Premji said, “Suresh Vaswani and Girish Paranjpe have been with Wipro for the past 20+ years and been an integral part of the Wipro leadership team. They have made significant contribution to the company in the critical years of its expansion and played a stellar role in the success of the IT Business. I want to personally thank them for their contributions to Wipro and wish them the very best in their future endeavors.”

Commenting on the appointment of Kurien, Azim Premji, Chairman Wipro Limited said, “The Joint CEO structure was one of the key factors that successfully helped us navigate the worst economic crisis of our times. With the change in environment, there is a need for a simpler organization structure. Over the last 10 years, Kurien has been instrumental in building and scaling many of our businesses successfully. His track record with customers, passion for excellence coupled with strategic thinking 
and rigor in execution makes him uniquely positioned to lead Wipro’s IT business through the next phase of growth.”

Result – Wipro’s Fall from Grace.

After Wipro reported disappointing numbers for the second quarter in a row, investors might have had enough.

The recent change in top management was another clear sign of the company’s troubles and the stock is now likely to lose its preferred status among large cap technology stocks.

On Friday Wipro said its consolidated net profit for the October- December period grew 9.6% from a year ago to 13.19 billion rupees ($290 million), just under the 13.22 billion rupees forecast in a Dow Jones Newswires poll.

Consolidated revenue at 78.29 billion rupees was also below the 80.25 billion rupee forecast.

But investors were most disappointed with meager 1.5% growth in business volumes for its IT services –well below the 3.1%, 5.7% and 6.5% growth posted by Infosys Technologies Ltd., Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. and HCL Technologies Ltd., respectively.

It is difficult to operate a large company with diverse interests under shared leadership. It becomes more challenging when it’s a family owned enterprise. Guess Wharton has a new case study in its hands now.

More on Google being Evil

A Screenwriter, John August has a thoughtful essay on how Google evokes feeling of being “Evil”.

On Google, and evil

But it’s remarkable how much my appreciation for Google has shifted over the last year or two. I use their products, but I don’t love the company anymore. In fact, I’m kind of nervous about them. It’s a small thing, but I stopped syncing my address book through Google. I don’t want all of my stuff in their cloud.

…

I’m not the only one noticing something has changed about Google. They cozy up with Verizon on net neutrality. While cheering for openness, they embrace Adobe’s proprietary Flash format. They have valid competitive reasons to do both, but it’s inconsistent with their stated philosophy.

They launch services that seem under-thought and over-engineered, like Google Wave and Buzz. Meanwhile, they’ve actually become worse at the thing you mean when you say “google.” For example, Paul Kedrosky tried to compare dishwashers, and found nothing but spam and gibberish:

Google has become a snake that too readily consumes its own keyword tail. Identify some words that show up in profitable searches — from appliances, to mesothelioma suits, to kayak lessons — churn out content cheaply and regularly, and you’re done. On the web, no-one knows you’re a content-grinder.

How do these content-grinders make money? Largely through Google ads. It’s created a situation in which inferior search results make more money for Google. Yes, they still want to organize the world’s information, but it’s become easier to see the gray text after it: “…so we can sell ads next to it.”

The Android operating system it makes for mobile phones has become a viable challenger for Apple’s iOS. But for all the talk about it being “open,” they’re not giving it away out of the goodness of their hearts. Explains Kyle Baxter:

Android isn’t an attempt to build the best mobile platform and sell it on its merits; it’s a play to control the vast majority of the mobile market, secure eyeballs for Google advertising and eliminate any threat to Google.

At Google board meetings, do they discuss whether they should aim for smaller market share? I doubt it, though if asked about any other industry, they would stress the importance of robust competition.

The Economist weighs in on Net Neutrality

These details are important, but the noise about them only makes the omission more startling: the failure in America to tackle the underlying lack of competition in the provision of internet access. In other rich countries it would not matter if some operators blocked some sites: consumers could switch to a rival provider. That is because the big telecoms firms with wires into people’s homes have to offer access to their networks on a wholesale basis, ensuring vigorous competition between dozens of providers, with lower prices and faster connections than are available in America. Getting America’s phone and cable companies to open up their networks to others would be a lot harder for politicians than prattling on about neutrality; but it would do far more to open up the net.
 

Some love for Ballmer

Blogosphere is singing a different tune about Steve Ballmer today (Steve Ballmer became Microsoft CEO 11 years ago today). Suddenly there is a lot of love for him.

Joe Wilcox (Betanews)

But there is something different now in Ballmer's leadership style, which started soon after the September 2008 stock market collapse and became more apparent in actions taken in 2010. No one should underestimate Microsoft in 2011. Whether the good ship Microsoft breaks up on a reef or outmaneuvers competitors during the next two years, Ballmer will be at the helm. Accountability starts and ends with him now, like never before in his 11-year tenure. He's communicated that he is absolutely in charge. It's now deliver or die.

Mary Jo Foley (ZDNet)

I have said on previous occasions that — despite the fact that I’ve been on the Ballmer-interview blacklist for more than 15 years — I still considered him the best person for the Microsoft CEO job. And last we heard from Ballmer on the topic of his CEO stewardship plans, two-plus years ago, Microsoft’s CEO made it clear that he had no plans to step down voluntarily until 2018 or so, when his youngest son was off to college.

…

The question — for me — always comes back to whether there is there someone who could do a better job than Ballmer leading Microsoft? I’d say if the pool of candidates is restricted to current Microsoft management, the answer is no. (Those calling for Bill Gates to return as Microsoft CEO need to give up that pipe dream. Gates has moved on, though he remains chair of the Microsoft board.) Because of the dismal record that outsiders have at succeeding and lasting at Microsoft, I’d say a non-Softie, as appealing as that may sound from a new-blood perspective, has a low likelihood of making it for long as Redmond’s CEO.

Matt Rosoff (SAI)

What a lot of outsiders don't understand is that Ballmer is a numbers guy. He aced the math portion of the SAT. He majored in mathematics -- not business, not computer science.

Insiders tell stories about how he often knows more about the performance of their business than they do, and he isn't afraid to dive deep. Once when a new executive didn't know some detail about customer numbers for a product, Ballmer corrected him. In public. That executive was gone a year later.

Ballmer may appear irrational from the outside, but his decisions are driven by the numbers. Sales. Revenue. Expenses. Income. Trends. That's it.

MSN specialized content sites doing great

Microsoft’s Global Ad Sales Chief Carolyn Everson shared some insights into the specialized content sites Microsoft created in partnerships with companies like Berman Braun, Hachette, Rodale. Seems all these sites are doing well especially Wonderwall. 
  • Glo is #1 in audience engagement in its category against major competitors. 
    • Since its April launch, Glo has reached over five million unique users monthly, who generated an average of 80 million page views per month. 
    • Glo has seen incredible advertising demand – the site has been sold out for the last six months with key advertising partners, JCPenney, Unilever, Fox, P&G, Intel, NBC, Ford, Sony, Kellogg's, and more. 
  • Wonderwall has reached nearly 11.5 million unique users monthly, who generated an average of 341 million page views per month. 
    • Wonderwall is #1 in its category. 
    • Key advertisers this year have included NBC, Fox, Disney, The CW, Columbia Pictures, General Motors, Lexus, Toyota, Chrysler, Kraft, P&G, Wrigley's, Unilever, T-Mobile, and other big brands across categories. 
  • BLTWY’s engagement is nearly double that of category competitors. 
    • Average site visits on BLTWY have increased by 67% from November to December 2010, a strong indication of audience growth.
    •  

Microsoft Numbers of 2010

Microsoft published few numbers in CES which are very interesting. I thought of collating and adding to these for everyone to see the year Microsoft had in 2010.

 

Xbox & Kinect for Xbox 360 (source)

• 8 million: Number of Kinects sold in first 60 days

• 50 million: Xbox 360s sold to date

• 30 million: Number of Xbox LIVE members

 

Windows Phone 7 (source, source)

• 100: Average number of new apps in the marketplace each day

• 5,500: Apps available in the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace

• 20,000: Developers registered to develop apps for Windows Phone 7

• 1.5 million: Windows Phone 7s sold by phone manufacturers in the first six weeks after launch

• 60: Number of mobile operators that carry Windows Phone 7

• 30: Number of countries where Windows Phone 7 is available

• 11 million: Number of songs in Zune catalog

 

Windows 7 + Windows Live (source, source, source)

• 7: number of Windows 7 licenses sold per second

• 20 million: Number of downloads of Internet Explorer 9 beta

• 500 million+: Number of Windows Live users worldwide

• 20: Percentage of PCs connected to the Internet running Windows 7

• 240 million: Number of licenses sold for Windows 7

• 500 million: Number of Windows Live users around the world

• 2: Position of Windows Live Messenger in the most used application on Facebook

• 20 million: Number of people already using the IE9 beta.

• 1: Position of Hotmail as the leading Email Service provider worldwide

 

Office 2010 (source)

• 30 million: Office Web Apps users.

• 1: Copy of Office 2010 sold worldwide every second. Office 2010 now ranks as the fastest-selling consumer version of Office in history.

• 8: Years in a row, Microsoft Office was the number one selling software product in U.S. retail measured by dollar volume, outpacing games and security software.

Microsoft - No move away from the PC

In an interview with Maria Bartiromo of CNBC, Steve Ballmer answers the question to what Horace Dediu predicted as end of PC era.

BARTIROMO: But do you need a transformative move to really make sure it's in people's face, that yes, you are in that space in terms of these different consumer trends, in terms of this move away from the PC model and toward wireless?

Mr. BALLMER: Well, let me first disagree with you. There's no move away from the PC. There is an embrace of other new form factors, which I think is fantastic, but people aren't stopping one thing and doing another. They're doing these things more or less additively, which I think is important. Do we have a lot of opportunity and a lot of desire to really drive hard, particularly in the phone? Absolutely. And Windows Phone 7, which we introduced two months ago, that's the shot.

How do Mac guys try new software now?

Mac App Store is getting some rare bad reviews. I can’t digest the fact that the App Store won’t allow test trials or demo/beta versions of software. I am not a Mac person but would be interesting to know, how do Mac guys try new software now?

Why the Mac App Store Sucks

Sure, the Mac App Store is a good idea in theory. Just like the Linux repositories that came before it, it provides a one-stop shop for all your software needs. There's just one big problem: Apple made it.

PC era is not over

Horace Dediu (one of my favorite bloggers) writes on yesterday’s CES announcements.

At this year’s CES two unthinkable things happened:

1.       The abandonment of Windows exclusivity by practically all of Microsoft’s OEM customers.

2.       The abandonment of Intel exclusivity by Microsoft for the next generation of Windows.

Many of Microsoft’s customers chose to use an OS product from Microsoft’s arch enemy. Some chose to roll their own. Microsoft, in turn, chose to port its OS to an architecture from Intel’s arch enemy.

These actions confirm the end of the PC era. Although most people would characterize the era as exemplified by a particular form factor or market, for me the definition of that era is the way the value chain was structured and hence how profits were captured.

Now Horace is a very smart and data driven person and this is a primary reason I enjoy his blog. But in this case, he chose to ignore the fact that Microsoft in the same CES announced that Microsoft sold 240 million Windows 7 licenses in just over a year and that these are still selling like hot cakes with over 7 copies a second. Also, many of Microsoft OEM partners have been looking at other OS’s for some time now. Earlier with Linux and now with Andorid. The option of getting something supposedly for “Free” is hard to ignore. As for the second part, Microsoft’s move to ARM is a step in right direction. This only means that Microsoft is getting more serious about coming up with better Tablets and Mobile devices. It will only mean the era extends.

Another take on how Google is one trick pony

Android Isn’t About Building a Mobile Platform

Google isn’t a web application company—they’re an advertising company. That’s what they do best, and that’s what drives their company. Of Google’s $23.6 billion of revenue in 2009, all but $760 million of it was derived from advertising, and nearly 70 percent of it was from Google’s own websites.

Everything Google does must be understood within this context. Google builds services like Google Maps, Gmail and Docs and gives them away for free not because they have a philosophical belief that web applications should be free, but rather because giving them away for free gives them a competitive advantage. Free services, running Google ads, are obviously advantageous because free means more people will use them than if they charged and thus they can realize greater advertising revenues.

Isolation from other perspectives in BigCo's

Chad Fowler writes about Stockholm Syndrome on how it applies to people stuck in organizations for one reason or another.

So I contacted Joseph Carver to ask his opinion. Could this be Stockholm Syndrome? He agreed. In email, he said “SS is most likely to develop when the employee feels trapped, perhaps by a high salary, fear of losing a career, or fear of humiliation.” So let’s look at his four conditions:

Perceived threat:

Getting fired, being humiliated, not being a “top 20%” employee, not getting a raise. Employers wield a lot of perceived power over employees, especially for those in very traditional corporate jobs. The employer must be willing to carry out the threat. Every business is under the right conditions. It’s how businesses work.

Small kindness

Got a Christmas bonus once when you really needed it? Make a competitive salary? Great benefits? Get to work on a technology you don’t think you’d be able to work on elsewhere? There ya go.

Isolation from other perspectives

Again, a big corporate environment is ripe for this kind of isolation. If you work for BigCo, you learn to do things The BigCo way. The company’s organizational structure becomes a blueprint for your career progression. You start to lose sight of what industry pay and incentives look like since you have a homogeneous population to compare with. Unfortunately, from what I’ve seen even the best run companies create this kind of isolation of perspective and group-think. Charismatic leaders are particularly capable of creating a culture vacuum around a cult of personality.

Perceived inability to escape

According to the Bureau of Labor statistics, American adults spend by far more time working than any other activity. That’s a lot of your waking time being trapped in a routine. In a Stockholm Syndrome situation, the captor chips away at the self-esteem of the captive. So for most of our waking hours, those of us trapped in dead end jobs like these are exposed to environments which systematically destroy our self-confidence. Not only that, a persistent fear and feeling of failure makes it harder to actually explore the options for leaving the bad situation. The instinctive self-preservation reaction in this kind of situation is to work harder to try to avoid the perceived threat coming to fruition.

Now Chad is a super smart person (I know because I interacted briefly with him way back in 1999/2000 when I consulted in GE Appliances) and he writes from his own experience working in a BigCo. He is right-on on all the points and super-right-on on the third point, “Isolation from other perspectives”.

Been working in a BigCo myself, I know what this means but I also feel that this is the only way BigCo’s works and succeeds. There is a very well defined structure and processes for everything under which a BigCo work. Success metrics are different inside a BigCo as against a SMB or a Startup. And these metrics get applied equally to everybody in the BigCo. Using the excellent infrastructure and experience, the BigCo tries to form a great community for people working in the BigCo resulting in people getting more and more comfortable knowing their peers and indulging with them inside and outside work. Sense of growth and progress comes from the excellent trainings and opportunities provided to the employees. And then there is performance assessment and promotions at the end of each year which again being laid out and applied to every single person in the BigCo provides them with a sense of achievement (0-15% pay rise on an average basis in good times). During these appraisals, you compare yourself with your peers in your group/sub-group and at max peers in other groups within the organization. Progressive BigCo’s provide excellent work culture which also provides impetus to not look outside the company. Over the years a sense of belonging comes for people working in this environment and even though you may be held hostage you love being there because of the growth and opportunities the captor provides. The only negative thing is the loss of risk taking capabilities (or atleast the ability to identify real risks) if you work in a BigCo for a long time.

But if you love what you do and keep getting the right opportunities from time to time, BigCo is the best place to be in. If you think you can do better things and are not getting an opportunity to do the same, Move on.

Return of the "Good Enough" (Once Again)

In 2011, we will see what we have seen all along the years, this time in the Smartphones Category. Resurgence of “Good-enough” Smartphones which addresses what customers expect of these devices with enough good mainstream apps support and attractive price point. Lots of very well articles today explores this with focus on Android being the protagonist here. Fortune has a great article today that says “2011 will be the year Android explodes“, this was followed up by some good pieces by Fred Wilson in “The Smartphone Explosion”, Scoble in “Fred Wilson and Fortune are right about Android vs iOS (and everyone else), but I hate it” and MG Siegler in “2011: The Year Android Explodes! Killing Innocent Women, Children, And iPhone Users”.

Christensen covered this same thing in many of his writings. From Research, quality, competitiveness: European Union technology ... - Page 147

When studying quality-based competition, it is necessary to take into account a phenomenon described by Clayton Christensen [Christensen 2002. Christensen 2003] according to which a good enough product that satisfies the demand for quality can replace the best product already present on the market and providing better performance but at a higher price. Emerging countries could seize a share of the quality market in which European industry is established as soon as they are able to offer products good enough to attract the attention of consumers who seek quality, but are also price conscious In the top-range motor vehicle field, Asian manufacturers now offer products good enough to seriously challenge the top German brands, which until now had strongly held a dominant position in the segment of best vehicles. In the photography sector, digital equipment cannot compete in terms of image quality with traditional cameras using chemical films but digital cameras are starting to be good enough to seriously challenge Kodak, the market leader in the manufacture of film. In the air transport Field, the case of RyanAir, a company that offers low-cost, no—frills travel, which is good enough to win out over traditional transport companies that offer best services, but are considered to be too expensive by the customers.

Nothing new here. It had to happen, I am surprised it took this much time.