2007

This is great news for the Open Access movement!

After a couple of days of intense coding (lost almost an entire day fighting with inheritance and table mapping in Entity Framework Beta 3, which I really like btw), I am now ready to go for some much deserved skiing. Off to Whistler tomorrow for two days. Waiting for Einar …

The previous post reminded me of the talk I gave at SC07 about “The Web as the Platform for Research”. Bill St.Arnaud recently blogged about it (“Cloud computing is the way forward rather than the Grid”) with a quote from yours truly. What you don’t see in the presentation (and …

In addition to the Program Manager for Scholarly Communications position (thanks to all of those who have already contacted me) and the internship opportunities, here are two more openings in my extended team. These two job openings are not for the Technical Computing group but applicants will still have the …

Are you a PhD student in the US? Are you interested in working with a passionate team in Microsoft Research for few months? Do you want to experience life in Microsoft? Are you a professor and have students who might be interested working in any of the areas below? Please …

/**/ As Dan said, Microsoft Research moved to a new building at the beginning of November. It’s really nice. Today, I was walking by a section of the 4th floor with ‘open’ offices (no-wall offices… yes, they even have numbers). They are supposed to be hot-desks or they ‘house’ temporary …

Here’s another simple, still very interesting, service from Amazon, with an interesting payment model. It’s called SimpleDB and it allows queries over structured data. It’s great to see Amazon delivering such services. I do hope that others, including my company, will follow. “Amazon SimpleDB is a web service for running …

Are you excited about scholarly communications, libraries, open access, repositories for research output, semantics, ontologies, academic tools for research? Do you want to interact with clever people around the world and inside Microsoft? Would you like to work with Lee Dirks*? Do you want to be part of Tony Hey’s …

Trains are my preferred way of traveling, while buses are my worst because I get motion sickness when I try to read. I am on a National Express (ex-GNER… I didn’t know about this) train from London to Newcastle. I knew that these trains offered WiFi access but just realized …

I am in Qatar for work-related meetings. This is my second day and still no luggage. I had to go cloth shopping. Traveled half way around the world to go to a mall :-( Tony Hey and I went swimming to the sea today, just outside the Sheraton Doha hotel. …

/**/ I heard on the radio that the local ski resorts were going to be open from today. Unfortunately, I can’t go this weekend. If I am not in Qatar next weekend for a work-related meeting, I am definitely going. Today, it started snowing in Seattle! I am at cafe …

I didn’t do the same mistakes as the last Seattle Half-Marathon but I did do the same as the Vanvouver one. I was prepared for the cold, proper runner’s t-shirt and long-sleeved top, gloves, hat, etc. The weather turned out to be beautiful, blue sky. Still, I did worse than …

We all know and love Slashdot for its anti-Microsoft, pro-Linux commentary. I follow it almost every day and I always smile with the Microsoft-related posts. It’s ok, it’s fun. I still haven’t digested the blue pill I was given when I joined the Borg collective, so I can still appreciate …

Just bought the new 8GB Zune (the black one). I’ve finally moved away from the iPod (not that I don’t like them… it’s just that my old 60GB iPod was failing on me). Can’t wait to get the 80GB Zune one as well, when it becomes available at the Microsoft …

I am at SuperComputing 07 and just gave an invited talk on “The Web as the Platform for Research” at the Grid Computing Environments (GCE) workshop. I don’t think I did the best job possible at the presentation but I am in the process of evolving the ideas and how …

/**/ Great video of how students see education today. Krishna Madhavan showed this as part of a presentation at the Grid Computing Environments (GCE) workshop, part of SuperComputing07. Krishna’s talk was great and his blog seems very interesting. Subscribed.(Update: trying to subscribe since Internet Explorer and Outlook don’t like the …