I've been out of coding practice (too much program management) so I decided to spend few hours today learning something new and starting a project I always wanted to do since I joined Tony Hey's group.

The "Research" Ribbon tab will allow people to consume various research-related services and also access research-related utilities. In the past, I talked about the integration with Live Search Academic. Today, I built an "explorer" of author networks using the Libra service, written by a group in MSR Asia, who have been very helpful in making their data available as XML over HTTP.

The idea is that you search for an author using keywords; it can be anything... a name, a research topic. You are given a list of authors that relate to the keywords you searched for (second screenshot). By selecting an author from the returned list, you get a list of his/her co-authors (second screenshot) and so on.

As I further develop this Word addin, one would be able to access related works, an author's publications for direct inclusion, etc.

The code will be coming soon to a Web site near you, once it's cleaned up and more functionality is added.