eScience @ Microsoft : InterOp

Windows Live Search Beta for mobile

eScience — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 21:11:42 GMT

WLS mobile really puts the power of searching and finding info into your hand - I especially use it when travelling to find locations (restaurnats, etc), but also to see the local traffic...

The great part is that it not only run on Windows Mobile devices...but will run on other popular cellphones

What it is
Windows Live Search Beta for mobile devices brings the power of Windows Live Local Search to your cell phone. Now you can get the answers you need no matter where you are. Need to find the nearest pizza place? Directions to a friend’s house? Check traffic en route to the office? No problem...it’s all there.
What it can do for you
The Windows Live Search Beta for mobile application gives you fast access to local search and maps, driving directions, and even local traffic information. When you get your search results, you can click to call the phone number of the place you found, or even look at a satellite photo (on some phones) to find the best parking nearby!
Service requires a J2ME-capable or Windows Mobile phone and a data plan for use...the service itself is free, but your carrier may charge you for data usage.

Source: Windows Live Search Beta for mobile

Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)

Open Specification Promise: What. How. Why.

eScience — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 00:46:52 GMT

This is great for those building protocol-based integration solutions.

Recently, Microsoft announced a new type of licensing model aimed at making it much easier, therefore safer from a legal point of view, for developers to implement specs without having to spend a lot of time understanding complex license agreements and obscure legalese, then signing and faxing Microsoft legal documents in order to leverage a specification.
This new breed of simple licensing model is called the Open Specification Promise (OSP).

Here, we chat with the minds behind OSP: Jean Paoli, co-creator of XML and General Manager of Interoperability & XML Architecture, Tom Robertson, General Manager of IP and Corportate Standards Strategy, and Amy Marasco, General Manager of Standards Strategy. Want to to understand what OSP is and why we created it? Tune in and let the the folks who thought it up explain it to you.

Link to Open Specification Promise: What. How. Why.

Cross-posted from Savas Parastatidis' blog.

HPC Leaders Demonstrate Interoperability Using OGF Specs

eScience — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 00:49:57 GMT

Saw this demo while at SC06 today - this is great news for folks looking to use HPC clusters.

The Open Grid Forum (OGF) announced its interoperability demonstration at the Supercomputing 2006 (SC06) conference showing the work being done towards interoperable high performance computing (HPC). Organizations participating in the demonstration include Altair Engineering, CROWN, EGEE, Fujitsu Labs of Europe, Genesis II, Globus Alliance, HP, Microsoft, OMII-UK, Platform Computing, Tokyo Institute of Technology, and University of Virginia. These participants are exhibiting their prototype implementations of OGF standards and draft specifications used to enable heterogeneous integration of HPC Grid solutions.
The demonstration involves compute clusters processing various HPC applications submitted via OGF's Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSATM) HPC Profile draft specification, which leverages common Web Services specifications and existing OGF standards. The use of widely adopted Web Services and OGF specifications enables the interoperable interaction between different HPC middleware platforms.

Source: HPC Leaders Demonstrate Interoperability Using OGF Specs

Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)

Novell and MS - OpenXML in OpenOffice

eScience — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 17:26:00 GMT

This is great to hear - this will allow folks not using Office to have access to scientific info/data that could be include in documents...

Office Open XML

http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/open_letter.mspx

Novell engineers have been working for the last year together with Microsoft engineers through the ECMA TC45 working group in producing a complete specification that would allow for interoperability across office suites.

Novell will develop the code necessary to bring support for Office Open XML into OpenOffice, and we will contribute that support back to the OpenOffice.org organization. We will also distribute the Office Open XML plug-in in our own edition of OpenOffice. In addition, we will participate in the Open XML Translator open source project.

Cross Posted from Dan Fay's Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/dan_fay)