Girish Raja's Dynamic(s) Thoughts : Technology

PDC2008 sets benchmark for Wireless Connectivity

girishr — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 21:30:23 GMT

Many of you who were there at the PDC keynote room might have missed the UFO style devices (in the picture below) from Xirrus. But several of these devices were silently (perhaps a little flashy) and dutifully doing their job in the keynote room.

Pardon my lazy blogging for not saying enough about it at the event as I promised earlier. But this press release from Xirrus will fascinate you.

An industry record was made at PDC as we connected 2,890 concurrent users in a 100,000 square foot keynote hall through Wi-Fi. You can read more on this and the other records that were set by Xirrus here:

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Ultra-High-Density-Wi-Fi/story.aspx?guid=%7B74E21C5A-BA6C-4AD1-BABD-376A3C9AE814%7D

We had over 2,000 connections pretty much during every keynote. With such large number of connections, attendees might have noticed how much bandwidth was eaten up. We didn’t use up the entire bandwidth but were over 90% of the capacity most of the times throughout the week. Hopefully that explains why you were getting a slower connection at times, as it was not just you, but thousands of other people on the same network around you.

Our priority was to make sure nothing catastrophic happens as we also had a backup wireless solution if the high-density solution didn’t work out. Thankfully we didn’t ever have to go to our backup Wi-Fi.

Next stop, we’ll think about scaling out High Density devices throughout the conference center and more bandwidth (of course) to make your conference experience better. Now you have one more reason to attend PDC 2009 and other future Microsoft events. So what are you waiting for?

Wireless at PDC 2008

girishr — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 05:50:00 GMT

Update (10/28 12.30AM): Make sure to use MSFTINET as SSID when connecting to wireless network. It is an open network (does not require key or password).

A few months ago, I “signed up” to be part of the PDC virtual planning team and my role was to take care of wireless (802.11) experience for the several thousand PDC attendees. Given the geeky nature of the audience, it was a challenge that had to be taken very seriously.

So what does it mean for you, the PDC attendees? You can get to the wireless network and browse the internet from most locations within the Los Angeles Convention Center. “Most locations” means that you may not be able to browse from within the restroom :) but you can at common locations like keynote room, internet cafes, lounges, breakout rooms where people congregate.

The keynote room was the biggest puzzle we had to solve. More than ever, many people use their laptops, smart phones and other internet enabled devices these days during conferences. Having several thousand people in one big room and every person using their array of devices, actually pushes the limit of physics to a greater extent.

In order for our attendees to have the best possible wireless experience at keynote, we realized a conventional wireless deployment may not work and we’re trying some innovative hardware and scaling it for “PDC level” experience. Infact, on the keynote this morning, we had more than doubled our usual capacity!!! I’ll blog more about it as the event progresses.

Also don’t forget to check out the mobile PDC experience at http://m.microsoftpdc.com/

Keep browsing!

Xbox 360 to stream Netflix content

girishr — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 23:27:18 GMT

That's right. The streaming is supposedly available in the fall update to Xbox. Check out the Gizmodo article: http://gizmodo.com/5025001/xbox-360-getting-netflix-streaming

Both me and my wife love the Netflix "instant viewing" even though their catalog of movies & TV shows for streaming is limited. Finally I don't have to use my laptop & VNC connection to the media center PC as a lousy remote control. Even though I haven't played anything other than Fuzion Frenzy 2 since I bought my Xbox Elite 2 months ago (busy times, you know), this update would help me justify the price tag of Xbox to my wife!

If Hulu.com makes the move to Xbox, I'll be well on my way to cancel my cable connection. Can't wait for that to happen.

WWT- It is all in the UX

girishr — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:48:32 GMT

One of the great things about working at Microsoft is that you get to meet and talk to some of the greatest minds in the world.

Soon after I blogged about WWT, Microsoft Research showcased it's work to all employees at an event called Techfest. Techfest is all the next and future generation stuff from Microsoft under one roof and is an amazing event.

One of my favorite moment at Techfest was at the booth for WWT. Curtis Wong, the leader of WWT project was manning the booth himself. I stood right next to him and he walked me through the product like I'm his most important customer. To add to it, they gave me a preview of the application soon afterwards.

Even though I don't know anything about astronomy, the start and the galaxies, it was still a very interesting application. More than anything else, the User eXperience (UX) of the application amazes me. Since it is not a public beta yet, I'll refrain from posting any screenshots. But I can't wait to for astronomers and professionals to post tours and let me learn a lot more about Astronomy and realize how insignificant I am in the world beyond ourselves!

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Astronomy,Technology

It is about realizing dreams - World Wide Telescope

girishr — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 17:43:42 GMT

Like everyone else, I'm always amazed at the wide open sky ever since I was a little kid. Growing up in India, where sky is clear on almost every day, it was my favorite past time to gaze at the open sky and try to find neat little patterns of stars. Well, today that I live in the Seattle area, it could only be a dream. For those who don't know about Seattle, see Jim Glass's post on Seattle's weather to get a taste of life in this area and what I terribly miss out.

Well getting to the point, watching the video of the World Wide Telescope, I felt like a little kid all over again. It is truly a magic carpet to travel through the Universe and I can't wait to check it out.

Though people point to several other projects that are similar such as the Celestia, KStars or even Google Sky, the World Wide Telescope seems to be something that has grabbed everyone's attention and the clarity and usability of it seems to definitely win over others.

Oh BTW, WWT was the reason behind me looking into Google Sky and as I was playing with it, I discovered something really funny. I marked a few places in Chennai that I visited during my India trip last month within the Earth view. I then switched to the Sky view and saw this!

I am sure these places aren't separated by several light years or have several stars in between them!

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Technology,Astronomy