Contextual grouping for Google searches?

Tony came across this when looking for information about Windows SharePoint Services. It looks like google is trying to do some sort of grouping by topic in the search results.



One slight problem is that if this was supposed to be grouping by topic, it didn't do very well.
We were discussing at work the other day about how interesting Flicrk has done segmentation of photos in their clustering (example: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/architecture/clusters/).

Web 2.0 is upon us.

Edit:
Alex Barnet has a post about Microsoft Research doing even more extensive clustering on thier search results.

Interview finally posted

The Scoble interview at the PDC I got a picture of (http://6by9.blogspot.com/2005/09/pdc-day-2.html) is finally up. It's worth a listen.

http://isvchalktalk.com/archive/2005/10/03/74.aspx

Sidebar on XP

So in a surprising announcement, the sidebar (previously seen in earlier versions of Longhorn), will now be released for XP.

PDC Day 3 (and some Day 2 Fun)

It's server day at the PDC. Lots of interesting IIS7 options that make it act much more like Apache, but at an even finer scale (think of loading mod_xxx for only a given site). There were also interesting auto-deployment tools, and debugging of those. Overall not much related to my day-to-day work, but still lots of fun.

Last night was the attendee party at Universal Studios. It was a little bit of a pain getting there. There was a line outside our hotel that went from the bus pickup, down the block, around the corner and then then half-way down that block. So instead of waiting, we ended up taking the train (subway). It ended up dumping us at the bottom of the hill that Universal Studios sits on, so after a hike we finally got there about 9:00 or so. A good time was had by all in the end.

The PDC Day 2

So it's day two of the PDC and I'm finally getting to post. Internet access is way spotty at our hotel (at least we have power now) and it's hard to post from a tablet here.

I was a little underwhelmed over what was announced here. In 2003 we were fairly blown away by everything (granted some of that isn't going to be shipping). It just seems like most of this tech was already known about before we got here. The Office 12 changes were a suprise to me, and I can't wait to get to play with it all. The WPF/e stuff is definately cool also. I don't know that re-releasing features that were being touted a year ago really counts as new tech (Vista Sidebar).

Still, it's great to get to talk 1 on 1 with lots of the people here.

As a side note I had two run-ins with Robert Scoble. First was literally that. I bumped into him on Tues night and almost dumped my dinner on him. Second one was when Tony and I happened to catch an interview in the Big Room.

Blogging and the PDC

Generally I hate meta-blogging, but this is only a little bit of that.

While it wasn't a really in-depth interview, I enjoyed how comfortable Scoble's interview with Bill Gates felt. I was impressed that Bill appreciated the blogging by Scoble, the Channel 9 team, and other Microsoft employees, and really understood why it was so important. I believe they changed the way a lot of people outside of Microsoft view the company. A big piece of this for me is how approachable they are as people. Read some posts on blogs.msdn.com and you really see the people behind the company.

So this leads into the second topic, the PDC. We leave is less than 4 days for LA. The last PDC (2003) was the first I'd been too, and I can't wait to be back. Some people complain that it's all marketing and fireworks, and perhaps lots of it is. I believe it's really what you make of it. Sure I love to get to see the new roadmaps and technology, but the other parts are just as important.

I like interacting with people that enjoy shipping software.

I'm not talking just about the Microsoft employees, but also other attendees. Most of these people are there because they are excited about what they do. They want to produce new things and have people use it. Then they want those people to be excited and tell more people. There's an incredible high during (and coming off of) the PDC that I really believe helps push software forward.

I think that a lot of the Microsoft blogging has helped keep some of this energy up year-round, but I'm looking forward to a recharge next week.

Books and Libraries

I'm very interested in writing rich libraries, and I always appreciate good structure and documentation.

Brad Abrams had a post about the .NET Framework Standard Library Annotated Reference, Vol 2. A book he co-authored. I read quite a bit of the the sample chapter that he linked to an it's an amazing. It's what MSDN could (and should) be. The code examples are simple, the say what other pieces of the Framework use the classes. You actually get to hear the reasons that things were designed or used a certain way.

Rumor has it that he'll have another book available by PDC time. I really enjoyed the set of related talks so I'm guessing that'll be a good read also.

Who

This is starting off a little bit slower than I would have liked, but more is comming.

So first a little background and/or history. My name is Michael Malinak. I'm a husband (to Terrie), father (to Chloe), and Software Engineer. I did most of my undergrad and then my grad work at Michigan State in computer science. After I finished up there I started working at TechSmith in May of 2002. For most of my time here, I've been working on SnagIt.

You'll also see Tony make an appearance here at some point. He and I met at MSU and have been friends since.