Temporal Locality: Technology

Windows Live Shared Map

Sun, 05 Feb 2006 22:48:45 GMT

It's been a while since I posted an entry, but after all this time, an update to the shared map has finally made it online. It's still called Virtual Earth Shared Map in the MSN Messenger activity menu, but it's been updated to support all the cool features of Windows Live Local.

Some features that are a must when you're searching for a location with a friend that are now available include:

Adding pushpins - Know where something is but don't know the address? Simply right-click and add a pushpin.
Directions - Directions were supported before, but the support in WLL is much, much better. Now you can quickly overlay directions on the map and even print them out for your convenience.
Bird's eye - In the context of a conversation, this is very cool. Easily showing someone a view from above is fantastic.
Permalinks - Building up a scratchpad and directions and then being able to bookmark it in a browser is great for saving a session. Too bad the Messenger Activity API doesn't support launching an application with some initial information.

Comments and feedback are both obviously welcome.

You're taking away my ability to express myself!

Tue, 02 Aug 2005 07:17:51 GMT

News that Microsoft recently applied for a custom emoticons patent spread across the Internet last week. As users of the MSN Messenger instant-messaging client will recognize, the patent deals with a feature that allows them to exchange customs emoticons with their contacts. The general consensus was that Microsoft "has no right to take away my right for self expression." While Microsoft applies for tens of patents each week and is often awarded as many, occasionally a particular one will catch the interest of the mainstream media.

Rather than offer an analysis of whether a particular patent is valid or not, I suppose it is much simpler to find a few self-proclaimed members of the open source movement to discuss why such patents are bad for society. If anything, such articles prove that an understanding of the patent system is elusive to most people. So rather than get into a religious discussion, I'll take this opportunity to analyze whether this particular patent holds up against the requirements for a utility patent.

While wading through a technology patent can be daunting, the four basic requirements for an invention to be patentable are the following:

Usefulness — Will anyone benefit from it?
Novelty — Does an existing reference anticipate the invention?
Nonobviousness — Would a person with ordinary skill in the art find the invention obvious?
Enabling — Could someone with ordinary skill in the art use the patent document to recreate the invention?

So does a patent for custom emoticons hold up? Let me discuss how it stacks up against each of the points. The bar for usefulness is rather low, so the fact that custom emoticons allow people to more readily express themselves during an interactive conversation should easily exceed that requirement.

Thinking back to the beginning of last year, when the patent application was filed, did anything anticipate a means to associate typed text with a pictograph and to transport them to a destination together? None of the IM networks supported such functionality, but did anything else more general support such behavior? While one might draw a connection between custom emoticons and hypermedia that contains links to images, the claims of this patent specifically embody an end-to-end method to associate an image with text and to then transfer them together. An extensive search is necessary and will be conducted before the patent is awarded, but for the purposes of this discussion, I also think the invention is novel.

The nonobvious requirement is often the most difficult to grasp. A simple way to measure whether an invention is nonobvious is to run the idea by someone skilled in the art, in this case a computer scientist. If that person fully grasps the idea yet almost has an epiphanic reaction to it, there's a good chance the invention is nonobvious. A classic modern example is the Black and Decker Snakelight: the average person probably believes that he could come up with that device, but the fact that B&D did first gave them the exclusive right to utilize the invention. In the same light, I would argue, Microsoft should be granted exclusive rights for the method to exchange custom emoticons.

Lastly, is the patent application enabling? Given this document, could a computer scientist directly implement the method that is claimed? Upon careful inspection, I believe wholeheartedly that there is enough pertinent information for me to implement the feature on my own.

Based on these findings, I will argue that Microsoft will be awarded the patent in several years time. Until then, a patent officer will be carefully examining the entire application as well as performing an extensive search of existing art. Questions, comments and feedback are all welcome.

A Brief Introduction

Tue, 02 Aug 2005 04:59:41 GMT

Up until this point, the focus of this space has been inconsistent and largely a journal of my life. However, since there's yet to be a developer on the Messenger Server team that has published a public blog, I figured I'd take a stab at it. While I'll surely continue to track the ongoings of my day-to-day life, the space will serve as an outlet to discuss some of the interesting problems that we regularly face as well as a running commentary on emerging technologies.

But first, let me give a brief introduction about myself. My name is Steve Gordon and I'm a 22 year old that recently graduated from Northwestern University with a B.S. in Computer Science. I happened to intern with the Messenger Server team last summer and since I enjoyed the experience so much, I decided to come back after I graduated in December. Since then, I've worked on several upcoming features and experienced many facets of a traditional software life cycle. So far, the most rewarding experience has been getting code in our production servers—knowing that a quarter of a billion people have relied on my work is a fantastic feeling.

Lastly, why "Temporal Locality"? It's basically computer science jargon for the idea that whenever a resource is referenced, it will most likely be referenced again in the near future. Since I'm often talking about topics that happened recently or are fresh in my mind, it seems fitting enough.