Sonos, whose multi-room digital audio system I am about ito install in my home, is now compatible with Pandora.  Pandora, the Music Genome Project’s trainable Internet radio service, which until now worked only from a browser-based Flash application and the Slim Device/Logitech Squeezebox and Transporter devices, can now be dialed up sans PC, in any room in your home.  And unlike the Slim Device implementation, Sonos’ interface to the service allows you to rate songs and create new “stations.”

I had picked Sonos before it had this capability (but after it added support for WMA-protected tracks and for the entire Rhapsody service, including streaming content).  So this will just be a wonderful bonus.

Microsoft has just announced that it will be rescheduling this year’s PDC to an as yet undetermined date.  Microsoft’s reasoning for this, essentially, is that between MIX, Tech*Ed Orlando and Barcelona, and (I suspect) its Business Intelligence Conference held two weeks ago, and a slew of recent and soon-to-come alpha and beta releases, developers have enough to chew on for a while.  The folks in Redmond prefer to wait until we’re well into the next wave of technologies before launching a new PDC.  If my memory serves me correctly, Microsoft made the same decision two PDCs back and, with hindsight, people appreciated the decision and judged it wise.

Interestingly, Microsoft lists four events at which it will be presenting future technology content, and the first one on the list is VSLive! New York, to be held Sept 16^th – 19^th in Brooklyn, USA.  As the Conference Chair of that event, I’m gratified by this nice little promo.  We will in fact have content on “Katmai” (the next release of SQL Server) and very likely a keynote on Silverlight, all of which will be presented by product team members from Redmond.  Meanwhile, the vast majority of our content will be focused on technology that’s shipping today.  We think this strikes the right balance of “futures” and practical present-tense-relevant material.

Steve Berkowitz, the Microsoft Senior Vice President of Online Services, made what I consider to be a stunning admission of defeat.

Here’s the context: quoted in Mary Jo Foley’s blog, from his presentation at the JP Morgan technology conference, Berkowitz makes the distinction between “destination search” and “convenience search.”  Destination search, effectively, is search conducted at a search site.  Convenience search is performed in-place, through some context-sensitive search facility in an application or Web page.

Berkowitz believes Microsoft is more likely to have a good showing in convenience search than in destination search.  Implicit in this assertion is that (a) Microsoft doesn’t believe it currently has a good showing in either search area and (b) MS believes it is very unlikely that it will ever have a good showing in the destination search arena.  In other words, people who want to go to a search engine will go to Google, and MSN/Live Search’s (last?) best hope is essentially as a mashup Web service.

While I’m glad to see Microsoft admit that no one takes its http://search.live.com page terribly seriously, I have to say I’m a little shocked to see them write off the whole prospect of improving and competing in the “destination search” arena.  And besides, to admit that your search engine is second-class but to assume people will use it anyway as an in-place service strikes me as somewhat contradictory.  Select/Ctrl-C/Ctrl-E/Ctrl-V/Enter isn’t that hard.

Especially if it gives back better results.

Ever since I was a high scool student programming on a Commodore 64, I thought that the New York City Subway system could benefit greatly from technology.  All the way back then I tried, in vain, to create an electronic version of the Subway map and dreamed of a more high-tech system.

So imagine my surprise and geeky delight, when last Thursday morning I boarded a Queens-bound N train at Union Square that was made up of what, I have since learned, are called the R160 subway car.  From the outside, these look almost identical to the cars used on the L train (which I belive are R143 cars), but inside there’s something much different.

The R163s have special electronic strip maps…every station on the map is displayed via LEDs, rather than simple light bulbs on printed maps:

Take a closer look at the train route and destination info in the panel to the left of the map:

That square is actually a video screen, and it displays messages and full motion video announcments from the MTA alternating with the route info.

Anyway, as the train moves along its route, the station that the train just left disappears off the map, and everything scrolls to the left.  The train shows the next 10 stops (or the current one and nine more), as well as several “further stops” and the very last stop (if necessary).  It also tells you how many stops away each station is (and for the “further stops” that has to be calculated):

How cool is that?  By the way, I hear it’s now illegal to take photographs in the subway.  Oh well.  Here are links to some other lawbreakers who took photos and videos of the R160 and “FIND” (Flexible Information and Navigation Display — the official name of the electronic map):


NYCSubway.org Photos

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Andrew, Sean (born May 9^th, 4:11am) and Miles