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Comment by jmatt | Hacker News Reader

This has got to be the greatest thing MSFT has done for the web since Ajax. I don't know; maybe I'm missing something. Assuming they aren't going to patent it or something similarly insane. And assuming it works in a normal browser. There is hope though the video shows a demo on an iphone.

I've known a number of really smart people at Microsoft Research. And I've always wondered why they seem to produce so little. A secondary curiosity - how do they manage to hire such great researchers with their tarnished reputation over the last decade.

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I've known a number of really smart people at Microsoft Research. And I've always wondered why they seem to produce so little.

it might be because the primary 'product' that MSR produces is academic research papers, not production software (or even prototypes). they are an academic research lab devoted to doing basic research, not an R&D incubator

> A secondary curiosity - how do they manage to hire such great researchers

From what I can tell, it's in large part because, post-Bell-Labs, nobody else offers a similarly nice job for senior researchers, where you have wide intellectual freedom, a nice salary, and few restrictions on publishing. I assume junior researchers can't just start their own projects, but it seems they let the famous researchers do more or less whatever they want.

Fortunately, that assumption is false: junior researchers can start their own projects. I joined Microsoft Research a year ago. In that time, I've been encouraged to come up with new projects where I can lead, as well as make contributions to existing projects. As you point out, this degree of independence is rare in industry, so it makes MSR a competitive place to work.

What are the typical languages you guys use? I know F# came out of MSR.

Whatever you want to use for the project. For a recent project, one of my coworkers created a domain specific language and the rest of us coded in that language. For another project, I use C++, because I'm leveraging an existing code base. Colleagues of mine use F# for program analysis tools, which they love. As you say, F# came out of the MSR Cambridge languages group, that's a great tech transfer story.

That being said, there are a lot of internal libraries or projects written in C/C++ or C#. So I see a lot of those languages. I've also been learning ASP.NET, in part so I can better understand cross site scripting attacks on applications written on that platform.

"I've known a number of really smart people at Microsoft Research. And I've always wondered why they seem to produce so little."

Taking something from research into a full-fledged product at a company like Microsoft is like turning an aircraft carrier - it has a lot of expensive hardware on deck that has to be kept safe and has to be down slowly given that the seas are shifting constantly.

If the aircraft carrier suddenly notices a large island right in front of it then it might should consider a sharp turn anyway, even if a few F-14s get dinged up a bit.

The aircraft carrier has advanced radar and sonar to avoid that situation :p

All the radar and sonar in the world won't do the aircraft carrier any good if Captain Balmer ignores them and steers based on where he thinks the island ought to be instead of where it actually is.

But you can't put an aircraft carrier on an island unless it has a deepwater dock!

This kind of thing interests me as a geek, its clearly pretty cool, but I dont think it adds that much to the standard street view. As a user, the standard street view is 80% of what I want, they have added another 5% on top of that which is nice, but oddly enough I dont feel (at the moment) as if it is actually that compelling. Its a weird perspective, I love the tech, but I dont think I will ever care enough to go out of my way to use it.

Fair enough,but from my POV, street view has a hardly-usable UI. The way you have to click, render, click, render, click, render, Street View works the way MapQuest worked before Google Maps was built.

Street Slide is to Street View what Google Maps was to MapQuest.

That is absolutely true, of course.

The thing is that I very rarely actually want to scroll right along a street, I usually only want to get a visual of the place that I am going.

Now, there have been times where I was interested in going exploring, but not as a matter of utility - just because the street view ui begged me to and I was interested in how it worked.

Having said that, I believe that there is a definite place for something that lets me zoom along in 3d land to explore the entire street - because I would love to be able to explore Paris for example - but that really requires a free form of movement that this solution still doesn't speak to.

Maybe that is precisely why you didn't want to use it -- google's street view interface was not right for you.

yeah, it could be. I do use street view, but just because I find it useful to have a visual of the entrance and location of the place I am going.

But I agree, aside from the playful inclination to go and explore, its never been a big thing for me.

"I very rarely actually want to scroll right along a street"

I do that all the time for country roads to plan cycle routes - the current Google interface leaves a lot to be desired.

I have to disagree, I think google street view has some really big usability issues, and that anything that helps you navigate the "bubble" data set more easily is a good thing. It adds a lot.

I feel like I'm constantly trying to use streetview in exactly the way that this thing is doing it; for example if Im looking for a particular location I was at, and I know the street, but I forget the cross street, I want to be able to scan down block after block to find what I'm l ooking for.... esp. since I don't tend to think in terms of address- more in terms of relations of streets and landmarks.

interesting, I can see how that would be frustrating.

I tend to use the map view for that kind of thing, with the right level of zoom seeing the names of cross roads and that kind of detail is easy and quick.

To each their own however, clearly this will be loved by many.

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