Matthew Baldwin is a foxy grandma
The geek in question: Matthew Baldwin
The job title: Programmer/Writer on the protocol documentation team.
So, what are you working on right now?
We have been creating technical specifications for the protocols used by Microsoft applications to communicate … okay, this is the moment where the eyes of the person who asked that question typically glaze over, so I’ve never actually come up with an ending for this sentence.
Is it awesome?
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The Shared Source Initiative makes publicly available the source code for many of Microsoft’s core products, including Windows and Office. And the company’s okay with that.
By Steve Birge
“I know customers are super excited to get access to source,” said Shawn Burke, a director in DevDiv’s .NET Development Platform. “It’s something they’ve wanted for a long time.”
Believe it or not, there are non-Microsoft people digging into the kernel source code for Windows, Office, and other prized corporate assets.
Before you start to worry too much, the company knows about it and, in fact, encourages it. Don’t think the company has gone all open source on you. It’s part of the Shared Source Initiative (SSI), whereby almost anyone – including customers, partners, developers, academics, and governments worldwide – can access and work with actual source code of many Microsoft technologies.
Since 2002, more than 80 technologies have been made available through the SSI, including a set of .NET framework libraries just released for sharing in mid-January. Additionally, more than 600 non-Microsoft technologies have been released under a Shared Source license.
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The venerable JPEG format for multimedia images has been an industry standard for some 20 years. Now, the search is on for sharper, more versatile image-coding technology, and Microsoft thinks it has developed it.
By Laurie Rowell
It took Robert Rossi’s team about five years to develop JPEG XR. Now, Rossi is attempting to persuade industry groups to adopt the technology.
How does Microsoft, a company eyed warily by competitors and open-source advocates alike, deliver a new information technology standard to the industry free of charge and without any strings attached? Especially when that standard promises to change how we see the world, via the Internet and other multimedia sources, for years to come?
Robert Rossi, principal program manager lead for Microsoft’s Core Media Processing Group, took a crafty approach to this challenge. He stood in front of the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG), the group that set the JPEG standard, at an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) meeting in February, and said, in essence, “Here is your JPEG1 successor.”
The new format, originally called HD-Photo and renamed JPEG XR (extended range) was developed at Microsoft entirely. “Internally, a lot of people would question why Microsoft gave the technology away free of charge.” Rossi said. “The truth is that an image-coding technology doesn’t survive if it has a cost associated with it, because it needs diffusion.”
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