Microsoft's spy network

I read this interview with Andrew Herbert a while back and had meant to blog it in conjunction with a video that Katie Ledger and I shot of Andrew late last year but that video is taking a while longer to get edited (we did a two camera take) so I decided to blog about this ahead of the posting.

Andrew is a great bloke to chat with - really quite down to earth and in this interview has talks about SenseCam and Lyndsey Williams (who we also have a GREAT video of coming soon). SenseCam is one of those great projects that spawns many different uses from blogging to work with memory loss patients at Addenbrookes Hospital.

I love the quote about the "Microsoft Spy Network" which is something we discussed with Andrew - how some of the more wacky projects at MSR ever get in to products. As Rick Rashid, head honcho of MSR worldwide says in a recent CIO Today interview:

"One of the things I like to say is, the reason you have Microsoft Research is so Microsoft will still be here 10 or 15 years from now."

Not many companies invest the level of R&D that Microsoft does and it's quite comforting to see the projects coming through in to real world products more and more. It's also a great breeding ground for computer scientists which we need many more of here in the UK and it also has an IP licensing arm which has some interesting licensees of our technology - such as Wallop which is kind of like MySpace but built on top of Microsoft technology by a company who can arguably move quicker than we can. Does that herald the future of how more Microsoft technologies come to the mass market?

Link to 'To Microsoft, we're a source of smart people' | Technology | Guardian Unlimited Technology