venkatna's (Venkat Narayanan's) WebLog https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/venkatna/feed.xml Live.com News and technical details Tue, 16 Apr 2019 05:34:40 GMT en-US hourly 1 One freakin' game https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/venkatna/one-freakin-game Sun, 05 Oct 2008 02:09:46 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/venkatna/2008/10/05/one-freakin-game/ Is it too much to ask? Win one freaking game. Best record in the NL, second best record in all of baseball, and what do they do in the NLDS? Lose three straight. The one good thing, maybe, is they successfully completed 100 years without a title.

I was not going to talk about the Cubs until the World Series, but now there is no need for it, is there? This sucks.

- Venkat

]]> Olympics and MSN/Live Search https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/venkatna/olympics-and-msnlive-search Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:05:09 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/venkatna/2008/08/15/olympics-and-msnlive-search/ Like a lot of people, I have been watching a lot of Olympics recently, and have really enjoyed it. I cannot quite put my finger on why, but I have been excited by the Olympics. This has also led me to augment my TV viewing with other sources of information. I found out that Microsoft has done quite a bit of work on the Olympics. Just look at all this stuff:

- www.nbcolympics.com - You can watch hours and hours of video, athlete profiles, current results, schedules and much more. This is a great site. The videos over Silverlight are awesome.

- NBC Olympics on media center - this is another awesome resource which basically has the same videos as on www.nbcolympics.com, but they are downloaded to your media center.

- Live Search answers: Live Search has a whole bunch of instant answers.

* Medal Count
* Medal Count by Country
* Medal Count by Sport
* Medal Count by Country and Sport
* Athletes

- Live Search Homepage - www.live.com has had pictures from the Olympics as the background every day (2 pictures a day). [Full Disclosure: I work on this, and am part of the group that selects the pictures every day. I also work on Search UX, but not directly on the answers]

- Venkat

]]> 300,000 servers in a container farm https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/venkatna/300000-servers-in-a-container-farm Thu, 08 May 2008 18:30:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/venkatna/2008/05/08/300000-servers-in-a-container-farm/ This is cool - Microsoft has 300,000 servers in a container farm in the Chicago Data Center. It has got to be hot in there. This kind of gives an idea to the pace of growth at Microsoft. Exciting times.

 Venkat

]]> Live Search at the Daytona Endurance Race https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/venkatna/live-search-at-the-daytona-endurance-race Tue, 22 Jan 2008 21:31:30 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/venkatna/2008/01/22/live-search-at-the-daytona-endurance-race/ I am a huge fan of Formula 1 racing, and don't follow races in the U.S. that much. However, I just found out that Live Search is sponsoring a car at the Daytona Motor Speedway for the 24 Hours of Daytona Endurance race. Turns out this is for a good cause. We are sponsoring Team Seattle, and they have a goal of raising $700,000 for Seattle's Children's Hospital. You can follow the progress of the Team Seattle Drivers, and find out how to support Team Seattle, you can go to the Live Search Racing Space. Last year, the team raised $400,000. Please help the team reach their goal of $700,000.

Oh, and btw, the race will be televised on FOX starting at 10:00AM Saturday and then carried on SPEED Channel for the rest of the race.

They also have Bird's Eye views of different race tracks at http://livesearchracing.spaces.live.com/lists/cns!593B3B417C192DC6!106/.

- Venkat

]]> Windows Home Server - Need to get me one of these https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/venkatna/windows-home-server-need-to-get-me-one-of-these Thu, 06 Dec 2007 21:34:14 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/venkatna/2007/12/06/windows-home-server-need-to-get-me-one-of-these/ I have been looking at getting the HP MediaSmart Windows Home Server. Right now, all my data is stored on one external hard disk. I would really like to not have to worry about backing up all of the photos and videos I have. That should all just happen. According to most of the reviews i have read, and people i have talked to, Windows Home Server does just that, and more. This definitely has the "wife approval factor".

BTW, it seems like Home Server also has a good marketing team. They have an awesome site at www.stayathomeserver.com and are producing some funny videos. Here are two:

Intro: http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=965cfa66-0332-476f-8b12-e904a6ed3612

Home Sweet Server?: http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=601ae5ee-daed-488e-8fb7-904274cbdcef

- Venkat

]]> List of all Microsoft Team Blogs https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/venkatna/list-of-all-microsoft-team-blogs Tue, 18 Sep 2007 14:36:34 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/venkatna/2007/09/18/list-of-all-microsoft-team-blogs/ Brandon LeBlanc has gone to some trouble to get a list of all Microsoft Team Blogs in one location. This is a very useful list for any Microsoft watcher.

- Venkat

]]> Speeding up Web 2.0 applications https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/venkatna/speeding-up-web-2-0-applications Mon, 10 Sep 2007 16:35:35 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/venkatna/2007/09/10/speeding-up-web-2-0-applications/ My experience with web 2.0 applications is limited to Live.com homepage (www.live.com) and Start.com. In my experience, start.com was generally faster than live.com. There are various reasons for this, but one of the main ones is the amount of JavaScript code we download. Start.com was a much smaller site compared to live.com. We also have some other cookie related features in live.com that slow it down a little bit.

The first release of live.com was very slow. We improved it a whole lot by doing more processing on the server and actually rendering the basic blocks as html, instead of rendering everything using JS on the client side.

I read a paper today from Microsoft Research - Code Splitting for Network Bound Web 2.0 Applications that contains a lot of great information about splitting JS files so that we download only what we need. We applied some of those principles on live.com, but didn't nearly do enough. Chalk it up to experience, I guess :). Anyway, the point of this post is to point people to this paper. It is well worth a read, and we could all benefit from faster web applications.

- Venkat

]]> Tafiti - Silverlight based Search Engine https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/venkatna/tafiti-silverlight-based-search-engine Wed, 22 Aug 2007 18:12:55 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/venkatna/2007/08/22/tafiti-silverlight-based-search-engine/ Microsoft has released a new experimental Search Engine at www.tafiti.com. This looks like it is more to show the power of Silverlight than to show off a new Search interface. And it really does that. It is very easy on the eyes and completely smooth. There is some interaction that I don't particularly enjoy. For example, if you search multiple times, a new "note" is added on the left column. However, you can only delete your most recent search and you cannot get to your previous search. I am not sure what this adds to the user experience. Also, I don't like the refine experience. I don't always refine searches by adding more keywords, and in this interface that is the only way for me to refine.

I do like the ability to store and tag results. I can store results from multiple result types (web, images, feeds, books) in the same tag. This is very useful for research.

And finally, the tree view. It looks cool, but unfortunately, I don't get it. It is a different perspective, but I cannot see how this adds to the user experience.

All in all, this site does what it was meant to do - show the power of Silverlight, and in the process, has given me something to think about regarding search engine behavior.

-Venkat

]]> Windows Live starting to look better and better https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/venkatna/windows-live-starting-to-look-better-and-better Thu, 09 Aug 2007 20:42:45 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/venkatna/2007/08/09/windows-live-starting-to-look-better-and-better/ This is exciting. Windows Live, for a long time has been confusing for a lot of people. Sites did not look the same and they did not work well with one another. That seems to be changing now. More and more services seem like they were built together.  And this morning Microsoft released two new Windows Live Services.

The first one, http://home.live.com is exactly what it sounds like. A central jumping off point for everything Windows Live. The page looks cool and seems to be quick. However, it seems to lack some basic functionality. If you have used the Live.com personalized homepage, you might remember home.live.com used to take you there. The personalized page still exists and as far as i know will continue to exist (I work on it, kinda :)). You can also access the personalized page at http://my.live.com.

The second service, Windows Live SkyDrive, is cool. I really like the name. I love the concept. I have two asks though. We only get 500 MB, that should really be higher. I would also like to see tighter integration with Foldershare. That would make this a killer service. [Note: I don't work with this team, and do not know what future plans are.]

We have also recently released new versions of WL Writer, WL Messenger, and WL Mail. And as Satya Nadella said in an interview recently, we are working on a new release of Search (and i am directly working on this :) ). I see fun things happening around Windows Live this year.

- Venkat

]]> Performance of Web sites https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/venkatna/performance-of-web-sites Sun, 05 Aug 2007 00:14:11 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/venkatna/2007/08/05/performance-of-web-sites/ Yahoo Developer Network has a good post that details a number of things you can and should do to improve performance of your websites. Most of the recommendations are common sense, but together they pack a powerful punch. I have personally seen the bumps you get in performance whenever you implement one of these changes. The most bang for your buck is in minimizing the number of get requests. However, the one thing that i am iffy about is GZip compression, especially for JS. Compressing HTML and CSS usually result in better performance with no issues, but certain browsers seem to have issues with compressed JS. This has led to far too many problems in the sites i have worked on. However, with more people moving to newer browsers, it probably makes sense to compress JS files now. This also depends on the kind of traffic you get.

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