Thanks to an earlier tip from Rafael Rivera on Twitter who noted hours ago the Office 2010 mini-site has gone live (update: now removed but Google Cache caught it), it appears just now the placeholder videos too have gone live with real Office 2010 preview videos, including the much anticipated Office Web applications plus some interesting new features never seen before.

Without a further ado, I’ll let the videos do the talking. Here’s a couple of videos discussing the most interesting applications (and online services) in the suite.

You can find videos on the rest of the Office suite at the Office 2010 website.

Update: The videos appear to be up and down for some reason, if it says “an error has occured”, in which case just refresh the page and they should reappear.

For the past couple of days, I’ve been thinking and dreaming about hashes, file hashes to be exact. My fascination with hashes started with an idea to host a universal hash database that could be used to identify every file in the world. If you think that wasn’t bold enough, then I think I might have just come up with a system that in hindsight, abstracts data distribution across networks and protocols.

The main reason I’m publishing this idea, and not ringing a patent lawyer, is because I want as many eyeballs scrutinizing this idea as possible. Even though I’ve already put a lot of thought into it and got some talented people to help validate it, nothing would be worse than blindly driving down a dead end. On the other hand if the idea holds up, I really need the motivation and support of the wider community to realize it.

Background

Now to cut to the chase, my idea can be said to be a mashup of many existing technologies, some have been technically documented and others have even been implemented in existing distribution methods. But, I believe the idea as a whole – and can only work as a whole – has never been publically discussed or realized.

As a starting point, it is my understanding that currently the most popular file distribution methods – notably HTTP and BitTorrent among others – are all arguably “filename”-based. For example, to distribute a file from a HTTP server, you specify a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) such as “http://server.com/file.txt“, and using BitTorrent, you create a .torrent file which specifies the filename “file.txt” among other things.

A disadvantage to the “filename”-based distribution is that it does not consistently identify unique files. For example, a simple text file can have as many names as an appropriate file system supports. On that note, this is where my idea begins.

Hashes

My good friend the hash, and specifically those created by the SHA-1 hashing algorithm (or SHA-512) can be used to identify unique files. If you hash a file using a hash function, the hash you generate will not change unless the contents of that file changes. Why this is useful for file distribution is that it normalizes the identifier of the file. After all, all we really want is the contents of a file; it doesn’t really matter what it is called. Of course, you could argue that the file extension is useful, if not important, in which case you’d be glad to know these are not lost in the endgame.

The skeptical will be thinking, how do you prevent hash collisions? Well I can’t. By definition it’s part of a good hash design that the chances of collisions are minimized and so far SHA-1 has lived up to expectations. In the event that SHA-1 is compromised, the system could very well accommodate any new hashing algorithm that becomes the standard, or multiple hashing algorithms simultaneously. Update: Another practical idea to reduce the chance of collisions even further is to concatenate two hashes generated by two different hashing algorithms.

Magnet links

Owning up to prior art however, the aforementioned idea is not new to the world of file distribution. Magnet links, as they are called, is a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) scheme which does exactly what I described. Most popularly used for peer-to-peer distribution networks and notably eDonkey, it creates an “URL” that is identified by a hash.

For example, “magnet:?xt=urn:fakehash:123ABC&dn=file.txt” describes a file whose hash using the “fakehash” hash function is “123ABC” and is suggested to be named “file.txt“.

Transfer

Now with a method of identifying unique files via hashes, the next step is to figure out how the file transfer transaction actually occurs. If I may say so myself, this is where the idea really shines and in true Web 2.0 mashup-spirit too.

To answer the question with a question if you will, “what are the best methods to transfer files today?” And the answer to that question is that there is no best way. Notably different types of networks (server-client, peer-to-peer) and their respective protocols (HTTP, FTP, BitTorrent, etc) are all unique, and each has a set of advantages and disadvantages that complement each other. Using these in synergy would maximize the speed and redundancy the infrastructure has to offer.

Web service

To get all these protocols to work in unity, this is where a central web service comes into play. (For the sake of simplicity, assume central does not mean one server at a single URL that is prone to failure, but a distributed system with redundancy.)

What this web service will do is abstract the resources on different networks. To put this into practice, let’s assume you are after a particular movie trailer video file; you come across a website which includes a magnet link to a high-definition 1080p version of the trailer. In this magnet link is among other things, the hash of the file and a suggested filename.

Clients

Now, using a client which associated itself with the magnet link, the application will launch and then send the hash to the web service. The web service will return you a set of claimed resources with the original content. This could be on Apple’s HTTP server as “http://apple.com/trailers/movie_trailer.mp4“, on a movie trailer website as “http://trailer.com/movies/19428.mp4“, on a FTP server as “ftp://files.com/the_fantastic_movie.mp4“, and available on a specific BitTorrent tracker as “awesome-trailer.mp4“.

A particular client may only support a small subset of the file transfer protocols available so the web service will only send back a list of resources that is applicable. Assuming this client supports HTTP and BitTorrent, it will now begin to download the segments of the file concurrently. How each client handles the actual data transfer is ultimately up to the application developer, allowing room for continued competition and innovation.

Resources

You might be asking, “how does the web service know where the resources for a hash are located?” It will ultimately be up to the users of this system – either manually or systematically – contribute to the resource “pool”.

Luckily, it just happens one part of the Magnet URI specification allows you to append an “alternative” resource link. In practice, it would mean different sites would append different alternate resources, which clients then send to the web service over time, taking advantage of existing infrastructures.

For example, the Apple site might have the magnet link “magnet:?xt=urn:fakehash:123ABC&dn=file.txt&as=http://apple.com/trailers/movie_trailer.mp4“. The movie trailer website might have “magnet:?xt=urn:fakehash:123ABC&dn=file.txt&as=http://trailer.com/movies/19428.mp4“. The BitTorrent site might have “magnet:?xt=urn:fakehash:123ABC&dn=file.txt&as=http://torrentsite.com/t/cool_movie_trailer.torrent“.

The pool will not be empty to begin with since one person must intend a file to be shared for it to exist in the web service database. Therefore it will have at least one resource location available. Over time the distribution becomes decentralized as more resources become available.

Resource integrity

Of course as we all know, people can be evil little buggers. How do we trust that all resources in the pool are for the same hash? How do we ensure the resources have not tampered with? Also, it’s a reality that resources can disappear without warning, so what happens if they no longer exist?. In all of these cases, we treat the resource as an improper resource.

So how do you validate the proper resource from improper ones? By hashes of course! Granted, if the resource is a big download like a high-definition video file, it wouldn’t be the best user experience to find out a resource was improper after hashing the complete file. This is why we need to segment the files in order to avoid the situation.

The size of these segments will be calculated algorithmically so that it is consistent across the system. Assuming a 1GB file is divided into 10MB pieces, we then hash the individual 10MB piece. It turns out BitTorrent does this too, to ensure integrity at the block level. However to deliver one step beyond BitTorrent, we can use a hash tree to ensure that not only is there integrity at the block level and at the whole-file level, but that we also ensure integrity between these levels. That is to say, we can verify the individual block hashes do in fact add up to the root hash. Update: These block-level hashes will be stored in the web service database that can be pulled if or when a client requests them.

Trust

The paranoid ones will probably ask, what happens if a client mistakenly or with malicious-intent claim a resource is improper when it is proper, or vice versa? In response to this, I propose a karma-based system which ranks the “quality” of unique user’s claims in a specific time period. Other clients who verify a claim in turn boosts the karma, and others who disagree with a claim will reduces karma of that user.

I haven’t worked out the specifics of this but I welcome suggestions.

Transition

So that’s pretty much it for the technical implementation, but as we all know, technicalities is not all that matters. To implement such a system, transition is critical. Getting users and most importantly entities which distribute files to switch to such a system could admittedly be considered impossible without some sort of a bridge.

But as previously mentioned, since magnet links have native support for “alternate” links, links which work without any new clients or infrastructure, means that there is always a fallback option. A current HTTP download client could continue to support just HTTP and the same for BitTorrent. At this level, the clients can take advantage of multiple resources on the same protocol, sort of mirroring-on-steroids. And when the clients are ready to support multiple protocols, then they can simply take advantage of the new resources returned by the web service.

Preemptive frequently asked questions

To conclude, I want to preemptively answer a few burning questions some people might have.

What you’re suggesting would require figuratively a “centralized” web service which can handle the file distribution requests of a potentially mindblowing number of clients at any one time. Where would you find the resources?

It is true that this system will only work at maximum potential when there is a centralized database of the resources, but centralized does not necessarily mean one server either. DNS is a server-client system which depends on a centralized database, and technologies like distributed databases and scalable web services hosted on Windows Azure make it possible.

Would this mean that the web service could potentially log (and trace) every download?

Short answer, no. The web service only coordinates requests of resources; intent to seek potential resources of a specified hash is not proof of data transfer. However, this won’t stop individual resources such as those hosted on a HTTP server to log every request a client may subsequently make, or a BitTorrent tracker which records the peers of a file.

Are there any other applications for this beyond file downloads?

Yes. If you think about it, downloads does not necessarily have to be a user clicking a link in a browser, it is whenever a file is transferred between two clients on the Internet. Of course the benefit of this system is exponentially decreased the smaller the file is. However, as content becomes higher in quality, it is a trend that files will continue to be larger and harder to distribute faster and more reliably.

Will this prevent malicious files from being distributed?

Unfortunately, no. Because the system only knows hashes, it has no idea about the original contents of the hashed file. However, this is not to say a third party cannot identify hashes which are known to be of malicious files and flag them as such (which I propose in my hashDB project), but this is outside the scope of this system.

What’s your business model?

I’ll consult the Twitter guys. Just kidding . Well because such a system would benefit both parties of a distribution, distributors and users, I’m sure there is some cost benefit somewhere that one can tap into to fund the system.

Of course if you’re an investor and are interested in helping me realize this, shoot me an email at long.zheng@gmail.com.

Ultimately if you’re looking for something, you no longer have to care what it’s called, where it’s hosted, if all the resources are available and safe, or even how the bits are transferred to you. You just get what the other party intended you to have.

It might have been the day the Chrome OS is finally announced, but according to Robert Scoble, this was actually a timely stunt by Google in an attempt to steal some of the spotlight before what he claims to be a “big announcement” coming from Microsoft on Monday. Apparently he has seen and shot videos of it, but is not allowed to talk about. Let the speculation begin.

As it turns out, next Monday is not the ordinary first day of the week for Microsoft. On that day, Microsoft is kicking off it’s Worldwide Partner Conference 2009 in New Orleans and from just looking at the keynotes list, is nothing to be sneezed at. Long story short, it’s basically a who’s who list of Microsoft executives. However, this doesn’t actually help narrow down what the big announcement might be since almost every Microsoft division is represented extensively.

Potential announcements already on people’s minds include the announcement and subsequent availability of Windows 7 RTM code and pricing and licensing plans for Windows Azure, but this does not appear to be what Scoble is referring to.

Scoble made several comments in his Friendfeed post that provide clues to what the announcement is about. The first made a reference to “Microsoft’s 14 billion dollar business”. After tracking down Microsoft’s last quarterly financial results, they indeed have a $14 billion dollar business ($14.33bn to be exact) and that is the Microsoft Business Division.

Update: Some people have pointed out what Scoble meant is that Microsoft runs fourteen (14) billion-dollar (valued) businesses, which makes more sense grammatically. In which case, puts a dent in my speculation.

Whereas Windows falls under the Client division and Azure falls under the Server and Tools division (they have since merged as the platforms division, but remain separate in financial reports), the Microsoft Business Division among other (and obviously extremely profitable) initiatives is responsible for the Office suite.

The second clue Scoble provides is that it runs in a browser, Chrome and Firefox specifically, and at least witnessed being demoed in Firefox. Whilst it’s not impossible whatever this is is not a Silverlight application, I’m more inclined to guess it’s an AJAX web application.

To play devil’s advocate however, Scoble specifically refers to “part of the Microsoft announcement” runs in a Chrome and Firefox, which could be interpreted one of two ways. Either it is not entirely a web application or that it is not 100% compatible with Chrome and Firefox.

To add a bit of seasoning to the salad mix if you will, Microsoft evangelist Keith Combs had been tweeting this week of some “secret Microsoft software”. Whilst I’m not sure if the two tweets are related to each other or related to this announcement, it appears at least one of the softwares would allow users to create content, which fits with the Office clue. If he is talking about the same software, why he doubts it might not work on Windows Server 2008 R2 remains a mystery. What Keith was referring to has since been revealled to be Expression Encoder Screen Capture.

Putting together all the clues, I’m going to speculate this is the public release of the Microsoft Office Web application that was announced back at PDC08, possibly with some new major features or capabilities that wasn’t demoed initially to take it above and beyond just Microsoft’s version of Google Docs. If it is indeed Office Web, it will certainly have to compete with the mindblowing collaboration features of Google Wave which sets the bar pretty high.

Nonetheless, there’s always the chance that I’m way off and it could be something complete different, but hey, that’s the price of admission for the speculative rollercoaster.

Update 2: Some people have provided me with more information that confirms the big announcement on Monday will be indeed Office Web application.

Update 3: Commenter “Bob” points out that the company that previously owned Office.com has recently changed their domain. Microsoft Office Web applications moving in? The plot thickens.

Update 4: It has been confirmed Keith wasn’t referring to the same thing as Scoble. The Office Web application prediction lives on nonetheless.

Just between you and me, I’ve heard that one could obtain copies of Windows 7, including builds newer than the public betas, from some not-so-sanctioned sources. Of course I would know very little about how this works, but I understand that there is a process of verifying the integrity of files to ensure files are as described and have not been tampered with, however not everyone does this.

Leading up to the inevitable leak of the Windows 7 RTM build like a bottle of champagne shaken once too many times, I wanted to make this process of verifying file hashes even simpler by making it easy and convenient to generate and compare the hashes. With the help of Sven Groot, we came up with this little applet for your Windows 7 ISO verifying pleasure.

It couldn’t be any easier to use. Simple drag and drop an .ISO file onto this EXE, or double click on it and navigate to the file, then sit back and relax whilst it crunches the numbers. Once it generates a hash, it’ll compare it with a list of known and trustworthy hashes of ISOs to tell you exactly which build version and architecture it is known to be. This list will be updated live over the web so you won’t have to redownload the app.

Download the Windows 7 ISO Verifier (EXE, 253KB)

Disclaimer: Like most entrepreneurs, I take no responsibility for the consequence of using this application. The information is provided only as a guide and cannot be used as evidence in an internet argument.

Update: As a few users have noted, this only works for English versions of Windows 7 ISOs so far.

In short, Strickman Ripps, a people-casting and marketing research company is looking for people who have voiced concerns about operating systems regarding features and functions in the past and are offering $100 for a short 20 minute video interview over the web. Enough money to preorder a particular OS you might be after I might add.

Here’s the offer in full.

Strickman Research, a marketing research firm, has contacted us [or in this case, me] for assistance in reaching out to you [in this case, the plural you] with this invitation to participate in a paid research study. If you qualify for the study, they would ask for no more than 20 minutes of your time and would pay you $100 US:

What are we researching?

We are looking for people who have left comments on various blogs and forums about operating system software they’ve used. We are looking for people who have previously “published” their suggestions online and expressed their wishes for certain features or functions they would like to see in future versions of various PC operating systems [the Windows 7 Taskforce qualifies perfectly]. Such comments can run the gamut from very technical to very broad, for instance comments like: “I wish it would boot faster.” or “How can I share files between my home computers?” would suffice. The wishes and suggestions can be implied in a question where one is hoping to find a solution to a particular problem.

We are looking for comments published online between 1/2004 – 12/2008. More recent assessments of newer operating systems, published in 2009, may also be pertinent.

How do I participate?

If you left a written comment on a blog, forum or informational website which was, broadly speaking, a suggestion or wish for a certain feature or function you would like to see improved in your computer’s operating system, please find your specific comment or comments online and paste the link/s in an email to us at sri-uk@live.com.

Please include:

1. The link to your comment/s including the date when it/they was/were posted
2. Your username on that/those site/s
3. Full name
4. Email address
5. Phone number
6. Location (City/State/Country)
7. Best time to be reached

We are looking for participants age 19 and older in, or very near the following regions: UK, France, Germany, Australia, USA.

What should I expect?

Once we have received your email, and reviewed your comment/s, a representative from Strickman Research will contact you by phone to ask you a few qualifying questions. This call will take no more than 10 minutes of your time. If you qualify (95% of applicants should qualify) we will schedule you for a recorded internet video chat at your convenience that would take no more than 20 minutes of your time and for which you would be paid $100 US in the form of a VISA cash card.

What if I don’t qualify?

If you do not meet the criteria for our research study, we will most likely let you know in the first few minutes of our phone call. We will not trouble you any further and we will not store or share you contact information.

I know this might sound too good to be true, but I have since come across one person I trust who is already involved and assures me that this is indeed legitimate. Furthermore if you’re worried about the @live.com email address, the official company twitter page confirms that these email addresses are indeed real and provides further evidence of this research study. Those who can read between the lines can probably figure out what this is all about too.

If you have any personal concerns, feel free to discuss them in the comments or simply ignore this offer.

Disclaimer: In the spirit of transparency, I have been informed that I do receive a commission for every successful participant but I can safely say that it did not affect my decision to support this project since I made the decision without knowledge of any commissions.

Update: Added clarifications regarding age and region requirements.

The Kodu game by Microsoft Research is out today and I’d encourage anyone with an XBOX 360 with access to Indie Games on the XBOX Marketplace to check it out. Simply put, it’s a sandbox game that allows you to make games using a straightforward but capable visual programming language. By definition it’s not the Little Big Planet for the XBOX 360, but if that makes you want to try it, then let it be.

I’ve been toying with Kodu for a couple of days now and I can’t help imaginging almost everyone will have a different experience with the game because it is so unique and depending on what you want to get out of it. As someone who didn’t take the time to build anything in the game, purely playing other people’s levels has been the ultimate “why didn’t I think of that” experience for me.

The variety of games that the creators and testers have already made is pretty astounding, ranging from a classic story-driven side-scroller to a multi-hole golf game. Even though I have no motivation to create a level from scratch myself, being able to dive into the “source code” of other games is extremely compelling since I’m one who loves to figure out how things work.

I think it’s quite amusing to recognize that in some ways Kodu, a games-building platform, is built on top of Microsoft XNA, another games-building platform.

Furthermore, I want to share with everyone the amazing simple art style of Kodu which I think is the perfect testament to the game’s shallow learning curve as part of its goal to be accessible by kids to learn about the fundamentals of programming.

Unfortunately though due to limitations of the XBOX Indie Games, the XBOX version does not support the community sharing feature that is available on the PC version which I played with. XBOX users can only share their levels on a peer-to-peer basis which limits the discoverability aspect of this game. At the same time, the PC version is not being publically released and limited to only school deployment at the moment.

From a freebie perspective, it’s difficult to imagine anything better. Whilst no person can ever have enough backpacks, drink bottles and glossy printed materials, a netbook on the other hand is not only fun but practical.

The particular netbook on offer is a HP Mini 2140 notebook which has actually been discontinued by HP just recently, but still packs a punch. It features an Intel Atom N270 processor, 160GB of storage, 10.1 inch (16×9) LED display. Microsoft will be preloading the latest public build of Windows 7 at the time (in September so presumably RTM) and attendees will be able to not only gain hands-on experience before the product launch, but also experience it on a netbook-class system, where it is said to perform very well.

From a conference perspective, this is also a smart move on Microsoft’s behalf to optimize the infrastructure necessary for hosting a large-scale event like TechEd. Attendees will be able to use the wireless connectivity to participate in collaborative development activities, download hand-out materials, presentations and communicate with other attendees using the webcam. However from experience the wireless networks are usually already-strained at an event like this, it’d be interesting to see how it will cope with every attendee potentially accessing the network wirelessly at the same time.

Of course, no freebie comes without a moral dilemma. At the conference, recipients of the netbook will be given the choice to receive the device as a gift or a loan. Those who do not need a netbook device can use the machine for the duration of the conference, after which it will be donated to the community sector through a local Microsoft initiative, On My Way, aimed at helping disadvantaged Australians develop technology skills.

To be eligible for this offer, attending must hold a paid registration. Unfortunately, this excludes sponsors, sponsor free tickets, exhibitors, volunteers, Microsoft staff (full-time and contingent), nor any delegate who has received a complimentary ticket (excluding non-Microsoft speakers).

Chinese Microsoft enthusiast blog LiveSino.net today posted a bunch of links to some interesting portfolios by a handful of Chinese designers who works at the Microsoft Advanced Technology Center (ATC) Studios in Beijing. What many people don’t know is that the ATC has been largely responsible for the user experience design of Windows Mobile. This however is no longer the case as WM 6.5 was their last project, but up and until now, they’ve been busy conceptualizing the future of Windows Mobile. Most of those concepts have never surface in public before, until now.

Out of all the portfolios linked, one stands out as the juiciest. Teng Lei, a user experience designer at the ATC recently blogged about a new portfolio by Robin Zhu (not yet launched) who appears to also work at the ATC. What appears to be a teaser quickly turns into an enormous gallery of high resolution clippings from Robin’s portfolio which showcases some extraordinary Windows Mobile concepts he’s designed over the years.

Here’s a select few I found the most interesting, but I would encourage everyone to visit the original blog post to see the whole range.

With these amazing UX concepts, one wonders, where did it all go wrong for Windows Mobile?

Update: The author of these concepts, Robin, clarifies in the comments that not all of these concepts were designed for Windows Mobile but designed for mobile user experiences in general.

[See post to watch Flash video]

I’ve been a big fan of the guided tour videos Apple makes available soon after a new product launch. It’s an effective way of showing off a new product without looking like an advertisement, at the same time educating potential customers about the features of the product without a wordy manual or features list. Now Microsoft has a series of guided tours for Windows 7 too.

Similarly to the recent iPhone 3GS video, the Windows 7 videos too feature a charming employee who introduces and narrates the videos, in this case, Latika Kirtane. If the face looks familiar to you, that’s because you probably watched Latika sing in the now infamous Microsoft Research Songsmith video. Interestingly, according to her LinkedIn profile, she has since moved on from the Windows team to now work on Windows Internet Explorer.

In terms of the video production, it’s fascinating to see the use of Sims-like figures in the introduction of the videos. Each of the four videos feature slightly different themed scenarios related to the topic of the video. The style of the animations are also quite interesting, and if you think of all the other elements that’s been associated with the Windows 7 brand so far – butteries, birds, trees, sunshine – this might actually be a sneak peek at what to expect in the mainstream advertising campaigns.

So I was over at the Microsoft Store seeing if one could pre-order a copy of Windows 7 with a fake US address and saw this banner when I checked out. I thought it was cute Windows is talking about itself in the first-person. It’s also interesting to see Microsoft ultimately classifying Windows 7 as a major upgrade where there’s been quite a bit of a debate on whether it is a major or minor release. Thoughts?

Update: For those who are curious, using a fake US address did not work since it appears to check for the region of your credit card number too (after you complete purchase).