Problem Symptom: Vista fails to find drivers for devices - typically USB devices. Often these are devices that don’t require drivers (many USB keys and hard drives) or you have already installed drivers for them. After plugging them in you end up with a driver not found dialog box.

Quick Solution: Download this batch file (zipped version). You will need to run this from a command prompt with admin privileges. (Be careful though - usual disclaimers apply about doing it only if you know what you are doing and have backed up recently).

Detail: The reason for this problem (to the extent that it has happened to me) is that the driver cache for vista got corrupted somehow and the fix basically forces Vista to rebuild it.

Here is the breadcrumb trail of my search sleuthing that led me to the solution:

LockerGnome

Winmatrix forums

Technet (this helped in certain cases)

and finally Peter & Laura (many thanks!)

Nitty Gritty:

Typical error messages:

Error 1: Windows couldn’t find driver software for your device

Error 2: Windows Encountered a Problem while Trying to Install your Device

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The last email I got from the man who I have often called my American dad was upbeat and full of energy - just like the very man whose office I had the good fortune of bursting into many many years ago. He mentioned as an aside that the cancer that he had beaten had come back but that he was supremely confident that he would beat it this time. About a month later, I got an email from his account mentioning that he passed away. Since that day I have been fighting away the sadness and trying hard to live up to the spirit of the man that inspired me to journey the road less traveled.

That day, many years ago, after I burst into the offices of the college Vice President - I had given vent to all my frustrations and my ambitions. I paced the room talking about my frustration at being unable to find enough time for research, and the paucity of student employment that hindered my ability to dream beyond. I talked about my journey from a small town in India to a small town in Kansas - and the temptation to give up. I talked and talked and through all of it this ram rod straight professor administrator sat behind his desk listening to me aptly and nodding to what I had to say. It was only when his office admin caught my eye from the outside that I realized where I was and who I was talking to. I skidded to a complete stop - unable to say anything further and expecting to be shellacked for being disrespectful. You see - I have grown up hearing "Guru Devo Bhava",  equating your teacher to God, in a society where teachers have tremendous authority.

I learnt my first lesson from him that day - as he calmly put into motion actions to create a new role within his office reporting to him and opening up avenues for me to engage in what little research activity that happened at small midwestern university. I learnt that day that action is the most eloquent of languages.

People were the reason why I could comfortably call Kansas my home, and Dr. Taylor was at the very top of that list. He inspired, advised and helped all he could and eventually encouraged me to make the move to Caltech. Along with a few others, he helped shape my future into something everyone would be proud of. He taught me how to start on the path to being a good strategist and it is to him that I owe much of my success as an approachable technologist. At the same time, I was very glad to play my part in his life - be it as the messenger boy in his budding romance or subsequently as a staunch supporter of mom Maria’s push to get him back to better health.

Even after I went to the west coast and they moved to Portugal - he and mom always wrote to me, emails full of wit and wisdom and warm benevolence.  When will you start your next company he asked - he wanted to invest in it. I had another home in Portugal they said, and a family that awaited my visit. Never did I imagine that I would not be greeted at the airport by my American dad when I finally visited. I will still go, because I want to see the land that he fell in love with and the lady that together with him nourished a young me with infinite care and amazing cooking.

Dad, I will miss you. No eulogies will suffice - you will live on in the lives of people that you have touched and inspired, continuing to teach and guide through your memory.

Dr. James S. Taylor (1947-2007)

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German: Alle ur Übersetzung sind gehören uns

Arabic: كلّ [أور] ترجمة ينتسب إلى نا

French: Toute la traduction d’ur sont appartiennent à nous

Dutch: Al urvertaling is behoort tot ons

Chinese: 所有ur翻译是属于我们

So Mike, what do you think?

Having traveled thousands of miles from my origin point, I found that being multilingual was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Growing up, having learnt several languages while being mostly oblivious to that fact - I am astounded at how incredibly powerful our brain is. This fact hits home much harder these days - as I watch researchers and linguists in my new team butting their collective (and considerable) intellects against the hard problems of getting computers to learn how to translate natural languages. Millions of dollars and innumerable bald patches later - you get to where a polyglot teenager might still do better at translating the phrase “Tabbed Browsing” better than the engine (I doubt they can do it to such hilarious effect though).

There are some very clear benefits to getting Machine Translation right. The harnessable processing power available to us through computers is great and at low cost. To be able to use that to make large volumes of information available to everyone irrespective of what language they speak would be a wonderful thing is this increasingly flat world. The MSR MT engine has been very successfully deployed to deliver thousands of knowledge base pages to users worldwide. You can also see that technology in action when you use the checkbox for the “computer related text” on the Live Translator.

As the volume of information continues to explode, this is a great time to be betting on technologies like MT. Of course, such technology only gets better with training and usage and so I hope to use it whenever I need things translated. This is not that uncommon these days, what with strange error codes that Vista throws up from time to time being discussed and solved on german and other language websites. In fact, I have written a bookmarklet that allows me to get the translation of the current web page in one click (this one does english to french, you can use other language pairs as appropriate). Right click and add it to your Links folder (if using IE) or your bookmarks toolbar (on Firefox).

One great thing about statisitcal MT (which is what is used by MSR for this engine) is that it can quickly learn and translate in new languages. Maybe one of these days the person who fills (filled?) this role might want to contribute to the database.

Update: The official blog for my team is now up on MSDN

Update 2: I added a widget to the right that allows for translation of any page into another language. Give it a whirl!

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One of the easier ways to become successful in an increasingly flat world is to identify a new market that has deep parallels to a mature one - understand the deltas and trends really well and apply the lessons learnt from the mature market to the new one. With that in mind, I think recycling is going to be a HUGE business in India. If I were an entrepreneur or investor looking to make an investment I would make one in the trash and recycling business. I know of many stories where people made millions in this business in the developed world. The same story could be easily emulated in a place like India. I saw some smaller trash picking operations while I was in Hyderabad and there are some global trash companies investing - but someone local with deeper pockets and a good understanding of the human resource situation who executes systematically would be able to reap huge rewards in a place like India. Some interesting execution points would be to (a) lobby government to bring about trash and recycling laws (b) make big pushes in terms of creating a brand name that is clearly associated with trash and recycling (like xerox is to copying) (c) create a profit sharing franchisee model to tap into the large low cost work force.

Further reading:

French Garbage Company Disrupts Community Initiatives

India’s tech trash heap - .net magazine (I wonder what part of a computer has grease)

Garbage too can make you rich

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Here is one such truly cool product from Microsoft: Microsoft Surface.  Lately there has been a TON of news around touch computing TED Multitouch demo, iPhone and so forth. I followed this inside Microsoft for quite a while (playtable), and I highly recommend checking the videos out.

 Engadget has a gallery.

Robert is covering it. Tell him what questions you have for the playtable team.

CNN has an article.

Nice long demo video on On10.

Techcrunch covers it.

Nice coverage and video on Popular Mechanics.

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I bring this up because I happened upon what I consider a very englightening and admirable post from Chris Sullivan, a Program Manager on the Home Server team at Microsoft. In said post, Chris goes into some detail on how many bugs/feature-requests were recieved against the product since it’s gone into beta and how they are being addressed.

I am heartened to see a team connect with their beta testers (and the rest of the world) in such a fashion. For someone who spends hours patiently installing a whole new operating system and configuring it and dealing with hardware and driver idiosyncracies, to know that the team is looking closely at what you and the other have reported and that they take the time to talk back to you is great encouragement to continue helping to make the product better.

 Then there are the downsides. The innards of software are not always beautiful. The process of getting to a beautiful end product is not always beautiful. Connecting to the world outside as an exception to established norm might cause trouble. Would Chris have thought that his blog post would get picked up by media? In a world where every move that your company makes is scruitinized under the microscope, there is always that chance that the information that has been presented would undergo the same treatment.

 Not everyone who has looked into the restaurant kitchen react calmly.

While the number of bugs reported (and also the impressive number of them fixed) seems large, one needs to understand that the product in question is a whole operating system - undoubtedly one of the most complex pieces of consumer software in existence. For comparison I did a quick query on one of my old hunting grounds: the Firefox bugzilla. Searching for bugs filed against FF2 after it’s beta release and before it’s final release was a similarly large number. I imagine if you looked at the bug counts on other beta software, you might see a number that to the average “kitchen-blind” consumer might seem like a lot.

I do hope that there will be more engagement of this sort from other product teams with their consumer communities. Home Server team and Chris - good job!

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What I meant by the title of this post though - is this little one. She is the first kid in this world who actually turned up in my arms on the day she was born. I have been watching her grow, missing almost every moment that I have not been nearby. I only hope that my friend P (who by virtue of having done the easy little job of giving birth to this little bundle get’s to spend waaaay too much time with her ) will decide that my superbly sunny countenance will more than offset any gray skies of the emerald city - and move over here with D, rika and her twin siblings.

I was looking for a picture to host on Zooomr since I wanted to try them again, and I kept coming back to this one. I finally gave up resisting and so here she is.

Emerald Baby Hosted on Zooomr

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There has always been the rumor of a Mac Tablet. One of my mac devs of that time kept telling me that a mac tablet has been in the works since when he was at Apple and all it needs was the right moment. Given one’s enthusiasm for pretty looking things - many of the macheads have been hoping and hoping for a mac tablet. Macworlds came and went, PC tablets came, UMPCs came.. yet, no mac tablet…

… till today. Jobs announced a Mac Tablet at the conference today. They call it the iPhone. If you took Microsoft’s vision of Haiku (UMPC successor), stick some glassy prettiness on it, put in a phone stack and release it a few months (or a year) in advance - you get iPhone.

My kidding aside, this device which is being positioned as a phone (or rather a convergence between an ipod, a phone and a communicator) at first look is a small mac tablet with a phone app on it. The trademark glassy UI replete with familiar icons. While there are no details on whether it supports inkwell it very well could - as it is touted to be running OSX. Mixed reports on the battery life - although most say it is likely to be pretty measly for a non smartphone. (As an aside, are we seeing an OSX embedded in the works? iTV seems to be another product that might be running it) So then, what differentiates the iPhone from a mac tablet with the aforementioned properties? Perhaps the famed lifestyle experience design expertise that Apple brings to many of their successful products? Perhaps the focus on building a single device, with a single operator, targeting very specific personas?

There has for ages been this debate on convergence. There’s been also the big debate on formfactors. What are the key features for a device that goes with you? How many of the activities you perform on the go are convergable and compatible? How big can this device be? Voice (Cell+Voip), IM and Email, Media (Music+Video), Productivity and Information Management (Calendars, Notes, Tasks), Location based services (Maps, GPS, Security) are the key scenarios for me in my lifestyle.

The iPhone is just one of the devices trying to answer these questions. I expect the debates to continue as next generation WindowsMobile based devices roll out into the market. The success or failure of any and all of these devices will depend on whether the designers GET it that in the end it is about making the user feel good about using the device (not dumb, not cranky, not miserable…).

To be Updated/Continued…

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You learn more about the release on the photosynth blog. Do note that this is a tech preview and works only on IE6/7.

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A cool video of the inside.

More details on the VE blog.

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