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How Microsoft quietly built the city of the future

microsoft.com

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Re: How Microsoft quietly built the city of the future

#21

Post by rlu »

tempaccount9473 wrote: post #13
rlu wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, I get a similar error when trying to download the whitepaper on the fifth page. I can change pages fine, but when I try and click on the link it does a "download microsoft" Bing search...

> stumbled over the navigation to the next page, which gave me this error > I get a similar error when trying to download the whitepaper on the fifth page. So... first time you two have used a Microsoft product then? Well, in case you're wondering, pretty much all Miscrosoft software is a stolen design wrapped around a buggy core when first released.

Thanks for your insightful comment and help on the problem! I'll make sure to remember that about Microsoft software.

Re: How Microsoft quietly built the city of the future

#22

Post by potatolicious »

andrewguenther wrote: post #17
ttrreeww wrote: post #12

If that's a city of the future, then I don't want any part of it...

Why not? Just curious

I think the complaint may be more about the location than the campus itself. Redmond, WA, is for all intents and purposes a Company Town.

It's pretty remote, and the entirety of the city revolves around a single employer. Everyone who works there either works directly for Microsoft or is closely affiliated with Microsoft business. Ditto everyone who lives there.

It's far from the nearest major city (Seattle), and to make matters a bit worse, there is a large natural barrier between the Company Town and the city (a huge lake in the way, with highly congestion-prone bridge crossings).

The negative side effects of this are too many to fully enumerate. Beyond the general boredom of living in a place where everyone works for the same company, there's also the issue of not having ready access to cultural events (which tend to be urban), the lack of proximity to competitors or indeed actual users of your products, etc.

Being outside of a major urban area is also limiting for employees in that there is substantially less choice in where you can live. Companies based in Seattle offer employees the full gamut of commuting options and accomodate both urban and suburban lifestyles thanks to the hub and spoke model of transportation. Being outside of a hub reduces the number of places that are within reasonable commuting distance.

Re: How Microsoft quietly built the city of the future

#23

Post by alyx »

bretthopper wrote: post #4

This is a pretty poor attempt at copying the NY Times design for their Snow Fall project ( http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/#/?part=tunne... ). It's lacking the top nav and the typography is terrible. Generally just lacks some polish and execution.

I know bashing Microsoft is oh-so-tempting, but can you at least try discussing the actual article here?

Re: How Microsoft quietly built the city of the future

#24

Post by chubot »

bretthopper wrote: post #4

This is a pretty poor attempt at copying the NY Times design for their Snow Fall project ( http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/#/?part=tunne... ). It's lacking the top nav and the typography is terrible. Generally just lacks some polish and execution.

Wow, "next page" is broken/nonexistent in firefox. I could only read the first page with it... Had to switch to Chrome to get past the first page.

Re: How Microsoft quietly built the city of the future

#25

Post by cmelbye »

alyx wrote: post #23
bretthopper wrote: post #4

This is a pretty poor attempt at copying the NY Times design for their Snow Fall project ( http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/#/?part=tunne... ). It's lacking the top nav and the typography is terrible. Generally just lacks some polish and execution.

I know bashing Microsoft is oh-so-tempting, but can you at least try discussing the actual article here?

But some people can't even read the "actual article" because the navigation is so broken.

Re: How Microsoft quietly built the city of the future

#26

Post by k3n »

Since this is obviously a marketing piece from MS, I'll attack the delivery and not the substance (since the substance is propaganda anyways)...

But are we back in the year 2000? That header image is 936kb! And for what purpose -- to show that they're in-tune with the over-saturated photo hipsters? Seriously, the image doesn't even lend anything to the article; looks like just a generic shot of some random 'burb. I see no signs of high-tech or futurism represented. What...the.....they have another gigantic, completely useless image on each of the next 2 pages as well?

And this horrid navigation thing that slowly slides in at the bottom? It doesn't even queue (if you scroll up/down rapidly a few times the nav bar will bounce up & down several times in succession).

This might be the worst website I've seen all year.

Re: How Microsoft quietly built the city of the future

#27

Post by eykanal »

Very interesting overview. I wonder how the sensors work... can they detect a broken pipe at a specific location? The article also kept referring to "equipment"... how granular does that get? Is an entire heating system one piece of "equipment", or can they get down to the component level?

Still, very cool. I know we trivialize dealing with lots of data, but still, this is a huge amount of information they have to automatically receive, triage, prioritize, and possibly even act upon. Impressive.

Re: How Microsoft quietly built the city of the future

#28

Post by rubyrescue »

k3n wrote: post #26

Since this is obviously a marketing piece from MS, I'll attack the delivery and not the substance (since the substance is propaganda anyways)... But are we back in the year 2000? That header image is 936kb! And for what purpose -- to show that they're in-tune with the over-saturated photo hipsters? Seriously, the image doesn't even lend anything to the article; looks like just a generic shot of some random 'burb. I s…

that's redmond in the foreground and seattle in the background

Re: How Microsoft quietly built the city of the future

#29

Post by k3n »

rubyrescue wrote: post #28
k3n wrote: post #26

Since this is obviously a marketing piece from MS, I'll attack the delivery and not the substance (since the substance is propaganda anyways)... But are we back in the year 2000? That header image is 936kb! And for what purpose -- to show that they're in-tune with the over-saturated photo hipsters? Seriously, the image doesn't even lend anything to the article; looks like just a generic shot of some random 'burb. I s…

that's redmond in the foreground and seattle in the background

Yes, but does it add anything to the piece?

Re: How Microsoft quietly built the city of the future

#30

Post by danso »

alyx wrote: post #23
bretthopper wrote: post #4

This is a pretty poor attempt at copying the NY Times design for their Snow Fall project ( http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/#/?part=tunne... ). It's lacking the top nav and the typography is terrible. Generally just lacks some polish and execution.

I know bashing Microsoft is oh-so-tempting, but can you at least try discussing the actual article here?

I was going to agree with you but the execution of this article is quite awful. The worst part of it is how there was no reason for this to be subdivided into pages.

An average page in the Microsoft story has fewer than 700 words.

In the NYT's Snowfall, the average chapter is 3,000+ words.

The NYT has an incentive to increase pageviews with pagination. Microsoft is paginating their press releases.

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