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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

#41

Post by dspeyer »

potatolicious wrote: post #22
andrewguenther wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's an exaggeration. While Seattle is painfully distant (painful really is the word for the 520 bridge) Bellevue is right next door. Bellevue is a city of 122k people, bigger than Ann Arbor. It's no great cultural center, but it's certainly more than just Microsoft people.

Re: How Microsoft quietly built the city of the future

#43

Post by morsch »

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…

No, in 2000, my home connection had 64kbit. We're in 2013, where even the kind of mobile devices you'd be viewing this piece on come with 1 Mbit/s+ connections. This lets us put beautiful, high-resolution photos alongside texts, using our equally high-resolution displays for something other than sharp fonts.

Not a fan of the navigation, either.

Re: How Microsoft quietly built the city of the future

#44

Post by k3n »

drivers99 wrote: post #32
k3n wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but does it add anything to the piece?

The buildings in the foreground are the Microsoft campus. They show a model of some of the same buildings in the article. So it appears to be related.

Related, yes. Adds value, no.

Re: How Microsoft quietly built the city of the future

#45

Post by sgk284 »

k3n wrote: post #29
rubyrescue wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, but does it add anything to the piece?

It's a picture of the campus that they're talking about. Everything below the big tree line in the middle of the picture is Microsoft's campus. Note that it's not even the whole thing. The campus is huge and extends outside of the picture in every direction but north.

It's relevant because it puts into perspective how massive their campus is.

Re: How Microsoft quietly built the city of the future

#46

Post by duncans »

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.

The typography is screwed because of the seemingly faulty font stack in:

    .ncDcParagraph {
       font-size: 14px;
       font-family: Segoe,Verdana,sans serif;
    }
I think it should be "Segoe UI" which is a very nice font (on Windows) and it's falling through to Verdana which makes it look dated.

Details, details...

Re: How Microsoft quietly built the city of the future

#47

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

Re: How Microsoft quietly built the city of the future

#48

Post by mturmon »

chubot wrote: post #24
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.

I'm on Chrome beta (27) on Mac and I also could not get nav to the next page to work. (It does work at the bottom of the final page.) I had to edit the freaking URL by hand, on a guess that the article was truncated.

Re: How Microsoft quietly built the city of the future

#49

Post by potatolicious »

dspeyer wrote: post #41
potatolicious wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's an exaggeration. While Seattle is painfully distant (painful really is the word for the 520 bridge) Bellevue is right next door. Bellevue is a city of 122k people, bigger than Ann Arbor. It's no great cultural center, but it's certainly more than just Microsoft people.

And unlike Ann Arbor it has neither the diverse industrial or academic base to provide for a diverse population. Bellevue is still largely an extension of Redmond, though admittedly not as thoroughly MSFT-dominated as Redmond proper thanks to some tech presence in Kirkland.

Bellevue can hope to have the diversity of Ann Arbor when they import a state school and a few cornerstone employers that aren't Microsoft or Microsoft-affiliates. I don't expect this to happen soon.

Hell, "Bel-Red" exists as a word for a reason.

In any case, I don't think my original point is at all an exaggeration. Redmond is a modern incarnation of a Company town, though it doesn't come with many of the stigmas of industrial company towns. Its proximity to Bellevue has meant the Microsoftification of Bellevue, rather than the diversification of Remond.

Re: How Microsoft quietly built the city of the future

#50

Post by gamblor956 »

As a counterpoint to all the negative comments about this article's typography and navigation, I viewed this article in IE9 at work and had absolutely no problems with the typography (which properlyl displays as Segoe UI) or with navigation.

Who would have thought that a Microsoft website looks best in a Microsoft browser?

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