I’ve moved teams (and sort of roles) at Microsoft.

I spent just over 11 months in my first real job, as a feature Program Manager in the Office group. As with any first job, it was an interesting learning experience. Having glided into that role from the prior internship, it was an easy fit. I knew the people, I knew the product, and I was very eager to build my core PM skills.

Compacted and condensed, almost a year later, I emerged from a very different team, without many of those original coworkers, working on an unfamiliar product, and longing for something that fit better with my interest and (minimal) expertise in design and computing hardware. However, without a bit of fate, I’d probably still be there. The person I interviewed with for an internship was now a group manager and had an open position. “Hey Charlie, are you interested?”

Now, I’m a partner-facing Program Manager in the Windows group, working with one of our three ARM silicon partners. My commitment? Ensure Windows has the right engagement with that partner to succeed in delivering Windows on their platform. Scope is almost anything I want to make it, from greasing the engineering cogs by defining an appropriate legal framework, to diving deep into a feature to help resolve technical challenges. As an engineer at heart, it’s stupendously exciting to get to ramp up rapidly on things from security feature set details to how one could address an engineering requirement with a button’s electrical implementation.

And I think it’s that last piece that makes me enjoy the role so much. I have the opportunity to learn and dive deep into nearly any aspect of Windows and the hardware it runs and will run on. As a role with broad scope, I’m surrounded by smart and immensely experienced people, off of whom I’ve been feeding for the past 4 months. I can feel myself bulging at the sames with learnings and growing rapidly. It’s been a crazy time since I’ve joined, with some of the toughest challenges I’ve ever faced. I wouldn’t have it any other way!

Samsung Focus (Windows Phone 7)

I picked up a Samsung Focus at the Microsoft Store in Bellevue on opening day. I had originally planned to stick with T-Mobile and the Dell Venue Pro, but after getting the runaround on the ETA for my pre-ordered device and some photo quality issues with the Dell, I decided to jump ship to AT&T and the Samsung Focus. After more than a year fiddling around with Windows Mobile 6.5 and then Android, I was itching for a phone that was a little simpler, and a bit more polished. I think I’ve found it in Windows Phone 7.

It’s still too early to pass final judgment on the hardware or software, but the core functions I need, great email, calendar, messaging, web browsing, and mapping, are all there. The device itself feels better than the ‘plasticky’ description I’d read in a couple reviews, which had initially scared me away from the Focus. It’s a thin, light device that slips into one’s pocket, unobtrusively.

I wonder if his continued work within the entertainment and devices division is to push in the direction of ‘appliance-like’ devices?

What’s even better is the Outlook Hotmail Connector for Office 2010 supports contact and calendar sync (in addition to email), so everything’s synced without ever needing to plug in a cable to my computer. As more of these mobile-oriented services light up over the next couple months, my anticipation for Windows Phone 7 builds.

Windows Phone 7 service preparations are well under way in the background and soon, everything will be coming together. I’m excited!

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Synchronization Made Clear(er)

The Worldwide Partner Conference is well underway, with some keynotes by Microsoft executives. The cloud has been a cornerstone of all the keynotes thus far, and while it may initially appear to be all business-y, comments yesterday by Brad Brooks and Andy Lees shows how consumers will start benefiting immediately. It is all centered upon the Three-Screens-and-the-Cloud mantra. As people begin to own multiple connected devices, data synchronization has become a priority issue. Although in the past Live Mesh, Live Sync, FolderShare, SkyDrive, and others made for a jumbled mess in the space, it appears these ‘experiments’ are paying off in the form of the architecture that is being settled upon for the consumer space: Live Sync + SkyDrive.

All the details aren’t quite available yet, but what has been shown thus far seems to indicate that no matter what platform you’re using, Windows 7 or Windows Phone 7 or Windows Live, SkyDrive will be the place to store all your data. Live Sync provides the syncing technology for Windows on a PC, and a slightly revamped version of MyPhone and specialized version of Live Sync, which will be named Windows Phone Live, syncs smartphone data to SkyDrive. SkyDrive is either already the storage location for the web-based Live apps (Office Live, Live Mail, etc.) or provided as a network-mapped drive for the rich clients, such as the Live Essentials suite. Microsoft is providing 25GB on SkyDrive, which is generous. I doubt the intention is to allow you to store your entire media library on the cloud, but sharing 12MP photos and home videos in private, especially in HD formats will now be easier. I’m excited there’s now a clearly defined way for me to synchronize data between my laptop and desktop (and perhaps my work laptop as well!).

Syncing Smartphone Data

Perhaps more interesting is the benefit for Windows Phone 7. AnandTech’s recently published article on the Kin euthanasia touched upon one of the well-received components of the product, Kin Studio. As sad as the Kin story is, perhaps something can be salvaged – the excellent sync philosophy that underlies Kin Studio. The author, Brian Klug, loved the automatic and near real-time synchronization of photos, messages, contacts, and more. Many of these features are already available with Microsoft MyPhone, but it’s nowhere near real-time. What was shown yesterday at WPC with Windows Phone 7, however, changes that. One of the features touted was: after a photo is taken, a web-quality version is automatically synced with SkyDrive, ready to be shared. In order to conserve some data, the full quality version and any media downloaded, say from Zune, is synced over Wifi once the device is plopped into its charging cradle. Now, I doubt the interface for Windows Phone Live will be anything like Kin Studio and its interesting timeline – Windows Phone 7 simply doesn’t have the same social intention Kin does. However, I imagine many of the core syncing scenarios have been ported over, and that’s the important part. No more is the phone tied to a computer. After all, why should it be?

I’m also super excited that synchronization doesn’t just stop at photos, documents and other files. With multiple social services like Facebook, MySpace, Live, and my work Exchange account, contacts are all over the place, often duplicated and many times incomplete. Windows Live will now start aggregating and merging contacts from multiple providers. This functionality was also shown during the Windows Phone 7 demonstrations at WPC. While Android smartphones and HTC Sense interface devices have been able to integrate with services like Facebook, there isn’t enough control over the resulting list of merged contacts. Furthermore, these merged listings are never stored in a permanent location, meaning a data wipe also wipes out those links. I’m hopeful now that Windows Live is hosting all this data, it will be persistent and available for easy manipulation.

The Data Availability Vision

Okay, lots of words, but what does it mean for us, the end users? You get the data that is important to you on all your devices, all the time, anywhere you go. Microsoft’s bringing together its often-confusing mish-mash of synchronization and web storage services in a much clearer way, enabling data and settings synchronization between multiple Windows PCs, Windows Phone 7 devices, Xbox, and the cloud (SkyDrive).

In the past, the enigmatic positioning of seemingly similar products indicated Microsoft itself didn’t quite know what it wanted to accomplish in the synchronization space. However, recent disclosures about the technologies that will underly the Personal Cloud, as Microsoft calls it, are solidifying the landscape. Past experiences have been drawn upon. Microsoft’s vision for your personal mesh of devices is finally becoming clear, and the scenarios are enticing.