Redmond center previews Microsoft's vision for future office

Microsoft group marketing manager Thomas Gruver demonstrates a Broadbench display at the company's new Center for Information Work. Microsoft group marketing manager Thomas Gruver demonstrates a Broadbench display at the company's new Center for Information Work. Photo: Phil H. Webber/Seattle Post-Intelligencer Photo: Phil H. Webber/Seattle Post-Intelligencer Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Redmond center previews Microsoft's vision for future office 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Microsoft Corp. today will unveil the Center for Information Work, a permanent exhibit of office products and software that are at least five years away.

The center is intended to do for business products what the Microsoft Home display does for household products. Sony Corp., Acer Inc. and Intel Corp. are partners in the endeavor.

In a visit last week, the center's emphasis seemed to be on keen new features and changes to the user interface -- some of them of dubious value -- though there was an obvious absence of the focus on increased security Microsoft has made a point of promising.

Located on Microsoft's Redmond campus, the center sports a main room with several desks, each with a different configuration of monitors. It's dark and hushed -- except for the Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound booming out from concealed speakers and whooshing, "Star Wars" noises emitted whenever new information comes onscreen or is e-mailed away.

"Surround sound is going to be increasingly important in future offices," says group marketing manager Tom Gruver in leading a tour of the new facility.

At one desk, users can move a wireless mouse's pointer from the screen of one computer to the screen of a laptop, with no wire or wireless connection between the computers themselves. That allows copying or moving material between the computers, a task that would otherwise be more difficult.

In an adjoining, ultramodern meeting room, visitors -- expected to number about 1,000 corporate executives per month -- can role-play workers in a hard-charging widget company, striving to nail down production of a new model before the company's chief executives goes on television for an interview.

In the world of Contoso Widget Corp., workers e-mail each other spoken messages, or videos of themselves delivering messages, rather than simply writing e-mails or leaving voice mails. They send e-mails that include clips of newscasts that refer to the company, rather than simply describing or quoting the broadcasts.

"Video mail and e-mailed voice mail will be just a popular as e-mail or voice mail in five years," Gruver says.

E-mails are forwarded to car dashboards, cell phones or portable devices at the recipient's option. They include portions of spreadsheets, which when clicked on are reconnected to the rest of the spreadsheet to allow digging deeper into the data.

All e-mail from every account, and all voice mail, faxes and instant messages, are displayed in one corner of a semicircular 6-foot screen that wraps around in front of the user. The screen technology is called D# ("D Sharp").

Research manager Mary Czerwinski says the company's studies show spreading Office documents over bigger screens significantly increases efficiency.

Instant-messaging buddies are grouped to reflect their hierarchy in the company, or where they're logged in. E-mails, instant messages and Web pages can be grouped into "Info Clusters" and then e-mailed or quickly turned into a Web site.

XML (Extended Markup Language) invisibly marks up a list of executives' names in a PowerPoint slide, so that dropping the list into an e-mail's "To" field turns the names into the execs' e-mail addresses.

In a meeting room, whatever is written on a white board shows up on everyone's Tablet PC, and vice versa. A Ring Cam at the center of the table automatically selects the person speaking to webcast.

In the event of a colloquy, it picks the most vociferous participants.

Each step in nailing down the new widget's production is projected onto a huge video screen to be attacked, the various steps color-coded to note their status.

In a faux living room, Gruver shows how documents on a computer at work can be accessed easily at home. . . . or in the air or in a car, thanks to two mocked-up first-class plane seats and complete, touch-screen-equipped Toyota Prius dashboard.

"The lines between home and office are blurring," he says.

Few of the products have names, and none has an expected delivery date or price. It's about concepts. One concept not addressed is the bugs, unnecessary or hidden features and overly complicated products Microsoft has already introduced into the market.

Some Microsoft users still hope against hope that the company will address those issues before moving on to newer, glitzier software.

Another concept largely ignored is security. Users must sign into the center using a biometric thumb-print detector, but there is virtually nothing more about security in the 1 1/2-hour presentation.

Bill Gates wrote in a January companywide memo, "When we face a choice between adding features and resolving security issues, we need to choose security."

"There is an emphasis here on security, but that doesn't mean we can't be visionary," Gruver explains.

But group vice president Jeff Raikes, who conceived of the center, agrees it might need an even bigger emphasis on security.

"Security needs to be part of the products people want," he says.