We have to be very quick to ask if the astonishment we feel at Watson's performance on Jeopardy is a projection. Eliza, the computerized Rogerian psychoanalyst does little more than slightly disguise the question "why do you feel that?" -- a question that people are so delighted to answer that they …

The TV quiz show Jeopardy this week will feature an IBM Computer ("Watson") competing against the two winningest Jeopardy champions. My prediction is that the computer is going to win. I base that on the name of the machine -- not Blue J but "Watson." That's the name of IBM's founder …

Kickstarter is a service that allows you to raise money for projects easily: write up a proposal, come up with a set of bonuses that your funders get (You've watched PBS, you know the drill: "For \$50, you get a lifetime license and a tote bag! For \$100, you get …

Goldilocks: A race-aware Java runtime - Microsoft Research.

This one's been in my backlog to post about for awhile. Not only is it interesting as a concept, I find it also interesting that it's a Java runtime and not based on the CLR. Technical reason or just researcher interest?

The Eddie did not go, but the winter storms that have kept the waves big all January gave someone an opportunity to do something truly nutsy -- surfing Maui's "Jaws" break in the middle of the night.

Sure, it was a stunt and, for surfing, stinks of dissipation and decadence, but …

Sho looks interesting, a .NET set of libraries, utilities, and an interactive console for rapid prototyping, data analysis, and visualization.

I am not sure how or if this interacts with Pivot, another Microsoft tool that seems to cover the same ground.

"A Wrinkle In Time" In 90 Seconds from James Kennedy on Vimeo.

This is awesome: award-winning children's books retold as 90 second films. Although my nieces and nephews are probably too old for this, I checked the list of Newbery winners and was amazed by how few I'd even heard …