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Tandy Trower

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628:'s Digital Media Division. After building the initial team and specifications, he recruited Joe Belfiore to replace him and moved back to work for Mundie, this time with the mission of coming up with an application scenario that could demonstrate the value of the concurrency work that Mundie was incubating under a project called BigTop. BigTop's objective was to fulfill Mundie's vision of helping developers with the need to shift development from single threaded single processor based development to asynchronous, distributed processing without the conventional complications of managing threads, locks, and semaphores to manage interaction between the simultaneously running code modules. This eventually became the CCR (Concurrency and Coordination Runtime) and DSS (Decentralized Software Services) that were later included in 645: 559:. IBM had rejected licensing Windows in favor of their own character based windowed app manager called TopView, but Microsoft continued with the development of a graphical user interface. Windows 1.0 shipped in fall of 1985. That version of Windows bears a scant resemblance to today's version since it had to run on CGA cards which had a resolution of 320×200 pixels, and, prior to Tandy joining the team, it had been decided to use tiled windows rather than overlapping ones as it had in its original design. 66: 356: 243: 123: 25: 531:
BASIC compilers. In addition, he was responsible for the few games (Microsoft Decathlon, Adventure); educational products (Typing Tutor); a couple of hardware products including the already shipping Z-80 based SoftCard and RAMCard for the Apple II computers; muMath (a symbolic equation processor); and muLisp (a LISP interpreter). His first manager at Microsoft was Nigel Smith.
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component of Windows ME and featured in a number of Microsoft Research projects as well as third-party applications and websites. The code was later dropped out of both Windows and Office due to the unsatisfactory user acceptance of the technology and despite his efforts to improve the way the interface could be used, the project was discontinued at Microsoft.
515:, since at that time Atari's personal computers ran a BASIC created by Shepherdson Microsystems, and was not fully compatible with the BASICs that was featured on other early competitive PCs like the Apple II and Commodore PET. Bill Gates himself came down to the Atari office in Sunnyvale and negotiated the features in the spec. 603:, which confirmed through a number of experiments that humans react to social stimuli, even when presented from non-human sources. However, he disagreed with the implementation that the Microsoft Bob team was developing. In response, Tandy hired a contract developer to create an interface for on-screen character agents, called 636:). However, in this first attempt to identify a compelling scenario, Tandy investigated bio-inspired technologies like neural networks, genetic algorithms, and swarm processing, but eventually proposing a project to build a dialogue software engine that would enable natural conversation. However, the project was canceled. 1059: 695:
Tandy Trower resigned from Microsoft in November 2009 to pursue a new venture to create software and services to support robotic solutions that can enhance the lives of an increasing worldwide population that require assistive care. The new venture named Hoaloha Robotics ("hoaloha" being the Hawaiian
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which enabled any Windows developer to incorporate interactive characters into their application or Web pages. In addition to the code to support interaction, four characters that developers could license, including a robot (Robby), parrot (Peedy - borrowed from MSR Persona Project), wizard (Merlin),
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80, a file sorting utility, were also transferred to him. About 6 months later he was also given responsibility for marketing Microsoft Pascal, FORTRAN, MacroAssembler, and the responsibility for launching the first Microsoft C compiler for MS-DOS. At this time he shed responsibility for the hardware
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By that time, there was a Joint Development Agreement with IBM (who still rejected licensing Windows) where Microsoft and IBM would work together on a new OS called OS/2 that would include its own window manager called Presentation Manager. The UIs for Windows and OS/2 Presentation Manager had to be
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It was later used by the Office team to support the Office Assistant and replace the original Microsoft Bob code that had been used. However, the Office team created their own set of characters including the infamous Clippit (aka "Clippy"). Microsoft Agent was also included in the user registration
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and the proposal was approved to move to a prototype phase and would be integrated the concurrency work that Mundie had been incubating. Nine months later, after a subsequent review, the project was approved for product development. with the first Community Technology Preview (CTP) shipped in June
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The team was assigned responsibility for marketing all of the various BASIC products which included an OEM version of BASIC that IBM was shipping with their new PC, known as GW-BASIC. It also included a variety of BASIC interpreters for 6800, 6809, 6502, Z-80, 8080, and 8086 processors as well as
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When Windows 2.0 shipped in November 1987, Tandy proposed the creation of a new group at Microsoft that would do usability testing, app interface design, publish UI guidelines, and create prototypes of new UIs. Subsequently, he founded Microsoft's first usability test labs and wrote most of the
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for 28 years where he was involved with over two dozen products, many of them well known in the market. In his last role at Microsoft he was the General Manager of the Robotics Group and spoke extensively at conferences and universities about the future of robotics. After leaving Microsoft, he
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After teaching himself to program, first on a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 1 and later an Apple II, Tandy switched careers from working as an engineer in the semiconductor industry, and moved to developing software in 1979, when he was hired to work at the San Francisco office of Wicat, a company
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in the industrial robotics sector, and a LEGO VP who was looking for software for their new robotics kits, etc. There appeared to be a common message despite coming from diverse parts of the technology world: robotics was on a new "disruptive" course and moving toward a new personal form.
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and genie (Genie), as well as a tool that enabled developers to create their own characters and animation sequences. In a paper presented at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in 1997, Tandy discussed how to create conversational interfaces for interactive agents.
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Starting out by evaluating software product for possible acquisition, he quickly worked as a product manager for a variety of different educational and entertainment products for the Atari 400 and 800 computers, and recommended to executive management that Atari acquire a license for
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Tandy wrote the specs for a set of desktop applets including a Paint program, a simple word processor called Windows Write, Calculator, Reversi game, Notepad, File Manager, and Calendar program. He also defined a way to change system parameters using an app called the Control Panel.
687:. After the 4.0 release in 2012, Microsoft discontinued the product and closed down the Robotics Group. Since then there has been some work on Robotics within Microsoft, including on ROS (Robot Operating System) for Windows, but Microsoft's involvement in Robotics has been minimal. 527:, Microsoft's then acting HR manager, to join the company. At that time there were about 90 employees. He joined as part of a new product marketing team which included Jeff Raikes, Chris Larson, Carl Stork, Mark Deutsch, and Mark Ursino. (See the end of the video on Channel 9). 598:
was being created within Microsoft Consumer Applications Division. Having met with team to evaluate the design work, Tandy felt the design approach had the right motivation and a good conceptual model based on the research of Stanford professors, Byron Reeves and
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As user interface design and usability assessment became more common practice and integrated into the product teams at Microsoft, Tandy shifted to primarily focus on promoting good design practice and new UI innovations. It was during this time that the ill-fated
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Around this time Steve Jobs left Apple and sued Microsoft over Windows. Tandy was involved in depositions and tasked with creating videos and other educational elements for the Microsoft legal team to use in court. Eventually, the matter was settled out of court.
573:. By then a company called Aldus had also created a Windows version of their popular page layout product, Pagemaker, which took advantage of a printer driver for the HP LaserJet printer. At the time most printers were dot matrix. 675:. This led to a proposal to create a development kit that could provide a consistent platform and tools that could be applied to a wide variety of robots. Gates requested review and input from Craig Mundie and MSR Senior VP, 503:
developing education and curriculum based products for schools. There he worked for Dr. Jim Schuyler on a classroom curriculum management package for the Apple II being developed for SRA. In 1980, he was hired by
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is the current CEO of Hoaloha Robotics LLC, a robotics company based in Seattle, Washington, developing an autonomously mobile, socially interactive robot, to empower senior citizens to live more independently.
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During the following 3 years, he built a small marketing team around the programming languages family and extended the family to include the first BASIC Interpreter and Compiler for the Apple Macintosh.
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Applications for Windows were slow in coming to market at first. In July 1986 Tandy, as Director of Marketing for Windows, had to admit that there were less than a dozen third-party apps.
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guidelines for designing Windows applications that were published by Microsoft Press. He was also a featured speaker on application interface design at early user interface conferences.
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He stayed on to help manage Windows 2.0 and the interface shifted back to overlapping windows. It became the platform for one of the first significant applications to run on Windows,
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kept in sync so users could move smoothly between them and Tandy became the liaison to negotiating features between the products in an effort to keep them operational compatible.
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in the personal computer division, which was the newest of the businesses at the time, and just after Atari's acquisition by Warner Communications from Nolan Bushnell.
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In 2005, Tandy transferred to work as part of Bill Gates' strategic staff, with the role of helping Gates keep up with ongoing internal and external developments.
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During this time Tandy was invited to meetings with different parts of the robotics community, including researchers in universities, vendors like
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After talking with a number of leaders in the robotics community and assessing the available resources, Tandy discussed robotics with
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In late 1981, Tandy inquired about possible openings at Microsoft and was invited up to interview and was offered a position by
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Late in 1984, Steve Ballmer, who had become Tandy's boss, asked him to take over retail marketing responsibility for
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products, and the games and educational products, but not before managing the release of the very first version of
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CHI '97 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems looking to the future - CHI '97
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2006 called Microsoft Robotics Studio. The official release of V1.0 was in December 2006.
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It may require cleanup to comply with Knowledge's content policies, particularly
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from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially
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Within 3 months, responsibility for marketing COBOL and
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youBot mounted with a Microsoft Kinect device in Webots
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A major contributor to this article appears to have a
696:word for "friend") was launched in September 2010. 457: 447: 440: 543:which was created for Microsoft by Bruce Artwick. 683:The 2.0 release in November 2008 was renamed to 640:Gates Strategic Staff and Research into Robotics 370:, potentially preventing the article from being 8: 53:Learn how and when to remove these messages 898:"The Persona Project and Peedy the Parrot" 437: 390:reliable, independent, third-party sources 154:about living persons that is unsourced or 1039:"Microsoft Shuts Down Its Robotics Group" 426:Learn how and when to remove this message 408:Learn how and when to remove this message 338:Learn how and when to remove this message 225:Learn how and when to remove this message 105:Learn how and when to remove this message 643: 384:by replacing them with more appropriate 705: 367:too closely associated with the subject 7: 811:"History of Atari's 8-bit Computers" 856:"Plantir Readies Windows Filer 3.0" 685:Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 630:Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 14: 1060:"Nā Puke Wehewehe ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi" 835:"The History of Microsoft - 1981" 34:This article has multiple issues. 489:Mr. Trower previously worked at 365:may rely excessively on sources 354: 241: 121: 85:. Please discuss further on the 64: 23: 1087:Tandy Trower's LinkedIn profile 925:. Portal.acm.org. p. 198. 616:Windows Media Center and beyond 42:or discuss these issues on the 762:. RoboBusiness. Archived from 620:In 2004, Tandy transferred to 1: 990:Cherry, Steven (2007-08-01). 785:"Hoaloha Robotics About Page" 268:secondary or tertiary sources 1102:American computer scientists 1037:Guizzo, Erico (2014-09-25). 917:Trower, Tandy (1997-03-22). 739:"Microsoft Fosters Robotics" 274:, especially if potentially 252:biography of a living person 132:biography of a living person 589:Interactive Software Agents 452:Washington State University 272:must be removed immediately 159:must be removed immediately 16:American computer scientist 1128: 968:Gates, Bill (2008-02-01). 541:Microsoft Flight Simulator 494:founded Hoaloha Robotics. 464:Microsoft Flight Simulator 741:. Seattle PI. 2006-06-19 970:"A Robot in Every Home" 931:10.1145/1120212.1120341 858:. Infoworld. 1986-07-21 519:Transition to Microsoft 992:"Robots, Incorporated" 653: 266:Please help by adding 146:Please help by adding 972:. 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